Dedication
Chapter One Dominic Avila House, January–February 2014
Chapter Two Daniel Avila House, February 2014
Chapter Three Daniel London, March 1991
Chapter Four Dominic London, March 1991 and April–December 1989
Chapter Five Dominic London and Thailand, January–November 1990
Chapter Six Dominic the Midlands, November 1990–March 1991
Chapter Seven Hunter’s Chase Preparatory School, 1969–1972
Chapter Eight Avila House, March 2014
Chapter Nine Hunter’s Chase, 1972–1974
Chapter Ten Daniel Hendon, May 2014
Chapter Eleven Greystoke, 1974–1977
Chapter Twelve Dominic Hendon, May 2014
Chapter Thirteen Oxford, 1977–1981
Chapter Fourteen Daniel Avila House, June 2014
Chapter Fifteen Saxburgh, 1981–1984
Chapter Sixteen Daniel London and the Midlands, July–August 2014
Chapter Seventeen Wingrove Manor, August 2014
Chapter Eighteen Groom’s, 1984–1988
Chapter Nineteen Wingrove Manor, October 2014
Chapter Twenty Avila House, January 2015
Supporters
Copyright
David Hargreaves studied history at Worcester College, Oxford, before becoming a history teacher, first at Stamford School in Lincolnshire, then from April 1986 at Westminster School in London, where he became head of the sixth form and a boarding housemaster. He taught at Westminster for a total of twenty-eight years until 2014. He now divides his time between running his education consultancy and writing, and is a governor of a London preparatory school. He publishes regular articles on history, including a weekly essay about the First World War published in centuryjournal.com. He lives in north London.
With special thanks to
Chris Liddell and Rennee Harbers Liddell
With special thanks to
Dennis and Charlotte Stevenson and their family
With special thanks to:
Christopher Alcock
Veronica Berman
Nabeel Bhanji
John Crewe
Marianne and Mike de Giorgio
Angela Dean
Helma Diffey
Robson Family
Arthur Fincham
Mary Gibson
Christine Hanway
William Hanway
Gavin Henderson
Claire & Robin Hilton
In loving memory of Fabian
Garcia Miller
Dylan, Carey, Harry and Alex Jones
Jack Kember
Jennifer and Ewan Labrom
Alan Leibowitz
Alex Letts
Ning Lim
Robert Lister
Cecilia Loo
Mandy Merttens
Andrew Miller QC
Isabelle & Andrea Morresi
Serena Nuttall
David Owen
Alex Panayides
Stuart Proffitt
Will, Gen, Josh and Amelia
Rosen
Ben Shillito
Simon Stanley
Barbara Weiss
Tom Weisselberg
Nancy Wood
Richard Wynne-Griffith
Alina Young
Sam & Annie Younger
For my family – past and present
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‘I may not be an alpha male,’ said Dominic, with a forced casualness, ‘but – really – breast cancer?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
He looked down sceptically at his chest which had been stripped bare for the purposes of examination. His left side felt very tender but, as midriffs went, it looked unremarkable for a man in his sixth decade: no moobs, at least, but only a historical trace of the muscle definition it had once boasted.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘goodness me. I didn’t even know men could get breast cancer.’
Mr Seymour, the oncologist, sat opposite, looking appropriately serious. He was a short and powerfully built man of about fifty with a generous crop of silver-grey hair. Through the garish 1950s redbrick casement, the afternoon blazed with a defiant optimism.
‘It’s rare, I grant you, but not unknown.’
‘Also vaguely insulting,’ said Dominic, essaying a lightness he did not necessarily feel.
Mr Seymour gave a small, uneasy smile.
As a veteran of breaking bad news himself, Dominic could only admire the consultant’s deftness – he had spoken in a measured tone, as one thoughtful man to another. Had he been gauche or flustered, or had he perhaps dropped his papers at the critical moment, Dominic might have had to deflect his own feelings and concentrate instead on feeling protective or sorry for him. Now all he could do was reflect on what he had been told.
A silent fifteen or twenty seconds passed which were broken by Mr Seymour, who suggested in tones of quiet encouragement, ‘You must have some questions.’
‘Must I?’ He thought for a moment. ‘I suppose I must. How rare?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Male breast cancer. How rare?’
‘Ummm, about one per cent of breast cancers occur in men.’
‘And how many are fatal?’
‘There are about three hundred deaths a year. ’
Dominic kept his face impassive. Momentarily, he allowed his eyes to search the room, as though it might provide answers. The sign fixed to the door had described it as a ‘consulting room’, and NHS bulk-buy furniture had been deposited within it without much sign of interest or care. There were two hard chairs opposite the desk, one of which he occupied. Mr Seymour’s was more elaborate – a clumsy recognition of his status as a consultant – upholstered in royal blue fabric, and with a swivel mechanism.
‘So,’ Dominic asked, ‘what happens now?’
For the first time, Mr Seymour tensed slightly. Dominic was aware that the nurse, who had been affecting to concentrate on the contents of a buff envelope, was listening intently.
‘Well. As you know, we did the scans because of what we found when we examined your lymph nodes – that is, under your left arm, when we first saw you – what is it? Twelve days ago?’
Dominic nodded.
