A Lie About My Father (34 page)

My father’s blackness was different – and that morning, I saw it for the first time. Where my grandfather had held it out and away, the better to control it, my father took it in, like some brother he would rather have done without, but could not turn from his door. He knew he was afflicted, and had decided to relish the affliction. He made it a piece of himself, a distinguishing feature, but it wasn’t his to own and, over the years, it came to possess him. That morning was the first time I recognised it for what it was and, though I couldn’t have told what I had seen, I knew. I had seen the blackness in things before, out in the fields, in the eyes of a rat draped in a thorn bush, or the hollowed faces of dead lambs; I had seen it in Mr Kirk’s hen house after the fox had got in; I had seen it in ponds dense with frogs’ spawn and in the black shadows of ivy and, once, in the black silt of the leech-infested loch where Stewart Banks and I had swum one bright afternoon, I had gazed down through the lit water at a black that had to do with time and erosion and forces that were indifferent to all human concerns. Finally, that morning, as my father stood smashing those panes of glass one after another with his reddening fist, I saw the darkness in him and I realised it was continuous, running from field to field, from hedge to hedge, from street to street and in, through the town, to the closed rooms where we ate and slept. Continuous, in the life of everything, and continuous from blood to blood, from him to me, an inescapable fact of existence. His darkness is also mine, or rather, it belongs to nobody. It takes up residence where it can – perhaps where it will – and from that point on, all we can do is try to manage it.

Nowadays, I will turn sometimes and find that same blackness staring back at me from a night-time window, or a half-lit mirror. There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend – a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will – but more often than not I am face to face with a stranger, a companion to something I recognise as myself, sure enough, but one who knows more than I do, thinks less of danger and propriety than I ever have or will, feels a cool and amused contempt for the rules and rituals by which I live, the duties I too readily accept, the compromises I too willingly allow.
We make our meek adjustments
– but there is always a dark buzz in the soul that despises any and all adjustments, a careless, erotic energy that wants to break every rule and simply be. This is the creature that rises from my bed in the night and sits there watching, waiting to be realised. When I wake, it drops to the floor and skitters away, dwindling as it goes, fading away into shadows and murmurs, a creature of the night only because I refuse to allow it a daytime existence, I who am a man, in the ordinary and fearful business of living in the world, and keeping my true self hidden. Part of this daytime enterprise is the tissue of lies by which I construct a visible self. Sometimes the lies are authorised, the textbook lies of citizenship and masculinity and employment we are all obliged to tell. Occasionally, they are the lies that reveal the unofficial version of the self, the truth of being. My father was searching for a lie of that calibre all his life. I think he expected to say something, one fine day, and everything would just slip into place: who he was, where he belonged, what was good about his soul. To my knowledge, it never happened. Or maybe it did, and he never realised. Maybe he told the perfect lie, the one that showed him what he really was, just minutes before he stood up, at the Silver Band Club, and walked off to the cigarette machine, half-cut, a little dizzy, and wholly oblivious to the significance of what he had just revealed to a ragtag gathering of old friends and familiar strangers.

CHAPTER 11

By the time I got to Corby, he was safely stowed away at the funeral home. Margaret met me, and drove me to the house, which was even more bare than I remembered: the tea service that my mother had kept intact for so long had vanished over the years; all her clothes, and most of his, had been given away, or burned; the kitchen was empty, my old room was empty, the piano was long gone, my father’s room was reduced to a bed and a wardrobe. I wondered what had happened to the things my mother had treasured: the toiletries and knick-knacks on her dressing table; the ornaments that had lined the mantelpiece; the little chiming clock she had won in some raffle – all the objects she had coveted and calculated for and handled with such care. Had they vanished by the usual mysterious processes of time and tide, or had my father disposed of them deliberately? I had visions of him coming home drunk and smashing the little figurines, cascading crockery on to the kitchen floor, pouring old perfume down the sink in the bathroom. More likely, though, these things had just got broken or lost through carelessness.

Before we left, Margaret handed me a package. ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘All I could find, really.’

