Glittering Images (37 page)

‘Straight away because there was a problem about money. I regret to say I’d been extravagant, keeping up with the people who mattered, and by the time I met Jane I was in debt. There was no real difficulty because I had the prospect of an excellent salary as headmaster, but starting out in married life is expensive and I didn’t want Jane’s father to think I couldn’t afford to give his daughter the best.’

‘Her father approved of you?’

‘Very much, yes, so of course I didn’t want to upset him by confessing I was in financial difficulty. Well, after the wedding I said to Jane we’d have to be careful for a while – no radica reduction in our standard of living but merely an avoidance of any major expenditure.’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘Yes, but … no doubt you can imagine the dilemma that put us in, Father.’

‘I can still remember,’ said Darrow, ‘the heart attack I almost had when my wife bought the baby’s perambulator and told me how much it had cost.’

‘Yes, I knew you’d understand, and you can see too, of course, what an awkward position I was in as a clergyman. When I married in 1927 the Church of England’s official attitude to contraception was still negative.’

‘Very awkward.’

‘Jane was devout and when I suggested contraception she was shocked. She’d have accepted it later, after we’d had four or five children and another pregnancy might have been detrimental to her health, but she didn’t believe contraception was right for newly-weds. Well, neither did I, but … It was difficult, Father. It really was.’

‘Did this lead to quarrels?’

‘Jane wasn’t the sort of person who quarrelled. She just cried and then tried to be brave, but I was terrified she might confide in her father. The old boy was a clergyman of the Victorian school and he thought all contraception was the invention of the Devil.’

‘What effect did this difficulty have on your intimate life?’

‘Well, Jane wanted to be a good wife so everything seemed on the surface to be all right, even when I began using French-letters, but … I knew she was unhappy about the situation and that made me feel guilty – and feeling guilty made me feel angry because I resented being made to feel guilty. Sex got a bit tense. Everything got a bit tense –’

‘You were using French-letters all the time?’

‘Yes, except occasionally when I ran out of my supply. I couldn’t buy them locally because of the risk of being recognized, and I didn’t always have the time to make the necessary expedition further afield so sometimes I had to practise withdrawal – but oh, how I hated that! I was always so afraid of an accident –’

‘Profoundly afraid? Why? Were you still in financial trouble?’

‘No, my financial affairs were much improved. By the time we celebrated our first wedding anniversary I even had a balance in the bank.’

‘In that case I presume the subject of a baby again came up for discussion.’

‘Yes, Jane wanted to abandon the contraception and I agreed. But then an awful thing happened, Father, every man’s nightmare. I began to suffer from premature ejaculation. I’d ejaculate even before I’d penetrated her.’

‘How very distressing. What did your doctor say?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t go to my doctor! I knew him socially – he was a friend of my father-in-law’s, and I didn’t want anyone I knew thinking I was a sexual failure. Anyway I was all right so long as I was using the French-letters.’

‘You’re saying you went back to the contraception?’

‘Well, I had to, didn’t I? Our sex-life had turned into a disaster without it. So I said to Jane, “I’ll have to keep on with the French-letters until I can get over this difficulty,” and she said: “Just as you think best” – but then I heard her crying in our bedroom –’

‘When did you confide in your spiritual director?’

‘I didn’t. This wasn’t a spiritual problem.’

‘Are you telling me that this severe marital worry didn’t impinge on your life of prayer and your service to God?’

‘But I couldn’t tell dear old Father Reid! He was so holy – so celibate – how on earth could I have talked to him about French-letters and premature ejaculation? It’s just not the sort of thing one talks about to one’s spiritual director, is it, and besides … I didn’t want another churchman to know about the contraception.’

‘Thinking of your duties as a churchman, may I ask how you were faring as headmaster of St Aidan’s while this trouble was going on?’

‘Oh Father, in a way that was the worst problem of all – I hated it! I was so bored with all those adolescent boys – I’d forgotten how tedious boarding-school life could be –’

‘When did you realize you’d made a mistake?’

