The Restoration of Otto Laird

by Nigel Packer

  As the hours passed, Cynthia and Otto became increasingly worried that Daniel might become upset. Yet he remained in good humour and remarkably philosophical, telling them not to worry as darkness fell and they had to abandon the search.

  ‘It was born to be free,’ he explained to them over tea that evening, quoting a line from his favourite wildlife film.

  Otto built a replacement kite for Daniel the following weekend, its design a good deal less ambitious than the first. But it was a replacement in name only. While it soon lay forgotten, somewhere at the back of a cupboard, its predecessor became a family legend. They never forgot its disappearance. It remained a running joke between them for years.

  ‘Where do you think your kite might be?’ Cynthia or Otto would ask Daniel, closing his book of stories and tucking him down for the night.

  ‘Passing Mars or Jupiter,’ he would say. ‘Maybe it has reached the Milky Way.’

  And he would smile his gap-toothed smile at the very thought of it.

  Twenty-Three

  Dear Daniel,

  I have recently become aware – and this is something to do with age, I think – of all the harm I’ve caused in life to those I love. Not just the major incidents, but the tiny emotional injuries, inflicted unthinkingly, day after day, and accumulating over a lifetime into something more significant.

  I realise now that the pain I inadvertently caused you goes back far into your childhood. I realise that my analytical turn of mind, while serving me well in a professional capacity, made me somewhat ill-suited to be a good father. With the occasional exception (remember your kite?) I must have appeared to you as a cold and rather distant figure. Even adults found me intimidating, so heaven knows what it must have been like for a sensitive boy to be faced with such a personality over the breakfast table each morning. In retrospect, I wish that I could change all that, but sadly I cannot. So I am writing in order to acknowledge my mistakes, to apologise for my emotional coolness. I have to repair at least a part of the cumulative damage.

  If the roots of our estrangement can be traced back to your childhood, my behaviour during your adult years has only deepened the division. Firstly, my lack of emotional support towards you following the death of your mother: what a friend once correctly described as my ‘running away from reality to the mountains’. What I did was unforgivable. You were still a young man at the time – just twenty-one – and I effectively left you to cope with your sense of bereavement alone. It must have been extremely difficult for you. You were in the midst of your studies, you were dealing with the usual emotional pressures of being young and not yet settled in life. And then you had the additional burden of coping with your mother’s illness and death, the nature of which was of a singular, quite breathtaking cruelty. And you had to do all this with minimal support from me, other than the occasional letter or phone call to your digs, because I had disappeared into the French Alps to become a recluse. The timing could not have been worse.

  In explaining my actions to you now, I’m not seeking to elicit sympathy, merely to establish a degree of understanding. Furthermore, I hope that by revealing to you my feelings at that time, you may at some point feel inclined to reciprocate the gesture. I would welcome that very much.

  As you know, within a few months – almost a few weeks – of your mother’s death, I had effectively retired from the architectural practice she and I had formed with our colleagues almost thirty years before, sold up our family home in Hampstead and rented a wooden chalet on the slopes of the Chartreuse Mountains. I took my leave from colleagues and friends without passing on address or telephone number. Looking back, the thing that amazes me most is that I was able to do all this without appearing to raise a single suspicion that I had, in fact, completely lost my mind (there are benefits, I suppose, to having a natural air of authority). I now believe this is exactly what did happen.

  We have never really discussed this before, and I apologise for probing old psychological wounds, but the last few days of Cynthia’s life – if that is a suitable word to describe her condition at that time – were not easy ones. All of us hoped for a good death, a peaceful one, for your mother. It was, at that time, the only hope we had left. But I’m afraid even that small mercy was denied her. You had, of course, returned to Cambridge by this time, having reached the point of emotional exhaustion after those weeks of waiting in the hospice.

  I’ll spare you the details, but her final hours were difficult. Cynthia struggled, I’m afraid. And, in the months that followed, well, I suppose I struggled, too. It was the nature of the ending – the brutality of it. After she had fought the disease so bravely, for more than two years, to see it take her in such a pitiless fashion appeared callous beyond belief. It seemed to me almost like a glimpse of evil; certainly, like the end of all hope. And then mixed up with it was this terrible sense of relief – a relief that her great suffering was finally over, and with it a sense that time hung suspended, in one endless moment of trauma. It was logical, I suppose, that I should have felt this way. I imagine that you did, too. But it left me with a deep sense of shame, nonetheless. I believe, with hindsight, that these various factors must have tilted me over the edge.

  For almost four years I lived in that chalet. I went for days, sometimes weeks at a time, without taking the trouble to shave. Most days I wore the same tattered sweater, one bought for me by your mother in Italy some years before. The only furniture I had at my disposal was a narrow bed with a mattress, a chair and a small wooden table. There was no radio and no television – I suppose my lifelong taste for minimalism had reached its logical conclusion. To complete this picture of rural solitude, I suppose I should also tell you that I lived on nuts and berries, gathered from the forest; and upon wild game, hunted down by my own hand with weapons I had fashioned from a beech tree. In reality, however, there was a convenient Carrefour in the nearby village, which I visited twice a week for fresh supplies, alarming the poor checkout girls with my bad French and mighty beard.