‘It isn’t good news, I’m afraid. The cancerous cells have metastasised quite aggressively.’
‘I see.’
‘We should start discussing treatment straight away.’
Dominic gazed at him, quite still.
‘It’s a question of working out how you are going to cope practically. Is there anyone who will be able to help at home?’
The nurse had given up pretence of doing anything at all other than staring at Dominic. She looked the very soul of compassion and, he realised, with a stab of humility, this was for him.
‘I am sorry,’ said Mr Seymour after a pause. ‘This is a great deal to take in.’
Dominic was aware that he was trying to assemble an idea, rather than struggling for composure. ‘Do I have to accept treatment?’ he asked quietly. ‘I’m pretty sure that I’d rather not.’
Mr Seymour shook his head. ‘No, of course not. Not necessarily. But that’s not a matter for making any decisions on today. That’s … that’s for when you’ve had time to digest the news.’
There was another longish silence. Unbidden, the nurse appeared at his side with a plastic cup of water which, to his surprise, Dominic found himself sipping gratefully.
‘I know I want to protect what’s left of my life,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll take anything that’s going to control the pain and to keep me calm. But I’ve no desire to spin things out if I’m just going to be miserable.’
Mr Seymour said nothing but nodded sympathetically.
Sly bugger, thought Dominic. He thinks I’m going to come begging for treatment once I’m past the first shock. But I won’t.
‘I’d like an idea of how long I can expect to live,’ he said finally, his voice sounding unnaturally slow and calm, even to his own ears. ‘I don’t have a family, but – well – there are one or two people who are going to need to know.’
‘Of course. I imagine you’ll want to talk to Fr Maybury, for one.’ Mr Seymour was a long-standing St Asaph’s parishioner.
Dominic nodded. ‘But not quite yet,’ he said, ‘I need a day or two first.’ He gestured ruefully. ‘Anything I say at this moment is bound to be a bit of a cliché – I need a bit of time to get my head round it.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d also like an answer to my question. How long?’
Mr Seymour folded his hands. ‘I understand that. You also know I’m bound to hedge. Everybody reacts differently to the disease.’
‘And you know I’m bound to push you. How long?’
The consultant grimaced, perhaps realising he had come against someone of strong will. ‘In my experience of patients who’ve decided against treatment for this kind of cancer, most have lived a good life for a year or more.’
They always over-estimated. Somebody had told Dominic that. Had it been Cara? Janey, even? Somebody well-informed, anyway. Six or eight months, he thought. Where were they now – January? Dead by Christmas, for sure. Finally absolved of the need to send cards.
‘Thanks,’ said Dominic, even more quietly. ‘It helps to know.’ He stood up and asked in a voice more like his usual what he needed to do next.
Mr Seymour looked at the nurse, rather as if he needed a prompt. She said something about Dominic’s medication, and about him needing to come to the dispensary on Monday.
‘And you and I can meet again next Friday, can’t we?’ he said, a little too heartily, speaking over her.
‘That’s fine,’ said Dominic.
‘Good, good.’ He turned to the nurse. ‘Ella – could you arrange for a taxi for Mr da Silva?’
Dominic protested, smilingly, he wanted to take the bus. It was nothing to do with money, he assured the consultant, just habit. Eventually, he shook hands with them both, having agreed to come back in a week’s time to discuss his decision. He could always change his mind, he was told.
‘I’m a bit worried about you having to take all this in by yourself.’
Dominic smiled. ‘Don’t be. I have good friends. They’ll step up.’
Practicalities, he said to himself, as he stepped on to the double-decker that would take him back to the centre of town. Concentrate on practicalities.
His will had first been written twenty-five years earlier, but he had made a point of revising it every couple of years, and so it was reasonably up to date. A bigger problem was what would happen to Avila House, the hostel for the homeless – or those otherwise on the fringes of life – where for over twenty years he had been warden.
His mind went back to – when was it? 1992? 1993? Avila House had consisted of no more than the old Victorian mansion and a couple of Portakabins in the asphalt yard at the back. It had been out of these that he and Breda Devlin had attempted to administer a home for twelve men, some recently out of prison, and whence many were destined to return.
The house had been a seminary until the late 1970s, by which time the flow of eager young prelates, mainly from Ireland, had dried up almost altogether. The diocese had tried to sell the house on several occasions, and it had been lying unused for months when squatters moved in during a particularly bad time for the town in the 1980s. The bishop, anxious to raise some funds for the struggling parish, prepared his lawyers to order an eviction. But Father Maybury, then the newly appointed parish priest at St Asaph’s, had counselled caution. Times were hard, he said, and the government appeared uncaring to those left in the wake of the hubris that seemed to have overtaken Britain. A few thousand pounds were raised and the hostel opened its doors for the first time in March 1993.
At once problems had erupted. Hostel wardens came and went with even greater rapidity than the residents, occasioning, as the bishop noted irritably, greater trouble. Within six months there had been one stabbing on the premises and one attempted suicide. The only clear legacies were a burgeoning trade in proscribed substances and ruptured relationships with the local community. On the Feast of the Assumption that year the bishop summoned Fr Maybury and told him he wanted the hostel closed by the end of the month.
