The Wheel of Fortune (71 page)

When we arrived home at the end of January, my father-in-law handed us the title deeds of our new mansion in Surrey, and presently we went down to Dorking to see it again. Built in the eighteenth century it was an architecturally superior Anglo-Saxon version of Oxmoon, and Constance declared with enthusiasm that after the necessary renovations by the right interior decorators it would be perfect for house parties. I walked through the empty rooms, which were devoid of all the memories that made Oxmoon precious to me, and said what a wonderful wedding present it was and how fortunate we were.

Constance had decided that my Kensington house was not smart enough for the home she had in mind, so we began our married life at a much larger house in Chester Square, not far from Eaton Walk. My father-in-law liked this because it meant he could call on us all the time, and Constance, who loved her father and perhaps loved him the more because she had never been the favorite daughter, basked in this constant paternal attention. I kept my thoughts on the subject to myself, but I found that Armstrong’s brash personality, which I had once judged so refreshing, was becoming increasingly abrasive once it began to flood my private life. Fortunately we had a respite whenever he took himself off to visit Edmund and Teddy in their
pied-à-terre
in Chester Mews, but Edmund and Teddy were often absent from town. Shrewdly gauging Edmund’s capabilities Armstrong had appointed him to run his estate in Kent, but as there was a manager in charge of the farms Edmund was not overworked. Armstrong himself used the Queen Anne mansion on weekends, but Edmund and Teddy were allocated the Regency dower house with its fine views over the Weald, and as far as Edmund was concerned he had been allocated paradise. I became weary of him telling me what bliss he was experiencing, and wearier still when Constance’s demanding exuberance continued unabated.

“John, we must plan our trip to the States—Mother says she’ll make sure we have a wonderful time. …”

Mrs. Armstrong, somehow conquering her nervous disorders, had crossed the Atlantic for her daughters’ wedding and had spent much time being hysterical because they were settling down three thousand miles away from her. I had found her so tedious that I now searched for an excuse to postpone my American visit, but as matters turned out I hardly had to search hard. The excuse soon presented itself.

“Darling, there’s something I want to tell you. … Oh, sweetheart, I think—I’m almost sure …”

She was pregnant. So was Teddy. Edmund was demented with delight. I managed to find the appropriate words to express pleasure and pride, but I barely heard myself utter them; I was too busy listening to the slam of the steel door as I found myself locked up in my new windowless cell.

“John, you
are
pleased, aren’t you?”

Still I had to endure this quest for reassurance.

“John, you do love me, don’t you?”

Still the futile questions droned on and on.

“John, I’ve asked the doctor and he says we can go on having sex for the time being …”

Constance liked sex and, just as I had anticipated, she was good at it. In fact my original estimate of her had proved accurate in every respect. She was an excellent wife. Although she was young she had just the right degree of authority with the servants; she was a first-class hostess, a splendid organizer of our social calendar and a superb administrator of my home. She took a conscientious and devoted interest in my children, and I had no doubt she would make a conscientious and devoted mother. She was already studying the subject of babies and working out how the perfect infant could be, as she put it in her American fashion, “raised.”

“… and the husband mustn’t be overlooked—all the books say how important that is, darling, so you mustn’t think I shall ever neglect you.”

“My dear, after your ceaseless attentions during the past months I’m sure I could survive a little benign neglect!”

“What do you mean?” She was at once deeply wounded.

“Nothing. It was a joke, Constance, just a joke.”

“I don’t see it.”

“No.” I had married a girl who had no sense of humor. I could not imagine how I had once regarded her lack of humor as a charming seriousness, and in a terrible moment of truth I saw that although I respected her many excellent qualities, I was never going to love her and would often dislike her very much. That was when I first asked myself not how difficult it would be for me to sustain my marriage but how much longer I could continue with it. At first I thought marital breakdown would begin in the bedroom but ironically that was the one place where the marriage continued to flourish, the one place where Constance could be guaranteed to keep her mouth shut and I could be guaranteed the opportunity to do exactly as I liked. In the end the bedroom offered me my only compensation for my disastrous mistake but even there, as the months passed, my time ran out. Constance’s pregnancy began to show. She was in good health but naturally I had to be careful, and this small attempt at restraint proved almost too much for me to bear. I found too that the visible signs of her pregnancy made me feel guilty. I felt guilty that I had fathered a child I did not want, guilty that I could not give Constance the love any pregnant woman needs and deserves, and guilty above all that I had wronged her by marrying her, by dragging her out onto the stage with me as I acted out my lies.

