The Wheel of Fortune (123 page)

I found him drinking whisky in the library as he pretended to write a letter.

“Father, I was just wondering whether to open those packing cases in my room but then I thought I wouldn’t bother if we’re not going to be here much longer.”

“Ah.” There was a pause while he drank some whisky.

“Father … are we likely to be here much longer?”

“I don’t know.”

Another pause. I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there and waited for him to help me, although what form the help should take I had no idea.

“You’re all right, aren’t you, Harry?”

“Oh yes, Father. Fine.”

I saw now with a terrible clarity that I’d lost him as well as Bronwen. My bright cheerful affectionate father had been wiped out by this battered stranger who could do no more than drink whisky and attempt a fragmented parody of a conversation. Once I realized this I knew there was no point in waiting for help so I slipped away.

I stood in the hall and wondered what to do but my mind was blank. In the end I wandered outside. I crossed the croquet lawn to the woods, and when I reached the summerhouse I paused to look back. Then I remembered that this wasn’t the first time in my life that I’d been dispossessed. I remembered my grandfather patting me on the head, slipping me five shillings and saying to my father, “He’s got Blanche’s coloring but there’s a look of you there too, John,” and I knew he was pleased. “Tell me the story of how you saved Oxmoon, Grandfather,” I would say to him again and again, and he would tell me how he had found the vital information he needed by throwing a book at a rat in the library.

“And I made Oxmoon a great house,” he said, holding my hand as we strolled together through the woods to the ruined tower of Humphrey de Mohun, “a great house, and they all came to Oxmoon, everyone came, and we decked the ballroom with red roses and we drank champagne and we danced to ‘The Blue Danube.’ ”

“I can play ‘The Blue Danube,’ ” I said, so we went to the ballroom and I played it for him on the untuned broken-down old piano there. It was near the end of my grandfather’s life by that time and Oxmoon was sunk deep in decay.

“What a clever little fellow you are!” said my grandfather smiling at me, and when he gave me another five shillings I knew I was his favorite.

“I’d like to make Oxmoon a great house too, Grandfather, just as you did.”

He gave me his brilliant smile. He had bright blue eyes, just like my father’s. He said nothing.

“I’d like to live at Oxmoon one day and be just like you.”

My grandfather looked away. His mouth trembled, and suddenly he seemed very old and very careworn. All he said in the end was “I’d like that too, Harry.”

So of course I thought I’d inherit Oxmoon. Then Kester started boasting that he was to inherit. Naturally I didn’t believe him, but my father explained that Kester had to inherit because he was the son of the eldest son and eldest sons always came first; it was the done thing.

So that was that.

Afterwards whenever I looked at Oxmoon I thought, Silly old house. I don’t care.

But I did.

I cared now. I looked back across the lawn to Oxmoon and thought, Dispossessed. I had compensated myself for the loss of Oxmoon by becoming fiercely devoted to Penhale Manor, but now that the Manor too had been stripped from me I found myself face to face with Oxmoon again. I looked at it and saw clearly how much more alluring it was than pretty, charming but commonplace little Penhale Manor. Little manor houses are two a penny throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles, but there could only be one Oxmoon, only one Georgian mansion slumbering in its grounds like a lost Welsh lion and waiting for the master who would comb its bedraggled mane.

My sense of deprivation was suddenly so strong that I couldn’t bear to look at the house for a moment longer. I ran off into the woods to the ruined tower but even the jackdaws in the tangled ivy there seemed to scream at me, “Dispossessed!”—which was a very stupid and improbable illusion, because the noises jackdaws make sound nothing like “dispossessed” at all. I went on through the woods. On the far side of the grounds there was a door in the wall, and letting myself out I ran down the footpath, crossed the road and set off across the moors which rose steadily to the summit of Rhossili Downs in the distance.

The sky was bright blue and the bracken was growing tall. A warm wind blew into my face from the sea and ruffled the manes of the wild ponies as they grazed by the megalithic stones known as Sweyn’s Houses. It was an ancient burial chamber reputed to be the tomb of Sweyn, founder of Sweyn’s-Ey, as Swansea had once been called. Vikings, Celts, Normans, Saxons—they’d all come to Gower in the old days to leave their mark upon the landscape.

