The Wheel of Fortune (107 page)

My mother went white. I thought she was angry and at once I began to stammer an apology for my frankness which I now realized must have sounded abominably rude, but I broke off when I realized she wasn’t listening. She had moved to the window. Beyond her across the loch I could see the towering slopes of Ben Nevis shimmering in the summer sun.

“I have been here before,” said my mother, and pressed the palms of her hands against her cheeks as if deeply disturbed.

I suddenly realized this conversation had become like no conversation I had ever had with her. I was so accustomed to being in tune with my mother that I had come to take our harmony for granted, yet now all I could hear was the discord. For a brief vile moment I felt wholly cut off from her, as if a door had been closed between us.

“Mum—”

“Kester, you must stop being so obsessive,” she said, letting her hands fall as she turned to face me. She spoke in a low rapid emotional voice which I found both embarrassing and alarming. “I can’t bear these obsessions.”

“What do you mean?” I was stupefied.

“Oh, your obsession with that girl, your obsession with writing, your obsession with Oxmoon—it’s just so—so alien to me, I’ve never brought you up to be like that, how can you be like that when you’re like me, everyone says you’re like me, everyone.” She got a grip on herself, and not a moment too soon. To my horror I realized she was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

After a pause I said, “I just don’t understand why you should be so upset.”

“No. Well, your father had his obsessions too, Kester, and they didn’t make him very happy.”

“But—”

“One day,” she said, staring out of the window, her eyes still bright with tears, “I’m going to have to talk to you about him.”

“The very last thing I want,” I said at once, “is for you to upset yourself by thinking you’re under some repellent maternal duty to rake over the painful past. I know you and Daddy were miserable when I was growing up, I know he could be an absolute bastard—but that doesn’t matter now, none of it matters, because I’m old enough to see beyond the results of that ghastly illness to the Truth, and the Truth, the beautiful romantic Truth which must always triumph over vile reality—is that my father wasn’t a bastard at all, he was a hero who fought tooth and nail to get me Oxmoon and who had this dazzling romance with you, and
that’s
Beauty and
that’s
Truth and
that
cancels out all the awfulness that came later.”

My mother began to cry quietly to herself. This was so unlike her usual passionate exhibitions of emotion that I felt frightened.

“And anyway,” I said, my fear making me sound rude and defiant, “what exactly were these obsessions of his which made him unhappy?”

But my mother merely wept without replying.

“I don’t believe they made him unhappy at all,” I said. “I think if he was unhappy it was because other people called them obsessions and told him they weren’t the done thing.”

My mother broke down utterly.

I couldn’t bear to see her so upset. It was easier to pretend she was being very silly and deserved to be left alone.

I walked out.

VI

“Mum, I’m sorry I walked out on you but I was rattled because you were being so unlike yourself. Why don’t you tell me now about Daddy? Then maybe you’ll feel better.”

“Oh no,” said my mother. “Not now. I can’t.”

“But why not? You always tell me everything! You’ve always been so truthful and honest!”

Tears welled in her eyes again.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mum!”

“Yes, I will tell you,” she said rapidly, “I’ll tell you everything one day, but you must let me choose my moment. I told Declan everything when we were reconciled, and he understood, he accepted everything and forgave me—it was terrible for Declan, terrible, when I married Robert—”

“I don’t want to discuss Declan.” I turned away.

“Kester, the day you can discuss Declan is the day when you’ll be old enough to understand my two marriages and hear what I have to say.”

“I have no interest whatsoever in hearing anything about your first marriage. That’s got nothing to do with me.
I just don’t want to know.
”

She bowed her head in silence.

“Now for the last time, Mum, what were these obsessions of my father’s?”

The silence lengthened.

I went away.

VII

“Are you sure you want me to be honest with you?” said Aunt Julie a week later.

“You’ve got to be. Mum can’t. She can’t bear to think that the great love of her life ended in tragedy, and every time she tries to speak of my father the tragic memories overwhelm her.”

