The Woman at The Window E-Book

Emyr Humphreys

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 258

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Emyr Humphreys is a major figure in twentieth-century writing and The Woman at the Window is an immensely enjoyable and impressive addition to his outstanding list of award-winning novels and short stories. From the widow alone in the rectory drawing room to views across the sunny expanses of post-war Europe, celebrated writer Emyr Humphreys offers this urbane, mature collection. His protagonists look back over the patterns of their lives and forward too, for the chance to untangle family relationships, rekindle lost loves, or find a home for themselves in familiar yet fresh surroundings.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

In memoriam

The Grudge

The Woman at the Window

Rendezvous

The Comet

Luigi

Vennenberg’s Ghost

Nomen

Home

The Ring and the Book

The Garden Cottage

Three Old Men

A Little History

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

The Woman at the Window

Emyr Humphreys

In memoriam

Richard Dynevor

The Grudge

i

WITH Lord Parry of Penhesgyn there was no means of telling whether he was pleased to see you or pleased for you to see him. In his early seventies he was well preserved. The same broad thick-lipped smile could be discerned in old school photographs when he was an outstanding sixth-former and the smile had stood him in good stead throughout a long political career. In retirement there was little point in abandoning the attitude of a lifetime. He still enjoyed a fine head of white hair and an imposing if portly proconsular presence. He listened with a slight tilt of the head as though considering a petition that he would prefer to grant rather than reject if the government’s finances would allow it.

He still liked to demonstrate democratic goodwill and throw back his distinguished head to indulge in rich baritone chuckles. He had held high office and even higher had been in reach but, as he was ready to confess, he lacked that streak of ruthlessness that makes it possible to plunge a knife in a colleague’s back. In a sense he was a victim of his own irrepressible good nature. ‘Alas’ he would say. ‘All political careers end in failure, so who am I to complain?’

His cousin, the crowned and chaired poet Gwilym Hesgyn, was altogether different. He looked like a man who had been whittled down by a lifetime of disappointments, and this in spite of his eisteddfodic triumphs. He sat in his study in his orchard bungalow staring at the magnificent view of the mountains, and longing for a fresh surge of inspiration that would prove once and for all and beyond question the unique qualities of his gift. The world had never sufficiently appreciated his vision or the lifetime of struggle and sacrifice he had devoted to preserving his heritage and his beloved commote of Hesgyn from alien invasion. His territory as much as his talent had been overrun by hostile forces: landmarks of the spirit had been bulldozed and replaced with unsightly evanescent structures. Farmsteads and fields with poetic, ancient names had been replaced by bungaloid developments occupied by newcomers with raucous voices and unruly children.

When he learned that his cousin, ‘the noble lord’ as he called him with monotonous sarcasm, had decided to retire to Plas Penhesgyn, it seemed to him a fresh insult to add to a lifetime of injury. The man dared to set himself up as a latterday lord of the manor and let it be known that his childhood haunts meant more to him than they could possibly mean to anyone else. It was to his long-suffering daughter Rhian Mai that Gwilym Hesgyn snarled:

‘Return of the Native! Return of the Traitor more like.

The nerve of the man. The sheer brassnecked nerve!’ Rhian Mai trembled and held her breath. Nothing much had gone well for her since she made the dreadful mistake of marrying a charming but feckless Dane in the early eighties. Claus Fleming was unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, or as her father put it, ‘he was a born liar’. For example, was he in fact a Dane or a German? He was born in Flensburg, but he told them that he wrote in German. He came to Hesgyn Bay to snorkle and remained, he said, to complete his best-selling thriller in the caravan he rented in their orchard. On the very site where the bungalow now stood with its wonderful view of the mountains. His book would be translated into fluent English and as many as twenty-three languages and without question make his fortune. It was Claus this and Claus that throughout that remarkable summer.The sky above him was always blue and the sun was his halo. Claus said his true love was poetry and he seemed to listen enthralled to Gwilym Hesgyn’s exposition of the mysteries of cynghanedd and the twenty-four metres.

Father and daughter were taken in, although the father never admitted it. In the end the unpublished author went off to Thailand leaving a trail of debt and misery behind him. As Mrs Fleming she played the organ in Moriah chapel on alternate Sundays. She attended the evening Bible class conducted on Tuesday evenings by Catrin Dodd, the doctor’s wife. This offered more than an escape from her father’s rumbling discontent. She felt the need to explore a book that might lead her to the true nature of love and forgiveness: to forgive herself as much as her errant husband. It would help her to unravel the tightening knots of years of resentment.