Predictably, the priest pleaded for time. ‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘There’s someone I know who just might turn the whole thing around.’
There were roadworks just outside the big Iceland warehouse, and the diesel engine of the bus was left ticking over for almost ten minutes. Dominic found himself speculating about the intentions of two women emerging with trolleys stacked high with hamburgers and firelighters. It seemed the wrong time of year for a barbecue.
Hardly my business, he thought. His reflexive interest in other people seemed more than ever superfluous, but it was still there – for now. I have terminal cancer, he told himself slowly. I will be dead by Christmas. It would be an effort to say the words out loud.
He thought about the evening that lay ahead. Even though friendship was immensely important to him, the habits of a solitary life were ingrained. Roy, the assistant warden, was on duty in the hostel, so he would have no duties before the morning. As the bus turned in to Friary Lane, his gaze wandered from the top deck to Marks and Spencer.
An extravagant supper, he suddenly thought; that would be an appropriately defiant gesture. In the light of the day’s momentous news at least there was no incentive to economise. Impulsively, he stood up and rang the bell. Inside the shop, he chose a baguette, cherry tomatoes, green salad, dressed crab pâté, and a small rump steak. Then, feeling cheerfully naughty, he picked out an egg custard tart sprinkled with cinnamon, and a half bottle of Rioja.
As he queued at the checkout, he felt himself salivate, but then the brief euphoria subsided as suddenly as it had arrived, and he felt almost too tired to remain standing. He rang for a minicab, which deposited him at Avila House.
As it swung into the forecourt, Roy was standing at the front door, holding an old VHS player, which Dominic vaguely recalled having seen on the upper landing. Lacking hands to open the taxi door, he made a pantomime show of regret. Grateful for having a reason not to make conversation, Dominic nodded his understanding and prepared to carry his shopping up to his flat.
Avila House had transformed itself since the early days. Instead of the original complement of twelve residents, there were now thirty-six, each with their own room in the large purpose-built block constructed on what had once been the back garden. The old house was now given over to a range of offices and workshops.
‘Here, Dom. I’ll carry that.’ With classically inconvenient timing, Lewis – the most obdurately unemployable and long-standing resident – suddenly materialised at his side. He was a floppy, overweight man, rather older than Dominic himself, but with an adolescent’s anxiety to be included.
‘Oh, that’s nice of you. I’m sure I’ll be fine.’
‘No, no. Let me.’ He made a beeline for the bags.
Sighing inwardly, Dominic prepared to write off the next twenty minutes. Lewis considered himself an intellectual in a Sargasso sea of philistines, and Dominic was one of the few people who was prepared to listen to him expiate on a disconcerting range of subjects. ‘Have you heard about that President of Nigeria?’ he now asked him.
Dominic shook his head, thinking inwardly that he very soon would. Fortunately, at that moment Roy emerged, claiming he needed help in identifying the owner of a mystery anorak, and took Lewis away.
His supper was easily made, and every bit as good as he had hoped. The two glasses of Rioja, enjoyed while stretched out on the sofa, made Mr Seymour’s news seem remote. Thank God for iPlayer, Dominic thought, as he settled down to catch up with recent episodes of The Apprentice.
In the small hours, of course, he lay awake.
Bad news could be quite exciting. At the time of his disgrace a quarter of a century earlier, any blame or reproach lay at his door, even though most people had tiptoed carefully around the scandal which had enveloped him. A sudden and aggressive cancer wasn’t like that. Once again, it gave him an excuse to do what always gave him comfort – organise his life and, where possible, control it. He thought now with some satisfaction of the tasks that lay ahead: tell friends, inform the bank, fix hospital appointments. And while he dreaded to be the occasion of sorrow to those whom he loved, he was stimulated by the thought of the attention he would now receive. Come off it, da Silva, he told himself – this isn’t mainly bad news: I’m being spared a lonely and directionless old age.
The thing was that he didn’t feel ill exactly. Tired most certainly. But still curious about the future. It was bewildering and incredible that there were narratives in which he was deeply interested, to which there were resolutions he would not live to see.
Somehow, his mind refused to dwell on the people he knew best and loved most, but raced across the more impersonal world of politics. What, he wondered, would he now not know?
Well, all the political shenanigans for one thing. Twenty years earlier, he’d bought into the whole Blair package, but that was an infatuation which had turned sour. Almost anyone was better than Cameron, though. Assuming there would be no General Election before 2015 – shit – he was going to die under the fucking Tories.
Thank God, he thought, for Pope Francis. He’d hoped since the age of about twenty that much against which he’d railed in the Catholic Church would have been expunged in his lifetime: a relaxation of the ban on women priests, for instance, or on clerical celibacy – let alone the old chestnuts like abortion, homosexuality, and contraception. These weren’t going to happen, evidently, but every day of his life he thanked God for the new Pope.
His mind moved on seamlessly to sex. The young man on the checkout desk in Marks and Spencer had been absurdly attractive. He chided himself for the thought: insofar as he had been given the death sentence in Mr Seymour’s office about half an hour earlier, it might have been more seemly for him to have held his carnal appetites in check. You are incorrigible, he told himself.
