The Wheel of Fortune (74 page)

Thanking her with equal civility, I allowed myself to be led across the hall. Mrs. Straker was immaculate in dove-gray, not a hair out of place on her sleek head. Her black eyes were inscrutable.

We entered the drawing room. The door closed. We stripped off our masks.

“I understand my father’s not well.”

“Well, that’s just it, dear, I’m afraid he’s not well enough to see anyone at present.”

“He’ll see me. Go upstairs, please, and tell him I’m here.”

“As a matter of fact, dear, he’s not upstairs—I’ve coaxed him out into the garden to see if any of the strawberries are ripe yet. They won’t be, but at least he’ll have a breath of fresh air. He’s been shut up in his room talking of you-know-who until I’m ready to scream. … By the way, you look a little peaky yourself, dear, you really do—would you like a whisky?”

“No, an explanation. When you say ‘you-know-who’—”

“That mother of his, dear, and her ruddy lover. Why those two couldn’t have managed their affair better I can’t think. Pure selfishness, if you ask me. In fact she must have been a very stupid woman, letting her lover get out of hand like that—and why kill the poor old homo husband? Most homos are ever so sweet when you get to know them, and he probably only drank because she treated him like dirt. Still, never mind me, I’m prejudiced—I’ve never had any patience with women who do everything wrong from start to finish. Now, what are we going to do about you? Frankly I think if you see him you’ll make him worse.”

“Nevertheless—”

“You
have
put the cat among the pigeons, haven’t you, dear! Not that I blame you. That girl’s got something all right—I admire your taste, and I wouldn’t say no to hers either! I’m sure you make very tuneful music together, and I hear there’s ever such a lovely baby!”

“Mrs. Straker—”

“All right, I suppose it’s no use hoping you’ll take yourself off, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Christ, there he is! Now, what’s he doing by the summerhouse? He’s supposed to be in the kitchen garden. Well, dear, do we toss for it? Who goes to the rescue, you or me?”

I made no reply but opened the door and stepped out onto the terrace. “Has Dr. Warburton been consulted?” I demanded over my shoulder.

“Don’t be daft. Bobby’s tough as old boots when it comes to keeping doctors at arm’s length—he’s too afraid of being carted off to the loony bin.”

I closed the door in her face, crossed the terrace and ran down the steps to the lawn. My father, dressed casually in gray flannels and a tweed jacket, was standing motionless in front of the summerhouse with his back to me. I went on walking. Eventually Glendower saw me and gave a bark to warn my father of my approach, but my father, apparently absorbed in some private meditation, took no notice. Sweat prickled on my back. I was seized by the nightmarish fear that when I saw his face I would find it changed beyond recognition, and in an automatic attempt to steady my nerves, I called a greeting and broke into a run to cover the last yards which separated us.

My father glanced idly over his shoulder. To my profound relief he appeared to be normal.

“Hullo, John,” he said. “I was just thinking that the summerhouse should be repainted. Looks a bit shabby.”

He held out his hand. Controlling my rapid breathing I took the hand and shook it. We smiled at each other, and that was the moment when I realized his behavior was abnormal. He ought to have been distressed and angry. His casual affability indicated a mind that had deliberately disconnected itself from pain.

The sweat began to trickle down my spine. “How are you, Papa?”

“Wonderfully well,” said my father. “I admit Robert did upset me yesterday, but I’ve quite recovered from that now.”

“I’m sorry Robert upset you. It was I, in fact, who asked him to call.”

“Robert’s very cruel sometimes,” said my rather. “Like Margaret. They mean well—when they interfere, they call it ‘sorting things out’ and ‘setting things straight’—but they don’t understand how muddled life is, how confusing.”

“I’m sure Robert didn’t mean to be cruel, Papa. He just wanted to explain—”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t believe a word he said; I knew it wasn’t true. You wouldn’t do what he said you were going to do. You’re a good decent boy. You’d draw the line.”

“Ah. I can see he gave you a wrong impression.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead and shoved back my hair in a quick movement of my hand. “Why don’t we go and sit in the summerhouse? I’d like to talk to you and explain everything.”

“Oh no,” said my father, “not the summerhouse. Quite definitely not the summerhouse. They meet in the back room.”

“Met. They’re dead.”

“Yes, I know. But everything’s come a full circle and now it’s all happening again.”