For Rhian Mai the prospect of the return of a distinguished relative offered some relief on a social level. Ever since the collapse of her marriage she had moved around the district virtually on tiptoe for fear of disturbing some further consequence of Claus Fleming’s irresponsible behaviour. To have an important uncle in residence might enable her to walk down the street with her head held a little higher. There remained such a thing as being well-connected.

‘They say he’s very nice. Tada!’

‘Nice! Being nice is nothing. Any fool can be nice. Rogues and politicians make a speciality of being nice!’

Her patient and prayerful longing for peace and reconciliation in the wider family seemed answered when a printed invitation to a housewarming at Plas Penhesgyn arrived, with a handwritten note from his lordship, signed Clem, anticipating a friendly chat about the good old days and all the spirited adventures of their youth. It seemed that life could take a turn for the better, until her father’s stubborn growl crushed her hopes.

‘I don’t want to smell the man let alone talk to him!’ Her father sank further into his rocking chair to nurse his resentment. From under overgrown eyebrows he glared at his daughter.

‘You’ve got no idea,’ he said. ‘Not the slightest idea what I’ve had to put up with. All down the years. My mother thought the sun rose in his arse.The great hero of the family.

She dressed me in his reach-me-downs as if I were being handed down royal robes. Crippled my feet in his old football boots. Ruined any chance of my reaching the first eleven. He was captain of the school and nothing I did was ever good enough. Even when I won the chair he’d been elected to the English Parliament and my mother was convinced he’d be the next Prime Minister. All he ever had was a good memory. Photographic. I heard him say so himself. He could master a brief in record time and then chuck it away to make way for the next one. Just as he chucked principles away. Not to mention people!’

His discontents rumbled on. The peaceful routine in the orchard bungalow was often disrupted by the chaired bard’s restless urge to devise means and methods, chiefly surreptitious, of exposing the shortcomings of his cousin: or the shabby subterfuges of that long political career. He fulminated, and at most mealtimes she had to listen.

‘Justice must be rocklike! That’s what I believe. The fulcrum of a civilised society. People should understand that.’ He cherished the phrases. He took time to hammer them out and in some sense saw them as part of his bardic mission.

‘Rocklike,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it will melt. Evaporate. Blow away and be forgotten. Lost in the sand.’

For her own part Rhian Mai wondered if that indeed was the case. Not that she dared openly to disagree. Her father was too easily upset and driven into one of his rages of frustration. She racked her brains for some way of bringing up the case for reconciliation as a general principle. The sad truth was since the failure of her marriage and all the troubles that went with it, her father was only too quick to demonstrate contempt for her lack of intellect and even common sense. She spent more time in chapel practising on the organ. She cherished the secret hope of discussing the nature of forgiveness on a one-to-one basis with the doctor’s wife. More than her own shyness restrained her. There was no knowing what sleeping dogs of family disgrace would be disturbed if she started blurting everything out.

Catrin Dodd was a formidable woman who in Rhian Mai’s eyes oozed success from every pore. She had given up her career in the University Department of Religious Studies in order to bring up three burly sons, and the fame of her achievement spread wide in Presbyterian circles. While she viewed the doctor’s wife with admiration and awe, she found the doctor himself intimidating. Since he was a keen amateur practitioner of the strict metres he was a frequent visitor at the orchard bungalow calling, as he put it, to consult the oracle. As a past master of his art he paid Gwilym Hesgyn exaggerated respect. He had a loud voice, a jovial manner and a bulky presence. She was obliged to nod more than once when he repeated that her father in France would be addressed as ‘Cher Maître’. She could never quite tell when the doctor was joking or being serious. Her father appeared to have no difficulty at all in making the distinction; beyond the study door she could hear his contented snigger punctuate the doctor’s loud laughter. It was possible too much isolation had made her socially tone deaf.