  Throughout the period of my stay there I did little else besides walk in the Alpine landscape. I was trying, I suppose – in a somewhat obscure way – to re-establish some sense of contact with your mother, even though there were no particular memories associated with that place. Cynthia, as you know, had a great affinity with the natural world. Sometimes, when she and I were out walking in the Chilterns, I could almost sense her disappearing into the wind and the birdsong, into the blades of grass themselves. The landscape seemed to consume her. During our walks she often didn’t say a word, her silence could be total. Even her footsteps became softer and her breathing quieter; as they do, for instance, upon entering a church. And in a way I think that this is an appropriate metaphor. Woodlands, valleys, rivers and hills were, for your mother, sacred places. It was like some long-lost impulse, recovered from prehistory, a sense of the eternal in nature. Since your mother was not a religious person, the countryside, I think – and especially her own, southern English countryside – fulfilled that role for her. It’s only in recent months that I have begun to understand on a personal level the intensity of Cynthia’s relationship with nature; her discarding of the ego and all sense of self, her becoming the very landscape through which she walked. There are moments when I’ve felt something similar myself, while wandering in the forest near my current home in the Jura. When I was walking in the Chartreuse Mountains, however – back in the late 1980s – I had yet to really understand these things.

  It went on for some time, this aimless walking in the circumference of my small wooden chalet; trying to catch a glimpse of Cynthia, or at least capture an inkling of how she might have felt, upon witnessing the play of light across a stream, or the puffs of mist hanging low in the valleys as the rising sun drew their moisture. Autumn, I remember, was an especially poignant time, being the season that most affected your mother. The winter months were harsh, but there was consolation to be found in the depth and silence of the snows.

  It was a poe
tic time, in its way, but also a deeply selfish one, as I had a young son back at home in England who needed my support. The guilt was there, on my part; of that there is no question. Indeed, the sheer ferocity with which I used to walk, and my recklessness while doing so, were probably indicators of that guilt. I would sit on high outcrops in wet and slippery conditions, lean out over precipices to look at vertiginous drops. Perhaps – who knows? – such actions embodied a death wish of sorts. But life for me was so different up there in the mountains, it had so little connection to my life down below, that I think I somehow managed to shed both the person I had been and the responsibilities that person held towards others. In brief, I tricked myself into thinking I was someone else. I pulled the plug on my former life, and found instead solitude.

  I suppose I would have stayed that way for the rest of my life, until tumbling off a precipice somewhere, or going completely barmy with the lack of human contact. Except that, one day, someone else appeared in my life. On a whim, I decided to take a bus trip to the lakeside town of Annecy. I have no idea why. It was the first time I had gone beyond my usual foraging territory for nearly three years. Maybe I craved for once the noise and bustle of people around me, or perhaps I wished to see again some stimulating architecture. Annecy, as you know, has an especially beautiful medieval centre. Whatever the reason, I ventured for a couple of balmy summer days beyond my familiar daily round, and there I encountered Anika.

  She approached me as I sat in a café above the village of Talloires. It was a lovely spot on the slopes with a view of the lake. I’m sure I would never have spoken to her otherwise, and this brings me on to the second issue I would like to discuss with you. I realise you have always believed that I married again too soon after your mother’s passing. In retrospect, I can understand how you might feel this way. I understand also that you have subsequently cast Anika in a somewhat predatory role; as the woman who swooped down, talons flashing, upon your father when he was not thinking quite as straight as he should have been.

  Please don’t deny these thoughts, for I must confess I once heard you express them. I was in the downstairs lavatory of your home, and you were talking with Suzie in the hallway. It was one of those difficult situations – wanting to defend someone against words that were not meant for my ears. I let it pass, then, but I would like to address it now. I can say categorically, and with the clearest of heads (the cabin fever of the Alpine years has long since passed, I assure you), that Anika is a kind and beautiful woman who comports herself at all times with the utmost discretion. When she spoke to me, the impulse that drove her was certainly not a predatory one. Please bear in mind that I looked, at the time, like the wild man of the woods! It was simple human compassion. She saw a troubled soul, if you will, and went to its assistance. The feelings that developed between us were slow in their gestation and entirely honourable. It took a long time, in fact, for us to reach a stage that one might define as love. It began as a friendship, pure and simple, and one that took no small degree of patience on her part to sustain, given the extent of my emotional withdrawal from the world at that time. I do not know, of course, what your mother would have made of Anika as a person, but I do know that she approved, as a concept, the idea of my remarrying. It is one of those strange matters that one discusses in the latter stages of an illness such as hers.

  I don’t wish to turn this portion of the letter into a lengthy homage to Anika, especially as I would like you to continue reading until the end! Suffice to say that she is a sensitive woman, whose spontaneous generosity towards others I witness on a daily basis. She is a very different character to your mother. Anika is not an artist, able to express her emotions with eloquence. She is practical, with an academic background in political science and a professional career spent mostly at the United Nations. Similarly, her kindness towards others takes a pragmatic and undemonstrative form. But it is there, I promise you, and both you and your family would certainly get to experience it, if only we could somehow break down these barriers that have grown up on all sides.

