Glittering Images (40 page)

‘He did write to me after the row. I can remember the letter word for word. He said, “Of course the stupid woman got the wrong end of the stick. She didn’t realize I’d praised you before I warned you about your faults and weaknesses. But praise should be sparing and I’m not here to flatter and pamper you to death. That’s not what fathers are for. My duty as your father was to bring you up to be a good straight decent man and once I’d done that – and I did – my next duty was to make damned sure you stayed that way. That’s why I regularly remind you of your faults and weaknesses. I’m not in this parenthood business to be loved and doted on. I’m in it to do my duty and be respected. You wouldn’t respect me if I allowed you to go to the dogs and I wouldn’t respect myself either.” Then he signed himself: “Your affectionate Father,” and added: “P.S. Visit us again soon if only to keep your mother happy.”

‘There wasn’t a word of apology. I wrote back and said I wasn’t going to return unless he apologized for scoffing at my vocation and calling me a fraud. He wrote back and said he was waiting for me to apologize for using filthy language in front of my mother and trying to hit him. I didn’t write back. So that was that. However, finally Lent arrived, and when I saw Father Reid – dear old Father Reid! – he said, “I think you’re a little bit in error here, Charles. I don’t think calling Mr Ashworth a bastard is compatible with the commandment “Honour thy Father”, and besides, if we’re mocked for our vocation we must always turn the other cheek and accept the suffering.”

‘Well, by that time I was feeling thoroughly miserable about my father so I hardly needed any extra pressure to coax me into writing to him again. I sent a friendly letter apologizing, inviting him to bring my mother to Cambridge for a visit and offering to put them both up at the Blue Boar. He wrote back saying he’d come so long as I wasn’t expecting him to attend any mumbo-jumbo in the Cathedral. That finished it. He was so damn rude. I didn’t write back. I just tried to put him out of my mind, but that wasn’t so difficult because I was very busy with my undergraduates, and even after they’d gone home for the Long Vacation I had yet another distraction because Lang arrived with his commission. And when I came at last to Starbridge … well, as soon as I met Jardine my father ceased to be important any more.

‘Jardine killed the pain. They all did, all those older men with no sons of their own who thought I was worthy of special attention. They killed the pain of knowing my father dislikes me. I’m just a duty as far as he’s concerned. I thought that if I was a success I’d finally make him like me – I’ve worked and worked and worked at being a success because I know success is the only language he really understands – but even though I try to talk to him in his own language he doesn’t hear me; in fact it’s almost as if he refuses to hear me – oh, how unjust it is! How unfair! It makes me feel so angry, Father, so angry, so hurt, so resentful, and all that anger goes round and round in my mind until I feel I can’t bear the pain of it any longer – and when the pain becomes unbearable I hate him, yes, I do –
I hate him
– oh God forgive me, I know it’s wicked but I’ve so often been so unhappy – so often when I was growing up I found myself hating him, so often when I was growing up I found myself being vilely jealous of my brother for being the favourite, and all that hatred and jealousy made me feel so guilty – oh, how I despised myself, because of course I do love my father, I do – I love him all the time I’m hating him but the whole relationship’s such a back-breaking burden and now I can’t carry it a second longer, I’ve got to put it down, I
want
to put it down but I don’t know how to do it, and that’s why you’ve got to help me, Father, you’ve got to help me,
you’ve got to help me
–’

‘I think there is probably in most lives a point at which private confession is both natural and salutary, very largely because it is felt to be the fitting and almost inevitable beginning of a new spiritual chapter in personal life.’

HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939
Retrospect of an Unimportant Life

I was tugging at my cross and suddenly as the clasp snapped the chain slid through my fingers. I gasped but Darrow scooped it up and thrust it back between my shaking hands. I could barely see. My throat seemed to be swelling so fast that my supply of air was impeded. I felt as if I were standing naked before an icy wind.

