The Wheel of Fortune (108 page)

I loathed him.

“Well, Kester,” said Uncle John, “you must spend the next year concentrating on your studies—we’ll have to postpone those lessons in estate management, but never mind, I hardly expected you to run Oxmoon single-handed as soon as you turned eighteen.”

I loathed him too. My magic birthday was fast being reduced to just another day in the schoolroom.

“But I can have a checkbook, can’t I,” I said, “as soon as I’m eighteen?”

Uncle John gave me a cool look and said stuffily, “I’m sure some suitable arrangement can be made to reflect both your majority and your apparent inability to live within your allowance. I understand you owe your mother twenty-three pounds seven and six.”

I had been betrayed. My mother joined the list of the loathed.

“Damn it, Uncle John, why shouldn’t I owe my mother a few pounds if she’s willing to lend them to me! After all, I
am
master of Oxmoon!”

“All the more reason why you shouldn’t get into debt.”

I immediately wanted to go out and spend thousands.

My eighteenth birthday was eventually celebrated in ghastly Godwin style by a dinner party for my relatives and various old friends of the family. The one redeeming feature was that Cousin Harry was absent. He was doing so well at Oxford that it was quite impossible for him to tear himself away.

I was beginning to have very serious reservations about going up to Oxford. Uncle John would use the fact that I was a student to keep me in leading strings for another three years, and besides the last thing I wanted was to be in a place where I would be continually outdazzled by Cousin Harry. Could I go to Cambridge instead? No, because Uncle John would want to know why I refused to go to Oxford and might indeed even humiliate me by guessing the truth. I decided to forgo a university education altogether, even though it might have been fun to live with Anna among “the dreaming spires.” After all, what was university? Just an extended version of school, and Ricky Mowbray had told me that Oxford was full of public-school louts who should have been exterminated on the playing fields of Eton.

“I hear that pansy Ricky Mowbray got sent down from Oxford,” remarked Thomas to my mother. “What was the trouble? Buggery in the quadrangles?”

“You’d better be careful, Thomas,” said my mother coldly. “You could be sued for spreading that kind of slander. Ricky came down from Oxford of his own free will, and there’s never been any hint that he misbehaved in the way you suggest.”

But I knew Ricky better than she did. I was sixteen when Ricky came down from Oxford and confessed to me.

“The truth was I just couldn’t stand being away from you, Kes. … I was so miserable … missed you so much … I can’t help it, I’m terribly in love with you.”

A nightmare. I panicked, retreated into brutality. “Gosh, Ricky, if I were going to be in love with a man I’d certainly be in love with you, but I never get physically excited unless I think about Anna.”

Embarrassment. Agony on both sides. Shame.

“Don’t betray me, Kes. Promise. I’ll never bother you again, I swear it.”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid, Ricky! Of course I’d never betray a friend!”

“Can I still be your friend?”

“Why on earth not?” I said, feeling desperately sorry for him, but I was relieved when he went away to France for a year to study at the University of Grenoble, and even more relieved when he returned home apparently quite recovered from his humiliating aberration.

“I
am
sorry I was such a certifiable oaf, Kes—I honestly think Oxford sent me right round the bend! However all that’s over now and I’ve developed a penchant for blue-eyed blondes. How’s your cousin Erika?”

Erika, who had been taking a cookery course in London, was back in Gower and nearly dying of boredom. I wished Ricky luck, but was somewhat less than forthcoming when he inquired about Anna. I had decided to tell no one, not even my closest friend, about my unbroken determination to elope as soon as Anna was eighteen.

She was now seventeen and a half. Six months to go.

June came. I sat for my Higher Certificate again, but this time I found the papers easy and knew I’d done well. Uncle John began to talk of Oxford but I merely listened politely; I was determined to give no hint that I was about to slash myself free of my leading strings in one grand glorious romantic gesture and celebrate my long-awaited independence in the biggest possible way.

In July Anna arrived home after her final term at school, and we met the next day at the Blue Rabbit to draw up our final plans.

She spent her birthday with her parents. We thought that was only fair to them, but on the morning of the twenty-fifth of July we caught the train to London and headed north to Gretna Green.

