The Wheel of Fortune (18 page)

She awoke, clung to me, pulled my mouth down to hers. Yet I knew further intimacy was impossible at that time and in that place. My guilt that I had broken my word to my father seemed to lie physically on my body like a lead weight, and in my mind I could hear my mother saying as she had said so often in the past, “Here I have my standards, and here I draw the line.”

After one last kiss I left the bed and pulled on my clothes.

“It’s much too early to announce our plans,” I said as I smoothed my hair into place. “If we did we’d simply shock everyone to the core and estrange ourselves from those we most respect. We’ll have to go on with the charade for a while. No choice.”

“None. Oh God, Robert, I’m so frightened—”

“Don’t be. I can manage this—I’ve always been able to manage my father. I’ll see him in private directly after breakfast and make a clean breast of the situation so that he can help me tame my mother—he won’t turn his back on me once he realizes my happiness is at stake, I know he won’t.” I kissed her. “Courage!” I said smiling. “Be brave!” And I kissed her again before slipping out of the room.

I met no one. On the landing I could hear the housemaids beginning work downstairs, but the door of my parents’ room was still shut and there was no sound behind the panels. I skimmed past, silent as a ghost, but by the time I reached the sanctuary of my room I was breathing hard not, I realized with contempt, because of the sudden exertion but because I was overcome with nervousness about my mother. After rumpling my bed to give an impression it had been occupied, I drew back the curtains to reveal another brilliant midsummer’s day. Then just as I was turning aside I glanced across the garden and saw a figure moving on the far side of the lawn.

It was my father. He was still wearing the casual clothes he had donned for his nocturnal walk, and as I recognized the old tweed jacket it occurred to me that he might have spent all night wandering around the garden to ease his insomnia. I stared. There was an aimless quality in his strolling which hinted at some profound disorganization. He paced around the tennis court in a semicircle, doubled back, headed for the summerhouse, doubled back again. My bewilderment sharpened. Kneeling on the window seat I leaned out over the sill.

He had his dog with him, the latest in a line of golden Labradors all called Glendower, but just as I was wondering what the dog was thinking of his master’s erratic movements, my father sat down on the bench by the tennis court and drew the animal close to him as if for comfort. This strange childlike gesture disturbed me still further. Leaving the room I headed abruptly downstairs to the garden.

As he saw me coming across the lawn he rose to his feet. The dog looked up, tail wagging, but my father ignored him. My father had eyes only for me.

“Robert.”

“Papa?” I was unsure why I made a question of the word. Perhaps it was because he seemed so unlike himself; perhaps I used an interrogative to imply I wanted to know what was wrong; or perhaps I sensed I was finally in the presence of the stranger who had always kept himself hidden from me.

We paused. We were some six feet apart. Above us the sky was very pale, very clear, and the sun was already hot. The lawn was sparkling with dew.

“Papa?” I heard myself repeat at last.

“Oh Robert,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth, “the moment’s finally come—I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve got to tell you, Robert. I’ve got to tell you about my parents and Owain Bryn-Davies.”

5

I

P
AST EXPERIENCE WITH CLIENTS
had taught me that people in trouble often make confessions which at first appear irrelevant but which in fact have a profound bearing on a truth not easy to approach. So when my father made his statement about his parents and Owain Bryn-Davies I did not say, “What on earth’s that got to do with last night’s disaster which has obviously upset you so much?” I said instead, “Let’s go into the summerhouse and sit down.”

“No,” said my father. “Not the summerhouse. That’s where my mother used to meet Bryn-Davies before my father died. I saw them once and Bryn-Davies caught me and said he’d kill me if I told anyone. I was so frightened I couldn’t speak. I didn’t think my mother would let him kill me but I wasn’t sure. She let him do what he wanted. He was a powerful violent man.

