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VI
Of course I forgot every word of my set speech. I discovered that my most important need was to keep talking – to impart the same information in a variety of different ways so that the sheer brutality of the truth was cocooned and smothered in excess verbiage. While I was speaking I was conscious that Charley, who was small and slim and looked younger than his eighteen years, was becoming smaller and slimmer, almost as if he were returning to the childhood he had so recently left. I half-thought he would interrupt me – in the end I was yearning for him to interrupt me and express all the normal emotions of incredulity, amazement and horror – but he said nothing. It was as if his volatile temperament had been frozen by the blast of an icy wind. Pale and still, he regarded me blankly with his lambent, amber eyes.
‘… and naturally you’ll want to know more about him. That’s why –’ I heard the lie coming but found myself powerless to stop it ‘– I’m glad he’s written you this letter.’ I managed to hold out the envelope with a steady hand. ‘Let him speak for himself,’ I said, ‘and then I’ll answer all your questions as truthfully as I can.’
Despite this dubious conclusion I believe in retrospect that my speech was very far from disastrous. I had reassured Charley about my feelings for him; I had said nothing adverse about Samson, and I had paved the way for the necessary question-and-answer session. However unfortunately Charley was not at that moment interested in Samson. He was much too busy trying to digest the fact that his parents had spent eighteen years deceiving him about a fundamental aspect of his identity.
Ignoring the letter which I was holding out to him he said in a voice which shook: ‘I should have been told from the beginning.’
At once I tried to adjust my approach. ‘I’m very sorry. I assure you we did consider it. But the trouble was –’
‘How could you have allowed me to believe a lie? You! The man who always preaches the importance of truth!’
‘I know how you must feel – I know how it must look – but –’
‘I think you and Mum have behaved absolutely disgustingly and I just want to go away and be sick!’
That concluded the conversation. Scarlet with emotion he rushed upstairs to his bedroom where he locked the door and refused to speak to either of us. Eventually Lyle lost her nerve and shouted: ‘I don’t care how vile you are to me but don’t you dare be vile to Charles after all he’s done for you!’ but when even this unwise reproof produced no response she turned to me and demanded, tears streaming down her face: ‘Where’s the letter? He’s got to read it.’
That was when I realised this harrowing scene must have been clearly visualised by Samson who had then done all he could to give us a helping hand. Or in other words, the clerical failure had behaved like a wise, compassionate priest, setting his own feelings aside in order to try to ensure the survival of the family, whereas I … But I could not quite work out how I had behaved. I only knew that I had always acted towards Charley with the very best of intentions.
‘The kind that pave the road to hell,’ muttered Lyle, shoving Samson’s letter under the locked bedroom door.
More agonising minutes passed. We went away. We waited. We returned. We banged futilely on the panels. We took it in turns to beg him to let us in. At last, egged on by Lyle and feeling nearly demented with anxiety, I fetched a screwdriver, opened up the lock and forced my way into the room. It was empty. Charley had made a rope of sheets and escaped through the window. The letter was lying unopened on the floor.
No mere words could describe the sheer horror of the next few hours, so I shall merely record our ordeal as tersely as possible. First of all I hauled up the sheets before they could be spotted by our neighbours. Then we began our search, but enquiries at the station and bus terminal proved fruitless.
At one stage I was in such despair that I said, ‘Supposing he’s tried to kill himself by jumping into the Cam?’ but Lyle, hiding her terror behind an ice-cool façade, answered: ‘If he leapt into the river he’d make damn sure there were plenty of people around to haul him out.’
We returned home to sweat blood and plot our next move, but we could think of nothing to do except wait by the telephone. It seemed too soon to notify the police. However as the hours passed and no contrite call came I was obliged to notify the headmaster that Charley would not be returning to school that evening. I was tempted to lie by saying he was ill, but I knew I had to tell a story which bore some resemblance to the truth in case the absence lasted some time, so I said that Charley had run away after a family disagreement. When the headmaster had recovered from his astonishment he was so kind that I had difficulty in sustaining the conversation, but I did say I would take his advice to call the police.