My marriage ended in the May of 1924, five months after our wedding day. I was breakfasting with Constance by the window, of our bedroom, and outside the spring sunlight was shining on the new leaves of the trees in the square. My chauffeur was not due to bring the Rolls to the front door for another ten minutes, and I was just studying the Times before going to the nursery to have a word with the children. I remember that I had finished the cricket report and was steeling myself to face the parliamentary columns. The new Labour government had been horrifying and enthralling the country ever since they had failed to wear court dress at Buckingham Palace.

The butler entered the room and handed the morning’s post to Constance.

She was wearing an emerald-green negligée which looked striking with her dark hair, and she had been reading the latest copy of
The Tatler.
On the table between us amidst the Royal Worcester breakfast set, two orchids wilted languidly in an exquisite silver vase.

“Here’s a letter from Oxmoon,” said Constance, sifting diligently through the post as usual in order that I might not be bothered by correspondence which would unnecessarily consume my time. She passed me the envelope bearing my father’s handwriting. “We ought to go down there again soon, John—shall I arrange for the Manor to be prepared for us at the end of the month? I think we could fit in a weekend there before the Derby.”

But I had now reached the stage where I was afraid to see those closest to me for fear I might break down and tell them the truth. Abandoning my newspaper I rose to my feet to make my escape and murmured, “But I have to go to Birmingham at the end of the month.” Since my marriage I had been thrust deep into the dreariness of the Armstrong Canning Corporation.

“You surely don’t have to go on a weekend, darling! Now, let me see: is there anything else here that you should look at before you go? Bills, receipts, invitations … oh, and what’s this? Swansea postmark, cheap paper, probably a begging letter … Oh, my! It’s in Welsh! Here, darling, for once I can’t cope—over to you.”

I had been halfway to the door. I looked back. Always I can remember looking back at the orchids dying in their silver vase while the spring sun shone beyond them on the brilliant green leaves of the square.

Returning to the table, I took the letter from her without a word.

Dear Mr. Godwin,
Myfanwy Meredith had written on lined paper in a clear script.
I think you should do something about my sister. She’ll never ask for help so I must. I write not to make trouble but because I believe you wouldn’t want her to suffer. Please may I see you to explain?

An hour later I was aboard the train to Swansea.

8

I

I
SAW THE PRAM IMMEDIATELY
. It was parked in the shade of the tree that stood in front of the farmhouse. I had walked the short distance from the Manor but now I broke into a run. The sun shone sporadically from a sky dotted with small white clouds, and beyond the cart track the front meadow was gay with buttercups and clover.

The perambulator was little better than a wooden crate on wheels, but it had been painted a smart navy-blue and cleverly lined inside with white cotton. Beneath a blanket embroidered with yellow ducks the baby lay fast asleep. It had some fairish down on top of its head and very small, very new features. When I lifted the blanket, I found that the nappy was damp. Pulling the cloth to one side, I saw I had a son.

A light breeze fanned the delicate skin I had exposed, and he awoke. I rearranged him beneath the blanket, but he was inconsolable, and hardly knowing what I was doing, I picked him up. He whimpered against my chest. Twenty yards away the front-door of the house slammed. As I looked up, rigid with misery, Bronwen stopped, rigid with anger, and we stared dumbly at each other for one long moment of all-consuming despair.

The baby began to cry again.

