My marriage will always be very presentable. Elsa won’t like the liaison at first. There’ll be tears and scenes but she’ll
never get around the fact that she’s a fat homely girl who’s unlikely to attract another man, so although she’ll be furious
for a while she’ll calm down once she realizes I intend to stay with her and put up an acceptable façade to the world. We’ll
go on sending out those little signals, trilling NORMAL, NORMAL! and nobody will look at her askance.
Vicky will go on living with Daddy so that Daddy can fulfil his
ambition to take over the kids, but I’ll lease an apartment somewhere, Sutton Place maybe, and she’ll meet me there whenever
we want to be alone. We’ll fix up the apartment ourselves. We’ll have a bed with black satin sheets in a room with a white
furry carpet. I like black and white together. Erotic. I’ll try to find a couple of Beardsley drawings, black and white, for
the walls. No, not Beardsley. Too decadent. Something with a good clear line, something pure. A Japanese woodcut, perhaps.
Or a sketch of a naked woman by Picasso.
Vicky can fix up the living-room but we’ll choose the books together. Lots of poetry. All the usual people plus
Beowulf
in the original. It doesn’t matter that neither of us can read Anglo-Saxon and that
Beowulf is
one of the most difficult poems ever created. We’ll have it on our bookshelf for the same reason that the Romans kept busts
of their ancestors in the atrium. And we must bring in Bede too, to keep Beowulf company. I still have the translation Scott
recommended when I was feeling like a member of a persecuted race. I wonder if Vicky knows that famous passage about the sparrow
in the lighted hall.
I think of Scott, talking about Bede.
Scott’s the great anomaly, of course. He’s the exception that proves the rule about people having to get married to prove
how normal they are. He gets away with breaking the rule because he somehow manages to give the impression that he’s as normal
as all-American apple pie, but he’s not normal, not by a long chalk. The more I think about Scott, the more brilliant I think
he is. In fact he’s so brilliant he makes my scalp prickle. He’s everything Cornelius detests: one, unmarried; two, an intellectual;
three, celibate (mostly); and four, Steve Sullivan’s son. Yet Cornelius thinks Scott’s the cat’s whiskers.
I don’t like that at all. It’s creepy. But is it dangerous to me? I don’t see how it can be. Cornelius is never going to give
a controlling interest in the bank to any son of his old enemy Steve Sullivan, so my future ought to be as safe as a diamond
in a vault stuffed with security guards, but all the same I don’t like Scott being the cat’s whiskers at the bank. Maybe I
should let Cornelius realize that, but no, it would be better to keep my mouth shut. If I try to clip the cat’s whiskers at
this stage, someone might try to clip my wings.
What’s Cornelius going to think of my liaison with Vicky? He won’t like it but Mother will. Mother’ll love it and Cornelius
will want to keep Mother happy, particularly as they’re now having themselves such a ball again in the bedroom.
God, that’s weird.
Elsa moans softly in her sleep and I put my arm around her
comfortingly. I like you, Elsa, I’m lucky to have you. Thanks for making everyone think I’m such a nice normal regular guy
…
Saturday 7 June, 1958. Scott and I play squash at the club and I win. We shower and I have a couple of beers while he drinks
Coke.
‘—so the question is,’ says Scott, ‘does the English legend of Childe Roland really have any connection with Charlemagne’s
nephew Roland, the hero of the famous
chanson de geste
?’
‘How can there not be a connection? If you read Browning’s poem—’
Scott sweeps aside Robert Browning who missed being born in the Middle Ages by a good three hundred years. ‘According to Dorothy
Sayers there’s no connection. She says …’ Dorothy Sayers as a writer of twentieth-century detective stories is, like Browning,
beneath Scott’s notice, but as an eminent medieval scholar she’s earned his respect.
I listen politely and decide that Scott Sullivan and I have spent enough of our spare time picking over the bones of the Middle
Ages. I think it’s time we climbed down out of our ivory tower of medieval scholarship and explored the darker reaches of
the twentieth-century jungle where we spend our daily lives.
‘Talking of Roland and the Dark Tower and other medieval structures,’ I say idly, ‘how’s life at Mallingham these days?’
