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Dearest Mother,

as you may imagine, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to hearing what you’d have to say to the news about Oliver. Your letter didn’t reach me until yesterday, when I was in the midst of getting ready to leave, so there was no time to write then. Anyhow, there’s really nothing of importance to be added before I can send you my impressions of him at first hand.

I don’t wonder you say you find the idea of Oliver in his Monastery ‘a little bewildering’! It does sound pretty exotic—a far cry from St Martin’s and your beloved Vicar! Olly is indeed a genius at surprises. If we’d been told that he was about to surprise us once again and that we must guess how he’d do it, I don’t think we would ever have hit on this, would we? He is among the very few who really have the right to say, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ (Sorry, I don’t mean to blaspheme!) But that unpredictability is one of the things we love him for, isn’t it?

And isn’t it refreshing, in these days of conformity, to know of one human being at least who always seems to do exactly what he wants to do, not what he has to do? I do find that most inspiring—though what would happen to the world if we all followed Oliver’s example, I tremble to think! Nearly all of us are the slaves of our obligations, however willingly we may fulfil them. (If you read this letter aloud to Penny over the phone, perhaps you’d better skip that last sentence, or she’s sure to take it personally. Aren’t I awful?!) Of course, joining a monastery is very definitely an obligation, too, and it’s possible that our reckless Olly has got himself caught at last. But I wouldn’t be too sure of it. He’s capable of breaking out of situations just as drastically as he plunges into them!

Well, now I’m actually on my way to him. We took off from Los Angeles after breakfast, at nine this morning. Or perhaps it was yesterday by now, I don’t know if we’ve crossed the international date line yet. The plane stopped at Honolulu but only briefly, I’m glad to say. There was a violent hot wind blowing, like the draught coming out of a huge hair-drier; such unpleasant clammy heat and harsh glittering sunshine. The airport is very like most other big ones nowadays, with all those ghastly shiny gift-shops. But to prove to you that you really are on the Hawaiian Islands the stewardesses grab you on arrival and throw a great halter of flowers around your neck, as though you were a horse. The flowers must be terribly hot and heavy to carry about, and their smell is sweet enough to make you feel sick, even at a distance. Luckily for me I wasn’t an honoured visitor but only a bird of passage, so I was able to avoid getting haltered.

My final memories of California are very agreeable, though. After weeks of having to attend tiresome lunches with executives in film studios and dinner parties at the homes of exceedingly dim stars, it was arranged for me to escape for a few days’ holiday. I was motored far up the coast to a district which is still quite wild and unspoilt; cliffs towering sheer out of the sea, seals swimming in the coves below, and magnificent tall dark solemn woods in deep canyons. At the bottom of one canyon, a low tunnel has been cut right through the rock. You come out through it on to a reef which forms a small natural harbour, just enough room for a single boat. The old heavy iron mooring-rings are still there. Perhaps it was used by smugglers, one can easily imagine that it might have been. I kept wishing you could have been with me, with your watercolours. It’s just the kind of outrageously romantic spot which really appeals to you!

We shall be in Tokyo by suppertime. India, via Hong Kong, tomorrow evening. I am very well and enormously enjoying this trip. I will write again as soon as I’ve seen Oliver, of course.

And now remember, Mother darling, you are not to worry about him. I can absolutely promise you, even in advance, that everything is going to be all right. I have a feeling about this, and you know my feelings, they’re never wrong!

Ever lovingly,

Paddy

 

My darling Penelope,

I’m afraid I have been bad, not writing to you in all this long while. I know how you hate phone calls, and our last few have been more than usually unsatisfactory, haven’t they? I kept feeling that I wasn’t really getting through to you. No, worse than that, I got an uneasy impression from one or two things you said that you imagined I was behaving strangely—being cold or distant, I don’t exactly know what. I avoided asking you about this at the time, for fear I’d only make matters worse, but now tell me, was that how you felt? If it was, you had no reason to, believe me! You must admit, darling, you do sometimes fancy things. Not that I’m criticizing you for that, it’s just one of the penalties you pay for having such an acutely sensitive sweet nature. I love you for minding about my moods, real or imaginary, because that proves you love me. But I can’t bear to think of your being even the least tiny bit unhappy, however mistakenly.

I even suspect, and do forgive me if I’m wrong, that you feel my staying on in Los Angeles these last ten days was unnecessary. (I know you were terribly disappointed, as I was, about our missing a Christmas together for the first time, but that was absolutely unavoidable, as I’m sure you realize.) Well, yes, it’s true that I could actually have left Los Angeles a little earlier than I did, and made the trip to India the other way around, via England, and spent a few days with you and the Children. That sounds heavenly, as an idea, but just consider, darling, what it would have been like in fact, our being together with the prospect of parting again so soon hanging over us all the time. You know yourself, the few times that’s happened, what a strain it was and how wretched, and how it makes a sort of tragedy out of something that isn’t in the least tragic—as though you and I were desperate lovers in wartime, counting the last minutes of my leave!

