Absolute Truths (81 page)

‘
I did a terrible thing to you,’ I said to Charley. ‘I deprived you
of your father. But that’s all over now, all quite finished, because
this is the moment when I give him back.’ I sank down on the
nearest chair. My hands were shaking. My throat was tight. My
eyes were hot. But my mind was very clear.

‘But Dad -’

‘
Shut up. Just listen. I l
ied to
you. I fed you a series of half-truths,
omissions, evasions and distortions because I’m a jealous man and
I didn’t want to share you with him, I wanted you all to myself,
I wanted you to be my reward - oh God, how utterly revolting
all that sounds when it’s finally spoken aloud -’

‘
Dad, honestly there’s no need to say any more.
If
you were to
go upstairs and have a
little
rest -’

‘
Be quiet. Listen to
me, listen to
me,
LISTEN TO ME -’

‘
All right, all right -’

‘
Your father was a great man - and he was
a
good man.
If you’re
like him, you can be proud.’

‘
Proud?’

‘
PROUD!’ I shouted. I reached out and pulled him down until
he was sitting in the chair next to mine. Then I repeated: ‘He was
a good man.’

Charley, who still looked
as
if he might be witnessing a nervous
breakdown, said faintly: ‘But how can you possibly say he was
good when he betrayed his ordination vows like that?’

‘
He loved your mother. He would never otherwise have betrayed
them.’

‘
But surely it was unforgivable! A married priest - all that sin -’

‘
We have to forgive. We have to forgive because in the end we
all need to be forgiven.’

‘Yes, but -’

‘
I couldn’t forgive him,’ I said, ‘and look what it did to us all.’
He was silenced. Now indeed I had his full attention. He had
realised I was not having a nervous breakdown. He had recognised
the ring of truth. Hardly breathing he sit bolt upright on the very
edge of his chair.

I said: ‘After Lyle and I were married I knew she still loved your
father. I hated that. I hated him. I suspect too that I had hated
him ever since I found out she was his mistress, but I refused to
own up to it because good priests don’t go around hating people.
I rold myself I still liked him, I told myself I felt sorry for him, I
even told myself I’d forgiven him, but that was all lies. Reality lay
quite elsewhere.

‘
One can’t forgive by an act of will in order to affirm one’s
self-esteem. The power to forgive comes from God, and in this
case I made no effort to align my mind with his so that the power
could connect and flow. I just aligned my mind with my own
ego. I thought:
I
want a reward for all I’ve been through,
I
want
compensation,
I want
to be hero-worshipped by this child - I
retreated into a self-centred nest feathered by my jealousy and
hatred, but I didn’t acknowledge it, couldn’t acknowledge it, it
was too shaming - and how very easy it is to bury unpalatable
truths which we’re too ashamed to own.

‘
Lyle did love me by the time I got back from the war, and once
I was more secure I did become more aware that I wasn’t lined
up right with the past. I began to talk to Jon about Samson. I had
to convince us both that I’d forgiven him and that no ambiguous
feelings existed, but although I brainwashed myself into believing
Samson was just a fading memory, I still wasn’t at peace with him.
I longed to forget him altogether, but how could I when you were
always around? Poor little Charley! I vowed over and over again
that I wasn’t going to take it out on you ... But of course I did,
in my own convoluted way. I can see that now.

‘
Lyle saw it clearly at the end. She saw I wasn’t behaving like a
father to you but like a benign guardian. And why? Because you were the ward who had to be handled with kid gloves so that you
never suspected the truth - all my ambiguity, all my hostile feelings
- but I did you no favours, did I, because unconsciously you sensed
there was a side to me which I was hiding from you and you began
to be afraid about what the concealment meant.

‘
I should have sorted out the mess when you were eighteen, but by that time I’d tied myself up in such a knot that I was incapable
of an honest conversation with you on the subject. In fact I had
the most dishonest conversation with you; I distorted the truth
because I was so afraid you’d turn away from me to him. It was
so gratifying forme to be idolised by this dutiful son who shared all my opinions and could hardly wait to follow me into the Church! I
thought: I’m not letting go of this, it’s owing to me after all I
went through, picking up the pieces after that bastard almost
wrecked my wife’s life.

‘
When I was thinking those sort of thoughts I forgot that back
in 1937 I’d felt called by God to take you
on. I
should have known
that if the call was genuine —
as
of course it was — I didn’t have
to carve out a reward for myself; I could trust God to reward me
in his own way and in his own time. But the trouble was my
jealousy and hatred of Samson cut me off from God in this particu
lar area of my life, and I lost touch with reality.

