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Nov. 9th, 2009 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
titusnowlTerry doesn't know it, but he takes after both his parents in ways that would be quite recognizable if they were on speaking terms. The cheerfulness - well, a great deal of that is Eton, and the oh-so-British Stiff Upper Lip he learned to grow there, but it's also a remnant of his mother, who always had a dark and dry sense of humour; she joked their way through the Occupation, and surely some of that echoes in his memory, as little as he saw of her even then (Père, of course, was usually absent doing Whatever It Is He Does That Keeps Ponce Supplied With The Money To Stay Poncey; Maman was a shadowy figure in carefully-kept silk stockings, showing up at dinner and fussing at him when he wasn't with the femme de tout they kept - her name was Elise - or, later, his tutors). So the black humour may, in fact, be congenital. The ability to keep what he's really thinking down in a quiet space inside, that's something he shares with his father - although his father's public facade is one of silent thoughtfulness, not his son's cheerful good-for-nothing act.
They don't really think he's stupid; not their son, not if he managed to get through Eton and be accepted to - oh, mon dieu, how many different colleges did he attend while he was floating about Oxbridge? There's no way their son could actually be stupid, but he is awfully foolish, and they sometimes wonder if they really did the right thing sending him off to England for schooling. (His father was silently mollified when l'UE eventually got the boy, even if he did go the path of least resistance for a graduate of that educational edifice.)
His letters make them shake their heads, as much at the content as the wording. They never really approved of his running off with that American woman; neither of them attended the wedding, although they sent a handwritten card of congratulations with their gift, and made their excuses based on his father's busy work schedule and the difficulty in getting time off to go to Ohio. Terry was secretly happy that they didn't show up, and Miranda simply slotted it into "Terry had a bad home life" rather than "Oh God, his parents hate me." (She's always taken his side in something that he doesn't even see as a war - to him, not talking to his parents beyond the annual "where the hell did I put my dictionary" letter is simply The Way Things Have Always Been, not the Great Tragedy she sees it as.) When they heard of his divorce in that year's annual letter, the news was less important than the terribly ungrammatical "et j'ai joigné l'Université de l'Espionage" that followed in the very same sentence.
Even as they sorrow over his terrible French, they recognize that he's at least putting the effort in - they both understand English perfectly well, but if their son started writing home in that language they'd definitely feel as though they'd failed. They get to hear very little of his life; neither of them is certain whether it's language constraints or natural reticence, but they're inclined to attribute it to the former, as much as they'd like to think it were the latter. In reality, of course, it's a mix of both. In this year's letter, they will learn that he's changed "offices," that his new coworkers are very nice, and that someone named Crusoe is teaching him to swim; and they will receive the first portrait of him that they've gotten since his wedding pictures. They will reply with a nice card, a brief letter written as though the recipient were the ten-year-old they waved farewell to at the ferry over two decades ago, and a cheque so he can go buy himself something nice. The photograph will go in a frame on the mantel, where his mother can show it to her friends as "mon fils qui habite aux Etats-Unis - il est très beau, n'est-ce pas? Quel dommage qu'il manque le bon sens à rester à la France."
If they had their druthers, he'd have come back to France after university and let them hook him up with a nice French girl (perhaps a Fatale or a d'Anger), but as it is, they just sigh and let him do as he likes.
They don't really think he's stupid; not their son, not if he managed to get through Eton and be accepted to - oh, mon dieu, how many different colleges did he attend while he was floating about Oxbridge? There's no way their son could actually be stupid, but he is awfully foolish, and they sometimes wonder if they really did the right thing sending him off to England for schooling. (His father was silently mollified when l'UE eventually got the boy, even if he did go the path of least resistance for a graduate of that educational edifice.)
His letters make them shake their heads, as much at the content as the wording. They never really approved of his running off with that American woman; neither of them attended the wedding, although they sent a handwritten card of congratulations with their gift, and made their excuses based on his father's busy work schedule and the difficulty in getting time off to go to Ohio. Terry was secretly happy that they didn't show up, and Miranda simply slotted it into "Terry had a bad home life" rather than "Oh God, his parents hate me." (She's always taken his side in something that he doesn't even see as a war - to him, not talking to his parents beyond the annual "where the hell did I put my dictionary" letter is simply The Way Things Have Always Been, not the Great Tragedy she sees it as.) When they heard of his divorce in that year's annual letter, the news was less important than the terribly ungrammatical "et j'ai joigné l'Université de l'Espionage" that followed in the very same sentence.
Even as they sorrow over his terrible French, they recognize that he's at least putting the effort in - they both understand English perfectly well, but if their son started writing home in that language they'd definitely feel as though they'd failed. They get to hear very little of his life; neither of them is certain whether it's language constraints or natural reticence, but they're inclined to attribute it to the former, as much as they'd like to think it were the latter. In reality, of course, it's a mix of both. In this year's letter, they will learn that he's changed "offices," that his new coworkers are very nice, and that someone named Crusoe is teaching him to swim; and they will receive the first portrait of him that they've gotten since his wedding pictures. They will reply with a nice card, a brief letter written as though the recipient were the ten-year-old they waved farewell to at the ferry over two decades ago, and a cheque so he can go buy himself something nice. The photograph will go in a frame on the mantel, where his mother can show it to her friends as "mon fils qui habite aux Etats-Unis - il est très beau, n'est-ce pas? Quel dommage qu'il manque le bon sens à rester à la France."
If they had their druthers, he'd have come back to France after university and let them hook him up with a nice French girl (perhaps a Fatale or a d'Anger), but as it is, they just sigh and let him do as he likes.
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Date: 2009-11-09 07:46 am (UTC)CHARLIE MANHUGE: yeah
CHARLIE MANHUGE: really the reason they don't talk boils down to a misunderstanding and him being too ready to accept that he's been abandoned or something
CHARLIE MANHUGE: even if the other person didn't mean it that way
Engineer: ponce you're a jerk :(c
CHARLIE MANHUGE: he doesn't really /mean/ to be a jerk
CHARLIE MANHUGE: CHARLIE MANHUGE: (lol basically ponce has an attachment disorder :V) (which is ultimately his mother's fault though!)
Engineer: oh ponce bb :(c
Engineer: and ponces' mom too
CHARLIE MANHUGE: PSYCHOLOGICALLY SPEAKING: she had Shit To Do when he was little; she foisted him off on the femme de tout and the tutors and had remarkably little to do with him other than as an authority figure, which along with the rest of his life ended up with him being a person who latches onto someone while fully expecting them to brush him off, and then taking the slightest thing as The Brush-Off and going off to find osmeone else to latch onto instead.
CHARLIE MANHUGE: see also: one fight with crusoe -> joining the circus :V
CHARLIE MANHUGE: how he managed to keep running after miranda so long is a mystery :V
CHARLIE MANHUGE: well the general pattern is carried out fairly well in WWAU version; standard version i suppose it was the fact that she never really gave him The Brush-Off because she just had a fundamentally different idea of their relationship
CHARLIE MANHUGE: she didn't know it was A Relationship so she just humoured him :V
CHARLIE MANHUGE: Engineer: so ponce needs someone either relentless or so laid back :V
CHARLIE MANHUGE: yeah :V
CHARLIE MANHUGE: Engineer: or BOTH >:Uc