The Wheel of Fortune (17 page)

Yet as I sat on the edge of the bed that evening I found that mountaineering was a distant memory, while rugger and cricket seemed as irrelevant as a couple of Stone Age tribal rites. I even felt that my entire previous life was not only remote but fantastic, a bloodless dance by a machine to a barrel organ that played only one tune. I supposed I was very much in love. This fact, I knew, was worthy of euphoria and I was indeed euphoric, but I was also alarmed. The unknown is often alarming and to be deeply in love was for me an unknown experience. Before that day my love for Ginette had been little more than a romantic myth but now it was a reality, and I felt confused, nervous, ecstatic, appalled, irrational and dangerous. I knew I should remain in my room but the next moment I was padding to the head of the stairs to see if the guests were on the brink of departure.

They were. In the hall all was noise and confusion, laced with fond farewells and fatuous remarks. I retreated to my room to think. It came as a relief to me to find I was still capable of thinking, but unfortunately I was thinking reckless thoughts of nocturnal expeditions; I was realizing the impossibility of running around Oxmoon in my nightclothes. I had to be able to say to anyone I met unexpectedly, “Oh, I’m feeling so much better that I thought I’d go out for a breath of air before I turn in.” I felt like a murderer plotting his crime. Stripping off my evening clothes I pulled on a pair of white flannels, thoughtfully packed by Bennett in anticipation of lawn tennis, and found the accompanying shirt. White socks and white canvas shoes completed the picture of a gentleman in quest of sport, and after a quick glance at my transformed reflection in the glass I opened the door again to gauge the advisability of a further reconnaissance.

The guests had gone. Everyone was drifting upstairs to bed. I decided to remain where I was.

A seemingly vast span of time elapsed which was probably no more than half an hour. At last, taking no candle, I risked another reconnaissance but all the lights were out in the hall and everyone seemed to be safely stowed out of sight. Returning to my room I waited for sleep to vanquish even the most active brains, and another eon passed. I finished the last cigarette in my case but fortunately perfect Bennett had included an additional packet in my bag. I mentally awarded him yet another increase in wages.

When the clock on my bedside table told me it was one o’clock I decided that to prolong the suspense would be more than my beleaguered flesh and blood could stand. I put out the candle. Darkness descended, rich and sensuous as the black satin of Ginette’s evening gown. I felt intense sexual excitement, and beyond it the old hypnotic vision of winning was beating its familiar drum to lure me on to the end of my dreams.

Leaving my room I moved swiftly and soundlessly down the corridor, tiptoed across the landing past the door of my parents’ room and glided down the passage into the other wing.

Time warped in the darkness around me and bent back in a great curve before running forward once more in a straight line. I was the child Robert again, tiptoeing through the night for a midnight feast with a bag of boiled sweets in his hand, and the child Ginette was waiting with licorice hidden beneath the eiderdown of her bed. Then I remembered that Ginette was no longer in her old room. My mother had put her in Foxglove, the best spare room, as if a line had to be drawn beneath the past.

When I reached the spare rooms I found the darkness unbroken. Foxglove, still named after its former wallpaper, was now only six feet away but there was no light visible beneath the door.

I knocked lightly on the panels and at once I heard a match flare in response. The bed creaked as she left it, and seconds later she was opening the door.

We looked at each other for one long exquisite moment in the candlelight, and after that there was no need for explanations. All I said in the end was, “I’ve changed my mind.”

VIII

AS I STEPPED PAST
her she closed the door behind me and moved into my arms. We kissed. I drew her hard against me both to gratify myself and to prove to her how unmistakable my need was, and she laughed softly and yielded her pliant mouth to mine.

“Come to bed.”

I smiled, recognizing her desire, and withdrew my hands from hers to strip off my clothes.

My fingers grazed her rings.

My fingers grazed the rings that Kinsella had given her.

My fingers—her hand—Kinsella’s rings—and suddenly I was in a nightmare, the most horrific nightmare of my life, half-dressed, wholly paralyzed and absolutely and unquestionably impotent.