‘
Of course your fanatical attempts to make me happy sprang not
from hero-worship but from insecurity. You knew things weren’t
right — and what a script I handed you, didn’t I, on your eighteenth
birthday, what an appalling role I gave you to play! Signalling that you should reject this villain who had fathered you — underlining
the importance of modelling yourself on me — riding roughshod
over the person you were in order to convert you into the person
I wanted you to be ... It was intolerable. No wonder everything’s ended in disaster, but now listen to me, Charley, listen. When I
told you Samson was a weak man doomed to make a mess of his
life, a moral failure and a blighted individual, I spoke out of hatred,
jealousy and self-centredness. How I slandered him! But I’ll lie
about him no more. I’m going to tell you the truth, the whole
truth, the ABSOLUTE TRUTH about this man I’ve wronged for
so long.

‘
For a start he wasn’t weak. He was very strong, as tough as
they come, of course he was, he’d overcome a difficult background and worked hard to enjoy a successful career. And he wasn’t weak
in his personal life either; there was never any suggestion that he
and his wife might part, even though they were fundamentally
mismatched. Perhaps he felt he had a moral obligation to stay with
her after the disaster with Lyle, but whatever he felt, he never
finally turned his back on that marriage, and the decision to stay
must have required considerable strength of character.

‘
And so we come to your mother. Charley, he wasn’t just a
foolish man, going through a crisis of middle-age by becoming
infatuated with a much younger woman. He was a clever, percep
tive, truthful man who had to face the fact that he’d met the
right woman fatally late. The solution he devised to this agonising
dilemma was the wrong one, but it was
his
decision, his alone,
and if you ever face such a dilemma — which God forbid — you might well decide to resolve the problem in a very different way.
The tragedy which overtook him wasn’t something that can be
inherited. It was particular to that man in that particular situation.
I must also tell you — and this is hard, but I know Lyle would
urge me on — that Samson didn’t create the tragedy single-handed.
Your mother was a very determined young woman and she wanted
him. I can quite see how Samson found her irresistible. I found
her irresistible myself.

‘
So let me repeat: there’s no way you can inherit his tragedy. But let me speak up now about what really was there to be inherited —
let me speak up at last about all those attractive qualities about
which I’ve been so silent for so long.

‘
He had great vitality, immense zest, a first-class brain — he had
wit and style and charm. He was fun! I did like him at first, and
I admired him too. It was true he had
a
volatile temperament; he
could be tactless, hot-tempered and downright rude, but we all
have our faults and he was certainly not unaware of his.

‘
He was a devout Christian — I know I’ve always referred to him dismissively
as a
liberal and a Modernist, but in fact he didn’t like
labels and thought of himself
as
independent of any church party.
If he often seemed radical it was because his passion for truth led
him to explore even Ihe most dubious theological avenues, but
what he believed at the end I’m not sure; Lyle said he became
more conservative when he
was
dying. Perhaps he was always at
heart conservative but enjoyed shocking the ecclesiastical establish
ment into rethinking their entrenched views. I believe he would
have approved of you being an Evangelical — but he wouldn’t have
approved of an Evangelical with a narrow mind who paid too
much attention to conformity and not enough to intellectual and
spiritual adventurousness. He would have wanted you to hold fast
to the truth by stepping outside rigid religiosity and being flexible, forward-looking and bold.

‘
He would have been proud of your gifts for preaching and
teaching – those great gifts you’ve inherited from him. He would
have been proud of
you,
and if he’d brought you up you would have been proud of him for being a very gifted man who did
a
lot of good in his life – no, don’t judge him only for his faults!
That wouldn’t be doing him justice. That wouldn’t be right at all.’

I paused. I was so exhausted that I had to pray for a final burst
of strength but my prayer was immediately answered. I looked
straight at Charley and said: ‘You see what he was really saying in
that letter he wrote you? You see how much he cared? He didn’t
want to upset you further, so he praised me, exonerated your
mother and took the blame upon himself. A lesser man would
have tried to justify himself and emphasise the claim he had on
you, but he didn’t want to tear you apart so he put your happiness
before your good opinion of him – he did everything right. It
was
I who messed everything up by putting my welfare before yours.

‘
So don’t waste any more time emulating
me.
It was Samson
who showed the courage while I took the coward’s way out, Sam
son who was self-sacrificing while I was self-centred, Samson who
put his faith in truth, no matter how damaging to himself, while
I retreated into
lies
and self-deception. And yet you mustn’t waste
time trying to emulate him slavishly either. You must accept
him
and own him – but not in order to copy him; you must accept him and own him in order to be at peace with him and so win
the fr
ee
dom to become yourself. He
and I were clergymen for yesterday. You have to be a clergyman for tomorrow – "For the
old order changeth,"‘ I said with my last ounce of strength, "yield
ing place to new," and we know that "All things work together
for good to them that love God."‘

I stopped. There was a profound silence. Then I heard myself
murmur vaguely as an afterthought: ‘How strange that the tragic
death of a young woman should give me the chance to put right
my past mistakes.’ I could no longer look at him by this time.
Levering myself to my feet I took a
glass
from the cupboard and
moved to the sink for water, but my grip was so uncertain that
the glass slid from my hands to smash upon the floor.