I opened it up. It was my father’s wristwatch. I stared at it, not knowing what to say.

‘At least it’s something to remember him by,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘Thanks,’ I said. I didn’t say, though we both knew, that I had no desire to remember him.

‘He didn’t make a will,’ she continued. ‘So it’ll be a while before the money gets sorted out.’

‘There’s
money
?’

She laughed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Not much, I suppose. About three thousand.’

‘Well, that’s a surprise,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought the Hazel Tree would have had it all by now.’ I slipped the watch into my pocket. ‘Anyhow, I don’t want his money. You did all the work. It should go to you.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. She patted me on the arm. ‘I told you he’s to be cremated, didn’t I?’ She seemed anxious. Maybe she thought there was enough Catholic left in me to be upset by his decision.

‘If that’s what he wanted,’ I said.

‘Mum wouldn’t have liked it,’ she continued.

‘No.’ Thinking about it now, I didn’t like it myself. Not because I was troubled by some vestigial Catholic scruple, but because I saw it for what it was: a final gesture of self-disgust, the last defiant act of a man who wanted to be reduced to nothing, to be erased. Ashes to ashes: I had always despised that saying. Living things are wet, dark, mineral, silty. I would have given my body to the earth, to feed insects and plants, the worms, the grass. Someone else might have seen the fire as cleansing but he saw it, I knew, as a removal. At the same time, it was a parting shot at my mother’s faith, and so, by extension, her family. A sad little act of revenge on people who would not be there to see it.

The funeral was surprisingly well attended. It was also a shambles. As soon as the formalities were done with, my father’s cronies took over, and the proceedings moved to the Silver Band Club – to the very place where he had died. This was too much for Margaret, but – for no good reason, or none I can think of – I tagged along with Nat and Mull and the others, a party of dour Scotsmen heading for the bar with a perfect excuse to get totally hammered. Two hours later, one of our number, a spare, pale-lipped individual named Billy, was slumped in a corner seat, while the rest of the gang gabbed at me. They had the air of men on a mission, like crazed evangelists out to bring a stray soul back into the fold – which would have been fine, but the stray they had in their sights was me, and I had no desire to be saved. I’d had less to drink than most of them but I was definitely warmed up, and the more warmed up I got, the more convinced I was that tagging along had been a big mistake. When they talked about the man we had just burned, I had to keep reminding myself that it was my father who was the subject of their conversation; they had accepted his stories as gospel, and now they were reminiscing about events they had never witnessed, remembering the achievements and near misses of a golden youth that none of them had shared. I didn’t say anything to put them right, of course – even I wasn’t ready for that kind of bloody mindedness at a funeral – but some of the boys picked up an incredulous note in my voice, or a flicker of disdain that passed across my face as they were talking about his early footballing career, and eventually, Mull, his oldest friend, pulled me up on it.

‘Are you all right, son?’ he said.

‘I’m fine.’ I looked around; as soon as Mull had spoken, they had all turned to look at me.

‘Did ye no ken he played for Raith in the old days?’

I smiled sadly. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Aye.’ Mull studied me sourly. ‘Your dad must have showed you the pictures, though, didn’t he?’

I shook my head. It was a challenge: I was being called upon to acknowledge something, and I wasn’t having it. If there were pictures, I would believe; but I knew there weren’t. My father had often talked about starting out on a football career before he’d joined the air force. Sometimes he’d played for Raith Rovers, sometimes for Queen of the South. Sometimes his glory days had been cut short by injury, sometimes by money problems. I knew it was all rubbish. ‘I’ve not seen any pictures,’ I said.

Mull smiled back. He slipped his hand inside his black jacket and pulled out a brown envelope. The envelope was old and worn, but the pictures inside – small, black-and-white images like the ones you used to get from a Box Brownie – were remarkably well-preserved. He handed one over.

‘There’s your Dad,’ he said. ‘Back when he was still playing.’

I took the photograph and studied it. It showed two men in old-style football strips, on a muddy-looking park that might have been the amenity pitch at a local playground. As far as I could see, either of the men could have been my father. ‘What’s this?’ I asked Mull.

