The Wheel of Fortune (106 page)

“Well, actually … no. Not really.”

Uncle John began to talk of syphilis and gonorrhea. I lasted exactly thirty seconds. Then I stood up, lurched to the fireplace and vomited all over the grate. How I failed to put out the fire I’ll never know.

To make matters infinitely worse Uncle John was so nice to me. If he had lost his temper and roared that I was a squeamish idiot I could somehow have made a dignified recovery, but to my horror he was kindness personified.

“My dear Kester, forgive me—please believe I meant well and only wanted to help—”

I recoiled from him. I felt as if my nose were being rubbed in the mud. I wanted my dignity, I wanted my independence, I wanted to behave like a man and yet here I was, crying in front of him like a child, utterly humiliated, thoroughly sickened and feeling absolutely defiled by everything that had been said. I wanted to think of Anna to steady myself but I was too afraid of contaminating our perfect love by my new sordid insight into the sheer frightfulness of the adult world.

“Oh my God!” said Uncle John as I sobbed harder than ever, and I loathed myself for reducing him to despair. I felt murderous, suicidal, demented. Huge emotions, black and poisoned, billowed out of my subconscious to blight my entire mind. I was in hell.

“I’ll call your mother,” said Uncle John.

Perhaps he expected my mother to clasp me to her bosom and croon soothing endearments, but if he did he had miscalculated. The full blast of her fury hit me as soon as she entered the room. Walking straight up to me, she slapped me across the mouth and shouted, “How dare you disgrace me like this!”

But this approach I could cope with. This straightforward rage knifed through all my tortuous emotions and gave me no chance to hate myself for my inadequacy. She was doing the hating for me, so all I had to do in return was to pull myself together.

However I at once realized that this reaction was quite beyond Uncle John’s comprehension, because he too was battling with feelings of inadequacy and he too was busy hating himself for what he nobly considered to be his failure. I heard him say—and every word struck me like a dagger because he was being so heroic, taking all the blame on himself—“I’m sorry, Ginevra, obviously I’ve made a complete hash of this. I can see now he’s still too young to master the advice I was trying to give him.”

‘‘Rubbish!” thundered my mother, at once in a towering rage with him as well. “If he’s old enough to talk of marriage he’s old enough to hear what you had to say! It’s about time he started facing facts instead of drifting around in a cloud of adolescent nonsense which bears no relation to reality! Very well, Kester, we’ll go back to the hotel. I’m absolutely disgusted by your weak childish behavior. I didn’t think any son of mine could be quite so feeble.”

That did the trick. I stiffened my backbone and looked her straight in the eyes. “There’s no need for us to leave so early,” I said in a firm dignified voice. “I was sick because I’d drunk too much port and I cried because I couldn’t hold my drink like a man. It had nothing to do with what Uncle John and I were talking about and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to resume my conversation with him.”

There was a pause before my mother said tersely, “That’s more like it” and walked out. The door banged behind her. We stood listening as her footsteps click-clacked away across the hall.

“Kester … if you’d prefer not to hear any more—”

I wanted to yell and scream and fling myself on the floor and drum my heels with exasperation, but all I said was a crisp “My mother was right. If I’m old enough to talk of marriage I’m old enough to hear what you have to say. Please go on.”

But poor Uncle John was so demoralized that he could barely bring himself to show me a French letter and give me a few succinct tips about its use. This hardly mattered, as I was determined not to listen to a single word he said, but I kept an attentive expression on my face and remembered to nod occasionally.

“… so I think that’s about all,” he concluded, sounding weak with relief. “Are there any questions you’d like to ask?”

“No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I’m very glad to have the information and I’m most grateful to you for taking so much trouble. I do apologize for making such a disgusting mess of your fireplace.”

I was behaving like a perfect Godwin at last. As we both sighed with relief I glanced again at the picture on his desk and thought of worldly Cousin Harry, taking the lecture in his stride and running off to outwit unmarried fatherhood and venereal disease with consummate skill. No vomiting into fireplaces for Cousin Harry, no grinding awkwardness, no sheer unadulterated hell of humiliation and shame. He would walk out into that foul polluted adult world with a smile and take his place in it without a backward glance.

