Absolute Truths (27 page)

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’MEMO TO GOD: Please excuse my spiritual stupidity and
show me the way forward. But make sure you spell the way out
to me very clearly because otherwise I shan’t understand.’

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*

‘
16th November, 1963. I’ve reread what I wrote yesterday. What
a muddle! And God must have thought me rather impertinent at
the end. Never mind. Soldier on. I’ve just tried praying for Venetia,
but I can’t believe it’ll do her any good. However,
I
feel better.
Interesting. I suppose if one’s powerless any activity, even prayer,
is better than doing nothing, and – wait a moment. I’m not just
powerless to help Venetia. I’m also powerless in regard to my
other problems. Perhaps I should pray about them too. Of course
I’m always praying for Charles and the boys and our life as a
family, but that’s routine, like brushing my teeth, and I’m not
really
praying,
not actively trying to open up my mind and will to
God and begging for enlightenment so that the situation can be seen in the light of truth and changed. If you name the demons
you gain power over them, as they used to say in the old days. So (metaphorically speaking, of course) I have to uncover the names
of the demons here so that they can be conquered and cast out.
Or in other words, I have to uncover the truth because the truth
will give me power over all the illusions – the truth will set me
free.

‘
MEMO TO GOD : It looks as if you’re calling me to pray, but
I can’t help thinking this is very eccentric of you as I have no
obvious gift for prayer. Make it very clear, please, if I’m on the
wrong track, because I don’t want to waste either your time or
mine.’

* *
*

‘
17th November, 1963. I keep thinking about prayer, although I
can’t decide whether this is an indication that I’m going senile or
that God’s sending some sort of signal. When I passed that brute
of a Cathedral today I thought: perhaps I should pray for it. (I’ll
be praying for everything at this rate!) Why should I have this
urge to pray for the Cathedral? I was thinking of Stephen and
Charles and their hopeless relationship as dean and bishop, and
suddenly I wondered if the Devil had got into the Cathedral back
in the 1930s, when poor Alex was bishop, and had never been
permanently ejected — with the result that every so often he (the
Devil) comes back and creates havoc, chewing people up left, right
and centre.

‘
Do I really believe in the Devil? No. But I do believe in the
dark forces of the human mind and how they can be projected
outwards to blight other people. Can these forces also blight build
ings? And
even
if they do,
is
it really possible to cleanse such
buildings by prayer? That sounds a bit dubious to me. I can see
prayer working when humans pray for humans; it’s a sort of
mind
over
-matter, extra-sensory-perception activity, which is why that
awful old monster Jon Darrow’s so good at it. But how can prayer
affect a building, which has no mind? But maybe buildings have
spirits. No, that’s animism. It’s humans who have spirits. But
humans do inhabit buildings. And if all creation is a unity .. .

‘
No, I really must be going peculiar, speculating about such odd
things. I do hope it’s not the onset of senility, but at least it can’t
be the onset of the menopause. (Thank God for large mercies.)

‘
MEMO TO GOD:
I’m
praying away but I still can’t quite
believe this is what you want me to do — and when I say
me
I
mean ME, Lyle, not Mrs Bishop, the fabulous clerical accessory, and not Mum, the fabulous clerical mother. If each
human being
is created for a special purpose in your plan, then by all means
show me what my purpose is at this stage of my life so that I can
do it, but can it really be prayer? Honestly? Surely
I’m
better
equipped to do something more interesting and rewarding?’

* * *

‘
18th November, 1963. No reply from God, of course. But what
did I expect? A telegram on a silver salver borne by an angel?
‘Acting on the principle that I should soldier on, since it’s better
to do something than nothing, I made the decision to get up early
so that I can do my praying while Charles is reading his theology.
I don’t like getting up early but it’s the only time when peace and
quiet are guaranteed, and if I’m going to soldier on with the
praying I must at least try to do it properly.

‘
I’m still thinking about Venetia and wishing for the umpteenth
time that I had a daughter — which is so silly, I know, because I
couldn’t have coped with a third child and anyway I’m sure I’d
have been madly jealous of her later when she was flouncing
around being gorgeous and attracting droves of young men. Also,
being incorrigibly sentimental about young girls, Charles would
have pampered her to death, just as he’s pampered Charley,
under the mistaken delusion that pampering means you’re a good
parent.

‘
I know why Charles does this. It’s because he doesn’t think
he
was
pampered enough by his father when he was little, but actually
my sympathies lie entirely with Eric, trying to give Charles a sen
sible upbringing while that awful Helen, who I thought was the
last word in mindless femininity, spoilt him rotten.

°The irony is that if you dig deep enough into Charles’s convo
luted psyche, you
realise
that he found his mother very tiresome
once he was grown up but Eric he respected and admired. Yet
Charles is so gripped by this compulsion not to make Eric’s "mis
takes" that he’s lost sight of the fact that Eric did a tremendous
job in difficult circumstances. After all, if he hadn’t, Charles would
hardly have made this huge
success
of his life; he’d be lying on a psychiatrist’s couch and sobbing that Helen had converted him
into a "mother’s boy", but anyone less like a "mother’s boy" than Charles, who’s a tough, brave survivor, is hard to imagine. Good
old Eric. He was a tricky old bastard in some ways, but I quite
liked him.

