The Wheel of Fortune (58 page)

“It” won. I hurried indoors, lit a candle and padded up the staircase. At the bedroom door I paused to listen, but all was quiet. I tapped lightly on the door.

“Blanche?”

There was no answer. Opening the door, I looked in.

“Darling, I hate to disturb you—”

But she was awake. Although she was lying in bed, her eyes were open.

“—oh, you’re awake. Thank goodness. Blanche, I really must talk to you further about all this—”

I stopped.

She had not moved. Her eyes did not see me. She was looking at some point beyond my left shoulder. “Blanche?” I said sharply, but there was no reply. It was almost as if she were dead, but that I knew was impossible. Healthy young women of twenty-five did not die without warning in their beds. Setting down the candle, I touched her cheek with my hand.

It was cold.

I found it extraordinarily difficult to know what to do next, but since it seemed that some mysterious drop in her temperature had caused her to lose consciousness, I pulled off my shoes and got into bed beside her to warm her up. While I waited I tried to imagine what “it” could be. What had I done? I loved her, she loved me and we were happy. Except that we weren’t. At least, I was. Or was I?

“Blanche?”

She was wearing a white nightgown, white as the white roses. Vile white roses. Odorless. Listless. Dead.

I got out of bed, pulled on my shoes again, picked up the candle and went downstairs to the telephone.

“Dr. Warburton, please,” I said to the postmistress when she responded to my call.

I was now no longer baffled but incredulous. In fact I was outraged. How
could
she have been unhappy? I had done everything possible to ensure a successful marriage. I had told her lie after lie in order to protect her from my troubles. I had restrained my baser physical inclinations endlessly in order not to give her offense. I had toiled year after year at the task of behaving perfectly towards her—and as I thought of this, I could hear my mother’s voice again. She was holding me in her arms in the remote past and telling me how I could feel safe and happy. “You’re going to be an extra-specially good boy so that your poor papa is never reminded of his mother’s wickedness …”

My mind suddenly plunged into chaos as past and present collided. Instinctively I squeezed my eyes shut in a futile attempt to blot out the Christmas of 1903.

“Hullo? Warburton speaking.”

“Warburton, it’s John Godwin.” I was so acutely aware of time being dislocated that I could not pin myself to the present. I said, “It’s all to do with my grandmother, my grandmother and Owain Bryn-Davies,” and then I hung up so that I could concentrate on the task of staying sane. Something seemed to be happening to my mind. I felt as if my capacity for producing rational interlinked thoughts were being savagely dismembered.

The telephone rang. I answered it. One always answered telephones when they rang. That was normal.

“Godwin, you need help, don’t you?”

It was Gavin Warburton calling back, nailing me firmly to the September of 1921. The past receded. I was back, shattered but sane, in a horrifying present.

“My wife’s dead,” I said, “except that she can’t be dead because she’s only twenty-five and there was nothing wrong with her.”

Warburton said he was on his way.

V

“I’m sorry,” said Warburton, “but I’m afraid there’ll have to be an autopsy. Of course there’s no question of death from unnatural causes, but when a young person dies suddenly the cause of death must be conclusively established.”

“You’re saying she’s dead.”

“I’m saying she’s dead. I’m very, very sorry. It could have been a heart attack,” said Warburton, persistently talking in order to underline the truth which I was still trying to reject, “but it might have been a cerebral hemorrhage. Did she complain of a headache?”

I stared at him.

Warburton started talking again, but this time I could not hear everything he said. His voice seemed close to me at one moment, far away the next. “Possibly born with a weakness in one of the blood vessels of the brain … could have happened at any time … or perhaps a blood clot … sometimes when a young woman is pregnant … very tragic … so much admired … deepest sympathy … My dear Godwin, I think you’d better tell me where you keep your brandy.”

The next thing I knew I was drinking brandy in my study while Warburton telephoned for an ambulance. When he rejoined me I said, “I don’t understand. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s as if my script’s been torn up, it’s as if someone’s rung down the curtain in the wrong place and now I’ve got no lines, no part, nothing, I don’t know what to do next, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Warburton waited a moment. Then he said, “Shall I telephone your father and ask him to come over? I think he’d understand what you’re going through.”

