BEN

Dear Harry,

This morning, aside from the usual online exchanges, I sent out an email to my old friend Ben. Do you remember him? It has been nearly two years since I last heard from him. He still lives in the north of England where he has spent most of his life. We were school chums at the age of seven or eight. He was the one friend I could always rely on, steady, unfazed by the cruelty or hostility of other boys. I no longer recall how it was that we reconnected just a few years back when we were both already grandfathers, but we met up at a pub somewhere in Hertfordshire, near where my son Matthew lives with his family and took a stroll together down a country lane, re-establishing our long, deep connection while the others in our party were starting on their before-dinner drinks in the lounge. 

Ben’s family lived in a large stone house perched on a hillside at the edge of Lake Windermere, and I stayed there with them once for a few days when I was about ten years old. I remember a dreadful and for me unusually acute attack of homesickness as I stood by the window of my cold little attic room, looking out over the gray lake, at dusk perhaps, and feeling, despite my welcome, terribly alone.

The next day I went with Ben down to the boathouse where they kept a small sailing dinghy and headed out onto the lake. Ben knew how to sail. What he did not know, could not have known because these strange weather conditions happen without warning, was that a squall was approaching us rapidly from the head of the lake. Before we knew it, the fierce gale attacked us with incredible force and bitter, driving rain. Never having experienced such a thing in my life before, I was terrified. Ben struggled to unfurl the sail while the little boat bucked and reared and twisted underneath us, threatening to sink below the sudden, angry waves. Stalwart as ever, he saw to it that we weathered out the storm and, after it had passed, rowed the dinghy back to the safety of the boat house.

This was the first time I had been in mortal anger. I was afraid, but not of death I think. Does any child so young have any real concept of death? Unless, I suppose, they have seen death take someone close to them.

Ben and I had lost touch already by the age of twelve, when we each went off to different boarding schools for the remainder of our school days. I learned that he had joined the ministry and had devoted his life, as you had done, to a parish priesthood. I’m sure he was the ultimate “good shepherd.” Long retired by the time we met again as old men, he had found a retirement passion as a beekeeper, tending to his bees with the same meticulous care, I’m sure, as he had tended to his flocks.

I wonder about bees. I wonder about their instinctive connectedness, as busy tribes zooming in and out of their hive, flying out in all directions—according, perhaps, to some unknowable plan—in search of nectar and returning to the hive to make their tiny, necessary contribution to the common weal.

And the queen, I wonder? Is she a benevolent but demanding monarch, a ruler of all those who occupy her domain? Or is she their servant, subject to the common will

I must ask Ben about this if I get the chance. I also want to talk to him about God. I want to ask him if he still believes, if belief is difficult for him. I want to share with him my disbelief, and yet an ancient, deep-felt longing for something to believe in.

Your son, Peter

 

BLETCHLEY, REVISITED

Dear Harry,

My apologies for the long silence. Shortly after I last wrote I developed a truly horrible cold and have been laid up for several days. Fearing that I might have somehow contracted the latest variant of the current coronavirus epidemic, I even went to the hospital for a test, but happily that turned out negative. So what I've been suffering from is "just a cold."

But I have not been totally incapacitated. I have been able to write--and have been in touch with my Facebook "friends" (all three thousand of them; again, don't ask, it would take far too long to explain to a mind attuned to 20th century technology--BBC radio and the early days of television!) to keep them abreast of things. It is gratifying to know that I have such a great resource of people who care to read what I write, and sometimes even respond with their own thoughts and comments.

Otherwise, I have been reading--principally a long novel called "The Rose Code" by Kate Quinn, a book that I think you would have enormously enjoyed. As I have perhaps too frequently reminded you, you were always a great fan of tales of mystery and suspense, and this one would have especially intrigued you because its milieu is the place I wrote about in my letter last week: Bletchley Park. I reminded you of our personal connection with this incredibly hush-hush, historic center of World War II intelligence activity because we had three of those super-smart "Bletchley girls" living with in the Rectory at Aspley Guise. Believe it or not, three of those girls in Kate Quinn's book are billeted in a three-story redbrick Queen Anne house... in Aspley Guise! Sound familiar?

