TWO
They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.
My childhood, adolescence, and young manhood were dominated by my father.
Will, the total power of will, was his fundamental credo.
‘Will. Man’s greatest asset. Under-used by the majority. The solution to all life’s problems.’ How often had I heard those words.
The combination of his unquestioning belief in his own power to dictate his life, and the tall, heavy body in which this will resided, made him a most formidable man.
His name was Tom. To this day, years after his death, I associate strength of character with every Tom I meet.
From the small grocery business his father left him, he built a chain of retail shops that made him a wealthy man. But he would have been successful at whatever career he pursued. He would have applied his will to the pursuit of his goal, and inevitably have achieved it.
He applied his will to his business, to his wife, and to his son. His first goal with my mother had been to win her. Then, to ensure that any way of life she pursued did not interfere with the other goals of his life.
He wooed her with total dedication, and married her within six months of meeting her. The nature of the attraction between them is still a mystery to me. My mother does not seem to me to have been a beauty. I heard her once described as having been a vivacious young woman. Perhaps that was what attracted him. However, there is no trace of vivacity in my recollection of her gentle presence. She painted as a young girl. Some of her water-colours decorated the walls of my childhood home. But she stopped. Suddenly. I have never learned why. The nature of the bond between them, for it was undoubtedly there, still eludes me.
I was an only child. After my birth they slept in separate rooms. Perhaps my birth had caused trauma. Whatever the reason, there was my father’s room, and my mother’s room, and they were separate. How did that young man live his sexual life? I have heard no scandalous stories, overheard no innuendoes. Perhaps the purpose of separate rooms was not to banish sexual activity, but to curtail it, for reasons of contraception.
My life as a child, and as a young boy, seems shrouded in a mist, permeated by the constant power of my father’s presence. ‘Make up your mind about it. Then do it,’ my father would say – about exams, running (my only athletic prowess), even the piano lessons which I took, much to his embarrassment. ‘Make up your mind. Then do it.’
But what of uncertainty, or pleasant failure? What of the will of others, subjected to his own? Perhaps it was something he never thought about. Not through callousness or cruelty, but because he truly believed he knew best. And that everyone’s best interest would be served by following his.
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