The Wheel of Fortune (65 page)

“Nevertheless,” said Constance, “I’m glad the Conservatives were elected. What would happen to the stock exchange if Labour came to power? the Times says today …”

To my amazement she started to quote from the City pages. As usual, she had read all the newspapers and knew everything. I began to wonder how she ever found the time.

She did play the piano, but it was a mere technical accomplishment and she preferred to listen to her gramophone or her crystal set. So did I. I bought her many records—classics, popular songs, dance tunes—and found she could comment intelligently on them all. Then we transferred our attention to painting, a subject about which I knew nothing, and Constance explained modern art to me. I still considered it was rubbish, but I thought it was wonderful how well she talked about it.

In addition to this exhausting intellectual activity, we somehow found the time to expend some energy on more mindless pursuits. I danced with her at numerous balls, dined with her at uncounted parties, escorted her to Ascot, to Henley and to Wimbledon, wrote my name against the most important dance in her program when Armstrong gave the coming-out ball for his daughters at Eaton Walk. Armstrong was now confidently expecting me to propose, at the end of the season. So were Constance and Teddy. So was London Society. So was I. The only trouble was that I found it hard to imagine myself ever doing it.

Something was wrong, and because I admired Constance so much and longed so intensely for the happy ending to which I felt entitled after so much sadness and muddle, I made a new attempt to analyze my situation so that I could define the problem and put it right.

I knew she was a little too serious, but I liked that. The modern girl who constantly erupted with gaiety like an overshaken cocktail I found noisy, tiresome and unsympathetic. I did wonder if Constance’s seriousness would affect her behavior in bed, but I came to the conclusion that this was unlikely, first because she struck me as an intense girl who would be capable of the most passionate emotion, and second because she was so competent in everything she undertook that I could not imagine her failing to master the basic pleasures of sex.

I had no doubt either that she would make an exemplary stepmother. “The subject of raising children is just so fascinating,” she confided in me one day. “I’ve been reading the latest book on the subject of child psychology.”

I had never even heard of the subject of child psychology. Gazing at her in unstinted admiration I thought yet again what a remarkable girl she was, and I was just telling myself I was a complete fool not to rush immediately to Bond Street to buy a ring when my brother Edmund arrived to stay with me and announced that he was looking for a wife.

VII

“Between you and me and the bedpost, old chap,” said Edmund as we smoked our cigars after dinner on the evening of his arrival, “I’m getting too old to turn out on a winter’s night and drive all the way to Llangennith whenever I want a good you-know-what, and now that I’m almost twenty-nine I can see that marriage does have a lot to offer.”

“I understand exactly,” I said, remembering uncomfortable winter journeys down the Fulham Road.

I had become closer to Edmund since my reconciliation with my father two years ago. Whenever I returned to Gower we had plenty of opportunity for long talks together, because I had installed him at Penhale Manor to look after my house and estate for me. At first it had seemed merely a neat solution to an awkward problem, but to my surprise and gratification, it had turned out to be the best offer to Edmund that I could possibly have made. The opportunity to lead an independent life and the salaried responsibility of the position not only had diverted him from the chronic melancholy he had suffered since the war but had given him the confidence he had always lacked. All my father’s children had known what it was to be overshadowed by Robert, but only Edmund had known the horror of being overshadowed by everyone. I realized belatedly that he had grown up convinced he was useless, an opinion my parents had unwittingly reinforced when they had allowed him to live at home without earning a living, and it was only when I had offered him work that he had begun to believe he was not compelled to go through life as a failure who lived on his parents’ charity.

His position was not arduous, since Huw Meredith was a first-class manager, but Edmund took his responsibilities seriously and applied himself with enthusiasm to the estate. However his chief interest remained horticulture, and at my request he had embarked on the task of removing all the scentless white roses from Blanche’s garden.

“My one insuperable problem,” said Edmund after he had revealed his decision to contemplate matrimony, “is money. I know you and Lion each brought off the fantastic feat of marrying an heiress, but you yourself are so obviously cut out to be a huge success in life, and even old Lion was cut out to be a huge success as a bounder, while I’m not cut out to be a huge success at anything.”