“And they all came to Oxmoon,” my grandfather had said, referring to his guests of long ago. “Everyone came to Oxmoon.”

How could I stand living there a day longer when I knew it could never be mine? Never. What a terrible word that was. Never, never, never. Oxmoon would
never
be mine.

And why was it never going to be mine? Because my grandfather had done the done thing by leaving it to the heir of his eldest son. And why had Bronwen gone to Canada? Because, as my father had said, it was the right thing, the only thing to do. And why was I being deprived of piano lessons? Because it wasn’t the done thing for a boy to waste time pursuing artistic ambitions. I was being sacrificed on the altar of The Done Thing, that was the truth of it, and oh God, how I
hated
the done thing. But of course I could never have said so. That wouldn’t have been the done thing at all.

I paused, debating whether to go on or turn back, but I knew that if I went back I would be guaranteed to feel miserable so I went on—I could have stopped, but I went on. That, I was to discover later, was the story of my life, but I was only fourteen then and my life had hardly begun.

I reached the summit of the ridge. The view was so stupendous that for a few precious moments I was jolted out of my slough of despair. Below me the Downs fell away abruptly to the three golden miles of Rhossili Beach, and beyond the sands the long lines of the breakers creamed languidly on the edge of a glittering sea. Far away to my left the little village of Rhossili was perched on top of the high cliffs that formed one arm of the bay, while far away to my right the sand burrows of Llangennith, huge grass-flecked dunes, swirled towards the lesser arm of the bay and the Loughor Estuary beyond Llanmadoc Hill. Looking back inland I could see the blue gleam of the river, and beyond Harding’s Down I glimpsed the village of Reynoldston shimmering in the heat haze atop the spine of Cefh Bryn. All was pastoral peace, like a landscape in a dream, and when I turned to the glittering sea I saw it as if from a great distance, as if it were a vision of happiness far beyond my reach. I noticed that the Worm’s Head, the tidal peninsula beyond Rhossili, was about to be cut off; I could see the white foam as the waters roared over the Shipway.

There were a few holidaymakers below me on the sands but the beach was not easy of access and was always sparsely populated. Certainly I assumed I was alone on top of the Downs. That was why, when someone called my name a moment later, I nearly jumped out of my skin with surprise.

“Harry! Oy! Come over here a minute!”

Peering around I saw a girl lying on a rock in the distance. Who was she? No idea. Unable to think how I could escape from such an unwelcome encounter, I muttered a curse under my breath and trudged off along the track towards her. I kept my eyes on the ground and frowned heavily to convey that I was feeling unsociable.

“Thank goodness you turned up,” said the girl as soon as I was within earshot. “I’m trying to raise the Devil and I need a Druid. Do you by any chance know how to fuck?”

I jumped as if I’d been shot, and looked up.

The girl was stark naked.

I recognized Belinda Stourham.

II

“Well, don’t just stand there goggling at me like a lost bullfrog,” she said crossly. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a girl naked before?”

“Well, actually … no. No, I can’t say I have.”

“Doesn’t your father keep picture books of ladies with no clothes on? Mine does. Well, never mind, don’t let’s waste any more time—do you know how to fuck or don’t you? I thought it just meant making a rude noise, but I must have misunderstood the stableboys when I heard them talking about it because although I’ve done everything Annie-May said I haven’t managed to raise the Devil. But on the other hand Annie-May did mention a Druid. So if you could play the Druid—”

“Who’s Annie-May?”

“Our housemaid. Look, don’t waste time, I haven’t got all day. If you’re not interested in being obliging—”

“Of course I am. But I don’t quite see—”

“Annie-May says that in the old days people used to dance around a fallen-down standing stone—you know, one of the upright rocks from an old burial chamber—and then the most beautiful girl would take off all her clothes and lie on the fallen-down standing stone and fuck. So would the Druid, and while he was fucking he’d say a spell and the Devil would appear in a cloud of sulfur and brimstone. Well, I thought it sounded rather fun, so I decided to have a go. No one’s breathing down my neck at the moment because my stupid old governess is on her summer holiday and stupid old Aunt Angela’s in bed with a liver chill, and it seemed a good opportunity to go off and hunt for a suitable rock—and look how lovely this one is, almost flat and with the best view in the world. I know it’s not from a burial chamber, but I’m sure the Devil wouldn’t mind if only I could raise him … I say, I do wish you’d stop looking so odd. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing exactly. But Belinda—”

“I’m called Bella now. Daddy’s gone crackers and cries whenever anyone says my mother’s name. I wanted to be called Linda but Aunt Angela said that was a common name, you know, not the done thing, so I have to be Bella instead.”

