It may cheer you to know (all these years later), that after you’d gone – a fair while after – I braved Glenys’s rage, went out into the road and rescued it (the maple – just as dusk was starting to fall). I planted it in our front garden (next to the brick path, by the gate) where it still stands to this day – almost taller than I am, now – a fine, lasting testimony, I often think, to a son’s gentle magnanimity (I only pray there might still be some small remnants of benevolence remaining in your heart, for Rhona and me, today).
Glenys never said a word about it (the tree, your visit. In fact she didn’t speak – to anybody – for almost a week) but I’m sure she knew what I had done. In fact I’m certain of it. Every time she entered our gate from that day onwards, she had to walk straight by it.
I saw her standing on the path and staring at it, deep in thought, early one autumn afternoon about three years ago (the leaves had just turned a deep vermilion and it did look especially lovely). It was difficult to read her expression at the time (apprehension? Uncertainty? Regret? As you know yourself, it could be so hard to tell what she was thinking), but I resolved to grasp the nettle and say something to her when she finally came inside (to comfort her? Confront her? Make a direct appeal on your behalf? I’m not entirely sure), but then the milk boiled over in the pan on the stove and the moment was lost in the chaos that ensued.
I suppose I never really had the stomach to stand up to her (I hope I’m not a coward, Donovan – although you often accused me of it. But I don’t think it’s cowardice so much as resignation, an inherent stoicism. I taught myself – ever since the trials of my childhood – never to expect too much. I like to think, of all the virtues, patience is the one I come closest to possessing. Patience: ‘A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue’, as I believe Ambrose Bierce once called it!).
I’m still not sure what good – if any – would have come from a needless confrontation. Your mother was never really open to persuasion (when I visualize her, even now, in my mind’s eye, I see her in the guise of an old seaman’s chest: heavy, well-travelled, somewhat battered, ribbed by a set of thick, iron supports, fastened by a giant lock. The key is lost).
Glenys was always uncompromising – in both her habits and her views. She could be shrewish, hard-nosed and intractable. By the end (the very end), Rhona and I (and the poor parrot, and the cat) were her only remaining friends. Even the postman refused to deliver to her door (he dropped her mail off with us). She was barred from both the pub and the local shop. She’d driven everybody else away. She’d scared them off. It had been an almost calculated act. As if to be alone – truly alone – towards the end was the fulfilment of a life’s ambition.
Thinking that – believing that – how could I have ever knowingly jeopardized the relationship we had? It was so fragile, so necessary. Glenys needed us (although she was far too proud to admit it). She needed me, and, in a curious way I was grateful for her need (the kind of gratitude you feel when an abandoned fledgling bites your finger as you struggle to feed it).
For all the pain she caused you (and the frustration and the disappointment), the end result of your awful rift – the marvellous upshot – was that you were set free (without guilt) to pursue what was to become your glittering career in the Diplomatic Corps.
Glenys often said things that were cruel. She could be savage and mean. But her assessment of me back then was clear-eyed and entirely accurate. I was a liability. I was a wreck. My epilepsy was so severe…
Now I’m not suggesting that it was ever just a case of ‘shooting the messenger’ (how could it be, when the messenger was the only one among us bearing arms?!), but I am saying that while it was a hard truth to bear at the time (for both of us), perhaps Glenys’s greatest crime (although not her only crime, by any means) was simply presenting things as they truly were – the bald facts – without the calming balm of artifice.
I would never have coped with the life you were destined for. I would have smothered your hope, your promise and your desire. If you had stuck with me (and my numerous maladies), you wouldn’t have married your ex-wife, Patricia, and she couldn’t have borne you your two handsome sons. You wouldn’t have taken on the greatest role of your life: to be a father.
The very thought makes me shudder.
And then, of course, there was always Rhona. She’d sacrificed so much for me, and with such a huge sacrifice comes a strong sense of obligation. I was obliged to her, Donovan (I think I always will be). She gave up her vocation in the Church to take care of me after Mother passed. She abandoned her calling. It would have been an unforgivable crime to desert her just when her faith – her trust in God – was starting to falter.
But let’s not dwell on these things! The past is the past. It is gone and forgotten. Although (to hark back, for just a brief second) it would be difficult for you to conceive how much comfort I took over the long years that followed – and still take, every day – in your manifold achievements as a UN negotiator in West Africa.
You have moved mountains, Donovan. You have altered borders. You have shifted the world’s emotional geography. You have shaped lives. You have saved lives. You have had a hand in making history.
How could I – one weak and waffling female – have dared to stand in the way of all that?!
If Glenys’s temper was a dam wall – threatening, at every second, to collapse or implode – your will to make peace, to intercede, to unify, was a force every bit as compelling and as powerful.
There’s a lesson in that, surely? And a rich irony. You have become one of the world’s most admired and respected Conflict Resolution specialists, because the most important conflict in your own life could never be resolved. It was unsolvable. Glenys’s implacability was the cruel spur that drove you. It was both your inspiration and your goad.
She was (in Rhona’s words) a silly old trout (and sometimes worse!). But oh, how I loved her, Donovan, for all her many faults! I loved Glenys. I don’t even mind admitting it, now. I loved her because she was the opposite of you, I loved her because to love her – the mother, your opposite – was as close as I could get to loving the son. I made loving her my life’s work (my trial, my test, my passion), and I feel such a gaping hole inside of me – a ludicrously huge void – now that she has gone.
Of course I don’t suppose for a moment that she ever loved me back! Glenys tolerated me, at best. It’s not that she was entirely cold. There were signs of warmth, on occasion (not heat, no – just the dull, red coals that glimmer in a cooling grate at the end of a long, inhospitable evening).
She could be funny – often unintentionally. I wouldn’t call her ‘unkind’, not as such; there was kindness there (microscopic little drops of it). It just wasn’t very well distributed. It was like those tiny scraps of burned newspaper that fly out of a bonfire – delicate tornadoes – on a gusty autumn afternoon.
She certainly cared for her animals. In their case you might almost say she cared too much. Her love could be ruinous (not to mention her over-feeding!). She killed three dalmatians ‘with tenderness’ over the past twelve years. When the last one died – Faith, a fine, good-natured, liver-coloured bitch, only five years old – it took three men to carry her out (rolled up in two blankets). They could barely squeeze her through the garden gate.
But enough of all this! I’m straying, once again, from the real purpose of my letter (I can hardly bear to engage with it, the subject is so painful – to both of us, I’m sure), so here goes… Deep breath…
Please try and forgive us, Donovan, for all the crimes you feel we have committed against you. If they were committed, then they were completely unintentional. You are one of our oldest and our dearest friends – a brother to us both. Let us start afresh. Let us put aside all the misunderstandings and the rancour and the pettiness (it can be done, it is possible, all it takes is a small act of will)! Let us try and return to the way things once were! The good old times!
If only you could be persuaded to believe me when I tell you that Rhona and I had no