Mallingham is the medieval Norfolk village where Scott’s father Steve is buried and where Cornelius’ arch-enemy Dinah Slade
was once Lady of the Manor. I know very little about Dinah Slade except that in addition to busting up Steve’s marriage to
Aunt Emily she piled up a lot of money, made life damned uncomfortable for Cornelius and died a heroine’s death at Dunkirk.
‘Oh, all’s well at Mallingham,’ says Scott sociably, just a nice normal regular guy discussing his family. ‘Elfrida’s entirely
wrapped up in running the school – she’s had more to do than ever since Edred quit. But Edred’s decision to take the job with
the orchestra was probably for the best. Elfrida didn’t like the way he taught music and there were rows.’
Edred and Elfrida are Scott’s half-brother and half-sister, the children Steve and Dinah produced long before they decided
to marry. Only the youngest child George had the luck to arrive after the wedding.
‘Nice of Cornelius to fund Elfrida like that, wasn’t it?’ I say innocently.
Scott’s smile broadens. ‘Sheer Christian charity!’ he says, making me laugh.
I pause for a moment to consider my next move. We all know at
One Willow Street that Cornelius and Steve fought to the death back in the thirties, just as we all know it was probably the
dirtiest of struggles with plenty of punches below the belt, but no one knows the exact details of the grand slam – or if
they do, they’re not talking. Certainly I’ve never managed to find out the whole story, although I doubt if it would shock
me if I did. Where Cornelius is concerned I always believe the worst because the worst is usually true.
But what does Scott believe? Surely with his brains and his experience of Cornelius he can’t possibly fall for Cornelius’
official view of the past; he can’t possibly believe that Steve was crashing around being a menace and Cornelius, poor meek
innocent little Cornelius, was driven to strike back in self-defence. I can accept that Scott was alienated from his father
– buccaneers like Steve Sullivan all too often live at such a pace that their children get lost somewhere along the line –
but just how deep did the alienation really go? I have no memory of Steve Sullivan, who left America for good in 1933, but
I can remember Scott’s brother Tony telling me once about the tree-house his father had built for him by the beach of their
Long Island home back in the twenties.
I remember saying to Tony enviously: ‘How great to have a father who spent so much time with you!’
And I remember Tony saying with that naïve honesty which made dissimulation so difficult for him: ‘He was the best father
in the whole world.’
That testimonial was remarkable and it became all the more remarkable when set beside Cornelius’ regular pronouncements that
Steve was totally unfit to be a father and had made a despicable mess of his paternal duties. (Cornelius had a Victorian fondness
for the word ‘duty’ and treated it as a talisman which would invariably clinch any moral argument.)
But had Scott ever shared Tony’s persistent loyalty to his father? He and Tony were very different both in temperament and
intelligence, and they had been estranged for some years before Tony’s death. Tony’s mind had been open and transparent. Scott’s
was closed and opaque. Were those two minds linked by an identical view of the past or not? Impossible to tell, impossible
to guess.
Looking at Scott I feel an intense desire to open up that shuttered enigmatic mind.
‘Do you think Cornelius funded Elfrida out of guilt, Scott?’ I say suddenly. ‘Do you think he was trying to make amends for
wiping your father off the map back in the thirties?’
‘I doubt it,’ says Scott, quite unfazed, effortlessly casual. ‘I can see
him acting out of expediency (“Let me get rid of this girl by giving her what she wants!”), I can see him acting out of common
sense (“If I’m nice to her she’ll cause me less trouble!”) and I can see him acting out of his famous Christian charity (“If
I help her I’ll feel good about it afterwards!”) – but I can’t see him saying to himself: “Oh God, let me atone for my sins
by giving this girl a school!”’
I burst out laughing and I can’t help being impressed; this clear-eyed unsentimental analysis of Cornelius’ motives rings
so true and the good-humoured affection in Scott’s voice sounds so obviously genuine that I begin to think I’ve been suffering
from paranoia by imagining treachery where no treachery exists. I remind myself that it’s perfectly possible that Scott rejected
his father one hundred per cent, perfectly possible that he’s fond of Cornelius even though he has no illusions about him.
