The Wheel of Fortune (54 page)

“My dears!” exclaimed Ginevra, who was seated opposite us. “What fun you girls are! Johnny, why did we always write off the Staffordshire crowd as a dead loss in the old days?” It was obvious she had had too much hock.

“Dead loss?” said Aunt Ethel, who had the kind of hearing that would have permitted her to eavesdrop at fifty paces. She turned to my father. “Bobby, did you hear that?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” said my father with great courtesy, “I didn’t.” He suddenly looked very tired. Pushing away his glass of hock, he turned to the butler. “Bayliss, bring me a glass of champagne.”

“
Champagne
?” said Aunt Ethel. Unlike my mother, she had never fully conquered her Staffordshire accent. “Bobby, I don’t know how you can think of drinking champagne when my poor dear sister has been laid to rest only an hour ago, but all I can say is—”

“John,” said Robert at once, but I was already on my feet. We had long since worked out a plan of action in case Aunt Ethel’s frightfulness assumed intolerable proportions.

“Papa,” I said, moving swiftly towards him, “let me take you into the library for a quiet cigarette.”

“But I can’t abandon my guests,” said my father. “That wouldn’t be the done thing at all.”

“Oh, don’t mind me!” said Aunt Ethel. “I know I’m only here on sufferance to keep up appearances! I realized long ago I wasn’t considered good enough for Oxmoon!”

I looked at Cousin Montague for help. He had been educated at some minor public school and I thought he might have the decency to keep his mother’s vulgarity in check, but evidently he shared her grudge against my family, for he merely toyed with his fruit knife and said nothing. Meanwhile silence had fallen with lightning speed over the table, and into that silence Robert suddenly unleashed his fury.

“You stupid woman!” he shouted at Aunt Ethel. “How can you have the insolence to talk of your ‘poor dear sister’ when we all know you were so jealous of her that you could hardly ever bear to visit this house! I’ve had enough of you simulating grief in the most vulgar way imaginable—just you leave my father to grieve in peace!”

“Well!” said Aunt Ethel, puce with rage.
“Well!
Never in all my life have I been so—”

“Papa,” I said, stooping over him, “you can leave your guests now—the meal’s over. Edmund—Celia …”

Edmund, Celia and Thomas all rushed to the rescue.

“Poor dearest Papa” said Celia, “you’ve been so brave—don’t take any notice of that horrible woman—”

“Montague,” said Aunt Ethel, “are you going to let your mother be insulted like this?”

Cousin Montague said, “I must say I find this behavior most uncalled for and quite definitely not the done thing at all.”

“You are, of course,” said Robert, “referring to your mother’s conduct. In which case I utterly agree with you.”

“How dare you!” shouted Aunt Ethel.

“And how dare you,” shouted Robert, “degrade my father’s hospitality like this!” He turned to Ginevra. “Take me out of here; get me out.”

“—never been so insulted in all my—”

“Please!” My father was on his feet. Silence fell. His children stepped back a pace as if allowing him room to speak. He was ashen. “I must apologize,” he said to his guests, “for this unforgivable scene. Ethel, I apologize in particular to you because I know my children’s insults are the last thing Margaret would have wanted you to suffer. And now, if you please, I must beg you all to excuse me.” Exquisitely polite, shaming us by the very perfection of his manners, he walked out of the room.

Edmund, Thomas, Celia and I all looked at one another and then turned as one to follow him.

He was waiting for us in the hall. “Margaret will be very angry when she hears about this,” he said severely. “Very angry indeed.”

As we stared at him in appalled silence, Ginevra wheeled Robert into the hall, and in panic I swung to face them. “Robert, Papa’s unwell again—”

“I’m not surprised!” Robert was still shaking with rage. “I’m only surprised that we’re not all raving lunatics after this bloody unspeakable charade!”

We all gasped. My father was suddenly very white, very still, and the next moment Robert was turning on him with a horrifying brutality.

“Why couldn’t you bury her quietly?” he shouted. “She was English and she deserved an English funeral—why did you have to give her this Welsh circus? You talk so much of doing the done thing and sticking to the rules, but all you’re capable of is vile pageantry and bloody hypocrisy!” And covering his face with his hands, he began to shudder with inaudible sobs.

