Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart

by Stephen Benatar

  So I made a decision.

  I should have to make sure I was a long way from Nottingham during the days surrounding my birthday.

  12

  It was the forty-first wedding anniversary of my mother’s parents. (My father’s were dead.) The year before, we’d had a slap-up celebration at the Golden Hind but today would be a somewhat quieter affair: Nana and Gramps and my mother’s widowed sister and unmarried brother and our three selves. Also, it would be a daytime, not an evening, do. The anniversary this year fell on a Sunday.

  In fact, it was to be no more than a glorified Sunday lunch, made special by having chicken in place of a joint and white wine instead of water. The chickens, two of them, were to be eaten cold, with salad and new potatoes, because it was July and for the past week the weather had been sultry. In a bucket in the bathroom—on a bed of melting ice beneath a deepening, gentle sea—the four bottles of wine clinked pleasantly.

  That morning, while putting out the breakfast things, my mother was laughing but prepared to panic.

  “Do you realize they’ll be here in three hours and I’ve hardly done a thing? Such an idiot! What could I have been thinking of, yesterday?”

  “But yesterday you made the cakes and the trifle and you and Ethan enjoyed your picnic in the woods. You weren’t just standing idle.”

  “Thank you. So I’ve now got half the pudding prepared and maybe half the tea. Oh, wonderful! What about all those potatoes which need to be scrubbed, the salad which needs to be washed, the chickens which need to be cooked, the nut roast which needs to be seen to? What about the table which needs to be laid, the eggs which need to be beaten, the chickens which need to be carved? Bethel, remind me, please, what have you done with that magic wand?”

  “You know,” said my father solemnly, “I think they could have done with you ten years ago as Mr Churchill’s speech-writer. Have we ever heard such rhetoric?”

  “There’s also the present to be wrapped, the card to be written. I’d also like to have a bath and wash my hair and spend a bit of time on getting myself ready. There are probably dozens of other little also’s that I’ve overlooked.”

  “I don’t suppose his trifle would compare with yours, either.”

  “I wish you’d be serious for a moment.”

  “You know you’ll get through it all just fine.” He lightly smacked her bottom as she leant across the table to position the Post-Toasties. “You know you have a highly domesticated husband and at times a semi-domesticated son—”

  “Yes, I do have a domesticated son, thank God.”

  “I shall ignore that. And after all it’s only your mum and dad and brother and sister. It isn’t the King and Queen. Then you might have had reason to worry.”

  “It isn’t funny,” said my mother. “I happen to believe I should try to treat my family as if it were the King and Queen. And if you hadn’t…” (she glanced in my direction) “kept us awake last night…reading…I’d have been up a couple of hours ago, possibly three, getting on as busily as I had meant to. It’s all very well for you to make jokes.” She herself was half joking. But only half.

  Even at fourteen, even with the accumulated experience of—give or take—seventy years, I found it oddly disturbing to know my parents had a sex life. I ought to have been pleased, and in a way I was, and yet it was by no means as simple as seventy years should have made it. And I wondered if Dad saw a suggestion of this in my expression.

  “You’re very quiet, my son.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “That’s my boy, and don’t I know what you’re thinking about! Why, about how you’re going to take over and solve all your mother’s little problems.” He pinched my cheek in imitation of Alec Guinness’s Fagin. “Jewel!” he said. “Treasure!” he said. “Angel!” he said. Three pinches in total, although I tried to duck away. “Now all you’ve got to do, young prince, is keep your reputation alive for just one more morning, earn yourself three bob into the bargain and let your mum retire to beautify herself, put on her regalia, practise her curtseys…and for a further two bob let me have my own bath in peace and read the News of the World in time to get that scandalized look off my face before our royal visitors arrive!”

  Today, though, his humour was falling flat. Inwardly—and uncharacteristically—I railed at the awkwardness of life. I’d had literally years in which to remember the importance of this date and I had actually only remembered it while listening to the crystal set less than thirty minutes earlier. Listening to, of all things, the weather forecast!