“No, Papa, the past never happens twice. People play their cards differently, don’t you remember?”

My father turned away and began to wander towards the bench by the tennis court. “My mother and Owain Bryn-Davies,” he said, “used to meet in the back room of the summerhouse but that was a long time ago, and now we keep the tennis net there during the winter.”

“That’s right.”

“Thomas will put up the tennis net,” said my father, “when he comes home from school in July. Thomas plays tennis with the Bryn-Davies boys.” He paused to survey the tennis lawn before adding carefully: “The Bryn-Davies boys are called Owen and Peter. Owen is spelled the English way, which I think is a pity, but their mother’s English so what can you expect? Their father is Alun, who was at Harrow with Robert, and Alun’s father is my friend Owain the Younger, and
his
father was my mother’s lover who drowned on the Shipway at the Worm’s Head. A little accident with the tide tables. Have you ever taken Harry and Marian out to the Worm for a picnic, John? It’s such a beautiful spot. Blanche would enjoy it too.”

We seated ourselves on the bench, and my father, crossing one leg over the other, whistled for Glendower.

“Papa,” I said, “Blanche is dead. I’m married to Constance now, but it was all the most appalling mistake, and I’ve decided—”

“Did I say Blanche? Stupid of me! Old age. Awful. I’m sixty-two—no, wait a minute—am I? Yes. It’s 1924, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I’ve been married to Constance for five months. However I now realize—”

“Wonderful wedding that was, had the time of my life. Wonderful champagne too—Veuve Clicquot, wasn’t it? I’m always very partial to Veuve Clicquot.”

“Papa, I’m in love with this Welsh girl Bronwen Morgan, and I intend to marry her once I have my divorce from Constance. There’s no question of living in sin indefinitely. Bronwen’s an honest respectable woman, and I intend that she should remain so.”

“Honest respectable women don’t have bastards.” He stood up again and moved restlessly back towards the summerhouse. “My mother had two miscarriages when she was living with Bryn-Davies,” he said. “It was disgusting. She was quite without shame. I was humiliated. She broke all the rules—and terrible things happen,” said my father, tears suddenly streaming down his face, “as I well know, to people who fail to stick to the rules.”

Far away Mrs. Straker had emerged from the house and was descending the steps of the terrace. The sight of her seemed to come as a relief to my father. He tried to wipe his eyes on the cuff of his jacket. “Ah, here’s Milly—expect she wants to know if you’re dining tonight. Wonderful woman, Milly, quite remarkable, don’t know what I’d do without her. She wants to marry me, of course, but I won’t because it’s not the done thing for a man in my position to marry someone like that. Got to stick to the rules, you see—and then nothing very terrible can happen.”

But it had happened. He saw my expression, knew I was thinking of my mother replaced by a whore and shouted, “You’ve no right to judge me!”

“And you’ve no right to judge
me
!” I shouted back before I could stop myself.

“I’ll have to ask your mother to talk to you,” said my father to me in despair. “Margaret will have to deal with it.” He turned his back on me only to be confronted by the figure of Mrs. Straker, representing an intolerable present. He turned towards the summerhouse only to be confronted once more by the intolerable past. He rubbed his eyes and looked dazed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Not well.”

Pity mingled with my guilt and drove me to make a final effort to communicate with him.

“Papa, you’re under strain and I think you should see Warburton. There are modern drugs—”

“No!” said my father fiercely. “I’m not seeing a doctor!”

“But you’ve just admitted you’re unwell!”

“Old age. Not so young as I used to be.”

“But—”

“
Nobody’s going to shut me up anywhere!
”

“That’s all right, Bobby,” said Mrs. Straker, covering the last few yards of lawn with the speed of lightning. “That’s all right my pet. Nobody gets shut up just because they get a bit upset now and then. The idea of it! If that were true we’d all be locked up, wouldn’t we, John?”

Ignoring her I took my father’s hands in mine. “Papa, I give you my word that I’ll never let anyone take you to the Home of the Assumption—or indeed, to any other institution of that kind.”

His eyes filled with tears once more. He whispered, “You’re such a good kind boy, John—and that’s why I can’t bear to see you destroying yourself like this.”

