Glamorous Powers (22 page)

We left the house together, and as we crossed the courtyard
to the main gate I was aware of the hot sunlight on the cobbles, the dull roar of the traffic beyond the wall and the glint of an aeroplane far above us in the cloudless sky.

‘More trouble brewing,’ said Francis, glancing up as he drew back the bolt on the gate. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve heard on the grapevine but the Luftwaffe have been making a big attack on the South-East during the last few days. However we seem to be holding our own.’

‘Still our Finest Hour?’ I said remembering one of Mr Churchill’s felicitous phrases.

‘Apparently.’ He turned to face me and suddenly I realized that with the formal blessings all exchanged and the cenobitic rituals completed we were at last free to be ourselves. ‘Make sure this is
your
finest hour,’ he said bluntly, not as a superior preaching to his subordinate but as one man giving encouragement to another. ‘Make sure
you
hold your own during all the inevitable assaults on your spiritual strength.’ Then with a swift change of mood he exclaimed laughing: ‘Something tells me we should now cut short this conversation before we both wind up as shattered as poor Bernard!’ and I too somehow contrived to laugh as I clasped his outstretched hands in mine.

So all I said in the end was: ‘Thank you, Francis,’ and all he said was: ‘Good luck, Jon.’ Then the monastery gate swung wide, our hands slipped apart and tightening my grip on my suitcase I walked out at last into the world.

‘The young have their own ideas, which are not ours. “The conversation of the young and old,” says Dr Johnson again, “generally ends with contempt or pity on either side.”’

W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934
A Pacifist in Trouble

Unlike the majority of monks who return to the world after many years of an enclosed existence, I had journeyed from time to time beyond the walls of my cloister and in consequence the shock of a permanent return was alleviated; there was no danger, for example, that I might be unnerved by the sight of a woman smoking a cigarette in public. Yet despite my persistent contact with the world the fact remained that I had lived apart from it and I knew I should expect to find my surroundings not only alien but possibly repellent. It was with wariness that I approached my visit to my daughter, and although I felt elated that I was free to respond to my new call I was at the same time conscious that disillusionment might lie no more than an undisciplined thought away.

Reaching Waterloo I boarded the train for the South-West and wondered how many changes I would see when I arrived at my destination. Ruth had lived all her life in Starmouth, where I had begun my ministry thirty-seven years ago, but although I knew the city well I had never liked it. Unlike the county town of Starbridge, which possesses great beauty and much historical interest, Starmouth is an ugly product of the Industrial Revolution, and as the train approached the
city centre that morning I wondered how soon the shipyards would be pock-marked by bombing. Closing my Missal I said a brief prayer for all those who lived and worked near the docks.

The train entered the station. Thrusting my Missal back in my suitcase I abandoned my newspaper for the next occupant of the carriage, smoothed the creases from my unfamiliar trousers and adjusted my clerical collar. By the time the train halted I was ready to spring down on to the platform with a vigour which I hoped demonstrated courage as well as youth, but I knew this air of bravado was mere play-acting; as always I was aware of the dread that I would fail to live up to Ruth’s expectations of how an ideal father should behave.

I soon saw her. She came rushing forward, stumbling in her ridiculously high-heeled shoes, and then hesitated as if she were shy. Immediately I felt anguish that I should arouse such diffidence, and in an effort to sweep aside all constraint I dropped my suitcase and held out my arms.

‘Daddy!’ As she hurled herself against my chest I reflected, not for the first time, how odd it was to be called ‘Daddy’ when normally everyone under the sun addressed me as ‘Father’. I could remember Betty and I arguing about how our children should address us. I had favoured ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ for infancy, ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ when the children were able to pronounce ‘th’ without lisping, but Betty, to my horror, had shortened ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ to ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’; moreover when I had criticized these abbreviations as intolerably common she had called me a snob and burst into tears. After this stormy scene ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’, then names which were becoming fashionable seemed the only possible compromise, but I had never liked being ‘Daddy’, and after Betty’s death I had been tempted to ask my children to call me ‘Father’. However my nerve had failed me. I had been too afraid they would interpret the request as a retreat into an unloving formality, so the name ‘Daddy’ had not only persisted but had even degenerated into ‘Dad’ (a vulgarity almost as bad as ‘Pa’) when Martin had entered adolescence.