  In some respects, I realise, I have continued to run away from reality for the past twenty-five years or so, to the point where an entirely new reality has evolved for me. I imagine, on those occasions when you visited Anika and me in Switzerland, you were surprised at the extent to which I had changed. You must have noticed how out of touch I was with the wider world, my lack of interest in current affairs, or politics. Anika, as you saw, keeps abreast of these things far better than I.

  Having avoided the realities for so long, however, in the past few days I’ve been forced to face up to them. Returning to Marlowe House (we’ve been making a documentary about its proposed demolition) has not been an easy experience. The building is in a poor state of repair and there’s a tangible sense of decay in the air. Inevitably, in such an environment, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, questioned where it was that things went wrong.

  Also, at a more personal level, it has reminded me of the world from which I came. Not just London, but the world I knew before then … before the change of country, and of surname. I raise this last point, as it’s something we’ve not discussed before. Just once, as I remember, was the matter raised by you. How old were you then: sixteen or seventeen, maybe? You asked me one day, out of the blue, just why it was I had changed my name to Laird. And I could sense in your voice, hence my rather dismissive response at the time, the deep disappointment that underlay your question.

  I’ve never forgotten that moment. I understand your feelings. I know how much our heritage means to you. Perhaps it was my duty, in the years after the war, to maintain the family name. Perhaps it was my duty to all the lost. Indeed, for this very reason, the decision I took remains a source of guilt. But it was a decision made, by a young man, remember, for entirely practical reasons. It was driven by a combination of residual fear – unfounded, perhaps, now that the war was over, but real enough for me at the time – and a wish to avoid any further difficulties.

  When I arrived in London, I was in a somewhat confused state. I was a guest here, invited on a scholarship, and yet mentally I remained a refugee. There was still some anti-Semitism around, even after what had just occurred, and occasionally I found myself the victim of it. In another sense, and perhaps rather childishly, I simply wanted to feel included somewhere, maybe for the first time in my life. And so I took the name Laird, somewhat randomly, because I was a fan at the time of the works of Sir Walter Scott, and it carried for me rather romantic associations. In a sense, I suppose, I was adopting a new persona; a character, if you like, for the professional life to come. That character, I now realise, is all played out.

  I’ve never been a religious man. It’s years since I visited a synagogue. The last time I went on a regular basis was with my father, mother and sisters. Yet even now, as I close my eyes at the writing desk, I can feel them all around me: the candles and solemnity, the incantations of the Rabbi, the words of the Torah and the music of the Hebrew language. Some memories, it seems, are just too powerful to ever leave us.

  I hope that you and I can close this emotional distance, Daniel. You have a wonderful family and I would like, if possible, to properly get to know them. It would also be fun to talk with you about architecture again. How I miss those conversations we once had. I have seen your plans for the cricket pavilion in Mumbai – I must admit I was green with envy when I heard you had secured the contract – and they look tremendous. It’s good to know those childhood days we frittered away at Lord’s and the Oval turned out to be productive after all.

  You may feel inclined to take those last comments with a pinch of salt, remembering the insensitive remarks with which I created this rift between us. I apologise. My criticism of your design for the railway station in Coimbra was harsh, ill tempered and wholly unfounded. Ill timed, too, given the professional pressures you were under at that time. I don’t know what came over me that day. I suspect, with hindsight, there was more than a hint of jealousy in my
remarks. They were the words of an old man, his powers in decline, raging against the dying of his own creative light. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve replayed that scene differently in my head; ending, each time, with a warm and forgiving embrace.

  There were deeper tensions, of course, underpinning that petty row. Anika’s name did not arise directly, but I sensed as ever your underlying resentment towards her. If only we could address that issue, of my remarrying not long after Cynthia’s death, then perhaps it would pave the way for the airing of other concerns. On the day you returned to Cambridge, for instance, in the final days of your mother’s life, I felt in some unspoken way that you were abandoning me. At the surface level I understood your actions, and goodness knows I didn’t wish to prolong your suffering further. And yet, as you waved farewell through the window of your cab, I felt a sudden sense of dislocation. It seemed that you were telling me something, deliberately putting a distance between us. In reality, I now realise, such thoughts were largely misguided. But the heart has a tendency to fear the worst, especially when it is at its most exposed, and a single misunderstanding – a slight, falsely perceived – can soon develop into something more deep-rooted. I believe I speak for both of us when I say this.

  I suppose this misplaced sense of rejection partly explains the subsequent coolness between us; the hesitation I experienced, in that cabin in the mountains, every time I picked up the telephone to give you a call. ‘Does he want to hear from me?’ I would ask myself. ‘Or would he prefer it if I left him alone?’ More often than not, I would find myself replacing the receiver.

  Those self-same doubts, the sense of hesitation, return as I write to you now. Twenty-five years on, we still suffer the consequences of our inability to communicate. You live just a few miles from where I sit writing this, yet I feel unable to turn up unannounced at your door. Please let’s try to remedy this situation now.