The relationship between my adoptive parents simply wasn’t engaged enough for them to generate the kind of passion required for an argument, which meant that Dartmouth Square was for the most part a harmonious place to live. In fact, the only serious fight I ever witnessed between them took place on the night the jurors came to dinner, a plan so ill-advised in its conception that it baffles me to this day.
It was one of those rare evenings when Charles returned home early from work. I had just left the kitchen with a glass of milk in my hand and was astonished to see him walking through the door, his tie not loosened around his neck, his hair not disheveled upon his head, his gait not unsteady, a series of nots that suggested something terrible had taken place.
“Charles,” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he replied. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
I glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the hallway and, as if it was in cahoots with me, it struck six o’clock with half a dozen long and echoing chimes. As we waited for it to finish, Charles and I stayed exactly where we were, not saying a word, although we smiled awkwardly and acknowledged each other’s presence with the occasional nod of the head. Finally, the ringing came to an end.
“It’s just that you never come home at this hour,” I said, picking up where I’d left off. “You realize that it’s still daylight out and the pubs are still open?”
“Don’t be cheeky,” he said.
“I’m not being cheeky,” I told him. “I’m concerned, that’s all.”
“Oh. In that case, thank you. Your concern is noted. You know, it’s remarkable how much easier it is to unlock the door when it’s bright outside,” he added. “Usually I’m stuck on the porch for a few minutes at least before I can get in. I always thought it was a problem with the key but perhaps it was me all along.”
“Charles,” I said, putting my glass down on an occasional table and walking toward him. “You’re completely sober, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Cyril,” he replied. “I haven’t had a drink all day.”
“But why? Are you ill?”
“I have been known to get through the day without lubrication, you know. I’m not a complete alcoholic.”
“Not a complete one, no,” I said. “But you are quite good at it.”
He smiled and for a moment I thought I saw something approaching tenderness in his eyes. “It’s kind of you to care,” he said. “But I’m perfectly fine.”
I wasn’t so sure. In recent weeks, his usual exuberance had diminished noticeably and I often passed his study to find him seated behind his desk with a faraway expression on his face, as if he couldn’t quite understand how things had got this far. He had bought a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Hodges Figgis and could be found engrossed in it at every spare moment, showing more interest in Solzhenitsyn’s novel than he ever had in any of Maude’s, even Like to the Lark, which she had practically disowned when sales figures soared toward triple figures. That he was comparing his own trials to that of a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp says something of his sense of personal injustice. Of course, he’d never expected his case to go all the way to trial, assuming that a man in his position and with his wide network of influential contacts would be able to prevent such an injustice taking place. And even when it became clear that there was nothing he could do to stop the trial going ahead, he was certain that he would be found innocent of any wrongdoing, despite his obvious guilt. Prison, he believed, was something that happened to other people.
Max Woodbead was a regular visitor to Dartmouth Square during those weeks, and Charles and he would veer from drunken caterwauling to the singing of old Belvedere College songs—Only in God is found safety when my enemies pursue me / Only in God is found glory when I am found meek and lowly—to roaring at each other in furious rages, storms that echoed around the house and caused even Maude to open the door of her study and stare out in bewilderment as she escaped the festering twilight of her writing room.
“Is that you, Brenda?” she asked me on one of those occasions when, for some forgotten reason, I was found loitering around the second floor.
“No, it’s me, Cyril,” I said.
“Oh, Cyril, yes,” she said. “Of course, the child. What on earth is going on downstairs? Has there been a breakin?”
“Mr. Woodbead is here,” I said. “He came over to discuss the case with Charles. I think they might be raiding the drinks cabinet.”
“It’s no good, of course. He’s going to jail. Everyone knows it. All the whiskey in the world won’t change that.”
“And what will become of us?” I asked anxiously. I was only seven years old; I wasn’t prepared for a life on the streets.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “I have a little money of my own.”
“But what about me?” I asked.
“Why must they be so loud?” she asked, ignoring my question. “Really, it’s too much. How is a person supposed to get any work done? By the way, since you’re here, can you think of another word for fluorescent?” she asked.
“Glowing?” I suggested. “Luminous? Incandescent?”
“Incandescent, that’s the one,” she said. “You’re a clever boy for eleven, aren’t you?”
“I’m seven,” I told her, struck once again by the question of whether my adoptive parents even realized that I was a child and not some sort of small adult who had been foisted upon them.
“Well then. Even more impressive,” she said, closing the door behind her and returning to her smoke-filled cave.