The Manticore

"That's a family affair, a charitable foundation that makes grants to a variety of good, or apparently good, causes. Such things are extremely popular with rich families in North America. Ours had a peculiar history, but it isn't important just now. Briefly, Grandfather Staunton set it up as a fund to assist temperance movements. But he left some loose ends, and he couldn't resist some fancy wording about "assisting the public weal," so when father took it over he gently eased all the preachers off the board and put a lot more money into it. Consequence: we now support the arts and the social sciences, in all their lunatic profusion. The name is odd. Means 'beaver' of course, and so it has Canadian relevance; but it also means a special type of sugar – do you know the expression castor-sugar, the kind that goes in shakers? – and my father's money was made in part from sugar. He began in sugar. The name was suggested years ago as a joke by my father's friend Dunstan Ramsay; but Father liked it, and used it when he created the Foundation. Or, rather, when he changed it from the peculiar thing it was when Grandfather Staunton left it.

"This large bequest to Castor ensured the continuance of all his charities and patronages. I was pleased, but not surprised, that he had given a strong hint in the will that he expected me to succeed him as Chairman of Castor. I already had a place on its Board. It's a very small Board – as small as the law will permit. So by this single act he had made me a man of importance in the world of benefactions, which is one of the very few remaining worlds where the rich are allowed to say what shall be done with the bulk of their money.

"But there was a flick of the whip for me in the latter part of the will, where the personal bequests were detailed.

"I told you that I am a rich man. I should say that I have a good deal of money, caused, if not intended, by a bequest from my grandfather, and I make a large income as a lawyer. But compared with my father I am inconsiderable – just 'well-to-do', which was the phrase he used to dismiss people who were well above the poverty line but cut no figure in the important world of money. First-class surgeons and top lawyers and some architects were well-to-do, but they manipulated nothing and generated nothing in the world where my father trod like a king.

"So I wasn't looking for my bequest as something that would greatly change my way of life or deliver me from care. No, I wanted to know what my father had done about me in his will because I knew it would be the measure of what he thought of me as a man, and as his son. He obviously thought I could handle money, or he wouldn't have tipped me for the chairmanship of Castor. But what part of his money – and you must understand money meant his esteem and his love – did he think I was worth?

"Denyse was left very well off, but she got no capital – just a walloping good income for life or – this was Father speaking again – so long as she remained his widow. I am sure he thought he was protecting her against fortune-hunters; but he was also keeping fortune-hunters from getting their hands on anything that was, or had been, his.

"Then there was a bundle for 'my dear daughter, Caroline' which was to be hers outright and without conditions – because Beesty could have choked on a fishbone at his club any day and Caroline remarried at once and Father wouldn't have batted an eye.

"Then there was a really large capital sum in trust 'for my dear grandchildren, Caroline Elizabeth and Boyd Staunton Bastable, portions to be allotted per stirpes to any legitimate children of my son Edward David Staunton from the day of their birth.' There it was, you see."

"Your father was disappointed that you had no children?"

"Certainly that is how he would have expected it to be interpreted. But didn't you notice that I was simply his son, when all the others were his dear this and dear that? Very significant, in something carefully prepared by Father. It would be nearer the truth to say he was angry because I wouldn't marry – wouldn't have anything to do with women at all."

"I see. And why is that?"

"It's a very long and complicated story."

"Yes. It usually is."

"I'm not a homosexual, if that's what you are suggesting."

"I am not suggesting that. If there were easy and quick answers, psychiatry would not be very hard work."

"My father was extremely fond of women."

"Are you fond of women?"

"I have a very high regard for women."

"That is not what I asked."

"I like them well enough."

"Well enough for what?"

"To get along pleasantly with them. I know a lot of women."

"Have you any women friends?"

"Well – in a way. They aren't usually interested in the things I like to talk about."

"I see. Have you ever been in love?"

"In love? Oh, certainly."

"Deeply in love?"

"Yes."

"Have you had sexual intercourse with women?"

"With a woman."

"When last?"

"It would be – let me think for a moment – December 26, 1945."