The Wheel of Fortune (89 page)

My mother gasped, screamed, snatched me back, yanked me into her arms and crushed me so hard against her that I yelped. “You stupid little nincompoop!” she yelled at me. “Killing yourself’s a wicked sin—you’ll end up in hell—you’ll never get to heaven at all!”

“But at least I’d be dead! Oh, how I wish I was dead!” I cried, but floods of tears overcame me as I visualized myself being roasted by the Devil while Robin went on sitting among the angels, and the next moment my mother too was in floods of tears again and I heard her sobbing, “Oh, God, what a frightful mother I’ve been, oh God forgive me, God help me—” Yet all the while this litany of despair was going on I was snuggling into her arms and feeling much happier because I could see she did care about me even though I fell so far short of the perfection achieved by little Saint Robin.

After that my mother was so often in my nursery that I almost got sick of the sight of her. However the main result of this incident lay not in her new theatrical displays of affection but in the understanding that developed between us, the understanding that was later manifested in a series of important conversations. My mother not only explained my father’s coldness to me in such a way that my potentially self-destructive hatred was neutralized; she promised me that there was more to life than playing cricket and being a perfect Godwin; she assured me that there was nothing wrong with liking fairy tales or painting pictures or even playing with my secret collection of dolls, which were kept hidden in a box under my bed far from my father’s presence and Uncle John’s conscientiously prying eyes. It was my mother, no slave to convention herself, who helped me believe I was not necessarily doomed to disaster merely because I was the black sheep of the family.

“Although all the same, Kester,” said my mother just before my father died, “you’re really getting a bit old for dolls now. I won’t take them to the jumble sale just yet, but see if you can’t say goodbye to them nobly, one by one. It would be awfully brave if you could, and I’d admire you enormously.”

“Oh Mum!” I said, much moved by her patience and tact, “I know I’ll never be as good as Robin, but I promise to make it up to you one day!”

My mother was greatly irritated. “Lord, Kester, I do wish you wouldn’t dramatize yourself the whole time and make these stupid remarks which always make me want to slap you! You’re just as good as Robin was, but you’re different, that’s all—and that’s good, I’m delighted. I don’t want a second-rate Robin—I want a first-rate Kester, and for once in my life I’ve got what I want!”

“Oh Mum, that’s so nice of you, so kind; but—”

“My God, what is it now?”

“Am I … am I a changeling?”

“A
what
?”

“A changeling. Like in fairy stories and history books. You know—the queen has a baby and it dies and she can’t face the king with the news so her lady-in-waiting gets hold of another baby and smuggles it into the palace in a warming pan—”

“You read too much,” said my mother. “That’s your trouble. And your imagination’s even more lurid than mine—and that’s saying something! No, pet, don’t be so idiotic! Of course you’re not a changeling! You came out of my tummy and the midwife washed you and wrapped you in a blanket and gave you to me and I said, ‘Very nice indeed! Blue eyes just like his father’s and a little bit of auburn hair just like mine! Thank you, Nurse,’ I said proudly, ‘this will suit
very well.
’ And then your father came in and he said, ‘Oh, good! A boy for Robin to play with—thank goodness it wasn’t a girl …’ ”

She went on spinning this fantasy for some time. God only knows what the reality was, but I didn’t care. My mother loved me enough to invent this splendid taradiddle for my benefit, and that was all I needed to know.

“But Mum,” I said at last when she paused to give her fertile imagination a rest, “if I’m not a changeling, why aren’t I a true Godwin? Why am I so second-rate?”

My mother’s bosom heaved, her dark eyes flashed and her fury was terrible to behold. “
Who says you’re second-rate
?”

Greatly excited by this magnificent display of maternal loyalty, my mind zoomed past frightful Uncle Thomas, beastly Uncle Edmund and brutal brother Rory, zigzagged around stuffy old Uncle John and closed in upon the cousin who had taken Robin’s place at the top of my list of most-hated people.

“Harry,” I said—not entirely accurately, for Harry had never used the words “second-rate,” but I felt a little inaccuracy was excusable in the circumstances. During our last quarrel he had called me a subhuman idiot who deserved to be laundered, shrunk and kept in a matchbox.

