The Wheel of Fortune (181 page)

My father said, “I loved Bronwen” and shaded his eyes with his hand. He sounded like an old, old man talking of someone who had existed a long, long time ago.

“And so we come to the disaster itself,” I said, rising to my feet and beginning to pace around the room. “Kester’s biggest advantage was that he knew exactly how you’d react to the situation he set up for you. He knew you’d respond instantly to that note. He knew you’d never sit around waiting for him at the cottage. He knew you’d never be able to resist following him across the Shipway—and of course when you came he knew you were there. Caitlin and I proved conclusively today that he could have kept you under observation without you being aware of it.

“Kester was luring you on, just as you said he was. He wanted to make you think you could catch him up in that isolated spot and intimidate him in a round of tough negotiation about the future of Oxmoon.”

“I only wanted to negotiate with him,” said my father. “Only to negotiate.”

“Yes, I can believe that because Kester clearly thought that was all you’d be prepared to do—he didn’t think you’d be such a fool as to kill him and get yourself into what could only be a big mess. He’d hardly have lured you out to the Worm if he’d seriously believed there was a possibility you might kill him there. He knew you so well, didn’t he? Your mind would have been an open book to him.”

“He was my double image,” said my father. “He was my other self, and we’d finally reached the point where our lives merged and we became identical. The Germans have a terrible legend about
Doppelgängers.
They say that when you see your double you die. It was as if Kester and I both died that night. It was as if neither of us came back alive.”

“I’m not interested in folklore, just in hard facts. Now, here’s what I think happened: you. reached the southern flank and you saw him on that spur of rock, just as you said you did last night. I’ve no doubt at all that he’d picked that spot very carefully—he wanted to offer you a chase that would end by you catching him up at the Devil’s Bridge, and you found you couldn’t refuse this offer. You didn’t turn back—you went on, and by the time he reached the Bridge and stopped in the middle you were only a few yards behind.

“Then comes the climax. Then this magician, this consummate actor stages what turns out to be his final scene. Heights don’t in fact disable him but he’s seen how he can make use of his dislike of them, and suddenly, there in the middle of the Bridge, he stages an attack of vertigo. He moans, he shouts, he calls to you for help, he gives a bravura performance of a coward in terror. Poor old Kester, you think—round the bend as usual. And you step forward to give him a helping hand.

“But this is the one spot where Kester, who’s not a trained fighter, can get the advantage of an expert in unarmed combat. All he’d need to do would be to give you a hefty shove when you were off guard, and Kester was more than capable of a hefty shove. So he grabs you. But you’re a fraction too quick for him—in the end he underestimated those commando reflexes—and you fight for your life so that in the end it’s Kester, not you, who goes over the edge into the sea.”

I stopped. My father said nothing. I looked at his white dead face and his black dead eyes and the candle began to flicker between us. We were both breathing rapidly and in a moment of panic I heard myself stammer, “It’s all right. You can’t prove it to me, but you don’t have to. I
know
it was an accident. I
know
you killed in self-defense.”

Nothing. No reply. Nothing.

“It wasn’t murder,” I said. “It’s all right, I’ll never believe it was. I acquit you.”

My father leaned forward on the table and slowly buried his face in his forearms.

“Father …” I stumbled over to him, dragged up my chair, sat down at his side. “Forgive me, he was a magician, he dazzled me—I didn’t understand what I was doing to you but I understand everything now, I can see the past in its entirety, I can see that Kester was the villain and you were the hero and I was fool enough to get everything mixed up—”

“But Hal,” whispered my father, “there were no heroes and no villains in this story. There were just two ordinary people who failed to draw the line.”

He stopped speaking. Neither of us moved but as we stared at each other something happened to the silence in that room. It was no longer empty. It was heavy with the vibrations of a powerful personality as if some great actor had walked onstage to begin his final terrifying performance. I looked around but there was nothing to see. I looked over my shoulder but there was no one there. I looked back at my father and suddenly I realized that he was the source of the terror which was being generated in that room.

