‘She’s not frightening a bit and she’d love the baby – very well, if you’d rather not. Have you got what you need, dearest?’ She nodded. ‘Come down again when you are ready.’
I went back to the Salon Vert. David was saying, ‘Zen forbids thought’ and Alfred was looking sad, no wonder, at these words which were the negation of his whole life’s work. ‘It does not attempt to be intelligible or capable of being understood by the intellect, therefore it is difficult to explain.’
‘It must be.’ (Falsetto.)
‘The moment you try to realize it as a concept, it takes flight.’
‘Mm.’ (On a very high note.)
‘Its aim is to irritate, provoke and exhaust the emotions.’
To my utter amazement, Alfred now lost his temper. During twenty-six years of married life I had never seen that before. He said, furiously, ‘You have succeeded in irritating, provoking and exhausting my emotions to a point at which I must tell you that, in my view, most Asiatics are incapable of thought. Zen must be simply perfect for them. But you are not an Asiatic; you have studied the great philosophies –’
‘Please, Father, say Asian.’ David had not even noticed the effect he was having on Alfred.
‘I suppose, alone with you and your mother, I may be allowed to use the correct –’
‘Not if it hurts my feelings. You see, our baby is one –’
‘Adorable!’ I said.
‘Oh my dear boy, I beg your pardon a thousand times. Well, I’ve got some papers to read so perhaps I’ll go back to the Chancery. Good-bye for the present.’
‘He’s called ’Chang, Dawn told me,’ I said as the door shut on Alfred.
‘We named him after the great Zen Master Po Chang. We dropped the Po. You have heard of him?’
‘I seem to know the name – I’m awfully ignorant though, about all that.’
‘It was Po Chang who placed a pitcher before his followers and asked them “What is this object?” They made various suggestions. Then one of the followers went up to it and kicked it over. Him Po Chang appointed to be his successor.’
‘Oh of course! Well, anyhow, I thought the baby a perfect angel.’
‘He’s everything to us.’
This rule about never asking questions, though I knew it to be sound and would never break it, sometimes made life rather difficult. I was dying to know the origins of baby ’Chang but how could I find out?
‘You must have one of your own,’ I hazarded.
‘We are going to – that’s why we got married.’
‘When you’ve got two babies, which makes a family, will you not settle down?’
‘The wheel of birth and death, in the face of eternity, is of no more importance than sleeping or waking. Do you not know that new bodies are only created so that we can work out our own Karma?’
‘Oh, do shut up and talk sensibly,’ I said.
‘To talk in terms that you would understand, Ma, I can’t approve, I never have, of your way of life. I hate the bourgeoisie. In Zen I find the antithesis of what you and Father have always stood for. So I embrace Zen with all my heart. Do you see?’
‘Yes. I wonder why you feel like that?’
‘It seems almost incredible that people like you should still be living in the 1950s.’
‘You can’t expect us to commit suicide in order to fall in with your theories.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind you being alive, it’s the way you live. Basil feels as I do. I’ve implored him for years to cut the umbilical cord and now at last he has.’
‘That’s your doing, is it? Thanks very much. He lies on his face on hot sand, instead of reading for his exam. It seems appalling waste of time to me.’
‘Time does not exist. People who have clocks and watches are like bodies squashed into stays. Anything would be better than to find oneself in your and Dad’s stays when one is old. Dawn and I are looking for an untrammelled future. Where is she?’
‘If you go to the room above this one you’ll find her.’
He went. Presently I heard his heavy footfall over my head. When David was a child Uncle Matthew used to say he walked like two men carrying a ladder. Greatly relieved, I telephoned to the Chancery. I got Philip. ‘Just tell Alfred,’ I said, ‘that old Zennikins has gone and he can come back and finish his tea.’
Alfred kissed the top of my head. ‘To think he took a first in Greats!’
‘Let me pour you out another cup – that’s cold. I remember, when the boys were little, you used to say if they don’t revolt against all our values we shall know they are not much good.’
‘That was not very clever, was it?’
‘You were very clever – you took a first in Greats yourself. Another thing was: “I hope when they see me coming into a room they will look at each other as much as to say: here comes the old fool. That is how children ought to regard their father.”’
‘How very odd of me. I’ve quite forgotten.’
‘Yes, one forgets –’
‘Hot news,’ Northey said, next day. ‘David and Dawn are drinking whisky with sweet Amy in the Pont Royal bar. ’Chang has been dumped with the men’s coats.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve just seen them.’
‘And what were you doing at the Pont Royal bar?’
‘I was meeting Phyllis McFee, the friend of my far-distant youth in Caledonia stern and wild.’
‘Northey, it’s not a suitable place for young girls. Please find somewhere else to meet her – why not here? What’s the good of giving you that pretty room – ?’
‘You’re saying all this because you don’t like clever little Amy.’
‘No, I do not.’
The answers to all the questions we had so discreetly not asked now became available to us in the Daily Post.
ZEN BUDDHISTS AT PARIS EMBASSY
Bearded, sandalled, corduroyed, and piped, accompanied by wife Dawn and baby ’Chang,