We were all staring appalled at him but no one was more appalled than my father. At last he whispered humbly, “I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you, Robert. Please forgive me,” and blundered away towards the library. Thomas ran after him, but my father said, “I’m sorry, I must be alone. John will look after you till I’m better.”

The library door closed. Robert let his hands fall. His bold strong striking face was battered with grief. I saw him reach for his wife’s hand and saw too that it was waiting for him.

“Robert’s right,” said Ginevra. “I don’t know why we’re not all raving.” She turned the chair and began to wheel him away from us. Over her shoulder she added: “We’re off to the kitchen garden to raid the strawberry beds.”

“The season’s over!” called Edmund the gardener automatically, but Ginevra did not stop, and the next moment he was seizing the chance to escape by dashing after them to help her maneuver the chair into the garden.

Celia and I looked at each other.

“I’ll deal with the other guests,” she said, “if you can cope with Aunt Ethel.”

I glanced at Thomas. “Will you be all right?” I said. “Celia and I have to go back, no choice, but you can stay here if you want to.”

“I’m staying.”

I could hardly blame him. Celia said with admirable resignation, “I’m afraid it’s a case of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ John,” and seconds later we were reentering the dining room.

VI

I had already received the hint that some deep fissure existed between Robert and my father. In his dementia following my mother’s death my father had referred to it obliquely, but in my distress I had discounted his words as the rambling nonsense of a sick man. Yet now, having witnessed Robert’s unprecedented hostility to him, I began to wonder anew and to try to recall what had been said. My father had talked of Robert’s marriage. That much I could clearly remember. But had he in fact disclosed anything which I did not already know?

We were all aware that my parents had opposed Robert’s marriage to Ginevra, even though they had ultimately given in with good grace. As Celia had said in one of her more acid moments, “Who in their right mind would want their son to marry a woman who acts like a courtesan and was married to an Irish-American brigand?” However Ginevra was certainly a lady, despite her raffish manners; a broken engagement and an elopement may rank as deplorable incidents, but they hardly turn a woman into a courtesan. Yet what kind of a lady was she? She had a foreign air, no doubt acquired in America where all women, so I had heard, were bossy and independent, unmarked by the virtues of English tradition, and even though I had no evidence that she had been unfaithful to either of her husbands, I thought her untrustworthy; there was a shadiness about her which hinted at all manner of private eccentricities, and although Robert was devoted to her, I had been far from surprised when my parents looked askance at the match.

What now surprised me was that their disapproval had apparently deepened. I thought they had accepted the marriage. I had been well aware that Robert and Ginevra visited Oxmoon only at Christmas—how could I have been unaware of it when I was so meticulous in visiting my parents far more often?—but I had not imagined that this could have led to bitterness. I had done well at the Foreign Office, but I had been no more than a clerk promoted later to a personal assistant; Robert, on the other hand, had been maintaining a brilliantly successful career, and I had fully understood that unlike me he had found it almost impossible to find the time to visit Oxmoon. However my parents had evidently found understanding not so easy. Why had my mother blamed Ginevra, who had always seemed to bend over backwards to please her? And what had my father meant when he had called the separation from Robert retribution?

I was too busy salvaging the shreds of the luncheon party to indulge in speculation beyond this point, but to my relief the guests now showed signs of departing. Presently the de Bracys, who were staying at All-Hallows Court, left with the Applebys; the Bryn-Davieses left in the company of Warburton; the Stourhams gave the vicar and his wife a lift to Penhale on their way to Llangennith; Daphne and her parents swept away in their chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce to the Metropole Hotel in Swansea while Rory Kinsella, now a volatile undergraduate of twenty, slipped off through the grounds to his mother’s bungalow at Martinscombe.

That left the crowd from Staffordshire. They were all staying at Oxmoon but not, Aunt Ethel assured me, for a day longer than was necessary; she said it was against her principles to remain in a house where she had been so grievously insulted, and were it not for the fact that she was about to be prostrated by a migraine brought on by mourning for her poor dear sister, she would have left immediately. Her daughters somehow coaxed her to bed and then departed with Montague and his wife for a very long walk. Aunt May’s daughter Evadne said she was exhausted and she hoped we wouldn’t mind if she and her husband retired to rest. Somehow we restrained ourselves from saying we were delighted. After they had disappeared upstairs, Celia and I, who had by this time perfected our act as host and hostess, thanked Bayliss and the servants for making the luncheon such a success, and then we withdrew to the hall to decide what to do next.

