The Wheel of Fortune (178 page)

XVIII

There was a long silence. He poured himself some more scotch and drank it. Finally I heard him say, “I’m sorry. I wanted so much to protect you.”

The silence continued. Then he said awkwardly: “What can I do? Do you want to go on talking about it? Is there anything else you’d like to ask?”

I shook my head, rose to my feet and began to pace slowly around the disordered room.

Eventually he said in desperation: “Would you like to hear some music?” Music for him was the great panacea which soothed all ills.

“No thanks.” To pretend I was calm I took out my notebook and began to flip through the pages. At once Declan’s name seemed to hit me between the eyes.

“How much do you think Declan knew?” I heard myself say, and although my eyes were on my notebook I was aware of my father relaxing as if he felt he had surmounted the most difficult interview of his life.

“I suspect Declan didn’t know as much as I originally thought he did,” he said readily. “One can argue, I think, that Kester would have shied away from confessing to his idolized elder brother that he had murdered Thomas during a period of insanity—and I also think one can argue that Kester wouldn’t have revealed his last crazy plot either. If Declan had realized Kester was insane again and contemplating suicide, I’m quite sure he’d have stopped Kester leaving Dublin.”

“Yes, Declan never believed in the suicide theory, did he? He thought you murdered Kester on the Inner Head.”

“Declan was bound to want to believe that when he found he couldn’t break my alibi, but you go out there, Hal. You look for that spur of rock and you’ll realize that once Kester started to run from there I could never have caught him up and dragged us both in time to beat the tide.”

“And if he didn’t run?”

My father was ashen. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Well, as a matter of fact I do. I can’t see Kester sitting around and meekly waiting for you to be aggressive—I’m sure that as soon as he saw you on the Inner Head his first instinct would have been to run, and that would have been true whether or not he knew you were behind him. So that means Declan’s story is a lot less plausible than yours is.” I flicked through my notebook again. This time the words that hit me between the eyes were
BRILLIANTLY PLAUSIBLE.

“Excuse me, Father. Back in a minute.”

I got to the bathroom, locked myself in and leaned back against the panels. I was in that most unpleasant condition where one wants to be sick but knows that vomiting is impossible. The bathroom was overpoweringly hot and the air reeked of heavily-scented talcum powder. Pam could only have departed seconds earlier.

I got the window open, leaned out over the sill, took several deep breaths and realized with a vague, curiously unemotional horror that I was going to have to go back into that room where my father was waiting. And not only that: I was going to have to have a few minutes of casual conversation with him in order to soothe his nerves. The one thing I couldn’t do was to betray my own shattered nerves by rushing off instantly to my scullery.

I thought: “No coward soul is mine.” And somehow I got myself out of the bathroom.

“Are you all right?” said my father immediately as I reentered his room.

“Yes. Well, no, to be honest I’m in pieces, but that’s okay, don’t worry about it, I’ll put myself together again soon enough.”

“I know my story must have been the most appalling shock to you—”

“Yes, it was. But don’t think I haven’t had my suspicions of Kester’s sanity. Father, I want to thank you for being honest with me. I know it was a great ordeal, but I really am very grateful.” While I spoke I sat on the bed and stooped to retie my shoelace. I was trying to think what to say next. All subjects of casual conversation were eluding me.

“I’m glad I was able to help,” said my father. “Yes, it was an ordeal, but in a curious way it was good to talk of it—talking can come as a relief. … My God, what I went through that night! I never slept a wink, of course—I told the jury I did but that was just to make them think I wasn’t feeling too guilty. In fact I was awake all night. I thought of the past, all of it, my father with his various families, Uncle Robert and Aunt Ginevra, my grandfather—my God, I even thought of my great-grandmother and Owain Bryn-Davies!—I thought of everything that had gone into producing Kester and me and making us the men we were—”

I saw a banal topic of conversation and seized it. “Didn’t you manage to find some nice soothing music on the radio?”

“What?”

“I said: Didn’t you manage to find some nice soothing music on the radio?” I was surreptitiously glancing at my watch and wondering how soon I dared escape.