He wouldn’t have minded a pee, but it would have meant getting up, and he wasn’t sufficiently uncomfortable for the effort it required. He put on his glasses and turned vaguely to the bedside clock. 3.20 a.m. Christ, he thought, I’ve got hours of this.
He might as well start to plan his funeral. He vaguely hoped that some of those who had passed through the doors of Avila House over the years might show up – those who weren’t dead or in prison, anyway. He smiled as he thought of the hymns best suited to the kind of democratic send-off he would prefer: ‘Lord of the Dance’, ‘Shine Jesus Shine’, ‘I the Lord of Sea and Sky’. Hymns calculated to piss off the kind of person he enjoyed pissing off.
Talking of whom, what about his former mother-in-law? He tried hard not to nurse grudges, but the memory of the abrasive mistrust between them had not been quite expunged, even after all this time. It was doubtful that she would attend the occasion, but he enjoyed the fantasy of her discomfort should she choose to do so. What about Janey? They’d never kept in touch, but – well – she had been his wife a quarter of a century ago. Blimey, he thought, why didn’t I think of her earlier?
Next morning, all seemed normal. Dominic was in his office from just before 8 a.m., veering between emails, phone calls and talking with the residents who milled in and out. When Fr Maybury arrived, Dominic gestured for him to close the door.
‘Something’s happened,’ he began, and saw the priest’s eyebrows arch in alarm.
It didn’t take long to lay out the bare essentials, and when he had finished the two men eyed each other in silence across the desk. An oasis of rosewood in a sea of plywood and Formica, it had been donated by the retiring senior partner of a local law firm. Facing Dominic, on the opposite wall, were three watercolours of his old college – one of the main quadrangle, one of the cottages, and the other of the old copper beech by the lake. They had been left to him years earlier by his Oxford tutor. On the desk were photographs of his parents, and another of a youngish man in a QC’s wig and gown.
‘Have you told Jack and Orla?’ asked the priest eventually. He was a tall man in his early sixties, big framed but still powerfully built, with a great head of thick white hair.
‘Yes,’ said Dominic, his eyes unhappy. ‘I rang them about half an hour ago.’
‘They’ll have been very upset.’
Now he wished he had not tried to use the phone for such a purpose. They were his oldest friends, and their intimacy had been greater in recent years than at any other point. He should have gone to see them, he thought.
‘They were.’
‘What about your family?’
‘I don’t really have a family, do I? My parents died years ago and I haven’t set eyes on Janey since … 1990, I think.’
‘Janey?’
‘My ex-wife.’
‘Ah.’ Fr Maybury looked embarrassed. ‘No brothers or sisters?’
‘None.’
‘Wait a bit. What about the nun?’
‘Oh yes – Kate. Not exactly a nun, but she runs a Catholic orphanage. My cousin.’
‘You haven’t told her?’
‘The orphanage is in Paraguay. We usually email at Christmas.’
Fr Maybury stretched his lips unhappily. ‘You might bring that forward a bit this year.’
‘Point taken.’
Fr Maybury looked as if he were struggling to remember something. ‘What about the posh pair?’ he said finally.
Dominic laughed. ‘Posh is a relative term, especially round here.’
‘You know who I mean. Great bear of a chap. Beautiful wife.’
‘Ah – Digby and Cara. I planned on ringing them tonight.’
After Fr Maybury had left, Dominic washed up the coffee mugs and tried to think what needed to be done. It was Wednesday, he knew, and on Wednesday he and Breda organised fresh bedding.
The reservoirs of self-discipline, by which he had often propelled himself in darker moments, were enough to help him absorb the shock, but they could not inure him against lassitude and exhaustion. The Bishop persuaded him to take indefinite leave, while insisting he could carry on living in the flat that came with the job.
He had, however, been right in what he had told Mr Seymour – his friends did rally to him. That first weekend, Jack arrived in his geriatric Fiesta to take him home for the weekend. He and Orla lived about thirty miles away, but they’d given Dominic the run of the place for the past twenty-five years.
‘Decent of you,’ said Dominic, as Jack insisted on carrying his small overnight bag out to the car. ‘I could have got a bus, you know.’
‘Will you shut up?’ It was said smilingly, but Dominic knew him to be both intensely shy and emotional.
‘What? Me? When I’ve got such a good reason to grab everyone’s attention?’
Jack gave a bleak smile. To anyone else, he looked his full age – Celtic, heavy-set, with a deeply lined face. When Dominic looked at him, however, he still saw the absurdly handsome and clever schoolboy who had befriended him.
‘Let’s do the cancer bit once Orla’s around, shall we?’ Dominic said pleasantly. ‘Jolly interesting for me, of course, but I don’t see why you should have to go through it twice.’
‘Good man yourself.’
Dominic smiled. It was Jack’s stock phrase of approval – an Irishism which he had picked up in childhood. Had he suddenly started wailing and gnashing his teeth, he knew, Jack would never have withheld support or comfort. But they’d known each other so well and for so long, there was much that didn’t need saying.
‘All right,’ said Dominic, once they were on the road. ‘General Knowledge test. For ten points – give me the name of Lord Curzon’s governess.’
‘Who?’
‘Lord Curzon. Viceroy of India? Are you telling me you’ve never heard of him? Very odd for someone who claims to be educated.’