‘I can’t breathe –’

‘Oh yes you can,’ said Darrow, and shoved me back hard against the bench to straighten my spine. Automatically I cried out, my windpipe relaxed its spasm and the air flowed again into my lungs. ‘And again,’ said Darrow. He gave me another shake to help the next breath along; I felt as if I were being resuscitated from drowning.

‘Why am I so cold?’ I had begun to shudder from head to toe.

‘Shock. You opened the cupboard door and looked directly on the skeleton inside. Now, Charles –’ He sat down again beside me ‘– keep holding the cross and give me your free hand. I’m going to say a silent prayer, just as I did on the morning after your arrival, and this time I want you not only to continue taking those deep breaths but to think of the heat of those Palestinian summers when Our Lord exercised the famous charisms – preaching, teaching, healing … and all in the heat, all in the warmth, all in the sun.’

The silence fell, and gradually I found I could feel the sunlight on my face as I sat motionless on the bench. Behind my closed eyelids I saw the sun-baked Palestinian landscape, but then the scent of the herb-garden brought me back to England and for a brief moment I saw Jane smiling at me. I remembered I was working to give her death meaning by my own rebirth, and as I realized that all I now needed was courage I felt the warmth begin. It seeped through my hands to my arms, through my arms to my heart, through my heart to my mind and through my mind to my soul.

I opened my eves at exactly the same moment as Darrow opened his.

‘You heard, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes. Courage. A new life. And Jane was there.’

Darrow smiled but was silent and suddenly I was saying: ‘You saw her. You must have done. I know you did. Why don’t you admit –’

‘You mustn’t tempt me, Charles. Do you remember me telling you of the spiritual director who said, “Beware of those glamorous Powers”? It’s so easy to make a gift from God look like a charlatan’s parlour-trick … But now forget the parlour-tricks and look around you. Do you know where you are?’ And as I looked blankly at the herb-garden he added, ‘No, look in your mind. The strait gate is behind you; you’re in the middle of the narrow way at last.’

I sat there, outwardly calm but inwardly still shattered by the aftermath of shock, and it was a full minute before I was able to say, ‘Will he start fading away now?’

‘Not yet. We’re looking on the roots but they’re deeply embedded and we have to dig a little deeper before we can remove them successfully.’

‘But I’m going to be all right – you’re going to sort everything out –’

‘No, Charles,
you’re
the one who’s going to sort everything out. But only when you’re rested and fit.’ He took off his Abbot’s cross and gave it to me. ‘Put that on and let me take the one with the broken chain. I’ll get that repaired and you can have it back tonight.’ He paused as I thanked him but then he said casually, as if he could no longer resist the temptation to help the healing process by a flash of unorthodoxy: ‘That was a pretty locket Jane was wearing.’ And rising to his feet with all the showmanship of a conjuror who had just produced a rabbit from a hat, he sauntered forward to inspect the nearest bed of the herb-garden.

The effect – as no doubt he had anticipated – was to divert me entirely from my shock and to restore me at a stroke to normality. I jumped to my feet and evidently the rapid movement served to remind him that I might be liable to panic. At once he said, ‘I’ll get someone to sit with you,’ and I realized that despite his flamboyant parlour-trick he remained the careful priest, pleased with his healing skills but humble enough to realize that they should be supplemented by a more conventional care. ‘You shouldn’t be alone at the moment.’

‘I’m all right.’ I was still so enrapt by the display of his ‘glamorous Powers’ that I barely heard him. ‘Father, she’s happy, isn’t she?’ I said, but immediately I was overwhelmed with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, I know what happened. I wasn’t seeing her as she is – I was remembering her as she was, and you looked across and saw my memory.’ In shame I added, ‘Forgive me for sinking into the error of superstition, but I suddenly had a great urge to communicate with her.’

‘That’s a healthy sign.’ He showed no anger. ‘I suspect you’ve been suppressing all thought of her for years, so if you now seek to commune with her memory it suggests that the burden of guilt is beginning to lift.’