“Good God, no!” I said, shocked at last out of my wretched loss of nerve. I pulled myself together. “But I’ll talk to Robert. He’ll know what to do. I’ll telephone him straightaway.”

Warburton began to speak but checked himself. I looked at him coldly. “You needn’t worry,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten he’s an invalid. I’m not going to behave like my father, throwing a hysterical fit and mixing up past and present.” I was going to say more but those last five words paralyzed me; I was too frightened to go on. I ran to the telephone but found I did not know what to do with it. I said, “This is September, 1921. Robert’s in a wheelchair. My mother’s been dead for two months. I’m twenty-nine years old. My grandmother’s been dead since 1910, eleven years she’s been dead, and this is now 1921.”

“I’ll talk to your brother,” said Warburton. “Come and sit down again while I make the call.”

He poured me some more brandy. I drank it. And gradually I began to be calmer.

VI

“I must establish straightaway,” I said to Robert and Ginevra, “that I’m now on an even keel following my initial shock. No more dementia; we’ve had quite enough demented behavior in this family, thank you very much, so if you think I’m going to go to pieces like Papa, you’d better bloody well think again. Sorry, Ginevra, please excuse my language, I’m afraid I’m still a trifle upset.”

“That’s all right, darling,” said Ginevra.

“Of course it’s tempting to go to pieces because that would prove how much I loved Blanche, and I did love her, no doubt about that, although it wasn’t a grand passion because I don’t believe in grand passions, they’re much too dangerous, think of Grandmama and Bryn-Davies—chaos, anarchy, madness and death. Awful. Stick to the script is the answer and don’t deviate from it. Hold fast, stand firm and soldier on, as John Buchan might have said, although actually I don’t think he ever did.”

“Yes, darling,” said Ginevra.

“Have a sedative, John,” said Robert, “and go to bed.”

“No, I’m going to sit by Blanche and grieve for her.”

“They’ve taken her away to the mortuary, John, you know they have. You saw the body being taken out.”

“Steady, Robert,” said Warburton.

“I know I saw it,” I said, “but I forgot for a moment, that’s all, it was just a little slip of the memory, there’s no need to treat me as if I’m a bloody lunatic. Sorry, Ginevra, please do excuse my language, I’m not quite myself yet.”

“It doesn’t matter, darling,” said Ginevra.

I suddenly realized she was humoring me. “I’m not mad!” I shouted. “I’m not! I absolutely refuse to be mad! I draw the line!”

“It’s all right,” said Warburton, gripping me. “Don’t panic; it’s the shock, it’s normal, you don’t have to worry about madness. Now, if you can sit down and take off your jacket … Ginevra, can you roll up his sleeve?”

“My poor grandmother,” I said, “it was retribution. But then the wheel turned a full circle and Papa and Mama knew retribution themselves. The wheel … Robert, you used to talk about that wheel—”

“All right, Godwin—just clench your fist and count to five.”

“And to think it was
she
who thought of the tide tables—he did it but she thought of it—oh, the horror, I can’t bear it, can’t face it, blot it out, blot it out, blot it out—”

The needle found the vein. I started counting in Welsh and within seconds was fathoms deep in oblivion.

VII

I woke at six. Evidently Warburton had reduced the dose he had given to my father—or perhaps because I was younger and stronger the drug had had less effect—for I had no inclination to sleep till noon. I felt dull-witted but not ill. I did have one moment of bewilderment when I found myself lying semidressed beneath a blanket on the drawing-room sofa, but my brain was functioning normally again, and although I shied away from the memory that Blanche was dead, I could recall the fact without confusion. My main preoccupation was with Robert and Ginevra. I was just shuddering at the memory of the scene I had created in their presence when I was mercifully diverted by the sight of a note propped on the nearby table.

Darling,
I read,
ring me as soon as you wake up and I’ll come over to hold the fort. I’ve spoken to Nanny and she’ll tell the children. All the servants know. Gavin will be returning to see you at nine. Much love,
GINEVRA.