Nat was looking over my shoulder. ‘Is that no the auld Raith strip?’ he said.

‘Could be,’ Mull said, his eyes still on me.

‘They were no a bad team, back in the auld days,’ Nat said. He looked closer. ‘Some a thae faces look gey familiar.’

‘We all know that boy on the left there,’ Mull said.

I looked again. I had never believed the Raith Rovers story, as told by my father, and I didn’t believe it now, but I was surprised by how keenly these men wanted it to be true. I nodded. ‘Sure enough,’ I said. I hoped Mull would be satisfied.

‘You know who he looked like?’ Nat said suddenly. I couldn’t believe it. That old Robert Mitchum thing was still coming up. How had he managed it? These men thought he was a great footballer whose promising career had been ruined when he’d had to go into the RAF to fight Jerry, that he was a mathematical savant, who could do five-figure multiplications in his head, that he’d put me through Cambridge University, where I’d probably scored a double first and been captain of the chess team, and now, in spite of the evidence that was right in front of their eyes, they were still talking about his uncanny resemblance to Robert Mitchum.

I shook my head and glanced at Mull. ‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Your dad!’ Nat cried, drawing a little ripple of attention from the others around the bar.

‘I know,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘So – who did he look like?’

Nat stared at me in amazement. ‘You mean, you never
noticed
?’ he said, trying to keep his voice down.

‘Noticed what?’

Mull gave me a warning look. I shrugged. Nat looked around in mock appeal. ‘The boy’s no seen it,’ he said. Mull shook his head. I knew he had been there on several occasions when my father did his Norman Wisdom–Robert Mitchum routine. ‘Why, your dad was the perfect spit of Robert Mitchum,’ Nat said. His triumph was wonderful to see. ‘You’re no goan to tell me a Cambridge college boy like you doesnae ken who Robert Mitchum is?’

I shook my head a little too soon. ‘I’m not a Cambridge college boy,’ I said. ‘I went to the tech.’

‘And whereabouts is that?’ Mull enquired, his voice quiet and dangerous.

‘In Cambridge,’ I said, exasperated. ‘But it’s not – ’

‘No,’ Mull broke in. ‘It’s Cambridge. Nobody here’s ever been to Cambridge, never mind Cambridge college. So you remember that.’ He leaned forward and fixed me with his gaze. I had always admired Mull’s power, his sense of what was right. Now that I was on the receiving end of it, I felt uncomfortable. ‘Your dad was proud of you, going to Cambridge,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘I’ve been to Cambridge,’ a slurred voice piped in, from somewhere to my left.

Everybody at the table turned. It was Billy. Like the dormouse, he’d come up for air long enough to chip in, before sinking back into blissful torpor. Nat smiled ruefully.

‘You’ll miss him,’ Mull continued to me, undistracted.

‘We all will,’ somebody seconded.

‘Aye, but this boy here doesnae know that,’ Mull continued, suddenly aggrieved. ‘And the sad thing is, you
will
miss him,’ he continued, studying me sadly. ‘More than you know.’

I nodded. ‘You’re right, Mull,’ I said. ‘I’m not arguing with you.’

Mull shook his head. He wouldn’t be bought off so easily. ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me some glib answer. You don’t even know, after all this time, what that man was about.’

The whole table pondered this silently for a moment.

‘He was larger than life, your dad,’ Mull said. ‘Maybe he made some mistakes, but he lived his life. How many can say that, in this day and age?’ He gave me a look that suggested, of the few who could claim to be living life to the full, I was not one. I didn’t disagree with him.

It was around then that Billy finally passed out and slid, rather beautifully, to the floor. We all turned to look at him, then Nat stood up. ‘Better get this boy home,’ he said. ‘He never could hold his drink, wee Billy – ’

I stood up next to him. ‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘You stay here and have a drink.’

Nat looked at me. ‘Are ye sure?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘I have to get on, see Margaret,’ I said. ‘She’ll be wondering where I am.’ I turned to Mull. ‘If you’ll help me get him to a taxi, I’ll drop him off, before I go round to hers.’