The Wheel of Fortune (59 page)

Dinner had now finished; Aunt Charlotte had retired, pleading exhaustion, and as soon as the drawing-room door had closed Robert was launching himself into the attack.

“We want to talk to you about your decision to spend a week entirely alone without servants after the funeral tomorrow.”

“Darling,” said Ginevra, taking the lead in a rush, “you
can’t
be all alone in that house for a week! I know it’s madly romantic to want to entomb yourself with your memories, and of course I’m simply passionate about romance, but—”

“Who’s going to iron your shirts and wash your underwear?” said Robert with his usual brutal common sense. “Who’s going to provide heated water for your shave?”

Ignoring him I said simply to Ginevra, “I know it must seem odd but I’ve got to be there.”

“But darling, why?”

I thought carefully. It was hard to know how to express my complex emotional instincts in words, but at last I said, “I have to arrange my memories.” I thought how much better I had felt after I had sorted out my muddled feelings towards my mother. “I have to arrange my memories into the right order before I can draw a line below the past and make plans for the future,” I said. “And to do that I have to be alone in the house where Blanche lived.”

They were silent but it was not a comfortable silence. I felt I could guess what they were thinking.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not about to go mad. I’ve rejected the grand folly of an elaborate funeral followed by a smart luncheon party. I’m quite in touch with reality, I assure you.”

“I can think of nothing less in touch with reality,” said Robert, “than shutting yourself up for a week in a manor house with no servants.”

“Well, if I don’t like it,” I said, “I can always leave. What are you two getting so flustered about?”

They looked at me. They looked at each other. But they both decided there was nothing more they could say.

XIV

The air reeked of flowers, and all the flowers seemed to be white in remembrance of her French name. The servants’ children had even offered wild white daisies from the hedgerows in little bunches tied with white ribbon. The September morning was warm but overcast; the sky seemed to reflect a burning white light which accentuated the aching glare of the white flowers. I had ordered a wreath of white roses and had instructed that the card should read:
In loving and devoted memory, John, Marian and Harry.
Later I planned to return to the churchyard, just as I had after my mother died, and put that card in my breast pocket. I was very mindful of how that small gesture had meant so much to me.

I had asked for the funeral to be private so the mourners in the church were restricted to the family, but outside all the village had gathered. Ginevra cried at the graveside. I knew she was prone to tears at emotional moments but nevertheless I was touched. I thought how kind she had been to me during the past few days, and I even wondered if I had judged her too harshly in the past. I resolved to be less censorious in future.

My father was there. He had tried to speak to me before the service but I had cut him dead. Edmund had been shocked. I thought, Silly old Edmund, and I started missing Lion again.

At last the service ended. I shook hands with Anstey and thanked him for conducting the service. I thanked Robert and Ginevra for being so kind. I thanked Aunt Charlotte for what I described as her understanding and patience in a time of great trial. Vaguely appalled by my diplomatic glibness, I excused myself from Blanche’s Herefordshire cousins and promised to visit them later when I had recovered from what I described as “this sad and difficult occasion.” I cut my father again, nodded to Edmund, said, “Thank you for coming, Thomas—that was good of you” and headed for the lych-gate. The silent crowds parted before me. My car was waiting. I drove off and two minutes later was halting the car outside the door of my home.

Now, finally, I could be alone to grieve. Taking a deep breath I expelled it with the most profound relief and then ran willingly, without a second’s hesitation, into the nightmare that lay waiting for me beyond.

XV

The grandfather clock in the hall was striking noon. All through that day I remember the clocks chiming the passing hours and reminding me that time was moving on for those who were left alive. Only the dead were beyond time, and Blanche was most certainly dead—“gone to heaven,” as I had told the children when I repeated the phrase that Blanche herself had used to break the news of my mother’s death. I shuddered. “Heaven” in that context conjured up an image of a celestial concert hall, complete with harps and massed choirs, and since I had no ear for music I found this vision more hellish than heavenly.