One of the three main characters in Quinn's book, all Bletchley girls, shares a lot of personal history with Sarah Baring, whose book we talked about together just last week--which irritated me a bit at the start, I have to say, until I discovered in an afterword that the borrowings were fully and forthrightly attributed. With the other two, all from quite different social backgrounds and of starkly different character, she leads us through the intense, at times harrowing experience of the work of those codebreakers on which the lives of so many service-men and -women came to depend. It's a compelling story of incredibly hard work, incredibly long hours, and above all the personal cost of the absolute imperative to maintain strict secrecy in such a hothouse environment. 

Quinn's skill is to wind the clock back as well as forward for her three young women, following their fortunes and misfortunes, their love affairs and poignant animosities, their loyalties and betrayals through the war years. What was an engaging read for the first half of the book becomes, in the second half, a real page-turner, galloping toward a climax in which the three friends rediscover their deep attachment even as they uncover a dreadful truth about the events at Bletchley Park. 

I was hooked. Okay, I'll confess that some remaining cynical part in my pragmatic, determinedly unsentimental male persona was irked by what seemed to me a few excessive moments of romance. But I was taken by the main characters--a "debutante" whose mother has a permanent suite at Claridges and is, before the war, presented to the King at court; a bright, keen, somewhat cynical social climber from the working-class East End of London; and a shy, seemingly slow-witted country girl, bullied horribly by her mother, who hides an Asperger's genius mind within. I was taken, too, as much by the gripping images of London in the Blitz as by the tense, harried scenes in the "huts" of Bletchley Park.

All in all, an excellent read, Harry, and one you would have loved--as you loved those Bletchley girls!

Gratefully---this time for the love of books like this!--your son, Peter

BLETCHLEY

 Dear Harry, 

I have been reading more about Bletchley Park, this time in a book called "The Secrets of Station X: How Bletchley Park Helped Win the War" by Michael Smith. As I read, I come across names thaqt sound familiar, names of people who were your friends during the war years and after. I'm sure you remember Hugh Trevor-Roper, for example, and Peter Calvocoressi who lived just a few yards down the road from us in Aspley House--a mansion that was reputed to be haunted by one of those "gray ladies" familiar to anyone who knows about ghosts in English country houses. This one was supposed to be seen walking occasionally down the wide main staircase that led to the front hall. It was Peter Calvocoressi, by the way, who was an editor at Chatto & Windus in the late 1950s when I was getting started as a writer. He was kind enough to read the manuscript of a very derivative first novel I had written and was arrogant enough to think deserved publication! He turned it down, of course, but was decent enough to write me a letter with some encouraging words--thanks, I'm sure, to his friendship with you and Peggy. There was also mention of another analyst named Hugh Foss who had a cottage in Aspley Guise--the book describes it as a horrible mess, with dishes stacked on the floor. I don't recall the name myself, but I wonder if you remember him?

No mention, yet, of any of the girls who lived with us at the Rectory. Would you recognize and of them from this contemporaneous image...

... or as they are today!

But it's fascinating to read about what was going on under our noses during those war years. You would love to have known about it all--and indeed tried quite improperly to pump our guests for information, as I've read. I'm trying to work out if you were still alive when the history of Bletchley started to be released, some fifty years after the war ended. Until then it was all a closely guarded secret. Since then, of course, there have been countless books, television programs, movies--the best know of the latter being "The Imitation Game" with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of the ill-fated Alan Turing. 

I don't know, really, what got me started on this kick. Perhaps my curiosity was nudged by a couple of letters that are included in my "Dear Harry" book. It does feel like an important part of my childhood, as though I was at least close to some critical part of 20th century history. It's something I'd love to talk to you about, if you were still around...

Sent with love, as always, your son Peter

MLK

It's MLK Day here in the US--the day on which we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King. Thanks to his leadership--and the work and leadership of countless others in the 1960s--the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. It was a moment of great joy, seeming to finally put paid to the Jim Crow laws that had hobbled the rights of African Americans for decades. 

