The Wheel of Fortune (64 page)

In fact I enjoyed every aspect of my new life, and the triumphant finale of my first months in Armstrong’s employment came when I bought him a Rolls-Royce. I could not remember when I had last enjoyed myself so much. John Godwin would have hated the life, but my old self, my true self, was amused by these wrestling bouts with unbridled vulgarity. I kept thinking how Lion would have exclaimed, “What a lark!” and burst out laughing. I laughed too, frequently and spontaneously, and thought how many entertaining memories I would have when I finally retired to Gower.

Those were the innocent days. They came before that evening in 1922 when he invited me to dine with him to celebrate the. first year of our association. We dined in great style. Then over brandy and cigars he told me I was the son he had always longed for and that he wanted me to become involved with his business empire.

I was staggered. I had never taken the slightest interest in his business empire; my heart was in neither plastics, nor petroleum, nor tinned food. I was also appalled, in the way that only a man educated at an English public school can be appalled, by this naked display of emotion. But above all else I was touched. Armstrong might be fifty, foreign, florid and frightful; he might periodically infuriate me with his tantrums and his pigheadedness; but there was an element both pathetic and endearing in his gratitude for rescuing him from loneliness in the country of his adoption.

However I knew I needed to be very careful, and after telling him in all sincerity that I was moved and flattered, I asked for time to consider his offer and retired to my little house in Kensington to analyze my new script.

To put it bluntly, in the smallest possible nutshell, I was being offered the chance to become a millionaire. I was also being offered the chance to exceed Robert’s success, because with that kind of money behind me there was nothing I could not achieve. Oxmoon would finally cease to matter. I would be able to acquire a bigger and better home for myself than a quaint little Georgian conundrum set squarely on the road to nowhere, and all my old jealousies would be extinguished once and for all.

Yet if I accepted Armstrong’s offer I would inevitably be cut off from my family, for I would be too busy to journey regularly to Gower. What had happened to those moral obligations about which John Godwin had once talked so loudly, particularly the obligation to be a pillar of strength to his father and brother in their declining years? I shuddered as the depth of my hypocrisy now stood revealed to me. I could see that although I had genuinely wanted to help my father and Robert, I had been concerned first and foremost with myself. I had wanted to take advantage of Robert’s illness by ingratiating myself with my father and becoming the favorite son—a triumph which would have represented a final victory over Robert and which in turn would have been symbolized by my acquisition of Oxmoon.

For one long clear-eyed moment I thought of Oxmoon, that seductive focus of all my past discontent. I knew I still wanted it. Probably I would always want it. But at least now I was not obliged to regard it as the only panacea for my private unhappiness. Besides, the truth—the truth which I had always been too muddled and unhappy to accept—was that I was never going to inherit that place. If Robert outlived my father, nothing would stop Robin inheriting. If Robert failed to outlive my father, Robin would still inherit—as the favorite grandson. My father had made that perfectly clear, and no matter how strong his new affection for me I could not see him disinheriting the elder son of his eldest son when Robin was a child of such exceptional promise. I was already well provided for. My father could not be blamed for thinking his moral obligations lay elsewhere.

The only sane conclusion I could draw from all these clear-eyed deliberations was that I was not destined for a life in Gower; in fact, as I could now see so well, I would be a fool not to realize that my fortune lay elsewhere and an even worse fool to turn my back on the dazzling new script I was being offered by Armstrong.

Yet I was wary of dazzling scripts.

In the end I told Armstrong that I liked the idea but felt I needed another year to prove to us both that I had the necessary talents to master the world he was offering me, and Armstrong, impressed by the fact that I was making no immediate attempt to grab every penny in sight, suggested that I took charge of his two new charities to find out if I enjoyed wielding power from an office desk.