“Well, no,” said my father after a pause, “I didn’t. As a matter of fact I didn’t turn on the wireless.”

“Why not? Was it broken or something? I can’t imagine you being in a room for hours on end without trying to find some music on the radio!”

“That’s quite true,” said my father, pouring himself some more scotch. “But of course I was very upset.”

“All the more reason for you to want some music.”

“That’s true too. How strange! Let me think for a moment. Why didn’t I turn on the wireless? I’m sure there was some very good reason, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.”

“Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter.” I stood up. “And now if you’ll excuse me, Father—”

“But this is really very puzzling,” insisted my father, becoming so intrigued that he ignored my attempt to depart. “Naturally I wouldn’t have acted out of character! I was just trying to recall that room … yes, I don’t remember the wireless at all; in fact I could swear it wasn’t there. Yet it must have been there because Evan had delivered it the day before—maybe Kester took it up to the bedroom?”

“That figures,” I said, moving to the door. I was so anxious to escape by that time that I hardly knew what I was saying. “Kester liked absolute quiet while he worked. Well, Father—”

“Hal, are you quite certain you’ll be all right?”

“Yes, sure, no problem; I just want to go to sleep now and forget the wholy bloody business but tomorrow I’ll be okay, I know I will; no doubt in my mind whatsoever.”

“If there’s anything more I can do, anything at all—”

It was painful how much he cared. I felt as if the weight of his caring were opening up deep cracks in my mind but I managed to say in a calm reassuring voice: “Don’t worry about me—I’ll be all right, I promise.” And then at long last I was able to escape.

XIX

FURTHER NOTES ON MY FATHER:

It’s a brilliant story. But there’s just one thing that worries me: is it true?

VERDICT:
Reserve
judgment till my investigations at the Worm are completed tomorrow.

XX

I lay awake in the dark.

At two o’clock in the morning I lit a candle and walked into the main part of the house. It was quiet but not still. I could hear the pitter-patter of mice in the wainscoting.

The great chandelier gleamed beneath the dust and as I crossed the marble floor of the hall my footsteps sounded curiously muffled by the darkness. The library door creaked as if in parody of a ghost story, but this was no ghost story; I’d made up my mind about that from the start. When all was said and done everything depended not upon my imagination but upon my logic, my courage and my will.

Did I go on? Or did I say “Mystery solved” and turn aside? I didn’t have to go out to the Worm tomorrow. I could take my father’s word.

But I couldn’t. Not quite. I wanted to believe him. I did believe him. But I had to be one hundred percent certain that this brilliant witness hadn’t just delivered the most creative testimony of his exceptionally creative career.

Yet I was afraid to go on. I could see I was afraid. My hand shook as I found the well-remembered book and opened it at the page Kester had so often read.

“No coward soul is mine,” Emily Brontë had written, “No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.”

I read the last line again. I had no faith in God, but I now had faith in my father. I thought of Eleanor saying, “I’ll never believe your father was the villain of the Oxmoon saga, Hal. I think the real villain was your cousin Kester.”

Right. All I had to do now to eradicate my fear, safeguard my sanity and terminate the nightmare that encircled me was to prove Eleanor was right.

Returning to the kitchen I printed in my notebook:
NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE.
Then I went back to bed and slept.

I was going on.

5

I

T
HE SHIPWAY CURVED
in a jagged arc beneath a hot cloudless sky. It was a Saturday, and tourist hordes unknown fourteen years before when Kester had died were swarming around the top of the cliffs. The car park was packed. Yet the sands of Rhossili beach remained almost empty, for only a minority of the lazy visitors bothered to clamber down the long steep path to the beach and only the hardiest marched across the headland to tackle the Shipway. Ahead of us a party of hikers were starting out across the rocks. A pack of Cub Scouts was yelling behind us. A courting couple had halted dreamily on our left. It was a very different scene from the sight that would have met my father’s eyes in the May of ’52; but the Shipway at least was unchanged, a huge sweep of wet rocks exposed by the tide, a wilderness of little pools where stranded fish waited for the tide that would liberate them, a lunar landscape baking beneath the June sun.