One of the things I found so confusing when I was growing up was that although I detest Cornelius, there are those occasional
times when I like him very much and even, God help me, admire him too. I liked him when he gave me that rabble rousing lecture
on condoms when I left Groton, and I liked him when he not only approved of my marriage but backed me staunchly all the way
to the altar. And I admire how tough he is about his asthma, fighting it all the time, never complaining, never sinking into
self-pity. I’d love to hate him one hundred per cent but I can’t, and if I can confess to some occasional twinge of affection
for Cornelius, why shouldn’t Scott share my feelings? Scott’s okay. He has to be. He’s just a regular guy with some eccentric
habits and that mind of his isn’t so opaque and sinister after all.
Or is it? Why do I keep feeling that somehow against all the odds Scott’s acting out some medieval allegory, in which he plays
Retribution stalking Evil in pursuit of the Holy Grail of Justice? Yes, I must definitely be succumbing to paranoia. All this
medieval crap Scott keeps dishing out must have finally reached me. I must pull myself together before I give way to the urge
to embroider the Canterbury Tales.
‘What was your father like, Scott?’ I say suddenly, taking myself by surprise. ‘Everyone talks of him as if he was just another
flamboyant hard-drinking Irishman but he must have been far more complicated than that.’
‘He was no Irishman. He saw the world through Anglo-Saxon eyes and considered it was no more than an accident that he had
an Irish name.’
We’re moving on to familiar ground here. When I first married Elsa and felt like a member of a persecuted race, Scott and
I spent some time discussing the ancient races of the world.
‘But didn’t your father have any Celtic characteristics?’ I ask idly, preparing to enjoy yet another foray into ancient ethnic
territory.
‘Hell, no!’ says Scott, relaxing with me. ‘He knew only one world and one time and one reality – the view the Anglo-Saxons
call “logical” and “common-sense” and “pragmatic”, the view that dominates the Western World today.’
‘
My
view,’ I say, smiling at him.
‘Your view, yes. But not mine.’
He’s done it. It’s incredible but he’s done it. He’s made a mistake. The shutters have slipped a fraction and I have a lightning
glimpse into that opaque enigmatic mind.
‘Why, listen to me!’ he’s exclaiming in amusement. ‘How crazy that sounds! Let me take that back. We both know that I’m no
more a Celt than you’re an Anglo-Saxon – we’re just two Americans living in the great melting-pot of New York, and to imply
we’re anything else would be pure fantasy!’
‘Pure fantasy,’ I say soothingly. ‘Sure.’
‘And besides,’ says Scott, still furiously trying to get the shutters back in position, ‘didn’t you tell me how senseless
it is to make distinctions about race nowadays since we’re all so thoroughly inter-married and mixed up?’
‘I did say that, yes. And I still believe it to be true,’ I say to reassure him, but part of my mind is already recalling
Jung saying we are not of today, nor of yesterday; we are of an immense age.
So you identify with the Celts, do you, Scott Sullivan? That’s very interesting. Thanks for giving me the missing key to your
personality. You can be sure I’ll make good use of it.
I remember all about the Celts. I came across them again and again when I was doing research into the Anglo-Saxons. The Celts’
enemies never understood them: such logical, practical, down-to-earth people as the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons must have
been baffled by a race whose outlook on life was so radically dissimilar to their own. The Celts were mystical and alien.
Their literature revealed worlds within worlds, the supernatural mingling freely with reality in an eerie dislocation of time
and space. Since they believed in an afterlife death held no terrors for them; in fact their society was suffused by death,
for over and above all the other hallmarks of the Celts which their structured disciplined enemies found so barbarous, towered
the mighty tradition of the blood-feud which meant that the Celts continually killed each other as well as all the enemies
who stood in their way.
If you were a Celt and someone killed your father, you couldn’t rest until you’d killed him in return. Your whole honour would
be at
stake. ‘Forgive and forget’ would have sounded a ridiculous piece of Christian folly to pagan Celtic ears, not only because
forgiveness was unthinkable but because forgetting was impossible. The Celts never forgot the past. It was always part of
the living present, kept effortlessly alive by the Celtic refusal to see time as their enemies saw it. Past, present and future
existed simultaneously in their looking-glass world where death, the one reality, was treated as a myth which enabled them
to waste their lives without regret in pursuit of a just revenge.
‘Still thinking of all those extinct Celts and Anglo-Saxons?’ says Scott laughing.