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HAROLD
After she had committed herself, Felicity didn't really know why she had asked to see him. She supposed that it was because, like Jessie's sexual preferences, his situation was something that she had absorbed like some sort of process of osmosis over the years; yet he had somehow become part of the romantic web of her childhood. They had never told her about Harold and his illness, but somehow she had always known. She supposed that she had overheard numerous conversations when they thought that she had been asleep, or more likely when she had had her head in a book and they thought that she had not been paying attention.
When she thought about it, reading had always been her great disguise. Her earliest memories were of sitting in a corner reading; in fact, she had realised by about the age of seven or eight that her position in the book-corner had become so much part of the routine of their lives that they ceased to realise that she may have been conscious of them and their conversation. In this way, she had learned about her father's great success, his great invention, for which the company, he was always a company man, had paid him the grand sum of forty pounds bonus. Granted it was probably a great deal of money in 1953, but her father's great bottle-top cap had now been used by every major soft-drink and spirit manufacturer for the past twenty-five years and she suspected that the company had made a nice little earner out of it. In this way she had learned of her mother's suspicion and jealousy when her father worked late. In this way, she had understood, at the age of seven or eight, why she was no longer allowed to play with Lorna who had been her best friend, or rather her only friend, because her mother suspected that her father was becoming too friendly with Lorna's mother, who was the nurse at the factory where her father worked.
So, she had known about Harold, without really knowing, for what seemed like forever. It was strange, but she had not thought about him at all when she was planning her trip; in fact, despite him being part of her mythology, she had never consciously thought about him: he and his story had simply been there. Yet, this morning, when she awoke, Harold was all she could think about. It was almost as if seeing him in all his awful reality was a penance she had to pay for her normality; her sanity.
Last night at the pub Felicity had been strangely subdued. Perhaps it had been the walk in the cold, perhaps it had been simply that she had been too excited and that she had used up all her emotional energy in the anticipation, or, as was most likely, it was the jet-lag which she had been fighting against for the past twenty-four hours that had finally caught up with her. They had only had one drink before she had asked to go home. Jessie and Vera had both been understanding and she had been in bed by nine o' clock. She had expected that she would have slept through for ten to twelve hours, but surprisingly her sleep had been fitful and she had woken continuously throughout the night. It had been during one of those periods of restless wakefulness that she began to think of Harold. She began to wonder if the stories that she was so certain had filtered through to her in the book-corner, had actually happened at all. Could they have simply been part of that imaginative world that she had created for herself in the loneliness of her childhood? How many of those things that she believed to be true of her childhood had actually happened? How much of her past was simply part of her make- believe world?
As she had tossed, trying to become accustomed to the unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable pillows, she began to doubt the other romantic elements of her autobiography. How much of her great childhood story had actually occurred? Those great stories of her childhood in South Africa with which she had established herself with both her peers and her teachers when she had first begun school in Australia. The personal stories that had convinced her teachers that she could write; the stories in the playground and in oral lessons that had made her a personality, something that she had never been in South Africa; the stories of haunted houses in Cape Town, of witch doctors and Kaffir beer in the Transvaal and, of course, stories of Harold. Harold, the Royal Marine war hero who had been torpedoed and picked up four times in one Atlantic crossing, who had been sent ashore at Singapore from his ship, the Prince of Wales to collect those who were AWOL only to miss the ship as she finally sailed to her doom. Guilt laden Harold, who had returned home to find that his wife had run off with a Yankee airman. Harold who had been no longer able to cope with his sorrow and his guilt and who had gone mad and spent the past thirty years in a mental asylum. Harold, the John Clare of her childhood world. She had spent hours imagining him in his tiny cell writing poetry, like poor mad John Clare, poetry that could only find release in a mind no longer restrained by the chains of society.
Now, unaccountably, she had committed herself. She was endangering the fragile web of her world: the web that she had so carefully woven in the mirror blue; she now had to turn towards the window and take the chance. Everything seemed to have changed since yesterday's walk; she no longer felt comfortably secure in this world, the facade of her newly found confidence seemed to be shattering as surely as the glass of Shallot.
Now, as Felicity sat staring through the double-glazing at the snow-covered farm and the barely distinct dam, she could no longer repress thoughts of Bobby. In many ways he was so bound up with her view of Harold. After all it was he who, at the start of last year, had questioned her romantic view of Harold. She had written a piece on Harold, the mad-sane poet, scribbling away in incarceration, seeing the world stripped bare of its illusions. It had been a piece of which she had been particularly proud; after all she had been imaginatively drafting it in one form or another, since she was fourteen. She had expected him to be full of praise for her imaginative and sophisticated perception; to tell the truth, she had set out to impress him. She needed to impress him in order to maintain her reputation as the most gifted student of English in the school. It had been easy with the others; they were either not particularly interested in teaching, or they had little or no real intellectual capacity. Most of them had read little or nothing, and were not really interested in challenging or interesting the students. Consequently, it had been easy for Felicity to make an impression. Her isolated and lonely childhood had meant that she had read voraciously and was far better read than any of her teachers. Also, her imagination and treasure-trove of stories, combined with her willingness to please, had made her something of favourite. However, she suspected that this achievement was fraudulent; consequently, her desire to prove herself to Bobby.
