Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch
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and partly to pay me back for favouring the cuckoo in the nest. Michael thought he should come first. I greatly regretted that he knew Charley was only his half-brother, but once Charley had been told about Samson it had proved impossible to keep Michael in ignorance.
I knew all adoption agencies recommended that an adopted child should be told the truth at an early age, but I could never bring myself to tell Charley. I had convinced myself that the truth, an example of extreme clerical failure, was too unedifying to be divulged to a child, but I knew that eventually I would have to speak out and I knew exactly when that moment would come. Samson had left Charley his library, the gift to take effect on Charley’s eighteenth birthday. Samson’s widow was still alive, so Charley did not inherit the money until later, but the books were in storage, waiting to be claimed. Possibly I could have explained away this legacy as the generous gesture of a childless old man, but there was a letter. I knew there was a letter because Samson’s solicitor had spoken of it; he was keeping it in his firm’s safe for presentation along with the storage papers. Lyle said I had to get hold of the letter and give it to Charley myself. The solicitor hesitated, but after all, we were a clerical couple who could be trusted to behave properly. The letter arrived.
‘Steam it open,’ said Lyle, confounding his expectations.
We were at Cambridge at the time. It was 1956, the year before I was offered the Starbridge bishopric, and I was still the Lyttelton Professor of Divinity. Charley was away at school but due home on a weekend exeat in order to celebrate his birthday. We were breakfasting in the kitchen when the letter arrived. I remember feeling sick at the sight of Samson’s writing on the envelope, and this reaction startled me. A communication from Edward VIII, Jack Buchanan, Harold Larwood or Shirley Temple would never have induced feelings of nausea.
Meanwhile Lyle had refilled the kettle and was boiling some more water for the steaming operation.
I did manage to say strongly: ‘It’s quite unthinkable that I should steam open this letter,’ but Lyle just said: ‘If you won’t I will,’ and removed the letter from my hands. I was then told that after all I had done for Charley I had a right to know the contents, and somehow I found myself unable to argue convincingly to the contrary. Nausea is not conducive to skilled debate. Neither is fear, and at that point I was very afraid that my relationship with Charley – that just reward for my past suffering – would be damaged beyond repair by this potentially devastating assault from the past.
Lyle read the letter and wept.
I said: ‘It’s quite unthinkable that I should read a single word of it.’ But I did. I read one word. And another. And after that I gave up trying to put the letter down. As I read I automatically moved closer to the sink in case I was overcome with the need to vomit.
‘It’s all about how wonderful you are,’ said Lyle, unable to find a handkerchief and snuffling into a tea-towel.
‘How very embarrassing.’ This traditional public-school response to any situation which flouted the British tradition of emotional understatement was utterly inadequate but no other phrase sprang to mind at such an agonising moment. The grave, simple, dignified sentences skimmed past my eyes and streamed through my defences so that in the end I was incapable of uttering a word. I could only think: this is a very great letter from a very Christian man. But I had no idea what to make of this thought. I could not cope with it. Vilely upset I reached the signature at the bottom of the last page, dropped the letter on the draining-board and waited by the sink for the vomiting to commence, but nothing happened.
‘Well, you don’t have to worry, do you?’ I heard Lyle say at last. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
I suddenly realised that this was true. Weak with relief I picked up the letter and read it again. Samson had made no paternal claims. My role in Charley’s life was affirmed, not undermined. The writer assumed all responsibility for the past tragedy and said he quite accepted that he had been unfit to play any part in Charley’s upbringing, but he still hoped that Charley would accept the books and later the money as a gift. They came with no obligation to respect the donor. The writer realised he had no right to demand any benign response. He wanted above all to stress how immensely grateful and happy he was that Charley should have been brought up by …
I stopped reading, folding the letter carefully and put it back in the envelope. I did not want his praise. I did not want him offering Charley the kind of selfless love which expected nothing in return. And above all else I did not want him making my wife cry and reminding us both unbearably of the past.
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Very sporting of him not to upset the applecart.’ The dreadful middle-class banalities sounded hideously false but at least they were safe. The next moment I said: ‘He’s got no business coming back like this. He should stay locked up in the 1930s where he belongs.’ That was not safe at all. That was a most dangerous thing to say, indicative of some convoluted state which could never be allowed to see the light of day, but Lyle was coming to my rescue, Lyle was saying: ‘We’ll lock him up again. Once all this is over we’ll put him back in the 1930s where he belongs.’
And that was that.
Or was it?
V
I telephoned my spiritual director. In 1956 Jon had yet to become the recluse who refused to have a telephone in his home.
‘It occurred to me,’ I said, ‘that there’s a sound moral argument for destroying the letter. For the good of the family – and to save Charley distress –’
‘This is a very bad line,’ said Jon. ‘Could you say all that again? I don’t think I can possibly have heard you correctly.’
A long silence followed before I said: ‘I’m in such a state I can’t think straight. What on earth am I going to say to Charley?’
‘Believe me, I do understand how hard it will be for you to master all your ambivalent feelings.’
‘What ambivalent feelings?’
A second silence ensued. At last I said: ‘I don’t feel ambivalent towards Charley. He’s my reward now for responding to that back-breaking call from God to bring him up. I’m devoted to Charley. I’m proud of him.’
‘Then trust him to work out what he owes and to whom.’
‘But how much of the truth should I tell him?’
Jon said nothing.
‘Must I tell the whole truth?’ I said. The absolute truth?’
‘I’m sure you know at heart what the answers to all those questions are, Charles.’
I put down the receiver.
VI
Of course I forgot every word of my set speech. I discovered that my most important need was to keep talking – to impart the same information in a variety of different ways so that the sheer brutality of the truth was cocooned and smothered in excess verbiage. While I was speaking I was conscious that Charley, who was small and slim and looked younger than his eighteen years, was becoming smaller and slimmer, almost as if he were returning to the childhood he had so recently left. I half-thought he would interrupt me – in the end I was yearning for him to interrupt me and express all the normal emotions of incredulity, amazement and horror – but he said nothing. It was as if his volatile temperament had been frozen by the blast of an icy wind. Pale and still, he regarded me blankly with his lambent, amber eyes.
‘… and naturally you’ll want to know more about him. That’s why –’ I heard the lie coming but found myself powerless to stop it ‘– I’m glad he’s written you this letter.’ I managed to 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.