All these memories flashed through my mind in seconds and by the time I gave Ruth the required paternal kiss I found I was thinking not of Betty but of my mentor. Ruth was the only woman I had been allowed to embrace during my years as a monk; Father Darcy had of course thought I should have no embraces with any member of the opposite sex, but since he had been unable to invent a justifiable excuse for depriving an innocent woman of the chance to show her natural affection for her father, the embraces which marked Ruth’s visits had continued. Yet Father Darcy had been right in judging them undesirable. They had not only recalled memories of intimate moments with Betty but – far worse – stirred up complex feelings of guilt.

Ruth was one of those women who are almost beautiful but somehow only succeed in being pretty. She was taller than Betty and slimmer around the hips (Betty had been proud of her hour-glass figure) but she had the same small elegant waist and the same disconcertingly lavish bosom. Her dark hair was immaculately curled; I deduced she had recently emerged from a hairdresser’s salon. She was wearing a blue coat and skirt, a spotted blue and white blouse and a matching blue hat but this smart assortment of clothes was ruined by the fact that she was also wearing lipstick, rouge and a very pervasive scent. I resent having an odour deliberately imposed on my sense of smell. I am also, I confess, quite unable to overcome the conviction shared by many men of my generation that the use of cosmetics other than powder is most improper for a respectable woman.

‘My dearest Ruth, how very fashionable and alluring you look!’ The long compromise with the truth, in the name of what the world deems to be good manners, had begun.

‘Darling Daddy, how lovely to see you in real clothes instead of that ghastly habit – and how excited you must be to return to the world at last after being cut off for so many years!’

‘I wasn’t in the least cut off!’ I was trying not to take offence, since I knew she meant only to be affectionate, but I was unable to suppress an indignant protest.

‘But you couldn’t do any of the
real
things, could you, like going to the shops or listening to the wireless or chatting with the neighbours about the weather –’

‘That’s reality?’

‘Oh Daddy, stop teasing me! I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see you here – I was only saying this morning at breakfast …’ Ruth chattered away, just like Betty, just like the vast majority of people in the world, talking about everything but actually saying nothing. The constant talk was going to prove arduous, I could see that, but I knew I had to stop thinking like a monk; I had to make the effort to respond even to the most banal remarks without writing off the conversation as a tedious frivolity which trapped me in the world of appearances when I longed for the world of reality, the reality which lay beyond time and space and the puny perceptions of the five senses.

‘What a smart motor car, Ruth! Is it new?’

‘No, we got it last year – don’t you remember me telling you about it?’

‘Ah yes, so you did …’ I had been listening with only half an ear at the time because I had been worrying about someone else’s spiritual problem.

‘Fortunately there’s no difficulty at present in getting petrol – the allowance is quite generous – but Roger says rationing’s bound to be severe eventually …’

Roger was my son-in-law. At forty-five he was too old for active service so Ruth was at least spared the constant anxiety which so many wives had to endure at that time. Dutifully I inquired after his health and was told that he was flourishing; the war had resulted in a promotion to a post of greater importance in his expanding firm of ship-builders, and as I murmured the necessary words of approbation Ruth began to talk with enthusiasm of the consequent increase in salary which had permitted her to purchase a new refrigerator.

Meanwhile we were driving through the streets of Starmouth and I was feeling exactly as if I had returned from the dead to inspect the haunts of my previous existence. A painful nostalgia,
liberally laced with poignant memories of Betty, seared my psyche and temporarily diverted me from my alarm that I should be travelling in a motor driven by a woman. My alarm was exacerbated since Ruth was too excited to drive well, but eventually when we passed from the centre of the city into quieter districts, I was able to surmount both my nervousness and my nostalgia. I saw we had reached the former village of Hartley, now transformed into a select suburb where houses reposed in spacious gardens on either side of roads entitled ‘The Bower’, ‘The Spinney’ and The Mount’ by authorities determined to breathe a 1930s’ life into the concept of ‘rus in urbe’. My daughter’s home, I discovered, was distinguished by a wealth of half-timbering which was no doubt supposed to recall memories of Tudor architecture. I wondered what an Elizabethan would have thought of such a parody.