More appalling conversations followed. The policemen clearly felt they were being troubled unnecessarily and said they were sure Charley would turn up, probably sooner rather than later. No sooner had they departed than a neighbour dropped in, saw the uneaten birthday cake in the kitchen and demanded an explanation. The grapevine began to hum. The local paper got hold of the story. Garish headlines screamed: ‘PROFESSOR’S SON VANISHES, SUICIDE OR SNATCH?’ We fobbed off our friends’ enthralled enquiries by saying we needed to keep the telephone line open, but some of them still insisted on calling in to commiserate with us. The schadenfreude generated by a clergyman’s son who goes off the rails is massive indeed.
I was just thinking how very pleasant it would be to spend a week in the nearest mental hospital, far from this repulsively madding crowd, when Jon rang from his home near Starbridge and said: ‘He’s here. He’s unharmed. Be sure you bring the letter when you come to fetch him.’
I drove through the night with the letter in my breast pocket, and when I reached Jon’s home the next morning I found Charley sitting on the steps of the porch as he waited for me. Halting the car I jumped out and rushed over to him and when he muttered: ‘You didn’t have to drive through the night,’ I shouted: ‘What the hell else did you expect me to do?’ – not the mildest of replies, but I was almost passing out with relief. At that point Charley broke down and began to whimper, but I grabbed him and held him so tightly that both of us were unable to do more than struggle for breath. Eventually Jon appeared and announced, rather in the manner of a tactful butler, that breakfast was available in the dining-room.
When Charley and I were alone together he told me he had completed the long journey by walking and by thumbing lifts. Having little money he had slept under hedges and survived on a diet of Mars bars. ‘The whole journey was hell,’ he concluded morosely, ‘but I wanted to see Father Darrow. I thought he’d know about everything and I’m sure he does, but he said you could explain it all better than he could.’ He hesitated but added: ‘He also said I should read the letter because letters from the dead should be treated with respect.’
I handed over the letter. Charley pocketed it and embarked upon his breakfast. He ate two fried eggs, a sausage, three rashers of bacon and a fried tomato while I toyed with half a piece of toast. Eventually I withdrew to the cloakroom where I at last achieved my ambition to vomit. On my departure from the dining-room I had heard the faint noise of tearing paper as Charley at once opened the envelope.
When I rejoined him I found that the envelope had disappeared.
Charley’s careful comment was: ‘That was an interesting letter. I might let you read it one day.’
Not surprisingly, I found myself unable to reply.
‘I was thinking,’ said Charley, ‘what a useful thing it was that Mum took me to see him – I mean him – back in 1945 when I was old enough to remember him properly. If I hadn’t seen him, I might always have wondered what he was like.’
I managed to agree that this was quite possible.
‘He seemed to like you a lot,’ said Charley at last. ‘Of course he took the blame for everything, and that was right, wasn’t it? You were the hero of the story and he was … well, what was he exactly? I can’t quite make him out. Was he a villain? Or a fool? Or a tragic figure felled by hubris like Charles Stewart Parnell? Or …’ His voice trailed away.
The pause lengthened.
Eventually Charley said in a rush: ‘Of course if you’d rather I didn’t ask any questions –’
‘But of course you must ask questions!’ I said, finally summoning the strength to behave as I should. ‘And of course I must answer them as truthfully as possible!’
But I think I knew, even as I expressed this admirable intention, that the absolute truth about my wife’s lover was still quite beyond my power to articulate.
TWO
‘Bad pride is negative; it blinds us to truths of fact or even of reason …’
AUSTIN FARRER
Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968
A Celebration of Faith
I
I should much prefer to say no more about this dreadful scene with Charley, but unfortunately I have to go on to record what a hash I made of it; the consequences were so far-reaching.
‘It would be uncharitable to call him a villain,’ I said to Charley as I embarked on this doomed attempt to depict Samson in the light of truth, ‘and it would certainly be inaccurate to describe him as a fool. One could, perhaps, acknowledge a resemblance to Parnell, but only a superficial one. After all, Parnell was not a clergyman of the Church of England who broke the vows he made at his ordination.’ As I spoke I insisted to myself that I should speak the truth. I also insisted that I would not let the truth be distorted by my anger. I told myself fiercely: I shall not lie.
‘He was a gifted man who had weaknesses which made him vulnerable,’ I found myself saying. ‘I felt sorry for him. At the end of his life he could be considered a pathetic figure, a man ruined by the flaws in his character – but I mustn’t judge him too harshly. That wouldn’t be right.’
I drank some tea. Eventually I said: ‘It was a tragedy that those inherent weaknesses wrecked his life and wasted his talents.’
