Cushing's Crusade

by Tim Jeal

  ‘I did it for me,’ he blurted out defiantly. ‘Not for you or for her, but for me, because I wanted to.’

  Derek was too stunned to be angry. The idea that Giles should have acted for personal reasons of his own had never even occurred to him. He heard Giles going on vehemently, ‘How could I have come home and seen you both lying to each other? Day after day you saying, “Yes dear, no dear”, and all the time her not knowing what I’d seen, and me having to kid you that I didn’t care; and you wondering if I’d tell her; and me not knowing if you wanted to go or stay.’ He paused and took several deep breaths before shouting, ‘That’s why I told her.’

  Derek found himself staring at his son with stupefaction. Vulnerable he might look with the soft down on his upper lip and the harsh line of his glasses breaking the curve of his cheek; touchingly awkward too—the way he bit his lips when embarrassed and couldn’t keep still when talking. But there he was, not just a boy with an erudite hobby, skinny white arms and a freckled face, but Giles, who considered things strictly from his own point of view and made his own plans and decisions. Giles, who thought for himself, and then acted upon his thoughts. His trousers were too short and the top button of his aertex shirt was missing. Derek wanted to embrace him but was afraid to do so in case he was rebuffed. He could feel his eyes filling as he said, ‘Are you really going to go with Mummy?’

  Derek had expected the question to embarrass the boy, but it didn’t. Giles looked at him seriously and replied, ‘It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t.’

  ‘Because of Angela?’ asked Derek bitterly.

  Giles seemed surprised by the question. ‘Nothing to do with that.’ He picked up his harpoon and stabbed at a rotten floorboard, breaking off bits of worm-eaten wood. Water had started to seep through the roof in more places.

  ‘Tell me,’ whispered Derek.

  ‘Because I get on best with you.’

  Derek was on the point of arguing but then he realized what Giles had meant. For years Diana had known that Giles preferred his father. If the boy stayed with Derek and she went off by herself, she would really be alone in a way that Derek would never be. For, in spite of separation, he would know that Giles would go on caring and that they would often see each other. Diana would have had no such certainty.

  ‘That boy in your class, the one whose parents split up—was he …’ Derek raised his hands as he searched for the right word. ‘I mean, did it take him long to get over it?’

  ‘Timpson,’ said Giles thoughtfully. ‘He was a bit low for a month or two. His mother married someone else; a travel agent. They get cheap trips all over the place. Timpson’s always boasting about going to Egypt and countries like that. He brings back dozens of boring photographs and hands them round.’

  Derek wondered for a moment whether Giles was making fun of him, but the boy’s seriousness was so obviously sincere that he discounted the idea. Perhaps adults overestimated the effects their behaviour had on their children. Hadn’t he read that young children who had been sexually molested usually thought nothing of it until their parents started weeping and tearing their hair?

  ‘We can see each other as often as we want,’ Giles said.

  Derek nodded helplessly. He wanted to plead with Giles, beg him to stay with him, but the thought of an almost inevitable refusal, probably accompanied by tears on both sides, deterred him. He took his son’s hand and squeezed it gently.

  ‘You won’t really be leaving home at all,’ he said with an attempt at a smile. ‘Home will be leaving me.’ He’d intended it as a joke, but saw at once that Giles had taken it as a plea for pity. He added hastily, ‘I won’t be lonely, anyway. I’ll have Kalulu for company.’ He was afraid that he had made matters worse, but Giles seemed to have taken his remark seriously.

  ‘Poor old Kalulu, he’s going to find it a bit strange being alone all day.’ Giles picked up the cat from the cane chair and started stroking him under the chin. Derek remembered painfully the day when Kalulu had first arrived as a kitten; how excited Giles had been, and how, three days later, he had wept for hours when they had thought the animal lost. The cat had been shut in the linen cupboard by mistake.

  Derek said shakily, ‘I suppose it will be a bit dull for him.’ He put a hand on Giles’s shoulder. ‘Look, why don’t you keep him? I’m sure he’d be happier.’

  Giles considered for a moment, then looked at his father dubiously.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Certain,’ replied Derek.

  ‘How about Mummy?’

