The Good Father

by Marion Husband

  It was as if I hadn’t spoken. He said, ‘Carol would have wanted me to be happy, wouldn’t she? Not mourning her for ever. But I still feel disloyal! And Val, well – she’s been around the block, I know. Sometimes I get the feeling she thinks I’m incredibly dull.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’

  ‘Sure?’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘Well, you weren’t there.’

  No, I wasn’t there, and so my opinion was worthless. And I’m sure he believed that it would have been worthless even if I had been there, knowing as I do so little about women, about anything very much of the real, manly world in which he strides about. There, I’m bitter and I’m jealous. These low feelings must have shown on my face because he said, ‘Oh listen, I’m sorry – going on like this when you’ve just buried your father.’

  I laughed, imagining my father not dead but only buried – thumping on the lid of his coffin for me to come and dig him up again. My laughter must have sounded deranged because Jack gazed at me with such a look of pity that for the first time in my life I was angry with him. I couldn’t sit there enduring his wrong-headed concern any longer. I got up and went out into the garden. The twins ran to me, grasping my hands.

  ‘Come and see what we’ve found, Uncle Peter. Come on!’

  I was tugged along, a boy holding each hand, their fingers warm and damp with sweat, soft, dirty little hands I had held so often before without ever feeling as I did then, suddenly and forcefully, a sense of furtiveness. Since their birth I have always been intimate with these children; I know the bony feel of them, their scent, and their salty, sharp taste when I kissed them. I have held them both on my knee and thought nothing of our easiness together. But now I wanted to pull my hands away from theirs and I would have, only I knew Jack was watching me. More than that, I had the idea that he was assessing my behaviour. I would have to act as I always had, the loving uncle, not the oddity I felt myself to be.

  The boys led me behind the garden shed where three headless mice were lying in a neat row, their tails artfully arranged so that they appeared tied together. Next to these pathetic little corpses was a dead blackbird, intact, glossy still, its bright yellow beak the last vivid colour left in this gruesome little world. Still holding my hands, the boys looked up at me, grinning.

  ‘We’ve been finding as many dead things as we can.’

  Behind us Jack said, ‘For goodness sake, you two!’

  Martin and Stephen turned to him. Proudly Martin said, ‘It’s our cemetery, Daddy.’

  ‘Go and wait for me in the front garden.’ Making an effort to control the anger in his voice, he looked at me. ‘I’m sorry –’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ He turned to the boys again. ‘Didn’t I just tell you to leave us? Go on, quick about it.’

  ‘We want to stay with Uncle Peter!’

  ‘Well, you can’t. You’ve done a horrible, disgusting thing and you’re to go home.’

  ‘Jack, it’s all right, it’s nothing.’

  He stared down at the dead creatures, his lip curling in disgust. Martin made to speak and his father shouted, ‘Get out of my sight, both of you!’ His voice was so loud that the boys’ faces paled. They stepped back from him, stumbling a little before turning to run across the garden and along the path leading to the front of the house. Jack watched them, anger setting his mouth into a thin hard line. When the boys were out of sight he said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry, Peter, I shouldn’t have brought them here.’

  ‘Of course you should have.’ I attempted to laugh. ‘You’re always welcome, all of you.’

  He glanced down at the dead mice. ‘I’ll have to scrub their hands when we get home – God knows what diseases these vermin carry. Christ, they’re disgusting. Were we ever as vile?’

  ‘It’s just a few dead mice, Jack, and they’re just boys being boys. Don’t be hard on them, not for my sake.’

  Prodding the blackbird’s corpse with the toe of his shoe he said, ‘A cat must have killed them – some well-fed cat killing for the sake of it. I’ll get rid of them for you. Do you have a shovel?’

  I stooped down, picked the mice up by their tails and tossed them into the weedy, overgrown flowerbeds. The bird I picked up more gently and placed it under the laurel bush that grew beside the shed. It would decay into the earth soon enough. Turning to Jack I said, ‘There, there’s no harm done.’

  ‘Peter.’ He placed a hand gently on my arm. ‘Why don’t you come to us for lunch tomorrow?’ Glancing in the direction the boys had gone he said, ‘I had better go, before they take it into their heads to do something even more horrible.’ He looked at me, that same furrowed-brow concern. ‘Come for lunch, eh?’

  I nodded. Wanting him to go, I began to walk across the lawn, leading him to the boys. I could hear them calling to one another, another game already started.

  Later, as I threw the stewed tea down the sink and washed the teacups, I thought how during my time in the POW camps I would have eaten those mice, and the bird, and that they would have been a very welcome addition to my diet. I thought too how Jack was disgusted by the poor dead things, how he would have needed a shovel to get rid of them. Jack, of course, had a very different war to mine. From his Lancaster bomber, he saw death from a completely different perspective. I would be surprised if he had ever seen the dead close up.

  I was taken prisoner in 1942, at the fall of Singapore. I was twenty and had seen nothing, done nothing – was, in fact, as green as green could be. And four years later I had still done nothing, still seen nothing except the worst, most perverted cruelties, which I think count as nothing because I learned nothing from them, only what it feels like to be terribly afraid, perpetually cowed and ashamed. In 1942 I stepped innocently into chaos and all normality, all ordinary experience that would have contributed to my growing up ended; now my twenty-year-old self is petrified inside the body of a thirty-seven-year-old – a middle-aged man. No wonder Jack looks at me the way he does. What is he to make of me, after all?

