The Wheel of Fortune (60 page)

I burst into the garden. The evening air was clear but the rose garden was an intolerable blur of white light, and the next moment I had started to run.

I ran to the front of the house, I ran down the drive, I ran past the gates into the lane. I ran towards the village but even before I saw the church I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the card from the wreath. I wanted to see those words
loving and devoted
and tell myself they did bear some relation, no matter how distorted, to reality. I thought that once that card was in my breast pocket next to my heart, I would finally be able to grieve as I had grieved for my mother.

I reached the lych-gate. I passed the porch. I turned the corner of the tower to confront the grave on the far side of the churchyard.

Some yards away in front of an ancient yew tree the white flowers, symbol of death, were heaped on the dark earth. But beyond them was color, a flash of shimmering red, the fire of life coruscating in the pale evening light.

I stopped.

A woman was seated casually on the ground by the grave. She was plucking the short grass nearby and throwing it aside in hypnotic rhythmic movements of her hand. Her brilliant red hair was very long, stretching all the way to her waist, and it waved over her shoulders like burning liquid gliding over molten rocks.

She went on tearing the grass, her head bent in deep, concentrated thought, but at last she became aware that she was being watched and her fingers were still.

She looked up. She saw me. She leaped to her feet. For a long moment we stood there, both of us transfixed with shock, and then above us, far above us in the belfrey, the church clock began to thunder the hour.

5

I

S
HE BEGAN TO WALK TOWARDS ME
. The evening sun, slanting across her face, lit those light eyes to a deep glowing sea-green. With a quick movement of her hand she pushed back her long fiery hair but again it slid forward to frame her face, and as the church tower cast its shadow across her translucent skin I knew, as indeed I had always known at heart, that she was ravishing. The clock, hammering her extraordinary beauty deep into my consciousness, struck again and again and again.

The last stroke died away. It was eight o’clock on the day of my wife’s funeral and I was alone with Bronwen Morgan in the churchyard at Penhale.

“Mr. Godwin,” she said rapidly in her low heavily accented voice, “forgive me for intruding. You want to be alone with your grief and I’ll leave you at once.”

I stopped her by raising my hand. “Why are you here?” I said. My voice was puzzled, confused.

“I couldn’t be in the churchyard this morning with the rest of the village because Dafydd was sick, but I did so want to pay my respects … Mrs. Godwin was such a very lovely lady and so kind to me.”

I had a brief poignant glimpse of Blanche being kind, and in that glimpse I saw both the familiar Blanche and the Blanche I had never known. The horror of my estrangement from my wife overwhelmed me afresh, and I leaned dumbly against the wall of the tower.

“Mr. Godwin, you’re not well. Come and sit down, sir, you really should sit down, indeed you should.”

I was too overcome by misery to protest. “I’ve done a very foolish thing,” I said as we reached the iron bench by the yew tree. “I’ve dismissed my servants because I wanted to be alone to grieve, but solitude’s proved too … difficult, and I don’t know what to do next. I can’t think clearly at all.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

I discounted the cheese and shuddered at the memory of the champagne. “No.”

“Then if you like, sir,” she said, “I’ll make you some tea and a sandwich. You mustn’t have too much but you should have something, and tea’s so clear, so cool, you’ll be able to think more clearly once you’ve had some tea.”

I could at once picture the tea, fragrant and steaming, in one of the white Coalport cups. “That’s very good of you, Mrs. Morgan,” I said. “Thank you.”

Leaving the churchyard, we crossed the green and walked down the lane to the Manor. No one was about. I supposed everyone was either at home or in the pub or at a meeting that was in progress in the church hall. In the lane the hedgerow glowed with wild flowers and the summer air was fragrant. Neither of us spoke. When we reached the house I led the way into the hall.

“I know where the kitchens are, sir,” she said. “You go to the parlor—the room with the piano—and rest. I shan’t be long.”

“I’m afraid the fire in the range is out—”

“Then I’ll light it,” she said tranquilly, and disappeared beyond the green baize door.