“Yet after my father died—of course I knew they’d murdered him—Bryn-Davies was kind to me, took trouble, I knew he was just doing it to please my mother but I liked him for it, it made life easier. But I was always frightened of him, I was always frightened of her and I thought they might kill me one day because I knew of the murder and they knew that I knew—my mother had confessed to me. After my father died I said to her, ‘It was the arsenic, wasn’t it, the arsenic you got for the rats,’ and she broke down, she said she’d be hanged if the authorities found out, she said if I made trouble Bryn-Davies would kill me and she wouldn’t be able to stop him. She was weeping, she was terrified and I was terrified to see her in such a state—I was just a child, only fourteen and I was so frightened. I was so frightened that I couldn’t sleep at night, I used to go and hide in the stable loft and cover myself with straw before I could sleep without fear of being killed.

“I didn’t ask why she’d murdered my father, I knew how unhappy, he’d made her, but Bryn-Davies was afraid I might take my father’s side and hate my mother so he spared me nothing, he told me everything, oh God I can’t tell you, I was so appalled, so frightened, I was just a child, only fourteen, God Almighty, I used to think I’d die of the terror.

“So I took my mother’s side and said I forgave her for the murder, my poor mother, she’d suffered so much, my father had been so cruel to her. I used to wonder why they had ever married. It was an odd sort of match, he from the gentry, she the daughter of a Welsh farmer, but as you know the Llewellyns are such an old family, and when Henry Tudor granted them their land after Bosworth that set them apart from all the tenant farmers in Gower. … But even so to marry a Godwin was a social triumph for my mother, yes, I can see why she married him. And he would have married her because she was so beautiful and he prized beautiful things, I suppose he thought that if he married anyone he might as well marry someone beautiful, and he had to marry because of Oxmoon, he loved Oxmoon so he had to have a son. … But he shouldn’t have married. He shouldn’t have married anyone.

“In the beginning I think he drank to suppress his vice and in the end I think he drank because he’d given way to it. You wouldn’t believe how he drank. I loved him but he frightened me. He frightened her. He’d start drinking brandy after breakfast and he’d be dead drunk by noon. Then he’d get violent and start shouting at her. He used to beat her … and worse. I’d run out of the house and hide in the woods because I couldn’t bear to hear her screams. … She left him in the end, it was when he started bringing boys home from Swansea, she ran away back to her father and took me with her, but her father was a religious man and said he wouldn’t have a deserting wife in the house. So she had to go back, and when she did Bryn-Davies escorted her. He was visiting the Llewellyns’ farm at the time to sell her father a ewe, and it was then, when she was rejected by the family who should have helped her, that she came to know him well. They already knew each other slightly because although he was born in The Welshery his farm was nearer, he used to graze his sheep on Llanmadoc Hill. My poor mother, how absolutely she fell in love with him … but it was all my father’s fault. It was his wickedness that drove her to adultery, it was his wickedness that drove her to murder and it was because his wickedness had driven her to such evil that I myself was driven to …”

He stopped.

His face was white, beaded with sweat, but his voice had remained level throughout this shattering monologue. He was looking across the lawn at Oxmoon, and as I watched he clenched his trembling hands and shoved them deep into his pockets in a pathetic attempt at self-control.

“Sit down, Papa. Sit down again on the bench here.”

We both sat down on the bench by the tennis court, and the dog Glendower, resting his long nose on his master’s knee, gazed up at him with devotion. My father stroked the golden coat, kneading the fur with strong repetitive movements of his fingers.

“But you do see, Robert, don’t you,” he said. “It was the vice that lay at the root of the disaster, it was the perversion. I couldn’t forget that. I can’t forget it. That knowledge came to dominate my whole life, and you have to understand that in order to understand me—oh God, I was so frightened, Robert, always so terrified that I’d inherited the vice and would grow up like my father.

“I didn’t look much like my father but I had his build, I kept growing taller and taller, and I thought if I had his build that might mean … Oh God, how it horrified me, I thought I’d go mad with the horror, but meanwhile other horrifying things were happening—Bryn-Davies taking control of Oxmoon—my mother living with him openly—the estate going to ruin—the rats infesting the house … For a while I just went my own way and tried not to notice but in the end I wasn’t allowed to be passive, in the end I had to act. Well, it couldn’t go on, could it? He was stealing my inheritance, robbing me blind, shaming my mother, ruining us all … Oh yes, I knew it couldn’t go on.