I think that what matters above everything else, when two people have come as close to each other as you and I have, is that we shall always be sensible and realistic. There’s always the danger of our getting over-intense and seeing minor annoyances as major problems. Also, when one of us makes a decision, the other must accept it without questioning. Perhaps you’ll laugh when you read this and say to yourself, what Paddy means is that I must accept his decisions! But you know, don’t you, Penny, that that isn’t so? You know how absolutely I rely on your strength. How I demand from you the faith that holds us two together. You know me, only too well. You know how weak I am. And, don’t you see, it’s just because I’m the weaker one, because I need you more than you need me, that it’s up to me to make this kind of decision—to be sensible and stay on in Los Angeles instead of giving way to my impulse and dashing frantically back to you?

But why am I writing all this? You don’t really need reassuring, do you?

This letter seems to be all about Los Angeles, but Los Angeles is far behind me now. And my thoughts are far ahead of this slow old plane, hopping to Olly in India, then to Singapore, then on home to you, as quickly as I can manage. I can scarcely believe I’m actually going to see Olly tomorrow night! What will he be like, now? What will be his attitude toward us all? It won’t be straightforward and uncomplicated, that much I’m sure of. The first time he wrote to me, I knew at once that he was hinting I should come out there to him, though his pride kept him from asking me outright. But does he really want me to come? Never shall I forget that disastrous occasion when he was working with his Quakers in that Congo village and I went down there to see him, very much against my better judgement and at considerable expense, not to mention the hideous discomfort. I hadn’t been there twenty-four hours before I began to feel him resenting my presence and willing me to leave at once!

If I seriously thought this new venture would bring him any real peace of mind, I suppose I’d have to be in favour of it. But, alas, all the signs point the other way. In both his letters, as I’m sure you’ll agree when you read them, there’s such a pitiful admission of insecurity behind his bold determined front. He keeps declaring, directly and indirectly, that nothing, nothing, nothing will change his decision to become a monk, until it becomes obvious that he’s secretly longing for something or someone to make him change it!

Poor dear old Olly, what in the world is going to become of him when he runs out of causes to embrace and prophets to sit at the feet of—feet that invariably prove to be of clay? You never knew Maddox, Oliver’s analyst. Olly seemed to regard him as Freud the Father, till one day he broke with him and never uttered his name again. And then there was that terribly aggressive passive resister who led Olly into all that trouble with the police. And at least half a dozen since. Not one of them lasted long. Olly softened them up with his desperate will-to-believe and then mercilessly poked them to pieces with his doubts. Really, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, he’s a demon-disciple! This Swami has certainly lasted by far the longest—his great advantage is that he’s dead—but, you mark my words, in the end he’ll find himself posthumously seen through and rejected, like the rest.

But of course it’s only Oliver himself that one really cares about. In the long run, he’s bound to suffer the most from his rejections. Every time he makes one of these breaks, the shock and disillusionment must be greater. So, if there has to be a break this time too, then obviously one must do one’s best to prepare him for it, try at least to cushion it somewhat. But how, exactly? Well—more of this after I’ve seen him and found out what kind of a state he’s in.

Tell Daphne and Deirdre that I’ll send them some little surprises from Tokyo before we leave there tomorrow morning. I’ll also try to find something for them in Hong Kong, if our stopover in Kowloon is long enough to give me time to get over there. (Better not tell them that, though, in case I can’t manage it.)

Bless you, my darling. Bless you for existing. Bless you for loving me. Kiss the Two Ds from me. Tell them to kiss you from me.

Devotedly,

Paddy

 

Tom,

how very strange—this is the first time I’ve ever written your name, and it sort of conjures you up! My heart has started beating faster already and I feel a bit breathless. Tom. Tom. Tom.

Aren’t I an idiot?

I wonder where you are, right at this very moment. That takes some calculating. Let’s see, there’s approximately four hours’ difference between Los Angeles and where I am now, over the mid-Pacific. You’re four hours later, so you’re about getting ready to have supper. However, the stewardess says we’ve already crossed the date line, so we’re in Saturday January the ninth. You’re still in Friday the eighth, which means it’s still the same day for you as when we said Goodbye at the airport. For me, that’s supposed to have been yesterday but it certainly doesn’t feel like it! I can remember every single detail, everything we said and did and everything I was feeling, exactly as though it were this morning. Perhaps you weren’t aware of the eyebrows raised by some of the other passengers when you kissed me smack on the mouth? That’s why I made a point of kissing you right back with equal enthusiasm! But I imagine most of the people who saw us doing it assumed you were my younger brother and we were foreigners of some kind, bidding each other a big Latin-style farewell.