I was on the Shipway again and Ginette was saying, “It brought us together in the beginning and it kept us together at the end.” I was in the dining room at Brooks’s and Kinsella was saying, “The prize you’ve always wanted is the prize you can never win.” Having come second to an Irishman in the past I was now coming second to an Irishman again, and the prospect of defeat was dancing before my eyes like a demon. I was failing, I was losing, I was lost, unable to do anything but stare at the floor as the sweat trickled down my naked spine, unable to be rational by telling myself I was a better man than Kinsella, unable to summon the willpower which would convince me that I could outshine him in the most important contest of my life. Panic beat around my brain like a demented hammer. I had a hellish glimpse into an unutterably complex world that was far beyond either my comprehension or my control.

“Robert.” She slipped her arms around my neck and stroked my hair. “It’s all right, I understand—I understood this afternoon—oh, I shouldn’t have told you so much about my marriage, but I was so consumed with the desire to put Conor behind us forever—”

“Forever?” I said, hearing the one phrase I could understand and grabbing it.

“Oh darling, I long to set him aside—wasn’t that obvious when I invited you here?”

“But you implied that physically, despite all your troubles—”

“Yes, but the marriage was so ghastly, such a nightmare, and now I just want someone utterly different—I want you, Robert, you, you, you—”

“Yes, but—”

“There’s no competition. He’s dead and you’re different and you’re going to win, Robert. You’re going to win because there’s no one now,
no one,
who can possibly stand in your way.”

She took off her rings. She tugged them from her finger in a single impulsive gesture and the next moment she was flinging them into the farthest corner of the room. The past merged again with the present. In my memory I saw her throw away Timothy Appleby’s ring as she moved into Kinsella’s arms, and now as she threw aside Kinsella’s rings I saw her moving into mine.

I held her tightly. “I’ll always come first with you now, won’t I,” I said, “no matter what happens next.”

“Always!” Her eyes were brilliant with love.

“And you really love me?”

“Yes. Best of all. Always.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die!” she said laughing, echoing our old nursery oath. She lived. We went to bed.

IX

I HAD NOT BEEN
in bed for more than a few seconds before I realized that the pleasure awaiting me there far exceeded even my most imaginative expectations, but I was in such a state by that time that the word pleasure seemed to bear little relation to what was going on. Despite all she had said I found myself consumed with worry. This was another new experience for me. In the past I had assumed that if one possessed physical fitness, the necessary desire and the required modicum of knowledge biology would do the rest, but now I found that although I was physically fit, beside myself with desire and well-nigh gasping to put my knowledge into practice, I was obsessed with the fear that biology would let me down. Fortunately impotence was now the least of my worries but other disastrous possibilities were jostling for pride of place in my fevered imagination. Caught between trying to remember the
Kama Sutra
on the one hand and my fear of an early ejaculation on the other, I was soon floundering around like a virgin schoolboy.

Then she put everything right. She whispered, “Darling, I’m sure you don’t want me to speak but I can’t help it, I’ve simply got to tell you what heaven this is,” and suddenly I forgot my fears and started thinking about heaven instead. This was a much more profitable exercise, and presently I found that no further ordeal divided me from the pleasure which exceeded all my dreams.

Afterwards for some time I was much too happy to speak but when she too remained silent I found I needed to hear her voice. Tightening my arms around her I asked if everything was well.

“Darling!” She gave me a radiant smile. “What a question!”

I felt compelled to say, “I’ll be better next time. The truth is I’m out of practice. I’ve been on my own too long.”

“Robert, I despair of you! No sooner have I convinced you that you’re not in competition with anyone than I find you’re still in competition with yourself!”

We laughed and kissed. I felt so much better that I even thought how pleasant it would be to smoke.

“I wish I’d brought my cigarettes with me.”

“Do you want one?” Opening the drawer of her bedside table she produced a packet. “So do I.”

“I shall never again disapprove of women smoking!”

We smoked pleasurably and intimately for a time. I was just about to tell her that I had never been so happy in my entire life when she asked idly, “Why has it been so long since the last occasion?”