But I wasn’t like Cousin Harry and I wasn’t going to live in his world. No contraception, no disease, no married women, no fast girls, no filth, no obscenity, no degradation—not for me, never for me, never,
never,
NEVER
. I was going to marry the Princess of My Dreams and live happily ever after at Oxmoon.

A dream? Yes, of course it was a dream, but what was wrong with that? If no one ever dreamed of perfection, reality would always be nothing but unalleviated ghastliness, but sometimes a man could make his dream reality—and sometimes, very occasionally, reality was no longer sordid but dazzling, a vision of all that was finest in human nature, a view of the absolute truth, a glimpse of God.

An idealist? Yes, of course I was an idealist, and what was more I was proud of it. It’s idealism that separates us from swine. Everyone should try to be an idealist. It would make for a better world than the mire in which we’re all currently submerged.

The next day I telephoned Anna and said I wanted to elope with her just as soon as I had celebrated my eighteenth birthday.

IV

“Two fizzy lemonades and two cream buns, please,” I said to the waitress in the Blue Rabbit. It was well before eleven in the morning and we were the only occupants of the restaurant apart from three elderly women who were drinking tea and exchanging medical histories.

“So you see,” I said to Anna after the waitress had padded away on flat feet, “since Uncle John’s made such a song-and-dance about sex I just have to find out how you feel on the subject. Now, I’ve never done any copulation so unfortunately it’s impossible for me to give you a reasonable estimate of how often I might want to do it, but I have to be honest and tell you I
would
like to do it occasionally, and not just because I want children. I sort of feel … well, it might be rather fun every now and then—”

“I don’t know much about it,” said Anna anxiously, “but I’ve heard some extraordinary rumors at school.”

“They’re probably true, but don’t worry. Mum says sex can be absolutely stunning.”

A hush fell over the tea shop as the three old tabbies abandoned their discussion of gallstones to eavesdrop.

“Two cream buns, two fizzy lemonades,” said the waitress, plonking down plates and glasses in front of us.

We bit deep into our buns to hide our confusion.

“Heavens, Kester!” whispered Anna as the old tabbies abandoned their eavesdropping and began to prattle about gallstones again. “Do you really talk about sex to your mother?”

“Yes, of course. Don’t you talk about it to yours?”

“Never! In fact I always thought talking about sex wasn’t the done thing!”

“Well, it often isn’t. But it’s always the done thing to be mad about it.”

“Goodness, how worrying it all is,” said Anna, forsaking her cream bun.

“Don’t worry,” I said soothingly again. “Doing the done thing, I’ve discovered, has very little to do with what people actually think. Of course not everyone’s mad about sex, but everyone has to pretend to be mad about it because they’re frightened of being different.”

“It
is
frightening to be different,” said Anna. “It’s easier and more comfortable to conform.”

“But that’s wrong—it must be wrong! One should hold fast and stand firm, as Uncle John would put it—one should stick to one’s principles and never compromise them just to do the done thing!”

“I agree,” said Anna, “but older people would laugh at us, wouldn’t they? Older people wouldn’t understand.”

“Older people,” I said, “are too busy living a lie and calling it their moral duty,” and at that point I thought of Uncle John, incarcerated apparently of his own free will in that soul-destroying house in Eaton Walk.

V

Uncle John fulfilled his threat to conspire with the Steinbergs to ruin our happiness in order to “protect” us from each other, but because they were clever people who realized their greatest mistake would be to forbid us to see each other, our separation was achieved by more subtle means. First of all the Steinbergs made Anna promise that she would on no account marry before her eighteenth birthday which was then still over a year away. That gave them the necessary time to combine with Uncle John to wage their war of attrition. The Steinbergs had no objection to me in principle; they had long since reconciled themselves to the fact that I wasn’t Jewish; and in social terms I was undeniably a good catch for Anna, but they were as fervent as Uncle John in believing that we shouldn’t marry too young.