And now you’ll soon be sitting down to supper—thinking about me, I trust. Are you alone? I won’t be selfish and hope you are. I hope you have agreeable company—well, no, not too agreeable! Anyhow, I most definitely don’t want you to be feeling as utterly alone as I am now. This plane is droning on and on across the endless ocean. We are chasing the sun, which is big and dull red, its lower rim seems to have got stuck fast in a cold blue cloudbank along the horizon. It won’t set for hours yet, because our speed has slowed it down almost to a stop.

The Japanese stewardesses are so cute, half shy and half amused. They bring us drinks, giggling, and they bow to us submissively as if we were mighty he-lords. These seats are too narrow, designed for delicate Asian buttocks. I can feel my neighbour’s elbow sticking into me. Wish it was yours!

That coverless and obviously much thumbed-through paperback novel you suddenly pulled out of your pocket and gave me at the airport—Wow (as you would say)!! You know, you might at least have warned me what it was about! I suppose I should have guessed, from your wicked grin. Anyhow, I didn’t. After we’d taken off, I opened it in all innocence at the first chapter and almost immediately found myself involved in that sizzling love scene between the character called Lance and that younger boy. Did you think that a hard-boiled publisher couldn’t be shocked? I began blushing, yes actually! And then I suspected that my neighbour was reading it too, out of the corner of his eye. So I put the book away for private consumption later—behind a locked door!

He’s probably reading what I’m writing to you now. But I don’t care a damn about that. He doesn’t know you, and people who don’t know you don’t seem quite human to me, at the moment, they belong to another race entirely. In Asia alone there are several billion of them. What a depressing thought!

Oh Tommy, what can I say to you? There’s too much to say. And I’m thinking about you so hard, all words seem meaningless. That afternoon down on the reef at Tunnel Cove, with the air full of spray and the shock of the waves making the rock tremble—no, if I talk about that I shall break the magic. It was magic, wasn’t it, every time we were together, from the first day we met?

When I’m with you I’m a new, quite different person. That’s why you must never get upset, Tommy—you did, once or twice, you know—about any of the other people and relationships in my life. They simply cannot touch us, they couldn’t if they tried to, because what you and I have together belongs only to us. It doesn’t depend on anything else. It exists on its own.

I have never in my life met anyone like you. I only wish it could have happened sooner. I wish—I wish—oh hell! Forgive this drooling.

When shall I see you again? I have all sorts of schemes, as I hinted to you that evening I got so drunk up at your place. I know I oughtn’t to have mentioned them until I was sure—in my profession one should have learned the danger of making promises! But I just couldn’t keep them to myself. I suppose that was because I was so desperately anxious to hook you somehow! I mean, I’m not naïve enough to imagine that anyone can be satisfied indefinitely by memories, especially if he’s young and full of life, like you. I did my best to help you build up a reserve to keep going on. That was why I didn’t leave until the last possible moment. But you must have something to look forward to, as well. Otherwise, I’d have no right to ask you to remember me at all. I ought not to be writing to you even.

But now I’ve been thinking things over carefully—amazing how much thinking you can do on a plane; it’s one of the few things they’re good for—and I really don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t get you a job on our film, as some kind of an assistant. I’m sure the work wouldn’t be any problem for you, you’re so quick at picking things up, and I know you’d get along wonderfully with everybody. It would probably be wiser if you weren’t attached to me officially—I don’t want to get you talked about, and anyhow I should hate to be in the position of having to boss you around! But I’m certain our director could use you in some capacity. I’ll talk to him about this as soon as I see him in Singapore. He’s an old friend of mine, and I can rely on him to be discreet and understanding.

That reminds me, be sure to write to me at the hotel in Singapore. (Address above, in case you’ve lost it.) Of course I would have loved to hear from you while I’m in India, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. They are probably pretty vague about handling letters at this Monastery. It would be awful if one of yours went astray!

Tom, you remember that evening we drove up into the hills and sat looking out over the lights of the city, and you told me you loved me and asked me if I loved you? We never spoke of it again, but I know you were terribly hurt because I wouldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it, Tommy. I wanted to so much, but I was afraid to. It’s such a tremendous word and yet most people throw it around so lightly. I happen to feel differently. I’m almost superstitious about it. But you can be sure of one thing—when the right moment comes to say it, I won’t merely say it, I’ll shout it!

