The Wheel of Fortune (83 page)

In an effort to divert myself from the knowledge that I was trapped in a way of life which was failing to satisfy me, I embarked on a restless search for occupations that would fill my hours of spare time. I arranged for electricity to be installed in the house. Then I studied the subject of electricity so that I would know what to do if the power failed. I read more voraciously than ever. But despite these diversions the time that meant most to me was the time I spent with Robert. I had always called on him every day but now I found myself staying longer because he alone could assuage the loneliness which for Bronwen’s sake I struggled to keep concealed.

“I despise myself for caring what people think of me,” I said when I told him I had become a pariah again, “but what I care about is not so much being cut off from the company of my own sort but being cut off from any hope of leading a more interesting life in my working hours.”

“I’ll have a word with Alun,” said Robert. Alun Bryn-Davies had been a contemporary of his at Harrow. “He’s on the board of Suez Petro-Chemicals as well as the Madog Collieries. Maybe he can help.”

So I lunched with Bryn-Davies at the new Claremont Hotel, and after I had made sure the luncheon was a success, he asked me to play golf with him. Following the game we adjourned to the bar and this time no one cut me; in fact when Bryn-Davies bought me a drink the members realized it was still possible to treat me as normal, and later, when I was offered a directorship of Aswan Products, which was a subsidiary of Suez Petro-Chemicals, they even accepted that I was employable. Yet the directorship was modest, demanding my presence only on one afternoon a week at the company’s headquarters in Swansea, and I still found myself wrestling too often with boredom and frustration.

“How naive I was,” I said to Robert one day as I spooned up his food for him, “to imagine that Bronwen could solve all my problems. I’m beginning to realize my major problem is that I’ve never found my true
métier
.”

“Your
métier
,” said Robert, “is organization and making executive decisions. It probably doesn’t matter much what business you wind up in so long as it’s large and challenging.”

In acknowledgment of the shrewdness of this observation I said depressed, “Well, you always said I was unsuited to a rural backwater, and how right you were.”

“You’re certainly unsuited for confinement in a rural backwater but that’s not necessarily the same thing as saying you’re unsuited to country life. Ideally, I suspect, you should be able to fuse your country background with your talent for executive management—maybe your true
métier
is indeed to be a farm manager, but on a large twentieth-century scale.”

“You mean I should have about ten small estates and roam around supervising them all?”

“Ten small estates,” said Robert, “or one big one.”

We fell silent as the image of Oxmoon slipped between us. Food dribbled from his mouth but I quickly mopped it up with a napkin. When I had finished he said, “Can’t you combine managing Penhale Manor with a more active management of your farms in Herefordshire?”

“Not without leaving Bronwen on her own frequently, and as things stand at present that’s quite impossible.” I tried to change the subject. “But don’t let’s talk of the present,” I said. “Let’s go back into the past.” For we spent much time now talking of the times that were gone, not the near past of the war but the extreme past, the golden past, the fairy-tale past of Edwardian Oxmoon. We talked of the dances in the ballroom and the tennis parties on the lawn and the expeditions to the Downs and the sea and the village shop in Penhale, and although in the past the ten years’ difference in our ages had separated us, we now found that time had encircled us so that his experiences could fuse with mine.

“ ‘In my beginning is my end,’ ” said Robert.

“Who said that?”

“It was the motto of Mary Queen of Scots. My motto would be to reverse those words and say, ‘In my end is my beginning.’ I feel so strongly that when there’s no more future the present fades away and only the past is real.”

We were silent, both thinking of Oxmoon again, and suddenly I knew that he was as aware as I was of that terrible ambiguity in my mind. I turned to him; I turned not merely to my brother but to my guide, my mentor and above all else my friend; I turned to him and I opened my mouth and I tried to say “Help me,” but the words refused to be spoken. My ambiguity was so terrible to me that I feared I might never overcome it once I had formally acknowledged it in speech.

So I said nothing. But he knew. He could no longer reach out to take my hand in his, but I felt his mind flowing powerfully into mine.

