Damage (2 page)
Perhaps there are benign and malevolent rhythms in life. We had tuned ours to the sound of beauty. My life then was like a pleasant landscape. The trees were green, the lawns rich, the lake calm.
Sometimes, I gazed at my wife asleep, and knew that if I wakened her I would have nothing to say. What could they be, the questions I wanted her to answer? My answers were all there, down the hallway, in Martyn’s room or Sally’s. How could I have questions still? What right had I to questions?
Time rode through my life — a victor. I barely even clung to the reins.
When we mourn those who die young — those who have been robbed of time — we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasures we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped inside its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek.
We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.
Ah, but those lost Mondays of our young dead friend! How much better they would have been! Years pass. Decades pass. And living has not been done.
But what of the births I had attended? Could anything mark a man’s time more usefully? What of the deaths I had witnessed? A competent easer of pain, I was often the last person the dying saw. Were my eyes kind? Did I show fear? I believe I was useful, here. What of all the minor dramas? The fears and anguish I dealt with? Here, surely, was time well spent.
Yet to what end did time cascade then, only to be lost in the flood? Why was I a doctor? Why did I minister? To what good purpose did I minister, carefully but without love?
Those who are lucky should hide. They should be grateful. They should hope the days of wrath will not visit their home. They should run to protect all that is theirs, and pity their neighbour when the horror strikes. But quietly, and from a distance.
I
NGRID’S FATHER WAS
a Conservative MP. He had been born into a well-off, middle-class family and was now, through wise investment, a wealthy man. Though my father had more money than most people would have believed, Edward Thompson was the wealthier man.
He believed that the basic instinct of mankind is greed. That the party which won an election was the one which promised the most advantageous economic package to the majority — not to the country.
‘That’s where Labour makes its big mistake, old boy. They know it’s all about economics really. They confuse that with a better economic deal for everyone. No one wants it. It’s too expensive, and anyway they just don’t care. The majority, keep them better off, and they will vote for you. It’s as simple as that.’
Ingrid smiled, or argued gently, humorously. But the reality was, he could be right. He was returned each election, his safe majority still intact.
I found it harder to be gentle with him, but all my questions went unasked for many years. As time went on, I became less patient. I began to argue with him more and more forcefully. To my astonishment, he loved it. He rose to every criticism, his face beaming with delight. He was a far more skilled debater than I had ever imagined. He roared with triumphant laughter whenever he had me cornered.
My position was inherently a weak one, I suppose. I loathed Socialism, and what seemed to me the simplistic solutions of the Left. I hated the lack of freedom for which the Left increasingly stood.
I accepted the basic philosophy of the Conservative Party. However, its total dedication to the pursuit of personal material wealth, I found deeply unattractive. I was a questioning, challenging, dissatisfied Conservative. But I was still a Conservative at heart.
Medicine is not the best training for the political mind. This was painfully obvious in many of the debates, though with practice I improved.
‘Why don’t you stand for Parliament? There’s room in the Party for a chap like you.’
My father-in-law could have been issuing an invitation to dinner at his club, so casually did he drop this bombshell into the conversation one evening.
‘Yes, yes! You are a doctor. You stand for compassion, integrity, for keeping us greedier chaps on the straight and narrow. I like the idea. It’s good for the Party. It’s good for you. You could go far, you know. Oh, yes. Didn’t I think so at first, of course. You seemed a bit bloody inarticulate, if you don’t mind my saying so. But you’ve come along a treat. It’s all there, always was, under the surface you know. I have seen it before, quiet chap suddenly blossoms. Then you have the great talkers in their twenties, who in their forties have nothing to say. Oh yes, I’ve seen it all. Twenty-eight years I’ve been an MP, twenty-eight years. I’ve seen it all.’
Ingrid smiled, conspiratorially I thought afterwards. But I was flattered. I arrogantly believed that I could soften Edward Thompson’s brand of Conservatism, just a little, and make my own contribution. My inner doubts slipped away that night. I was pleased with the idea. I was proud of myself.
After years of carefully watching every move I made in order to avoid being dominated by my own father, I now found myself about to embark on a whole new course of life, because my father-in-law had flattered me into it.
Ingrid and I sat and talked more intensely that evening than at any time in our marriage. She was very excited. I realised that she must always have hero-worshipped her father. She was now thrilled by the thought of my following in his footsteps.
We agreed I would pursue a safe seat, which had just become vacant close to where we lived. There my influence as a doctor would be at its most powerful. Though I was opposed by a clever, older, local businessman, Party officials clearly wanted a member of the ‘caring’ professions. I was quickly selected as a Tory candidate. At the by-election they must have felt they had made the right decision, because I was elected with a substantially increased majority. Ingrid retired into herself again, satisfied. The normal working mechanism of our relationship re-established itself. She was content. The tranquillity which had always characterised our daily lives returned.
Years later, I often wondered how much had been discussed between Ingrid and her father, before the fateful dinner party. Had they found me so easy to manipulate? Or was my guard so low with them, as with everyone, because I thought myself unknown by anyone, and unthreatened?
I was an adman’s dream. I was forty-five, with a beautiful and intelligent wife, a son at Oxford, and a daughter at public school. My father had been a well-known businessman. My father-in-law was a leading politician who had paid his dues to the Party.
I was reasonably good-looking. Not handsome enough for my supposed good looks to precede me, like some ill-deserved reputation, but enough to be pleasing on television — the new gladiatorial arena. There, those who combat to the political death salute not Caesar, but the people whom they are about to betray. This gives the masses an illusion of power which serves to hide the fact that, however bloody the battle to the death seems, the politician always wins. In a democracy, some politician, somewhere, is always winning.
