Absolute Truths

Our younger son Michael had commented during the Christmas of 1964: ‘The prayer-group’s Mum doing her own thing,’ but our other son, Charley, had said with his customary lack of tart: ‘Cynical types don’t usually become mystical – I hope she’s not going nuts.’ I gave this remark the robust dismissal it deserved, but it did underline to me how uncharacteristic this new deep interest in prayer was. I also had to admit to myself that although Charley had been tactless in describing Lyle as cynical, he had not been incorrect. ‘I always believe the worst,’ Lyle would say, ‘because the worst is usually true’ – a philosophy which was repugnant to me, but no matter how often I was tempted to criticise this attitude, I always remembered her past and abstained. A disastrous love affair in the 1930s had left her emotionally scarred. In the circumstances I felt it was a wonder she had any faith left at all.

And now, having disclosed the disastrous love affair which Lyle had endured, I must disclose just how far we were from being a conventional ecclesiastical family. Lyle had been pregnant at the time of our marriage, and our elder son was not, biologically, my son at all.

III

I hate to speak of this skeleton in the cupboard, but as I am engaged in painting a picture of my career, marriage and family life in order to set the scene for 1965, I can hardly leave a large central section of the canvas unpainted. If I did, the events of 1965 would be to a large extent incomprehensible.

So let me now turn, with great reluctance, to the skeleton.

We had a code-name for this lover who had nearly destroyed Lyle. It was Samson, a man ruined by his involvement with the wrong woman. I had chosen this sobriquet in a rush triggered by my loathing of the entire subject and had only afterwards reflected that the choice automatically cast Lyle as Delilah, a lady who has never received a good press. However, when I had voiced my misgivings Lyle had said bleakly: ‘And what right have I to receive a good press?’ – a question which had taken me back to the harrowing early days of our marriage when she had been recovering from the most destructive aspects of the affair.

Lyle was my second wife. I had been married for three years in my twenties to a pleasant, innocent girl called Jane whom nowadays I could recall with only the smallest twinge of anguish. We had been fond of each other but unsuited, and our difficulties had been unresolved at the time of her death in a car crash. Fortunately I had managed to come to terms with this tragedy before I journeyed again to the altar in 1937, but although I realised Lyle was curious to know more about her predecessor I felt no desire to pour forth a torrent of information. Perhaps it was fortunate that back in 1937 Lyle was far too bound up with her own unhappy past to spare much time to speculate about mine.

Lyle’s affair with Samson had been conducted with fanatical secrecy because he had been not only a married man but a distinguished married man. In fact – and I hate to admit this but I do need to explain why he was so vulnerable to scandal – he was a clergyman. Of course clerical failures have always existed and of course one must do one’s Christian best to be charitable to those who break the rules, let the side down and drag the Church through the mud, but I have to confess that Samson reduced my stock of Christian charity to an all-time low. I knew I had to forgive him for the damage he had inflicted on Lyle, but unfortunately forgiveness cannot be turned on like a supply of hot water from a well-stoked boiler, and this particular act of forgiveness had remained frozen in the pipes of my mind for some time.

It was not until I returned from the war that I managed to forgive him. At least I assumed I had forgiven him because I realised I had reached the point where I was seldom troubled by his memory. By that time he was not merely tucked away behind a pseudonym, categorised theologically as a sinner who had to be forgiven and thereby rendered as harmless as an exhibit in a museum; he was also dead, a fact which meant the affair with Lyle could never be resurrected. Occasionally his name – his real name – came up in ecclesiastical circles, but not too often, and as the 1940s drew to a close I realised I had consigned him to the compartment in my mind which housed other obsolete images from the previous decade: Edward VIII abdicating the throne, Jack Buchanan singing, Harold Larwood bowling and Shirley Temple dancing. The point about these people, as I told my spiritual director, was that I could think of them without pain; therefore, I reasoned, if I had relegated Samson to this harmless group, I must on some deep psychological level have forgiven him. The hallmark of forgiveness is that it enables the forgiver to live painlessly with the forgiven.

Certainly by 1965 I was satisfied that I had not only forgiven Samson but managed to convert his malign memory into a benign force in my ministry. Indeed it was arguable that my reputation as a bishop tough on sexual sin was the direct result of being obliged to pick up the pieces after a catastrophic adulterous liaison. The 1960s might have been the age of the permissive society, but thanks to my encounter with Samson at Starbridge in 1937 I was going to preach against immorality until I dropped dead or my tongue fell out. After all I had endured, nursing Lyle back to a normal life, no one could have expected me to endorse promiscuity – but no one still alive knew now what I had endured in the early days of my marriage, no one except Lyle herself and my spiritual director, Jon Darrow.

