The Wheel of Fortune (145 page)

The warning bell rang once more; the date set the famous nerves of steel jangling and without a second’s hesitation I telephoned my father.

III

By that time my father had succeeded in shaking off the lingering aftereffects of his life with Constance and was sunk deep in the bliss of his third marriage. Naturally I could understand him being happy with Bronwen but what I found harder to understand was how he fitted so tranquilly into his casual, noisy and, to put it brutally, middle-class surroundings among all those peculiar Canadians he had fathered in a lost era.

The Canadians ebbed and flowed into the house according to the university vacations, and when they were at home they seemed to spend their time laughing, shouting, eating and playing Frank Sinatra records too loudly on the radiogram. I couldn’t have stood it but my father said it was wonderful to be surrounded by young people who were enjoying life so much. He and Bronwen led a busy life. My father was on several civic committees concerned with the reconstruction of Swansea and had acquired the usual number of directorships which always fell into his lap whenever he moved to a new place. Bronwen was an active member of the Women’s Institute and had a part-time job in the library of the Red Cross. Both she and my father knew hordes of people. Dinner parties abounded. I never visited their house without thinking how different their new life was from their past in Penhale, and whenever I saw my father’s happiness, inexplicable though it was in part, I recognized the lack in my own life and felt lonely.

When I arrived to see my father that evening in July I found Bronwen making two large treacle tarts, Lance raiding the larder, Gerry chatting to his latest girlfriend on the telephone, Evan separating the dog and cat, who were having one of their fights, and my father mending the television set. Sian was still completing her final term at Bedales. When I entered the drawing room my father, who had discarded both jacket and waistcoat to tackle the television and was looking dashingly
déclassé
in his braces, glanced up at me with a smile.

I saw then what an impossible task I had set myself. The atmosphere of happiness in the house, the absolute normality, the peace—of a kind—now divided my father from me. I knew instinctively that he would disbelieve every word I said.

“Could I have a word with you alone, please, Father?”

That move took us to his study. My father mixed drinks for us and told me some interminable golfing story while I tried to work out what I could say without sounding hopelessly melodramatic.

I spoke. Within ten seconds my father was looking at me as if I’d gone round the bend. My heart sank.

“Just a minute,” said my father, making the humane decision that I should be treated gently. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You think there’s some sinister purpose behind this luncheon party because it’s being given on the tenth anniversary of that appalling scene at Oxmoon when Kester got himself into such a mess.”

“Yes.” I felt close to despair.

“But what in God’s name do you think he’s going to do?”

“I think he’ll fire Thomas in such a way that Thomas is as humiliated before all the family as Kester himself was once humiliated before us. Honestly, Father, I think you should warn Thomas, I really do. I’d warn him myself, but as we’re not on speaking terms I know he wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Yes, knowing the state of your relationship with Thomas, may I ask why you should care whether he’s fired or not?”

“Because I think Kester’s going to use me as a scapegoat, Father, and once Thomas goes berserk—as he inevitably will—his rage will be directed primarily against me and not against Kester. I think Kester’s been at the bottom of my rift with Thomas all along—I think he’s been fermenting trouble between us to set me up for the kill—”

“
The kill?
”

“Well, of course I’m not speaking literally—”

“No, you’re talking rubbish.” He opened the door into the hall. Gerry the Wonder Boy had finished his phone call but was sticking a stamp on a letter. I immediately suspected him of eavesdropping.

“Gerry, tell Evan I want to speak to him, will you?”

“Right, Dad.” Wonder Boy sped off with a click of his winged heels.

Sensing that I was opposed to this summons my father said to me, “Evan sees more of Kester than you do. If Kester’s really so unbalanced that he would bear a grudge for ten years and then serve it up without warning at a friendly family gathering, then Evan should be able to back up this preposterous theory of yours.”

“Christ, Father, do you think Kester doesn’t have the brains to deceive an idealistic young fool like Evan?”

Bad mistake. I was making a hash of this. My father looked very cool.

In walked Evan radiating honesty, sanity, decency and credibility. His reaction was so predictable that I barely bothered to listen.

