Bachelor Boys Read Free Page A

up under the distinct impression that my father was in charge, and my mother was his resentful prisoner. Her baffling relationship with him surrounded her like a fog, leaving little room for me. They divorced when I was in my teens, and I felt nothing except a mild relief. I was glad to leave our petrified house, and move to a less pretentious but more comfortable flat near the railway in Gospel Oak. Without my father, I could draw a proper breath.
I found I could live quite easily with my mother’s gloom. You can ignore gloom.
    Later, I came to a better understanding of the sadness that lay between my parents, without coming near to guessing what caused it. As I grew up, Phoebe urged me to keep in touch with my mother. Mainly to please Phoebe, I called her about once a week. It was hard work. Ruth, my mother, had absolutely no gift for light conversation. We were distantly courteous, and I couldn’t help thinking of Winnie-the-Pooh trying to cheer up Eeyore.
    I couldn’t mention Winnie-the-Pooh to my father. He banned the book during my childhood, on the grounds that it was “elitist and anthropomorphic.” Yes, he was a barrel of laughs. We met then as we do now. He takes me out to lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand, twice a year, Christmas and birthday. He used to express a tepid interest in my career. I used to enjoy listing my various academic and professional triumphs, until I realized he was only showing the interest he would have shown to one of his patients. I’d spent my whole life trying to impress him, but it was a waste of time. I don’t think he ever wanted children. What freakish spasm of heat warmed me into being? I have no memory of a single sexual frisson between him and my mother.
    All the warmth and love in my childhood (and my access to the unsuitable works of A. A. Milne, E. Nesbit and C. S. Lewis) came from the house next door. My parents were insular and never fraternized with the neighbors, but as soon as I was aware of a longing for anything, I longed for the next-door garden like the banished Peri at the gates of Paradise.
    The home of the Darling family vibrated with noise and heaved with chaos. I used to sit in our bay window in the mornings, hungrily watching the drama of Jimmy Darling leaving for work. Jimmy was a handsome, rosy, boisterous man, with a loud and tuneful voice (we often heard him singing through the wall) and a jubilant laugh. He was a venereologist at the Royal Free Hospital. He would come bursting out of his front door scattering papers, shouting over his shoulder to his wife and their two little sons. Sometimes he would swear because he had forgotten something, and dash back inside. Sometimes he would run back to give his wife and the boys one more bear hug. Although he was very busy, and although my parents had only spoken to him to complain about a tree
house he had built, Jimmy never forgot to wave to the solitary little girl in the window. He was the kindest man I have ever known.
    And I adored his wife, who used to give me the sweetest smiles and hellos when we met in the street. What can I say about Phoebe Darling? The greatest writers have a hard time describing real goodness, so I have to fall back on lukewarm clichés—“sweet,” “warm”—which can never convey the pure essence of Phoebe. I can’t write about the scent of a rose.
    In those days, she must have been at the height of her special brand of loveliness. She was slight and dark and softly spoken, and her brown velvet eyes brimmed with watchful humor. I was interested to see how often Jimmy kissed her lips and swept her into his arms. Both parents practically worshipped their two dark-eyed sons. The fortunate Darling boys were hugged and squeezed and kissed and thrown into the air. Slight as she was, Phoebe carried Ben on her hip until he was at least four.
    The day the barrier between the gardens came down is seared into my memory. I was four years