My mind fastened on the word “children.” I knew I had to tell them myself. That was the right thing to do. A glimmer of a new script presented itself. I had to be the perfect widower, and the first act consisted of surviving the funeral with decency and good taste. I had no idea what the second act would be about, but I could think of after-the-funeral later. Meanwhile I had to look after my children and behave properly.

Leaving the wings I began to move to the center of my new stage.

VIII

“Mama’s gone to heaven?” repeated Marian dazed and burst into tears.

“When will she be back?” said Harry mystified. I saw that this second death in the family, coming so soon after his grandmother’s, had made him feel death was a subject he wanted to understand.

“She’s dead, you stupid baby, she’s dead!” wept Marian before I could choose the right words for him. “And dead people never come back, never!”

“Shhh … Marian …” As I held her tightly, I saw Harry’s dark eyes fill with tears.

“But that’s not fair,” he said.

There was no answer to that. Leaning forward, one arm still around Marian, I drew him to me as he started to cry.

IX

“My wife’s aunt will of course be coming down for the funeral, Nanny, but she’s suggested that you take the children now to her house in London for a few days.” Ginevra had offered to have the children to stay, but Robin was always aggressive towards anyone who tried to share his nursery, and I thought Harry and Marian would be better off under Aunt Charlotte’s roof.

“Oh, that would suit very well, sir—much better for the poor little lambs to be far away from here while the funeral’s going on. … Oh sir, I can hardly believe it … such a
lady
she was, always so thoughtful to others, always so sympathetic and understanding …”

But I could not stop to think about Blanche. There was no time. My new script called for an audience with the vicar, and soon I was hurrying into Penhale on cue.

X

“I want the shortest possible service,” I said to Anstey, who was a Swansea man about five years my senior. He did not have Gavin Warburton’s County connections but my father, always conscious of his own lack of education, liked him the better for not having attended a public school. Anstey preached a brisk twenty-minute sermon, kept his services free of Romish tendencies and could be relied upon to discuss the weather intelligently. In my opinion no parish could ask more of its parson than that.

“But you’ll have music, of course,” he said to me. “Everyone will remember your wife’s gift for music—although she was always so modest and unassuming—really, she was such an exceptional person, wasn’t she, so sensitive to the welfare of others, such a very Christian lady—”

“But she’s dead,” I said, “and funerals are for the living to endure. I want no music, no hymns, nothing. This is to be a short plain private English funeral, and I’ll have no Welsh circuses here.”

XI

My butler was making an emotional speech telling me that all my servants offered their deepest sympathy.

“… the best lady we ever worked for … always so ready to help … nothing was ever too much trouble or beneath her notice …”

I thanked all the servants for their sympathy and loyal support. Then I retired to my study to draft the notices for the newspapers.

XII

My father wrote me a note.

My dear John, I’m so very sorry. How seldom one meets someone who is beautiful and good
and nice.
It makes the tragedy worse. Tragedies hurt. I don’t like to think of you in pain. Please come and stay for a while at Oxmoon. I want so much to help. Always your loving and devoted father,
R. G.

I tore up the note. I burned the shredded paper. And I scattered the ashes from the nearest window.

Then, because I had a break between scenes, I started to think. That was a mistake because my thoughts were not in accordance with my script. I was aware that a portrait was inexorably emerging of someone I did not recognize, someone who listened to people’s problems, someone who was deeply involved in caring for others, someone to whom people talked and who talked to them in return. My fragile exquisite wife whom I had preserved so conscientiously beneath the glass case of my love now seemed to be disintegrating in my memory while into her place moved a stranger I had never cared to know.

The world was grinding out of focus but I ground it back. I told myself I would think of all that, whatever “all that” was, after the funeral. Then I drove to Little Oxmoon to embark on the next scene in my script.

XIII

“Ginette and I feel we must talk to you,” said Robert at Little Oxmoon on the night before the funeral.

I had gone there to dine with Aunt Charlotte, who had arrived that afternoon. Since I had temporarily dismissed all my servants from the Manor by giving them a week’s holiday with pay, this meant—to my relief—that I was unable to invite Aunt Charlotte to stay, but although I had expected her to go to the Metropole Hotel in Swansea, Ginevra had compassionately offered her hospitality instead.