“Harry, you’re nuts.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you—” I bit back the word “bastard” but the effect was exactly as if I had spoken it aloud. Evan blanched. My father looked furious. With an effort I achieved a colorless apology.

“That’s all, Evan—thank you,” said my father, dismissing him. “Of course I don’t have to ask you not to repeat a word of this conversation to Kester.”

“Of course not, Dad. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of worrying him with Harry’s paranoid suspicions.”

“Why, you—”

“Be quiet, both of you!” said my father so fiercely that we fell silent. Evan left the room. As the door closed I had a brief glimpse of Wonder Boy still lurking in the hall.

I made one final attempt. “Father, I beg you—give me the benefit of the doubt. You can remember that threat Kester made on July the thirteenth, 1939. You must know in your heart that Kester’s very mixed up about his family, particularly about me and Thomas. Wouldn’t playing safe be the prudent thing to do here? Tell Thomas. It can’t do any harm and it may avoid some appalling fiasco. Please—tell him.”

“No,” said my father. “I’m not going to tell him. You are. It’s your yarn. Spin it.”

“But he won’t listen to me!”

“I’ll come with you to see that he does—and that, I’m afraid, Harry, is just about as far as I’m prepared to go.”

IV

“I’ve never heard such a load of old balls in my life,” said Thomas, but his rudeness was no more than an automatic reflex. I saw at once with relief that his hatred of Kester was now going to work in my favor. He had a much lower opinion of Kester than my father had and so found it much easier to believe him capable of bizarre behavior. He turned to his brother. “What’s your opinion of this rigmarole, John?”

“I don’t know. But I thought it worthwhile to play safe by informing you.”

“Bloody glad you did. On second thoughts I wouldn’t put it past that pansy to try to stab me in the back.” He thought for a moment. I watched him as his brain ticked over briskly. Because of his emotional naivety it was tempting to dismiss Thomas as a complete fool but I knew very well he had a certain crude intelligence. It takes more flair than brains to run a large estate well, but flair alone won’t balance the books or run an orderly office as he did.

“I won’t go to this lunch,” he said at last. “I’ll ring up at the last moment and say I’m ill. If Kester’s going to sack me he’ll sack me, but at least I can stop him doing it in a big scene in front of the family.”

“Good for you, Thomas,” I said fervently.

“Wait a minute,” said Thomas. “I’m not finished. Hasn’t it occurred to either of you that if this theory’s right I won’t be the only one Kester’ll be gunning for?”

My father was too stunned to speak but I said sharply, “Yes, that did occur to me but so long as I defuse his plan against you I’m safe. There’s nothing else he can do to touch me.”

“Are you trying to say—” began my father horrified.

“Wake up, John,” said Thomas. “All three of us were there in the library at Oxmoon on July the thirteenth, 1939. If Kester’s bent on revenge he’s not going to stop with humiliating me—you and Harry will be on the agenda too.”

“No,” I said at once while my father was again reduced to an appalled silence, “he’d never move directly against Father, I’m sure of it. He’ll consider it enough if Father’s merely embarrassed by your humiliation.”

“That makes sense,” agreed Thomas. “But Harry, wouldn’t that embarrassment be doubled if you were humiliated too? Think again. Are you sure—absolutely bloody positive—that there’s nothing that sod can do to touch you?”

And that was the moment when I finally remembered little Melody and my hair-raising interview with Kester to the accompaniment of Handel’s
Messiah.

V

I said nothing to my father. By that time he was seriously worried in case I was right about Kester’s plans for Thomas, and I saw no point in distressing him further. But I could now clearly visualize Kester’s plan. First he would crucify Thomas by saying he drew the line at employing an agent who took part in drunken orgies, and then he would turn to me and announce to his enthralled family: “But wait—the real culprit’s sitting here! He’s the one who’s led Thomas astray, he’s the one who’s been seducing every girl in sight since the age of fourteen!” Gasps. Sensation. The family would be lapping up every word he uttered and he wouldn’t even have to invent the lurid details; he’d merely reel off the results of his investigations. Once he’d convinced himself that Melody had existed he would have realized that she could only have been conceived in the summer of ’33 when I had spent the school holidays at Oxmoon, and once he’d scoured his memory for clues he would have been sure to remember Bella’s absence in Switzerland for the first six months of 1934. After that he would have needed only to dispatch a private detective to Geneva. I remembered Bella telling me that Miss Stourham had included my name on the birth certificate. An open-and-shut case. With that birth certificate in his hand Kester could hang, draw and quarter me and drag my father through a bottomless mire of shame. What a revenge! Or so he thought. But think again, Cousin Kester.

