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Such an abandonment would have seemed undignified at the very least. Susan used to go to him when we were fighting and he would take her side, phoning me and saying, ‘Don’t be cruel,boy.’ He said she was ‘all in one’. She had everything I could want. Dad left his own mother at twenty-one and never saw her again. He didn’t approve of leaving, and he liked to be chivalrous. He didn’t see that the women could take care of themselves. The man had the power and had to be protective.
    Father believed, too, in loyalty. For him to be accused of disloyalty would have been like being called a thief. But what would he have been loyal to? After all, when required, one can always find something to attach one’s stubborn faith to. Probably he would have been loyal to the idea of loyalty itself, for fear that without it the world would have been robbed of compassion, and oneself exposed.
    Father was a civil servant who later worked as a clerk at Scotland Yard, for the police. In the mornings, and at weekends, he wrote novels. He must have completed five or six. A couple of them were admired by publishers, but none of them got into print. They weren’t very bad and they weren’t very good. He never gave up; it was all he ever wanted to do. The book on his bedside table had, on the cover, a picture of a middle-aged writer sitting on a pile of books, a portable typewriter on his knee. It was Call It Experi ence by Erskine Caldwell. Under the author’s name it said, ‘Reveals the secrets of a great writer’s private life and literary success.’ The writer did look experienced; he had been around, but he was ready to go on. He was tough. That’s what a writer was.
    Failure strengthened Father’s resolve. He was both brave and foolish, I’d say. He wanted me to be a doctor, and I did consider it, but probably only because I was an admirer of Chekhov and Father liked Somerset Maugham. In the end Dad told me it was hopeless to take up something that wasn’t going to provide me with pleasure for the rest of my life. He was wise in that way. I was adept and successful a couple of years after I left university. I could do it; I just could. Whether it was a knack or trick or talent, I didn’t know. It puzzled both of us. Art is easy for those who can do it, and impossible for those who can’t.
    What did Father’s life show me? That life is a struggle, and that struggle gets you nowhere and is neither recognized nor rewarded. There is little pleasure in marriage; it involves considerable endurance, like doing a job one hates. You can’t leave and you can’t enjoy it. Both he and Mother were frustrated,neither being able to find a way to get what they wanted, whatever that was. Nevertheless they were loyal and faithful to one another. Disloyal and unfaithful to themselves. Or do I misunderstand?

I run my hand down the CDs
    I run my hand down the CDs piled on every available surface. Classical, of all periods, with dark Beethoven my God; jazz, mostly of the fifties; blues, rock-‘n’-roll and pop, with the emphasis on the mid-sixties and early seventies. A lot of punk. It was the hatred, I think, that appealed. It is great music but you wouldn’t want to listen to it.
    Victor doesn’t have much music over there, and few books. He only had the Bible in his house, and no one read it, not even the Song of Solomon. Now I accompany him to record shops and he flips through the CDs. ‘Who’s this? What’s this?’ he goes.
    He has a lovely helplessness, and has caught my enthusiasm. I took him to see my friend who has a shop. He bought a sky-blue suit which certainly shocks but does not outrage, except in certain low dives. He has tinted his hair. He might resemble a badger, and I did balk at the earring. But I keep my mirth down, and would say: any advance in wisdomrequires a good dose of shamelessness.

Separation wouldn’t have occurred
    Separation wouldn’t have occurred to a lower-middle-class couple in the