The Wheel of Fortune (141 page)

And there I went again.

I could have stopped. But I went on.

VI

Bronwen came home with me to help with the children, but she said I had to tell them the news myself. I panicked, said I couldn’t, but she was stern with me and said the one thing I could still do for Bella was to look after her children and try to be a good father.

That trapped me. I felt myself being locked up in yet another circle, this time with those four wretched little boys, and this time I knew I was never going to have the will to get out. Guilt is an all-powerful jailer.

Well, we got back and I told Nanny who looked appalled and tried to offer me some conventional words of sympathy but I couldn’t stand that so I got rid of her, rounded up the boys in the nursery and tried to say what Bronwen had told me to say but I got in a muddle and made a mess of it and wound up saying, “Christ, I’m so sorry,” which certainly wasn’t in Bronwen’s script. What a hopeless father I was! In fact I knew now that I’d had no business becoming a father at all. I’d only done it to keep Bella occupied—and to show certain people how successful I was at reproduction.

Four bright-eyed, pink-cheeked, noisy boys became as quiet as little white mice. Then after a long interval someone gave a sob, and the next moment they were all bawling at the top of their voices. Poor little devils, I was so sorry for them but what did I do next? In despair I shouted for Bronwen, and once she had come to my rescue I retreated at last to the piano to put myself beyond the reach of my pain.

VII

The funeral went off without a hitch. I’m good at funerals. My father told me once that Uncle Robert used to survive them by privately reciting classical verbs, and I had always found this a most useful trick for keeping the horrors of ritualized death under control.

I embarked on the Latin conjugations.

No point in thinking of Bella dying in her twenties as the indirect result of our childhood tragedy, no sense in thinking of my part in putting her in that bloody coffin burdened with stinking flowers. Better just to say she was fated and recite
amo, amas, amat
or—more efficacious still since they required deeper concentration—all the tenses of
fero, ferre, túli, látum.
Once I started remembering how I’d abdicated the responsibility of birth control I might as well have booked myself into the nearest lunatic asylum and asked for its best padded cell.

Except for Kester all the family dutifully turned up at Penhale Church and admired my performance as the model widower. Kester, who was still living quietly with Declan in Dublin, sent a telegram. It read:
LETTER FOLLOWS PLEASE DONT DESTROY IT UNREAD GENUINELY SORRY KESTER.

I was too busy ordering a coffin to give more than a passing shudder at this threat to communicate with me, but after the funeral a chunky envelope arrived bearing an Irish stamp and addressed to me in Kester’s flowery handwriting. I couldn’t face opening the letter immediately, but after I had collected a prescription from Warburton and after I had taken two of the new soothing pills doled out by the chemist, I summoned my shredded nerves of steel and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of large white typewriting paper. I pondered on its significance. Was it indicative of a fantasy, like his novels, or merely of a businesslike approach? I didn’t know but I shuddered irrationally.

My dear Harry …

Odd how we all addressed each other as “dear” on paper. Sinister.

…
I’m sorry about Bella. Please accept my sincere sympathy and believe me when I say I’m not using the word “sincere” as a formality. I know better than anyone what it means to lose one’s wife as the result of a tragedy
—
and this leads me, of course, to apologize for those terrible things I said to you after Anna’s death. The shock and grief had driven me mad, but I’m better now and certainly well enough to hope that you can forgive me. How curious it is that we should lead such parallel lives …

I dropped the letter and headed for the whisky decanter. Then I remembered that Warburton had told me not to drink when I had taken the pills. Bloody hell. Scrabbling on the floor, I retrieved the letter.

…
parallel lives, both born in the same year, both with older brothers who died young, both marrying before we were twenty-one, both becoming widowers within months of each other. I suppose these coincidences have no deep significance but I can’t help feeling they should draw us together, not drive us apart. Looking back I fear the gulf between us has been largely my fault; I’ve been very unjust to various members of my family in the past, but I shall never forget how kind everyone was after Anna’s death. Even you wanted to be kind, I can see that now. In short I think it’s time I abandoned paranoia, turned over a new leaf and gave my poor long-suffering family a respite!