“My life merged with Kester’s,” said my father. “It’s as if we’re one now and that’s why you mustn’t call him a villain. If you condemn him you condemn me.”

I tried to push my chair backwards away from him. I tried to speak but the air was so thick that I choked on it. I tried not to listen anymore but my father was saying rapidly in a low uneven voice: “It’s no good; I can’t keep silent. God help me, but I’ve got to tell you the truth, Hal—I’ve got to tell you the truth you don’t want to hear.”

X

There was no escape. I was paralyzed with fear. I had to listen.

“You guessed so much correctly,” said my father. “You even guessed the vertigo at the end. But Hal, I knew Kester better than any other man on earth and I’d seen what he’d done to Thomas. Do you honestly think that in the end I didn’t guess what was going on?

“When Kester collapsed in the middle of the Devil’s Bridge and gave his bravura performance of a man suffering from vertigo, I didn’t think, Poor old Kester, poor old sod. I saw straight through that act so I just stood at the beginning of the Bridge and waited. Finally he realized his plan had failed—he realized he was cut off in one of the most dangerous spots in Gower with a killer who wanted him dead. His nerve cracked. He went to pieces.

“He started crying—tears always came easily to Kester—and then he stumbled back towards me and begged me to forgive him. He confessed he’d planned to kill me but he said he now realized he’d never again delude himself that he could go through with it. I didn’t believe him. I just asked him why he had wanted to kill me—at that stage I still believed he didn’t need to kill me to get Oxmoon back—and then he began to say the most horrifying things … terrible truths … I could see quite plainly that he was mad but I knew I was mad too because I believed them. Everything he said made sense.

“He said he had to kill me because I was the violent distorted side of his personality, the man of action who throughout history had been the enemy of the man of peace. He said he had to kill me before he could live at Oxmoon again, just as war always had to be eliminated before peace could prevail. Then he said—he was still crying—he said he could see how that he could never go through with it because this theory had been based on an illusion. ‘You’re not really like that,’ he said. ‘You’re just the man I might have been if my creative leanings had been stamped out, and I’m the man you might have been if you’d had the courage to live your life a little differently.’

“And as soon as he said that he became intolerable to me.

“ ‘I can’t kill you,’ he said, ‘because if I kill you I kill myself,’ but although I heard him say that I took no notice. All I could think was that he was the man I’d never been allowed to be—I looked at him and I knew I’d wasted my life and I couldn’t endure it. I just couldn’t look at him and stay sane.

“Moreover I didn’t believe he wouldn’t try and kill me again. I didn’t see how he could look at me and stay sane either. I stood between him and Oxmoon which symbolized all that was finest in his nature. It was as if I’d deprived him of his true self and he had to kill me to get his true self back.

“He walked the last few steps towards me and I held out my hand as if in friendship. But when he reached to take it I caught him with a hook to the jaw. He wasn’t badly hurt. I reckoned he’d be unconscious for no more than two minutes—two minutes I had to work out the best way to murder him.

“I nearly tossed him straight over the side but I thought, No, the cold water could bring him round and who knows what’s down the bottom there; he might be able to swim to the side and climb out. Then I decided to strangle him but just in time I realized that a postmortem had to reveal water in the lungs so I knew I had to throw him over while he was still alive. I took a look over the edge but I was reassured. He couldn’t have survived down there. The tide was rising fast and the water was roaring through the channel below and I knew he’d be smashed to death at once on the rocks.

“But I didn’t want him to know anything about that. Before I pushed him over I gave him another blow to make sure he stayed unconscious. Then I did it. I murdered him in cold blood. And even before he hit the water I realized the full horror of what I’d done.

“I’d done what Kester himself had realized he couldn’t do. I’d killed my other self—and my other self was the finer side of my nature, the artistic, creative side, the side that longed for peace. Then I saw my future, I saw it all; I saw Oxmoon turning to dust in my hands as I won every battle but lost all the way along the line—I even saw myself sitting at that piano in the ballroom and being unable to play anymore. Later I tried to kill myself to escape the nightmare but I wasn’t even allowed to die. I met Pam again and then I lost my nerve for killing myself because I loved her too much to prefer death to life. So my punishment wasn’t to die; it was to live. I had to live with Kester’s memory. I had to live on with the knowledge of what I’d done.