‘How am I supposed to know the name of his – nanny?’ The last word was inflected with particular contempt.
‘A famous figure, Jack. Subject of a book by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. I’m sorry your reading is so restricted.’
‘Oh, that Lord Curzon. Let me see – Miss Paraman?’
Dominic groaned. ‘You were not supposed to be able to answer that.’
‘No complaining, please. Right now – my turn.’
Orla did not go in for this kind of nerdy emotional evasion, although she was the best of the three of them in their ludicrous General Knowledge competitions. When the car pulled up outside the front of the house (they lived in half of what had once been a Victorian village school), she was standing by the front door, but did not emerge. Short and slight, she radiated a determination to be good, and to subordinate her own needs and feelings to those of others. Today, however, Dominic could see she was struggling to maintain her composure.
Their four children were all grown up and lived independently. Dominic was close to each of them, but he enjoyed the undivided attention of Jack and Orla that weekend and accepted their invitation to come back the following Friday.
‘Actually,’ said Orla, ‘what we’d like is for you to come and live with us.’ Her copper hair had been cut short recently, and she looked far more severe than she was.
‘The Bishop said I can have my flat for as long as I’ve got left.’
‘Come on,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll look after you. Your cooking’s shite, anyway.’
‘It’s not that bad.’ He smiled at them. The reflex that had led him to cling to independence was, for now, as strong as ever.
Two weeks later, having accepted Digby and Cara’s invitation, he went to see them in their manor house in Sussex – the same house which, when Dominic had first known them both, had belonged to Digby’s parents.
It was cold out of doors, but the sun was bright and he lay in a large armchair in the orangery, reading Raymond Chandler.
‘If this is cancer,’ he said contentedly on the Sunday afternoon, ‘I’m all for it. Between the pair of you and Jack and Orla, I’m a pig in shit.’
‘Come and stay with us at St Maurice,’ said Cara. They had a farmhouse near Avignon. ‘We’re going to be there over Easter week. We’ll look after you.’
‘We’ll get a nurse,’ Digby promised, in his rumbling patrician burble. ‘Or, well, perhaps a priest?’
‘A bit previous,’ Dominic said, smiling. ‘But I have a favour to ask.’
‘Fire away.’
‘I want opium,’ said Dominic, ‘and a lot of it.’
Digby looked uneasy. ‘You’re not planning on … ?’
‘No, of course not. I just don’t want to hang around any longer than I have to once everything starts to kick off.’ He pointed vaguely in the direction of his breastbone.
‘Won’t the hospital see to all that?’
‘I hope so. I want you to prepare to make good any deficiencies.’
‘Ah, point taken. Not a problem, old boy.’
‘I need to know you mean it.’
‘I absolutely do. Now put it out of your head.’
Back at Avila House, he began to find the weekdays more of an effort. Afternoons could be particularly hard: for so long now, his days had been filled by visits to detention centres, housing departments and cut-price supermarkets – none of them guaranteed entertainment hotspots, but they had soaked up a great deal of time.
Rather like an over-ambitious gap-year student, he now listed books which he had never read or those which he had merely glossed over and made self-conscious efforts to repair the omission. They didn’t come to much, however. The Book of Psalms had a couple of airings. So did the poems of Robert Browning, and even the sonnets of Shakespeare. Swann’s Way was tossed aside after twenty perplexed minutes, as was A Suitable Boy. Far more time was expended on watching re-runs of Frasier and looking rather listlessly at YouTube.
After a month of this strange half-life he knew he could not put off telling the person who mattered to him perhaps most and prepared, finally, to call Daniel.
It was a Saturday morning. They sat now in Dominic’s flat drinking coffee. Dominic claimed that it had come from the local discount store but to Daniel, a great aficionado of expensive blends, that seemed unlikely. Momentarily casting aside more pressing feelings, he reflected that his old friend and mentor had never been able entirely to suppress the evidence of the more affluent world to which he had once belonged.
Even in the sitting room, which was small and looked out over nothing more glamorous than an asphalt yard, there were giveaways: for one, his old Charles Eames chair and footstool. It had been a gift from Janey, Dominic had told him, by way of mitigation for such a gross extravagance. (Daniel had seen the former Mrs da Silva, of course – but, like so many wives in old-fashioned public schools, she had assumed no independent profile in pupils’ eyes.) Then there were the books – mainly nineteenth-and twentieth-century history and literature. Dominic, he thought, might play the ascetic all he liked, but he could never be a philistine.
They talked now about their most recent meeting a few months earlier. It had been at home in Hendon when Esther’s family and his own parents had celebrated Shabbat. It had been evident that Dominic had been delighted to have been asked, and that he had enjoyed the excursion from the habitual disciplines of Catholicism. On that occasion, Daniel had noticed, he had seemed energised and quietly joyful, almost as though he had known something which he did not, yet, want to share.
‘Did you know then that something was wrong?’ he asked him now.
‘Not exactly.’
‘What do you mean – “not exactly”?’
‘I could feel a lump around my left tit.’
‘You didn’t feel ill?’
‘Just tired. I didn’t take it very seriously. Being tired is nothing new.’
‘That’s because you work all the time.’