Meanwhile, there’s something I am going to say to you. I know I’m taking a risk, saying it. Perhaps it will make you angry, but I don’t really believe it will, because you’re so wonderful and generous and you have so much intuitive understanding of me. Well, anyway, here goes—

Tom, I need your love, terribly. And I’m asking you now to go on loving me, even though I haven’t told you I love you or made any promises. Is that outrageous of me? Yes, of course it is. But still I’m asking it, and I don’t apologize. I have complete faith in your love, that’s my only excuse.

Patrick (not Paddy, he’s for the others).

 

Tomorrow he’ll be here.

Went into the Temple extra early, I must have been there three hours at least. In the state I was in, it was impossible to meditate, so I just kept myself mechanically telling my beads. I know that no effort of this kind is ever fruitless, or so they teach you, but this morning it didn’t seem to help at all. I tried to offer the whole situation up and say, Your will, not mine. But all the filth out of the past kept backing up on me, like a choked sewer, it was foul beyond words. I felt I could remember every single grudge I’ve ever harboured against Patrick (I was probably inventing a lot) and I still hated him for all of them. There was such a storm going on inside my head it seemed strange the other people in the Temple couldn’t hear it.

So then I went outside and sat for a while on Swami’s seat. There was no one about. In any case, they never speak to me nowadays if they see me there. I wonder if Mahanta Maharaj has said anything to them? Or do they just know? The subtlety of their understanding about matters like this still keeps astonishing me.

As always, it helped me, sitting there. I feel calmer now, at least for the moment. But that may be only because I’m so tired.

In the midst of this storm, and all the storms I’ve been through, I can only try to hold on to three things:

I have known a man who said he knew that God exists.

After living with him for five years and watching him closely, watching the way he lived, I’m able to say that I believe (nearly all of the time) that he really did know. I also believe in the possibility of my having the kind of experience which gave him that knowledge.

That man chose me for his disciple. I may be poisoned with hatred and half mad, but nevertheless I’m his disciple. And he can never desert me. I have got to believe this, and know that he is with me always, even if I don’t feel his presence. As long as he’s with me, what can I possibly fear?

I’ve become more and more convinced during these last months—now it’s practically a certainty—that when Swami left his body it was an intentional act. What’s more, he wanted me to know it was intentional, in order to strengthen my faith, so he left me various clues, as it were, to convince me in retrospect.

Let me write down the reasons why I believe this:

Swami chose a day on which his health was actually a bit better. His death on that day from ‘natural causes’ was most unlikely. The doctor confirmed this.

That morning, before I left for work, he seemed more than usually cheerful, playful almost. When I said to him, ‘I’ll be seeing you at six o’clock, then?’ (I made it into a sort of question, I don’t know why) he smiled and answered, ‘Do you expect me to run away?’ And then he added, without becoming at all solemn but in a tone which made it all the more significant, later, ‘Don’t you know the Guru can never run away from his disciple, not even if he wants to, not in this life, not in any other!’ When he said this, I was kneeling beside his bed straightening the bedclothes, and he put his hand on my head, and patted it. He didn’t do this very often. I always felt it was a special kind of blessing, because I hadn’t asked for it as you do when you prostrate. And now I believe that that also was something done for me to remember afterwards.

Also, when I came home that evening and found him, he was lying in front of the shrine. He had his chadar on over his dressing-gown, and his rosary was looped round his hand. That can only mean that he had deliberately got out of bed and prepared himself to meditate, and that he left the body while in meditation. He didn’t just happen to fall dead on that particular spot by accident.

I carried him back to the bed before I called the doctor. I didn’t see why anyone else should know. Since I’ve been out here, I’ve sometimes thought it was terribly selfish of me, not to have told the rest of our group. It would have helped them, too. I will write and tell them, one day. I suppose I’m waiting until I’m quite sure about all this in my own mind.

Later. The storm is on again, and now I don’t feel sure of anything. I feel I don’t know what I believe, or why I’m here in this Monastery. Perhaps I have gone mad. Perhaps Swami was somehow deluding himself. Perhaps he is quite dead and doesn’t exist anywhere. Perhaps all those millions of people are right, who say that there’s no God and that life has no meaning. Why should they be the insane ones? They are the majority.

Will things get better when Patrick arrives here? I don’t know that either. It’s all very well to say that what I’m struggling with isn’t Patrick himself, but a monster I’ve raised up. That may well be true—yes, of course it is true. But what’s the use of admitting that, if I still can’t make the monster disappear?

And if I can’t, how can I dare to take sannyas?