With increased access to the polls, the prospect for a better, more just, more equitable future seemed momentarily bright. Now look where we are. Led on by the delusional fury of the man rejected from the presidency in the 2020 election, representatives of one political party are working assiduously throughout the country to reverse the progress made by Dr. King and those who worked with him. Motivated by the clear understanding that their prospects in a fair and cleanly run election are dim, they are resorting to every conceivable way to win by voter repression, district gerrymandering, control of the election bureaucracy and other forms of outright cheating.

There seems to be no way to stop these people. They have been working cannily for decades to assume control of the political process, from school boards to city and state governments. Democrats, for their part, have believed--naively, it now seems--in small "d" democratic fair play. Now threatened with the disastrous prospect of a Republican takeover of the House and Senate in 2022 and a further consolidation of their increasingly autocratic right-wing control--they are already threatening to take partisan revenge on Democratic opponents, and even impeach President Biden for unspecified crimes--the only way to stop this long downhill slide from MLK's 1960s is to activate unimaginable numbers of oppressed and reasonable Americans and persuade them to defeat every obstacle designed to keep them from the polls. It will be a Herculean task.

Dr. King asserted that the "arc of the moral universe" may be long, but that it "bends towards justice." Unhappily it has been seized in recent years by those who have nothing but contempt for social justice and seek to distort it to their own nefarious ends. May Dr. King prove right in his guarded optimism, and may this country finally reset its course toward the aspirations of its founders. Flawed as we now know them to be, they had a vision that transcended the limits of their personal lives and projected a possibility for humanity that continues to elude us. 

EMAIL

 Dear Harry,

I was just thinking as I was going through the tedious daily ritual of deleting unsolicited email after unsolicited email--dozens of them, in fact--that you never, ever received one of these during your entire life. You never opened a computer, never racked your brains to remember a bloody "password", never Googled anything... You never had a telephone where you could check the weather anywhere in the world, visit the stock market, find the solution to the daily crossword puzzle. make a "FacetTime" video call to someone in Australia--for "free"!--never hit the "send" button by mistake, before you'd finished your text, never made a "butt call" and would not have the first idea what that might mean. 

Whatever did you do without it?

In the days when telephones were telephones, attached to the wall with a cable that only reached so far, you had to "dial" the number you wished to reach on the rotary dial. Calling required some physical action beyond one finger (thumbs, it seems, for the young and those more expert than myself) hovering over the keypad. There was a sense of "connection" through the wires. For most of your life, if there was no one at the other end of the line to receive your call, you could not "leave a message". You'd have to try again another time. As for international or transatlantic calls, particularly at Christmas, don't even ask...

Well, Harry, times have changed. I now carry my phone in my pocket everywhere I go. It takes photographs! Or movies! And transfers them instantaneously to anyone I want to send them to! No more loading film into the camera and taking it to be "developed"! Oh, it's all so convenient, so easy, Harry. You can manage your entire life on this little thing, smaller even than a pack of twenty cigarettes. Imagine. 

And oh, by the way, I'm "posting" this on my "blog." Again, don't ask.

With love, Peter

MARMALADE (Part 2)

 So the Meyer lemon marmalade is done. Looks good. Tastes pretty darn good, too!

I'm pretty chuffed with myself!

MARMALADE

Today is another marmalade day. Another, because I made some kumquat marmalade a couple of weeks ago (did I mention this before?) Today it's Meyer lemon marmalade. We have both these fruit trees out on the top deck of home in Los Angeles, and this year has been a good one for both. It's hard to know what to do with so many Meyer lemons (we also have a heavily-laden tree with regular lemons) and so many kumquats except to make marmalade, and even then my marmalade-making ambitions make only a modest dent in our supply of citrus fruit. It's a shame that they all seem to ripen at the same time...

Still, it's an interesting and enjoyable occupation. It reminds me of the time when my mother, Peggy, would make big vats of Seville orange marmalade and various kinds of jams, depending on what fruit happened to be ripening in our garden. I remember the wonderful aromas that wafted through the house as she stirred those big pots with wooden spoons on the coke-burning stove, calling my sister Flora and myself to the kitchen for a spoonful of the tasty "scum" our mother scooped from the surface as the mixture simmered. That was a special treat.

