Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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hold out the envelope with a steady hand. ‘Let him speak for himself,’ I said, ‘and then I’ll answer all your questions as truthfully as I can.’
Despite this dubious conclusion I believe in retrospect that my speech was very far from disastrous. I had reassured Charley about my feelings for him; I had said nothing adverse about Samson, and I had paved the way for the necessary question-and-answer session. However unfortunately Charley was not at that moment interested in Samson. He was much too busy trying to digest the fact that his parents had spent eighteen years deceiving him about a fundamental aspect of his identity.
Ignoring the letter which I was holding out to him he said in a voice which shook: ‘I should have been told from the beginning.’
At once I tried to adjust my approach. ‘I’m very sorry. I assure you we did consider it. But the trouble was –’
‘How could you have allowed me to believe a lie? You! The man who always preaches the importance of truth!’
‘I know how you must feel – I know how it must look – but –’
‘I think you and Mum have behaved absolutely disgustingly and I just want to go away and be sick!’
That concluded the conversation. Scarlet with emotion he rushed upstairs to his bedroom where he locked the door and refused to speak to either of us. Eventually Lyle lost her nerve and shouted: ‘I don’t care how vile you are to me but don’t you dare be vile to Charles after all he’s done for you!’ but when even this unwise reproof produced no response she turned to me and demanded, tears streaming down her face: ‘Where’s the letter? He’s got to read it.’
That was when I realised this harrowing scene must have been clearly visualised by Samson who had then done all he could to give us a helping hand. Or in other words, the clerical failure had behaved like a wise, compassionate priest, setting his own feelings aside in order to try to ensure the survival of the family, whereas I … But I could not quite work out how I had behaved. I only knew that I had always acted towards Charley with the very best of intentions.
‘The kind that pave the road to hell,’ muttered Lyle, shoving Samson’s letter under the locked bedroom door.
More agonising minutes passed. We went away. We waited. We returned. We banged futilely on the panels. We took it in turns to beg him to let us in. At last, egged on by Lyle and feeling nearly demented with anxiety, I fetched a screwdriver, opened up the lock and forced my way into the room. It was empty. Charley had made a rope of sheets and escaped through the window. The letter was lying unopened on the floor.
No mere words could describe the sheer horror of the next few hours, so I shall merely record our ordeal as tersely as possible. First of all I hauled up the sheets before they could be spotted by our neighbours. Then we began our search, but enquiries at the station and bus terminal proved fruitless.
At one stage I was in such despair that I said, ‘Supposing he’s tried to kill himself by jumping into the Cam?’ but Lyle, hiding her terror behind an ice-cool façade, answered: ‘If he leapt into the river he’d make damn sure there were plenty of people around to haul him out.’
We returned home to sweat blood and plot our next move, but we could think of nothing to do except wait by the telephone. It seemed too soon to notify the police. However as the hours passed and no contrite call came I was obliged to notify the headmaster that Charley would not be returning to school that evening. I was tempted to lie by saying he was ill, but I knew I had to tell a story which bore some resemblance to the truth in case the absence lasted some time, so I said that Charley had run away after a family disagreement. When the headmaster had recovered from his astonishment he was so kind that I had difficulty in sustaining the conversation, but I did say I would take his advice to call the police.
More appalling conversations followed. The policemen clearly felt they were being troubled unnecessarily and said they were sure Charley would turn up, probably sooner rather than later. No sooner had they departed than a neighbour dropped in, saw the uneaten birthday cake in the kitchen and demanded an explanation. The grapevine began to hum. The local paper got hold of the story. Garish headlines screamed: ‘PROFESSOR’S SON VANISHES, SUICIDE OR SNATCH?’ We fobbed off our friends’ enthralled enquiries by saying we needed to keep the telephone line open, but some of them still insisted on calling in to commiserate with us. The schadenfreude generated by a clergyman’s son who goes off the rails is massive indeed.
I was just thinking how very pleasant it would be to spend a week in the nearest mental hospital, far from this repulsively madding crowd, when Jon rang from his home near Starbridge and said: ‘He’s here. He’s unharmed. Be sure you bring the letter when you come to fetch him.’
I drove through the night with the letter in my breast pocket, and when I reached Jon’s home the next morning I found Charley sitting on the steps of the porch as he waited for me. Halting the car I jumped out and rushed over to him and when he muttered: ‘You didn’t have to drive through the night,’ I shouted: ‘What the hell else did you expect me to do?’ – not the mildest of replies, but I was almost passing out with relief. At that point Charley broke down and began to whimper, but I grabbed him and held him so tightly that both of us were unable to do more than struggle for breath. Eventually Jon appeared and announced, rather in the manner of a tactful butler, that breakfast was available in the dining-room.
When Charley and I were alone together he told me he had completed the long journey by walking and by thumbing lifts. Having little money he had slept under hedges and survived on a diet of Mars bars. ‘The whole journey was hell,’ he concluded morosely, ‘but I wanted to see Father Darrow. I thought he’d know about everything and I’m sure he does, but he said you could explain it all better than he could.’ He hesitated but added: ‘He also said I should read the letter because letters from the dead should be treated with respect.’
I handed over the letter. Charley pocketed it and embarked upon his breakfast. He ate two fried eggs, a sausage, three rashers of bacon and a fried tomato while I toyed with half a piece of toast. Eventually I withdrew to the cloakroom where I at last achieved my ambition to vomit. On my departure from the dining-room I had heard the faint noise of tearing paper as Charley at once opened the envelope.
When I rejoined him I found that the envelope had disappeared.
Charley’s careful comment was: ‘That was an interesting letter. I might let you read it one day.’
Not surprisingly, I found myself unable to reply.
‘I was thinking,’ said Charley, ‘what a useful thing it was that Mum took me to see him – I mean him – back in 1945 when I was old enough to remember him properly. If I hadn’t seen him, I might always have wondered what he was like.’
I managed to agree that this was quite possible.
‘He seemed to like you a lot,’ said Charley at last. ‘Of course he took the blame for everything, and that was right, wasn’t it? You were the hero of the story and he was … well, what was he exactly? I can’t quite make him out. Was he a villain? Or a fool? Or a tragic figure felled by hubris like Charles Stewart Parnell? Or …’ His voice trailed away.
The pause lengthened.
Eventually Charley said in a rush: ‘Of course if you’d rather I didn’t ask any questions –’
‘But of course you must ask questions!’ I said, finally summoning the strength to behave as I should. ‘And of course I must answer them as truthfully as possible!’
But I think I knew, even as I expressed this admirable intention, that the absolute truth about my wife’s lover was still quite beyond my power to articulate.
‘Bad pride is negative; it blinds us to truths of fact or