Eric and Peter

Dear Eric

Sorry for approaching you out of the blue, especially as I’m about to ask a small but, hopefully not unpleasant, favour.

My name’s Andrew Orton and my dad is Peter Orton. I think you were both history students together at Jesus college.

He’s got vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s and there are certain memories that seem to have stuck with him particularly strongly and stories which recur when he talks about his youth.

One of these stories concerns hitch hiking around Europe in the early 60s and I think that for at least part of the journey you might have accompanied him.

I don’t know how much you recall of the trip or even whether it was actually you who was with him. If you do remember anything about visiting Europe together or just about my dad more generally it would mean a great deal to me if you could share it with me.

His memory is fragile and deteriorating so any gaps we can fill are valuable to him.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Orton

* * *

Dear Andrew

Thank you for your email, which is both melancholy and delightful (if that makes sense?)

I knew your father very well at university and have thought of him often over the last sixty (can that be right?) years. I too remember our time in Holland and France. Did your father say that the trip ended in a fearful row and me flouncing off to Spain? I don’t want to tell you too much about that, it shows no one in a good light and is the type of banal story that could have happened to anyone.

Instead I’d like to tell you about the afternoon of 7th July 1962. I have looked at my diary from the time and, while the entry for the day is detailed, I shall use it only as a safety net to my memory, which paints like Monet, inaccurately but beautifully.

I should say that there may be one or two things in this story which surprise you a little about your dad but I am a firm believer that once you’re past 80 you have no reason to be ashamed of any harmless pleasure you ever took from the world.

You will need to start by picturing a roadside in rural southern France around four very long and undulating miles away from the small town of Sainte-Clair.

“Tasteless pathos, port wine and Aramis, Faceless bathos fortified with caramels…”

“Eric, my friend, is there any power on earth that will compel you to stop?”

“Well, you didn’t like the one about the chocolate frog.”

“No, that’s true, I didn’t. I just wonder whether it’s entirely necessary to fill any silence with homemade nonsense verse.”

“It’s lucky you weren’t following Edward Lear around.”

“If we’re thankful for mercies as small as the fact that I didn’t dog the footsteps of poets who died sixty years before I was born, we’d spend our whole lives being nothing but grateful.”

“And wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“Jesus Christ, Sunday School Eric,”

“Language! If Mrs Orton heard you blaspheme like that, she’d be astonished.”

“No, nothing of the sort. She’s got a mouth like a cockney cabbie.”

“She’d also be shocked at you traipsing across the countryside to corrupt an innocent French girl.”

“She wouldn’t believe that an innocent French girl could exist.”

The previous day we had nursed quarter litres of beer in a bistro. The owner, a short, hefty man in an apron who’d evidently failed his higher national diploma in food hygiene and people skills, circled the bar and occasionally hovered menacingly close to our table muttering dark Gallic vowels. Although I couldn’t understand a word he said it was evident that he wanted us to leave promptly and that he thought we were personally responsible for the attack on Mers-El-Kebir.

It was at this point that Aurelie walked in. She was wearing a long, pale blue, cotton summer dress and, although this is like an Ayatollah giving his views on Beaujolais, even I could see that she was attractive. Your father, the slovenly, pink faced mess suddenly sat up, no more the self pitying sweaty teenager, suddenly the ramrod straight man of the world with a mission to perform.

She was cool breezes, fresh laundry, aqua marines and casual mastery of the universe. We were Anglo Saxons sweating meat; damp, unfit for the environment, and lacking the faintest vestige of savoir faire.

Still, your dad, like a figure from the Iliad, heedless of danger and his own limitations, stood, wiped his face with a handkerchief, flattened his shirt and walked straight over to her. There may have been greater acts of bravery performed on the European continent in that century, but not many.

“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.” She looked at him with an amused benevolence. “Umm, je suis désolé, mon français n’est pas parfait.”

She raised her eyebrows and smiling said “Sans blague!”

“Pardonnez-moi, umm...”

“It is easier perhaps in English?”

“Yes, a great deal. Thank you.”

An unpleasantly warm, gelatinous silence seeped into existence.

She stared at him. One has to bear in mind that her experience to date would have been with French boys who speak exclusively in romantic epigrams and are always only moments away from presenting any woman they meet regardless of age, weight or marital status with a single rose and a lascivious proposal.

“Uh, so, umm, what’s your name.”

“My name is Aurelie Du Pont.”

“Ah, as in bridge.”

“Yes, that is right. And did your mother give you a name?”

“Yes, she did. It’s Peter. She called me Peter.”

“A good name, like Peter Lorre.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And are you a Hollywood actor?” Her pronunciation of Hollywood would have made a monk renounce his vows.

“No, I’m a student from Oxford. I am travelling with my friend.” He glanced in my direction and I gave an extravagant bow from a seated position. “Are you a student?”

“Oh, no, I am working.”

“At the moment?”

“I have come to ask M. Cheval to pay his bill.”