5

I

B
EFORE I LEFT OXMOON
, I wrote a note which read:
Dear Mum, I’ve gone off to marry Anna. Don’t be too livid. I’m the sort of man who only falls in love once and this is it. Sorry I can’t wait till I’m twenty-five, but I think my father would have married you when he was eighteen too if you hadn’t run off with Mr. Kinsella in order to escape from that engagement to Sir Timothy Appleby. I doubt if he was really all that keen on any of those mistresses you mentioned. I certainly wouldn’t have been. Anyway, remember him and forgive me. Back in six weeks. Much love,
KESTER.

Gretna Green turned out to be a humdrum town, despite its romantic fame as a center of clandestine marriages, but I had plenty of money (my bank manager Mr. Lloyd-Thomas had been most accommodating, such a refreshing change from Uncle John), so at least we were able to entertain ourselves in style as we established our Scottish residency. I hired a motor; every day we explored the pretty countryside, while every evening we would linger over a substantial dinner before drifting upstairs for the night. (Of course we had separate bedrooms.)

We were just thinking that marriage must surely be an anticlimax after such perfect bliss when we returned from our afternoon picnic to find a familiar M.G. parked in the forecourt.

“Oh God!” I said in horror as Rory emerged from the hotel with a triumphant expression on his face.

“What shall we do?” said Anna, panicking.

“Hold fast! Stand firm!” I said, resorting to Uncle John’s favorite Imperialist war cry, but I was quailing at the thought of my family conspiring to save me from myself. Halting the car I got out. Rory blazed over to me. “You little fool!” he shouted. “I’ve come to bring you home! You’ve broken your mother’s heart!”

“Dear me,” I said, “just like Rupert of Hentzau!” And when I heard Anna laugh I felt my courage return.

“Now look here, my lad—”

“Oh, shut up, Rory—go back to sponging off your rich wife and leave me alone!”

Rory stared at me as if I’d grown horns and a tail. I was in ecstasy. I suddenly had a vision of a future in which I would say exactly what I liked to all the members of my family who had so irked me in the past.

“Will you excuse us, please?” said Rory to Anna. “I’d better talk to my brother on his own.”

“As far as I’m concerned you’re not my brother,” I said. “If Mum hadn’t gone off her head and married an Irish gangster you wouldn’t even exist!”

“Christ!” said Rory, scarlet with rage. “My father was ten times the man Robert ever was—”

“Oh, go and spin your fairy tales somewhere else!”

“You’re the one who’s spinning a fairy tale if you think your father made our mother happy!”

I knocked him down.

Anna gasped.

Rory was too stunned to speak. He sat on the ground and shook his head rapidly as if to clear his vision. Across the forecourt by the hotel entrance I saw the porter scurry inside to broadcast news of a crisis.

“Go to hell,” I said to Rory, “and bloody well leave us alone.”

Rory growled in rage to conceal his humiliation, shouted, “You silly little bugger, I’m going to take you home even if I have to do it by force!” and staggered to his feet to attempt to carry out his threat. He was shorter than I was but broader and heavier. However too much drinking had made him flabby, and I had the youth and agility he lacked. We fought furiously together. Anna jumped out of the car and begged us to stop, but we took no notice and in the end we were separated only by the combined efforts of the hotel manager, both porters and the boot boy.

The police arrived.

Hours of tedium followed. Rory and I were charged with a breach of the peace and spent the night in separate cells at the police station. Rory was allowed a telephone call, and after an all-night drive in the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Uncle John arrived at Gretna Green just ahead of a gang of journalists who had realized that a junior member of
Burke’s Landed Gentry
was trying—futilely—to elope with style and good taste.

More tedious hours passed. Uncle John’s
aides-de-camp
handled the press. Uncle John’s solicitor handled the police. Eventually the charges were dropped, and back at the hotel Uncle John himself prepared to mop up the rest of the mess.

“I’d be obliged if you’d return to London, Rory,” he said in a voice that made his son-in-law cringe. “I’ve no wish for you to prolong your disastrous presence here.”

Rory slunk away. If I hadn’t been so consumed with nervousness on my own account I might even have felt sorry for him.