My father had not emerged from the library, but Blanche, who had been playing the piano quietly in the music room, appeared to ask what she could do to help. She volunteered to stay on at Oxmoon, but I did not want to worry about her any longer; I considered she had been exposed to quite enough distress, so I asked my father’s chauffeur to drive her home to the Manor, and as soon as the motor had departed I said to Celia, “I think we should have a family conference to plan how we’re going to survive the rest of the day.”

Celia agreed, and collecting Thomas from the hall, we retired to the drawing room where a glance from the windows revealed that Ginevra and Robert were sitting by the summerhouse on the far side of the lawn. After separating Edmund from his whisky in one of the greenhouses, I hid the decanter under a large flowerpot and shepherded my flock out of the kitchen garden.

Robert and Ginevra saw us coming as we moved down the lavender walk, and suddenly I experienced a longing for Lion. I could almost hear him saying, “Let’s draw lots for who murders Aunt Ethel!” and I thought how he would have bounced out of his deep grief for my mother to raise our spirits with his vitality. The sight of Robert and Ginevra too heightened my longing for a past that had been lost. In my earliest memories I could remember the two of them in the summerhouse, Robert wearing his first pair of long trousers and looking immeasurably grand, Ginevra a remote goddess with thick plaits, a white frock and holes in both her stockings. “Here come the babies,” I had so often heard her say as Lion, Edmund and I advanced to invade their privacy, and now in an eerie echo of the past I heard those same words repeated.

“Here come the babies,” she said idly to Robert as we crossed the tennis lawn to the wheelchair.

“You’ve come at the right time,” said Robert to us. “I’m feeling too hot out here—lift the chair into the summerhouse, would you?”

He seemed composed again. In the summerhouse, I did say, “Robert, if you want to go home now, I shan’t blame you in the least,” but he answered at once, “Don’t be ridiculous—how can I leave without apologizing to Papa for that monstrous scene I created with Aunt Ethel?” and various sympathetic comments were made about Aunt Ethel’s frightfulness before I called the meeting to order. I then declared that we should plan the rest of the day like a military operation in order to avoid further ghastliness.

“An idea which is none the less brilliant for being obvious,” said Robert. “Continue.”

Thus encouraged, I launched myself on a forecast of the next stage of the nightmare. “With any luck,” I began, “Aunt Ethel won’t emerge from her room again today, but if she does, leave her to me. I think I can just manage to survive her.”

“John should never have abandoned a diplomatic career,” said Celia to the others. “He’s been quite wonderful.”

“Well, you were wonderful too, Celia—”

“Enough of this mutual admiration,” said Robert, “or I shall start to remember how I allowed Aunt Ethel to reduce me to her own appalling level of vulgarity. Go on, John.”

“I suggest we divide the entire tribe between us and swamp each section with charm and good manners.”

“What a revolting prospect,” said Edmund.

“I think it’s all rather heavenly,” said Ginevra. “Shall I take on Dora, Rosa and Clara? I simply adore it when they talk about Emmeline and Christabel!”

Robert groaned. More comment on our frightful relations followed, but eventually I divided them as equitably as possible between Edmund, Thomas, Celia and Ginevra.

“And what do you and I do, John,” said Robert, “while our siblings struggle with these repulsive duties you’ve assigned them?”

“We cope with Papa.”

We all looked at each other.

Edmund said unexpectedly, “I think he’ll crack now. I saw it happen in the trenches. When the brave ones cracked they cracked utterly. One just can’t keep up that kind of performance forever.”

Robert said to me, “He’s right. This is where our troubles really begin,” and I thought again of that moment in the hall earlier when my father had started talking of my mother in the present tense.

“I don’t understand,” said Thomas truculently, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “What do you mean when you say he’ll crack?”

“Break down and cry,” said Celia soothingly before anyone could mention the words “go mad.”