  “Dad, this is rotten. I was going to tell you both. I’ve got to go out.”

  “Oh, Ethan!” cried my mother, and now the last sign of her being able to laugh had totally vanished. “Oh, no, but you can’t! I’ve been relying on you! Where have you got to go?”

  “Aylesbury.”

  “Aylesbury!”

  This wasn’t just down the road; it was about fifteen miles from Amersham. And although the train service wasn’t bad, even on Sundays, there’d also be a lengthy bike ride at the other end. There was no way I could hope to get home before the arrival of our guests.

  “Son, you can’t,” said my father. “That’s all there is to it. Who were you going with? Well, whoever it is, give them a ring and explain that your mother needs you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “I mean, I’m not going with anybody and there’s no way I can put it off.”

  “You aren’t making much sense.”

  “Dad, I have to see someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know her name.”

  My father looked at my mother.

  “No, it isn’t like that,” I said. “It’s—”

  “Ethan, frankly I don’t care what it’s like. Not now. The thing is—you’re not going.”

  “I’ve got to.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But I shall have to, whether or not you allow me.” This was miserable. At fourteen I was already much taller than my father.

  “Ethan, be careful. I feel tired. I’m not in any mood to mess about. Walk out of here this morning and you need never bother to return.”

  “Bethel!” screamed my mother. “No, obviously he doesn’t mean that, Ethan. But all the same—”

  “I’m sorry, Mum. Dad. I really am. But look, I’ll make a start on the potatoes. And I’ll be fast. They may not take much more than fifteen minutes.”

  My mother looked as if she were about to cry. “No, you haven’t eaten any breakfast. Whatever happens, I want you to sit down again and eat your breakfast.”

  “Yes, sit down again and eat your breakfast,” said my father. “And while you’re doing so, you can tell us what this is all about!”

  But I didn’t sit down. Now that he was struggling to recover his temper I became aware of losing mine. I, too, was feeling tired; I, too, had been having orgasms. (I didn’t much like the thought of Zack knowing, nor indeed my Granny and Granddad, but the drive at times was just too strong.) I had lost my temper before, of course, by no means the saintly individual I had hoped and prayed to be, yet at least it hadn’t occurred often and at least I’d always done my best to make amends. Each time it happened, though, I hated it—hated it.

  “No, I can’t tell you. You’ve simply got to accept my word that it’s important. I’d have thought by now you might have learnt to trust me.”

  I could have said worse. I was relieved I didn’t actually say, “Sometimes I think you’re apt to take advantage,” because I knew my parents depended on me for dozens of things that fourteen-year-olds didn’t normally get asked to do (from mending fuses, replacing washers, cleaning windows, to wallpapering and painting, and digging the allotment) and I was really glad this was the case—in theory I wanted to be made use of, always, and as fully as possible—but nevertheless I wished I could sometimes get round things by resorting to a meaningless white lie, the sort that hurt nobody and si
mply eased away the complications.

  “All right! Go off on your little jaunt,” said my father.

  “It isn’t a little jaunt and I can’t see why there has to be this huge to-do about it, why you’re overreacting as you are. As you said, it’s only family for heaven’s sake, and all of them would be only too happy to pitch in if necessary. I know they would. Honestly, Dad! I know it!”

  But by this time my mother was actually crying. On the one hand I was tempted to put my arms about her but on the other I felt it was all so unnecessary; and in any case my father was there to put his arms about her.

  He called after me. “Next time someone says how wonderful you are, I think we may have to reconsider!”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I shouted back. “Why don’t you tell them how you always like to take advantage?” I had to have the last word.

  Already, though, as I was cycling down to the station, teeth uncleaned, hair unbrushed (and this was a day we’d all been looking forward to), the tears were welling up in my own eyes; and would have been easier to hold back if only they’d been due to frustration. But they weren’t. Inevitably they’d been brought on by remorse and shame. I should have handled it far better—that whole silly scene which had sprung out of nowhere! If only I had been less tired! If only I had been more prepared! I would have liked to ride back right then and there and throw my arms around the two of them and confess I’d spoken wholly out of turn and without having meant a word of it. But I hadn’t got the time and, besides, what could I have offered that would have made the situation any more acceptable? I wished I could have spoken to Zack.

