The Wheel of Fortune (51 page)

As Edmund guffawed with laughter I was aware of the wheelchair spinning across the room towards us.

Robert said, “Mama, are you all right?”

“Yes, dearest, just a little worried about the soufflé after last week’s disaster with the Stourhams.”

Robert looked skeptical. My father looked painfully anxious. Deciding it was high time I exerted my diplomatic talents to save the situation, I speculated whether Oswald Stourham had yet recovered from his disastrous second marriage to an errant platinum blonde.

IV

Despite the underlying tension, dinner passed off better than I had dared hope, first because a failed dinner party was unknown at Oxmoon, second because my parents were superb at keeping up appearances and third because we all drank steadily from my father’s hoard of prewar wine—all, that is, except Thomas, who was too young, and my father, who having consumed far more champagne than normal before the meal now behaved like a man who had taken the pledge. I drank, I knew, far too much and this was most uncharacteristic of me. Indeed my father, whose drinking habits were normally so moderate, had always made it clear to his sons that drinking was not an essential adjunct of masculinity, and certainly I had always shied away from the more dangerous consequences of too much wine, the fatal sense of well-being, the risky loosening of the tongue and the sinister relaxation of the will to behave as one should. I had also shied away from the aftermath of alcoholic excess, the depression, the restlessness and above all the inexplicable frustration which made me feel as if I were a dog endlessly chained up in a backyard and endlessly obsessed with the longing to be free.

However that night, disturbed by my impression of a clear-cut world slipping inexorably out of focus, I drank to maintain the illusion that nothing had changed, and soon I found I could look at Ginevra’s décolletage without being embarrassed and at my father without remembering Mrs. Straker and at my mother without resenting the fact that she found it hard to love me as she should. I could even look at Robert and not feel ashamed because I found it so much easier to be devoted to him now that he was sick and helpless; I could even look at Robert and pity him because he would probably die before he could inherit Oxmoon.

“… and of course there’s no denying we farmers have done well out of the war,” my father was saying after the women had retired and the cloth had been drawn, “but times are changing so rapidly now, and sometimes I worry about the future of this place.”

“Oh, Oxmoon’s all right,” I said, finishing my glass of port. “A large estate can always survive, given good management, Oxmoon’s all right. I could run Oxmoon and run it bloody well, changing times or no changing times, although of course I don’t want Oxmoon, wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, it all goes to Robert, everyone knows that. However if I ever did wind up with Oxmoon—”

“You never will,” said my father, “so that’s that. You’re still going to outlive me, aren’t you, Robert?”

Robert, who was smoking a cigar, said sardonically, “John evidently has his doubts.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I exclaimed, half knocking over my glass. “Just because you’re in a bloody wheelchair you needn’t act as if you’re in a bloody coffin!”

“Steady on, old chap,” said Edmund.

“You’re not going to die just yet, are you, Robert?” said Thomas, who had somehow reached the age of fourteen without mastering the art of being tactful. He had just sneaked and wolfed a glass of port from the decanter while my father had been busy lighting a cigar.

“Unfortunately not,” said Robert drily. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

I spun round on Thomas. “What the hell are you doing swigging port on the sly and asking bloody stupid questions?”

“My God, you
are
bad-tempered!” exclaimed Thomas, livid that I had called attention to his stolen drink. “And don’t think we can’t all guess why! You’re fed up because you have to make do with measly old Penhale Manor when you think you’re so bloody perfect and so bloody wonderful that you ought to be ruling the roost at Oxmoon!”

I leaped to my feet with such violence that my chair was flung over behind me, but my father shouted, “Enough!” and my fury was checked. Then as I remained motionless, he said in a level voice to Thomas, “Did I give you permission to drink port?”

“No. But I didn’t think you’d mind—as it’s a special occasion—”

“Nobody drinks port in this house before they’re eighteen, special occasion or no special occasion. Very well, that’s the end of your evening. Excuse yourself to the ladies in the drawing room and go to bed.” He waited until Thomas had slouched off in a fury before adding, “Robert, will you please oblige me by going with Edmund to join the ladies. I want a word with John on his own.”