‘When you say “weaknesses”, do you mean –’
‘I mean primarily his weakness for women. It clouded his judgement. His disastrous marriage was quite obviously an example of a sexual attraction which had soon faded … but I don’t want to be too harsh on him.’
There was a pause. As I waited for the next question I saw with dismay that Charley had lost his brave air of nonchalance. His face had a pinched look.
‘I don’t want to be too harsh on him,’ I repeated hurriedly, trying to put things right. ‘Anyone can make a mistake.’ But before I could stop myself I was saying: ‘It was just a pity his mistakes were so crucial. His weakness for women was compounded by a tendency to drink too much. Certainly he enjoyed a luxurious style of life which was quite unsuitable for a priest, and in the circumstances it was hardly surprising that his moral will was sapped so that he was unable to resist the temptation which your mother presented … although of course I don’t mean to pass judgement on him for what he did to her. All judgements must be left to God.’
Charley said unevenly: ‘I just don’t understand how Mum could ever have –’
‘Oh, the whole episode was entirely his fault. She was an innocent young woman corrupted by a sophisticated older man,’ I said, but I knew at once I could not let that statement stand unmodified. Furiously I told myself: I WILL NOT LIE. ‘No, let me rephrase that last sentence,’ I said rapidly. ‘By using a cliché I’ve made the affair sound simple and it wasn’t. It was complicated.’ But even as I spoke I was thinking: Charley wants simplicity, not complexity; he wants certainties, not ambiguities; it really would be kinder to him to sketch the story in black and white.
‘But never mind all that,’ I said even more rapidly. ‘The rock-bottom truth is that he was older than she was and should have known better. Of course I’m tempted to blame him for putting her through hell, but in fact it’s futile to assign blame since our prime task is to forgive. As I keep saying, I don’t mean to pass judgement on him for what he did.’ Realising that I was becoming convoluted, once more passing judgement and rescinding it in the same breath, I made a mighty new effort to be clear and simple.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought you up. I’ve made you what you are. So long as you model yourself on me you’ll never have to worry that you’ll make a mess of your life as he did.’
Charley by this time seemed to be barely breathing. His pallor had a faint greenish tinge.
‘Upbringing’s the important thing,’ I said at top speed. ‘You needn’t worry about your heredity. I often think how like me you are, sharing so many of my interests.’
‘All I ever wanted,’ said Charley painfully, ‘was to be just like you.’
‘In that case there’s no need for you to give this man –’ I could not name him ‘– a second thought. I mean, of course you’ll give him a second thought –’ I was tying myself in knots again ‘– but there’s no need for you to become obsessed by him. We’ll give him a code-name,’ I said, fastening on the device which enabled top-secret matters to be referred to with discretion, ‘and then he can be filed away. He won’t be lost or forgotten. He’ll merely be out of sight unless we choose to recall him.’
But Charley was already worrying about something else. ‘Should I refuse to accept the legacy?’
‘Certainly not!’ I was startled by this question and also, at some profound level, distressed. I remembered the sacrifice implicit in that letter, the love given without hope of any return.
‘I just want to do what you want, and if you think it would be safer for me to reject him altogether –’
‘No, no, that wouldn’t be right at all! If you reject the legacy you’re really passing judgement on him, but our business is to forgive, not to condemn.’
It was all true, of course. Yet it was all, subtly, false. Later I tried to work out how I could have eradicated the distortion, but I was never able to decide where the distortion had come from and how I could have eradicated it. Later still I did think to myself: one day Charley should know just how selflessly that man loved him. But the thought vanished, pushed aside by my enormous relief that the crisis was past. Charley had emerged from his ordeal more devoted to me than ever while I was now free to rebury Samson in the nostalgia drawer of my memory.
Telephoning Lyle five minutes later I told her we were all set to live happily ever after.
II
Did we all live happily ever after? No. As soon as Charley had returned to a stable state Michael began to cause trouble.
I told Michael about the skeleton in the family cupboard as soon as he returned home for the half-term holiday. I had had no choice. Charley’s escapade, now public knowledge, had to be explained, and with dread I steeled myself for yet another parental ordeal.
Michael, who was then sixteen and still more interested in cricket than in girls, listened with astonishment to my brief recital of the facts and afterwards appeared to be too nonplussed to offer any comment. I did stress that Lyle had been a mere innocent victim but I soon discovered that his mother’s consent to the affair was not what was puzzling him. ‘She’s still Mum no matter what she did,’ he said commendably before adding: ‘But why didn’t she go to hospital and have Charley removed when he was no more than a blob?’
