The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  After a moment I followed her. She looked up startled as I entered the scullery.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I feel much better now.” I was trying to decide how I could best express my gratitude to her. Obviously I could not offer her money but I felt some tangible gesture of thanks should undoubtedly be made, and after careful thought I said, “I must go through my wife’s possessions soon. Perhaps you would accept something in memory of her.”

  “Oh, but I wouldn’t presume—”

  “Nonsense. She liked you, spoke well of you.”

  She was speechless. She set down the newly dried teapot as if she feared it might shatter to pieces in her hands.

  “Perhaps you’d like some of her clothes,” I said suddenly. “They’re no good to her maid, she’s the wrong shape.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t possibly accept—”

  “I don’t see why not. Why don’t you at least have a look at them and see what you think?”

  “Well, I … it’s very, very kind of you. … When?”

  “Now?”

  “Oh! Oh yes—yes, indeed—if you wish.” She hastily dried the last plate and hung up the cloth.

  The twilight was heavy by this time but although the hall was in gloom it was not in darkness. Carrying a candle more out of courtesy than necessity, I led the way upstairs. We were both silent. I had fixed my mind on the subject of Blanche’s clothes and was debating whether to donate them to the Red Cross or to the Salvation Army after Mrs. Morgan had made her selection.

  In the bedroom I walked to the wardrobe and opened the doors.

  “These are the clothes she usually wore,” I said over my shoulder as I held up the candle to illuminate them. “But there’s another wardrobe in the bedroom across the passage where she kept the clothes she wore less frequently.”

  Mrs. Morgan cast one glance at the contents of the wardrobe and said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly take any of them, sir. They’re much too good for me.”

  In the pause that followed I was acutely aware of my hand setting down the candle. Then before I could stop myself I said, “You’re too modest, Mrs. Morgan. You’re far, far too modest.”

  Everything changed. I had never before realized that a mere inflection of the voice could destroy a world forever, but as I spoke I saw that Anglo-Saxon world in which I had always secretly been such a misfit keel over and begin to fall soundlessly, endlessly into the void.

  The other world moved closer. I saw the open spaces, the timeless light, the freedom beyond imagination, and suddenly in a moment of absolute certainty I knew that this was the way, the truth, the life I longed to lead.

  The chained dog finally slipped his collar. I rushed forward, she stumbled towards me and a second later we were in each other’s arms.

  II

  I kissed her exactly as I wanted to kiss her. There was no question of worrying in case I offended delicate sensibilities, because I knew that she too was exercising no restraint. Her arms were so strong that they seemed almost as strong as mine, and her mouth was strong too, very free and supple, and her fingers were strong but sensitive as she caressed the back of my neck. Our tongues were silent together. I knew a moment of intense intimacy followed by such a violence of desire that I would have swayed on my feet if she had not been holding me so strongly, and in her strength I saw a reflection of my own.

  I was aware of Blanche’s bed behind her, and beyond the awareness lay the knowledge that whatever happened next could never happen there. I hesitated, and into the mental space created by my hesitation streamed the training and self-discipline of decades, no longer tormenting me with the image of imprisonment but offering me the only possible escape from the terror of my new freedom.

  In panic I released her. I backed away, covering my face with my hands as my voice, the voice of an English gentleman, said with absolute correctness, “I’m so sorry; I do apologize. Obviously I’m unhinged by my grief.”

  There was a flurry of movement. Slim, strong fingers gripped my wrists and pulled my hands from my face. Great green eyes, fierce with the most desperate emotion, blazed into mine.

  “Don’t you lie to me!” she shouted in Welsh. “Never lie to me! I don’t deal in lies!” And bursting into tears she rushed from the room.

  I tore after her, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by the sheer reality of my emotion. I was blistered and bludgeoned by it, my old ways shattered, my past blown to bits and all my defenses incinerated by a white-hot heat. It was as though every mask I had ever worn, every lie I had ever told were being blasted from the face of my personality until at last, at the very bottom of my consciousness, my true self began to stir again in its long-forgotten, long-abandoned grave.

  I caught her on the landing and grabbed her back from the head of the stairs. We were a long way now from the bedroom I had shared with Blanche, and nearby us a door led into one of the spare rooms which had never been used.

  I remember how I noticed that door.

  I opened it. The room contained only a narrow single bed with a shabby mattress but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except the door. It was the door I always remembered so clearly afterwards, the door leading from one world into another, the door which connected past and present and opened onto the future. I remember flinging the door wide, I remember shoving the door shut, I remember the door slamming with utter finality behind us—yes, it’s the door I’ll always remember, the door, the door, the door …

  III

  The miracle was the absolute cessation of pain. At one moment I was in such pain that I was incapable of imagining life without it and the next moment there was no pain, only a deep all-powerful forgetting, not a peace, for peace implies stillness, and not oblivion, for oblivion implies unconsciousness, but a freedom to sever myself temporarily from the unbearable sources of my distress.