There are only two habits that I brought over with me from England when I left my native country more than sixty years ago. One of them is my indispensable morning cup of tea, and the other is marmalade. I was dismayed, when I first came to America, to be served orange jam in the guise of marmalade when I went out for breakfast. Jam is jam. Marmalade is marmalade. Because "proper marmalade" is made with tart Seville oranges, it has a tang to it. Jam is sweet. Big difference. For breakfast, I need marmalade. Not jam. Not honey. Marmalade. I'm a bit of a snob that way.

B.P.

Dear Harry,

Bletchley Park continues to fascinate, even here in America, even 80 years after the events there in the 1940s. It's due in part, I'm sure, to the move "The Imitation Game", with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Alan Turing. But I was surprised by the number of responses to the brief review I posted in my social media forum (also on Goodreads) of a book called "The Road to Station X: A Memoir of One Woman's Journey Through World War II" by Sarah Baring. Station X is, of course, Bletchley Park, where some of the smartest people in the country were working day and night on the interception and de-coding of vital German military communications. You'll remember Fiona and Vivian, and my auntie Gay, all three "Bletchley Girls" who lived in the Rectory at Aspley Guise during the war years.

I reminded you in an earlier letter of the great shock with which I learned, from another B.P. book, that there was "a parson in this neighborhood" who had drawn the attention of the security services for proving too nosy about what might be happening at that super hush-hush facility, and had been pestering the billitees for information. The offending "parson" was none other than yourself. It was innocent enough, I suppose, more for the fun of flirtation with those attractive young women along with a bit of natural curiosity than to undermine the whole British war effort.

Anyway, here's the brief "review" I posted of the book by Sarah Bating, who would have to be 100 years old or more today, were she still alive. But I suspect she must have left us a while ago: "I had a lot of fun with this book, in part because it took me back to my childhood in England during WWII. The author came from the privileged background of the British peerage, the god-daughter of Earl Mountbatten, and was presented at Court in 1938, shortly before the country went to war with Germany. Living in London during the Blitz, she joined the war effort at a fighter plane factory before her knowledge of German led to her recruitment at Bletchley Park--the now-famous code breaking center for the captured German Enigma machine. Three of the Bletchley girls--but not this one--lived in my own home during the war, so her work there was of special interest to me. Beyond that personal point of interest, though, I greatly enjoyed Sarah Baring's cheerful, can-do approach to everything she was called upon to do (very English!) as well as her modesty and her sharp sense of humor. She's one of those fine, "well-brought-up" people from the upper classes who manages to carry her privileged status without a trace of snobbery and, aside from performing admirable secret war service, is also a fundamentally likable person."

Cheers, then. Your son, Peter

EPIPHANY

Dear Harry,

Today is Thursday, January 6, the inglorious anniversary of that dreadful event in Washington DC last year--and trash day on our little little nest of streets in Laguna Beach. Out on my walk with Jake this morning early with nothing particular on my mind, I came upon an abandoned Christmas tree, left out to be hauled away with the rest of the "green" garbage--the garden debris, grass cuttings, and so on. It's always a sad sight to see a Christmas tree left out with the trash, but this one this morning happened to put me in mind of the approach of the Sunday that celebrates, in the Anglican calendar, the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the arrival of the three kings at the baby Jesus's crib. They had traveled far, the Bible story goes, bearing gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh to celebrate the arrival of a new "king" on earth. A snatch of the hymn we used to sing that Sunday came back to me: "We three Kings of Orient are/Bearing gifts we traverse afar/Field and fountain, moor and mountain/Following yonder start." I could not remember all the words, but I could hum the tune.

I had forgotten, to tell the truth, that January 6 is the actual, fixed date for Epiphany each year. How very odd, then, that I should be inspired by that abandoned tree to think these thoughts and write these words today! And how very much odder, now that I come to think of it, that it coincides with the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol last year--an event that could not be further in spirit from the traditional associations of epiphany: enlightenment, revelation, joyful recognition...