“I never wanted you to know. Pam always, said you ought to be told, but I couldn’t, couldn’t … In fact I thought right up till now that I’d never be able to do it; but somehow … when you acquitted me like that … I couldn’t have lived with that acquittal, I couldn’t have stood by and known I’d destroyed your faith in what Kester represented to you, I couldn’t have permitted our reconciliation to take place at his expense. It wouldn’t have been fair to him, and he was such a remarkable man, Hal, there was so much that was fine about him—you mustn’t think of him as an evil magician, you must remember him as the cousin who loved you—”

“No.” I was shaking my head. I shook it violently. The room seemed to be revolving. I heard the scrape of my chair as I struggled to my feet.

“But Hal, you can’t forgive me and not forgive him—”

“I must.” I could feel my mind begin to split in two. “I can only forgive you if I think of him as the villain.”

“But can’t you see—”

“You’re trying to divide me,” I said, “but I can’t be divided. You both want me but you can’t both have me.
I’ll die if I’m divided
.” I somehow got to the sink and started to retch. All that came up was the Coke. I retched again and again and again.

I was aware of him crossing the room to me. Or at least I was aware of someone crossing the room. Of course I knew there were more than two of us present but I didn’t dare look back to see which one was coming to claim me. The air was like lead. I could hardly breathe. My mind kept trying to split and I was only just able to hold it together.

“It’s all right, Hal. I’m here.”

But I didn’t know which one he was. He was right behind me. I lost my nerve.

“Go away!”

“Hal …” That was my father. I was almost sure it was my father but I still didn’t dare turn around.

“Stay away from me!” I shouted, and the next moment Kester’s voice shot back: “Hold fast! Stand firm!”

I blew my mind.

XI

“
Kester!
”

“Hal, no—”

“
Kester, Kester
—”

“Hal, it’s your father—
your father
—”

“Oh no, oh my God—
Kester
—”

“Kester’s dead, Hal—he’s dead, he’s dead, I killed him—”

I shouted in terror. I was in a frenzy. I tried to fight him but then the miracle happened and he pulled one of his commando tricks on me. That was how I knew he really was my father. He tripped me, flung me against the table and doubled my arm behind my back to keep me there. I was reminded of the time long ago when he had beaten me for spitting at him and shouting that I wished I were Kester’s son.

“Help me, Father, help me—”

“Yes, but you must be calm. I can’t help you unless you’re calm.”

I tried to think of Emily Brontë. There were no words but I remembered her courage and her faith. My breath was coming in sobbing gasps but I tried to breathe more evenly. The air still felt like lead. I kept my eyes squeezed shut because knew that if I opened them I’d see Kester watching us.

My father’s grip slackened. “That’s better. All right, up you come.”

He helped me stand upright. As soon as my hands were released I pressed them to my eyes.

“Come along,” said my father. “This way.” And although my hands covered my closed eyes I heard his quick breath as he blew out the candle and plunged us into darkness. At once I was in terror again but his voice said levelly, “It’s all right. Keep your eyes shut and hold on to me,” and his arm was around my shoulders to prevent me splitting into pieces.

He led me outside. We crossed the yard. When we reached the mews house the front door must have been on the latch because he never paused to find a key or ring the bell. Opening my eyes a fraction I peered through my fingers. Pam was there. I saw her crossing the kitchen towards us and for the first time in my life I was glad to see her because I knew she could cope with me without turning a hair. In fact to Pam I’d be just another run-of-the-mill case, nothing to get excited about, just another mind that needed vacuuming, sanitizing and stitching together again with her usual professional skill.

The tears were streaming down my face. I said: “Please help me, I’ve gone mad,” and then I stumbled forward into her outstretched arms.

XII

“Harry, bring down the electric blanket—it’s in the small spare room. It’s all right, Hal, you’re suffering from shock, this is perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, just do exactly as I say.”