I recognized the plea for reassurance. “Stop talking drivel—you’re earning your living, you’ve been to the right school, you’re thoroughly respectable and you’re a jolly nice chap. What more can any girl want?”

“Money for diamond hatpins.”

“Edmund, girls don’t go to bed with diamond hatpins. They go to bed with men.”

This put us on safer ground. Edmund had overcome his conviction that no woman could possibly look twice at him; at least his experiences in wartime France had not all been hellish, and when he returned home he had embarked on a long affair with a land girl called Joan who worked at Stourham Hall. Unfortunately Joan, having decided that no wedding ring was ever going to be forthcoming from Edmund, had now announced her plans to marry a Swansea bank clerk, and it was this catastrophe, rather than his advancing years, which had led Edmund to consider that matrimony might have more to offer than a love affair.

“I was so upset,” he confided in me, “that I damned nearly proposed to Joan myself, but Papa talked me out of it and I know he was right. It’s simply no good marrying out of one’s class, is it? Of course he and Mama did, but he was
déclassé
and she was exceptional and the circumstances were so peculiar that it didn’t matter. But normally … well, you know what happens. The marriage winds up in a social mess, and it’s always such hell for the children.”

“True. I tried to explain to Armstrong once that to marry out of one’s class here is like marrying someone of a different-colored skin. That’s the only parallel that an American can understand.”

“You don’t think I’m being a bloody snob?”

“No, just bloody sensible.”

Edmund visibly blossomed as I praised his good sense, but was still anxious enough to say, “All the same my position isn’t easy. Do you by any chance know of a gorgeous young heiress who’s simply panting to marry a man whose only talent lies in being a jolly nice chap?”

“Possibly—but what kind of a girl are you looking for? I suppose you’d like a sweet shy English-rose type of person who’s fond of gardening.”

“Good God, no!” said Edmund horrified. “What use would that be? Isn’t it bad enough that
I’m
a sweet shy English-rose type of person who’s fond of gardening? No thank you, I want someone utterly different! I want one of those marvelous modern girls who says outrageous things and laughs all the time, someone who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish and thinks sex is jolly good fun!”

“Say no more, Edmund. Let me introduce you to Teddy Armstrong.”

VIII

I had spoken with the rashness that so often follows a pleasant dinner and half a bottle of claret, and when I awoke the next, morning I was at once uneasy about my role of matchmaker. However I told myself it was most unlikely that Edmund and Teddy would discover a mutual passion which would drive them pell-mell to the altar.

Never was I more mistaken. Edmund was quickly reduced to a shining-eyed wraith who could neither eat nor sleep, and Teddy was quickly driven to confide that he was “every right-minded girl’s dream come true.” I noted the word “right-minded” as I acknowledged her determination to be besotted with him, and realized that Teddy had frightened herself by her fast behavior that season. After ricocheting in and out of love with a fine display of emotional pyrotechnics, she had lost her heart to a former army captain who had turned out to be not only a professional gambler but a married man. Her hired chaperone had washed her hands of her. Even the doting Armstrong had been shocked enough to talk of sending her back to America, but I had convinced him that his best chance of avoiding scandal lay in keeping her at his side.

“Of course nothing actually
happened,
” confided Edmund to me. “She’s told me all about it.”

I thought it kindest to maintain a diplomatic silence. It was certainly possible that Teddy’s virginity was intact but on the other hand hired chaperones seldom return their fees unless racked by the most profound sense of failure.

“Poor little Teddy’s been awfully misunderstood,” said Edmund. “She says all she really wants is to get married and live happily ever after near her father. She doesn’t get on too well with that mother of hers in Boston.”

That sealed Edmund’s fate, and his fate made it well-nigh impossible for me to break with Armstrong even if I had wished to do so. If I now refused to marry Constance, I knew he would intervene in revenge to prevent his other daughter marrying my brother. I did wonder if he would object to the match, but I soon realized the bizarre truth that Edmund was even more of an ideal son-in-law for Armstrong than I was. Armstrong wanted to control his favorite daughter’s life; this meant he needed a docile son-in-law whom he could manipulate, and in this respect Edmund posed no threat to him. He must have hoped that Teddy would do better for herself but after the scandal he was willing to concede that she could do very much worse, and as always he was keenly aware that if she failed to marry she would have to return to her mother in the autumn.