“Not the done thing. I see. Yes. Actually, Bella, you wouldn’t know this because you’re too young, but fucking’s not the done thing either, not unless you’re grown up and married. So—”

“Oh rubbish, Annie-May does it all the time and she’s not married, she’s only fifteen! Anyway, who cares? I don’t want to do the done thing like boring old Aunt. I want to be mad and bad like Eleanor who wears trousers and drinks whisky and says ‘What the hell’—in fact I hope I’ll be much madder and badder than she is by the time
I’m
thirty-one; but meanwhile I’m thirteen, and I’m going to start my mad bad career by raising the Devil. After all, one’s got to start somewhere. Now, for the last time, are you going to be useful or aren’t you? Because if you’re not …”

I took a quick look around but there was no one in sight along the summit of the Downs as far as the eye could see. Far below us the waves streamed languidly over the sands and the sea faded into a blue horizon. It was the landscape of myth. The girl was part of the myth too, a naked siren upon a rock, and when I stepped into the myth to join her, I found that reality, unbearable reality, was suddenly a million light-years away.

“Gosh, what a peculiar shape boys are! How do you squeeze it all into your trousers? Or does it fold up small like a telescope?”

The waves went on streaming over the beach but I no longer saw them. The sun beat down on my naked back. Sweat got in my eyes. The rock on which she was lying was gray-green with unlikely flecks of pink in it. As my heart slammed like a sledgehammer all the colors ran together into a waving chaotic blob. I thought I was going to pass out.

“I say, Harry, have you ever done this before?”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. Just wondered if you knew what you were doing.”

“Of course I know what I’m doing.”

“Seems jolly odd to me.”

Pain racked us both and terminated speech. I panicked, floundered, then suddenly realized the pain wasn’t pain at all but the most excruciating ecstasy. I said incoherently, “Don’t stop me, don’t,” because I thought she was bound to try to fight her way free but she grabbed me so tightly that her fingernails bit into my shoulder blades. Then one of us said “Oh God,” and a sea gull screamed overhead, and the next moment the pink flecks were all flying back into place in the rock.

“Goodness, my back’s killing me,” said the girl. “I never knew a rock could be so hard … Rather fun, wasn’t it? But what a fibber Annie-May was, talking of the Devil appearing in a cloud of sulfur! Unless … oh yes, we never said the spell, I knew there was something we’d forgotten. Never mind, we can’t try again now because I simply must go home for tea. We’ll try again tomorrow.” She paused, her head bent suspiciously over her private parts. “Oh gosh, what’s all this mess? No, don’t look, I’m all right. It’s just something girls get. Or is it? No, it can’t be. Gosh, this
is
peculiar! I’ll have to ask Eleanor about it.”

I nearly had a fit. “Good God, no, you mustn’t do that! You mustn’t tell anyone—anyone at all!”

“Oh, all right, all right! No need to get in such a flap! But I say, Harry … is it really very much not the done thing?”

“Very much, yes.”

“Oh good. But how could something so nice be wrong? How idiotic grown-up rules are!”

“Idiotic, yes. And vile.” I pulled on my trousers and stood up. Far away at the Rhossili end of the bay, the Shipway had sunk below the sea and the Worm’s Head had become an island. The waves were no longer streaming dreamily over the beach; greedy white breakers were roaring up the sands, and beyond the surf the horizon was knife-sharp and the sea was a restless violent blue.

Everything was quite changed.

When I turned to look at the girl I saw her as if for the first time. I tried to remember the last occasion we’d met and thought it had been at a birthday party at the vicarage over a year ago. Little Belinda Stourham had worn a pink dress with a white sash and had sulked in a corner. I had paid no attention to her.

Now I noticed that she had shining, mouse-colored hair, not very long, and brown eyes, green-flecked, not very dark. Her nose tilted upward. Her wide mouth curved upward too as she smiled.