Glittering Images (41 page)

‘Who says you’re unfit and unworthy?’

‘I do. How else can one explain my father’s attitude towards me?’

‘That,’ said Darrow, ‘is the big question, Charles.’

I stared at him. ‘But of course I’m unfit and unworthy!’ I said. ‘And of course my father’s right to despise me for it. When I think of my recent errors – that drinking bout – Loretta –’

‘Never mind your recent errors for the moment. Let’s concentrate on your more normal behaviour. You work hard, don’t you – try to do what’s right – aim to lead what your father would call a good straight decent life?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Then is it realistic to treat you as a drunken wastrel who’s perpetually poised to go straight to the dogs? And is it fair? You’re not really such a bad chap as all that, are you?’

I tried to speak but nothing happened.

‘Well, I mustn’t put thoughts in your head,’ said Darrow. ‘If you want to believe you’re a bad chap you have a perfect right to do so, but I’d like you to consider very carefully how far this belief chimes with the actual evidence provided by your life. I’d also like you to consider the indisputable fact that your father is not the Pope speaking
ex cathedra
; he’s not infallible. No matter how heroic he is he’s still capable of making mistakes, just like any other human being.’

I managed to say, ‘I’d like to believe I’m not such a bad chap. Sometimes I do believe it.’

‘How do you feel about your father’s judgement then?’

‘Angry. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? I must turn the other cheek and forgive him.’

‘Yes, you must – eventually. But how can you possibly forgive him at present when his attitude towards you is so inexplicable?’

‘It’s not inexplicable. My father adopts this attitude towards me because I’m so unfit and unworthy,’ I persisted but even as I spoke the words began to assume a curiously hollow ring.

‘This is indeed how you’ve always explained your father’s attitude,’ said Darrow, ‘but supposing, just for the sake of argument, this explanation’s dead wrong?’

The psychological chain binding me to my self-hatred was suddenly wafer-thin. I said, ‘My father certainly
thinks
I’m unfit and unworthy. That’s undeniable. But –’

‘But?’ said Darrow, coming to meet me as I struggled out of the dark into the light.

‘It’s just possible … it’s not wholly out of the question … in fact it’s within the bounds of probability –’ I drew a deep breath and said, ‘He’s made a mistake.’ The chain snapped apart as the truth overpowered me like an avalanche, but after the avalanche came the silence and into the silence came the first faint whisper of the massive questions which I had never before been able to hear. Eventually I found I could say the questions aloud. ‘Why does he have this low opinion of me?’ I said baffled. ‘What have I done to deserve it?’ and as I spoke I felt as if I were turning some great psychological corner to confront a strange new landscape in my mind.

‘And that,’ said Darrow, ‘is the mystery beyond the mystery beyond the mystery. Congratulations, Charles. Now we’re indeed beginning to make progress.’

‘Your father certainly seems from your narrative to be strong and high-principled,’ said Darrow when we met later, ‘but he also seems to be dangerously proud. Pride is always dangerous. Pride coupled with a strong inflexible character can be lethal.

‘Part of your father’s pride, I think, would be manifested in the way he brought you up. Once he’d made a commitment he’d stick to it through thick and thin and he seems to have been saying to himself (if I may borrow the phraseology you yourself used), “I’ll bring Charles up to be a good straight decent man even if it kills me – and even if it kills him.” That sort of inflexible determination, though it can be admirable if riveted to a moral principle, is potentially destructive because it’s incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances. Perhaps your father was justified in being strict with you when you were small – bright children often need a firm hand – but it seems he was incapable of modifying his attitude when you grew up.

‘Now we come to the heart of the matter. There you are, clever, nice-looking, successful beyond any father’s wildest dreams. Most fathers would be grovelling at your feet in sentimental adulation, so why should your father be sunk in this incorrigible pessimism? Of course one must make allowances for his character – his hatred of boasting, his natural English reserve, his admirable horror of spoiling you. One might suppose he’s incapable of being demonstrative towards a son, but since you tell me your father displays an all-too-human paternal partiality towards your brother one feels driven to wonder why he’s so inhibited in showing paternal partiality towards you.

‘Now let’s see where we’ve got to. We’ve speculated that your father adopted this attitude towards you when you were very young; this is supported by your impression that the glittering image has always been there. We’ve deduced that because of his inflexibility he was later unable to change his attitude, even when you turned out well, but we still don’t know why he was compelled to adopt it in the first place. We know he was a conscientious father who was consumed with the desire to bring you up to be a good man, but we don’t know why he’s apparently unable to believe his success here is permanent. We can assume, I think, that he would act with the best of motives, but we don’t know why he’s wound up treating you so unfairly. Perhaps the whole mystery can be summed up by asking: how has this particular road to hell been paved with your father’s good intentions?’

Darrow stopped speaking. We were sitting again in the herb-garden but I was by this time oblivious of my surroundings. I was too busy channelling my mental energy into the mystery as if it were a piece of research which demanded absolute concentration.

‘How much clearer everything seems,’ I said, ‘but that means, paradoxically, how much more mysterious. I feel as if I’m seeing the outline of the mystery for the first time.’

‘Then let’s now step past the outline to examine the mystery at close quarters. Tell me about your brother. Is he older than you?’

‘No, he’s two years my junior and I suppose one could describe him as a sunny-natured version of my father. He’s married with three children and lives near my parents in Epsom.’

‘Is he clever? It’s hard not to imagine you outshining him on every front.’

‘He’s certainly no fool; he’s a partner in my father’s firm, but he’s limited in his interests and we don’t have much in common.’

‘How did his early career compare with yours?’