In the Bible class Rhian Mai concentrated on being unobtrusive. There were teachers present as well as a philosophical market gardener. She judged herself the least educated among the group and certainly the person most in need of some form of spiritual sustenance. The others seemed able to chat lightheartedly among themselves. Their lives were so much brighter, more fulfilled than her own, and this was reflected in the ease and confidence of their discourse. Should David have taken steps more speedily to be reconciled with his son Absalom, and was Hushai just as guilty as Ahitophel of deception and double-dealing? And did it all fit in with the workings of Providence, or just a pattern of a national myth? All Rhian could think of was David’s grief, and the tears welled up in her large and mournful eyes.

Her distress did not escape Catrin Dodd’s notice. She was tempted to take her aside after the class and ask her if anything was troubling her. It was part of her remit to take a pastoral interest in her students. Mrs Fleming had allowed herself to murmur aloud that if families couldn’t get on how could the family of nations be expected to live in peace with each other? This was sufficient to determine Catrin Dodd on a course of action. The following morning, at breakfast, the doctor’s wife urged her husband to tackle Gwilym Hesgyn at the first opportunity.

‘He’s a bad-tempered old misery guts at the best of times,’ she said. ‘He’s making his daughter’s life miserable. He listens to you. Use your authority. Tell the old man to think of his daughter. Tell him selfishness is bad for his health. He’s so monumentally thoughtless and he calls himself a poet. Tell him to let bygones be bygones – or whatever.’

‘Is that an edict?’

His wife was adding to his workload but he approached the task in his usual cheerful manner. He had a couple of new leaflets on blood pressure and the treatment of the prostate gland; also an englyn sequence of his own that he would like Gwilym Hesgyn to take a critical look at. Armed with these he paid the poet a visit. The doctor found the chaired bard in his study studying the list of subjects for the next National Eisteddfod but one, which had arrived with the morning post.

‘Well now then Gwilym Hesgyn! How about it? Doesn’t the ever-changing light on the mountains inspire you? What a subject! I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. You’ve only got to sit here and set the pulse of composition racing!’

He advanced to the window and made large gestures suggesting an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

‘It’s been done before,’ Gwilym Hesgyn said. ‘Too often if you ask me.Talking of pulse I think my pressure is going up. Do you think the tablets are strong enough?’

The doctor reassured him that his tablets were of adequate strength. He added the poet would be well advised to take more exercise now that the weather had improved. And perhaps he should drink more soda-water and cranberry juice. When his mind was at rest concerning his blood pressure Gwilym Hesgyn launched himself into an unsparing critique of the doctor’s metrical sequence. Quite apart from technical deficiencies, he felt the subject matter was too frivolous. The doctor should dig deeper to find deeper thoughts. The doctor shook his head. He accepted all technical criticism cheerfully, but digging deeper didn’t appeal.

‘I’ll tell you the advice old Prof Oliver gave me when I told him I was going into general practice. “Remember to keep your patients at a decent arm’s length,” he said. “It’s their bodies you are paid to cure, not their souls.” Well I feel the same about thoughts, Gwilym Hesgyn. If they lie too deep for tears, let them lie there.’

He gave a roar of laughter that puzzled the poet and then made a sudden change of subject.

‘I hear your noble cousin is settling down very nicely. Don’t you think it’s time you paid him a visit?’

Gwilym Hesgyn bared his teeth as though the doctor had just made a joke.

‘Take Mrs Fleming with you. It would do her good. She’s been looking rather anaemic lately, don’t you think?’

‘He had a nerve to come back here. After all the things he’s done. People forget things.That’s one thing about poets, Doctor Gronw. They don’t forget. Their business is to remember. Never forget the present rests on the foundation of the past.’

The doctor frowned as he considered the proposition. ‘You never met Eiry’r Mynydd? No of course not. You’re too young.’

The doctor showed signs of vague recognition. ‘You wrote a poem sequence about her.’

‘Of course I did. Bright and beautiful she was. A glorious symbol. Her home was in a valley threatened with inundation. We tried to save it. We struggled. We protested. We fought. And who was in the vanguard making the Cause his very own? My cousin Clement Parry. Hero of the hour. And Eiry fell in love with him unfortunately. But when the real testing time came and a prison sentence in the offing, the great Clement became unavailable. Gone off to America on a Fulbright.’

‘Well there you are,’ the doctor said. ‘The story with so many politicians.’

Gwilym Hesgyn was unappeased.