Deciding to approve of Edmund, Armstrong then asked me when I was going to propose to Constance.

“On her birthday,” I said without a second’s hesitation. The date was two weeks away.

“No, let’s sew this up right now,” said Armstrong, unable to resist pushing to conclude the deal that would scoop both his daughters away from his wife. “Constance isn’t eating or sleeping properly, and I want her put out of her agony. Take the day off tomorrow, buy the ring and fix the date.”

I said I would. Despite my anger that I had been the victim of an exercise in power, I was also conscious of relief that the decision had been taken out of my hands. Constance had not been the only one enduring an agony of uncertainty, and I went home convinced that proposing to her was the right thing—indeed, the only thing—to do.

I had just entered the house when my father telephoned. My nephew Robin, six years old and his parents’ pride and joy, had fallen to his death from one of the tower windows at Little Oxmoon, and Robert wanted me to return to Gower at once to organize the funeral.

IX

“Have you ever noticed,” said Edmund the next morning as our train thundered towards Wales, “how tragedy so often strikes at people who already have a surfeit of tragedy in their lives? I saw it happen again and again in the war. Men would have their balls blown off and then the next day they’d get a letter saying their wives had run away or their mothers had dropped dead or their children had died of diphtheria.”

I said nothing. I was too busy thinking how I would feel if Harry’s life had been cut short, and alongside my grief for Robert lay the memory of Robin, spoiled and precocious but still a child of exceptional promise and charm.

We were alone in our first-class compartment. I had thought Rory Kinsella would be accompanying us, but he was on holiday with his Dublin relations and would be approaching Wales from Ireland. Two years ago he had been sent down from Cambridge for incorrigible idleness, but Robert had somehow obtained a position for him in a well-known firm of stockbrokers and Rory had promised to turn over a new leaf. I was skeptical. Both those Kinsella boys had turned out badly, although since the formation of the Irish Republic, Declan was no longer in danger of being shot by the British.

“Of course it would be the best of the bunch that gets killed,” Edmund was saying. “That always seemed to happen in the war too. Poor Ginevra! She hardly deserves yet another catastrophe.”

I suddenly could not endure to hear him talking so calmly of such brutal chaos. “There’s got to be some meaning in it all,” I said in despair. “I just can’t accept that life can be so disordered.”

“Accept it, old chap,” said Edmund placidly, “or you’ll go mad. I found that out in the trenches.”

“Oh, shut up about the bloody war!” Any talk of madness always had an adverse effect on me.

The rest of the journey passed in silence but as the train entered the industrial wasteland on the eastern side of Swansea I did apologize to him. Edmund promptly apologized in his turn for upsetting me, and with an uneasy peace established between us we steeled ourselves for the ordeal of our father’s welcome. He was waiting by the ticket barrier, and for once he looked his age. He was sixty-one, thirty years my senior. I noticed that he was stooping slightly and that his hair, which had once been a dark gold, was now a pale silvery yellow.

After I had embraced him I said, “This must have been a terrible shock for you.”

“It was a tragedy,” said my father so firmly that I knew he was incapable of discussing the subject. “Why, Edmund, how well you look! Tell me all about this nice little American girl you’ve met in London.”

Edmund promptly began to chatter about Teddy, but when we reached the motor my father asked him to sit in front with the chauffeur and the paean was curtailed.

Somewhere beyond the Penrice Home Farm my father said to me, “He was such a game little fellow.”

“Yes. I expect he reminded you of Robert, didn’t he?”

“Just like him. It was a miracle. It made up for Robert being ill. Well, at least Margaret was spared this. No more little replacement, no more little miracle … and do you know, I can’t face Robert, not yet, I’m too upset … that awful bungalow—the wheelchair—Ginevra—”