The Wheel of Fortune (142 page)

Hurrying to my study, I grabbed the letter from my desk. Yes, here we were—the fond reference to the family, the humble plea for a new friendly relationship—but served up this time with the good-humored honesty which had so readily annulled my suspicions. The letter now struck me as being immensely clever. I told myself: “Never forget that this man’s a writer.” Like the rest of the family I had never taken Kester’s scribbles seriously but perhaps we’d all made a big mistake. He was twenty-seven, twenty-eight in November, and he’d been scribbling away since he could hold a pen. Even if his stories were rubbish the likelihood was that by this time he would have acquired certain technical skills which enabled him to use words much as a ballet dancer uses music.

I remembered going to the ballet at Sadler’s Wells. I remembered the sweeping leaps and bounds which had caught my eye, but in between these set pieces, as Constance had pointed out, lay the footwork so intricate that the audience was aware of little but a graceful flowing movement. Yet it was this subtle footwork which made the big leaps possible.

I took a look at Kester’s footwork. I noticed the spare expression of condolences which floated effortlessly into the apology for our quarrel. I noticed how this apology, immaculately phrased with not a single misplaced word that might have upset me, blended seamlessly into the remarks on our parallel lives which he knew would lure me on into his further apology for our past estrangement. Liquidly, with an almost sensuous ease, the apology melted into an amusing paragraph in which he expressed the hope that we could re-form our relationship. How cunning! No mawkish talk, no rich sentimentality which he knew would alienate me. The whole paragraph was immaculate in its emotional discipline, and then at the end came the mention of the
Doppelgänger
to send me rushing over the page into the most mysterious paragraph of all—the lines in which he led me to believe, without actually promising anything, that he wanted to take a significant interest in Hal. After that he had tossed off a witticism or two in the penultimate paragraph in order to restore the good-humored tone which he knew I would find irresistible, and then produced another seamless blending, this time into a final farewell.

A masterpiece. But what did it mean? What in fact could it mean? Even if it meant he had some mad purpose in mind the doctors would hardly have let him out of the mental hospital if they had thought he was dangerous.

All the same …

A clever but unstable man. A neurotic.

Not to be trifled with under any circumstances.

Then I thought: Who am I talking about?

And when I glanced in the mirror at my reflection for one split second I saw Kester looking back.

Mad as a bloody hatter. I took two pills, drank two brandies, went to bed and passed out.

VIII

Kester arrived home a week later. I gave him two days to settle in and then I called at Oxmoon to say hullo, just as he’d suggested. Naturally I no longer believed he had any sinister purpose in mind—that was just me being neurotic—but I felt I had to see him to reassure myself that he was benign.

I took Hal with me, not merely because Kester had asked to see him but because Bronwen had said he needed special attention. He had been ill, vomiting and running a high fever. Warburton had said it was gastric flu but Bronwen had said it was grief and Bronwen was the one I believed.

I wondered what it could be like to be ill with grief at the age of seven. It was bad enough being ill with guilt at the age of twenty-eight. Despite the pills my rash was giving me hell again, and although I knew sex would soothe my nerves I shied away from it for fear it would make me feel guiltier than ever. One really can’t go sleeping with other women directly after one’s wife’s funeral. Only a hopeless degenerate could be capable of such behavior.

As we arrived at Oxmoon I asked Hal how he was feeling but he assured me he was all right. Poor little devil. Ill with grief. I glanced at the shining mouse-colored hair and the fresh-looking skin he had inherited from Bella but it was at that moment, as concern drove me to examine his face intently, that I realized how unlike her he was. Bella had had a round chubby face with blunt heavy sensual features. Hal’s face was thin, fine-drawn, and although he had my dark eyes his bone structure was different from mine. There was something about his jaw which reminded me of someone. Couldn’t think who. Curious, those old likenesses which run through families like recurring trademarks. I knew I looked like my mother, but Hal was more like my father, more of a Godwin.

There had been no butler at Oxmoon since Lowell’s death during the war, but a bossy parlormaid admitted us as though she regarded our call as an intolerable intrusion on her time and we were shown into the morning room. With a shudder I noticed that the Edward VII coronation mug had been placed in the most exquisite eighteenth-century curio cabinet. Perhaps the mug was Doulton or Worcester. Kester would hardly have retained it if it had been junk.

