The Wheel of Fortune (42 page)

“Today I climbed that same stretch where my friends were killed,” he said later. “It looks so different in summer.”

I could think of nothing to say except “Did you reach the top?”

“Oh yes,” said Robert, and I knew he was thinking: I won.

I understood then the exact nature of his obsession. In the black-and-white world of mountaineering, a climber either won or he lost; he either reached the summit or for some reason he turned back and waited till he could try again. There were no grays there, no shadows where one appeared to succeed yet ended in failing, no hellish competition with a dead man who somehow still managed to be alive. Mountaineering was the sport in which Robert knew he could always come first but he had come to believe that sex was the sport where he would always come second.

I saw now the depth of his humiliation when he had failed to consummate our marriage during my pregnancy, and I knew that even though he was no longer impotent he was unable to forget the memory of that failure to live up to Conor Kinsella. No doubt he had wanted to forget. No doubt he had struggled to come to terms with the memory, but when all was said and done this had proved impossible for him, so impossible that in his confused despair, mountaineering had represented the only escape from emotional problems he knew he could never solve.

As the end of the holiday drew near he told me he intended to go to the Inner Hebrides and would join me later in London.

“I want to go to Mallaig,” he said, much as a devout Moslem might have expressed the yearning to go to Mecca. “I want to get the boat to the islands. I want to experience again that magic moment beyond the Isle of Eigg when one can look across the glittering sea to those mystical Coolins of Rhum.”

I looked at him. He was in a dream. I saw then what a hopeless romantic he was, talking of glittering seas and mystical mountains, conjuring up a fantasy world like Valhalla where happiness was always endless, winning was always guaranteed and everyone lived forever in a haze of glory and masculine comradeship. I was a realist who adored romance. Robert was a romantic who adored realism. We might have been two people inhabiting different planets.

“What about your work?” I said, not exactly trying to drag him down to earth but at least trying to ease him back as painlessly as possible. “What about Mr. Lloyd George?”

“He can wait.”

That was when I formally acknowledged to myself that we stood on the brink of disaster.

We were in our room at the castle, and one of the Wynter-Hamiltons’ maids was helping me pack. Beyond the long window the rain was gusting across the loch and the mountains were half-hidden in mist. Turning my back on the view I dismissed the maid, waited till the door was closed and then said in the firmest voice I could manage, “Robert, the cancer’s growing again on your personality and you must cut it out to survive.”

“No,” he said. “This is my personality as it should be. This is the man I really am.”

I was too appalled to speak. The silence lengthened. Then he said, “I’m such a bloody coward that it’s taken me years to face up to this, but now I’m determined to have the courage to live my life as it should be lived.”

“But Robert—”

“Life’s short. Life’s precious. I can’t go on wasting my time like this in London; it’s not only wrong, it’s obscene. During the war I’ve lived while others—men like Raymond, better men than I—have died. That’s a terrible truth to have to live with, and I can only live with it by leading the kind of life I was put on this earth to lead. Then I shall feel that my survival, unmerited though it is, has some point.”

So he was using his guilt about the war, not the failure of our marriage, to explain his behavior, and I knew then that he would never realize he was running away from problems he couldn’t solve. His nature was too simple, his emotional understanding too limited.

We stared at each other and the void of our estrangement yawned between us.

At last he said, “So long as the war lasts I must stay at Westminster. That’s my duty. But as soon as the war’s over I’m giving up London and I’m giving up politics.”

No longer able to look at him I turned away towards the half-packed trunks. The clock told me it was four o’clock. I dimly remembered my promise to Nanny to look in at the nursery for tea.

“I’m sorry,” said Robert, not unkindly, “but perhaps I can save us both from emotional scenes if I tell you that my decision is unalterable. I gave in to you once on this subject and regretted it. I’m not giving in to you again.”

That settled that. Over. Finished. Done.

“We’ll go back to Gower,” said Robert, “just as I originally planned.”

I whispered, “What about Bobby and Margaret?”