Anyway, it’s because my attitude to the family has changed that I shall now venture to hope that we may become more at ease with each other in future. Bosom friendship is of course too much to hope for (the very idea no doubt sends identical shivers down our spines) but why can’t we be casual acquaintances who can smile and say hullo to each other without having apoplexy? Let’s dispose of the ghastly charade Aunt Teddy invented in which we meet for a drink and end up talking idiotically about religion in a muck sweat of panic! Let’s instead just accept each other’s presence in the parish of Penhale and talk about how frightful the weather is if ever we bump into each other. I think we could get along very well on that basis; it would certainly take the melodrama out of our peculiar
Doppelgänger
situation
…”

Doppelgänger.
The double. The mirror image. No reader hypnotized by a master novelist ever turned the page so quickly as I turned over Kester’s letter to find out what he had written on the other side.

…
and besides, I’d like to be on speaking terms with you so that I can see your boys now and then. Don’t worry, I’ve got over my jealousy that you’ve got four sons and I’ve got none. Curiously enough it was Anna’s death that helped me to come to terms with this problem, because once I knew I had no wife
—
and of course I’ll never remarry
—
I realized it followed as a corollary that I’ll have no children. However I do like children so much, and if you could spare Hal for the odd hour or two occasionally I really would be very pleased.

I’ll be returning to Oxmoon in time for Easter. I don’t think I’m
quite
strong enough yet to face a full-scale Godwin reunion, but if you want to drop in with Hal and say hullo I think I can just about manage to say hullo back. You needn’t have a drink if you don’t want to. We don’t even have to talk. We can just exchange greetings and run in opposite directions.

This letter comes with best wishes for a happier future from your reformed (!!!) cousin
KESTER
.

My prime reaction was relief. I had been expecting hysterical effusions but instead I had received this calm, sensible, amusing and eminently rational letter. Incredible. Those psychiatrists in Dublin had evidently administered some sort of mental enema so maybe Teddy was right and psychiatrists weren’t just a bunch of quacks. Paranoia. That was an arresting word. Obviously the medical term for a persecution complex. I made a mental note to look it up in the dictionary.

I liked the idea of him taking an interest in Hal. Well, why not? Of course Kester was never going to leave Oxmoon to any son of mine, but … Or would he? Maybe if I made an all-out effort … I was so carried away by the idea of Hal inheriting Oxmoon that I seriously contemplated bosom friendship with my reformed cousin Kester.

This fantasy lasted some hours, and the rash on my back quietened to such an extent that I took no more pills and was able to pour myself a drink before dinner. I was just adding soda to my glass when I heard Thomas’s Hillman careering up the drive.

I had become very, very tired of Thomas. Since his reinstatement as manager of Oxmoon he had formed the tedious habit of dropping in at Penhale Manor regularly to drink me out of house and home as he conducted a monologue on estate management. I was continually tempted to tell him frankly that I couldn’t afford to pay for his alcoholic excesses, but I didn’t want a row. That would have meant trouble with my father, and trouble with my father was always a disaster which had to be avoided at all costs.

On the salver the water jug was empty, and filling it with whisky I hid it behind the curtain. That left the decanter one-fifth full and I could say it contained all the whisky I had in the house.

“Harry!” Thomas came bursting into the hall as I opened the front door. “Christ, old boy, what do you think’s happened?” He was already heading for my study and the inevitable offer of a drink. “You’ll never guess, never in a thousand years!”

Preparing for some story of a sow who had produced two dozen piglets in one litter, I showed a clean glass the decanter and reached for the soda siphon to conceal my sleight of hand.

“Make it a double,” said Thomas, perhaps dimly aware that I had formed the habit of shortchanging him. “My God, I need a double after the shock I had this morning!”

“What happened?”

“I had a letter from Kester.”

I nearly dropped the glass. I gaped. And somewhere, far away in the distance, the warning bell rang to tell that indefatigable survivor Nerves-of-steel Godwin that something unpleasant lay lurking below the horizon.

I said abruptly, “Why on earth should he write to you?”