After a moment he said, “In the beginning—my beginning—there was Oxmoon and it was a magic house. I tried to tell Kester that the other day. ‘You’re going to get this magic house,’ I said, ‘and you’ve got to put the magic back into it.’ All my life I’ve wanted to do that, John, and now I never shall, but I can live with that knowledge—die with that knowledge—if I believe Kester will do it instead of me.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t believe in a life after death,” said Robert. “I don’t believe human beings are capable of resurrection. But if Kester puts the magic back into my magic house then Oxmoon will
rise again
on the Wheel of Fortune, and
that
will be my resurrection; it’ll be my redemption too because Kester will be so grateful to me for securing his inheritance for him and all my past neglect of him will be wiped out—and that means everything to me now, John, everything, I’m no longer extorting Oxmoon from Papa in revenge for the past, I’m extorting it to pass Kester the future which has been denied me and to give meaning to my death.”

Robert was normally neither an emotional nor an imaginative man. Nor was he in the habit of baring his soul. Suddenly I realized that in an effort to demolish my ambiguity he had thrust the whole weight of his trust upon me, and I was dumb; I could only grope for his crippled hands to show that I wanted what he wanted, and for a moment his vision of Oxmoon united us, an Oxmoon radiant and restored, triumphing over the ravages of time.

“Well, so much for that,” said Robert briskly with an alteration of mood so abrupt that I jumped. “Man cannot live on romantic sentimentality alone—thank God—and now that I’ve had my wallow I think I’d better get down to business. My dear John how strong are you feeling? The truth is I’m in the devil of a mess and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to rescue me.”

IV

When I had recovered my equilibrium I said in great alarm, “What in God’s name are you talking about? What kind of a mess?”

“A legal mess, naturally. Lawyers are notorious for making a cock-up of their legal affairs.”

“But what on earth have you done?”

“It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what I’ve failed to do.” Robert paused. Speech was no longer easy for him and the impairment, which gave his words a distorted staccato ring, was becoming more pronounced. I found myself leaning forward in my chair to make sure I heard him properly. “John, when Papa gave me Martinscombe back in 1919 there was no deed of gift. There were two reasons. First, it seemed unnecessary, since although I knew I was ill I had every intention of outliving Papa and inheriting Martinscombe along with the rest of Oxmoon when he died. And second, Papa was in a peculiar tax position at the time and needed Martinscombe for a year or two to set himself straight. So our arrangement was informal—always a fatal mistake.”

“Fatal. But didn’t you try to put matters right later?”

“Yes, but can’t you imagine what happened? He couldn’t face the increasingly obvious fact that I was going to die before he was, and he started talking about how he’d have to discuss the situation with Margaret. Having a pardonable horror of seeing him demented I then shied off. Time drifted by. However, goaded on quite rightly by Ginette, I nerved myself last month to dictate a letter to him on the subject. Back came a polite reply to the effect that he preferred to keep the estate together and that as Kester was the heir anyway, why not leave matters as they were. But you see the problem, don’t you?”

“All too clearly. When you die Ginevra and Kester will have no legal right to remain here, and Papa may well be more unreliable than ever.”

“Exactly. I detect the hand of Straker in this polite but profoundly unsatisfactory letter from Papa. She may not want the bungalow for her old age, but I can quite see her fancying the idea of letting it and pocketing the income.”

“So can I. Very well, what’s to be done?”

“Land Registration’s been in force since the Act of ’25. I want Martinscombe registered in my name, and I’ll give you a power of attorney so that you can deal with the Land Registry on my behalf. Ginette’s power of attorney is no use here; the Land Registry might look too closely at the matter if they knew they were dealing with a woman.”

“Well, I’ll certainly do all I can to help you, Robert, but how can you register something that’s not legally yours?”

“That’s the difficulty,” said Robert, and beyond his speech impairment I heard the echo of a lawyer who was gliding with consummate skill around some very awkward facts. “We have two choices here. Either we involve Papa or we don’t. If we involve him he’d have to sign a letter of authorization—at the very least; the Land Registry might well insist on seeing a formal deed of gift. However as Papa won’t discuss the estate with you and has proved himself highly evasive with me, this doesn’t seem to be a feasible course of action.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“We take matters into our own hands.”