I enjoyed it. I also excelled at it. The Armstrong Home for Wayward Boys was in Battersea and the Armstrong Home for Distressed Gentlefolk was in Putney, and within six months I had organized them into formidable charitable machines. Throughout my labors I took care to ensure that Armstrong’s name as a philanthropist was much quoted in the press, for by now it was 1923 and it was time for me to put the finishing touches to the American gentleman I had created out of the New York gangster I had met eighteen months before. Far away in Boston Mrs. Armstrong was preparing to launch her daughters across the Atlantic for their London season, and their social success was heavily dependent on my skill in promoting their father as a respectable generous benefactor who could be welcomed at even the highest levels of society.

“You’ll like my daughter Constance,” said Armstrong as the day of the girls’ arrival drew nearer. “She’s intelligent and well educated, just like you.”

I knew an order when I heard one. My role in the script was being amended so that I could play Prince Charming as well as Heir Apparent, but although I expressed diplomatic enthusiasm, I knew I was still in no hurry to remarry. By that time I was well aware that my decision to marry at the absurdly young age of twenty-two had been prompted in part by the belief that sexual satisfaction could be safely obtained only within the framework of marriage, but now I knew that other frameworks were available. Naturally the idea of consorting with prostitutes was repugnant to me, and naturally I shied away from the loose-living Society women whom I met in increasing numbers, but eventually I encountered a gentle, unaffected young widow who was a seamstress. She visited my house regularly to attend to Marian’s clothes, and one afternoon when I was on my way to the Boys’ Home in Battersea I gave her a lift in my car to her room in Pimlico. Later I paid the rent on a flat for her near the Fulham Road, and when I realized how lucky I was to have found someone so pleasant, so grateful even for the smallest kindness and so anxious never to be demanding I started paying her a small income. Needless to say I spent much time worrying in case this arrangement marked the beginning of an inexorable decline into profligacy, but as the months passed I finally dared to admit to myself that I was doing the right thing. At least it guaranteed I did not rush into marriage a second time out of sheer sexual frustration.

Another reason why I had no wish to rush into marriage was because I was so aware how important it was that I should find the right woman to be my wife. I knew my father had been correct in saying that Blanche had not been entirely suited to me. I still wanted someone who could be gentle but paradoxically I now felt that what I needed most in a partner was strength. I had spent so much of my life in an emotional muddle that I longed for someone who could be guaranteed to see life clearly whenever I became bogged down in confusion, and for the first time it occurred to me how attractive my mother’s personality must have been to my father. I had no desire to marry someone exactly like my mother, but her unflinching ability to discern the truth of a given situation and deal with it efficiently, no matter how horrific the truth might be, now struck me as a priceless asset.

The picture of my future wife began to form more clearly in my mind. I wanted someone strong, though the strength had to be entirely feminine; I wanted someone intelligent, like Blanche, but less musical and with more eclectic interests; I wanted someone not necessarily beautiful but certainly someone whom I found sexually attractive. I decided that although I could not contemplate a divorced woman, I might consider a widow. Virginity struck me as being overrated. I felt I had had enough bashfulness in my sexual history to last me for the rest of my life, and I decided it was high time I conquered those emotional constraints which I later discovered from Constance were called inhibitions.

By the time Constance arrived from America in the April of 1923, the portrait of my second wife had crystallized in my mind.

I was now looking for a woman who was smart, sophisticated, good-looking, intelligent, efficient, sensible, sexually satisfying, popular with her contemporaries, admired by the world in general, affectionate towards Harry and Marian, devoted to me and altogether a paragon of womanhood. However as this extraordinary combination of feminine virtues not surprisingly proved elusive, it had slowly dawned on me that I might have to lower my impossibly high standards. I decided that I might after all marry a virgin if she showed unmistakable signs of sensuality. I also decided that I might marry a foreigner provided she could adapt herself without difficulty to my world. Armstrong’s enthusiastic descriptions had made me suspicious, but when I met Constance I could see that he had by no means fabricated her attractions.