‘I did outshine him. I often suspected my father felt driven to favour Peter in order to compensate him – in the same way as my mother felt driven to favour me in order to compensate me for my father’s harshness.’ I hesitated before adding, ‘However explaining the family relationships in terms of favouritism fails to convey their complexity. For instance, although I’m my mother’s favourite neither of us are comfortable with each other. She’s much more relaxed with Peter.’

‘You’re not close to her?’

‘I hate to say it but I find her a strain. It’s because she’s very effusive – but not in a natural way. In fact she always makes me want to cringe and protest: “For Heaven’s sake treat me normally instead of putting on this act!” Yet it’s not an act. The emotion’s genuine enough but she can’t express it in a relaxed manner.’

‘Yet you said she was relaxed with Peter.’

‘He doesn’t seem to affect her in the same way. In fact the atmosphere Peter generates with our parents is entirely different, but I suppose this must happen frequently in families where the two children are unalike.’

‘I agree this is a fairly common phenomenon, but has it ever struck you in your own case as seeming distinctly abnormal?’

‘Well, I remember one instance in particular: I was visiting them soon after I was ordained – it was before Peter was married and he was still living at home. I was watching the three of them when they were in the garden and I was indoors. My father was laughing, Peter was sprawled happily in a deck chair – even my mother was looking relaxed. Then I walked out of the house to join them and it was as if a curtain had come down over the scene. Peter didn’t change. He went on sprawling in his deck chair, but my father said “Here comes the clergyman” in a typical sardonic voice and my mother said with that awful false brightness of hers, “Let’s all have cocktails!” and I felt –’

‘Yes?’ said Darrow. ‘How did you feel?’

‘Like an unwanted guest.’ It was too difficult to go on.

‘Odd man out? I’d been thinking,’ said Darrow, coming to my rescue, ‘how different you must be from the other members of your family and how awkward this must have been for you when you were growing up.’

The knowledge that he understood enabled me to say, ‘When I was fifteen I even wondered … Well, Father, don’t laugh, I know this sounds melodramatic and ridiculous, but I even wondered if I were adopted.’

‘That sounds rather a sensible explanation to me. Who said it was melodramatic and ridiculous?’

‘My father.’

‘Ah!’ said Darrow. ‘I see. Your father made you feel melodramatic and ridiculous, just as he made you feel unfit and unworthy.’

There was a silence while I grappled with the huge implications of this statement but at last I said resigned, ‘No, this time there’s no question of my father making a mistake. I really was being stupid. You see, what happened was this …’

‘I’d been wondering for some time if I were adopted,’ I said, ‘and finally I decided to inspect my birth certificate to see if there were any clues there. My father kept all the family documents in a file in his study so it was a simple matter to make a raid one night when everyone was asleep. I found no hint of any irregularity on my birth certificate, of course, but in the file I came across the certificate of my parents’ marriage and then I did make a discovery which astonished me: my parents had married a year later than I’d thought. I knew the month and day of their wedding because they always celebrated their anniversary, but I thought they’d married in 1898. I’d never realized they were married in 1899 and that I’d arrived – in 1900 – only seven months after the wedding.’

‘Premature?’

‘That was my first reaction but no one had ever mentioned me fighting for life in my cradle. Then I wondered if I’d been conceived out of wedlock with the result that my father had been forced to marry my mother, but somehow I couldn’t see him seducing a girl from a respectable family. And at that point I remembered my father’s sister mentioning cattily once that my mother had been considered fast when she was young, and immediately it occurred to me that I might have been fathered by someone else.’

‘Did you go back to your aunt for further information?’

‘No, I didn’t like my aunt. I might have gone to my mother, but I was in the throes of a sex-obsessed puberty and I balked at the prospect of asking her intimate questions. So in the end after much soul-searching I went to my father. I’d convinced myself he’d be relieved to tell me the whole truth at last.’

‘How did he respond?’

‘He was livid. Mortally insulted. “Never heard such melodramatic ridiculous nonsense in my life!” he said. “How dare you doubt my paternity after I’ve been slaving away all these years to give you a decent upbringing!” Well, as you can imagine, Father, I was completely cowed.’

‘Of course you were, but did he deign to explain –’

‘Yes, he had a thoroughly convincing explanation for my early arrival. He said that in 1899 everything was going wrong for him; it was before he founded his own firm, he was unhappy in his work and although he wanted to marry my mother he’d given up hope of her accepting him. So on an impulse he volunteered for the Army – the Boer War was brewing all that summer – and when my mother realized he could be sent overseas to fight she became aware how much he meant to her and she finally agreed to marry him. Well, in the end the Army rejected him because of his eyesight, but for a time both he and my mother believed they were about to be separated so they rushed to the altar as soon as possible – and in all the drama the conventions slipped; he did have her for the first time before they were married. “Very reprehensible,” he said, “but I was so carried away that she’d agreed to marry me and so worried in case I had to leave before the wedding that I lost control and blotted my escutcheon.”’

‘So what conclusions did you draw from this conversation?’

‘I believed him. He was so dogmatic, so positive, so convincing –’

‘Was he hurt?’

‘Hurt!’

‘Well, if my son had questioned his paternity in that way,’ said Darrow, ‘I certainly wouldn’t have been dogmatic or positive. Neither would I have been livid or mortally insulted. I’d have been deeply upset and extremely worried about why he found our relationship so unsatisfactory that he was driven to search for painful explanations. Tell me, did you ever discuss this with your mother?’

‘He absolutely forbade it. He said, “Your mother’s a very emotional woman, she feels guilty that you were conceived before the wedding, she suffered agonies of embarrassment when you arrived early, and you’re never on any account to mention the subject to her.”’

‘So his testimony is unsupported.’

‘Yes, but I’m sure he was telling the truth.’

‘What makes you so certain?’