“Well, you just tell your cousin Harry,” said my mother fiercely, “that you’re twice the Godwin he’ll ever be because both your parents were Godwins—you’re the Godwinest Godwin of them all, and that automatically makes you incapable of being second-rate! You stand up for yourself and don’t be intimidated by that boy just because he thinks going to prep school has given him a license to be bossy and boorish! It’s not his fault he’s such a little troublemaker, of course,” she added hastily, as if she feared she had gone too far by voicing this delectable criticism. “The upbringing’s really been quite impossible, but—well, we won’t go into that. I’m very fond of Bronwen and I won’t hear one word against Johnny and those children will probably turn out all right in the end, but meanwhile there’s certainly room for improvement. Why, I wouldn’t change you for a hundred Harrys! Second-rate indeed! How monstrous!”

“Oh Mum, you’re so wonderful!” I exclaimed, tears in my eyes.

“Oh Lord, here we go again!” said my mother exasperated. “Kester, you really must stop being so emotional!”

“But you’re emotional, Mum! Daddy’s always saying how emotional you are!”

“Yes, pet, but I’m a woman—women are supposed to be emotional! Men are supposed to be … well, like your father. At least … oh, I do wish you could remember Daddy before he was ill! You’re at a disadvantage there. Well, men are supposed to be like your uncle John—yes, model yourself on Uncle John, darling. Uncle John’s magnificent, so strong and tough, yet so very humane and understanding, and he never cries at funerals and he always does the done thing—well, almost always does the done thing—”

“But Mum,” I said, driven by the acuteness of my anxiety to interrupt this paean, “the trouble with Uncle John is that he just wants me to be like Harry.”

“Oh, bother Harry!” said my mother. “Well, I don’t know, Kester, I confess it’s a problem but I’m sure there’s a way you can be perfectly masculine without turning yourself into a replica of Harry.”

“A replica of Harry—ugh!” I groaned, and then unable to resist wallowing in all the emotion I was supposed to suppress I added: “Oh, Mum, if only you knew how much I loathe that rat—that snake—that
villain
Harry Godwin …”

II

Even if Robin had lived he would have had a hard time outshining Cousin Harry, slinky, slithery, slippery Cousin Harry, glossy in his perfection, the model Godwin. He didn’t look like a Godwin for he was dark, his smooth straight hair ink-black, his narrow nasty eyes velvet-brown, but no one, least of all me, ever doubted that he would grow up to be just as tall and handsome as any self-respecting Godwin had a right to be. I was neither dark nor fair but a mediocre mixture of the two, burdened by springy thick reddish-brown hair which was well-nigh impossible to control, and humiliated by a lily-white skin which gave me the look of a consumptive Victorian heroine. My overall appearance resembled a mutated chrysanthemum. My enormous nose (where on earth had it come from?) I considered little short of a deformity. My one hope was that I would grow up to be tall—not taller than Cousin Harry; that would have been too much to expect but by the time I was eight I had begun to believe I wasn’t doomed to be a dwarf and the thought was comforting to me.

Perfect Cousin Harry, superbly athletic, excelled at games. From football and cricket to Ping-Pong and croquet, all sport was easy for him. He glittered, he coruscated, he luxuriated in battles which always ended in victory. To make matters worse he had been brought up by Uncle John to display good sportsmanship at all times, so I was even unable to accuse him of arrogance. When he won at Ping-Pong he would always make some gracious remark like “Thanks, old chap. Jolly good game. Bad luck you lost,” but his velvet-brown eyes would harden in contempt before he allowed his thick black lashes to fall like a curtain to conceal his private feelings. Harry and I might fight and quarrel, but never as the result of a game. “Because after all, old chap,” said suave Cousin Harry, “that wouldn’t be sporting, would it? That wouldn’t be the done thing at all.”

Self-confident Cousin Harry, matchlessly mastering the art of maintaining a stiff upper lip, swept off to boarding school at the age of eight without a tear or a backward glance and returned in triumph at the end of his first term with a new air of sophistication and a new contempt for those who still did their lessons at home. Of course he had a glowing report. Uncle John, who had the reputation of being good with children (God alone knew how that myth ever got started), was actually very sloppy about Harry and read the report aloud to my parents before it occurred to him that he was being tactless.