  ‘She won’t mind.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best,’ said Giles with adult gruffness, and then, with firm reassurance, ‘I’ll look after him well.’

  ‘I know,’ muttered Derek, finding it hard not to cry. Crying over a cat? Your wife leaving you, your son with her; but the cat proves the final straw. He felt water trickling down his back. A drip had been coming down onto his shoulder for several minutes but he hadn’t noticed until it had gone through his jacket.

  ‘We’ll muddle through, won’t we?’ he asked, looking away across the rain-sodden tennis court.

  ‘You bet,’ said Giles, stifling a sob.

  ‘I’ll ring you tonight when I get back to the flat.’

  ‘Must you go today?’ Derek saw Giles’s mouth sag a little.

  ‘It’ll be easier if I do.’

  Pray God he doesn’t weep now, thought Derek, but the boy gave a resigned nod and took his father’s hand. A moment later they were walking towards the house together through the slanting rain and the long wet grass. Derek was grateful for the rain, which masked his tears.

  Chapter 13

  The skeletal trees etched black against a leaden sky, the lake a chill muddy streak in the distance, the deck chairs long since put away for the winter. A hint of fog over Horse Guards Parade. Beside the path the leaves had been swept into large piles and would soon be removed in trucks or burned. St James’s Park on an afternoon in early November. Derek and his father, who had both spent several hours with their solicitor, were crossing the park together. During the past two hours Derek had become considerably richer in purely financial terms. They had walked in silence since leaving Birdcage Walk.

  If you were with me now, Diana, we would buy something to celebrate our good fortune, we would go out this evening to a restaurant of your choosing, and very likely see a film or a play also of your choice. Since you are no longer with me, I will do none of these things, not because I am incapable of making up my mind where to eat or which entertainment to choose, but because I have no inclination to go anywhere. Since the removals men came four months ago to take away your things, I have done very little. Sometimes I run out of clean shirts and often I wear socks that do not match. I eat scrappy meals and leave books scattered in every room of the flat. But, as we said, life goes on, the heart pumps and the bowels churn. Your going has left a hole in my life and I am unable to fill it, but my fears of personal extinction have faded. I hope you won’t think me flippant, but yesterday I bought a brown herringbone suit and two silk ties; I have other purchases in mind. I may well go abroad next year and think it likely that I will have the flat redecorated. Before you went away I was frightened, but you’ve gone, and I still go on. I have a strange feeling that I ended last summer but I can’t have, can I? Now has little or no relation to then. In anticipation everything is always worse, and, although I do feel a bit like a dead man’s toenails growing after their owner’s death, I daresay the feeling will pass, or, if it doesn’t, I’ll get used to it. I hope you won’t think me stupidly sentimental if I tell you that three weeks ago I found a hairbrush which you used to use, and, instead of throwing it away, I carefully extracted a number of your hairs and placed them in a match box. Hair is so much more tangible than words or thoughts, don’t you think? Then a week ago I broke a cup which you often drank from. I have kept it and intend to glue the pieces together. I don’t want to give the impression that I spend my time weeping, but neither do I leap la
ughing from room to room. So, Diana, when we have been apart for a little longer I shall write and say that if whim, loneliness, or lack of money ever leads you to consider returning to Abercorn Mansions, I would like you to do just that. Things could never be the same, which, I am sure you will agree, is just as well. My best guarantee of better behaviour is the fact that I no longer need you as I thought I did, so please accept my invitation as simple fondness with all old strings cut. There are no debts between us to be paid, which is never a bad basis for partnership.

  How it rained last month, the wettest September for years and early on I lost my umbrella. November now and looks more like snow. My father’s with me and unwittingly sends you his regards. That’s all, I think.

  Derek and Gilbert reached the lake and walked along beside it until they reached the bridge; there they stopped and looked at children throwing bread to the ducks in the water below. Derek watched the frantic struggle for crusts impassively. The seagulls undoubtedly were getting more than their fair share, largely because they managed to catch most of the bread in the air.

  Please understand that only my fear of being thought guilty of emotional blackmail made me omit mentioning how I miss you in many ways; not just the absence of flowers in the flat, although I admit small things sometimes strike hardest; old shopping-lists found in a drawer … Gilbert tugged impatiently at his son’s sleeve, as they both leant against the metal balustrade of the bridge.