It was September. My mother and I had at last retreated from Scotland to London so that she could raid Harrods and assault the auction rooms, but before she could get into her stride we had bumped into an old American friend of hers who had immediately invited her to a nightclub. This was not an unusual occurrence; my mother often met old friends who took her to nightclubs, but this man was much younger than she was and looked like a vulgar version of Clark Gable, and I at once decided such an outing would be most improper.

“You ought to think of your reputation, Mum,” I said severely later as we returned to the hotel. “I mean, I understand that you wouldn’t do anything vile, but other people might think—” I stopped. It had occurred to me for the first time that other people might be right. To my horror, I realized that my mother fell into the Uncle John category of Married Women (subdivision Merry Widows) and—bearing in mind her self-confessed enthusiasm for copulation—might well be capable of considerable iniquity.

Misery overwhelmed me. The world suddenly seemed quite unbearable. “I want to go back to Oxmoon,” I said.

“Oh pet, do buck up and stop being such a blight on the landscape! I know—I’ll ring Julie. Perhaps she can take you out to dinner and cheer you up.”

I protested with dignity that I was perfectly capable of spending the evening on my own, but I was secretly pleased. After all, Aunt Julie was a real person, not just a cipher in one of Uncle John’s revolting categories, and that meant I didn’t have to shy away from her for fear she might have some sinister purpose in view. She also happened to understand all about the importance of Beauty, Truth, Art and Peace, although this for the moment seemed barely relevant; for me now the most vital fact about Aunt Julie was that she had known my father in the days before he became ill.

“Be honest with me, Aunt Julie.”

“Very well. But that means I must start by saying I didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t like women. Don’t misunderstand; he was sexually normal—your mother would hardly have been attracted to him if he wasn’t—but I always thought he loved her not because she was a woman but in spite of it.”

This was so alarming that I said the first thing that came into my head. “But he did love her, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Julie. “He did. And they had the most extraordinary and remarkable relationship.”

I relaxed. This was exactly what I wanted to hear. “All right, now tell me about these obsessions of his.”

“Well, my dear, I hardly knew him well enough to provide a comprehensive catalogue, but I could see he had an obsession-prone personality. It was as if life were just one long endless competition in which he always had to win and emerge as top dog. He was an extremely successful man, as you know, but I don’t think his success meant all that much to him. It was merely an exercise in
amour-propre.
”

“How peculiar.” I was much intrigued. “So what you’re saying is—”

“I’m saying his obsessions were all tied up with his desire to be top dog. He couldn’t go to Oxford without wanting a double first. He couldn’t take up politics without wanting to be Prime Minister. He couldn’t take up mountaineering without wanting to climb Mount Everest. And of course, he couldn’t fall in love with your mother without wanting both a grand passion
and
a fairy tale.”

“But this is wonderful!” I exclaimed, suddenly seeing my father’s glittering life from an angle that I could completely understand. “He dreamed of perfection and made his dreams reality! He was an idealist—a romantic!”

Aunt Julie stared at me. “How very perceptive of you,” she said at last. “People thought he was so cold and cynical—but of course there’s no one so cold and cynical as a romantic idealist who’s been deprived of his romantic dreams.”

“Yes, I can see now just how awful the illness must have been for him. It makes the tragedy more vile than ever.”

Aunt Julie hesitated. I was aware of her hesitating, and in that moment some sixth sense told me I was within sight of dangerous waters. But before I could turn my back on them Aunt Julie said casually, “The illness was certainly a tragedy, Kester, but it’s not impossible that your father may have seen it as imposing a solution on problems he couldn’t solve.”

“But surely he had no problems before the illness,” I said. “All his dreams came true.”

“Not quite all,” said Aunt Julie.

There was a pause. Then I said, “Which ones—”

“Oh, your mother would know about that better than I do,” said Aunt Julie. “But I could see he was a troubled man, and I suspect that this was why he staged his massive retreat into mountaineering.”

“Massive retreat? Wait a minute, I knew he liked climbing but I thought that was just a hobby!”