  I often wished I could have spoken to Zack. Zack, whom I had seen only once since infancy. And even that had been four years ago.

  I’d been wandering on my own round Woolworths, or, more precisely, standing at one of the long counters looking a little aimlessly at cigarette cards.

  “I hope this isn’t how you normally spend your time,” he’d said. It was as though we saw each other every day; there was absolutely no need for formalities or catching up.

  “Why? What should I be doing?” Then I put my arms around his legs for a moment and held my head against his stomach.

  “Reading something improving, not gazing at pictures of Susan Hayward and Jean Kent.”

  “I’m always reading something improving.” But my grumble was as counterfeit as the reproach it was in answer to.

  “Like what, at the moment?”

  “Confessions of St Augustine.”

  “And before that?”

  “Bertrand Russell.”

  “Where do you find such things as Confessions of St Augustine and Bertrand Russell?”

  “There’s a secondhand bookshop in—” But then I saw his face and realized he knew perfectly well.

  “And I think if you were genuinely enterprising,” he said, “you might have learnt to hide those gentlemen behind dust jackets borrowed from The Famous Five or Just William.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? William the Showman, actually, and Swallows and Amazons. But Mr Marshall in the bookshop believes I’ve got the best-read family in the whole of Bucks and that there’s always one of them celebrating a birthday. He feels sorry for me and lets me have things for practically nothing. Oh! I’ve suddenly got an idea you may know Mr Marshall! If you do, please tell him how his kindness unfailingly touches me. Tell him I shall never stop feeling enormously grateful to him.”

  “Point taken. How are you enjoying your childhood in general?”

  We were walking slowly round the various counters.

  “Oh, it’s brilliant!”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know how. Do you want a list of things?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…” Where did I begin? A sense of wonder had gradually been restored to me, a boy’s-eye view of the world that noticed as if for the first time the patterning on a snail’s shell or the inside of a foxglove. It had been fun being pushed along in one’s buggy, having rides on shoulders, owning a tricycle, scooter, roller skates—electric train set—wind-up gramophone. It had been fun to stay again with grandparents, riding in an open car, eating honey from the comb, scattering grain for their Rhode Island Reds, going mushroom picking in the dawn. It had been fun being taken to children’s plays and circuses and pantomimes, and knowing that this time one had to hang onto everything one could, since it was all so transient and precious and unrepeatable. (Essentially unrepeatable.) But it wasn’t easy in a few minutes, and without warning, to pick out the thousand contributing ingredients. “I honestly can’t do it justice.”

  “But if you’re not even going to try I shall think it very feeble. And feel truly disappointed.”

  I needed no greater incentive. As well he knew.

  “Okay, then. Completely at random. One’s first glimpse of the sea out of a train window. Birthday parties. The smell of a grocer’s shop. Tobogganing on a tin tray. Treasure hunts. Riding on a pram base. Running after car tyres. Playing rounders. Storming the enemy’s camp, or castle, on summer evenings in the dark. I think this all sounds very naff.”

  Zack was riffling through some sheet music. “It’s 1947,” he said. “I don’t know the meaning of that word.”

  “But naff or not…it’s been phenomenal!”

  “And what about your looks?”

  “My looks? Oh, fine. Yes.” But somehow they didn’t seem so important any longer. Maybe they would come to do so as I grew older and got interested in girls, or maybe it was the usual story of someone wanting what he hadn’t got and not reflecting too much on what he already had. But at least I liked to think of meat and fish and peanut butter slowly transforming themselves into muscle. (I hadn’t yet become a vegetarian. Why not, I was to wonder later.)

  “I note you’ve made no mention of the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind.”

  “What about them?”

  “Renewed opportunities for the helping thereof.”

  “Don’t mock,” I said. “It may not amount to much but I do try.”

  “I wasn’t really mocking.”