“Oh, I don’t care about that difficulty anymore—and anyway that’s your problem to solve, not mine, because I’ll be away climbing most of the year. Time’s short. I’m thirty-six and that’s old for mountaineering. I must go to train in the Alps if I’m ever to tackle the Himalayas, and I must go as soon as possible before I’m forty.”

I sat down on the bed. “If you still loved me, you wouldn’t condemn me to Gower.”

“I do still love you but I can’t go on pandering to this abnormal sensitivity about something that happened over twenty years ago.”

“But surely we could stay in London—I wouldn’t mind if we had to move to a small flat—”

“I can’t afford London.”

‘Then perhaps I could earn a little—find employment—”

“Find employment?
Good God, no, I don’t want my wife earning a living! I want her looking after my home and child wherever I choose to live, and I don’t choose to live in London, I choose to live in the parish of Penhale—and not merely for financial reasons, either. I want Robin to grow up in Gower as we did.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, but I’ll stand no argument. I’ve given you what you want for damn nearly five years, and now it’s my turn to have what I want—and that, I’m afraid, Ginette, is really all I have to say.”

I have but one thought, and that is I mustn’t quarrel with him. If Robert and I part I’m bound to take a lover eventually, and then unforgiving, implacable Robert will take me straight to the divorce court and wind up with custody of Robin. But that’s never going to happen.
Never.

I’ve got to struggle on somehow. At present I can face only one day at a time. Better not to think of Bobby and Margaret just yet. I’ll cross that bridge later.

One day at a time. A little sex would help. I don’t want Robert but without sex I eat and drink too much, and I feel quite miserable enough already without feeling miserable because I’m fat.

But supposing he can’t be bothered to make love to me again?

Oh God, what shall I do, what shall I do, what shall I do …

He’s made love to me again, though I found I was too bitter to enjoy it. I might have known he’d stick to the rules and do his marital duty in the bedroom, just as he’s now doing his patriotic duty by attending sessions in the House.

But the war’s coming to an end. I do believe it’s almost finished, and now I can see the bridge called New Life looming ahead of me, the bridge which represents the final crisis in a marriage wrecked quite beyond repair.

The war’s ended today. I know I should feel joy, so after I’ve stopped grieving for Lion I try to drink champagne with a smile. But the joy’s a charade. I feel the word “joy” can never be the same again, and suddenly I see that golden summer of 1913, the summer I returned to Oxmoon; I see us all laughing and lounging on the lawn while little Thomas pours milk over Glendower and Margaret presides over the silver teapot and Robert and I are in an ecstasy of romantic excitement. All gone now. A lost world utterly vanished. I’m alive in a grim drab postwar London and enduring a grim drab marital reality for which I can see neither amelioration nor cure.

They say Parliament is to be dissolved and the election held at once, so my days of respite are coming to an end. Robert won’t change his mind about his career so I shall soon have to tell our friends that we’re about to sink without trace into Wales. I’ve decided I shall be quite brazen about it and pretend to be thrilled—it’s the only way of concealing my horror, but what our friends will think God only knows. Most of them will drop us immediately. It’s at times like this that one discovers who one’s friends really are.

Julie will stay my friend. I think I would have gone mad by now without my lunches with Julie at The Gondolier. I even go to her flat sometimes when Robert’s at the House, and she’s introduced me to the most delicious drink based on gin. Of course it would be dreadfully common before the war for a woman to drink gin but this is after the war and everyone’s much too busy trying to keep sane to worry about being common. “Bugger being common!” says Julie, who as a socialist believes not only that we’ll all be common one day but that we’ll all absolutely love it.

I absolutely love gin so I suppose my next problem will be chronic drunkenness. What a bore, but oh God, what
am
I going to do, how can I stop Robert living in Gower, never mind the mountaineering, let him climb every mountain in sight, but I’ve got to stop us winding up on the doorstep of Oxmoon.

I haven’t told Julie about Bobby. That’s
verboten,
but she sees clearly that I can’t bear the thought of living near my parents-in-law and that this has now become my major nightmare.