‘It’s because I’m at last doing something to put matters right – wiping out the man who made her unhappy –’

‘Yes, the glittering image has certainly taken a pounding today, but now you need time to recuperate. If you’re strong enough – and only if you’re strong enough – we’ll resume the attack this evening.’

That evening we exchanged crosses following the repair of the broken chain, and as he replaced the Abbot’s cross on his chest I thought how ill its lavish splendour accorded with his austere, occluded, tightly disciplined personality.

‘Well?’ he said as we sat down at the table. ‘How are you feeling after this morning’s haemorrhage?’

‘Haemorrhage!’

‘Is that an exaggeration? You lost a lot of emotional blood, and sometimes,’ said Darrow, embarking on another meticulous examination of his ring, ‘after an ordeal like that one can suffer a reaction. One can feel guilt and anger, guilt that one’s betrayed one’s most private secrets, anger that one’s been lured into speaking the unspeakable.’

We considered this possibility in silence but at last I said: ‘I do feel guilty – but not because I’ve told you my most private secrets. And I do feel angry – but not with you for luring me into self-revelation. I feel angry with myself because I wanted to give you a fair picture of my father yet I ended up by delivering that vile tirade. And I feel guilty because I failed to convey to you what a wonderful man he is and how much I admire and respect him.’

‘There was no failure,’ said Darrow. ‘You did convey those feelings clearly.’

‘I did? But at the end when I said I hated him –’

‘If all you felt was hatred you wouldn’t be here. You’d have walked away from him years ago and heaved a sigh of relief that you’d finally escaped from his clutches. But you can’t walk away, can you? During the past year you’ve tried but you’ve merely made yourself thoroughly miserable.’

‘It’s as if …’ I strained to identify the elusive words and at last ventured: ‘It’s as if he’s got some colossal hold over me.’

‘Of course. We’re very much at the mercy of those we love, and never more so than when those we love don’t love us quite as we would wish in return.’

‘But he doesn’t love me at all.’

‘Who’s “me”?’ said Darrow.

‘My true self. He doesn’t love and approve of me as I am, and that’s why –’

Darrow waited.

‘– that’s why I have to become someone else. But he doesn’t even like the glittering image!’

‘He respects him, though, doesn’t he? And so long as you’re slaving away fulfilling his definition of a successful man you stand a hope of hearing him say once in a while, “Well done, Charles!”’

‘Yes, but he thinks it’s all an act.’

‘This is where your father resembles Jardine. He has a knack of spotting a performance that doesn’t quite ring true, and so there are inevitably times when he sees straight past your glittering image and starts disapproving of you all over again – as he did during that last terrible quarrel.’

Shading my eyes with my hand I traced a line on the table and said, ‘He tore up my glittering image and rejected my other self beyond.’ Suddenly I could no longer see. I had to use both my hands to shade my eyes.

Darrow said: ‘That was a cruel thing to do, wasn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t his fault.’

‘No?’

‘No, it was my fault. If I hadn’t been so unfit and unworthy he wouldn’t have needed to disapprove of me so strongly. You see, he’s so straight, so upright, so decent – if only I could convey to you what a hero he is –’

‘Charles,’ said Darrow, ‘your father may indeed be a remarkable man in many ways, but if he’s at the root of your glittering image – if he consistently rejected your true self so that you were obliged to become someone else – if he was in any degree responsible for launching you on that road which finally resulted in you arriving here one night dead drunk and spiritually shattered – his status as a hero is very much open to debate.’

It had never occurred to me before that my father’s heroism could be debatable. I wrestled with this revolutionary idea for some time before saying firmly, ‘He can’t be entirely to blame.’

‘That seems fair. I must say, I entirely disapprove of the Freudian tendency to blame all a child’s troubles on his hapless parents … Very well, let’s assume you should share at least some of the responsibility for arriving here wrecked in the middle of the night. But how much of the responsibility should you shoulder?’

I could only say in despair, ‘All of it – I can’t blame my father for anything. If I wasn’t so unfit and unworthy –’