Jackson's Dilemma Read Free

daughter of an amicable solicitor, and training to be a singer. However Pat did not like music. He was also, as Benet soon found out, dissatisfied with his son. He wanted a daughter. He once asked Benet if he would like a little sister, to which Benet shouted ‘No, no, no!’ In any case no more children came. Pat’s ill luck continued. Eleanor died quite early on in a car crash, Pat driving. Pat himself, a dedicated smoker, died of lung cancer, by which time Benet had grown up, had left the university, where he had studied philosophy, and followed his father into the Civil Service. Benet had loved his parents and regretted later that he had not revealed his love more openly. Remorse.
    Uncle Tim (he did not marry, neither did Benet) was for Benet, and indeed for others, a romantic and somewhat mysterious figure. He had been involved in ‘various wars’. He had left the university without a degree but had been (this much was known) a talented mathematician. He became, using this talent no doubt, an engineer, and somehow thereby came in contact with India, where he then spent much of his life, returning at intervals to England. During his absences Pat ‘took over’ Penndean, but more often, to Benet’s chagrin, rented it.
    Nobody quite discovered what Uncle Tim did in India, after his war, except perhaps building bridges. Perhaps they simply did not ask him; even Benet, who adored him, did not ask him until late in his life when Tim gave him what sometimes seemed to Benet strange answers. Pat used to say that his brother had ‘gone native’. Uncle Tim more than once asked his family to visit India and to see the Himalayas. Benet longed to go but Pat always refused. Late and at last Uncle Tim started spending longer and longer times at Penndean and then settled down there altogether.
    Thinking of the books, Benet recalled how Tim, who, though no scholar, loved reading, used to utter, again and again, his ‘quotes’ or ‘sayings’, ‘Tim’s tags’ lines out of Shakespeare, sentences out of Conrad, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson. ‘Another step Mr Hands, and I’ll blow your brains out.’ When he was dying Benet heard him murmur, ‘Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.’ Of course Benet had had his classical education, but had inclined to the philosophical side. His sense of the Greeks had come to him later, distantly from memories of his grandfather, and from Tim and Tim’s books. In a strange way the books, which were indeed not all ‘classics’, were somehow deeply soaked in some spirit of the Ancient World. Benet had sometimes tried to analyse this atmosphere, this rich aroma, this trembling resonance, this wisdom, but it eluded him, leaving him simply to bask within it. He recalled now, something which Tim liked to picture again and again, the moment when Caesar, angry with the Tenth Legion, addressed them as Quirites (citizens), not as Commilitones (fellow soldiers)! Benet, even as a child, instantly shared the grief of those devoted men as they hung their heads. There were some magic things which these books and utterances had in common. A favourite inner circle, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lord Jim, Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, Kim. Tim also liked Kafka, which might have seemed strange, but on reflection Benet understood that too.
    Pat used to say of Tim that he remained ‘absolutely childish’. This was perhaps an aspect of his character which Benet saw rather as a heroic romanticism. Some years ago Benet, accidentally talking to an Indian diplomat at a Whitehall party, mentioned casually that his uncle worked in India, and was amazed to find that the diplomat had heard of Tim. He said of him, ‘Dotty, crazy, but brave as a lion.’ Benet was sorry that he had then lost track of the diplomat, not having even discovered his name. Tim’s books were indeed adventure stories, as Benet saw them in his own