Glittering Images (56 page)

‘You bloody fool!’ said my father, scarlet with rage. ‘How dare you disobey me like that!’

‘Shut up!’ screamed my mother. ‘I’m sick of you being cruel to him just because he reminds you of his father!’

‘My father,’ I said, ‘is the one who’s standing here behaving like an irrational jealous child. Now listen to me, both of you –’

‘Never heard such colossal impudence in all my –’

‘Be quiet, Father, and listen to me. Alan Romaine –’

‘I will not have that man’s name mentioned in your mother’s presence!’

‘– ALAN ROMAINE
,’ I said, outshouting him, ‘has had a life which has often been profoundly unhappy – indeed I think it’s a pity you can’t both meet him so that you can discover for yourselves how fortunate you’ve been in comparison. However you won’t meet him because the last people on earth he wants to see again are Mr and Mrs Eric Ashworth.’

‘Charles –
Charles
–’

‘I’m sorry, Mother, but this is where the fantasy ends and the truth begins. Romaine doesn’t want to see you. What happened between you nearly destroyed him, and I’m quite sure that the last thing he wants is the resurrection of all those painful memories at some excruciating reunion.’

‘I don’t think your mother can stand you talking to her like this, Charles – you’ll kill her –’

‘Rubbish. I’m saving her a lot of pain by exploding this fantasy of hers that Romaine would be glad to see her again. Now the next fantasy I want to explode, Father, is that I’m a carbon-copy of Romaine. I’m not. I’m me. And the third fantasy I want to explode –’

‘I feel dreadfully faint, Eric,’ said my mother.

‘Here, have some of this filthy cocktail.’

‘Brandy – I must have brandy –’

My father obediently hurried to the brandy decanter. ‘Charles, get a glass from the cabinet and
don’t argue.
’

I extracted a suitable glass. ‘The third myth I want to explode –’

‘Shut up,’ said my father, grabbing the glass and slopping brandy into it, ‘or I’ll explode
you.
Here you are, darling,’ he said to his wife, thrusting the glass into her hands. ‘Don’t take any notice of that silly boy. He means well but he’s crashing around like a bull in a china-shop. It’s the shock. He’s not used to the idea of Romaine yet. Temporarily off his head.’

‘The next myth I want to explode while I’m temporarily off my head,’ I said, ‘is the myth that I’m going to turn my back on you and devote myself entirely to Romaine. I shan’t. Regardless of what happens between Romaine and me, you and Mother are my parents and I shan’t stop loving you just because –’

‘For God’s sake don’t start talking like a damned foreigner, Charles – no wonder your mother looks as if she’s about to puke!’

‘What’s wrong with talking about love?’

‘Nasty un-English sentimental behaviour –’

‘But wouldn’t it save such a lot of misunderstanding in the future if I now make it clear that I do love you both very much indeed –’

‘She’s going to puke, Charles, and by God, I don’t blame her. Quick – get the golf trophy – the silver bowl –’

‘Not the bowl!’ whispered my mother. ‘Ada’s just spent all morning polishing it –’

‘Please don’t bother to puke, Mother,’ I said, handing her the bowl in the certain knowledge that she would never dare ruin Ada’s hard work, ‘because if you think all this over carefully you’ll realize how much healthier it is to live in an atmosphere of honesty than in an atmosphere laden with lies, evasions and unexorcized ghosts. Besides, I think it’s time you both stopped thinking about how much you’ve suffered from the Romaine disaster and think about me for a change. I’ve suffered too, and now I want both Romaines put away – and when I say both Romaines I mean not just the real Romaine, that battered old doctor with the unhappy past, but the mythical Romaine, that glamorous doctor with the brilliant future that never happened. The mythical Romaine must be given a decent burial in your memories at last and the real Romaine must stay tucked safely out of sight in Starvale St James with his blonde wife and his double whiskies, because I’m not prepared to stand by any longer while he spoils my relationship with you and spoils your relationship with each other. He’s been hanging around this family quite long enough, and this is the moment when I insist that he departs. Out he goes this instant. Finish. The end. Now, I’m going down the garden with my dry martini and when I come back I shall expect to find you’ve both pulled yourselves together – for my sake, if not for your own. Come along. Nelson, you can come with me to inspect the tennis-court.’

