39

I decided to spend the week in Folkestone. On Tuesday morning I rang The Copper Kettle to inform Mrs Watson my mother was ill. Mrs Watson was extremely sympathetic. “Well, now,” I said to myself, as I came away from the telephone, “who’d ever have believed that?” Not a profound thought but a salutary one.

Mum stayed in bed for the first part of the week, only coming downstairs for a little in the evenings, to have her supper and a game of cards. Aunt Clara and I shared the shopping, the housework and the cooking….and, in a quiet way, enjoyed ourselves. My mother mainly read, or listened to the radio, or slept. The rest transparently did her good. No one could have said she was the essence of jollity for the remainder of the week but at least she seemed content to be pottering around the town with the pair of us: having coffee and a pastry, browsing through antique shops, strolling down to the beach. On the Thursday we went to the pictures. On the Friday we went into Canterbury.

It was while we were in Canterbury, sitting over lunch, that Aunt Clara—supposed to be studying the menu for a sweet—nervously cleared her throat.

“Norma, dear, I’ve been making up my mind about something. I think I may shortly go to live at The Elms … that is, if it’s all right with you, of course? You know I have a friend there, a Mrs Maxton? She says they sometimes get a vacancy and that it’s really very nice. Besides—living there—I could hardly be closer to home, could I?”

“But Clara. These things cost money.”

“Yes, I know, dear, but I have a little put by … even if at times I have been living just a shade beyond my means. In my day, you see, we were always encouraged to save. So I’m positive I can manage—especially if I share a room. Perhaps Mrs Maxton might be happy to share with me.”

“But that won’t be necessary,” I intervened. “I’ve got some money. I can help you. Five thousand pounds,” I added, quietly.

And as I spoke, I was thinking: This must be right. Please make it right.

“Five thousand pounds?” repeated my mother, staring at me.

“A legacy,” I said. “From Oliver Cambourne. The painter. The fellow I told you about. He died last year.”

My mother touched my hand. The gesture was so quick it might have been an accident. She might almost have been brushing away a crumb.

“He must have been very kind,” she said. “He must have been a good man.”

“Like you, John,” said Aunt Clara. “Just like you!” It was doubtful, though, how much of that last brief exchange she had actually understood—her mind was too full of The Elms and Mrs Maxton. “But did you say you would lend me money? I could never allow you to do that, you know.”

Yet I felt confident that I’d be able to arrange something. With either the matron or the management. My aunt need never find out.

Nor my mother, come to that.

The following day, as I’d suggested, I took them to the local rep. The play was ‘Private Lives’, which we’d all seen before, but that didn’t mean we didn’t enjoy it. Far from it. From time to time I glanced round at my mother’s and aunt’s faces; and what I saw gave me a wealth of satisfaction.

We had our meal at a Chinese restaurant and it was well past twelve when we got home. But I gave them their presents then: a pair of Dresden figures for my mother; a Copeland cup and saucer for my aunt. And the next morning, while my mother stayed behind preparing dinner, Aunt Clara and I went to church. “It’s such a pity Norma couldn’t come,” she said to me after the service. “I believe she’d have enjoyed it.” I waited for the inevitable reference to Violet. “Of course, it was always so much easier in my time, when every household had its parlourmaid and cook. But, these days, who can afford that type of luxury? Talking of luxury—let’s go and have some coffee! Do you think you could manage a doughnut, without letting it spoil your lunch?”

In the train that evening I reread Oliver’s letter. Yet again. The previous night I’d had another vivid dream about him, the first since that sun-splashed idyll with the harsh awakening. But this time its effect wasn’t depressing; the more oddly, since it involved the night of his suicide—in it I actually saw him jump. But the bridge he jumped from was no longer across the Thames. It was the little bridge at Biarritz leading from the beach to the big rock on which the Virgin Mary stood. And in my dream the statue came to life and lovingly bent down to scoop him from the water.

There had been a time when he believed.

Couldn’t a remnant of that belief somehow have survived? A dim, far-off memory of a hypnotic pair of eyes that was utterly all-seeing, utterly all-forgiving…? I remembered his bitterness—his disappointment, almost; his disillusion—when speaking of Derek Bentley. As an adult—as an adult not thinking back to childhood—did you still feel disappointment in Santa?