Inside everywhere was spotlessly clean and immaculately tidy. I wondered if Ruth had made a special effort to impress me or whether she really was a far more orderly housewife than her mother.

‘I love housework,’ she was saying, answering my unspoken question. ‘Of course I have a daily – the neighbours would think it odd if I didn’t – but I spend my whole time trying to think of things for her to do.’ With pride she ushered me into the spare-room where a double-bed lay marooned on a spongy pink carpet. The counterpane was not only frilled but flounced. On the walls hung a series of pictures reminiscent of the sentimental daubs which so frequently adorn the lids of chocolate boxes. There were net curtains.

‘What a beautiful vase of flowers!’ I said, relieved to see at least one item I could admire, and immediately Ruth blurted out: ‘Oh Daddy, you’re not secretly hating everything, are you?’

‘My dearest Ruth –’ I saw with foreboding that her eyes shone with tears.

‘You’re so silent – I never know what you’re thinking –’

‘I’m thinking how exceedingly lucky I am to have such a good daughter,’ I said truthfully enough but somehow I only
succeeded in sounding stilted and embarrassed. ‘The house is most striking,’ I said fervently in despair, ‘and I’m sure I shall be very comfortable.’ Giving her a kiss of gratitude I realized with relief that I had finally succeeded in behaving as she wanted me to behave, and seconds later my relief was expanding as I was left on my own to unpack.

Immediately I took down all the pictures and put them in the wardrobe. Then I hung up my other black suit, put away its clerical accompaniments and my change of underclothes in the chest of drawers and arranged my books on a shelf by the bed. The pot of honey I set aside to give to my grand-daughter. Having completed my unpacking I then read a psalm and prayed that I might be given the grace to overcome the guilt which so inhibited my relationship with my daughter, the guilt which stemmed from my past inadequacy as a parent and which so distorted my genuine affection for her that I found it impossible to express my feelings in a satisfactory way. Certainly I knew Ruth was never satisfied, just as I knew that her obsessive attention to me sprang not primarily from her innate warm-heartedness but from a deep-rooted subconscious fear that I had no love for her at all.

However my prayer for the grace to be the ideal parent was disjointed and, as I soon realized, ill-conceived, based on a self-centred desire to avoid the debilitating emotional scenes which would arise if Ruth found me inadequate. Rising from my knees in shame I tidied myself, visited an effete lavatory which even had a frothy piece of material covering the lid like a tea-cosy, and went reluctantly downstairs for luncheon.

Luncheon consisted of an excellent shepherd’s-pie followed by cheese, and I began to feel more cheerful. Ruth and I were alone. Roger was at his office, my grandson was still on holiday with his schoolfriend and my grand-daughter had been dispatched to Roger’s sister nearby.

‘I wanted to have you to myself for the first couple of hours!’ confessed Ruth, touching me impulsively as if to make sure I was not a mere figment of her imagination.

After luncheon I was given a tour of the house, but although I had wanted most particularly to see the children’s rooms I found them disappointing. Colin, covering his walls with pictures of aeroplanes and motors, had revealed a passion for machinery not uncommon among boys of sixteen who never open books except when forced to do so at school, but the pictures reinforced my suspicion that I shared no interests with him. My grand-daughter’s room indicated a fractionally wider outlook on life but its very femininity only emphasized the gulf which must always exist between the sexes; I noted an assortment of dolls, no doubt retained only for sentimental reasons now that Janet was twelve, a large picture of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, and two shelves of storybooks bearing tides such as ‘Mimsie in the Upper Fourth’. In neither room did I see a Bible, a prayer-book or even a volume of Biblical stories for children.