“And is M. Cheval the portly fellow over there?”

“Portly?”

“Fat.”

“Ah, then yes, yes this is him.”

“What’s his bill for?”

“These are a lot of questions.”

Glancing around in a charade of surreptitious panic, “Is it a secret bill?”

“No, it is a milk bill.”

“What’s your job?”

“I work for my father, he has the cow farm, no, not cow farm, what is the word?”

“Dairy?”

“Yes, the dairy farm.”

“So you’re a milk maid?”

“This makes you happy?”

“Umm, yes, it does rather.”

“Well, Peter Lorre, I must go to speak with M. Cheval, it was nice to speak with you.”

She went over to assault the hapless bar owner and Peter sipped his beer smugly, the crook of his arm, the tilt of the glass, the positioning of the shoulders all said “Before you is no callow youth, here sits an international ladies man.”

M. Cheval gave Aurelie the money she had come for. She turned and walked towards the door giving us a smile and a wave as she went.

“Grab your things, we should follow her.”

“No, no, that’s a terrible idea.”

“It’s romantic.”

“How can I say this without being unkind?”

“What? Just say it.”

“This won’t go well.”

“I only want to talk to her.”

“There are other things you want.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

“We have to settle up with Mr Horse.”

“Mr Horse?”

“M. Cheval.”

“Not the time or the place.”

“I can’t imagine any other time or place where I could possibly use that sentence again.”

“Come on.”

We dashed out onto the street but of Aurelie there was no sign.

“She’s gone.”

“It would appear so.”

“I think she liked me.”

“Of course she did, old boy. Everyone likes you, you’re a very popular fellow.”

“No, she liked me.”

“Easy does it, Galahad.”

We intended to stay in an Auberge Communal, where for a few francs we would get a bed, some breakfast and the almost obscene luxury of a wash stand for brushing one’s teeth and pissing.

“Why did you take so bloody long getting out of there.”

“I doubt it would have made a difference.”

“We’ll never know now, will we?”

“I don’t think there is a version of events in which you would find yourself reclined on her linen sheets as she performs an exotic dance with scarves and fans.”

“You really know how to be a bastard, don’t you?”

You are perhaps unfamiliar with your father in a mood of frustrated randiness but, let me tell you, he wasn’t easy to deal with. We maintained a hostile silence until we were sat in our dusty, ill ventilated, uncomfortably warm room.

“She may have liked me, you know.”

“She may have done.”

“It’s just we’ll never know now. I rather worry that I’ll return to Oxford unchanged.”

“Were you expecting to burst into life like a butterfly?”

“No, it’s just, oh, I don’t know. When I was a boy, and I went to that posh school my family all thought that I would come out better than them and better than I had been for the experience but it didn’t happen. I was still me at the end of it, which was something of a disappointment all round.”

“Yes, I’d imagine so.”

“And then I got into Oxford and my mother stopped strangers in the street to tell them and she rather thought it would be the making of me. So far I’ve learnt rather too much about Gibbon and Macauley and not changed a blind bit.”

“You grew that beard before Christmas.”

“I thought that maybe coming away with you to Europe would do the trick. That I’d meet a girl or fight a bull or a fascist or something and come away from it a man or at least different. It sounds silly doesn’t it?”

“No, not in the least.”

“You’re never looking to be transformed.”

“I emerged into the world perfectly formed in every regard.”

“Really?”

“There can’t be many dairy farmers called Du Pont in the vicinity. We’ll go to find her.”

This is how we ended up gentlemen of the road on that hot July morning.

“What should I say when we get there?”

“Well, the man at the Auberge said that it’s about ten kilometres to the farm, I think you’ve got an hour or two to learn to speak French like a native. Do you think you can manage it?”

“Oui.”

“Oh, the thing’s in the bag.”

“She can speak English in any case.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe I could pretend that we were there by accident. We’re on a country walk, we need a glass of water, we knock on the first farm house we see and who should answer the door? None other than Aurelie Du Pont.”

“I’m not sure about that. Look, this isn’t an area I’m terribly familiar with but won’t you run the risk of looking like a cowardly liar. You know, like from the Wizard of Oz.”

“What?”

“Nothing, mere verbal felicity. Aren’t you better off just telling the truth.”

“Won’t the truth seem rather strange?”

“Well, yes but there’s a slim chance, I don’t know, something like one in fifty, that she’ll find it endearing.”

“One in fifty? As little as that?”

“I think you ought to be prepared. There’s a pretty good chance that this will not be a successful endeavour.”

“I know that. It’s still worth trying though, isn’t it?”

I helpfully filled the silence that followed with song, “Tasteless pathos, port wine and Aramis, faceless bathos fortified with caramels.”

“Eric, I thought we’d spoken about the song.”

“I think we may have taken a wrong turning somewhere.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The road appears to stop up ahead. Look.” The country lane petered out into a kind of dirt track which itself only lasted until it reached a gate behind which was a vast field of wheat.

