for his father, who had for two years languished a helpless invalid. At this stage of his literary career, Patrick continued deeply reliant on personal experience as matter for his fiction.
There were other memories on which he could draw, and death frequently has the effect of diminishing the bad and resurrecting the good. Charles Russ had enthusiastically supported Patrick’s early literary endeavours, negotiating their acceptance by publishers. He penned a glowing introduction to his precocious first novel Caesar, and Patrick in turn dedicated his next book Beasts Royal ‘To my father’. During the troubled days of his late adolescence, he found an apparently contented refuge in his father’s and stepmother’s house at Crowborough in Sussex.
My mother’s ‘poor Patrick’ confirms that Patrick was distressed by the news, since he would not have disguised his true feelings from her. Furthermore, he must unquestionably have been concerned for his stepmother, who had been consistently kind to him as a boy, and of whom he remained extremely fond.
It is important to appreciate Patrick’s reaction to this emotional occasion, not least because it has been misinterpreted to his lasting disfavour. A biography of Patrick devotes several pages of speculation to the event, the gist of which is that he:
never introduced his son to his father. He never spoke of his father to Richard, and he did not even tell Richard now that his grandfather had just died. The amazing thing is that a man of O’Brian’s insight not only was incapable of repairing his relationship with his father but fostered a similar father–son breach in his own house.[3]
No evidence is cited to support these unpleasant charges, the burden of which is profoundly misleading.[fn8] Poverty and distance, coupled with wartime travel conditions, might (we do not know) have precluded Patrick’s taking his son to Crowborough before his departure with my mother to Wales in 1945, when Richard was seven. While little communication appears to have passed thereafter between Patrick and his reclusive parent, Patrick’s siblings have confirmed to me that Charles Russ rarely corresponded with any of his children or grandchildren.
Although it is not impossible that Richard’s grandfather never communicated with him, other members of the family were concerned with the boy’s welfare. ‘Grandmother Russ’ (Patrick’s stepmother Zoe) visited Richard and his mother at their flat in Chelsea, as did Uncle Victor and other relatives. Richard unselfconsciously passed on family news from them to his father in France, and it is evident that there were no ‘forbidden areas’ in family discussions.
Unfortunately, Patrick was unable to travel to England for his father’s funeral, almost certainly in consequence of acute lack of funds. At the time of Charles Russ’s death, my mother wrote in her diary: ‘Despairing thoughts of no money to meet car’s lettre de change at end of month.’ However, Patrick’s brother Bun, a successful lawyer in Canada, had flown over to attend. It seems that Bun (as he certainly did on other occasions) generously paid for Patrick’s journey and hotel room in Paris, since my mother’s accounts record only trifling expenditure connected with what must have been a costly expedition.
It is frankly incredible to suppose that Patrick kept all this secret from Richard. Why on earth should he have done so? Besides, secrecy would have been all but impossible, closeted as the three of them were in the tiny flat in the rue Arago. The further charge that Patrick ‘fostered’ a breach with Richard himself will in due course be seen to be demonstrably unfounded, and confirms the extent to which such accusations represent no more than ill-natured conjecture.
A month before news arrived of his ailing father’s stroke, Patrick told my mother of an idea which had come to him of writing his ‘Chelsea novel’. More and more gripped by the concept, in May she observed ‘P. internally working on next novel’, and by June ‘P. is too deep in new novel to go back.’ It seems unlikely that it was coincidence that led Patrick to turn to such an introspective theme at a time when he was becoming aware that the once-daunting parent figure was slipping from the scene. Was he unconsciously afraid that his father’s death might deprive him of an identifiable explanation – or even pretext – for his continuing inability to realize his ambition?
In the event Patrick made little attempt to tutor Richard during his long stay at Collioure in 1954. Not only was the boy enthusiastic enough about the subjects he had chosen to apply himself to without any necessity for supervision, but throughout this time his father had become immersed in writing The Golden Ocean. My mother, who taught her stepson French on the beach, was delighted to learn that ‘R. gets excellent reports on his course.’
With the arrival of warm weather, much time was spent beside the sea, taking long walks, exploring neighbouring places of interest such as the magnificent castle of Salses north of Perpignan, and entertaining a stream of friends. Richard began learning to drive, but sadly expenditure on the purchase of the vineyard eventually compelled the sale of the much-loved deux chevaux. On 25 April my mother drove to Perpignan, sold the car for 210,000 francs (about £200), in a rare fit of indulgence enjoyed ‘an immense lunch’ at the Duchesse de Berri restaurant, and took the train home. As has been seen, she and Patrick went straight to the Azémas, and paid the full price of the vineyard. ‘Vous voilà propriétaires définitifs,’ declared Madame Azéma. My mother triumphantly inscribed the joyous words in the margin of her diary.
Apart from benefiting from the strip of land to make the family self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables, wine and honey, their plan was to construct a small stone chamber beside the road at the top of the vineyard, where Patrick could write in peace, away from the hurly-burly of the rue Arago. Such cells, known as casots, are scattered about the nearby hillsides, being used by cultivators of vignobles to store their tools and provide shelter from the burning sun during breaks from cultivation.
In order to accomplish this, it was first necessary to excavate a recess at the top of the rocky slope, which could only be accomplished by means of explosives. After obtaining the requisite permit, Patrick bought a quantity of dynamite and detonators. These being required to be kept separate, the dynamite was kept under Richard’s bed. In later life Patrick proved less circumspect. Nearly half a century later, not long after his death, I looked into the high shelf of a cupboard in the narrow passage next to the bedroom where my mother and Patrick slept. There I discovered a brown paper parcel which proved to contain two sticks of dynamite together with a detonator.
No wiser than Patrick, I assumed they posed no danger, since their explosive power must surely have long ago dissipated. Some years later I recounted my discovery to an old school friend, a retired Army officer. He impressed on me that the explosive was undoubtedly more dangerous, having become unstable after the space of half a century. This alarmed me, and it was arranged for it to be removed and exploded by the gendarmerie. I still feel qualms when I think of my parents blithely sleeping for decades with their heads three or four yards from a package capable of blowing up the entire house.
Returning to 1955, Patrick and Richard travelled beyond Port-Vendres to Paulilles, where they purchased the explosives. Unfortunately they missed the return train, and trudged the weary miles home, each carrying a 10-kilogram load. Next, holes were prepared with pickaxes and sledgehammers, and faggots gathered to restrict the effect of explosions, after which mining began.
Patrick was convinced he could handle the detonations himself, until a massive explosion discharged a load of rock perilously close to him and Richard. Henceforward he grudgingly employed a pair of burly Catalan miners, Cardonnet and his friend Juan, who completed the work with professional skill. This was the limit of assistance required, and the family’s daily toil is recapitulated in detail in Patrick’s gardening diary he kept that year. Mining completed, there succeeded the arduous labour of shifting stones out of the recess created. Although he and my mother worked themselves to the bone, the satisfaction at finding themselves at long last working their own land was boundless.
My mother with Buddug at the well
The work continued throughout July, when thundery