“Hush, Evan.” She rushed forward, scooped him out of my arms and hugged him tightly. “Who told you?” she demanded, not looking at me. Her voice shook as she turned away. “Was it Huw? Was it Myfanwy? Was it some old gossip in the village? I thought no one doubted he was Gareth’s—I didn’t think anyone remembered exactly when Gareth died—” She broke off as the baby, sensing her distress, began to cry more loudly. “Shhh … there’s a good boy … shhh.” Her hair was loose, and as she bent her head over him, a long strand tickled his cheek. He stopped crying and peered at her. He was too young to smile, but I saw him focus his eyes as he gazed upward. Hugging him again she rocked him gently in her arms.

“Your sister wrote.”

“How dare she! I’ll never forgive her, never!”

“But why didn’t you want me to be told?”

“Because I knew,” she said, tears streaming down her face, “that we ought never to meet again.”

We stood there side by side. Eventually she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said in a flat voice, “He’s very wet. I must take him indoors to be changed.”

Automatically I followed her but she turned on me in a rage. “Go away! I don’t want your pity or your charity! Go back to your wife!”

“Never.”

That silenced her. It silenced me. As her eyes filled with tears, I took her in my arms.

After a time she whispered, “You mustn’t lie to me anymore. It’s cruel. When you wrote and said Cornwall was wrong and marrying a girl you didn’t love was right—”

“I’ll get a divorce.”

“Oh, damn you, what good would that do!” she shouted. “You’d only leave me later when you found another woman of your own class who suits you better than I ever could!”

“I’m never leaving you again.”

That settled that. My arms tightened around her, she raised her tear-stained face to mine and the poor baby had to endure being crushed so hard between us that he screamed with rage. In consternation we sprang apart, and then as the sun blazed down upon us all our misery dissolved and once more we were smiling into each other’s eyes.

II

It was late in the afternoon. The children were home from the village school but out playing somewhere in the fields. From the kitchen came the sound of Myfanwy’s voice as she talked to a visiting neighbor, but after entering the house through the front door we avoided them by going straight upstairs to the room that Bronwen shared with the baby.

“I can’t be with you yet,” said Bronwen simply. “It’s too soon after the birth.”

“I understand. When was he born?”

We began to talk. I sat on the bed as she changed the nappy, and then she lay on the bed in my arms while she fed him. She told me that when she returned to Cardiff she had found domestic work again but had been dismissed by her employer when the pregnancy became obvious, and although she had tried to go on working she had begun to suffer from anemia, a misfortune that had made her afraid for the baby’s health. Finally, unable to pay anything to her in-laws for her room and board, she had been obliged to return to the Merediths. Both of them had been horrified by her condition but had taken her in without hesitation.

“But I knew I couldn’t go on living on their charity,” said Bronwen, “and besides I was too afraid of you finding out, so I told Myfanwy I’d emigrate to Vancouver where we have cousins who would have lent me the fare. I suppose that was what drove her to write to you. She wanted you to pay for me to stay in Wales.”

I told her that at some remote time in the future when we had been married so long that we had nothing better to do, I would take her on a visit to her Canadian cousins, and we laughed together. Meanwhile the baby had finished his feed and had to be held up and patted and encouraged to perform the rituals of digestion. As I stroked the down on the top of his head, I said abruptly, “You should have said something in Cornwall about the possibility of this happening. I assumed you couldn’t have any more children.”

“Why?”

I explained.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “But Gareth was too drunk most of the time to be a husband to me.” She wiped the baby’s mouth carefully and smiled at him as if to negate the unhappy memories. Then a thought struck her. She looked up frightened. “Are you angry about the baby?”

“Of course I’m angry—but not with you or with him. I’m angry with myself for ignoring my responsibilities in Cornwall and leaving you alone to pay the price.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “It takes two to make a baby. If I hadn’t wanted him I would have said something.”

I was interested to discover that I had not after all underestimated her practical streak. We discussed contraception idly for a time. Among the working classes, I learned, birth control consisted of
coitus interruptus,
sodomy and old wives’ tales, although since the war French letters had provided a welcome relief for those who could afford them. Bronwen referred to sodomy as “what they did in the Bible,” and as I laughed at this contraceptive vision which would have appalled all fundamentalists, she laughed with me. I tried to remember when I had last felt so happy and that was when I realized how miserable I had been ever since our holiday in Cornwall.