She soon realised that he was of a different calibre to the others; he was well read, he wrote and published poetry, and his classes were vastly different to any other that she had experienced. He was enthusiastic, appeared to know what he was talking about, and was continually prepared to move beyond the set text. However, most importantly, he did not view Felicity with the same awe as the other teachers and students did: he, unlike them, was not afraid of her supposed intellect. He was prepared to question and challenge her pronouncements on the texts and she found herself, more than once, having to admit that her reading of a particular text or poem may have been flawed. Initially, in an attempt to defend her fragile sense of importance, she had tried to paint him as being arrogant and aggressively chauvinistic; but as soon as she used those clichés stolen from Germaine Greer, she knew that to continue in that way would inevitably mean defeat. So, she set out to prove herself, not so much to him, but to herself, by producing a piece of writing that even he would have to recognise as being good. And she did. And he did, but with reservations. Now she recognised at last; it was those reservations that were leading her to insist on seeing Harold.
Bobby had been reasonably impressed with her piece but had challenged her on her romanticising of Harold in the mental home. He had given her One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to read and had made some comment on her need to write from experience or at least to do the hard research to be able to write from a fully formed vicarious experience. She had read the book and been unable to cope with its bleakness; she had simply rejected it as being another example of American overstatement. However, despite her reluctance to accept what she considered his over-intellectual cynicism, her piece on Harold had been the start of a developing mutual respect that had led inevitably to the relationship that she was now unable to control or even handle. It was what she had wanted; a relationship with an intellectual superior, a relationship that would confirm her sophisticated superiority to her peers. And she had succeeded. Bobby had loved her, confided in her, shared his hopes and despair, was prepared to leave his wife for her, and here she was twelve thousand miles away, hiding from him.
Jessie arranged the visit for Christmas Eve and Felicity's excitement at the prospect of buying Harold a present was quickly dampened by Jessie's curt: "There's no sense in buying him anything. He will simply put the present in his locker and forget about it. In all probability it will be stolen by one of the nurses."
"But I must buy him something" Felicity had protested feebly at Jessie's back as she strode from the room.
"If you insist on buying him anything, get him some cigarettes; he will only smoke Woodbines." Vera called from the kitchen.
Felicity slumped into the chair not really knowing how to respond. Obviously, neither of them really wanted her to see him and she could not help wondering how much support the poor man had received over the years. She sat for at least half an hour, fighting back the tears she was determined not to show these self-sufficient and obviously uncaring women. The room darkened as the weather closed in from the north-east, bringing the threat of more snow, and it was only when Vera came into the room and proffered her a cup of coffee that she roused herself, realising that she must appear to be a spoilt, sulky, little girl. However, Vera made no comment, but simply sat in the chair opposite drinking her coffee. Eventually, Felicity felt that she had to make some attempt to explain her disappointment.
"I'm sorry if I appear to be sulking, Vera, but I so wanted to do something to make his existence... I don't know, ... happier, I suppose." She felt even more foolish at this inadequate attempt to explain her feelings; however, the warmth of Vera's smile made her feel a little better.
"I understand how you feel, Felicity dear; I suppose to your eyes we seem to be cold and unfeeling. However, you have to be prepared. Harold will have no idea who you are. He will not remember your father; in fact he will probably show little or know recognition of Jessie. He has deteriorated rapidly during the past few years and whenever Jessie visits him now, he simply sits and stares into space. I've tried to persuade her to go less often, but she has this almost masochistic sense of duty."
"Yes, I understand that", Felicity broke in, "but why does she seem so antagonistic towards me? Isn't it natural that I want to see my uncle, no matter what his circumstances?"
Vera did not answer at once. She stood up, walked to the window, seemly unable or unwilling to respond. Felicity could feel the anger rising and, no longer able to control her frustration, cried out: "But why?"
Vera turned slowly from the window, put her coffee cup down, and gathered her thoughts. "Jessie will not thank me for telling you this, but I suppose you have a right to know how she feels. When your mother talked your father in to returning to South Africa, Jessie felt as if she had been abandoned. Your grandmother wasn't well and your grandfather was a frustrated and difficult man. He had always felt cheated by life and as he got older, he became more and more morose. He had little patience with your grandmother, and when Harold was committed he refused to even acknowledge his existence. So that when your parents migrated, she felt as if they had simply left her with all of the problems. She had to devote herself to looking after your grandparents as they deteriorated, and she had to take full responsibility for Harold. The early years of his incarceration were particularly difficult. He was often violent and was locked in a padded cell for long periods of time. He tried to attack Jessie more than once when she went to visit him; it was almost as if she came to embody all those women that he had learned to hate. Your grandmother because your dad was her favourite, his wife for her betrayal and, of course, the nurses who he saw as his gaolers. And Jessie, rather than freeing him, appeared to be the one who was responsible for imprisoning him; so he lashed out at her. Initially, she was simply hurt by all this, but gradually she became bitter. Your father, the eldest son, was thousands of miles away, living his own life while she was as much imprisoned as Harold, not by walls, but by her guilt and sense of duty."
Felicity did not know what to say; she simply sat there cradling her now cold cup of coffee, her mind in a whirl. Her romanticised myths of Harold as some sort of modern day John Clare shattered.
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