  We were together for a long time. Then the episode was concluded but within minutes, mysteriously, our strength was renewed. I use the word “our” deliberately because she was as exhausted as I was. I had never before, witnessed feminine exhaustion of that nature, although I had known it could exist; I had heard stories about such phenomena, but I had thought only prostitutes could be so untroubled by reticence. However, I passed no judgment, registered neither astonishment nor disbelief; I was beyond such banal emotions. I was deep in my forgetting, only thankful that she wanted me again without constraint, so we went on and the new strength brought with it a gathering ease, but again I neither registered astonishment nor marveled in disbelief. I was wholly absorbed in the miracle of my painlessness and wishing only that it could last forever.

  But passing time and the inevitably finite nature of all that one might wish to be infinite eventually conquered us. Exhaustion came again, and although we later achieved yet another renewal, it was short-lived. Unaccustomed to such excess my body had become sore, and I sensed she was sore too for the same reason. Her fingers hardened on my back; I felt our release uniting us for a few more precious seconds, but although I tried to sustain myself afterwards I failed. The force was spent and a moment later we had fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

  IV

  When I awoke it was sometime in the dead of night but the moon had risen and the room was brighter. I was at first aware only of the body pressed to mine but presently I observed that the window was curtainless, the mattress was lumpy and the air was cool upon our nakedness. I shivered and she woke up.

  “Bronwen.” I sighed and kissed her and sighed again. I had never been face to face with a naked woman before. My knowledge of the feminine anatomy had been derived first from classical statues and later from tactful explorations of Blanche’s body under cover of darkness.

  After some time I said, “May I ask you something outrageous?” I was still existing entirely in the present. There was no past and no future. I was by a miracle suspended in time.

  “Outrageous!” She laughed at the prospect. “You’d better ask in Welsh or I mightn’t understa
nd!”

  I laughed too. Then I touched her below her narrow waist and beneath the curve of her hip. “Is your hair there,” I said, “the same color as your hair here?” And I kissed the shining strands which, dark in the moonlight, streamed past her cheek to fall across her breast.

  “Of course!” She started laughing again, and so did I. “Why should my hair be red in one place but not in another?”

  “My brothers, who are all much fairer than I am, have hair that’s darker on their bodies than on their heads,” I said, and thought, What an extraordinary conversation! I began to laugh again. It amazed me that I should want to laugh with a woman in such very intimate circumstances.

  “I know nothing about fair-haired men,” she said simply. “My husband’s dark and there’s been no one else.”

  “I’ve had no one else but my wife. But that wasn’t because I’m virtuous, as you undoubtedly are. It was because I felt I had to pretend to be perfect.”

  “But no one’s perfect except in a fairy tale!”

  After a pause I said, “Blanche was.”

  “No, she wasn’t! That was why she was such a lovely lady—she wasn’t cold and faultless like a stone angel in a churchyard; she was warm and human and real.”

  “But when I think how she slaved and slaved to be the perfect wife I so selfishly wanted her to be—”

  “Ah, that reminds me of myself. I slaved and slaved to be a perfect wife to Gareth, but that wasn’t because I was a saint. It was because I was afraid he’d fall out of love with me and leave me for someone else. I was weak and timid and dishonest. I wasn’t a heroine at all.”

  “And did he leave you?”

  “Yes—for the sea and the bottle. We still share a bed when he’s home, but I don’t bother to pretend to be a saint anymore, and now I’m much happier. Better to live in the truth, however terrible, than to murder your true self by living a lie.”

  I stared at her. Then I tried to imagine Blanche as weak and timid, perhaps even a little dishonest, not a saint but a flesh-and-blood woman who had loved me not perfectly but well enough to accept the burden of trying to be the wife I wanted. At last I said, “I never knew her. And she never knew me either. She only knew the English side of me; she only knew me as John. But in the old days I was Johnny and I was Welsh.”

  “What happened to Johnny?”

  “I murdered him. I murdered my true self in order to live a lie.” Pulling her closer I buried my face in her streaming hair.

  “But he’s come back, hasn’t he?” she said. “Can’t you see the curve of time? You didn’t murder him after all. He’s still alive.”

  V

  Soon after four she said in English, “I must go. Myfanwy will be up before sunrise to bake the bread.”

  In alarm I asked if her sister would have waited up for her but she shook her head. “No, I always go to bed later than either Myfanwy or Huw. I don’t have to be awake so early.” She slipped out of bed. “I must wash,” she said abruptly. “I’ll go down to the scullery.”

  “What’s wrong with the bathroom?”

  “I’m not sure what to do there.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Could you come with me?”

  We removed to the bathroom which she had apparently visited during the night after using the lavatory next door.