‘It’s worse than that. When he comes back he dumps her. Breaks her heart. And why, you ask? In order to marry the daughter of a Labour Lord and inherit a safe seat. That’s the kind of fellow he is. A sly, duplicitous bastard.’

‘But he’s your cousin, Gwilym Hesgyn! Don’t forget that!’

‘I don’t intend to forget anything. People may forget, but I don’t. And I’ll tell you more. I’ve got chapter and verse written down. Look here.’

Trembling with energy and indignation, from a bureau he produced a black ledger and waved it in the air.

‘Did you know the last time that man was in office he issued a contract to Intruder Services and within six months of leaving the government he was on their board!’

‘That’s politicians,’ the doctor said. ‘Most of them do it.’

‘And the way they treat him! Honorary this and that. The University. The Eisteddfod. Instead of being punished he gets institutionalised. I’m going to give him his just desserts. An honest account of our hero’s life and work. In the strict metres. A technical tour de force and at the same time the branding iron of fact!’

He was pleased with himself and waited for the doctor to share his pleasure with a robust laugh. Instead the doctor frowned and shook his head as he did when facing an unpromising diagnosis.

‘Where would you get a thing like that published? Libel and all that?’

Gwilym Hesgyn tapped his nose and put his fingers to his lips.

ii

The public lecture which Lord Parry kindly agreed to deliver was very well received: particularly so among the growing numbers of retired English that Gwilym Hesgyn described as ‘Settlers’. The title of the lecture also enraged him. The Second Chamber: an intimate view. ‘Their House of Lords, isn’t it?’ he fumed. ‘Public Lecture indeed! Anything that gives them an excuse to cluster. In no time at all they’ll form a caucus and take the place over, County Council included!’ Rhian Mai would have loved to attend the lecture but she dared not risk her father’s displeasure. The doctor and his wife were present and to their surprise enjoyed the occasion.

Lord Parry was still impressive to look at and easy to listen to. He played an audience like an instrument, making a virtuoso’s use of pauses and hesitations as well as his rich baritone. In no time he extracted laughter with nicely judged touches of self-deprecation; and then nostalgia and fond memories with a hint of sadness in order to end on a note of universal goodwill. The applause verged on the rapturous and comparisons were made with notable orators of the past and a mysterious quality called Dawn Môn.

At the modest reception afterwards Lord Parry circulated graciously among the invited. An important-looking matron introduced him to the doctor and his wife! ‘Dr Gronw Dodd? Author of Medical Matters among the Morisiaid? Could they be one and the same?’ It seemed they shared a lifelong interest in the Morris letters. And even when Lord Parry turned his attention to Catrin and learned about her academic past and her knowledge of Hebrew, he was able to recall an official visit to the Holy Land, and how, for ever after, he enjoyed nothing more than browsing in the Old Testament and comparing the various translations. There was so much of mutual interest to talk about, the doctor and his wife were pressed to dine with him at the earliest opportunity. ‘Take pity on a lonely old man,’ he said with a cheerful smile. In spite of reservations, Doctor Gronw and his wife Catrin were equally charmed. It was not every day of the week you came across an ex-member of the government showing such a civilised breadth of interests, so much interest in Old Testament texts and the Morris letters.

They agreed that Lord Parry of Penhesgyn knew how to win friends and influence people.

The dinner party they attended at Plas Penhesgyn was a pleasant occasion. Eight persons of consequence sat at the round table and Catrin was flattered to find herself seated next to her host. The meal was prepared by Kazimeira and her daughter Maria. ‘Polish exiles, guest workers if you like,’ Lord Parry explained to Catrin. ‘Inclined to be emotional but excellent cooks… as you can judge by their size.’ He made further asides in a language the two women had no claim to understanding. ‘They are prone to bouts of hiraeth and to sudden quarrels. Then they are quickly reconciled. Usually in floods of tears. Never a dull moment!’ Catrin would have liked to pick up on the theme of reconciliation, but the wife of the Principal of the Further Education College had raised her voice to ask a cheerful question. ‘Why were the things going on backstage always more interesting than the political shadow-boxing taking place in front of the footlights?’ Soon the company was enjoying a rich sequence of anecdotes and revelations. As the wine flowed they were warmed by a sense of privilege and well-being. The Principal’s wife was emboldened to ask his lordship what in his opinion made a good politician? His reply was only tangential, but he had used it before and found it effective.