“Oh, come off it, Bobby!” said Mrs. Straker at once. “This one’s not going to destroy himself in a hurry—just look at him! Smart as paint, smooth as glass and clever as the Indian rope trick! You mark my words, a man like that could keep a bloody harem in a church if he put his mind to it! Now, don’t you worry, my poppet. You run along and look at those strawberry beds, just as you said you would, and John and I’ll work out how he can live happily ever after at the Manor. He’s not stupid and he’s not interested in destroying himself and I’m sure we’ll have everything settled in no time at all. Oh, and watch that dog in the kitchen garden. I hear he’s a terror for digging holes in all the wrong places.”

This demonstration of crude street-corner sanity was evidently just what my father needed. He wiped away his tears, kissed her briefly and trailed away across the lawn with Glendower at his heels. I watched him for some time but even before I had nerved myself to face Mrs. Straker, I knew she was poised to move in for the kill.

“Well, Mr. John!” she said with heavy irony. “Don’t you think you should come down off your high horse before you fall flat on your face? Let’s go and sit in that bloody love nest of a summerhouse for a moment. I think it’s time you and I had a cozy little chat together.”

XIII

Robert had implied that we might one day have to go to war with Mrs. Straker about her position at Oxmoon, but neither he nor I had anticipated that she might now seek to go to war with us. Horrified by my father’s condition, I was no match for her at that moment. I could only follow her into the summerhouse, and when she sat down on one of the wicker chairs I saw no alternative but to sit down opposite her.

She had crossed her legs primly as if she were drinking tea in her native London suburb, and when she began to speak this illusion of respectability only made her words the more bizarre.

“I was thinking of having a word with you, Mr. Casanova,” she said, “even before this trouble blew up over your gorgeous redhead. I’d decided it was time you and your brother Robert realized how bloody indispensable I am here nowadays. You’re hoping, aren’t you, that this little trouble of your father’s will give you the excuse to step in and get rid of me. Well, think again, my friend! Just you think again! You can’t afford to wipe me off the slate, and if you can somehow manage to keep that handsome mouth of yours shut for a moment, I’ll tell you the way things really are at Oxmoon.

“That’s better. I can see I’ve got your full attention. I knew you weren’t stupid. Now just you listen to me.

“There are two sides to my job here, and I do each of them damn well. Let’s take the formal side first. I run that house like God runs heaven—perfectly. And unlike God I don’t have a lot of angels to help me, and from a domestic point of view Oxmoon’s a long way from heaven. It’s old-fashioned, inconvenient and hell to keep organized. How your mother stood it I don’t know, but of course she had a full prewar indoor staff of ten, whereas I now count myself lucky if I can get five servants living in and a couple of dailies from the village—your father won’t pay for anything more. Never mind, I manage. I rule with a rod of iron and stand no nonsense, and fortunately the unemployment situation helps—people want to hang on to their jobs so they’ll stand for a lot, and my God, I make them stand for it. Yes, I hold this place together all right. But remove me and it would fall apart at the seams.

“All right, so that’s one potent argument in favor of keeping me: I do the formal side of my job damn well. But it’s on the informal side that I’m bloody well indispensable. You might replace me as a housekeeper—if you were lucky—but you’d never find anyone willing to replace me for long in your father’s bed. Nor are you going to find anyone who can control him in the way I can. You think my control over him’s a bad thing, don’t you? Well, this is the moment when you change your mind, my friend, because neither you nor your brothers have any idea what would go on at Oxmoon if I packed my bags and walked out. Shall I continue? Or shall I give you a moment to digest that? You look as if you could do with a cigarette. That’s right, take out your case. I’ll have one too—here, give me the matches and I’ll do the lighting. That’s right. Ah … that’s better, isn’t it? Nothing like a good puff to steady the nerves, and my God, your nerves are going to need steadying when you hear what I’m going to say next.”

She leaned forward in her chair. Her sharp pointed face was close to me, and I could see the mole on her chin and the powder in the pores of her sallow skin and the hard lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.

“Your father,” she said, “isn’t the man he used to be. The present deterioration set in after Robin died, but if you ask me he’s never been right since his wife’s death, and now it’s got to the stage where it doesn’t take much to upset him and trigger him off. The only reason why this incident is different from other more recent ones is that this time he has a genuine excuse for being upset. However let’s leave Mrs. Morgan for the moment—we’ll get to her later.