At your Rectory, the Sunday of, or following Epiphany was the day that Christmas officially ended for the family. The lights were unstrung from the tree and packed away until next Christmas, along with the decorative colored balls and tinsel and the star from the top of the tree. The tree was taken out to the side yard to await who knows what fate. It's a detail I've forgotten. But, yes, this was our annual ritual, and one that I remember well from my boyhood days.

Epiphany has come to mean something different to me these days, Harry, now that I no longer set much store by those Christian tales you taught me. It has its origin, certainly, in the story of the kings and their "discovery" of the Christ child, but these days it has come to mean the sudden, even blinding revelation of a previously unknown or unrecognized truth. We have all had those moments, surely, when some vital truth we had ignored or been avoiding hits us with all the power of its undeniable reality. You would recognize it in the blinding light from heaven that led to the apostle Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. 

Most frequently these epiphanies come to us at moments when we least expect them. But I have learned that I can also actually invite them. I have told you previously about my daily meditation practice, but I don't think I ever explained further that the kind of meditation I have learned and followed over the years is called "Vipassana", or Insight meditation. It's a way of using an unwavering attention on the breath as a way to create space in the mind for insights--epiphanies, really--to arise. I may start out with an intention, some problem or perplexity to resolve, not exactly "thinking" about it, but creating an awareness in that part of the "unthinking" mind that can process it without ratiocination while I sit. If I'm lucky--no, wrong; if I can create the stillness and silence in the mind for it to happen--that helpful insight will arise, allowing me to perceive the nature and perhaps the source of some cause of suffering in my life and, in recognizing, release it.

One of those "perplexities" that haunts me these days is precisely that which was manifest in that other January 6 event, the one that irrefutably revealed the bitter conflict at the heart of our national identity today. The memory troubles me deeply, daily, as does the distressingly persistent reality of that conflict. I sit in awareness of it in meditation and find some peace of mind in simply acknowledging it as a particular reality, a circumstance over which I myself have no control and can in no way resolve. I must be grateful for what I can get because, other than this, I confess that helpful insights are in short supply on this Epiphany day.

I'd be happy to hear the wisdom from your perspective on all this, Harry. But alas, that's not to be.

Signing off with my wishes for peace and love, Peter

NIBBLE

 Dear Harry,

You may recall that I had the offer of a contract on a collection of our letters from a "hybrid" publisher before Christmas. Hybrid means the author pays part of the publication costs, so it's somewhere half way between self-publishing and the commercial route. While I was tempted by the offer--I'm feeling the pressure of rapidly accumulating years--I decided to hold off for a while to see if I could generate interest among genuine literary agents and look for a more conventional publisher.

So I thought you'd be chuffed to hear that we got our first nibble from a prominent literary agency today. It's just a preliminary response to my query letter, but I choose to think of it as a good omen, since this was one of the very first letters I sent out. The agent requested the first 10,000 words of the book (the total word count is 90,000), so I sent those off this morning. 

Keep your fingers crossed, Harry! Wish me luck!

With love, Peter

2022

Dear Harry,

So here we are in 2022! Hard to believe. In 1922 you were already 17 years old, seven years older than your youngest great-grandson Luka. Since the year of your birth there have been two world wars that cost countless millions of lives, not to mention literally dozens of other wars, some small, some big, all of them pitching human beings against each other in increasingly barbarous and inhumane hostilities. You'd think we might have learned something from the barbarous 20th century, but here we are, well into the 21st and still unable to live together in peace and harmony.

Here in America, we can't even come together in the battle against the deadly coronavirus that has already taken nearly 900,000 American lives--despite the fact that we know how it could be contained. We face an election that could well result in the end of democracy in this country, perhaps even worldwide. Our politics and culture, both, are clouded by delusion, misinformation, and outright lies that no one appears able to contain. If we continue in this way, the bullies will soon have taken over the schoolroom and the teachers will have left. The result will inevitably the rule of unreason and chaos. 