‘What – and you don’t?’
‘I’m younger.’
That was true, although the twelve-or-so-year gap in their ages felt a great deal less now than it had when Daniel was a bright and intense schoolboy and Dominic his History teacher. The real gaps between them had less to do with age than circumstance. Daniel had taken silk the previous summer and was already being spoken of as a future Law Lord.
‘I still wish you’d told me earlier,’ Daniel said, forcing himself back to the present.
‘I know, Dan, I know.’ Dominic shook his head. ‘Believe me, it wasn’t through any absence of affection.’
‘What were you thinking of?’
‘Honestly? I’ve been scared of upsetting you.’
‘I don’t care about being upset,’ said Daniel. ‘I care about you.’ To his dismay, he could hear his voice thickening and registered at once the distress in Dominic’s face at the sight. Bringing himself under control, he said, ‘Are you scared?’
‘Not very. Not in the way I would be if I had to go through chemo. Oblivion feels altogether easier.’
‘I would be.’
‘Ah, I’m looking to be bailed out by my posh connections. My old buddy Digby – that’s Sir Digby to you – has promised to procure hard drugs before the pain gets to me.’
‘How the hell is he going to do that?’
‘I have no idea. But I know Digby. He always delivers.’
Daniel said carefully, ‘I’ve got no scruples about suicide.’
‘I do,’ Dominic said. ‘Once I really am dying, however, a gentle shove would be appreciated. No point hanging around.’
‘How can you be so cool about this?’ Daniel asked. ‘I wouldn’t be.’
‘You have a wife and daughter, mon vieux, so you’ve no choice but to stay well and strong. Anyway, I need you to be well. I’ve a big favour to ask – much bigger than the one I asked Digby. Also more legal.’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘I need to show you something,’ said Dominic, suddenly standing up. Behind the sofa lay an old-fashioned tin trunk that Daniel did not remember seeing before. He looked up at Dominic, whose eyebrows were arched.
‘Open it.’
Crouching down, Daniel did so. Inside were piles of diaries, mainly the kind manufactured by Collins and Letts, augmented by a few old school exercise books.
*
Rummaging among them soaked up the next half hour very easily, after which Daniel placed the contents of the trunk carefully on the small table behind the sofa and Dominic went off to the kitchen to make fresh coffee.
‘How many years?’ Daniel asked when he returned.
‘Twenty, give or take a few months.’
‘You filled in every day?’
‘Nothing like, you’ll be relieved to hear. I seem to remember being more diligent about them when I was a little boy. Later on, there were phases when I might write it up two or three times for a week and then do nothing for a month or two.’
‘Bloody hell. When did you start writing them?’
‘On my tenth birthday.’
‘And why did you stop?’
‘If you read them,’ said Dominic, ‘you’ll understand.’
Daniel sat up, looking genuinely surprised. ‘You want me to read them? All of them?’
Dominic nodded. ‘That’s the favour,’ he said. ‘I really need you to read them. Carefully.’
Daniel stood up and went over to the table, and started flicking through the pile.
‘Do you want me to wait until – well – afterwards?’
‘Quite the reverse. I’d like you to read them now, while I’m still around and compos. Then maybe we can spend some time talking about them.’ His tone was conversational but Daniel was under no illusion as to how much this mattered.
‘Of course I will.’
Dominic looked across at him and spoke in a low and serious voice. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I know I’m reverting to teacher mode.’ He passed over a big Tesco’s shopping bag. ‘These cover my prep school years. Don’t lose them, please.’
Daniel looked at him. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘I’m good about that kind of thing.’
‘I know you are, I’ve also put in a covering note – just to give you the feel, you know.’
Later they went out for a drive and took in some of Dominic’s favourite Warwickshire villages.
‘It’s annoying,’ said Dominic. ‘The older I get, the more I love rural idylls. Exactly what I used to despise in the older generation.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it happening to me. I only get cities.’
Dominic raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You only get London.’
‘I only get north London, come to that. Anyway, didn’t you spend your childhood in London?’
‘Hardly. Until I was ten we lived in West Byfleet.’
‘Where?’
‘You illustrate my point exactly. West Byfleet in Surrey – very genteel in those days. The motif was, ummm – fauxrustique. With a few suburban safeguards like lollipop ladies and monkey puzzles.’
Later that afternoon, Daniel pulled into a service station and parked but did not get out. On the passenger seat lay the big box file. He had promised himself he wouldn’t start to read the diaries until he could set aside some proper time, but Dominic had said he had put in a letter as well. Maybe, he thought, he could read that.
He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the file. Four of five leatherette diaries lay inside with a cream oblong envelope on top of them, on which was written his name.
Avila House
Bulmer Road
11 February 2014
Dearest Dan
I blame Jennings. Like thousands of other poor saps who’d read that particular oeuvre too enthusiastically, I had been wildly excited before I arrived at prep school.
My parents drove me all the way from Surrey to the distant north for my first day – an all-day drive in those days, made in my father’s rather ponderous Rover 3-litre. It was September 1967 and there were long stretches of very slow road because the M1 and M6 weren’t yet linked. At one point we pulled over and had lunch on the side of the road, drawn out of pale blue Tupperware containers – all the rage in those days. We ate ham and cress sandwiches and homemade flapjacks, and drank from plastic beakers of orange squash.