  ‘Well, how do you feel? Not every day you get your hands on sixty thousand pounds.’ The old man laughed throatily and made as if to clamber over the railings. ‘You’ll have to watch me; seven years I’ve got to live.’ Gilbert paused and stared morosely at the muddy water. ‘My God, if that money had come my way when I was your age.’

  ‘What would you have done?’ asked Derek.

  ‘I’d have left the Malayan Civil Service for a start.’

  ‘And then?’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders and sighed. ‘It’s a bit late now.’

  ‘Only for the more athletic forms of debauchery,’ replied Derek with a smile.

  ‘I might have made a passable Chinese scholar. Got together a decent collection of jade.’

  Derek had been trying to trace the underwater journey of a tufted duck, but had finally lost track of it. Gilbert was looking at him expectantly.

  ‘You want to know what I’ll do with it.’ Derek grimaced. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve decided.’

  They walked on past an old woman feeding crumbs to the pigeons and sparrows. Derek winked at his father and gave him a gentle nudge in the ribs.

  ‘I’ll buy a young Eurasian dirt cheap and use her body to satisfy the most bestial desires that whim can invent and my constitution can stand. Then I’ll sell her at a profit and start a brisk business in eighteenth-century sado-masochistic erotica.’ As they walked north towards the Mall, Derek told his father that he intended to grow his fingernails to an exorbitant length and disregard all forms of personal hygiene; that he would keep several wild animals in his sitting-room and sell their dung to market gardeners; that he would wear shoes with holes in them, dye his hair grey to get pensioners’ rates in cinemas, and force friends to pay all his restaurant bills. He would most certainly die a millionaireand would then leave the money to a fund for destitute ministers of the crown.

  Gilbert looked at him more with reproach than amusement. Derek wondered if he had wanted to discuss the best way to invest it and whether to go for annual income or maximum capital growth. It was hardly enough to retire on, whatever he did with it.

  They had crossed the Mall and were climbing up Duke of York Steps, heading for Piccadilly Circus and the tube. To their right the office lights in Carlton House Terrace shone yellow in the fading light. Gilbert had to stop at the top of the steps to get his breath back. It was getting colder and their breath came in steamy clouds. Derek took his father’s arm.

  ‘I haven’t any idea what I’m going to do with it. Diana once said I’d renounced the enjoyment of money. Perhaps I’d better start buying things to see what it feels like. I’ll let you know, of course.’

  They weren’t far from Piccadilly Circus when Gilbert said, ‘Not much point, you mean, if there’s nobody to give things to.’

  ‘Something like that.’ He saw how crushed his father looked and added at once, ‘I’m damned glad to have it, though. I don’t have to say that, do I? Better to be rich and alone than poor and alone. Nobody to share it with. So? I might have nothing to share with nobody and that’d be a whole lot worse.’

  ‘You’re young, too,’ put in Gilbert encouragingly.

  ‘That’s right. I’ve probably got another thirty years, so I’ll have to do something with them. They’ll go a bit slower if I don’t.’

  They were passing the offices of a shipping-line. A large-scale model of a liner, complete with cabins, portholes and lifeboats, took up most of the window. The pavements were crowded now and every so often they were separated.

  ‘You could go round the world,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Several times, I shouldn’t wonder. I could spend the next ten years in constant motion. It’s a thought.’ A steady tide of people was forcing them towards the steps leading down into the tube. Gilbert stepped to the edge of the pavement and asked with an attempt at jocular irony, ‘You’ll ring me soon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Two months or three?’

  ‘It’ll be soon, I promise.’ Derek suddenly took his father by the arm and said, ‘Let’s go and get some tea somewhere.’

  Three days before, a similar scene. Another tube station. Derek had taken Giles to a film. Giles had had to rush back afterwards. A friend dropping in, or so he’d said. Their parting had been so hurried that there had been no time to fix up the next meeting.

  ‘If it isn’t too much trouble,’ muttered Gilbert.

