The Good Father (26 page)

Chapter 32

One month later

Hope waited until after her father's wedding to tell him that she wouldn't go with him to Canada. He was alone in their garden when she went out to speak to him. Val had taken the boys out to buy ice creams from the van. The van's chimes had reminded Hope of the last time she'd seen Peter that Sunday, a lifetime ago, and she'd had to be stern with herself to stop from crying. Even so, when her father saw her, he glanced away as if he couldn't bear to look at her.

‘Now what? Can't I have a moment to myself?'

Jack had aged suddenly; he smoked more and said less, although he and Val talked and talked until late into the night, and one evening they went out into the garden for ages. It was obvious when they came back inside that they'd both been crying. Since then Val seemed to be forcing herself to be happy and only the boys didn't notice her sadness. Martin and Stephen loved their new stepmother. To Hope's relief she seemed to love them in return. It made what she was about to say easier, knowing the boys didn't need her any more.

Her father lit another cigarette. She stepped closer to him, inhaling the smoke greedily. He frowned at her. ‘Do you want one?'

‘Could I?'

He held out his silver cigarette case. ‘Help yourself.'

She took one shyly and he lit it for her, tossing the spent match down as though he could hardly contain his contempt for it and everything else in the world. Already nervous, Hope drew on her cigarette heavily, feeling her father's eyes on her. She managed to smile at him.

‘They're a bit nicer than the ones I usually smoke.'

‘They're expensive. Don't smoke cheap cigarettes. In fact, don't smoke at all.'

After a moment she said, ‘I need to speak to you.'

‘I'd gathered.'

He had stopped loving her over the last few weeks and this was so strange and horrible that she kept telling herself she had to be wrong. Now he looked at her and there was something in his eyes that made her believe she could be mistaken, a struggle against that part of him that had been keeping such a distance from her. More gently he said, ‘What is it, Hope?'

She drew on the cigarette again. Afraid to try his patience for long, she said quietly, ‘I can't go to Canada.'

He was silent for such a long time that she said timidly, ‘Dad?'

‘Yes, Hope. I heard you.'

‘And?'

He laughed emptily. ‘And I know you don't want to go. Why would you? But
can't?
Do you think I need you to give me some big excuse?' He turned to face her, tossing his half-finished cigarette down. ‘You can stay here, if you like. I can't make you come with us.'

‘I don't know what to say.'

‘How about goodbye and good luck?' He turned away, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes. As he took them out she saw that his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't open the case.

‘Dad . . . ?' Fearfully, she said, ‘Please don't be like this.'

He spun round to face her. ‘Like what? Haven't you got what you wanted? Haven't you
always
got what you wanted? Between us, we spoiled you half to death! Well, now you're seventeen you can have this last big
want
and I'll leave you to get on with it!'

‘Jack!' Val had come outside without either of them noticing. Looking at Hope, she said, ‘I'm sorry, love. Perhaps it's best if you go and see what your brothers are doing, and later we can discuss this calmly.'

‘No.' Her husband sighed. ‘No, Val. I've had enough. She can stay here if she wants to.' To Hope he said, ‘And you do want to, don't you? You want to stay with this boy – Guy. Isn't that right?'

She nodded, unable to speak because she knew she would give her tears away.

‘Will you marry him?'

‘For goodness sake, Jack, she's too young to be married.' Val shook her head. ‘Hope, your father's upset. As I said, we can discuss this later –'

‘There's nothing to discuss,' Jack said.

‘So you're just going to leave your seventeen-year-old daughter here alone?'

Her father gazed at Val. At last he said, ‘Maybe I should tell her the truth.' Turning to her he said softly, ‘Let's go inside, Hope. Upstairs in your room so the boys won't disturb us.'

‘I loved you,' he said, ‘since the moment you were born, and before that, because you were part of your mother and I loved her with all my heart. You were the only two people in the world that mattered to me. And we were so happy together, I didn't want anything else. When the war was over I thought only of us, the best life I could make for my wife and baby.