I'm sorry to be painting so bleak a picture, Harry, at the start of this New Year. You and Peggy left this world before the advent of the 21st century; you could scarcely imagine what has happened since. It would appall every humanitarian value that you represented in your life. It certainly appalls me. You had your God to turn to. Unless she's a cruel and cynical jokester, I'm afraid I don't. Will our children and grandchildren make a better job of stewarding this world and taking care of other human beings than we have done? I hope so.

Sadly, then, your son, Peter

THE GREATEST GIFT

Dear Harry,

It started the other morning as I sat in meditation. I could hear our grandson Luka stirring in the room behind me and the question popped up: what is the greatest gift I could ever give him? Not money, of course, nor any material thing. Not even a great education. It occurred to me that the greatest gift I could ever give him would be the skill I have learned myself in the course of many years: the skill of meditation. Once you've mastered that--or, well, have begun to master it, since you're always at the start--it applies to everything you undertake in life and improves your chances of success. He's a restless 10-year-old at the  moment, though, so that gift will likely have to wait a few years yet...

Thinking about this, though, I started wondering what might be the greatest gift I received from you, Harry, father to son. It was not your religion, which I soon abandoned. It was not my more than privileged education--though that was a true gift, one that has stood me in good stead throughout my working and post-working life. It was not even the skill you had with words--a gift that I myself have worked long years to hone. No, I believe the greatest gift you gave me was my conscience.

Not consciousness. That's something I had to learn I needed, something I have learned slowly through the years, the need to be present and to pay attention. No, I do mean conscience, an infallible, sometimes annoying moral compass, that indefinable place in the heart, brain, and mind where I quite simply know without question what is right and what is wrong. It can be a burden, when it turns back on me in the form of a "guilty conscience." Guilt rarely serves me well. More valuable than guilt is recognition, realization, and based on that the intention to do better when I fall short.

Not indistinct from that personal moral compass is the social conscience I also learned from you. Usually without much debate, I know what social justice looks like, and what injustice looks like, too. You took the side of underpaid, underserved workers in the coal mines in the north of England, where I was born. You militated for the improvement of working conditions that compromised their health long before the National Health Service came along. You were the champion of the poor, the sick, the underprivileged. You never questioned what you knew to be right, and never shirked the responsibility to speak out against the wrong.

It is a quality much needed in America today, and much lacking. I look to the politics of this country and find them dominated by the lust for power and the fear of acting forcefully for the public good. I look to business and see the predominant compulsion of the bottom line. I look to religion, for God's sake, where moral issues are subordinated to political advantage. We could use man of your conscience to model what it means to be in service to humanity, not self.

So, I do thank you for that gift, Harry. It's a hard one to honor in the observance in a world that so dishonors it, but I value it nonetheless. Who knows, I might even find ways to share it with that restless great-grandson, who will need if he is to be worthy of the life you passed on to him through me and through his mom, your granddaughter. I trust that it may be so, or humanity will soon find itself in a sorry state indeed.

Respectfully, your son, Peter

SENTINEL

Every morning on awakening my first task is to let Jake out of his crate and leash him up for a pee and poop walk. It's a ritual. These winter days have been unusually cold in Southern California, requiring a hat, a scarf and a jacket to keep warm. Then out the front door of our cottage and down the few steps to the street.

This morning as I left the house I heard a call that sounded, at first, quite un-bird like, high and squeaky, like a child's toy. Then I realized that it had to be a hawk and, looking around, I spotted him (her?) at the rather ragged top of the tall pine tree across the way, motionless, keeping a watchful eye on the nest of small streets that make up our little community. 

(not my picture, I'm afraid!)

It's New Year's Day. Looking up at this magnificent work of nature, a rare sighting on our street, I chose to see this sentinel as an omen, a good omen, for the year ahead. And a blessing of a kind, a gift to welcome whatever lies ahead. I very much want America to wake up, to come to its senses, to restore the union it has already shredded and risks squandering decisively this very year. And realize, sadly, that I may not get the outcome that I wish for.

So let's hope the sentinel that greeted me this morning will prove the good omen that I'm hoping for. I wish America, my adopted country, a happy, prosperous, and peaceful year to come, a respite from disease and discord, and the discovery of a renewed compassion at its heart.