Cushing's Crusade

by Tim Jeal

  Derek winced. An interesting competition to be sure. Should the winner be the elderly obsessive with false teeth and two dead wives, or his son, a middle-aged cuckold with piles and an identity crisis? Or should neither of them win the comic accolade? There was a third competitor: the intense and insecure adolescent with adulterous parents and no sense of humour. A real fun family.

  ‘Laughter’s usually at somebody’s expense,’ Gilbert said, ‘but I don’t really care if it’s at mine.’

  ‘How uncommonly wise and mature,’ muttered Derek. But if I poured my beer over your head or pulled the chair from under you, would you still be so detached? At ten years old he had locked his father out of his flat in his pyjamas on a January morning. Gilbert had gone out for the milk and Derek had slammed the door on him. He had been angry enough to wrench off the knocker and seriously bruise his shoulder in an attempt to break down the door.

  When they had finished their drinks Derek raised the matter of where his father should stay. After some persuasion, which Angela supported enthusiastically, he agreed to come and stay with the rest of them at Charles’s house. Having squared things with the publican, they left. Outside Derek suggested that Giles should put his bicycle on the roof-rack and come with them.

  ‘I’d rather ride back.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you came with us?’

  Giles didn’t answer but swung his leg over the crossbar and started to pedal away. In spite of the beer Derek’s mouth felt dry. He turned to his father: ‘Was he upset when he arrived?’

  Gilbert thought a moment and shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s not very communicative; not with me at any rate. They caught some fish he said, but not much else.’

  ‘Had he expected a whale?’ asked Angela as they got into the car. She gave Derek a conspiratorial smile as she flopped down into the back seat. No worries for her. She’d got rid of her irritation, recovered her detachment and ironic sense of humour, and was ready to enjoy anything that Cushing and son had to say. Derek could see her face in the mirror as he drove off. She was blowing him an insolent kiss and half-closing her eyes in a fine imitation of passion. Such fun, such naughtiness when at any moment the one-time Protector of Chinese, Straits Settlement, might turn round and see. Perhaps she would undo her shirt again. Derek narrowly avoided driving into the ditch. Ahead of him Giles was careering downhill, his hair streaming and his shirt flapping. Derek tooted as he passed but the boy ignored him. Derek felt alarmed again. True, Giles had been calm enough, but hadn’t he been almost too calm? He’d been very silent in the pub and unusually humourless even for him. Then that emphatic refusal to come in the car and not even a nod or a wave as they passed. Derek changed down too fast as they approached a corner and grated the gears badly.

  ‘The only thing that bothers me,’ Gilbert was saying, ‘is that Diana may not be too pleased to see me.’

  There had been a clock over the bar. It had showed six or a few minutes after when they’d arrived at the pub. Derek remembered noting this when his father had accused him of not meeting the train. Mounting panic was stopping him thinking clearly.

  ‘Well?’ said his father.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Derek.

  ‘I said Diana wouldn’t be too pleased.’

  ‘She’ll be delighted.’

  So if it had been six then, how long before had Giles set out? St Mabyn was roughly five miles from Tregeare. Half-an-hour on a bike? About that; it was quite hilly. Giles had arrived just before them. So? He was breathing faster.

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ Gilbert murmured. He turned to Angela. ‘There are some people, and I’m afraid my daughter-in-law is one of them, who find the elderly slightly repellent because they’re old. I have false teeth; I don’t know whether you noticed, but I have. I’m not ashamed to admit that I make a noise while eating. Diana doesn’t like this noise; in fact it irritates her a great deal.’

  Derek longed to shout at him to shut up. He felt so confused that he couldn’t work out whether precise times mattered. And such a beautiful evening. The golden warmth of the evening sun on trees and fields; the bright red-and-purple splashes of fuchsias in the hedgerows; insects floating in the air, small specks of gold caught by the sun.

  They were passing through Tregeare when Derek realized without a shadow of doubt that the precise time Giles had left was irrelevant. He had arrived a few minutes before them and the field had only been a couple of miles out of St Mabyn. He had to have passed the car, absolutely had to have done. For a moment Derek thought that he was going to be sick but the spasm passed and was succeeded by a feeling of complete helplessness. And now? he asked himself. And now?

  *

  Derek could not remember any occasion during the past ten years when he had deliberately set about making himself drunk; but the moment he got back to the house he poured himself half a tumblerful of whisky. By the time Charles offered everybody drinks, Derek had already tipped back the best part of a quarter of a bottle; and, although he was still aware of his problems, they seemed rather less pressing. As dinner progressed and brandy followed wine he attained what he had sought: an irresponsible sense of detachment. There was no doubt at all that Diana was responding unfavourably to her father-in-law but there was equally no doubt that Derek didn’t care—didn’t even mind too much when Giles went to his room immediately after dinner was over. The others were discussing aesthetic taste. Gilbert and Diana were as usual at odds. Charles was in his element at last.

  ‘Of course,’ he was saying, ‘because art reflects social conflict and dissonance these have become fairly central elements in our aesthetic experience. Art isn’t escapism, and modern realities have led to a rejection of precious tonal harmonies and delicate enamel surfaces.’