“Oh …” I could hardly bore her with an explanation which involved disclosing the more convoluted aspects of my personality. “I’ve been working too hard. There’s been no time for pleasure.”

“What a mistake!”

I smiled. “But everything will be different now I have you,” I said, and it occurred to me that I would no longer even miss my mountaineering. We kissed. I extinguished our cigarettes and it was then, just as I was preparing to caress her again, that we both heard the soft footfall in the corridor.

X

WE STARED WIDE-EYED AT
each other. Then we both sat bolt upright and held our breath.

The footsteps halted. There was a long pause, followed by a tentative tap on the door.

Too late I remembered that in the drama of my arrival we had failed to turn the key in the lock.

“Who is it?” called Ginette unsteadily.

“Bobby. Ginevra, do forgive me but I’m so worried about Robert and when I was outside just now for a breath of air and saw a light was still burning in your room—” As we watched, both paralyzed with horror, the door began to open. “—I wondered if I could possibly talk to you—just for the briefest moment, of course; I’m sure you must be very tired after the dinner party …”

His voice stopped. There was a short terrible silence. Then he began to back away.

“So sorry … unpardonable intrusion … should have waited for permission to enter … very remiss … just so worried … forgive me—it never occurred to me … forgive me.”

He left. The door closed behind him but before his footsteps had faded into the distance Ginette had jumped out of bed and was fighting her way into her dressing gown as she ran across the room.

“Bobby—” She opened the door and rushed out into the corridor. “Bobby, please—come back.”

I was pulling on my white flannels. My shaking fingers slipped futilely among the buttonholes of my fly as my father with great reluctance returned to the room.

“Bobby,” said Ginevra in a shaking voice, “you mustn’t betray us to Margaret.
Please,
Bobby, promise me you won’t.”

“Of course he won’t!” I said abruptly. I drew her aside so that I could face him. “I’m sorry, sir—you’ve every right to be very angry. I’m also sorry that you’ve been so worried about me, but I assure you I’m going to settle down now, I’m going to be happy at last and I’m going to live my life very differently in future.”

My father said nothing. He looked at me, he looked at her, he looked at me again but he was quite unable to speak. The silence seemed to last a long time. Then he said simply, “Please excuse me,” and once more he left the room.

XI

WE SANK DOWN ON
the bed. Ginette was trembling so I put my arm around her and kept it there until she was calmer. Then I said, “Never mind my mother. Never mind my father. Never mind either of them. I’ve apologized for my bad manners in flouting their rules and as far as I’m concerned that’s that.” I waited again before adding firmly, “Of course you’ll marry me.”

“Darling Robert!” she said and burst into tears.

An emotional interval followed during which she clung to me and swore weeping that she wanted to marry me more than anything else in the world but she was so frightened, frightened, frightened in case the marriage never happened and she lost me and wound up in a mess for the rest of her life.

“My dearest Ginette! How can you lose me? Friendship’s forever! Don’t you remember how we used to tell each other that?”

The memory calmed her. She said tearfully, “Nothing can ever destroy that shared past, can it?” and I answered, “Nothing.”

After we had embraced she whispered, “Don’t go back to your room, sleep here, I don’t want to be alone.”

I locked the door, returned to bed and, thoroughly exhausted by this time, slept almost as soon as I had pulled her into my arms.

XII

MY LAST CONSCIOUS THOUGHT
was that I had to wake no later than five; my mother always rose early to supervise the start of a new day in her household, and I had no wish to encounter her as I slipped discreetly back to my room.

When I opened my eyes again the hands of the clock on the chimneypiece told me five o’clock was still ten minutes away so I stayed where I was, savoring my good fortune and struggling with my guilt. Shuddering at the memory of my father’s intrusion and blotting it from my mind before it could mar my happiness, I drew Ginette closer to me and wondered if there were any joy on earth that could compare with the joy of waking up for the first time beside a woman one has single-mindedly desired for more than fifteen years.