‘Broadly speaking you can divide politicians into two classes. Those who expect to serve their country and those who expect their country to serve them. I leave you to decide which camp I belong to!’

Doctor Gronw established such cordial terms with Lord Clement Parry that in the course of time it became just as easy for him to drop in at Plas Penhesgyn as at Gwilym Hesgyn’s orchard bungalow. There were minor indispositions to attend to, particularly with the Polish women, and Lord Parry was so grateful for the doctor’s help that he urged him to call him ‘Clem’.

After the first jovial flush of comradeship and the occasional convivial session, Gronw confessed to his wife that this new- found friendship made him uneasy. He felt that he was being false at both ends and getting nowhere near Catrin’s cherished goal of reconciliation in Rhian Mai’s extended family.

‘I don’t really care so much about the two old men,’ she said. ‘It’s Mrs Fleming I worry about. The poor thing is suffering. It’s all so unnecessary.’

In the depth of a leather armchair in Lord Parry’s well- appointed study, Doctor Gronw resolved to speak up. He balanced a cup of coffee in his large hands, smiled at Polish Maria and glanced briefly at the weather vane above the gable end of the coach house. Not for the first time he compared this limited view with the inspirational panorama to be seen through the window of Gwilym Hesgyn’s far more modest and crowded study in the orchard bungalow.

‘You know Clem, you could drop in on your cousin Gwilym. Tell him how much you admire his poetry. That sort of thing. It would do the old boy no end of good.’

Lord Parry parried the petition with ease. ‘Why not? I might indeed do that.’

He had things of greater urgency on his mind that he was eager to discuss with the doctor. A local sense of renewal had to be set in motion. Things had been allowed to slide and there was a need for a positive approach. The village green, for example, where he and his companions of yore had played from dawn until dusk, had been invaded by gorse bushes. They bloomed right up to the War Memorial that itself stood in need of refurbishing. It was in the shape of a Celtic Cross and the names of the Fallen were literally falling off the marble plinth or fading away. Then again the old church school that served as a Pensioners’ club badly needed doing up. Why not encourage the natives and the settlers to engage in friendly rivalry in a programme of renewal. He put forward a range of stimulating ideas. The doctor could not but agree.

It was on his next visit, urged on by his wife, that the doctor grew more persistent. If there was to be a renewal, he argued, why not start with a reconciliation?

‘You can move from a position of strength, Clem. The mark of the magnanimous is to show mercy. That sort of thing. You know what I mean.’

Lord Parry took a deep breath, shook his head more in sorrow than in anger, and moved forward in his chair as though he did not wish to be overheard.

‘My cousin Gwil was born timid, you see. That meant he got bullied. In school I always had to defend him. More or less take him under my wing.’

‘Well there you are then!’ Doctor Gronw was jubilant as if a magic solution had presented itself.

‘Let me tell you something, Gronw, and let it go no further.’ Lord Parry’s voice grew deep and solemn.

‘There was a time when Gwilym was in real trouble. And the truth is he has never forgiven me for getting him out of it. He got a headship in Powys. Years ago. Could be on the strength of his eisteddfodic triumphs. Anyway he got on the wrong side of the dinner ladies. As you may have noticed he never found it difficult to get on the wrong side of anybody. He was, you may say, hell-bent on getting a second eisteddfod chair. I suppose people had been telling him he was a genius. He wished to be the biggest fish in his little literary pool. His head was more in the clouds than usual: the dinner money went missing, evaporated in one way or another, and the dinner ladies laid all the blame on him. He was suspended. There was an enquiry and his mother, poor woman, implored me to get him out of trouble. Which I did. I had a devil of a job keeping the whole affair out of court. And he’s never ceased to resent being grateful all those years. That’s the true source of the grudge, and that’s my cousin for you. Eaten up with envy and resentment. So what can I do about it?’

Gronw Dodd was lost for an answer. He stared into his coffee as though the brown liquid had become an inexplicable mystery.

iii

The doctor decided not to let the ancient quarrels of two old men weigh on his stomach. They were so hardened in their attitudes it would need steel chisels to prise them out of them. This was not an operation he had been trained for. For the time being he would give both of them a wide berth. He had more than enough to do with patients in physical predicaments he could do something about. Even in the case of Mrs Fleming he could alleviate her menopausal discomforts. To make up for being deprived of exercises in the strict metres he could immerse himself in pharmaceutical literature, and write out more sophisticated prescriptions. A doctor in general practice needed to cultivate a degree of detachment, otherwise he could get bogged down in emotional quagmires of incalculable depth. He should allow the human comedy to become an amusing diversion from the daily irritations of the National Health Service and the machinations of political parties bent on persuading a gullible public that they had an inalienable right to live for ever.