“I’m afraid I provoked John, sir,” said Robert. “I must ask you not to hold him responsible for this debacle.”

My father said nothing. Robert then apologized to me but I shook my head to indicate that no apology was necessary. Retrieving my fallen chair I stood stiffly by it as Edmund and Robert left the room.

“You’ve drunk too much,” said my father to me as soon as the door closed.

“I know. Unpardonable. I’m very sorry.”

“Why did you do it? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Everything’s fine. Couldn’t be better.”

“So it would seem, certainly. You’ve got well over two thousand acres in Herefordshire, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have nearly three hundred acres here together with one of the finest old manor houses in Gower?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have money on top of all that, haven’t you, and good health and good looks and a devoted wife and two fine children?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve everything a man could wish for, in fact?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s have no more nonsense about Oxmoon. It goes to Robert and if Robert dies before I do it goes to Robin and that’s my last word on the subject.”

“I absolutely accept that, sir, and what’s more, I always have accepted it. I can’t think why you should be taking Thomas’s idiotic remark so seriously.”

“A man’s private feelings aren’t so private when he starts to drink, and God knows I can recognize avarice when I see it. I remember how Owain Bryn-Davies used to covet Oxmoon while my father was still alive.”

“I’m not Owain Bryn-Davies! And how dare you compare me to such a bastard, why are you always so bloody unfair to me, it’s unjust and I resent it,
I resent it,
it’s not my fault I look like—”

“Be quiet! That’s enough! Take yourself home at once and don’t show yourself here again until you’re sober!”

“
I’m not drunk!
”

The door opened, interrupting me, and swinging around I saw my mother had returned. “Please,” she said, not to me but to my father, “could you go to the drawing room and deal with Thomas. He’s making a fuss and I can’t cope. I’m afraid everything’s quite beyond me this evening.”

“Of course,” said my father, greatly agitated by this unprecedented confession of defeat, and left the room.

My mother sank down on the nearest chair.

“Mama …” Shock sobered me. When I stooped over her in anxiety I found she was crying. “Mama!” I was appalled. I had never seen my mother cry, not even after Lion died. I drew up another chair and sat down beside her. “Mama, what is it?”

But she was already controlling herself. “Nothing. But I live under such strain and sometimes I hardly know how to bear it.”

I was deeply distressed. “What can I do? I’m so sorry, I had no idea, tell me how I can help.”

“Oh, you can’t help,” she said flatly. “You have too many problems of your own.”

“What problems?”

“My God,” she said, “how’s that poor child Blanche ever going to cope?”

“Mama, I think you’re a little overwrought—”

“Overwrought? Oh yes, I daresay. Lion dead, Robert dying, Edmund shell-shocked, Thomas impossible, Celia cut off in Heidelberg, you cut off in some dangerous world of make-believe—”

“My dear Mama—”

“—and Bobby,” wept my mother, “Bobby no longer strong enough to live as he longs to live … a decent life … free of scandal … It’s so terrible to see a good man, someone one loves, slip deeper and deeper into degradation—”

“There must be something we can do to stop it, there must be!”

“No. There’s nothing.” She wiped her eyes clumsily with the back of her hand before adding: “This is retribution. People pay for the wrong they do, and then hell exists not in the hereafter but
now,
right here on earth—and here we are, 1921, thirty-nine years after that terrible summer, and I’m in hell, Bobby’s in hell and that man’s still drowning on the Shipway and that woman’s still being destroyed in her asylum.” She wiped her eyes again and managed to say in a calmer voice, “Sometimes I ask God to remember how young we were. Young people are capable of such brutality but it’s because they know nothing of life. All they understand is the instinct driving them to survive, but sometimes the price they have to pay for survival is so very terrible.”

There was a silence. I did not know what to say. I was consumed with the longing to terminate this morbid stream of quasi-religious reflection which I found both tasteless and embarrassing, yet at the same time I was moved by my mother’s grief and I desperately wanted to help her. I racked my brains for a consoling diplomatic response, but when it continued to elude me I realized that this was because it did not exist; no words were appropriate and she was inconsolable. In bewilderment, not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around her and kissed her gently on the cheek.