Occupied with these comfortingly vacuous thoughts I drifted into the dining room, mixed myself a whisky-and-soda and sat down at the table to reflect further on life after death and other fables. Time filtered idly but not unpleasantly by until I found myself meditating on the meaning of life which I knew was a desperate subject for a man who had insufficient courage to believe in either atheism or God. I decided I had to pull myself together. Mixing myself a second whisky-and-soda, I set aside all metaphysical speculation and said aloud, “Now I shall grieve.” I waited. Nothing happened, but that, as I realized, was because I was in the wrong room. I went into the drawing room and opened the lid of the piano so that I could more easily picture Blanche playing her music. Still nothing happened, but that, as I told myself, was because I needed time to unwind after the ordeal of the funeral.

The clock on the chimneypiece struck one, the fine French china clock that Blanche’s ancestor had smuggled out of Paris during the French Revolution. I had always thought this episode in the clock’s history was most improbable, but I had to concede that improbable things did happen. It was improbable that Blanche should have died yet she was undeniably dead and here was I, undeniably alone as I waited to grieve, just as every good widower should, for the wife I had so greatly loved and admired.

I debated whether to have another whisky but decided against it. Instead I began to wander around the house as I waited for the grief to come. I decided my trouble was that I had so many precious memories that I could not immediately decide how they should all be arranged, and suspecting I would think more clearly if I had something to eat, I entered the kitchens just as the clock in the servants’ hall chimed two. Nosing around in the larder, I found a piece of cheese and ate it. “ ‘Appley Dapply, a little brown mouse, goes to the cupboard in somebody’s house’!” Lion had chanted long ago. I could not accurately recall the rest of Beatrix Potter’s rhyme, but I knew that Appley Dapply had been charmed by cheese. However I was less than charmed by the piece I ate, and closing the larder door I began wandering again.

Upstairs in our bedroom the little hand of the clock on the bedside table pointed to three, and when I opened the window I heard the church clock in the village boom the hour. Penhale church was as unusual in its possession of a clock as it was in its possession of a square tower. The previous Lady de Bracy, an Englishwoman who had found Wales distressingly unregulated, had installed the clock to encourage the villagers to lead more ordered lives, but nobody had paid it the slightest attention. Enraged by the continuing unpunctuality, Lady de Bracy had ordered that the chimes be made louder, and from that day onwards the clock of Penhale church had been famous for the manner in which it thundered the hour.

I stood by the window listening to it. I liked the thought of the clocks all chiming away, all doing what they were supposed to do, but that only reminded me that my own behavior was leaving much to be desired, so I embarked on my most serious effort so far to arrange my memories. My first task obviously was to picture Blanche with the maximum of clarity in order to conjure up the appropriate emotions, so turning aside from the window I examined the silver-framed wedding photograph that stood on top of the chest of drawers nearby.

I continued to stare at the handsome young couple in the picture but after a while they began to seem like an illustration from some old-fashioned book of homilies. I could imagine the text: “This is how you should look on your wedding day. This is how you must appear as you prepare to live happily ever after.” Then it occurred to me that the photograph was just a pattern of black-and-white shapes. It had no reality, it was just a prop in my script, and when I looked at Blanche I could not see the Blanche I wanted to remember.

I shoved the frame face down on the chest of drawers and opened the wardrobe so that I could touch her clothes. Here was reality. Now I could visualize her clearly in the clothes she had worn. I saw her smooth, shining hair, so dark that it was almost black, the pale, creamy skin, the slender waist, the delicate breasts, the lovely line of her neck, her—but no, I could not see her face. In my memory, my glance traveled upwards from her neck and found a void beneath the cloud of dark hair.

I was unnerved. I had to see her face. I looked at the wedding photograph again but that was useless; her face was like a death mask. I had to see her being normal, laughing with the children, being the wife I remembered.