On the morning of the lunch party I telephoned Oxmoon and left a message with the bossy parlormaid that my prize bull was at death’s door. Thomas had already pleaded a touch of bronchitis and I thought it would sound more plausible if I had an urgent appointment with the vet. Then leaving the Manor I retreated to the Home Farm, found Dafydd busy repairing the roof and crawled up the ladder to join him.

“Thought you were lunching at Oxmoon?”

“Couldn’t face it. Aquarius is sick, if anyone asks.”

“Okay.”

Dafydd made no further comment and again I was aware of how restful I found him. He bore no outward resemblance to Bronwen; he was dark and thickset, with a skin pitted from acne, but there was something in his manner that reminded me of her. I sensed not only an inner strength but a profound capacity for understanding.

“Have a cigarette,” said Dafydd presently. “If you don’t calm down you’ll fall off the bloody roof.”

“I can’t think why I haven’t fallen off already.”

Another curious feature of my relationship with Dafydd was that I felt no compulsion to put on an act for him. I couldn’t saunter around playing the ex-public-school boy and calling him “old chap” because that would have taken an intolerable advantage of the difference in our backgrounds. Neither could I saunter around playing the war hero. Dafydd never spoke of the war but anyone who had survived a Japanese prison camp knew exactly what hell war could be, and this automatically stopped me from pretending I’d enjoyed every minute of my time in the S.A.S.

“What’s the bloody lunch in aid of?” said Dafydd in between fixing slates, and when I explained why Evan and Gerry were to be the guests of honor, he commented: “Typical. I don’t get invited, do I, even though I’m just as much those bastards’ brother as you are. I suppose bloody Kester thinks I can’t hold a knife and fork.”

“God knows what bloody Kester’s thinking.” Without mentioning Melody I gave vent to my suspicions.

“Well, either he’s off his rocker or you are” was Dafydd’s succinct response.

“Who’s your favorite in the sanity stakes?”

“You. You’re a survivor. That means you have a nose for danger. If your instinct’s now telling you he’s off his rocker I’d trust your instinct.”

Dafydd suddenly turned to face me. He had small muddy-brown eyes with creases at the corners. “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

“Dangerous? Hardly—no guts!” I said laughing, but my laughter was uneasy. “No,” I said to reassure myself. “He’s not the violent type. And I don’t think he’s really mad, Dafydd. Just unstable.”

“Once people start going off their rockers,” said Dafydd, “anything can happen.” He picked up another slate.

After a moment I said, “Kester would draw the line at violence.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well, I’d draw it. In peacetime.”

“Maybe Kester thinks he has a war on his hands.”

“God knows what he’s thinking,” I said again, and it occurred to me that not knowing what to believe was far more of a strain on the nerves than holding a firm, if terrifying, opinion.

We returned to the Manor together for lunch and afterwards I wound up hovering by the phone. I was in such a state of tension that when it rang I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Heard anything yet?” said Thomas after I’d grabbed the receiver.

“No—get off the line.” I hung up.

I was just on the point of defying convention by pouring myself a double whisky at three o’clock in the afternoon when my father’s Rover purred up the drive. He was at the wheel. Evan was sitting beside him and Lance and Gerry were in the back. They all looked chillingly normal.

“We won’t stop!” called my father cheerfully, not bothering to switch off the engine. “But I just thought I must let you know that it was a delightful lunch and Kester was at his most charming and hospitable.”

“How’s your sick bull?” said Evan in a tone of voice that made me want to punch him on the nose.

I ignored him. I just said to my father, “I’m glad all went well.”