“Hardly. He wanted to abandon both his career and his London life in order to devote himself entirely to climbing.”

“Good God!” I stared at her. I was deeply, powerfully interested. “But that wouldn’t have been the done thing at all!”

“That wouldn’t have bothered him. He was like a man in the grip of a mystical vision.”

“How absolutely magnificent!” I now had my back to the dangerous waters and had returned to comfortingly familiar territory. I polished off the rest of my wine. “Well,” I said, “what a hero!” And then a thought occurred to me, just a little thought, not a thought that one would worry about but just a little idea that one might possibly want to cogitate upon at some time in the very remote future, and I heard myself say, “But Mum wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

“No,” said Aunt Julie. “I’m afraid she didn’t.”

“Well, never mind,” I said at once. “Despite everything they had this remarkable relationship which cancelled out all the unhappiness, and oh God, how wonderful Beauty and Truth are, redeeming the ghastliness of life and bringing one closer to God—to the divine—to heaven … Lord, I must be drunk! I
am
sorry! I’ve recently discovered that I get drunk far too easily.”

Aunt Julie patted my hand and signaled to the waiter for the bill. “I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

Halfway to Kensington Gardens in Aunt Julie’s little Austin I said suddenly, “Does Mum have affairs with these beastly men who keep taking her to nightclubs?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” said Aunt Julie. “I’m sure she’d be truthful.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

We drew up at the hotel but before I could thank Aunt Julie for her considerable kindness to me that evening, she said abruptly, “Your mother’s had a tough life in some ways, Kester. Her first husband was shot before her eyes; her second took nine years to die; for a long time she never saw Declan; Robin died in that ghastly accident. When you think of all that, does the occasional visit to a nightclub really seem so important?”

It didn’t. I knew that but could not find the words to tell her so.

Aunt Julie patted my hand again before adding: “Guard against jealousy—that was a great failing of your father’s. Guard against all those strong violent feelings which gave him so much trouble, and be patient with your mother. I think in the end she’ll be glad you’re like him as well as her—she’ll eventually see it as romantic, and then perhaps the past pain will die a little and it’ll be easier for her to talk to you about him.”

I kissed her, swore to be patient and tottered away into the hotel to sleep off the unfortunate effects of too much Nuits St. Georges.

VIII

“I’ve decided I’ve been very naughty and very silly,” said my mother the next morning as we breakfasted in her room, “and I want to tell you everything about your father.”

“Oh no,” I said at once. “That’s not necessary.”

She stared at me. “Not necessary?”

“No. I know everything I need to know, thank you, so we can consider the matter closed.”

There was a long, long silence. Presently she lit a cigarette, I poured myself some more tea and we went on sitting there together, watching the rain fall over Kensington Gardens.

In the end my mother said, “Last night outside the nightclub there was an old busker playing a Strauss waltz, and as I watched him I thought how odd it was that most people hear only the gaiety in Viennese music. But I think Strauss wrote about sadness, and if you listen hard you can hear the melancholy beyond that romantic facade.”

“I can’t hear it,” I said, “and what’s more, I don’t want to. It’s the romance that’s important, not the melancholy.”

She smiled suddenly, her dark eyes brilliant with an emotion I could not read. “I’d like to believe that,” she said, “and maybe, despite all the awful things that have happened to me, I still do. That would be a triumph, wouldn’t it? What a victory over disillusionment and despair!”

“I don’t want to talk about vile things like disillusionment and despair.”

“No, it’s all right, pet, I understand. We’ll turn it into just another bridge that has to be crossed later, and then for the moment at least we won’t have to bother about it anymore.”

IX

It was soon after we returned from London that I began to find my circumstances intolerable. It turned out I’d made a hash of my Higher Certificate; I had done well in English Literature, but I had barely scraped a pass in History and in Latin I had failed altogether. Uncle John said I should have followed Harry’s example by waiting till I was eighteen before taking the examination—and Harry, needless to say, had achieved three superb passes and won an open scholarship to Oxford.