  ‘Trouble? Sixty thousand’s worth a cup of tea, isn’t it?’ The joke had been intended to cheer up the old man, but it seemed to upset him. Derek suddenly felt guilty. ‘We must celebrate. Dinner together. That Greek place near you.’ They had reached the top of the steps and Derek was being pushed down by the pressure of numbers towards the ticket machines and the escalators. ‘Eight o’clock,’ he yelled. When he reached the bottom of the steps he remembered he had done his father out of his cup of tea.

  *

  The restaurant had only opened recently and the owner had spared neither time nor treasure when decorating it. Greek fabrics, goatskins, reproduction classical plates, musical instruments, dried gourds of various shapes, and framed travel posters covered every available inch of wall-space. Two tall vases of brightly coloured plastic flowers stood on each side of the entrance. Ironically, although the cook was Greek and the food authentic, the extravagant décor tended to keep away the would-be cognoscenti, who preferred the austerity of ‘real’ Greek restaurants with rough walls and oilcloth-covered tables.

  After several glasses of wine, Gilbert’s mood improved and soon he had become mellowly anecdotal, treating Derek to many old favourites. The Raja Bharu’s funeral, when the mourners had forgotten which way round he was in his coffin and had had to take him out and unwind his grave clothes to make sure that he was buried facing Mecca. There were the three Javanese murderers who, when taken to execution, on seeing the ropes hanging from the beam, had stood on tiptoe just before the traps opened, since they assumed they would be pulled upwards. Then poor old Fred Dalton who spent an hour every evening writing his epic pornographic verse play with characters like Bollocks: a pair of hangers-on; Scrotum: a wrinkled retainer and his pal Scratchet. Gilbert himself had had his moments, like the time he’d been delirious with malaria and had seen a snake eating a frog on the lawn. With a cry of ‘Save the frog’, he had snatched up a knife, slipped and cut his hand so badly that it had had to be bandaged for two months. They both laughed a lot and drank more wine and said that it was a pity they didn’t see more of each other, past mistakes notwithstanding. Dere
k felt a warm, self-approving sensation. His own problems were considerable, his life empty, his future uncertain and yet he still had it in him to give his father happiness. He hadn’t intended to eat anything else but he changed his mind and ordered a sickly-looking Greek cake. If there was an off-licence open they might buy a bottle of liqueur and take it back to Gilbert’s flat.

  Gilbert was sipping Turkish coffee and Derek eating his cake, which was covered with a watery syrup. After a long silence Gilbert leant forward and said quietly, ‘Not much fun being on one’s own.’

  ‘We all are,’ Derek replied philosophically. ‘In here,’ he went on, tapping his skull. ‘It’s got to be faced.’

  ‘Company can make quite a difference; ask anybody who’s been in solitary confinement.’

  Derek felt suddenly uneasy and apprehensive about what his father might be getting at.

  ‘Come on,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Living alone’s not solitary confinement. A man can live in an army barracks in the middle of hundreds of other men and still be lonely. So can married people.’

  Gilbert put down his coffee cup and pursed his lips.

  ‘You know what I mean. How many people are you seeing these days? A few because of work; but apart from that? You must have shared most of your friends with Diana. Awkward for them now. Asked you round once or twice, did they? Then nothing. I ought to know. When Margaret died I had a few sympathetic callers but sympathy doesn’t last very long. I’m old too; a widower, just the sort of jovial fellow to make an evening swing along.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ countered Derek with too much emphasis. ‘You’ve done all right this evening. I’ve hardly said a word and you’ve had me in stitches.’

  ‘Quite an old card, aren’t I? All right once a month for a funny story or two. He made their evening and went back to an empty flat.’

  ‘That isn’t at all what I meant.’ Derek emptied his wine glass and sighed. ‘Look, you’re right. We don’t see each other enough. Couldn’t we fix up a regular evening every week?’ His father’s look of disappointment told Derek all he neeeded to know. Any moment now Gilbert would ask him directly and he knew quite well that he couldn’t refuse. Undeniably alone himself, undeniably lonely. Sixty thousand was a fairly generous payment for a room and company. Derek sat back and placed his outstretched hands on the table. ‘My flat or yours?’ he asked.