I intended to be the politician who won. My suit was a strong one. I was elected and rose to higher ranks with the ease that had attended all my endeavours. I believed as strongly in my cause as I did in medicine. But neither endeavour had cost me anything. Time, for a man who has never truly felt a second of it, is not a great sacrifice; nor is effort that brings worthwhile results; nor energy from a man in middle years and perfect health.
In politics I committed myself to the same old values I had practised in a busy surgery — honesty, a kind of prickly integrity, a total lack of interest in personal power, combined with the maddening arrogance of one who knows that, if he decided to play, he would win.
I avoided all the basic suppositions on which parliamentary life is based. Loyalty to the Party as a form of self-advancement, the trading-off of favours, the recognition and grudging acceptance of emerging leaders — the masters of the future, who need to be acknowledged and have fealty sworn to them: all this I found repugnant.
However, to appear unambitious amongst the ambitious is to invite loathing or fear. To be in the game, but not playing with intent to win, is to be the enemy.
It was improbable, but not impossible, for me to emerge at the top. All I needed was the cutting edge. Perhaps I did not have it. Or perhaps it was just hidden. I became an enigma to my colleagues — a seemingly purposeful man, but without a purpose. My obvious abilities were as yet untested, but my colleagues and I were aware that should the chance come, success would probably follow. But why should the chance be given to me? Unlike so many others, I did not lust for it.
I had not found the key to myself in any area of service, medical or political. I carried out my constituency surgeries with the same absolute involvement with which I had attended my patients. But it was the absolute of the intellect. No effort seemed too great to advise on this matter, or act on another.
My thoroughness and expertise bred a respect, and a kind of confidence. I was doing the job well. There was no doubt about that. I spoke out on subjects which seemed to me to need comment. I said what I meant. I meant what I said. The political consequences were not weighed by me, at least not unduly. On the other hand, the subjects on which I spoke out strongly were hardly fundamental to Party discipline. My ideas were attractive to large numbers of the Tory left.
I never faced a serious moral dilemma. Nothing that I felt or said was extreme, or left me completely out on a limb. All options, except those of the far right, were open to me still. Had I planned the perfect political life for myself, it could not have worked better.
I was soon given the post of junior minister in the Department of Health, to which I was obviously suited. My concerned face and well-bred voice spouting acceptable, vaguely liberal cliches appeared on television. Or I gazed earnestly from newspapers and magazines, saying the things I’d always believed, in what came across as a sincere and genuine manner. I learned the public geography of my soul from television and newspapers. It was neither shaming nor pleasing, just another perfect set-piece. Even I recognised that if I kept up this performance for some time, I might shine even more brightly as the years went by.
One poll, published in a Sunday paper, listed me amongst the possible future Prime Ministers. Ingrid was thrilled. My children were embarrassed.
I acted those parts required of me, like some professional member of a good English repertory company. Reliable, competent, taking pride in my work, but as far away from the magic of an Olivier or a Gielgud as not to seem part of the profession at all.
The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all its essentials, my life was a good performance.
M
Y SON WAS
a handsome young man. If there was in me a slight stockiness, Ingrid’s slender proportions tempered it in Martyn. He had both height and strength. Ingrid’s excessive paleness was there. My dark hair and eyes seemed to counterpoint the almost feminine delicacy of his skin. His was a dramatic colouring, unusual in England, and the exact opposite of his sister Sally’s. She was that rare yet common miracle, the true English rose.
Beauty in our children is disturbing. There is an implied excess that casts a question mark over the parents. Most fathers would like their daughters to be attractive, their sons to be manly. But true beauty disconcerts. Like genius, we wish it on another family.
Martyn’s looks and elegance embarrassed me. His sexual involvements were so blatantly casual that it astounded me his girlfriends saw no danger in him. The succession of young women whom Ingrid and I met at Sunday lunches or at occasional parties, seemed never-ending. I realised that my son was sexually promiscuous. He was undoubtedly careless of the many loving looks sent in his direction. Ingrid was amused by it all. I was much less so.
His attitude to life, when he left university, dismayed me. Medicine was of no interest. Politics was unappealing to him. He wanted to be a journalist — the onlooker’s position in life, it seemed to me. He was very ambitious and determined about his career, but his ambition was totally for himself. At no time did he delude himself, or us.
He got a job on a local paper, where, amusingly and perhaps to his chagrin, he was made political correspondent. When he was twenty-three, he got a junior journalist’s job on a Fleet Street newspaper. He left the small flat we had created for him over the garage, and found a place of his own.
Ingrid was pleased by his success, and single-mindedness. It was such a flattering contrast to the sons of our friends, who seemed so unsure of everything. To me, however, he remained an enigma. I looked at him sometimes and reminded myself that he was my son. He would shoot a questioning look back at me, and smile. I knew that with Martyn my performance was only adequate.
With Sally, I fared a little better. She was earnest and sweet. Her small talent for painting she developed to its highest potential. She became a junior in the design department of a publishing company.
So here was a marriage, its outlines clear. I was a faithful, if not passionate, husband, and I acted lovingly and responsibly towards my children. I had seen them safely through to young adulthood. My ambitions, in important and respected fields, had been realised. I had enough money from income, and private means, to put me beyond financial worry.
What man was luckier?
I had obeyed the rules. I had been rewarded.
Clear direction, some luck, and here I was, fifty and fully realised.