‘Almost straight away but I felt I couldn’t say anything because everyone – especially Lang – was expecting me to make a huge success of it and I couldn’t bear the thought of disillusioning them. So I knew I’d have to endure the situation for a minimum of three years – if I’d left earlier people might have judged me a failure.’

‘What did Jane think of your unhappiness with your work? She must have been very upset.’

‘Oh, I never told her,’ I said. ‘No, of course I never told her. Like everyone else she was expecting me to be a great success, and anyway she was so upset already that I felt I couldn’t bear to upset her further –’

‘Where had your intimate life got to by this time?’

‘It was all very awkward. Occasionally I dispensed with the French-letter but it never worked. However we both tried very hard to pretend nothing was wrong, so –’

‘But surely such a situation couldn’t have gone on without some sort of crisis occurring?’

‘Jane did become a little depressed. It wasn’t a nervous breakdown, you understand – no one ever called it that – but she cried all the time and said she wanted to go and stay for a while with her father … I nearly had a fit when she said that, but then she screamed at me that I cared more about what her father thought than about what
she
thought, and I said no, I care terribly what you think, I love you, and she broke down and said how could I be content to go on without a baby, and I said I’m not, I’m not, I want a child as much as you do … And then, Father, finally, the terrible truth dawned on me and I realized that was a lie. I didn’t want a child. I didn’t know why. I still don’t know why. I just thought: I can’t be a father, I can’t cope. But I knew I couldn’t tell Jane and I knew I couldn’t tell anyone else. A Christian marriage is for the procreation of children, and I wasn’t just a Christian, I was a clergyman. But this stranger, the one who lives behind the glittering image, he didn’t want a child and he took over my marriage; I – I tried hard to keep him out, I tried so hard, Father, so hard –’ I was breaking down but I dragged myself together. ‘“Strait is the gate”,’ I whispered, ‘“and narrow is the way”.’ I scrubbed my eyes with my cuff and somehow found the strength to go on.

‘The odd thing was,’ I said, ‘that as soon as I’d admitted to myself that I didn’t want a child I had no more trouble with premature ejaculation. It was as if that just protected me from fatherhood while I couldn’t face up to the truth, but once I’d faced the truth I found I had almost limitless powers of control. I used to pretend with Jane. I’d pretend to reach a climax and somehow manage to hold back till I could get to the lavatory afterwards –’

‘But Jane must surely have realized there was no seminal fluid.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what she thought, Father. We never talked about it.’

‘You were, in fact, by this time deeply estranged.’

‘Oh no, Father, everyone always remarked how happy Jane and I were, the ideal young couple –’

‘How did the tragedy end?’

I opened my mouth to say, ‘It wasn’t a tragedy!’ but the words were never spoken. I was too overwhelmed with relief that at long last the pain had been correctly identified. I felt as if I had finally exchanged a pair of brutal clogs for a pair of handmade leather shoes. ‘Tragedy,’ I said. ‘Tragedy.’ I had to say the word aloud to make sure it was real. I said to Darrow: ‘It’s the word “success” which is unreal here, isn’t it? But I always have to talk in terms of success because tragedy and failure are …’ I groped for the right word but could only produce ‘… unacceptable.’

Darrow said nothing.

‘Tragedies and failures don’t happen to me,’ I said. ‘They’re not allowed to happen.’

‘Who’s “me”?’ said Darrow.

‘The glittering image.’

‘Then whom did this tragedy happen to?’

‘My other self.’

‘He agrees now, does he, that it was a tragedy?’

‘I think he always knew. The suffering seemed so undeserved.’

‘Made him feel angry, did it?’

I managed to nod.

‘Good!’ said Darrow astonishingly. ‘It’s right that he should be angry if he’s been locked up and forbidden to acknowledge his suffering! What could be more inhumane to a suffering man than to imprison him?’

I said confused, ‘But I’ve got to keep him locked up!’