“Perhaps this is her farm?”

“Does this look like a dairy farm to you?”

“Maybe on the other side of these fields?”

“No, beyond these fields it’s just wheat field after wheat field, at some point you’ll reach the Mediterranean but between here and there it’s only wheat fields.”

We took our packs off our backs and ate our grim cheese sandwiches in silence. The realisation of just how utterly futile this jaunt was had dawned on your father very suddenly. There were tears running down his face. He wasn’t sobbing. Men didn’t blub but a manly tear in the face of adversity was acceptable so long as one didn’t make a fuss. He lay back, looked at the sky and shouted “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

“Take it easy, old man.”

“Oh, that’s your answer to everything. You’ve had a leg blown off by a hand grenade, take it easy, dear fellow. Your mother’s been eaten by cannibals, don’t make a fuss, dear boy. Some things matter Eric, sorry to have to tell you but they bloody do.”

“I’m aware of the fact, but thank you nonetheless.”

“Are you though? Because everything’s a bloody joke to you.”

“Sometimes jokes aren’t just jokes.”

“No, they’re also music hall songs about bleeding musketeers and chocolate frogs.”

“Sometimes you joke because you want to say something but you can’t.”

“Oh, really? You? You have something to say?”

“Of course I do, Peter, I’m not so very different from everyone else.”

“I have my doubts. You’ve never told me you were happy or sad or scared or that you loved your mother or fancied a girl, you just exist in a perpetual fug of silly word play.”

“Can you really be so dense?”

“I’m just trying to express a human feeling, although I don’t wonder it’s a confusing process to you.”

“Do you know why I came to Europe? It’s not the food or the weather or the adventure. It’s you, Peter, it’s you.”

“Eric.”

“Oh, sod it, in for a penny. I love you Peter, I am dizzy, giddy, heart-a-flutter in love with you. The proper thing, the full on Hellenic stuff.”

“Christ, why didn’t you say?”

I leant across the top of the gate, looked into the distance and explained “I didn’t say it because there wasn’t the faintest chance you’d feel the same. I love all the time we spend with each other, the stupid conversations, this stupid quest of yours, the sheer lovely bloody ridiculous stupidity of it all. Oh God, look at me, I’m a pantomime dame.”

“It’s alright, you know.”

“It’s not though, is it? You’ll move on, you’ll marry someone called Sandra or Jean and you’ll have awful children who you’ll adore. I’ll be a peculiarity, a pervert, a leper. Doesn’t bear thinking about really.”

I felt your father hold me. One arm over my shoulder, the other around my waist, firmly but gently. This daft, truculent, inexperienced, wonderful fool held me. I loved him before as a teenager loves another teenager, at that moment I loved him as an adult, I loved him as family.

I turned slightly, just enough so I could look him in the eye and I kissed him. It was not a passionate kiss, it was, frankly, a rather dreadful attempt. Our heads weren’t at quite the right angle, our noses bumped together, we adjusted from side to side like pedestrians negotiating a narrow pavement.

Then there was a kind of fumbling mutual exploration which we both executed with all the sophistication of a rhinoceros playing the cello. It did, however, accomplish its aim and your father needed to wipe himself down with his vastly overworked handkerchief.

We stood and gazed in different directions. After a couple of moments Peter said “We probably ought to head back into town.”

“We probably ought.”

As we walked, I sang “Oh, the Count of Monty Bisto, he went out and got pissed-o, on cheap wine, furniture polish, secrets and sacred knowledge…”

“I think I preferred the one about the chocolate frog.”

Long before we got back to Sainte-Clair we had returned to our old equilibrium. We shared rooms in our third year. I was at your parents’ wedding, I met your mum and thought she was superb. Your dad is not, so far as I’m aware, any gayer than his contemporaries, which is to say he’s a little more gay than he’d like to admit but still essentially hetero. We drifted apart as people so often do but I thought of him often, I still do.

I suppose the thing that I want you to know is that for a single hot afternoon in the summer of 1962 he made me feel loved and important in a way no one ever had before, that he was a truly wonderful friend.

I have a lot more memories of him but I don’t think I shall write again. It is this day, this moment that stays with me, it is on that day that I want to remember him.

With love

Eric

* * *

Dear Eric

I am afraid I am writing with sad news.

My dad passed away last Tuesday – I’ve included an invitation to the funeral but I don’t suppose you’ll be able to attend.

With that in mind, I wanted to share something small with you. In the days before he died he was stuck in bed. We sat with him in shifts and spoke to him all the time even though he struggled to speak.

We read him stories from the newspapers, reported on the cricket, and I told him the story of Bernadotte becoming the King of Sweden again and again because he always told it to me when I was a kid.

Anyway, at one point I found myself idly singing “Tasteless pathos, port wine and Aramis…” just as something to fill the air. He responded “Faceless bathos fortified with caramels.”

With love

Andrew