  ‘Art’s just a social and economic reflex?’ asked Gilbert with pretended horror.

  ‘Far from it,’ returned Charles with a chuckle. ‘The quality of art’s not something to be confused with the means of expression. On a different tack one could say that because many of the great Renaissance artists worked to commission they were just social tools. Utter rubbish. Or is Mozart’s music negligible because it was for a confined society?’

  A short silence. ‘Sod quality and taste,’ Derek announced. ‘If somebody gets pleasure from what the cognoscenti call ugly, what use taste? In the eye of the beholder, as the expression goes. How can you say I don’t feel the same emotion looking at a pavement artist’s work that you feel peering at a masterpiece?’

  ‘You’d have to be rather more precise,’ replied Charles.

  ‘Precision’s grossly overrated,’ cut in Gilbert, who had also drunk a fair amount.

  ‘To people who make generalizations like that, perhaps,’ said Diana.

  Gilbert smiled affably.

  ‘Take my suit,’ he said.

  ‘Not on your life,’ chipped in Diana.

  Derek clapped appreciatively. Gilbert shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘My suit,’ he went on, ‘would be essentially the same suit if it was ironed, pressed, altered here and there. You get me? Still inherently the same suit. Detail can become a fetish. Diana may be distressed by a hem a quarter of an inch too high or too low, she may be offended by wallpaper that doesn’t quite match or a slight crease below the collar of a coat; but does it matter? Who can say whether a suit should be cut in a certain way when fashions change as they do? My suit looks like a shower curtain, a relic of less scrawny days, but it may be very fashionable in a year or two.’ He smiled complacently at Diana.

  Derek couldn’t help noticing the way his father’s adam’s apple bobbed up and down when he talked. He wondered whether Diana had seen. He felt inclined to point it out to her but didn’t because she was talking again.

  ‘I don’t mind people who are casually unkempt, but the borderline between that and looking down-at-heel and seedy is a narrow one.’

  ‘And the borderline between blatant rudeness and friendly argument?’ asked Gilbert.
Derek stopped listening to them; instead he found himself scrutinizing Angela. She was sitting lengthwise on the sofa with her feet up. Sometimes she smiled and little brackets formed at the corners of her mouth, but throughout the evening she had taken care not to get involved in any acrimony. Derek realized that he was smiling at her. He looked away at once. The way she was sitting stretched her trousers tightly over her thighs. With sudden pleasure Derek recalled the precise sensation of her stomach against his, recalled how he had been convinced for a moment that they were breathing together, that while they held each other’s gaze neither could look away. In retrospect, even in his drunkenness he was almost as surprised as he had been when it had all happened.

  After the unpleasantness between Gilbert and Diana, the evening broke up quickly. When everybody went up to bed Derek remained in the empty room. He poured himself a final brandy and walked uncertainly back to his chair. The irony of it, the ludicrous irony. He took a sip of brandy and rolled it round his mouth, enjoying the warm sensation in his throat after he had swallowed. To think that for thirteen years he had lived virtuously, drearily, mechanically; had pursued his studies conscientiously, been a dutiful father if not a good one; had, it was true, hankered from time to time but had never attempted to convert his wishes into reality. Then, one summer afternoon because of a few drops of salt water in a watch, he had arrived late at a railway station and because of that he had fornicated in a field and because his father had not been met at the station, Giles had cycled to the pub and because of that …? Derek shook his head and made a plopping noise with his tongue. There had been thousands, no hundreds of thousands of hours of decent clean living and only twenty minutes of indiscretion but it would have to be those twenty minutes that proved significant. Significant! A smashing fuck. Derek managed a wry smile; his head had started to throb unpleasantly but he felt no less detached. The nagging ache behind his eyes grew slightly worse. He started to feel indignant. Why me? Why should fate have singled me out? If Giles had caught Charles and Diana that would have been justice of a sort.

  Derek shut his eyes and tried to visualize the sex talks Giles had attended at school. What had that gruesome school doctor told them? The usual stuff designed to keep them off it: the meaning of sex and love, the spiritual and the physical both playing their parts in equal doses. Lust never brings any kind of satisfaction, desire without love brutalises rather than transfigures. Sex was degraded without mutual respect. Derek thought of Angela and sighed. The merging of sex and love? Nothing like that, but at the time better. Unexpected, unpremeditated and even now almost unbelievable. A fantasy fuck made real. A miracle of a sort, pagan perhaps but still miraculous. Was that something to be ashamed of? Should he feel obliged to beg Giles to forgive him? Your mother’s flagrant carryings on gave me no right to pursue lecherous liasons on my own account; far from it; two wrongs never made a right. Forgive me for I knew not what I did and wish I hadn’t; I have erred and strayed and am no more worthy to be called your father. Why bloody well should I?

  Would any self-respecting teenager think twice about the rights and wrongs of a casual lay if it had been fun at the time? Like hell he would, and quite right and proper. With people maiming, killing and exploiting each other all over the world what harm was a bit of fornication? If my only contribution to universal sin is a bit on the side with Angela, I ought to get a first-class ticket to paradise. It’d be worse to drive a car with faulty brakes or to refuse help when it was asked, or to say things intended to wound, than to join genitals with a willing accomplice.