Returning to the drawing room, I sat and waited. The room grew darker, and I was just rising to my feet to light a lamp when I heard her footsteps recrossing the hall.

She was carrying a tray. On it stood a teapot with a milk jug and sugar bowl, a plate bearing a cheese sandwich, and an apple. There was only one cup and saucer.

“I hope the bread’s not too stale, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter. Mrs. Morgan, you’ve only brought one cup. Don’t you want any tea?”

“I have a cup waiting in the kitchen.”

“Then please bring it in here. I’ve been alone too much in this room today.”

She retrieved her tea, and when she returned she brought not only more hot water but a second sandwich. The tea tasted exquisite. I ate and drank with single-minded concentration until finally I felt strong enough to look back over my shoulder at the piano, but although the image of Blanche returned to me I was still unable to see her face.

I said suddenly, “I can’t grieve. I want to but I can’t. I’ve set this time aside to grieve but now the grief won’t come and I don’t know how to summon it.”

“There is no timetable for grief,” said Bronwen Morgan. “Grief isn’t a train which you catch at the station. Grief has its own time, and grief’s time is beyond time, and time itself … isn’t very important. It’s the English who think time is a straight line which can be divided up and labeled and parceled out in an orderly fashion, but time isn’t like that, time is a circle, time goes round and round like a wheel, and that’s why one hears echoes of the past continually—it’s because the past is present; you don’t have to look back down the straight line, you just look across the circle, and there are the echoes of the past and the vision of the future, and they’re all present, all now, all forever.”

I looked at her and saw far beyond her into the remote comforting mysticism of Celtic legend. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees and cradling her chin in her hands, and as her hair streamed over her shoulders to frame her face again, I felt the magic of that other culture beckoning me away from the down-to-earth brutality of the Anglo-Saxon tradition in which I had been educated. And then it seemed to me that the culture which had been hammered into me at school was not only inferior to hers but less in touch with the real truths of life, and I felt my familiar world shift on its axis as if pulled by some gravitational force far beyond my control.

“Tell me about the echoes of the past,” I said. “Tell me how I can look across the circle and hear my wife’s echo in time.”

She said, “It may be tomorrow, it may not be for years, but you’ll hear it. Perhaps the children will sound the first note, the first chord in time; perhaps one day Master Harry will go to the piano and when he plays you’ll see her there and you’ll think, Yes, it’s sad I shall never hear her play again, and you’ll grieve. Or perhaps you’ll think, Yes, it’s sad, but there was happiness before the sadness, and then although you’ll still grieve you’ll be grateful for the memory, and the memory will echo on in time. And later perhaps you’ll hear one of her favorite tunes played by someone else and you’ll remember again, perhaps less painfully, perhaps even with pleasure that the memory should bring her close to you again, and the echo may be fainter but still very clear, so clear that you’ll tell your children about it, and then it’ll be part of their memory too, and so it’ll go on echoing again and again in time, and that time is beyond time, time out of mind.”

She paused. She was still looking at the unlit fireplace, and behind her the soft light from the lamp made her hair blaze against her uncanny skin.

“When I was two,” she said, “my father died in the Boer War. I have no memory of him. I thought later, How sad I can’t remember him, can’t grieve as I should—for of course to me he wasn’t a hero, he was just someone who’d gone away and left us, and I resented him for being killed and then I felt guilty that I resented him, and what with all the resentment and the guilt I never thought the grief would come, I thought I’d never hear his echo in time, and indeed I forgot all about grieving, but gradually, as I grew up, other people would talk to me about him, and I thought, Why do they do this, what makes them speak now after so many years, and then suddenly I realized it was because of me, because
I was the echo
for those people, and for them the past wasn’t lost far away down the straight line after all but coming back towards them in a curve. It was as if he was still alive, for when they looked at me they saw him, and when I understood this, when I understood he was present in me, then I knew him, then he became real to me, then the resentment died and the guilt fell away and at last, years after his death, I was able to grieve.” She stood up and stacked her own cup and saucer with mine on the tray. “I’ll take these to the kitchen and wash them up. Please excuse me, sir, for talking so much.”