“Never mind, we’ll simply elope later than we originally planned,” I said to Anna, but I was privately annoyed that the Steinbergs had played on her filial feelings with such skill, and it was hard to control my anger with the older generation as we settled down to survive the war of attrition.

Anna returned to school soon after that. I saw her once in the Easter holidays, but then my mother whisked me away to the Continent for a month to “broaden my mind” (a repulsive euphemism, I considered, for detaching me from Anna). I began my tour of Europe by sulking beneath the Eiffel Tower but presently I fell in love with Versailles, and to my reluctance I began to enjoy myself. We wandered on via ravishing Switzerland to mesmerizing Italy. Naturally I sent Anna a postcard every day, but by the time I reached Florence I found I wanted to do more than write postcards. I began to jot down notes for a new novel, and despite missing Anna intensely I grew steadily happier in that unique, utterly satisfying way which can come only from putting pen to paper and exercising one’s imagination. Meanwhile my mother was promising to take me to Venice and generally treating me with the deference due from one adult to another. She made me order the meals in restaurants, instruct taxi drivers and distribute all the necessary tips. I began to feel about thirty, and it was not unpleasant. It was far better than feeling, as I always did in Uncle John’s presence, like a recalcitrant child doomed to perpetual immaturity.

“So you see you don’t have to get married to achieve independence, darling,” said my mother as we traveled back to England.

I gave her an appalled look but kept my mouth shut. Did she really imagine I wanted to marry simply to demonstrate my independence? I did not need to make a demonstration. When I came into my inheritance the following November the facts would speak for themselves, and later my marriage would be a celebration, not a demonstration, of my status as master of Oxmoon.

However my eighteenth birthday was still some months away, and as soon as I returned home I was plunged into the final revisions necessary before I took my Higher Certificate examinations. Simon was worried because I had been neglecting my studies during the furor over Anna, but I was sure a little hard cramming would see me through, and besides … I didn’t want Uncle John to know that I had fallen behind in my work.

Cramming meant I had no time to write more than a few words to Anna each day, but she was working hard too so our formerly voluminous correspondence degenerated into cryptic notes. I realized sourly that my mother was pleased by this so as soon as the exams were over I took care to write screeds again.

The summer holidays arrived but we only had time for a quick meeting at the Blue Rabbit before my mother took charge of my life once more; we visited Uncle Edmund’s estate in Kent before whirling up to Aunt Daphne’s place in Scotland where a large house party was in progress. Cousin Harry, who had also taken his Higher Certificate exams, was there with Uncle John, Aunt Constance and Francesca, and after talking to him I realized what a hash I had made of my Latin paper. Cousin Harry was planning to go up to Oxford in the autumn to read Greats. I was still too young for Oxford and would have a year to fill in first, but Uncle John said he could think of plenty of things for me to do while I waited.

I shuddered, but the sheer awfulness of Aunt Daphne’s house party prevented me from dwelling on his threat for long. I yearned to write; I was lusting to develop the notes that I had jotted down in Florence, but time and privacy were in short supply at Aunt Daphne’s that August and I found myself becoming more and more frustrated. Finally, locking myself in my room away from the mindless girls who bored me and the kindly married women whom I now—thanks to Uncle John—found extremely sinister, I scribbled myself into a state of exhaustion until Uncle John said I was being rude. After that I did try to participate in all the stupid social activities, but to compensate myself I got up at four in the morning and put in five hours before breakfast. I didn’t mind doing this but by the time evening came I was wilting and once I even dozed off at the dinner table.

“Honestly, darling,” said my mother, who knew quite well what was going on, “can’t the masterpiece wait till you get back to Oxmoon?”

“No,” I said. When I’m obsessed I’m unstoppable, and as I saw my mother give me a very strange look indeed I sensed she was recognizing this secret side of my personality which had been stealthily developing as I grew older. “Darling,” she said uneasily, “you must be wary of obsessions, you know. Writing’s a delightful hobby but you mustn’t let it take over your life. That would be an escape from reality—that would be running away.”

“Rubbish!” I said without a second’s hesitation. “It’s this idiotic house party which is the escape from reality! What you’re pleased to call my obsession is the only thing that’s real here!”