I had had no trouble forgiving Lyle herself for this affair which had already run into difficulties by the time I met her. It is easy to feel compassion for someone one loves, particularly when that someone is emotionally wrecked and verging on the suicidal. What I did find hard to endure was the fact that after we were married she could not love me as much as I loved her. This gradual realisation that she was still far more bound up with Samson than she was willing to admit became so hard for me to bear that I was more than willing to escape from my marriage once the war came. Naturally I told everyone that I was volunteering to be an army chaplain because I wanted to have a hand in Hitler’s defeat – and this was no lie – but the whole truth was rather less palatable. Nowadays, I dare say, I would have wound up in the divorce court. So much for the permissive society! Young people refuse to acknowledge that there can be rewards for enduring the dark days of a marriage; happiness is always supposed to be instantaneous and any deferral is regarded as intolerable. Was there ever such a flight from reality? No wonder the young resort to drugs to ease their disorientation! They have never been taught to face reality and endure it – or in other words, they have never been taught how to survive. The permissive society is a phantom utopia which promises perfect freedom and yet has all its adherents in chains on Death Row.

The mention of chains reminds me of the three years I spent as a prisoner of war. That experience certainly taught me some lessons about how to survive adversity, and when I returned home in 1945 I found the rewards of my long endurance were about to begin. Samson was dead, Lyle was at last ready to be devoted to me and a new era in my marriage had dawned. With relief I prepared to live happily ever after, but did I? No.

I had had a tough time as a prisoner and I returned home with my health damaged. I did manage to reconsummate the marriage, but our efforts to produce another baby failed and tests revealed my poor health was to blame, a diagnosis which did nothing for either my marriage or my self-esteem. Now it was Lyle who endured, Lyle who battled on, Lyle who was not loved as she should have been. She was saved from despair by the doctors’ belief that I would make a full recovery, but I languished, suffering a reaction from my long ordeal and reduced to apathy by the well-known syndrome of survivor’s guilt. Finally an old friend of mine, a doctor called Alan Romaine, took me aside and said: ‘You will get better, Charles, but you’ve got to work at recovery – it’s no good just sitting back and waiting for it to happen.’ He gave me a diet-sheet, listing all the unrationed, nutritious foods I could eat, and he dragooned me into taking up golf again, but I think I was eventually cured not so much by exercise and good nutrition as by his care and compassion.

Did Lyle and I then have our much-wanted third child and live happily ever after? No. Lyle was by this time approaching the menopause and our daughter continued to exist only in our imaginations. Lyle became increasingly upset. I became increasingly upset. Meanwhile the two boys were big enough to be perpetually fighting, yelling and smashing everything in sight. The marriage limped on.

The reward for our endurance of this apparently endless ordeal finally arrived when Michael followed Charley to prep school and Lyle and I found ourselves on our own for two-thirds of the year. It was then that the terrible truth dawned: we were happiest as a childless couple.

I was so shocked by this revelation, contrary as it was to all the modern Christian thinking on family life, that for a long while I found myself unable to speak of it, even to Lyle, but eventually I forced myself to discuss the matter with my spiritual director.

Jon reminded me that family life had not always been a Christian ideal. He also suggested that my duty was to be myself, Charles Ashworth, not some ecclesiastical robot who mindlessly toed the fashionable Church line on domestic matters.

I felt obliged to say: ‘But I can hardly preach on the joys of being a childless couple!’

‘You could preach on the heroism of those who feel called to bring up other people’s children.’

I denied being a hero, but when Jon answered: ‘You are to Charley,’ I was comforted. Charley’s idolising of me ranked alongside Lyle’s devotion as my reward for all I had had to endure in the early years of marriage. Moreover this hero-worship by my adopted son went a long way towards compensating me for the difficulties I experienced with my real son, Michael.

And now, having exposed the less palatable side of my marriage, I must nerve myself to describe the effect on my sons of the skeleton in the family closet. I need to explain why and how they became the young men they were at that time in February 1965, when we were all steaming forward towards the abyss.

IV

Of course I thought of Charley as my son. Of course I did. I had married Lyle in full knowledge of the fact that he already existed as a foetus, and I had accepted full responsibility for him. I had brought him up. I had made him what he was. He was mine.