After a moment I followed her. She looked up startled as I entered the scullery.

“Thank you,” I said. “I feel much better now.” I was trying to decide how I could best express my gratitude to her. Obviously I could not offer her money but I felt some tangible gesture of thanks should undoubtedly be made, and after careful thought I said, “I must go through my wife’s possessions soon. Perhaps you would accept something in memory of her.”

“Oh, but I wouldn’t presume—”

“Nonsense. She liked you, spoke well of you.”

She was speechless. She set down the newly dried teapot as if she feared it might shatter to pieces in her hands.

“Perhaps you’d like some of her clothes,” I said suddenly. “They’re no good to her maid, she’s the wrong shape.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t possibly accept—”

“I don’t see why not. Why don’t you at least have a look at them and see what you think?”

“Well, I … it’s very, very kind of you. … When?”

“Now?”

“Oh! Oh yes—yes, indeed—if you wish.” She hastily dried the last plate and hung up the cloth.

The twilight was heavy by this time but although the hall was in gloom it was not in darkness. Carrying a candle more out of courtesy than necessity, I led the way upstairs. We were both silent. I had fixed my mind on the subject of Blanche’s clothes and was debating whether to donate them to the Red Cross or to the Salvation Army after Mrs. Morgan had made her selection.

In the bedroom I walked to the wardrobe and opened the doors.

“These are the clothes she usually wore,” I said over my shoulder as I held up the candle to illuminate them. “But there’s another wardrobe in the bedroom across the passage where she kept the clothes she wore less frequently.”

Mrs. Morgan cast one glance at the contents of the wardrobe and said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly take any of them, sir. They’re much too good for me.”

In the pause that followed I was acutely aware of my hand setting down the candle. Then before I could stop myself I said, “You’re too modest, Mrs. Morgan. You’re far, far too modest.”

Everything changed. I had never before realized that a mere inflection of the voice could destroy a world forever, but as I spoke I saw that Anglo-Saxon world in which I had always secretly been such a misfit keel over and begin to fall soundlessly, endlessly into the void.

The other world moved closer. I saw the open spaces, the timeless light, the freedom beyond imagination, and suddenly in a moment of absolute certainty I knew that this was the way, the truth, the life I longed to lead.

The chained dog finally slipped his collar. I rushed forward, she stumbled towards me and a second later we were in each other’s arms.

II

I kissed her exactly as I wanted to kiss her. There was no question of worrying in case I offended delicate sensibilities, because I knew that she too was exercising no restraint. Her arms were so strong that they seemed almost as strong as mine, and her mouth was strong too, very free and supple, and her fingers were strong but sensitive as she caressed the back of my neck. Our tongues were silent together. I knew a moment of intense intimacy followed by such a violence of desire that I would have swayed on my feet if she had not been holding me so strongly, and in her strength I saw a reflection of my own.

I was aware of Blanche’s bed behind her, and beyond the awareness lay the knowledge that whatever happened next could never happen there. I hesitated, and into the mental space created by my hesitation streamed the training and self-discipline of decades, no longer tormenting me with the image of imprisonment but offering me the only possible escape from the terror of my new freedom.

In panic I released her. I backed away, covering my face with my hands as my voice, the voice of an English gentleman, said with absolute correctness, “I’m so sorry; I do apologize. Obviously I’m unhinged by my grief.”

There was a flurry of movement. Slim, strong fingers gripped my wrists and pulled my hands from my face. Great green eyes, fierce with the most desperate emotion, blazed into mine.

“Don’t you lie to me!” she shouted in Welsh. “Never lie to me!
I don’t deal in lies
!” And bursting into tears she rushed from the room.

I tore after her, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by the sheer reality of my emotion. I was blistered and bludgeoned by it, my old ways shattered, my past blown to bits and all my defenses incinerated by a white-hot heat. It was as though every mask I had ever worn, every lie I had ever told were being blasted from the face of my personality until at last, at the very bottom of my consciousness, my true self began to stir again in its long-forgotten, long-abandoned grave.