‘
I prayed for Charles today. I mean, I didn’t just say: "Please,
God, bless my husband," like some lobotomised clerical wife. I
shouted in my head: "HELP HIM, HELP HIM!" And I thought
about this ghastly relationship with Charley — yes, CHARLEY,
not Michael — and I tried to set it out neatly before God, but it
was all such a muddle I gave up.

‘
How do I tell Charles that if you love a child wisely you don’t
pamper it? Answer: I can’t. He’d get upset at the implication that his love for Charley is out of alignment, in some hidden way not ringing true. Charles thinks
I’m
the one who doesn’t love Charley
properly just because I don’t smother him in gooey behaviour, but
Charley’s so emotional that the last thing he needs is a parent
being emotional back. I know I’m austere with Charley, but that’s
not because I don’t love him properly; it’s because I do. He often
irritates me enormously, but all children irritate their parents some
times, that’s normal. What’s not normal is for the parent to be
forever radiating sweetness and light no matter how much the
child plays up. I adore Michael, but even Michael I never allowed
to get away with bad behaviour when he was young.

‘
I actually think that in my own peculiar way I’m a good mother.
It nearly killed me, bringing up those two boys, but if there were
exams for parenthood I’d pass them. Charles, I know, thinks I’m
not really cut out for motherhood just because I don’t slop around
being sentimental and effusive like
his
mother, but he’s blind to the truth — which is that he’s the one who’d have a hard time
passing the parenthood exams. Can I ever tactfully point this out
to Charles? No. He’d never believe me.

‘
The ironic part is — more irony — that although Charles and
Michael don’t get on at the moment and although Charles thinks
this
is the relationship which has gone profoundly adrift, the truth is that the two of them deep down — DEEP down — are comfort
able with each other. By that I mean they have a relationship that’s
real, not phony. It doesn’t matter that Charles yells and screams
at Michael and Michael yells and screams back — or at least it does
matter, it’s frightful, especially for me, but it doesn’t alter the fact
that they have a blood relationship which can’t be broken, they’ll
always be deeply connected, and one day, if Charles doesn’t wreck
everything by being so utterly STUPID, they’ll wind up being
friends.

‘
But Charles and Charley don’t have this real relationship. I don’t quite know what Ihey do have, but it’s not
real.
No, wait a
moment, maybe it is real, but it’s got nothing to do with
fatherhood. Charles behaves like a supremely over-indulgent godfather, or perhaps like some ultra-benevolent Victorian guardian
(e.g. John Jarndyce
in
Bleak House).
But what does Charles really think of Charley?

‘
That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and I don’t
know the answer. Maybe Charles doesn’t know the answer either.
Charles is so convoluted sometimes, and the whole problem is
compounded by the fact that we never talk about Charley’s natural
father apart from alluding to him casually every now and then,
just to reassure ourselves we can mention him without flinching
— he’s been swept under the rug, otherwise known as the pseudo
nym, and covered up. I don’t approve of all this covering up — we
ought to discuss him freely among ourselves, but Charles says
Charley would get upset. I feel like saying: "Oh yeah?" although
of course I never do. The truth is that Charley only gets upset
because he senses Charles gets upset — or in other words, it’s
Charles who can’t cope with this skeleton in the family cupboard,
and we’re all, in our different ways, reflecting his convoluted,
unacknowledged emotions.

‘
How can I ever begin to tackle Charles about this? He’d simply deny everything and think I was round the bend. Sometimes I feel
I’d like to discuss him with the old monster, but Jon, I’m sure,
would plead the secrecy of the confessional and avoid a discussion.
Or maybe Jon too would think I was round the bend. I can never
quite decide whether Jon’s a spiritual genius or a complete charla
tan — maybe he’s capable of being both. He certainly glued Charles
together in 1937 and he certainly helped Charles back to a normal
life after the war, but maybe Charles would have got better anyway,
regardless of who was around to help him. The trouble is I don’t
like Jon and he doesn’t like me. Don’t know why. It seems to be
just one of those irrational antipathies — or maybe sex is at the
bottom of it somewhere. What a wrecker he must have been when
he was young, mesmerising women with those cold grey eyes of
his but never fundamentally committing himself to anyone but
God! Nasty. But never mind the past. The situation in the present
is that I can’t ask him for help here and he wouldn’t give it to me
even if I asked. Forget him.

‘
MEMO
TO GOD: Please
grant Charles more self-knowledge
somehow. I don’t know if my prayers for him will do any good,
but at least I can hope that they will, and so long as I can hope,
I can beat back that terrible feeling of powerlessness. So I shall go
on praying, but please send me instructions about how I can pray
as effectively
as possible.’