Ever After

14

And how do I know? And why should I believe it?

The College notepaper is a godsend. A tasteful ivory, with the College crest lightly embossed in blue, top centre, and (only available to such as me) the words “Senior Combination Room,” for extra swank, in Roman capitals, top right corner. The sort of notepaper that must surely command respect and compel an answer, even as it is evasively passed, as I’m sure it will be, from desktop to prevaricating desktop in the warrens of Whitehall.

I haven’t a clue whom I should write to. I don’t know if there exists, in the bowels of officialdom, any functionary appointed to deal with inquiries like mine. But who am I to turn to, a poor orphan, committed to the (temporary) fosterage of this goodly college?

And the College motto (embossed scroll under the crest) is auspicious and encouraging, not to say downright optimistic: Qui quaerit, invenit.

So I compose a “Dear Sir” letter, imagining, as occasionally we all do, that this “dear sir” really exists — a seasoned, ashen-haired figure, authoritative but kindly, long-suffering but fair-minded, on whom there presses the weight of many a more onerous matter, yet who is moved, as is only proper, as is only right, to give our particular little plea his heartfelt and painstaking attention.

Dear Sir,

I am writing with reference to my late father, Colonel Philip Alexander Unwin, DSO, MC, formerly of the Hampshire Regiment, subsequently seconded to extra-regimental duties, who died by his own hand on 8th April 1946, in Paris, while on attachment to or in the full employ of the diplomatic service.

At the time of his death, my mother, Sylvia Jane Unwin, and I were temporarily resident in Paris with my father. I was nine years old and an only child.

My age naturally restricted my acquaintance with the facts. However, it has never been a secret to me that my father died by suicide and that his death occurred (by gunshot) during working hours in the office where he pursued his duties in Paris. This I believe to have been in an annexe of the then British diplomatic mission in the Rue St. Dominique. I assume the matter to have been filed in the appropriate records.

On the authority of my mother, together with the findings of the inquest, I have always accepted that the motives for my father’s death, in so far as they could be scrutinized, were personal, if never wholly clear. However, following my mother’s death, eight months ago, information has come into my possession which prompts me to reconsider the matter.

I do not anticipate that official records, such as they are, will necessarily assist in a question of private concern. However, any further light you may be able to shed on the circumstances in which my father died would be greatly appreciated.…

The language that we use! The postures we adopt! A little ingratiating mimicry of those whom (we think) we are dealing with? Or is this stuff me? — the professorial blather (the infection well advanced); the palpable signs of fogeydom. No, not the moody Prince all along, but prating Polonius. Three “howevers” and an “in so far as.” The craven guff into which we slide in order to settle the most intimate facts of our lives. “Information has come into my possession.” Well, yes — and no. And “personal”—his motives for suicide “were personal.” What the hell else should they have been?