At breakfast, as he was bracing himself to face the rigours of another heavy day, his wife Catrin once again brought up the vexed subject.

‘I’m very worried about Rhian Mai,’ she said. ‘She takes everything so much to heart.’

‘Those two old donkeys…’

Doctor Gronw chewed faster on his toast. ‘Someone ought to knock their heads together.’

‘It’s worse than that. She’s had a letter from her ex- husband. She showed it to me after class. Poor thing must have been desperate to do that. Didn’t know who to turn to. Terrified her father might see it.’

‘What did it say? The letter?’

‘Basically he’s demanding money.’

‘Of course. What else. Don’t they all. That sort.’

‘He says he has a son from his marriage in Thailand and wants to educate him. He wants six thousand right away to pay the boy’s fees. He says he part owns the orchard bungalow. Helped to build it he claims. She says it isn’t true. I said why don’t you show the letter to your uncle? He’s a distinguished lawyer. She’s much too scared to do so. The poor thing is like a rabbit in a trap.’

Contemplating the depth of Rhian Mai’s misery reduced them both to silence. The doctor could escape to his appointments in the surgery but for Catrin that misery invaded the comfortable house like a mist that refused to clear. She attempted some preparation for the Tuesday evening class but the dire warnings made by minor prophets seemed to apply even more to individuals than to nations, chosen or otherwise. Could it be that Rhian Mai was being made to pay for her innocence. Was youthful folly so culpable? And how youthful and how innocent? How are such shortcomings quantified. She concluded that Rhian Mai was the victim of the rampaging selfishness and egomania of untamed males. Satan’s willing accomplices. Could the coefficient of woe in the human condition remain constant down the centuries? Rhian Mai’s distress was here and now.

Catrin Dodd lost patience with speculation. Theory without practice was useless. She had to do something. To act. She would confront the monster in his lair, interfering or not. She set off in her little car, her heart thudding in her breast. The lane to the orchard bungalow was narrow and her heart beat even faster when she was confronted with an ambulance with its blue lights already flashing. In her anxiety to get out of the way she reversed her on-side rear wheel into the ditch. The ambulance driver waved an angry fist and it was quite clear he was swearing at her. Then one of the paramedics recognised the doctor’s wife. She was relieved to get out of the car while they lifted the rear wheel out. She found Rhian Mai sitting in the ambulance and trembling from head to foot. Her father was the casualty. He lay on the stretcher bed with a drip in his arm and an oxygen mask on his face. She whispered down to Catrin standing in the lane: ‘I thought he was going to kill me. I really did. He was raving and raging and smashing ornaments with his stick. And then he fell over and couldn’t get up. Couldn’t speak.’

Catrin drove behind the ambulance the twelve-mile journey to the general hospital. While they tried to keep up with the trolley down the long corridor from Emergency to Intensive Care, Rhian Mai clung to her arm and could not stop shivering. Catrin commandeered a red blanket, led her to the canteen and made her drink a cup of hot, sweet tea. Bit by bit she was able to put together a coherent account of what had happened.

‘I wasn’t out of the house an hour…When I came back he was waving Claus’ letter in my face and calling me all sorts of things I can’t repeat. He said I had been in touch with him all these years and when I denied it he called me a liar and a two-faced whore. It was awful. The way he worked himself up. What made it all worse in a way was that building the bungalow in the orchard was Claus’ idea in the first place. He was full of ideas…’

A blush on her cheeks betrayed a lingering admiration for her ex-husband that had to be corrected.

‘He never paid for anything. Never. He had this way of handling my father. He drew a plan of the bungalow and marked out where it should stand to give the best view of the mountains. “A proper dwelling for a major poet,” he said. My father loved listening to him. He pretended to take so much interest in poetry. Maybe he did, of course. There was no telling with Claus. He could get round anybody. My father always blamed me for his disappointment. And now this is my fault.’