The moment had now come. It was without doubt the most crucial moment of my life so far. Did I assert my independence or did I allow Uncle John to reduce me once more to the level of a recalcitrant child? I was beside myself with fright as we confronted each other, but beyond all my terror I was aware of an iron determination not to give way.

“Well, Kester,” said Uncle John, his glance flickering around my little bedroom with such distaste that it instantly became as drab and sordid as the current state of my elopement, “this is a very unfortunate situation.”

“It was all right,” I said, “before everyone tried to interfere.” To my horror my voice shook.

“I’m sorry—I was under the impression that my interference at least was essential; after all I’ve just extracted you from a police cell and saved you from a great deal of unpleasantness. However, that’s of no consequence. If the price I have to pay for saving you is your anger and resentment, then I’ve no alternative but to pay it. Now—” He paused to draw together the shreds of his patience. “—I must tell you that as Rory’s pleas have had no effect, your mother wants to prevent the marriage by making you a ward of court, but I would strongly urge you to come home with me so that this step is rendered unnecessary.”

“I’m not going home till I’m married.”

“I don’t think you quite understand. Once you’re a ward of court you can be jailed for contempt if you disobey the court’s order forbidding you to marry.”

“Then I’ll go to jail. But I’m getting married and no one’s going to stop me.”

“I’m sure that if you come home quietly now your mother will agree to a formal engagement—”

“No. I’ve waited long enough. I’m waiting no longer.”

“But—”

“That’s my decision and I’m sticking to it.”

“—if only I could convince you to—”

“No.”

“—postpone your plans for a while—”

“NEVER!”

I faced him. We were the same height. I looked him straight in the eyes and finally he said, “I wish your father were alive to talk to you. Robert found the reality of marrying his childhood sweetheart rather different, I think, from the romantic dreams of his adolescence.”

“This is no mere romantic dream,” I said. “I’m marrying for friendship, and personally I think that’s extremely realistic and practical. It’s certainly a lot less foolish and misguided than to marry for sex and social position as so many people seem to do.”

Uncle John said nothing.

“Personally,” I said, looking him up and down, “I think the real obscenity is to marry for money. If Anna were an heiress and I were pretending to love her in order to further my ambition, that would be so despicable that you’d have every right to interfere.”

Uncle John remained silent. But he was very white.

“Friendship lasts longer than sex,” I said. “Everyone says so. And friendship, real friendship, is something money and social position can’t buy. Anyway, I
love
Anna—I love her without illusion, without pretense and without deceit—and how many men could say that on the eve of a trip to the altar? Could you, in fact, have said as much before you married either Aunt Blanche or Aunt Constance?”

Absolute silence.

“And don’t you try and fling my parents’ marriage in my face,” I said, “because I don’t believe you know anything about it. Maybe I don’t know so much about it either, but one fact I do know and that’s the one fact you can’t deny: they were old friends who loved each other and she stuck by him to the end. So don’t tell me not to marry for friendship. And don’t tell me my father would ever have stood in my way.”

Uncle John turned aside. He had now been silent for a very, very long time. I stared at his profile but of course, as always in moments of complex emotion, it was inscrutable. I went on watching him, I went on listening to my heart hammering in my chest and slowly, very slowly I began to realize that I had won.

At last he said without looking at me, “Very well. I’ll tell your mother not to make you a ward of court,” and he moved towards the door.

I tried to thank him but he cut me off. “I wish you well,” he said, finally managing to look at me. “I hope you’ll be happy. I’ve nothing else to say.”

The door opened. The door closed. I sank down on the bed. I covered my face with my hands. I cried. So might William the Conqueror have wept after Hastings. Then feeling about seven feet tall and fit to conquer the rest of the world I dashed away my tears, surged to my feet on a tidal wave of euphoria and raced off to find Anna and order champagne.

II

As soon as our three weeks’ residency had been completed we rushed to be married, I in a plain dark suit, Anna in a short white dress, and as I slipped the ring onto her finger I thought:
I won
!” I was in ecstasy, so was she, and immediately the deed was done we jumped into our hired car and headed north. Anna wanted to take the Road to the Isles because it sounded so romantic, and that night after a breathtaking journey west through the mountains we arrived at Mallaig where I had reserved a room in the little hotel that faced across the harbor to Skye.