‘Yes, but I think,’ said Darrow to the glittering image, ‘that you need a rest. Being such a ruthless jailer must be the most exhausting occupation. I think the prisoner might be allowed out on parole here in this room – just for a minute or two – so that he can complete the story of the tragedy which he feels belongs to him and him alone. Or does he perhaps feel too angry to talk about it?’

‘No, he wants to talk,’ I said, ‘because he knows you’ll understand.’ Then I stepped out from behind the glittering image. I felt stark naked, terrifyingly vulnerable but not alone. I came out because Darrow was there to meet me and I trusted him not to recoil in horror.

‘The tragedy ended when Jane got pregnant,’ I said, and
I
said it, my other self said it, and not just my other self but
my true self,
the real Charles Ashworth said, ‘I don’t know how it happened but I suppose that for once the coitus interruptus wasn’t so interrupted as I thought it was. Then one night I came back to the headmaster’s house after an absolutely damnable staff-meeting – oh, how I hated that school! – and Jane was waiting for me with shining eyes to tell me the good news. And then I – my other self –
MY TRUE SELF –
I
took over from the glittering image. I said, “My God, that’s the last thing I need to hear after another bloody awful day at this bloody awful school,” and I poured myself a double whisky. Jane said, “You’re not the man I thought I was marrying.” Tears were streaming down her face, and immediately I was crucified with guilt. I went over to her, begged her to forgive me but she shouted, “Never!” and hit me and rushed out. I was so stupefied that I didn’t at first rush after her – and when I did it was too late. She’d gone to the garage and taken out the car. I couldn’t catch her before she drove off and less than five minutes later she’d crashed into a tree – killed instantly – no other car was involved, and the coroner at the inquest said what a tragic accident it was, but of course I always wondered – I always wondered –’

‘– if it was suicide,’ said Darrow.

I leant over the table, buried my face in my forearms and cried as I had not cried since I had learnt of Jane’s death seven years before.

‘If she was devout,’ said Darrow, ‘suicide is unlikely.’ He had moved his chair around the table so that he could sit at my side.

‘But I can never be certain of that and meanwhile I feel her death was entirely my fault –’

‘I quite understand why you should feel that, Charles, but it’s not a judgement you’re qualified to make. We never know all the circumstances of a tragedy, and even if we did we might not have the wisdom to interpret them correctly.’

‘But the indisputable fact remains –’

‘The only fact which is beyond dispute here is that your wife is dead. God saw fit, for reasons which are hidden from us, to claim her after only a short life in the world, and you must accept this. Your guilt is making you say that this shouldn’t have happened, that God made a mistake, but this is arrogance. Say to yourself instead: “Jane is now beyond all pain and this is God’s will; I did make errors during my marriage but the best thing I can do now is not to wallow in guilt but to find out why I made these errors so that I can ensure they never happen again.” Then Jane’s death will have meaning.’

‘I did love her,’ I whispered. ‘I really did.’

‘Of course. That’s why you’re not sitting back and saying, “My marriage was a disaster but thank heaven I escaped!” And that’s why you must, in memory of her, reconstruct your life so that you can make the right marriage to the right woman. Your first task, I think, is to understand exactly why your marriage ran into such painful difficulties.’

‘But I do understand! It was because my real self was so unfit, so unworthy –’

‘Stop!’ said Darrow so incisively that I jumped. ‘That statement contradicts every word you’ve just uttered!’

I stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘In your narrative you made it quite clear that your true self didn’t get a chance to speak his mind until that final scene. Who was really running that marriage of yours?’

I could not answer.

‘Your marital difficulties didn’t begin in that final scene, did they? They began before you were married when you ran into financial trouble – and who got you into financial trouble by luring you into keeping up expensive appearances? Who kept you from seeking help by demanding that no one should know your marriage was in difficulty? Who seduced you into that disastrous headmastership and then insisted that you stayed there? Who came between you and your wife and prevented you from being honest with her? Who initiated this tragedy and then left your real self bearing the burden of all the guilt and the shame?’