This was evidently the right approach. Her fingers clutched mine. She looked up at me with gratitude. “Dear John,” she said, “how very good and kind you really are.” Then she said with more than a hint of her old self, “You must have too much to drink more often!” and she smiled as she kissed me in return.

“Forgive me—I’m afraid I’ve just had an appalling row with Papa—”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll put it right. So much has gone wrong tonight that I’m almost past caring. It’s just so sad about Robert,” said my mother, weeping again. “I couldn’t bear to see him in his wheelchair.”

If I had been sober I would have murmured a platitude. As it was I said painfully, “I couldn’t bear it either, but you shouldn’t retreat into religion, Mama, in order to make sense of the suffering—you shouldn’t start flagellating yourself with concepts like retribution. You’re the heroine of this story, not the villainess.” And when she covered her face with her hands, I put my arm around her again and said, “I don’t care what you did in the past. You’re a wonderful woman—a magnificent woman—and we all love and respect you so much. If you’re suffering now it’s unmerited, I know it is—it can have nothing whatsoever to do with that vile summer back in the Eighties.”

My mother let her hands fall. She stared at me. Her eyes shone with tears. “Oh God forgive me,” she whispered. “To think that
you
should be the one who loves me enough to say that.”

The door opened as my father reentered the room. “Margaret—”

“I’m all right now,” said my mother. “I’m better. And so’s John. I’m sure he’s willing to drink a lot of black coffee, and so there’s no need for him to leave yet.” She rose to her feet, she squared her shoulders, she set her mouth in its familiar determined line. “We must all go to the drawing room,” she said, “and we must all keep up appearances. Whatever happens that’s always the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do.”

V

“Are you all right, darling?” said Blanche, in our bedroom later. “When Thomas returned to the drawing room he mentioned something about a quarrel.”

“Oh, that was nothing, just a little difference of opinion.”

I was so anxious to put an end to these questions and so overwhelmed by my desire to forget, for a few precious minutes, the hellish evening I had just endured that I started to claim my marital rights while the light was still burning. Blanche never complained about anything I did but this time she did whisper, “Darling—the candle,” and I had the grace to mutter, “Oh, God, I’m sorry” before I clumsily extinguished the flame.

I had once heard up at Oxford that a surfeit of alcohol damages a man’s performance in bed, but all I can say is that exactly the opposite now happened to me. Under cover of darkness I stripped off my pajamas and almost asked Blanche to remove her nightdress, but fortunately I had not drunk four cups of black coffee in vain, and I somehow managed to restrain myself. Then I found I was obsessed by the desire to prolong the episode beyond five minutes. Usually I tried to restrict myself to three or four. I also had other desires which are without doubt better left unrecorded. I was appalled by myself but at the same time hopelessly engulfed in pleasure. Blanche tolerated it all like a saint, God knows how. I loved her so much for her tolerance that I finally, after an interval which I fear was at least ten minutes, managed to conclude the episode and spare her further embarrassment. Pleasure ended. Self-hatred and guilt began. I begged her to forgive me, but she said she loved me so nothing mattered. At that point my alcoholic excesses caught up with me and I sank mercifully into unconsciousness.

I dreamed I was a dog chained up in a backyard but someone was calling to me from a long way away and suddenly I longed to be free. Slipping my collar I sprang over the wall of the yard, and there ahead of me was a vast space where Edmund’s voice echoed, “I think it’s that attractive girl with the red hair.”

Then a rope encircled me and began hauling me back to my kennel. An anxious little voice kept saying, “John! John!” but I took no notice because John was no longer my name. I was Johnny again, Welsh-speaking Johnny who got into scrapes with Lion and lived adventurously at Oxmoon. I could see Oxmoon clearly now and it was Welsh, all of it, every brick beneath the creeper, every slate upon the roof.

“John, wake up! Darling, it’s three o’clock in the morning and the telephone’s going on and on and on—”

I scrambled back over the wall, pounded to my kennel, dragged the collar of my Englishness over my head and woke up. Pain immediately shot through my head and made me gasp. My mouth was desert-dry. Far away in the hall the telephone was shrilling like a demon.