Yet he was not mine. He was unlike me both physically and temperamentally. I understood early on in his life why many adopting parents go to immense trouble to find a child who bears some chance resemblance to them. They need to forget there are no shared genes. A benign forgetfulness makes life easier, particularly when the child has been fathered by one’s wife’s former lover. Even after I believed Samson to be forgiven, living harmlessly in the nostalgia drawer of my memory alongside Edward VIII, Jack Buchanan, Harold Larwood and Shirley Temple, I could have done without the daily reminders of that past trauma, but I taught myself to overlook Charley’s resemblance to Samson and see instead only his resemblance to Lyle.

The bright side of Charley’s inheritance lay in the fact that he possessed Samson’s first-class brain. This was a great delight to me, particularly when Charley became old enough to study theology, and it made us far more compatible than we had been during his childhood when his volatile temperament had persistently grated on my nerves.

It had grated on Lyle’s nerves too. Lyle was not naturally gifted at motherhood, and although she loved the boys she found it difficult to manage them when they were young. This lack of management meant the boys became hard work for anyone determined to become a conscientious parent – but I have no wish to blame Lyle for this state of affairs; after all, life was hard for her during the war, particularly during those years when I was a prisoner, and no doubt she was not alone in finding it difficult to be the sole parent of a family. If I appear to criticise her it is only because I need to explain why, when I returned home after the war, I soon discovered that parenthood was no picnic. Probably one of the reasons why we both became so keen to celebrate the new beginning of our marriage by producing a daughter was the belief – almost certainly misguided – that a little girl would be all sweetness and light, a compensation for the barbarity of our sons.

Another fact which exacerbated our complex family situation was that Lyle was ill-at-ease with Charley. No doubt all manner of guilty feelings were at work below the surface of her mind, but the result was that she tended to escape from this unsatisfactory relationship by idolising Michael. Charley resented this behaviour and to prevent him being hurt I found myself paying him special attention. This in turn upset Michael, who became abnormally demanding. Again, I have no wish to blame Lyle for triggering these emotional disorders; she could not help feeling guilty about Samson and muddled about Charley, but nonetheless the situation was one which even the most gifted of fathers would have found challenging.

The final fact which aggravated our troubles was no one’s fault at all and can only be attributed to the lottery of genetics. Michael resembled me physically but his intellect was dissimilar to mine, and the older he grew the more incomprehensible he became to me. It was not that he was stupid. He was just as clever as Lyle, but as he grew older we found we had nothing in common but a fondness for cricket and rugger. I minded this more than I should have done, and when he embarked on a phase, common among the sons of clergymen, of rejecting religion, I minded fiercely. Meanwhile nimble-witted, intellectually stimulating, devoutly religious Charley was ever ready to compensate me for Michael’s shortcomings. Was it surprising that I welcomed this development? No. But Michael became jealous. He began to misbehave, partly to grab my attention 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. I had reassured Charley about my feelings for him; I had said nothing adverse about Samson, and I had paved the way for the necessary question-and-answer session. However unfortunately Charley was not at that moment interested in Samson. He was much too busy trying to digest the fact that his parents had spent eighteen years deceiving him about a fundamental aspect of his identity.

Ignoring the letter which I was holding out to him he said in a voice which shook: ‘I should have been told from the beginning.’

At once I tried to adjust my approach. ‘I’m very sorry. I assure you we did consider it. But the trouble was –’

‘How could you have allowed me to believe a lie? You! The man who always preaches the importance of truth!’

‘I know how you must feel – I know how it must look – but –’

‘I think you and Mum have behaved absolutely disgustingly and I just want to go away and be sick!’

That concluded the conversation. Scarlet with emotion he rushed upstairs to his bedroom where he locked the door and refused to speak to either of us. Eventually Lyle lost her nerve and shouted: ‘I don’t care how vile you are to me but don’t you dare be vile to Charles after all he’s done for you!’ but when even this unwise reproof produced no response she turned to me and demanded, tears streaming down her face: ‘Where’s the letter? He’s got to read it.’

That was when I realised this harrowing scene must have been clearly visualised by Samson who had then done all he could to give us a helping hand. Or in other words, the clerical failure had behaved like a wise, compassionate priest, setting his own feelings aside in order to try to ensure the survival of the family, whereas I … But I could not quite work out how I had behaved. I only knew that I had always acted towards Charley with the very best of intentions.