We were introduced at his house on Eaton Walk on the day of her arrival in London. Mrs. Armstrong never traveled anywhere on account of what were described as her “nerves,” so her daughters had been chaperoned across the Atlantic by family friends who were heading for a grand tour of Europe.

Constance was nineteen. Dressed with severe smartness in a beaded black gown accompanied by a diamond necklace and earrings, she appeared more self-assured than her English contemporaries. Not a wisp of her fashionably bobbed hair was out of place. Her unobtrusive American accent gave her speech a formal tone, but beyond her apparent poise I sensed she was nervous in case she failed to appear suitably
soignée.
With the aid of my most polished manners I did my best to put her at ease.

“John!” Armstrong was surging towards me with his younger daughter bobbing saucily at his side. “Meet Theodora! Teddy my dear—Mr. John Godwin.” And he gave her a doting look, a perfect example of a normally sensible man in the grip of a paternal sloppiness. Yet I knew Teddy was not to my taste. As soon as I saw her round blue eyes, bee-sting mouth and conscientiously “naughty” expression, I realized she would be a chaperone’s nightmare, thoroughly unsuitable for me. However I took another look at Constance and decided she had possibilities.

Exerting the full force of my diplomatic charm I slipped casually and disastrously into the role of Prince Charming.

VI

At this point I needed someone to shout at me, “Don’t you deal in lies!” and shake me till my teeth rattled but unfortunately no one performed these useful offices and I continued to think that I was behaving in a rational manner. Having made up my mind that it would be wonderfully fortunate if Constance turned out to be the kind of woman I wanted to marry, I now saw with striking clarity how wonderfully fortunate it would be if I decided to marry her. It would save me from disappointing Armstrong, who was offering me this wonderfully fortunate future which so neatly solved all my problems, and whenever I remembered those problems I became increasingly convinced that I did not care for the idea of disappointing Armstrong. I felt that Armstrong’s disappointment was a prospect on which it was safer not to dwell.

However I did not forget my past experience with Blanche. Prince Charming, in other words, was a role I had played before with results that had been dubious in the extreme, and armed with this knowledge, I now decided the time had come to analyze my feelings for Constance with scrupulous honesty.

She apparently had everything to commend her. I found her sexually attractive; with her slim neat figure and her dark hair and eyes, she belonged to a physical type that I had always strongly admired, although despite this surface resemblance she was very different from Blanche. The most striking difference was that she was well educated enough to discuss French literature with me, an accomplishment which I regarded at first with antipathy but later with a reluctant fascination. It was by this time ten years since I had come down from Oxford, and I was ripe to recover from the anti-intellectual reaction I had suffered after so much exhausting academic toil. Deciding I would start to read novels in French again, I took Constance with me to Hatchard’s where she bought all the novels that I bought so that we could embark on our literary journeys together. This joint venture resulted in some enthralling discussions, and I had to admit to myself that the prospect of a well-educated wife opened up vistas of hitherto unexplored intellectual pleasures.

Better still, Constance was no mere bluestocking but a well-informed articulate young woman who even read the reports of the political debates in the
Times.
The political state of the nation had been in turmoil for some time, with the Conservatives marching and countermarching, the Liberals continuing to hack themselves to pieces and the Labour Party waiting breathlessly in the wings as the Coalition fell apart. I found it all of absorbing interest, particularly since I had begun to doubt that the country would disintegrate if a Labour government came to power. Constance and I spent long hours debating the possibility of class war, revolution fermented by Bolsheviks and the elimination of all that was most inequitable in British society. In the election I voted Conservative out of loyalty to my class, but through the newspapers Constance and I followed Ramsay MacDonald with rapt attention as he inched his way closer to power. Constance said she found it so moving that he was illegitimate, and although I smiled, I knew what she meant. He proved that the socially unacceptable could still win their way to the top; he represented those who were discriminated against because of circumstances which they could not avoid; he stood for the victims of social prejudice, for all those in that unknown world where people did not know what H meant on a basin tap and were turned out of their rooms because their husbands had drunk the rent money.