And leaving my shattered parents speechless behind me I walked out of the house with the labrador at my heels and headed for the bottom of the garden.

In the end I was the one who vomited. Beyond the lawn I stepped behind the yew hedge and neatly disgorged my breakfast into a flowerbed. Nelson regarded me with interest but seemed unsurprised. I myself was astonished. I had not vomited from nervous tension since I had departed for my first term at prep school at the age of eight. Scattering the remainder of my dry martini, I kicked some earth over the mess, slumped down on the seat overlooking the tennis-court and lit a cigarette. I was wondering if the scene in the drawing-room had been a triumph or a disaster or merely a chaotic piece of bad taste verging on bathos, but I reflected that the only important question was whether I had communicated my message to my parents. I continued to smoke my cigarette and occasionally I shuddered. I wondered dimly how anyone ever survived their families.

I was just debating whether it was time to return to the house when I saw my father crossing the lawn, and as I drifted towards him I realized I now knew exactly how Romaine had felt when he had drifted into his drawing-room to meet me; I was outwardly casual but inwardly taut, exuding self-confidence but racked by the dread that the approaching scene might be a failure.

‘Glad to see you’re looking calmer after that shocking exhibition,’ said my father as we finally met by the net-post. ‘Encourages me to think you haven’t gone completely off your head. Now listen to me, Charles. Your mother and I have been talking things over and we take your point so there’s no need for you to be upset any more – and no need to keep shouting that you love us. Very embarrassing, that. Bad form.’

‘Yes, Father. I only wanted to make myself absolutely clear –’

‘Quite. Now this is what your mother and I have decided: we’ll all go on exactly as before. We won’t talk about it, of course –’

‘My dear Father –’

‘– but that’ll be because there won’t be any need to talk about it – everything’s been said. So although we’ll go on as before, everything will be different.’

‘Well, I suppose that does sound more promising, but –’

‘I’m sorry, Charles, but your mother and I are quite agreed that although we’re very glad you went off your head and spoke your mind we’d really much rather it didn’t happen again.’

‘But how are you and Mother going to get on when I’m not here? Don’t you think it would be better if –’

‘Are you going to have the unpardonable impertinence to tell us how to conduct our marriage? May I remind you that we’ve been at it for thirty-eight years so we must be doing something right! I know your mother very much better than you do, Charles, and I can tell you that the last thing she wants is to hear me dredging up the past in the name of honesty. What your mother wants,’ said my father severely, ‘is that you should show her a little extra kindness occasionally to make her feel she’s not fit for the scrap-heap now she’s pushing sixty. However you seem to have grasped that at last, thank God, so there’s nothing else I can say on that point. You obviously didn’t realize it earlier, but she felt lonely when you shut yourself up in your ivory tower, and of course when you refused to come home
I
got all the blame. Well, naturally I became depressed! Who wouldn’t be depressed if they had a wife who was miserable and a son who treated his parents as if they were fit for the dustbin?’

‘I really am very sorry about the estrangement, Father –’

‘Of course you are. So am I. If we weren’t both sorry we wouldn’t be here talking to each other. But Charles, if you really want to make amends for worrying me half into my grave, you’ll now wash your hands of that rotter Romaine before he ruins your life, wrecks your career and sends you straight to the dogs!’

‘Oh, good heavens –’

‘Well, what does the mad monk really say about Romaine, I’d like to know? I can’t believe he approves of this reckless excavation at Starvale St James, but on the other hand maybe he’s mad enough to approve of anything. Did he put you up to that scene just now?’

‘He told me to be firm, genuine, loving and truthful. Is that a crime?’