  “There are two taps,” she said, “and I didn’t know which one to use. The second sink in the scullery just has one tap so I knew I wouldn’t have to worry there.”

  “Ah, I see.” I stared at the bath and basin, two humdrum objects which I had taken for granted for as long as I could remember, and tried to imagine the background of someone to whom they represented a worrying challenge. “Yes,” I said, pulling myself together. “Well, you can use either tap at the moment—it won’t make any difference because the boiler’s out and there’s no hot water.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, I wondered if the H on the tap stood for Hot but I wasn’t sure. It’s better to ask, isn’t it, if one’s not sure.”

  “Much better.”

  “I was afraid it might be some special drinking water which mustn’t be used for washing. When I was in service there was no bathroom—river water came out of the pump in the yard and drinking water came from the well, and when the gentry wanted hot water it was heated in copper vats and carried upstairs to their bedrooms in jugs.”

  “Oxmoon used to be like that when my parents were first married. I daresay many country houses in remote areas took time to acquire modern plumbing and bathrooms.”

  “I’ve never seen a bathroom before,” said Bronwen simply. Then she smiled and said with a trace of her old awkwardness, “I’ll be all right now.”

  I kissed her and departed to my dressing room to put on some informal clothes. On my return to the spare room I said, “When’s your husband coming home?”

  “I don’t know. It depends whether it’s the Lisbon or the Naples run.”

  “Didn’t you ask him which it would be?”

  “No, I was too angry because he was leaving me with hardly any money and I knew we’d have to go back and live on Huw’s charity again.”

  “Why couldn’t he leave you more?”

  “He’d drunk it.”

  We went downstairs in silence. I tried to imagine her life in cheap rented rooms in Cardiff but it was beyond me, so I thought instead of Disraeli, thundering three-quarters of a century ago about the two nations of Britain, the rich and the poor. Instinctively I recoiled from this vision; I reached out my hand as if I could bridge the unbridgeable, but as I looked across the void that separated her nation from mine I saw the glittering bayonets of the class system waiting to impale all those who fell into the abyss below.

  “What are you thinking about?” she said suddenly as I opened the front door.

  “Nothing.”

  She stopped. I saw her face and said, “Class. I shall never take it for granted again.”

  “What else can one do but take it for granted? It’s the way of the world.” She paused on the doorstep. “I want to say goodbye here.”

  “Can’t I walk up the lane with you?”

  “I’d rather say goodbye to you here, where you belong.”

  “But of course we’ll meet again!”

  “Where?” she said. “How?”

  “But—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said rapidly. “You needn’t pretend that there could be more between us, you needn’t try not to hurt my feelings. I accept that there’s no future but I don’t mind because I’ve had my one perfect night, the night I thought I could never have, and now on the dark days when life seems very hard I’ll be able to look across the circle and hear your echo in time.”

  I could only say “I must see you again.”

  “How?” she repeated, and added: “Black is black and white is white and gray isn’t allowed.”

  “Except in the bedroom.”

  “Oh yes! If the woman’s a whore.” She began to walk away.

  “For God’s sake, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know you didn’t. But that’s the truth, isn’t it? And that’s why I can’t see you again.”

  We stood motionless facing each other. The sky was lightening in the east, and across the dew-soaked lawn in the opaque woods the birds had started to sing. I took her in my arms. After a long time, I said stubbornly, “I know we’ll meet again, I know it,” but she shook her head, said, “Goodbye, Johnny” and walked off down the drive to the gates.

  VI

  I sank down exhausted on the drawing-room sofa. My last conscious thought before sleep intervened was: Johnny. And in my dreams Lion was laughing once more at my side.

  When I awoke I saw that the French clock had stopped. Outside in the broad daylight it was raining, but I barely noticed because memory was slamming through my mind with the force of a tidal wave and I was rushing out into the hall.

  The grandfather clock, still ticking somnolently in its corner, told
me that the time was twenty minutes past seven. I toyed with this fact, wondered what to do with it, but it meant nothing. All I knew was that there was still no past and no future and that I was still suspended in time.

  I wandered around the hall, rubbed my face absentmindedly and remembered that I had to shave. The quest for hot water occupied me satisfactorily for quarter of an hour, but at last I was heading upstairs with a steaming kettle. I was enjoying the timelessness, savoring my detachment from the world, luxuriating in a mild but most delectable euphoria. Johnny! Not even Lazarus, raised from the dead, could have been so blissfully unconscious of everything save the fact that he was once more alive.

  In the dressing room I poured the water into the basin, picked up the razor and glanced at my reflection in the glass.

  I hesitated. I was wearing a blue shirt, and this performed the usual sartorial trick of making my eyes, never pale, seem bluer than ever. I looked into those eyes and saw my father looking back at me. And beyond my father, I saw my grandmother Gwyneth Llewellyn.