‘The war was over, my war, at least, and I didn't want to think about what was happening in Asia – too afraid that they might send me there. I tried to forget about Peter. I believed that he was dead.'

They were sitting side by side on her bed and all the time he'd been speaking he had held her hand, his gaze fixed on their entwined fingers. Her room smelled of her, of her perfume and cosmetics, and of something else, more fecund and even more telling of the young woman she had grown into. Hers was such a small room, the rosebud-patterned wallpaper making it seem smaller still; her clothes spilled out of the childish wardrobe he had built for her, nylon stockings and garter belts trailing from its drawers to the floor.

He closed his eyes, afraid of the way his emotions had overrun him lately. He was afraid that Val would leave him, despite her reassurances, and this fear made him feel as helpless as a baby; and then, only a few minutes ago in the garden, he had felt hard and bitter and angry enough to hurt Hope, to make her hate him, and that had felt like punching a fist into an open wound. In all his life he had never felt so adrift, so in thrall to unruly feelings. He dreamed of taking the boys away, flying them away in a machine he had control over. He thought of Peter often, trying to convince himself that his death really wasn't his fault.

Looking down at Hope's fingers clasped in his, he said, ‘Do you remember when Peter came home? You would have been about five. I remember the first time he saw you, how my heart stood still when he lifted you into his arms. I thought he couldn't fail to notice . . . I wanted to hide you from him, take you far away. Your mother wouldn't hear of it.' He looked up at Hope. ‘She loved him.'

Hope drew her hand away from his, wiping her eyes quickly. ‘She loved
you
.'

‘Yes. But Peter . . . Peter was from her childhood, from all the stories she invented for herself when she was a little girl, all alone in your grandparents' big old house. She told me that when she first saw him . . . ' He hesitated; even now the memory was painful. After a moment he said, ‘When she first saw Peter, it was as if the prince had stepped out of her storybooks. You know how handsome he was. And she had this romantic idea of him. But she knew that's all it was, a romance, a fantasy. What she and I had together . . . Well, there are stories and then there's real life.'

‘She didn't love him! She couldn't have!' Hope turned to him, her eyes fierce. ‘Why did you allow it?'

He stared at the wall, the repeat pattern of flowers beginning to blur. He had no answer for her that didn't make him seem weak. He thought of his father who had always impressed on him the importance of honesty, whose life had been uncomplicated enough for him to keep to his rigid standards. His own life had been based on a lie, a lie that at times seemed too insignificant to even count as white, and at other times too huge to bear. Aware of Hope's angry gaze on him, he said, ‘Peter was a good man, Hope. He loved you so much –'

‘No! I didn't want him to love me!'

He turned to face her, taking both her hands in his. ‘You're my daughter, Hope. But you were his, too. You knew that, didn't you? You knew in your heart . . . '

‘No.' She shook her head in disbelief. Pulling her hands from his she cried, ‘You're lying. You're lying because you don't want me any more.'

‘No, Hope.' He held her face between his hands, gently sweeping her tears away with his thumbs. ‘I love you more than ever, but I think you should know the truth.' He dropped his hands, unable to face her any more, afraid that his voice would let him down. At last he said, ‘Hope, I need to leave – I have to. I have to start again with Val, with the boys. And you, if you want to come with us, my home will always, always be yours. But I think that perhaps you're old enough now to make your own decision.'

‘You don't want me!'

He shook his head. ‘Oh, you're wrong! So wrong. I want us to be together and happy as larks.' He smiled at her sadly. ‘I want to say
come with us
, because I'll miss you so badly.'

She stood up. ‘Did he know? Did he know I was his?'

‘You're mine, Hope. But if you mean did he know he fathered you, yes. He did.'

She nodded; she seemed calm, the kind of tightly reined-in calmness that takes such concentration, such effort. Wiping her eyes impatiently, she said, ‘I can't go with you. Guy's asked me to marry him and I've said yes.'

He thought how he might have reacted a month ago, how he would have raged. She was so young, after all, still his child, too young to be married. But now he didn't have the energy for outrage or bombast. He only searched her face, looking for proof that this was what she really wanted.