“I’m not sure I’m too keen on this, Robert.”

“My dear John, to quote one of Mama’s most notorious phrases, it’s the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do. How else can I protect my wife and son from a predator like Straker?”

“All right, go on.”

“I think I can see a solution based on the fact that Papa and I have the same name. We’ll approach the Land Registry and ask for Martinscombe Farm to be registered in the name of Robert Charles Godwin. That’ll include the bungalow, which is still legally on the Martinscombe lands.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ll engage a London firm of solicitors whom I’ve never used before and ask them to attend to the formalities of the registration—the documents, fees and so on. Then when the Registry issues a certificate I can lodge it with my normal solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn. Once that’s done I ostensibly have a title which I can devise by will, and if I behave as if I’m the legal owner of Martinscombe by remaking my will to include it, no one in London will question the ownership when I die. My new will will be granted probate, the title will be reregistered and there’s no reason why either Papa or Fairfax’s firm in Swansea should ever find out about it—unless Papa goes completely insane, Straker tries to evict Ginette and the deed has to surface to prove Kester’s title. And all that may never happen. This is purely a defensive measure, not an act of aggrandizement.”

“If Papa does go completely insane, surely Ginevra would have a legal remedy?”

“His sanity would still be a debatable issue. No, I’m taking no chances—if there’s even the faintest possibility that Ginette might lose her case in court, I don’t want her involved with the law at all.”

“Fair enough, but I still don’t see how you’re going to get around this without involving Papa. Surely the Land Registry will want proof of title?”

“That’s not a problem. I’ll simply ask Fairfax, who as the Oxmoon solicitor has the Oxmoon deeds in his safekeeping, to lend me the Martinscombe abstract of title—or whatever documents the Land Registry needs. I’ll say there’s a point I want to establish in relation to my son’s inheritance, and Fairfax isn’t going to refuse me. In fact I may even improve on that story in order to keep the deeds in my possession. I’m sure that’s well within my capabilities.”

I ignored this chilling reference to the potential acrobatics of a legally trained mind. “And meanwhile,” I said, working the scheme out, “the abstract of title will say the farm belongs to Robert Charles Godwin—”

“—and the Land Registry will innocently assume that’s me and not Papa. Don’t worry, John, this is nothing serious. It’s just a little muddle over a name.”

In such a manner might my mother have suggested my father’s fatal juggling with the tide tables.

“My dear Robert, you appall me.”

“I appall myself. But you answer me this: what the devil else can I do?”

I had no idea. I was silent, trying to consider the morality of the situation clearly. At last I said, “In my opinion it’s unarguable that you have a moral right to that property—Papa intended in 1919 that it should be yours.”

“Exactly. To square your conscience you can think of this as legalizing Papa’s wishes.”

“And since the estate will go to Kester anyway,” I pursued, plowing doggedly on, “it doesn’t matter whether he inherits Martinscombe from you soon or from Papa later. No one’s being defrauded.”

Robert hesitated. I looked at him sharply, but decided he was having trouble with his speech. His facial muscles were paralyzed so there was no expression for me to read. In the end he just said, “People will get what they deserve. Justice will be done.”

“ ‘
Fiat justitia!
’ ” I quoted, smiling at him, but he was too exhausted to reply. Ringing the bell for Bennett I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll arrange everything” and heard him whisper back, “You’re the best brother a man ever had.”

I only hoped I could live up to his opinion of me. I had no doubt that I was doing the right thing by helping Robert protect Ginevra and Kester, but once I started manipulating the legal ownership of property I felt I was on dangerous ground indeed.

V

“That stupid sissyish baby Kester said such a silly thing to me today,” said Harry, wandering up as I tinkered with the engine of my motor to distract myself from my worries. “He says he’s going to inherit Oxmoon! Imagine!” And he laughed with scorn and took a large bite out of the apple in his hand.