“But I was afraid of my mother ending up on the gallows. I was afraid that if I once embarked on revelations to the law there was no knowing where those revelations might end. And above all I was afraid of Bryn-Davies. But of course the situation couldn’t go on, and after you were born, I looked around, I saw the world I’d brought you into, and I knew I couldn’t tolerate it anymore. I had to change it for you. I had to cleanse it and put it right. I did it for you, Robert; I did it for you and for Margaret. You gave me the courage to act.

“I talked it over with Margaret and decided the best plan was to arrange a meeting with Bryn-Davies at the Worm’s Head. This was a favorite spot of mine, I often took your mother there to escape from Oxmoon, even after you were born we used to take the pony trap to Rhossili and walk out to the Worm and you’d be strapped in a little pack on my back. I knew the Worm like the back of my hand. But Bryn-Davies didn’t. He’d never been there but he talked of going because the sheep there were legendary, wonderful quality, and he was interested in buying into the flock.

“But on the day he died he didn’t go out to the Worm to see the sheep. That was just what we told everyone later. He went out to see me. I wrote him a note saying I’d meet him there to discuss my father’s murder and the future of Oxmoon, and then I left immediately for Rhossili—with you and your mother, of course. I didn’t dare let either of you out of my sight.

“Well … We got to Rhossili and … and I realized I’d made a little mistake with the tide tables … silly of me … I saw at once, as soon as I looked down at the Shipway, that it would be going under in half an hour.

“Well … I settled you and Margaret in a secluded spot farther along the cliffs and then I went back … but he’d already started out. The Shipway’s so deceptive, it looks safe long after it’s begun to be dangerous. He was caught in the middle. And he didn’t have a chance.

“You know what happened next. My mother arrived. She’d found the note and realized … well, no doubt she was worried about what might happen. She came and I was there and there was nothing we could do but watch him drown.

“It drove her mad. It wasn’t just that he died before her eyes, it was because she thought I’d killed him. I told her over and over again it was … well, just a little accident with the tide tables, but she refused to believe me. And she went mad. But I was glad of this because it gave me an excuse to lock her up. She had to be locked up, you see, because she was a murderess, she’d poisoned my father—and besides, I wanted Oxmoon purged, I couldn’t have had her there, polluting the house with her memories of adultery and murder. … No, she had to be locked up. As Margaret always said, in the circumstances what else could I possibly have done?

“And so we come to Margaret. We come to your mother. You think she’s so commonplace, I know you do, but my God, you’ve no idea, Robert. You’ve no idea at all.

“She got me through all this. I couldn’t have survived without her. And I don’t just mean she stood by me before and after Bryn-Davies died. She gave me the will to pull Oxmoon back from the grave. I stood in the ruined hall with her and said, ‘I can’t manage, I don’t know where to begin.’ I felt so helpless because I knew nothing about the estate, but she said, ‘I
know
you can manage,’ and suggested searching the library for papers that might help me. We found nothing but later she said, ‘Let’s take one last look,’ so we went back and there in the library the most enormous rat was sitting on the table and chewing a candle. It was a vile moment. Beautiful Oxmoon, ruined, infested, decayed … Margaret screamed and I grabbed the nearest book and flung it at the rat and killed it. And then when I replaced the book I found there were papers stuffed behind it—the journals of my grandfather in which he’d described in detail exactly how he’d managed the estate. … Margaret just said, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’

“But it was her will. And her way. She made everything come right, you see, even when we were first married. I was so terrified that I might be like my father, but Margaret proved I wasn’t. And you proved I wasn’t. That was why I wanted a lot of children because every time a child was born it proved how different I was from my father, who, so Bryn-Davies told me, only consummated his marriage twice in the normal way. So every time I was in bed with my wife … being normal … do you see what I’m trying to say? It was like an erasure, like a victory over memory, until in the end bed became not just a way of forgetting my father but a way of forgetting everything I couldn’t bear to remember. And gradually … as time went on … I found …”

He stopped again. I waited but when he clearly found it impossible to continue, I said in the neutral voice I used to clients when I was playing midwife at the birth of some terrible truth, “As time went on you found Margaret alone couldn’t help you forget.” I used my mother’s Christian name deliberately to foster the illusion that I was a mere lawyer who bore no personal connection to my client or anyone he knew.