‘Hopefully? But—’
‘No, he says the word “hopefully”. I’m in all right.’
He smiled, as he had smiled on Norman’s stairs, and in the bathroom passage here, and a hundred times before: at my moods, my opinions, the letters I made him sign explaining my unwillingness to do PT, at each show of eccentricity. I didn’t care now.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Is he giving you a scholarship?’
I said I wasn’t sure.
‘If he is it may well mean another college is after you and he wants to get you before they do, so to speak.’ My father laughed, so I thought I might as well laugh.
‘He did say that if he didn’t take me someone else would.’
Then perhaps he is going to give you an award, in which case I’ll ring old Sir Herbert and see what he suggests. Yes ?’
‘Yes, fine.’
There followed a silence, quite a relaxed one.
‘Uh, father, don’t think I’m getting hostile again – I’m not asking this petulantly – but what do you think’s going to happen with you and mother ? I’m not challenging – just want to know. I realize I’ve been … but I think I understand these things better now.’
My father sat down and motioned me to do the same. He crossed his little legs and stitched his fingers; he looked alert, as if trying to evaluate my sincerity. Then, throwing his head back, Gordon Highway said:
‘I expect I shall stay with your mother at least until Valentine is grown up, possibly … probably longer. It’s highly likely that we’ll never separate.’
‘You’re not considering divorce?’
‘Not at this moment in time. As you know, it’s an extremely expensive and … messy business, not to be undertaken without desperately serious thought. As you know. And marriage is always something of a compromise, as I’m sure you’re now aware. Any long-term relationship is – and one does have to see it in the long term, Charles. No, I expect your mother and myself will never divorce.’ He shrugged his self-effacement. ‘It’s uneconomic and, at my age, usually unnecessary.’
This may be bluffing, but I think that one of the dowdiest things about being young is the vague pressure you feel to be constantly subversive, to sneer at oldster evasions, to shun compromise, to seek the hard way out, etc., when really you know that idealism is worse than useless without example, and that you’re no better. The teenager can normally detach his own behaviour from his views on the behaviour of others; but I had no moral energy left.
And besides. Twenty tomorrow. Get my hair cut, get my trousers taken out and tum-ups put on them, buy some fawn cardigans, wool socks, brogues.
‘I see,’ I said, ‘Well, that seems reasonable.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Eh?’
‘How are you getting on with your young lady ?’
There was a pause between ‘with’ and ‘your’; even so I was surprised, almost moved, not by his question but by the fact that he had asked it.
‘It’s all over. I lost interest. For a number of reasons.’
He rubbed his cheeks. ‘Yes, that’s always a shame, of course, but don’t be got down by it. These things come and go. It’s all experience.’
‘You’re telling me. It’s experience all right. And why—’ I felt the uneasiness of a good actor with bad lines – ‘why does it take so long coming and so little time going ?’
My father laughed wealthily. ‘My dear boy, if I knew the answer to that question I should be a happy man.’ He slapped his hands on his thighs. ‘Well! I’m glad we’ve had this chat. It’s cleared the air. See you at dinner ?’
‘Possibly. I might have something early. Letters to write, and so on.’
‘Of course.’
My penultimate teenage experience occurred at 6.30 p.m., nearly five and a half hours ago. I had been to the pub and was struggling with the front door, a bottle of plonk in both pockets. I waited. Gradually, as though it were the least I could expect, I heard the sound of wheels on gravel. I turned: headlights at the corner of the drive.