It was cold in the room and I was just starting to worry about the possibility of Hal developing pneumonia when Kester walked in. He looked well. His curious face with its lean masculine bones and soft feminine mouth was relaxed, and not for the first time I found myself thinking that with a better nose he would have been good-looking. There was something about that jaw inherited from Uncle Robert …

That jaw. Christ Almighty—

“Hullo, Harry! How are you?”

Had to pull myself together.

“Absolutely splendid, old chap. How are you?”

A strong, well-made but much too well-kept hand was being offered to me, and I saw the writer’s callus on his middle finger, the emblem of the soft life I’d been brought up to despise.

“I’m feeling marvelous!” said Kester as we shook hands. “Couldn’t be better!” Then he laughed and said with great charm, “Whew! Thank God we’ve got that over—now we can start talking about how awful life really is!” He stooped over my son. “Hal, I was so sorry to hear about your mum—I did feel for you so much because I could remember how frightful I felt when my own mum died. I cried and cried—imagine! And I was eighteen years old!—but I was glad I did because afterwards I felt better.”

I expected Hal to find this speech as nauseating as I did but no, Hal was smiling painfully, and there was a grateful expression in his eyes.

“I felt better too after I’d cried,” he confided, “but then I started being sick and I felt awful again.”

“But you’re well enough now for a treat, aren’t you? My brother Declan has American friends who send him luscious chocolate biscuits, and I’ve brought some home with me.”

“Real chocolate?”

“Real chocolate. One day, Hal, probably when you’re quite old, rationing will end and you’ll be able to buy as many sweets as you like and the shops will be full of fascinating things like pineapples and bananas—”

“Yes, I’ve heard of them. Is the chocolate milk chocolate or plain chocolate?”

We adjourned to the drawing room where to my relief I found a fire blazing. Kester and Hal were deep in a discussion about whether it was more stimulating to lick the chocolate off the biscuits first or whether the biscuits should be crunched up without being stripped. I could now see just how smoothly my serf must have been purloined in the past, and I had to tell myself very firmly not to feel jealous because poor old Kester, poor childless old sod, could talk to my son better than I could. Of course I could see by this time that I’d imagined the resemblance in the jawline. That was just me being neurotic again.

“Gin-and-French, Harry?”

I couldn’t tell Kester that I was temporarily on the wagon because of my neurotic skin troubles. I had given up the pills but Warburton had told me that alcohol, heating the skin, could only act as an irritant, even though the immediate effect was to soothe the nerves.

“Wouldn’t mind a quick one, old chap,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Not at all. Now Hal, what would you like to do while I have a chat with your father? Read? Write? Draw? I don’t mind, it’s up to you.”

But Hal just sighed in bliss, his left hand clutching his glass of orange squash, his right hand already oozing chocolate, and said with a yearning I had never once anticipated, “Is there still a piano in the ballroom?”

IX

So he was like me after all, never mind the jawline and never mind damned Kester standing by to transform him into an acolyte. I at once resolved that he should have piano lessons at school. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? It had never occurred to me. I’d just thought he banged the piano to give me hell, whereas all the time … I pictured endless discussions on the subject of Bach. I saw us at the Albert Hall, Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden. I envisioned myself as a battered bedridden old man with Hal being the perfect son and making sense of all that hell I’d gone through with Bella. In my head an emotional contralto accompanied by the full orchestra of the Royal Opera House was singing some richly sentimental piece of nonsense—“Softly Awakes My Heart” from
Samson and Delilah
perhaps, or else an aria from some horror by Puccini.

“Here’s your gin-and-French,” said Kester, recalling me to reality as Hal rushed off to the ballroom.

“Thanks.” Still dazed at the thought of what a musical son might mean to me I forgot where I was and sniffed the glass, just as I had sniffed drinks in Italy during the war. Some of that Italian wine would have taken the paint off cars.

“It’s all right,” said Kester amused. “I’ve run out of cyanide so murder’s not on the agenda today.”

“Oh, don’t be so bloody ridiculous!” I snapped, and then realized I’d sounded just as uncomfortable as if I really had suspected him of a poison attempt. I tried a lighthearted laugh but only sounded sheepish.

