"Almost" Part 19: Book 2, Part 9

Tom’s Rage

It was some months before Tom and Reginald saw each other again. Both were tempted to write letters to each other, to luxuriate in the bitter monomania of delivered and unanswerable absolutes. Reginald started one such letter many times, hoping to achieve a regal tone of magnanimous injury. No matter how many times he tried, a raging tone of public humiliation kept cropping up. But he kept at it, and his last draft – which he finally sent – went thus:

February 2, 1935

Dear Tom:

I am writing in the hopes that something might be salvaged from our relationship. For reasons I do not pretend to understand, we have always had a strained intimacy. I have done what I could to ease this tension. I always did my best to help you in school. I introduced you to a good social set. I helped you swot. I always advanced your cause – even when, as so often happened, others criticized you heavily.

Tom, it was not my fault that you had to leave Oxford. This seems a point so obvious that it should scarcely need restating, but it seems to have escaped your attention. I have always had your best interests at heart. I have no idea how to convince you of this. You seem so obsessed with thinking the worst of me – and anyone like me – that anything I could say on this point would be pointless. You have your own fixed ideas; I will not dignify them by pretending that they have anything to do with me.

It is also probably not worth re-stating that the entire family is very anxious about you. Mother in particular worries herself sick about your future. Father seems to have given up on you. I try to plead your case, but he refuses to discuss it, and as yet I have been unable to make any headway.

Tom, please try to understand this much at least. We are worried about you because we love you. We are not trying to control you, corner you, force you to do anything or ‘inhibit’ your personality. We just believe that sitting in a room and stewing in endless resentment at the vicissitudes of life is a very poor way to conduct one’s affairs.

All is not lost. It is entirely possible that your talents – which are not inconsiderable – might not go entirely to waste. Through my influence at the Foreign Office, I would be more than happy to arrange for a clerking position of some kind. Though the starting salary and position would be poor, it is my belief that, as long as you keep your tendency to self-pity and physical aggression in check, you could rise in time.

We are not all built for world affairs. Just as I accepted my limitations in your spheres – athletics, womanizing – I invite you to accept your own limitations. We cannot ever be everything we think we can be – or fantasize that we have the ability to become. You are human. You are mortal. You have limitations. You cannot excel everywhere. Life is not an endless rowing race.

As for our recent political debacle, I would be remiss in my duty to truth and honour if I did not tell you, honestly and openly, that I consider your behaviour utterly despicable. To hijack a public debate of mine – one which was important for my career – for the sake of exposing your own ill-informed apocalyptic ramblings – is something that, upon reflection, I can never forget, or forgive. The only chance that we have for any kind of relationship in the future is for this to become a completely closed subject. I shall never speak to you of it. I do not hope that you are capable of respecting my wishes – all I will say is that if you attempt to speak to me of it, I shall leave the room, leave your life, and never return.

With all hopes for the future – and looking forward to some kind of reasonable response – I remain

Your brother

Reginald...