I put the letter away. I had kept it on me, in one pocket or another, since receiving it.

“Oh, Lord, I believe. Tentatively as yet but—help thou my unbelief—I’m sure it’s going to grow! And let me believe sufficiently for the pair of us: for Oliver even more than for myself. Probably that sounds patronizing. But who cares—I’m sure that Oliver won’t—and don’t they say two wrongs can make a right? It also sounds illogical.”

At first I must have frowned, in the sheer effort of concentration. “Make it all right for Oliver!”

There was another point, though. Suicide. Regarded as the one cardinal sin. The sin said to sever even the best of us from God.

But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe in a creator who hadn’t infinite understanding, who wasn’t prepared to make endless allowances for the balance of the mind—what was it now?—being temporarily disturbed. I didn’t mean to set conditions. (Well, yes, in a way I suppose I did.) It was simply that God’s withholding his mercy at such a time would have been indefensible.

“Make it all right for Oliver.”

I imagined I was asked a question.

Even if you find—the thought now took coherent form, although ever since my first reading of the letter I’d done my utmost not to let it—even if you find that you would have to share him with Edmund?

Yes, of course. Even if I found that I would have to share him with Edmund.

Or even if Edmund should have him entirely to himself?

Yes! Yes! Just so long as Oliver is there!

I caught sight of my reflection in the window but immediately turned away.

Then smiled.

The smile broadened.

“You’ve always known that one day I’d be asking you. Begging you … And I shall go on begging you; I shall drive you mad with my persistence. You’ll say in the end, ‘Oh, no—that Wilmot! I never knew how quiet it was until he decided to start on me…’ Make it all right for Oliver!”

I had written to Mrs Cambourne, naturally. But a few days after I got back from Folkestone I decided to pay her another visit. And this time, following a hunch, I again threw some basics into my pigskin suitcase.

On the way into Surrey, halting at a traffic light, I happened to glance at my watch.

Well, how many times in the course of a day does the average person glance at his watch? Possibly a dozen? But now, for some reason, that glance took me right back to my nineteenth birthday. Oddly, not to the moment when the watch had been given, but to one much later, well after midnight. We had been to see ‘West Side Story’. Oliver had booked for it as soon as we returned from France but hadn’t told me until that morning. It was only the fourth night of its London run and I grew wild with astonishment and delight, three times hurrying back to hug him, when rightfully—frightened that I’d be late in meeting my mother and aunt at Charing Cross—I should have been back at Gloucester Place by then, with the wine and the salmon and the list of things I meant to pick up from my local grocer. Anyhow, at the theatre, there was a five-minute standing ovation and at least ten curtain calls. As we slowly emerged into the Haymarket, amid a glowingly intoxicated crowd, Oliver touched my elbow with a look of grave concern. “Respectful adaptation, would you say?”

“Oh, yes, very! Shakespeare’s well satisfied.”

“Songs grew spontaneously out of the action?”

“Absolutely! Absolutely! Although I could have done with a lyric saying it’s mean of you to mock.”

He laughed. “Yes, I bet you could! But I’m awfully glad that you can take it.”

We went to Stone’s (me with my carrier bag!), where we had a light but excellent meal; and finally got home shortly after one. The customary nightcap—or two—and then to bed, roughly an hour later.

“Thank you again and again for this,” I said, admiringly holding up my wrist as we undressed.

“Oh, don’t mention it. You’ve already done so a good deal more than enough.”

“And for the message and the pun. Actually I rather like that pun. It’s so awful it’s cute. It’s endearing. For all time,” I teased him. “For all time.”

But he refused to be shamed.

“Yes, for all time,” he answered evenly. “For all time and beyond.”

“And beyond? Then vot can vun do with a man like that? Such a sweet shepsel! So vithout shame!”

“Well, I don’t know what the Chief Rabbi may advise,” he replied, taking a purposeful step towards me, “but at least—in the meanwhile—let me come up with a suggestion.”

For all time … and beyond. Suddenly, whilst I sat waiting at those traffic lights, it seemed—incontestably—a message of corroboration.

And it was still in the forefront of my mind—probably always would be—when an hour or so later I turned into the drive of Merriot Park: a returning prince who, with God’s help, would this time show himself much worthier of trust. I pulled up before the front door, got out of the car and gazed about me. Unhurriedly.

It felt like coming home.