“Sorry!” said Kester breezily. “I didn’t mean to drown you in facetiousness! Let’s change the subject. Well, I’m all agog—what did you think of my letter?”

“Brilliant. So was your letter to Thomas.”

Kester looked startled. “I didn’t realize Thomas rushed to show you his correspondence!”

“No; I didn’t think you’d anticipated that. Never mind, you’ve got us both eating out of your hand and thinking, Good old Kester, not such a bad old sod after all. But what happens next? Or aren’t I supposed to ask?”

Kester laughed. “With any luck nothing will happen at all—I’ve got to write and that means I must have absolute peace. Hence the white flag waving feverishly on all fronts. I simply can’t waste any more time being upset and unable to write just because I’m in a state about my family.”

This was a very simple, thoroughly plausible explanation. I could feel myself relax.

“Couldn’t you write in Ireland?”

“No. I tried but I felt mutilated, cut off from my roots … and from Oxmoon. I’m no good without Oxmoon. So I decided to come back, and as soon as I made that decision I knew I was better. A good nervous breakdown’s very therapeutic, you know. I feel better now than I’ve felt for a long time.”

“Good.”

“Of course you probably think I’m mad as a hatter. Well, I was, after Anna died—madder than a hatter, in fact. Imagine burning down that summerhouse! Incredible! Oh, and by the way, I’m so sorry I said I wanted to kill you when you burst into Oxmoon that night. Awfully florid of me, wasn’t it! And it wouldn’t have been chic at all if I’d wound up hanged for murder—or would I have been ‘detained during His Majesty’s pleasure’ at Broadmoor? Interesting point. Anyway you needn’t worry—I did want to kill you at the time but that time’s past, thank God, and I didn’t kill you anyway so what the hell, have another gin. I seem to have absolutely wolfed mine.”

We had another gin-and-French apiece. Kester started chatting about how awful funerals were and we wound up talking of Bella.

“My God, she was sexy,” said Kester—I think we were on our third gin-and-French by that time—“and I can quite understand why you married her. I bet Thomas often thought he’d picked the wrong sister—Christ, poor old Thomas, no wonder he drinks, do you think he ever gets an erection? I’ll bet he’s too sodden most of the time, but if he ever does I wouldn’t be surprised if he ejaculated neat whisky! Have another drink.”

“Uh … well …”

“You’re not really chums with Thomas, are you, Harry? You’re such opposites—he’s all talk and no action while you’re all action and no talk! Poor old Thomas, he’s pathetic, isn’t he? I really feel quite sorry for him sometimes.”

I tried to picture the size of the apoplectic fit Thomas would have thrown if he had heard this judgment but my imagination failed me. I accepted a fourth gin-and-French. I was beginning to be most entertained by this salty, good-humored stranger who was now my reformed cousin Kester. Who would have thought the old sod was capable of behaving like one of the boys? Wonders would never cease. I could see now that the nervous breakdown had done him a power of good.

“Of course I’m not chums with Thomas,” I said. “I can’t stand the damned sod. He invades my home, drinks my whisky and drives me up the wall. But Christ, if he ejaculates neat whisky I’d like to know about it, I’d follow him around with a bowl, it’s about time I got some of my own back—although yes, I bet you’re right, I bet he’s usually too pissed to get it up. Ah, to hell with him; I wish he’d drop dead!”

“Couldn’t agree with you more, old chap,” said Kester, thoroughly sympathetic. “However at least he saves me the bore of looking for an agent. One must be thankful for small mercies, even if the mercy does come in the form of a shit with a pickled cock.”

We laughed and laughed. It’s amazing what extraordinary things seem amusing after four hefty slugs of gin gingered up with four hefty slugs of French dry vermouth.

But later when I was sober I thought,
Was
that Kester talking? And I just couldn’t believe it. There was something odd going on, I knew there was, and I wasn’t just being neurotic either.

Or was I?

I dragged out the medical dictionary which I had recently acquired out of a desire to find out more about my skin troubles, and eventually after much thumbing of macabre pages I found the entry
PARANOIA
. I read it. Naturally I had all the symptoms, but I always did, no matter which entry I read, so this meant nothing.