“Ginevra, why not try to enlist his mother’s help? I can’t believe any mother in her right mind would welcome her brilliant son wrecking his career in order to pursue an undergraduate hobby, and if he sticks to his career he’ll have to stay in London, won’t he?”

This strikes me as shrewd advice. I don’t honestly believe that anyone can now stop Robert climbing, but if anyone can it’s Margaret.

I decide to act on the principle Nothing venture, nothing gain.

We’re going down to Oxmoon for Christmas as usual, and Robert’s talking of advancing the date of our departure because he’s so anxious to discuss the future with his father. This means that I’ll soon see Margaret, but nevertheless I think it would pay me to write a little letter warning her that everything in the marital garden is rather less lovely than it appears to be …

“Here you are, Robin my angel, have some of Mummy’s heavenly licorice.”

Nanny said strongly, “It’ll all end in tears, Mrs. Godwin, if you don’t mind me saying so. Little children weren’t designed by the Almighty to digest licorice on trains.”

“I want it!” said dear little Robin, reminding me of Robert, and grabbed the licorice from my hand.

“Say Thank you, my pet,” I said dotingly, but Robin was too busy cramming the licorice down what Nanny called “the little red lane.”

It was early in December and Rory was still at school when we all left London. We had a first-class compartment on the train to ourselves, but Robin, who was twenty months old and very active, kept Nanny busy by rushing up and down the corridor at high speed. Nanny was right about the licorice. My fatal indulgence did end in tears but darling Robin was so adorable that I couldn’t resist spoiling him. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, sunny-natured and divinely intelligent, he was the one ray of sunshine in my dark private life, and although I detested mothers who doted excessively on their offspring, I was quite unable to stop myself being detestable. As Robert sat in his corner of the carriage with the
Times
and tried to pretend he had no connection with two distracted woman and a child who was screaming of nausea, I ignored him and lavished all my attention on poor sickly little Robin instead.

Poor sickly little Robin was eventually borne off by Nanny to the lavatory to vomit. I was just heaving a sigh of guilty relief when Robert suddenly put down the
Times
and covered his eyes with his hand.

“That’s uncommonly odd.” He let his hand fall, squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head violently and opened them again. “I’m seeing double. Reminds me of the time when I was hit on the head by a cricket ball.”

I was most alarmed. “Oh God, Robert, do you think it’s a recurrence of the injury? One hears such extraordinary stories about head wounds.”

“I’ll probably be all right in a minute.”

But at Swansea his condition was unchanged. As we left the train he said to me, “Don’t mention this at Oxmoon. I’ll see a doctor tomorrow if I’m not better.”

I was concerned but he seemed only mildly troubled, so I did my best not to think of damaged retinas and concentrated instead on the task of greeting Bobby who had come to Swansea to meet the train.

The great ordeal of the 1918 Christmas was finally about to begin.

We’re not the only ones in a mess apparently—what a relief it is to hear that other people too have their troubles! Poor Celia, who’s more spinsterly than ever now that she’s in her mid-thirties, has fallen madly in love with a German P.O.W. whom she met while she was doing V.A.D. work at the Cottage Hospital. The P.O.W. was removed from his camp in order to have an appendix operation and Celia nursed him back to health. She says he’s a chemist from Heidelberg and she shows me a photograph of a cherubic youth who must be at least ten years her junior.

“My dear—a younger man—how do you do it!” I say to cheer her up, because of course Bobby and Margaret are livid and Bobby swears that even now the war’s over he won’t have “that damned Hun” in the house. Well, I’m not mad on the idea of her marrying a German either, but the boy looks rather a pet, and anyway if I were nearly thirty-five and had never been to bed with a man I’m sure I’d be capable of marrying anyone, even a damned Hun.

Ironically it’s Edmund, the one who’s suffered most from the Germans, who says, “The Huns are no different from us. They bleed and die just as we do.”

Edmund’s looking a little better but not much. Apparently he had a bad bout of shell shock, complete with rigor, while he was recuperating from the leg wound, and he’s still odd at times, odd enough to spend several days without talking, but he seems reasonably normal at the moment although he still limps as the result of his wound. He looks at least ten years older than twenty-four.