The grandfather clock in the hall struck four as I raced downstairs to the drawing room, but in panic I discovered that the photograph albums had vanished from the cupboard below the bookcase. This was bizarre indeed; it was almost as if Blanche had never existed, as if she had been a mere figment of my imagination, yet another prop in my script, but I knew I could not cope with a mad thought like that so I thrust it aside and dashed into the study. There was a photograph of Blanche on my desk, a studio portrait taken after she had recovered from the loss of our first son, who had died within hours of his birth. I stared at the new arrangement of black-and-white shapes. She looked like some actress who had been miscast in Shakespearian tragedy; I saw her as Ophelia, or perhaps as the poor queen in
Richard II,
someone struggling with adversity on a cold bleak stage, someone wearing a mask not of her own making, someone toiling in the wrong part assigned to her by some blockheaded producer who had entirely failed to understand her talents.

Reality began to grind into focus again, and this time I could not grind it back. I told myself I had to find those photograph albums. They were my last chance. Without the photograph albums I would be unable to visualize the Blanche I had loved, and if I could not remember her properly how could I arrange my memories? I started to ransack the house from top to bottom.

I ended up in the nursery just as the cuckoo clock on the wall was hiccuping five. It had occurred to me that Nanny had removed the albums from the drawing room and forgotten to replace them; no doubt the children too had wanted to see the photographs as part of the ritual of grief. I hunted among the toys, but at last ran the albums to earth on the bedside table in Marian’s room. Sinking down on the bed I began to turn the pages.

I looked for a long time and in the end I even took the collection downstairs to the study were I could examine the pictures with the aid of a magnifying glass.

More time elapsed and on the chimneypiece the carriage clock struck six.

I glanced up at those two hands pointing in opposite directions. I was in my study at Penhale Manor, the room the de Bracys had called the library. That, I knew, was true. That was real. But nothing else was. All the albums showed me was my script. In a variety of charming scenes the perfect mother played and laughed with her perfect children; the perfect wife smiled adoringly at her perfect husband. But there was no sign of the other Blanche, the real Blanche who had wept and said we never talked to each other, the Blanche who had been so frightened and alone. I had never known the real Blanche. It had not suited me to know her. I had been too busy acting out my script in which I outshone Robert and secured my parents’ approbation by making the perfect marriage. I had not cared for Blanche. The only person I had cared for had been myself. I had had this wonderful wife, who everyone now told me had been so exceptional, and yet I had never loved her enough to bother to become more than formally acquainted with her. And what was worse, I had made her desperately unhappy.

This was a different situation indeed from my mother’s death. There I had been able to console myself that matters had been put right between us before she died, but Blanche had died when I was estranged from her; she had died alone and unloved.

The truth stood revealed in its full horror. I had been a bad husband. My marriage had been a failure. My life had been false. “I want to arrange my memories,” I had said grandly. What memories? I had no memories of anything except lies, and now, I realized to my horror, I was going to have to live with them. But how did one live with such guilt and such shame? I had no idea. I felt I couldn’t cope, couldn’t manage, couldn’t think how I was going to go on. I had never before experienced such a horrifying consciousness. The pain was excruciating. How did one live with such pain and stay sane?

The Victorian clock in the dining room thudded seven as I uncorked the bottle of champagne. I drank the first glass straight off and poured myself another, but seconds later the glass was empty again. I went on drinking, and gradually as the familiar lassitude stole over me I managed to control my panic. I knew I had been fond of Blanche. That was real, that was true, and I thought that if I could now grieve for her, not as a husband should grieve for his wife but as a man mourning the loss of someone precious, I would find my disastrous failure easier to accept. But my guilt defeated me; although I waited and waited and waited, the grief still refused to come.

I stopped drinking. I knew I should eat to avoid becoming ill but I had drunk too much, and in the kitchens all I could do was vomit into the sink. I returned to the hall, and as I entered the drawing room the silence came to meet me, the silence of those white piano keys, the silence of the white roses, the silence of reproach and estrangement. The room was utterly silent, utterly still, unbearably silent, unbearably still, and suddenly I was overpowered by the silence, choked and racked by it, and I knew I had no choice but to escape.