We had been told that the school was due to assemble for Benediction at six o’clock. The sound of the tyres crunching on the gravel as we turned into the front drive is very vivid in my ears. So too was the slightly apprehensive voice of my mother who turned to my father and asked him ‘Aren’t you going to wear a jacket, darling?’ He duly obliged.
The diary habit kicked off a few months later – slowly at first, but seems to have become properly ingrained by the time of my tenth birthday. I was lonely and bored, I suppose, and found it therapeutic to be able to spill my thoughts at the end of each day. Maybe if I’d been at home I might have done that with my parents, but I doubt it. People held back a bit more in those days.
I should add, however, that I never felt remotely abandoned by them. I received at least one letter every week, penned in the slightly guarded but affectionate terms which marked out their generation, and they made termly visits. Of course, I also went home in the holidays. My father had had it much tougher: he had arrived at Hunter’s Chase Prep, also aged eight, back in 1929. But my grandparents lived in Argentina, and in the ten years which followed, he saw them again exactly once – when they came to London in 1935 for the Silver Jubilee of King George V.
Bless you for doing this. I am happy and relieved to know these will have been read by someone who loves and understands me. I suppose the simple truth is that I need to remember my life before it’s quite gone.
Much love
Dominic
One memory – brutal and transformative – stood out: 30 March 1991.
He was nineteen years of age, and in his second year at Merton. Insofar as there were ways of measuring such things, it seemed to be going well: his tutor was delighted by his work and, among the rather cautious kind of company to which he gravitated most naturally, he was respected and popular.
He had no girlfriend, however (a fact that tormented both him and, for entirely different reasons, his mother). A couple of earnest college acquaintances had suggested he join them for the Easter vacation in walking part of the Camino de Santiago. He declined, on the basis that he wanted to get laid rather than blisters, and felt the odds were better in London.
Daniel’s father had never been to any kind of university and found the ways of such places arcane and effete. After watching his son loll disconsolately round the house for a week, he called in a favour from a business acquaintance and arranged for Daniel to get some work experience at a criminal set in Lincoln’s Inn.
Schooled to obedience, Daniel left his parents’ house the following Monday morning and took the Tube from Golders Green to Temple. The traces of panic in the eyes of Mr Barrons, the barrister to whom he had been assigned, and the thinly veiled contempt of the clerks, left him in no doubt that his presence was welcomed by none of them. A token effort was made during his first two days to keep him busy but, on the Wednesday morning, Mr Barrons decided to work from home and advised Daniel to spend the morning at City of London Magistrates’ Court.
‘Might be interesting,’ said the clerk, through whom the message was relayed. ‘Never know, do you?’
‘I see,’ said Daniel. He had long learned to appear impassive even when he knew he was being jerked around, and vented his frustration by walking as slowly as possible towards Queen Victoria Street. Once inside the building, he chose a court at random and sat at the back.
His arrival coincided with the reading of the charge of importuning in a public lavatory contrary to the Sexual Offences Act. All that Daniel could see of the occupant was a balding head and a blue suit which had seen better days.
He had never been in a courtroom before and began to drink in the surroundings: grubby panelling on the walls and on the bench; a rather fussy coat of arms – enough to irk his republican sentiments – and, almost directly in front of him, the dock in which the accused was standing.
After some whispered consultation with a grey-haired man who appeared to be the instructing solicitor, the clerk shuffled his papers.
‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty.’
‘And are you willing for this matter to be dealt with here in the Magistrates Court, or to go to Crown Court?’
‘I am willing to have it dealt with here, ma’am.’
‘Please sit down, Mr da Silva.’
For a few moments, Daniel tried to believe that this wasn’t the same man. Da Silva – not a common name exactly, but there were others. About the same height, true, but then average height was what the word suggested, and most people were somewhere around that. No, no – this guy was bald, almost totally. That’s not, Daniel told himself furiously, that’s not how I remember him.
Jaw clenched, Daniel reached out for the Court List, a copy of which lay on the unoccupied seat to his left.
0699/59 Da Silva Dominic James Francis dob 07/03/59.
‘Well, Mr Jeffrey-Herd?’ said the Chairman of the Bench.
‘This is a sad case, Your Honour,’ he began. ‘A tale of a talented young man who has made a most regrettable mistake.’
What followed was unedifying. Mr Jeffrey-Herd described his client as a young man of excellent character but a victim of entrapment. He had indeed visited the public conveniences at Euston station, en route to visit his recently widowed father.
‘You mean your client has recently lost his mother, Mr Jeffrey-Herd?’
‘He has, Your Honour. Only a few months ago.’
‘Please go on, Mr Jeffrey-Herd.’
Mr Jeffrey-Herd did so. His client, whose marriage had recently ended and who was unemployed, had been drinking whisky by himself for most of the afternoon and evening. When a young and handsome man had sidled next to him at the urinals and made, by virtue of a series of body movements, a lewd suggestion, Mr da Silva had succumbed to a moment of weakness.