‘Nearly killed your mother. Felt a bit queasy myself, to tell you the truth. I think I’d better come to Cambridge after all and get this monk under control. He’s beginning to frighten the life out of me.’

‘What about your plants?’

My father stooped to pat Nelson. ‘Peter might look in on them for a day or two. Of course I’d have to leave him very careful instructions, but the plants can’t all die, can they? Some of them would be bound to survive.’

I recognized the unfamiliar note of optimism and knew another tide had turned. I too stooped to pat Nelson, but all I said was, ‘I’ll make the reservation at the Blue Boar.’

After lunch when my father had retired to his conservatory I said to my mother, ‘Forgive me for being so brutal earlier about Romaine, but I was in such a state trying to cope with Father.’

‘Yes, I realized that in the end.’

I put my arm around her and we sat in silence for a while. ‘Is Alan’s wife attractive?’ she said at last. ‘A blonde with a Lancashire accent sounds perfectly horrid, and I can’t imagine him being married to someone common!’

‘That’s because you can only picture him as he used to be. Mother, I do understand how much you must want to see him, but I honestly think –’

‘Oh, I don’t want to see him if he doesn’t want to see me,’ said my mother quickly. ‘That would be frightful, so humiliating.’

‘I’m sure that in many ways he would like to see you but perhaps he has a better grasp than you have of the pain involved. What would it really be like if you met him again? Would it be romantic? Or would it underline the tragedy and make even your cherished memories unbearable?’

She was silent, struggling to comprehend the situation in its entirety, and as I saw her set her fantasies aside at last I tried to find the words to comfort her.

‘At least if you remember him as he was,’ I said, ‘you still have your cherished memories.’

She nodded. ‘I think you saw the truth earlier when you talked of the two Alans. It’s as if the Alan I loved died and now today’s Alan is someone else altogether.’

‘Well, that’s a sad way of putting it, but –’

‘Life often is sad, isn’t it? But never mind, I had my great romance, nobody can take that away from me, and I still have you to remind me of it. Darling Charles,’ said my mother as I tightened my arm around her, ‘how very kind you were to Eric, treating him exactly as if he were your real father. No one realizes better than I do what a difficult man he is, but he’ll be quite all right, you know, so long as you show him a little kindness every now and then.’

I kissed her and promised to be kind.

My parents travelled to Cambridge by train on the last weekend in August and stayed at my expense at the Blue Boar. After lunch on Saturday my mother obediently retired to her room to rest while I drove my father to Grantchester; I had explained to her in private how important it was that my father should have a word with Darrow on his own.

‘We won’t stay long, will we?’ said my father restlessly as we left Cambridge. ‘I don’t want to stay long – in fact I wish now we weren’t going at all.’ And he added in his most fractious voice, ‘Can’t think why I let you talk me into this visit, Charles.’

‘Father, you volunteered to come of your own free will –’

‘Must have been off my head.’

We met Darrow in the Abbot’s Parlour, and when he took my father off to show him the garden I went to the chapel for ten minutes to pray. They rejoined me in the Parlour later; my father had an uncharacteristically tranquil look but Darrow was characteristically serene.

‘Interesting fellow,’ said my father afterwards as we drove back to Cambridge. ‘Served in the Navy. Nearly drowned at Jutland. Worked after the War in a prison where they hanged murderers. Doesn’t approve of capital punishment. Very interesting. Didn’t like being a monk at first. Said he hated being ordered around after all those years of being his own boss. He started out as a monk here in Grantchester but he got kicked out to their farm in Yorkshire because they thought he had too good an opinion of himself and needed to have his nose rubbed in the mud. He said he hated milking cows but liked being trained as a carpenter. I asked him why he stuck it and he said he knew it was the only way he could serve God once he didn’t have to provide for his children – he said it was one of those situations where a man feels he has absolutely no choice but to act in a certain way. Reminded me of when I decided to marry your mother. Interesting. Very interesting … Of course he’s off his head, but he’s off it in the most intriguing way. Did you know his son’s an actor?’