I was considerably shocked by this reaction, unmodified as it was by anything which resembled a Christian morality, and as a result I found myself discussing the ethics of abortion, but Michael was uninterested in generalities, only in his mother. ‘She must have been mad to have wanted a baby in those circumstances,’ he said. ‘The older I get the more peculiar I think women are.’ And before I could comment on this verdict he asked: ‘If Charley’s not your real son, why do you spend so much time slobbering over him?’
‘I don’t slobber over him!’
‘Oh yes, you do! Mum says it’s because Charley’s small and plain and needs encouragement, but why should I be penalised just because I’m tall and good at games and okay to look at?’
‘Nobody’s penalising you! You mean just as much to me as Charley does!’
‘Why don’t I mean more? If you’re not his father –’
‘For all practical purposes,’ I said, trying to remain calm, ‘I am his father, and anyway, regardless of who his father is, he’s still your brother and I’m sorry that you make so little effort to get on with him.’
‘I don’t care who he is, I think he’s a louse.’
‘That’s the most unchristian thing to say!’
‘So what? Lots of Christians are unchristian – look at Charley’s real father! He didn’t exactly behave in a very Christian way, did he, and he was a clergyman!’
‘Well, of course he was a clerical failure. I’m not denying he was a disgrace to his profession and I’m not denying that the Church, like any large organisation, has the occasional rotten apple in its barrel, but Christians in general do at least try to live decent lives, and –’
‘Too bad they so seldom succeed!’
At that point I lost my temper and Michael lost his. The scene ended shortly afterwards when he yelled: ‘Bloody hell!’ and bolted straight to his mother to complain that I had been unfair to him. Lyle was livid. We had a row. She accused me of getting up on my Christian soap-box and pontificating; I retorted that I had a duty to draw the line when Michael started slandering the Church. Lyle then accused me of short-changing Michael; I then accused her of spoiling him rotten. Lyle said the whole grisly episode, beginning with Charley’s running away, reminded her of the parable of the prodigal son, and what a pity it was that Jesus had never recorded the feelings of the prodigal son’s mother. I said that Jesus had had no need to record the feelings of the mother in order to make his theological point, and Lyle shouted that she hated theological points and hated theologians who pulled out all the intellectual stops in order to win an argument and make their wives feel miserable. Seconds later I was deafened by the slamming of the door as she stormed out of the room.
I did look around for something to smash but fortunately no suitable object lay invitingly to hand and anyway after nearly nineteen years of marriage I knew there were better ways of resolving marital quarrels than behaving like a Cossack. I allowed Lyle time to cool off. Then I followed St Paul’s admirable advice (‘Let not the sun go down upon your wrath’) and made the required gesture of reconciliation. During the cooling-off period I consumed one very dark whisky-and-soda and meditated on my heroes of the Early Church, those titans who had been obliged to abstain from marriage. How would St Athanasius, a bishop popular with the ladies, have adjusted to the wear and tear of married life? His energy reserves might well have been so seriously depleted that he would have been unable to dredge up the enormous strength required to be contra mundum, with the result that the Arian heresy would have prevailed – but no, heresy never prevailed in the end because always truth was ‘the daughter of time’. With a sigh I absolved the imaginary wife of Athanasius from ensuring the triumph of Arianism.
Later that evening Charley obliquely expressed his new anxiety about our relationship by saying to me: ‘I’m worried about Michael. Supposing he thinks you just took me on because you wanted to marry Mum? Supposing he thinks you don’t really like me at all and that secretly you regard me as a ghastly reminder of the past?’
‘He couldn’t possibly think anything so ridiculous! I decided to take you on from the moment I knew you existed. I regarded it as a very special and quite unmistakable call from God.’
‘And later you didn’t privately moan and groan and regret the whole thing?’
‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic and absurd!’
‘But –’
‘All right, no, I didn’t. What an idea!’
‘And you’re sure I don’t remind you of him all the time?’
‘Of course I’m sure! As I’ve already said, you often remind me of myself.’
‘And you’re sure that if I go on modelling myself on you everything will be all right?’
‘Absolutely certain,’ I said, now so exhausted by the demands of family life that I barely knew what I was saying, and so it was that we set off along the path which was to end so cataclysmically nine years later in 1965.