Miss Holmes, Counsel for the Prosecution, reminded the Bench that the law made importuning for sex a criminal offence. The fact that the young and handsome man was a police officer, said Miss Holmes, did not alter by one iota the culpability of Mr da Silva. She conceded that Mr da Silva was not a predatory offender, but suggested that his behaviour fell way below the standard one might expect from someone who had enjoyed so many advantages in life: Mr da Silva had been to Oxford, after all. He had taught at Groom’s, one of the most august schools in the country.
The Bench stirred at the mention of this great name. The Chairman, looking distinctly unfriendly, peered over his spectacles. ‘Indeed, Miss Holmes. At Groom’s?’
‘Yes, Your Honour,’ Miss Holmes, said. ‘At Groom’s.’ She allowed the word to fall slowly into the courtroom, perhaps for the benefit of any journalist who might be lurking.
Mr Jeffrey-Herd stood up. ‘It should be understood that no hint of impropriety attaches to his career there.’
‘True,’ said Miss Holmes. ‘But of course, he is no longer at Groom’s. He left there at about the time his marriage broke up, and went to Thailand.’ Again, she allowed the last word to fall on the court in a light diminuendo.
The Chairman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Thailand, you say?’
‘Yes, Your Honour – Thailand.’
That was that, despite Mr Jeffrey-Herd’s silky efforts at mitigation. Dominic was fined £100 plus costs, and bound over for nine months.
After the Bench had retired, Daniel saw his old teacher leave the dock and walk towards a handsome elderly man with white silky hair, who, judging by the palpable pain and tenderness which was passing between the two of them, must surely be his father. It was an unbearably intimate moment to be played out in public, and Daniel wished very much he was not there. When the coast looked clear, he fled from the court and dived into a cafe a safe distance away.
Over a cup of tea, he tried to get a handle on his feelings. The spectacle in front of him – someone shamed in the eyes of the world and for slightly shabby reasons – saddened him. There was also shock: he couldn’t help seeing Dominic through the eyes of a slightly overawed teenager. Only two years earlier, Dominic had been a teacher, he kept thinking, he shouldn’t have done this.
Daniel had suffered at Groom’s. His Housemaster had once described him to the Matron as a ‘clever little Jew’. Those were the exact words, and they had been uttered without the least embarrassment, although (he supposed) he had not been intended to overhear them. Over time, he schooled himself to ignore the low-level antisemitism that emanated chiefly from the younger boys and the older masters, but found it harder to forgive their philistinism or the absurd quantities of time he was required to spend playing meaningless team games.
At the start of his O-level year, he had changed History teachers, and thus Dominic had come into his life. Daniel’s first impression of Dominic was that he was funny and kind and had no favourites. That marked him out. He also worked hard – essays were always marked by the next class. He had a whole repertoire of daft theatricals: the Ministry of Silly Walks (he liked to walk on desks or collapse under them, feigning despair at the stupidity of his pupils) and the Ministry of Silly Voices (Mussolini, Gladstone, Churchill, even – rather riskily – Gandhi). For A-level pupils, Daniel was to discover, he toned it down. Less knockabout, more stories.
For Daniel, the arrival of this upbeat soul had been a blessing. Mr da Silva had quietly guided the pupils in his classroom into a semblance of care for one another, a near-miracle brought off by the simple expedient of being nice to all of them. Incredulous and grateful, Daniel developed the habit of hanging around at the end of class, usually with an invented question, in the hope he could strike up a conversation and prolong the time of grace. Other boys (girls too, once they joined in the sixth form) did the same. Mr da Silva seemed pleased to see them all – he seemed quite without fear or favour. Nothing that he had ever done in sight of Daniel had ever been less than fair and fond.
In the days which had followed Dominic’s ignominious appearance in court, Daniel tracked down an address for him (not easy – his old school, ever-sensitive to adverse publicity, was trying to erase all memory of him but Daniel persevered). He sat in his bedroom and, painfully slowly, wrote a short letter of support. He also suggested that, next time Dominic was in London, the two of them might meet up for a meal.
It would have been a hard letter for anyone to write, and Daniel felt emotionally drained by the time he dropped it into the letter box at the end of the road. He knew, nonetheless, that he was doing the right thing. Having sat, bored and resentful, through many school chapel services, one line from the Book of Samuel had stayed with him: ‘He that honours me, I will honour.’
Sprung from the dock, Dominic would have gladly taken the Tube, but he could see that his father’s emotion and exhaustion exceeded his own. There were no cameras or reporters, fortunately, and he and his father piled into a taxi without anyone paying them attention.
‘Euston,’ Dominic told the driver. He saw his father flinch slightly at the sound of the name. For a moment they looked at each other nervously.
‘It’s all right,’ Dominic promised. ‘I’ll behave this time.’
His father laughed softly, and so did he. It was the first good moment they had both enjoyed since his arrest. On the train back home, the elder Mr da Silva slept, leaving Dominic to his own thoughts.
His solicitor had harrumphed a good deal after the case ended, using words like entrapment and muttering about a travesty of justice. Perhaps, thought Dominic, he had been rather unlucky, but his guilty plea had been heartfelt and general. Any chance of going back into teaching was torpedoed, of course, but his instinct just now was not to mind. Something menial but useful was what he wanted. It was time to atone.