Absolute Truths (3 page)

I telephoned my spiritual director. In 1956 Jon had yet to become
the recluse who refused to have a telephone in his home.

‘
It occurred to me,’ I said, ‘that there’s a sound moral argument
for destroying the letter. For the good of the family — and to save
Charley distress —’

‘
This is a very bad line,’ said Jon. ‘Could you say all that again?
I don’t think I can possibly have heard you correctly.’

A long silence followed before I said: ‘I’m in such a state I can’t
think straight. What on earth am I going to say to Charley?’

‘
Believe me,
I
do understand how hard it will be for you to
master all your ambivalent feelings.’

‘What ambivalent feelings?’

A second silence ensued. At last I said: ‘I don’t feel ambivalent
towards Charley. He’s my reward now for responding to that back-breaking call from God to bring him up. I’m devoted to
Charley. I’m proud of him.’

‘
Then trust him to work out what he owes and to whom.’

‘
But how much of the truth should I tell him?’

Jon said nothing.

‘
Must I tell the whole truth?’ I said. ‘The absolute truth?’

‘
I’m sure you know at heart what the answers to all those ques
tions are, Charles.’

I put down the receiver.

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 child
hood 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. ‘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 dearly
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 mad
ding 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
c
ar 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 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 judge
ment. 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 dear 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.