“Time for you to receive your briefing,” I said to Caitlin. She was sensibly dressed in jeans, a blue blouse and gym shoes. Her long hair which was finer and darker than her sister’s was scraped back from her face into a ponytail. As I spoke, she looked up at me with obedient intelligent eyes. She had already apologized for seeking my autograph, as if Gwyneth had mercilessly upbraided her for such ingenuous behavior, and I felt sorry for the girl who was undoubtedly a nice child, clean, bright and not unattractive but obviously suffering from the loneliness of adolescence. I hoped she would soon find a steady boyfriend, marry young and have two point three children or whatever the average girl produced nowadays, the kind of girl who was uninterested in winning a place at Oxford, indulging in do-it-yourself psychology and treating men like horseshit. I made an additional resolution to be kind.

“What I want to do,” I said to her, “is to reconstruct my cousin Kester’s last hours. Never mind why for the moment. I expect you know roughly what happened, don’t you? He came out here and my father followed him. Okay—you’re going to be Kester and I’m going to be my father.”

She nodded. The Cub Scouts streamed past us and howled around the rocks.

“Two independent witnesses,” I said, “supported my father’s claim that he and Kester were quarter of an hour apart on the Shipway, so you’re going to start out and I’m going to follow you after fifteen minutes. How’s your knowledge of the Shipway? I advise you to keep to the inside of the curve until you reach the little shingle beach and then flounder on as best you can.”

She nodded again. “I’ll manage. Do I hurry?”

That struck me as an intelligent question. “No, this isn’t a race. My father said Kester moved like a man in a dream. Just keep going steadily.”

“Okay.”

“When you get to the Inner Head don’t stop. Go on along the path until you’re out of my sight and continue until you see a spur of rock that runs from the path towards the sea. Once you get there, sit down and wait for me. All clear?”

“Yes.”

“One thing more: don’t turn around to see how far I am behind you, but at the same time try and glance back surreptitiously to see where I am. In other words, keep an eye on me without me being aware of it.”

“Okay.”

“Now repeat your instructions.”

She repeated them. I wished her luck. She set off, and sitting down on the grassy bank at the foot of the headland I wrote in my notebook: 10:16.
Caitlin starts out across the Shipway.

II

I had forgotten what a large area the Shipway covered, and I had forgotten how sinister it was once one had been swallowed up in it. The hikers were ahead of me but taking a different route far over to the left. The Cub Scouts and the courting couple were lost among the rock pools. There were other people behind me but keeping a steady pace I soon outdistanced them and within minutes I was alone among the tall rocks, my shoes slipping on the seaweed, the barnacles scraping my hands as I scrambled past each hazard. It was like mountaineering on the horizontal.

After a while I became aware of the special quality of the silence. The water of the bay on my right seemed motionless as the tide fell steadily toward low water, and far away on the other side of the Shipway the surf from the Bristol Channel was receding so that the muffled boom of the waves became steadily fainter. I began to feel as if I were journeying through a graveyard packed so densely with tombstones that normal walking was impossible.

There was the same forlorn atmosphere of abandonment yet the same eerie air of expectancy; the Shipway was waiting for high tide just as a graveyard waits for Halloween, a time when life returns and the horrors begin. I tried to picture the water running many feet over the rocks that towered over me but the vision seemed preposterous. Yet it happened. It happened twice a day. It was unbelievable but it was true.

In an effort to divert myself from things that were unbelievable but true I began to sing. I had made my name in the music business by picking hits from the American country-music charts and converting them into popular songs which the English public could digest. I thought of it as translation work, moving a song from one culture to another. I liked country music. I did sing rock, but that was just an exercise to warm up the audience. Once the tension was humming I could slip from rock to country-rock with an early Presley number and from country-rock into pop-country and a Jim Reeves song. Having softened up my listeners I could then achieve my goal, a song by the master of country music, Hank Williams. I did write and record my own songs; there was more money in that than in rerecording masterpieces but I was enough of a purist to find my work imitative and unsatisfactory.