  When the missionaries first went to Africa to tell the natives about monogamy they thought it was the best joke they’d ever heard. To be horrified by adultery’s about as logical as an African tribesman’s fear of bumping into a menstruating woman. Derek gulped down the last mouthful of brandy and rose with dignity. Although they build a fire for me, I shall not recant, I shall not. He stared defiance at the empty chairs as though facing a hostile mob and then turned disdainfully towards the door. He managed to climb the stairs without falling.

  Chapter 8

  When Derek woke up, Diana’s bed was empty; the curtains were half-drawn and invading blades of sunlight stabbed his eyes. He buried his face in the pillow and groaned. Waves of shame and self-disgust flowed through him making him squirm like a pinioned insect. His mouth felt like a decaying fungus and his skull seemed to have shrunk during the night, but his physical discomfort was as nothing compared with the leaden emptiness that filled and enveloped him when he remembered the day before. It wasn’t the alcohol in his blood that made his limbs feel like plasticine but the thought that he had deliberately made himself drunk rather than face his son. What could Giles have thought seeing his father soaking himself in drink after the events of earlier in the day? Must talk to him, must explain. Derek rolled over and fumbled about on the floor for his glasses. But say what? He cradled his head in his hands and rocked himself back and forth. Say what? Too soon to think. Wash, dress, have breakfast and then think.

  When Derek arrived in the dining-room breakfast was all but over. To his relief Angela and Giles weren’t there. With studied composure he helped himself to a congealed egg from a dish on the sideboard and sat down. The sight of the egg made him feel sick. Nor did his father’s recollection of visits to out-stations in Perak make him feel any better. Gilbert was describing how his cook would always bring along several live chickens for each meal.

  ‘Fresher, you see. Although I never quite got used to the dying convulsions of my lunch when the time came for neck-wringing.’ He paused and gave Diana a nostalgic smile. ‘But it would have been stupid to get upset about chickens’ necks. I had to witness a good many hangings at the time.’

  ‘What a perfectly repulsive analogy,’ snapped Diana.

  The idea came to Derek shortly after Giles entered the room and its impact was so sudden and forceful that it made him slop coffee into his saucer. Confess. His hand trembled as he put down his cup. Tell him everything. Make no excuses; just give an unvarnished account without false sentiment or exaggerated remorse. After a brief spasm of fear, Derek was overwhelmed by a deliciously warm altruistic feeling. Of course saying anything about Diana’s misbehaviour to mitigate his own was out of the question. The object of the confession was to put the boy’s mind at rest, not to worry him still further. A moment later the purity of Derek’s altruism received a slight check when he reflected that since Giles already knew what had happened with Angela, he would be most unlikely to think worse of his father for confessing to him.

  Charles was telling them all about the Penfillian Ox Roast, which was happening later that day at a village several miles away. Derek listened with scant attention as his host described the Penfillian Silver Band, the stalls, rodeo and the ox roast itself. Diana thought it would be a marvellous idea to go. A visit was agreed upon.

  After breakfast Derek followed Giles upstairs to his room.

  ‘I’m not going to any rotten ox roast.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Derek.

  ‘I don’t like Charles.’

  ‘You needn’t be afraid to tell me the real reason,’ said Derek gently.

  ‘That is the real reason.’

  Derek rested a hand on his son’s shoulder.

  ‘I know what you know, Giles. So you needn’t invent things to make me feel better. You don’t want to go to the ox roast because you think I’ll be going too.’

  Derek couldn’t make out whether his son’s expression was one of alarm or puzzlement. He decided it was alarm. Giles said vehemently (too vehemently, thought Derek), ‘He shouted at me when we went fishing. I steered through some seaweed and choked up the propeller. He called me a bloody little idiot and then tried to make out he hadn’t been cross really. He was as smarmy as hell.’

  Derek cleared his throat. ‘You mustn’t be afraid to talk to me about what you saw. Nothing very terrible happened; you’ll realize that when you’re a bit older. You saw us and that’s that. I’m not g
oing to shrug it off or make excuses.’

  Derek saw his son’s eyes grow larger behind his glasses.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied with a slight catch in his voice.

  It occurred to Derek that Giles was trying to make things easier by pretending that he had seen nothing. He wanted to take his son in his arms like a little boy. Instead he said very gently, ‘There’s no need to hold back.’

  ‘I’m not. I don’t understand. That’s all.’

  The apparent sincerity of his son’s denial shook Derek for a moment.

  ‘You mean you don’t want to understand.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’ Giles sounded confused and exasperated.

  Derek’s mouth felt dry. He could still taste the greasiness of the egg.

  ‘Please be straight with me,’ he implored.

  ‘I am,’ moaned Giles.

  Derek could feel his heart banging unpleasantly. Was there really a possibility that Giles was telling the truth and had seen nothing? The idea made his legs feel weak. He sank down on to the bed. Be calm, he told himself.

  ‘I want you to think carefully about your trip to St Mabyn yesterday. You went to Faddon?’ Giles nodded. ‘Then you cycled out on the St Mabyn road?’

  ‘No.’