  “I’m only a little boy of ten. Unfortunately there are limits to what people will accept from little boys of ten.”

  “You could run errands. Read newspapers. Make lovely cups of tea.” He smiled, spread his hands, then added, “But never mind. You’ll get older. I give you my word on that.”

  “Big-Hearted Arthur,” I said.

  He turned from his desultory inspection of assorted loose biscuits and looked at me closely. “Why do you say that?”

  I was cock-a-hoop.

  “Oh, Zack, you surprise me. I thought you knew everything. And you haven’t even heard of Arthur Askey!”

  “Ah, right. ‘Hello, playmates’… ‘Bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz, honey bee, honey bee…’”

  “Too late,” I said complacently. “You can’t bear to think I caught you out, that’s your trouble.”

  “You jumped-up specimen! Don’t break a lance with me!” He smiled as he ruffled my hair.

  I’d never met that expression. “Is it derived from jousting?”

  “Which in turn derives from jouster, Old French. To fight on horseback.”

  “That’s something I’d like to take up as soon as I can.”

  “Jousting?”

  “Ha-ha! Yes, and fencing—why not? But what I really meant, as I think you must have known, was horse-riding.”

  “I agree. It’s an imperative. It’s also great fun.”

  “Along with polo and squash and boxing and…” I laughed. “Zack? Do you ever get the feeling I’ve a lot to make up for?”

  When I’d said that, I had been talking only in terms of wasted time, but ever since then the phrase had intermittently reverberated, and taken on a different connotation.

  “I’ve got a lot to make up for,” I thought now, as I cycled down the hill towards the station.

  Once more, when he had gone, it struck me that I had spoken largely of inanities (no
doubt carried away by the sheer exhilaration of seeing him again—very schoolboyish) and still hadn’t alluded to the thing which really cut to the heart of my being: my unshakable guilt over Brian Douglas. It seemed there might be a basic malfunction in that part of my memory, self-regulating as soon as Zack had gone. But it also seemed, whether I alluded to it or not, that he must surely know. Yet why in that case didn’t he help? God surely knew, as well—why didn’t he help? The prayer for Brian Douglas—and for myself—was constantly in my thoughts and yet my burden remained intact (the cross I had to bear, as Miss Evers at the library would have phrased it, an expression I abominated with a force that simply wasn’t rational and could sometimes make me shudder). The nightmare continued as before, though not so frequently—only seven times during this past year. It was enough. I didn’t have to be asleep to remember its content.

  I got to Aylesbury at half-past-ten and then cycled to the village where Major Shipman lived. The Major was one of my father’s bosses. He and Mr King owned not only the Regent but, in Chesham, the Embassy and the Astoria, as well as other cinemas in nearby towns. I had met him and his wife on several occasions, received good presents from them over each of the past six Christmases, as well as from Mr and Mrs King—Dad had come back from the war in September 1945 and had almost at once been taken on as the Regent’s manager—but I’d never visited the Shipmans at their home, and indeed it wasn’t them I’d come to see today. (As a matter of fact, I knew that on the following morning the Major would be calling on us and bringing a tinful of his wife’s meringues.) Luckily, though, the way to the village had been decently signposted.

  I hoped to heaven that the Shipmans had only one set of neighbours nearby, for if there were houses all about, then my job would be a lot more difficult, as well as considerably more embarrassing. I began to sweat as I cycled and this wasn’t entirely due to the humidity.

  It was fortunate, however, that the land wasn’t hilly. If it had been, my Aertex shirt would have felt still damper than it already did.

  It was also fortunate that, yes, Apple Tree House was the only dwelling in any direction that could have been called close to Shipman’s Farm. But my heart was showing no signs of slowing down in gratitude as I pushed open the front gate and walked along the narrow path between rows of neatly planted vegetables, rows prettily interspersed with pinks and marigolds and lavender. Perhaps the apple trees—or at least apple tree—were in the back garden. The house itself was unpretentious: redbrick, small and functional: and looked more in keeping with its vegetables than with the high-sounding name picked out for it.