Damage Read Free Page A

abilities were as yet untested, but my colleagues and I were aware that should the chance come, success would probably follow. But why should the chance be given to me? Unlike so many others, I did not lust for it.
    I had not found the key to myself in any area of service, medical or political. I carried out my constituency surgeries with the same absolute involvement with which I had attended my patients. But it was the absolute of the intellect. No effort seemed too great to advise on this matter, or act on another.
    My thoroughness and expertise bred a respect, and a kind of confidence. I was doing the job well. There was no doubt about that. I spoke out on subjects which seemed to me to need comment. I said what I meant. I meant what I said. The political consequences were not weighed by me, at least not unduly. On the other hand, the subjects on which I spoke out strongly were hardly fundamental to Party discipline. My ideas were attractive to large numbers of the Tory left.
    I never faced a serious moral dilemma. Nothing that I felt or said was extreme, or left me completely out on a limb. All options, except those of the far right, were open to me still. Had I planned the perfect political life for myself, it could not have worked better.
    I was soon given the post of junior minister in the Department of Health, to which I was obviously suited. My concerned face and well-bred voice spouting acceptable, vaguely liberal cliches appeared on television. Or I gazed earnestly from newspapers and magazines, saying the things I’d always believed, in what came across as a sincere and genuine manner. I learned the public geography of my soul from television and newspapers. It was neither shaming nor pleasing, just another perfect set-piece. Even I recognised that if I kept up this performance for some time, I might shine even more brightly as the years went by.
    One poll, published in a Sunday paper, listed me amongst the possible future Prime Ministers. Ingrid was thrilled. My children were embarrassed.
    I acted those parts required of me, like some professional member of a good English repertory company. Reliable, competent, taking pride in my work, but as far away from the magic of an Olivier or a Gielgud as not to seem part of the profession at all.
    The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all its essentials, my life was a good performance.

S IX
    M Y SON WAS a handsome young man. If there was in me a slight stockiness, Ingrid’s slender proportions tempered it in Martyn. He had both height and strength. Ingrid’s excessive paleness was there. My dark hair and eyes seemed to counterpoint the almost feminine delicacy of his skin. His was a dramatic colouring, unusual in England, and the exact opposite of his sister Sally’s. She was that rare yet common miracle, the true English rose.
    Beauty in our children is disturbing. There is an implied excess that casts a question mark over the parents. Most fathers would like their daughters to be attractive, their sons to be manly. But true beauty disconcerts. Like genius, we wish it on another family.
    Martyn’s looks and elegance embarrassed me. His sexual involvements were so blatantly casual that it astounded me his girlfriends saw no danger in him. The succession of young women whom Ingrid and I met at Sunday lunches or at occasional parties, seemed never-ending. I realised that my son was sexually promiscuous. He was undoubtedly careless of the many loving looks sent in his direction. Ingrid was amused by it all. I was much less so.
    His attitude to life, when he left university, dismayed me. Medicine was of no interest. Politics was unappealing to him. He wanted to be a journalist — the onlooker’s position in life, it seemed to me. He was very ambitious and determined about his career, but his ambition was totally for himself. At no time did he delude himself, or us.
    He got a job on a local paper, where, amusingly and perhaps to his