Hope spoke in a low voice. ‘I thought you'd be angry. You should be angry.'

‘Why?'

Meeting his gaze, she said, ‘I'm pregnant.' She began to cry.

Jack stood up to take her in his arms, only for Hope to throw herself against him, the sudden force of her embrace making him stagger. ‘Please don't leave me, Daddy. Please don't go.'

He held her as she cried. He saw his plans fall around him, all his big ideas for a new life far away from the small sameness of England. Perhaps he'd always known he wouldn't go; perhaps all he'd needed was something big to think about, to take his mind off the hurt.

Kissing the top of her head he whispered, ‘I won't leave you. Of course I won't.'

Chapter 33

Hope wore a plain white dress and Jack thought how young she looked, and slight; no one would guess at the life curled safe inside her. In the car on the way to the church they had kept silent, the day's importance making them shy of one another. He found himself staring out of the car's window at the passing streets, the familiar places of his life. From time to time he had glanced at Hope and saw that her face was serious and composed; he imagined that she was rehearsing her lines, determined not to let Guy down. He thought of the boy who was to be her husband. At first he had thought that Guy was too plain, too ordinary for Hope; lately though, he had come to see what she saw – his brightness. Hope changed when she was around him, reflecting back the light that animated his eyes whenever he looked at her. Jack wondered if he had ever been so much in love. He pictured Guy, standing waiting for them now at the front of the church, his uniform so new, so pristine. If there was a war, he would hide him away.

Now though, they stood outside another church, the driver in his peaked cap waiting, the engine idling because Jack had told him that they wouldn't be long. At the lych-gate that led into the churchyard, he stopped and took Hope's hand.

‘Would you like me to wait here?'

She shook her head. ‘Could we go together?'

He smiled, squeezing her fingers. A breeze caught her short veil and he put his hand to it, smoothing it down. He wanted to say how beautiful she looked but there was that shyness still. Instead, he turned and led her along the gravel path, the swaying shadows of the trees changing the pattern of light at their feet.

Harry Dunn had seen to it that Peter's grave was far away from his father's. Dunn had come to him, had said, ‘I need your help. You knew him; I know that he cared for you. At least tell me the hymns that he liked.'

‘“The Lord's My Shepherd”,' Jack had told him, and Dunn had looked at him as though this was the first hymn that had come into his head, making no effort to hide his contempt. But Jack knew that this was what Peter would have wanted; they had sung it at Carol's funeral. He remembered how Peter had held him upright when he thought that he would collapse with the weight of grief. He remembered all his careful words and silences. He remembered Peter's strength, how he had imagined that he could go on and on leaning so heavily against him and that Peter would never tire, never allow him to fall into that pit he knew he would never crawl free from.

Forcing himself to meet Dunn's gaze, he'd said, ‘You don't have to do this. I will.'

Guy's father had sighed. ‘We'll do it together.' Then, more gently, he added, ‘There are only the words left. I didn't know him well enough to put him into words.'

To the tiny gathering at his funeral, Jack had said that Peter Wright had been the truest friend. He felt like a hypocrite, a liar, because his pain was still so raw; at least his children weren't there to hear him.

Hope walked ahead of him, her pace quickening as she approached the as yet unmarked grave. She stood, and Jack watched as she took a rose from her bouquet and crouched to place it on the earth. Her dress billowed around her, she bowed her head and her veil hid her face from him. And he thought how beautiful she was, and so like her father, who had loved her so truly. 

About the author…

Winner of the first Andrea Badenoch Prize for Fiction in 2005 for
Paper Moon,
Marion graduated with distinction and won the Blackwell Prize for Best Performance for the MA in Creative Writing at NorthumbriaUniversity in 2003. She currently teaches creative writing through the OpenCollege of the Arts and has had poems and short stories published, most recently a pamphlet of poetry about her father and childhood entitled
Service. 
Her first novel,
The Boy I Love
, was published in July 2005 to much critical acclaim.
Paper Moon
was followed in January 2007 by
Say You Love Me.

Marion is married with two children and lives in the TeesValley.

www.marionhusband.com