Thomas at once produced a sheet of typewriting paper covered in flowery handwriting. “Read it,” he offered, and added benignly: “Poor old Kester, perhaps I was a bit too hard on the sod in the past.”

This was the equivalent of Hitler saying Churchill was a nice old chap when you got to know him. Too stunned to speak I read:
My dear Thomas, I feel that now I’ve recovered I should formally express my sincere thanks to you for looking after the estate in my absence. Uncle John informs me you’ve done your usual first-class job and I wouldn’t like you to think that I’m not deeply grateful.

My experiences since Anna’s death last summer have made me realize how lucky I am to have such a loyal devoted family, and consequently I can’t help but see I’ve done you much less than justice in the past. However perhaps we might meet on more friendly terms in the future because I can now frankly acknowledge that we’re in a position where we can do each other a favor. You want to continue running the estate; I want to live in peace without having to worry about Oxmoon. So will you be awfully decent, bury the hatchet and agree to stay on permanently as manager after my return at Easter? I can see so clearly that my only hope of a tranquil life in future lies in giving you
carte blanche
with the running of the estate.

Of course you must have an increase in salary, that goes without saying, and if you feel you can accept my proposal I’ll ask Uncle John to act as a mediator in negotiating a new figure. Meanwhile I send my best wishes and look forward to seeing you again soon. Yours,
KESTER.

Looking up I found Thomas beaming at me with such childlike naivety that he seemed more like a schoolboy of fourteen than a hard-drinking thug past thirty-nine.

“Isn’t that incredible?” he said sunnily as I handed the letter back to him.

“Incredible.” Unlike him I spoke literally. I was thinking: One fattens pigs before sending them to the slaughter. But I checked that thought before it could blossom into paranoia. It would never do if
I
fell victim to persecution mania.

Nasty word, paranoia.

“Of course he’s mad as a hatter,” said Thomas, unaware of my neurotic thoughts, “but what the hell? So long as I’m running the place I don’t even care if he ends up as gaga as my father—although of course Kester, being a secret queer, couldn’t get up to all the tricks my father got up to. Did I ever tell you what John and I found in his bedroom after Milly ran off in ’28?”

“Yes. Three times. But you usually wait till you’re drunk before you trot it out.”

“Christ, do I? I must be getting senile myself! Poor old Papa, I was damn fond of the old bugger … hey, what’s this? I asked for neat whisky, not neat pissing soda water!”

I somehow got rid of him but before I could meditate further on the situation I was diverted by the boys. It was their bedtime and Bronwen had suggested that I read them a story every night to prove I was still there even if Bella wasn’t. This was something I could do. I couldn’t sustain a nursery-level conversation but I could read. I sat on a bed, Humphrey on one knee, Jack on the other, Charles glued to my left side, Hal glued to my right. Everyone except me sucked his thumb, and I was almost tempted to suck mine too, just for old times’ sake, to see if it had a soothing effect on me.

That night, the bedtime story concluded, I dined alone as usual and retired to the drawing room. Then I put my feet up, listened to Stravinsky and tried to work out what the devil my reformed cousin Kester was up to.

I knew that Thomas’s letter was rubbish from start to finish. Kester, clever Kester, had judged his reader to a nicety and fed him no sentiment he couldn’t swallow whole, but I wasn’t Thomas and that taradiddle stuck in my gullet. In fact the very thought of Kester in his new role of family saint made me want to puke.
How lucky I am to have such a loyal devoted family!
he had scribbled with such winsome hypocrisy, and
I can’t help but see I’ve done you much less than justice in the past,
he had added, fawning on the uncle I knew he would always despise.

So what was going on? Thomas might have no trouble dismissing Kester as an addled eccentric but I was beginning to see him as a very clever, highly unstable man, unstable enough to have abnormal thoughts and clever enough to conceal them. He was up to something, I had no doubt of that, and I was just wondering in incredulity how Thomas could have accepted his letter at face value when I suddenly realized that every one of the sentiments Kester had expressed there had been expressed—though much more subtly—in his letter to me.