Stunning Cousin Harry, the mathematical genius who could do complicated arithmetic in his head while I was struggling unsuccessfully to do the sum on paper, excelled in all subjects but showed a scientific curiosity which left me cold. He kept tadpoles and white mice and made notes of their habits. He examined worms under his toy microscope, cut them in half and examined them again. He hoarded the most extraordinary things in test tubes. He lurked in the kitchens and drew anatomical diagrams whenever Cook skinned a rabbit or plucked a chicken. “If it were the done thing,” said Cousin Harry, “I’d like to be an animal scientist when I grow up, but if it’s common to be an animal scientist I’ll have a big estate and keep lots of animals instead. Being a landed gentleman of a big estate like Oxmoon,” said Cousin Harry, “is very much the done thing indeed.”

“I thought you wanted to be a concert pianist?”

“Oh Lord, no—that wouldn’t be the done thing at all! Playing the piano’s very sissyish actually, and strictly for girls who have nothing better to do.”

Musical Cousin Harry, who was capable of listening to an hour-long Bach concert on the wireless without one single yawn, could play the piano by ear. When I sat down at the piano at Penhale Manor I could just manage to pick out “God Save the King” with one finger, but Harry could play a two-handed version of any tune that took his fancy. It was an astonishing gift, and one I deeply envied.

“That boy of Johnny’s is really very musical,” said my mother to my father once.

“Much good that’ll do him—John’s quite right to discourage it,” said my father, whose intellectual tastes were purely literary, and I thought how typical it was of Cousin Harry that he should so effortlessly succeed in extinguishing any awkward un-Godwin-like trait from his personality as he glided along the road to his (no doubt) golden adolescence.

In stark contrast to all this raging glamour, I was tucked shyly away at Little Oxmoon—not exactly kept out of sight, but hardly put on open exhibition. I had a kind clever tutor of whom I was very fond, but apart from Simon Maxwell no one else seemed to think I had much potential. Simon had been a contemporary of my father’s at Oxford; severely injured in the war he found walking arduous, and so Little Oxmoon, designed for my father’s wheelchair, suited him well. Although he enjoyed teaching me I knew his chief pleasure lay in acting as a companion to my father, and their favorite hobby was writing Greek verse together. It must have been sad for Simon when he discovered I was never going to be a Classical scholar, but he was so pleased by my precocious interest in English literature that he promised not to betray my Latin failures to my father. However, my father, trained long ago in the art of cross-examination, soon discovered my defects for himself and was enraged by my stupidity.

“Your cousin Harry could conjugate the verb
amare
in every tense by the time he was your age!”

Infant prodigy Cousin Harry became the complete monster when he turned out to be a born Classicist. It was too much for me. My temper was at boiling point. What had I ever done to deserve these ghastly paragons in my life? First Robin, now Harry. Such persecution seemed more than flesh-and-blood could stand.

“I shall explode entirely soon!” I said to my mother. “Oh Mum, is it always going to be like this? Is Harry always going to outshine me at absolutely everything?”

“Oh no, quite the reverse, darling!” said my mother complacently. “You’re going to end up outshining Harry.”

“But how? How,
how,
HOW
?”

“Well, one day,” said my mother, “you’re going to be master of Oxmoon.”

III

So one day fantasy was going to triumph and all my fairy tales would come true. The neglected little ugly duckling whom everyone despised would be transformed into the gorgeous prince, and I would live happily ever after in my beautiful palace with the ravishing princess who would inevitably accompany such good fortune.

“Gosh, Mum, are you sure?”

“Positive, pet. Daddy’s arranged it with Grandfather. I know you find Daddy difficult, Kester, but never forget he’s fought tooth and nail to get the best for you.”

This was very satisfying. “So he really does love me after all?” I said, preparing to enjoy a wallow in Victorian sentiment (I was in the middle of a novel by Charlotte M. Yonge).

“Darling, he’s devoted to you, I’ve always said so!”

I was still not at all sure whether I believed this, but I was prepared to concede that if my father had fought to win me Oxmoon, he was very far from being the dead loss he had always seemed to be.

Shortly after that I had my first and last meaningful conversation with my father. It was not easy to follow his words because his speech was impaired, but my mother acted as an interpreter when necessary.