Absolute Truths Read Online Free Page A

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 a ttention. 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 develop ment? 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 hesi tated, 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