  Before he left with the boys, Jack told me – incidentally, having almost forgotten – that Hope would not be coming for her drawing lesson as usual this afternoon. He didn’t say why and of course I couldn’t question him, couldn’t allow my disappointment to show. I’ve been thinking that perhaps she’s only shy of me now because of my newly bereaved status. I shall see how she behaves towards me tomorrow at lunch, and not mention the missed lesson. I have begun a drawing for her, and next Saturday, if she still doesn’t come, I shall take it to her and hope that it will dispel any new awkwardness between us.

  Chapter 4

  Harry sat by his wife’s bed. The injection Dr Walker had given her was doing its work because Ava was sleeping peacefully, or so it seemed. He wondered if such unnaturally induced sleep could be peaceful, but at least her expression was relaxed, her lips slightly parted as if about to speak, to smile even. Beneath her closed lids, her eyes had stopped their restless flickering, she was breathing steadily and a little colour had returned to her cheeks. Lying on her back, her long blonde hair fanned out on the white pillow, she looked like one of the porcelain dolls she had once loved so much. Harry hunched forward in his chair, kissing her hand that he had been holding since the doctor stuck the needle in her arm. ‘Ava,’ he said softly. ‘Liebchen. I must go.’

  He placed her hand down on the counterpane, watching her for a moment to be certain she slept on before getting to his feet. Standing over her, he watched again for signs that she might be about to wake, to reach out and grab at his hand, to weep and rave and throw herself about the room. It had taken both him and Esther to contain her, and only when she was a little subdued by exhaustion could he send Esther to fetch Walker. By the time the doctor came Ava was curled on her bed, weeping; she had made the pillow wet with her snot and tears. Walker had sat beside her, stroking her hair and saying, ‘ There now, there now,’ over and over. Every time Harry saw this man he could have cried with relief for his ki
ndness. Few doctors were so good; his goodness meant that Harry was in danger of telling him everything. Already, Walker was his saint, his saviour; it wouldn’t take much before he became his father-confessor.

  Harry went to the window and closed the curtains. It would be dusk soon and besides, the thickly-lined curtains would muffle the noise from the road. He went to Ava’s dressing-table and turned on the lamp; she was afraid of the dark and always slept with the light on. Tonight more than ever she needed the reassurance of the lamp’s soft glow.

  Next to the lamp stood the silver-framed photograph taken on their wedding day, bride and groom on the register office steps – her favourite photograph of him, she said, because he looked so handsome. ‘My knight in shining armour.’ She’d laughed, thrusting the photo at him. ‘Look – look how grave and serious you are!’ And she’d made a frowning face that was supposed to be an impersonation of him in the picture. It was true he hadn’t smiled, but only because the photographer had caught him unawares. He had been happy enough. Enough! He exhaled sharply, knowing he was lying to himself. He hadn’t been happy then, not by any measure. Besides, happy seemed too frivolous a word to apply to anything at that time.

  In the photograph Ava wore a flower-sprigged cotton dress, belted at the waist, the skirt sagging to just below her knees. Several sizes too big for her, the dress hung on her like a sack on a scarecrow, the girlish puff-sleeves loose where they should have fitted closely and showing off her poor, emaciated arms. The dress had had a detachable lace collar; he remembered how it would flutter up around her face in the breeze. The lace should have been stiffened, an Elizabethan ruff to frame her beautiful, delicate face. But such delicacy had been fashioned by starvation and she hated the way she looked; she wouldn’t have wanted to emphasise any part of herself. So she had worn a matronly, flower-sprigged dress and sensible, lace-up shoes. Man’s shoes, from the Red Cross – she had stuffed newspaper in their toes to help them fit. And she had grinned at him when he met her outside the register office, ‘Am I not the most pretty girl?’ her eyebrows raised, ironic. Except, of course, she was the most pretty girl – more than pretty, incandescently lovely. She had made him worry that, big fat man as he was, he would crush her.

  Harry put the photograph down as quietly as he could. He turned to his sleeping wife; she hadn’t moved. He tiptoed across the room, wincing at every squeak of floorboard beneath his heavy tread.

  From the doorway Guy said, ‘Are we going to get some peace now?’ He walked into the room and went to stand at Ava’s bedside. ‘I wonder what drug he gave her?’ Frowning thoughtfully, he turned to Harry. ‘Perhaps he could leave a few injections for us to administer – what do you think? I would stick the needle in if you’re too squeamish.’

  Harry sighed. ‘Guy, let’s leave your stepmother in peace, eh? Let her rest.’

  Guy ignored him. Gazing down at Ava he said, ‘I’ll sit with her, if you like.’ He smoothed a strand of her hair back from her face; he picked up her wrist and seemed to time her pulse before allowing her hand to fall limply back onto the bed. Itching to drag him away, Harry only watched his son impotently, knowing that if he acted on his natural impulse he would only be playing into Guy’s hands. Lately Harry had decided that he would try to ignore Guy’s efforts to provoke him; he had decided that he would treat him as a rather tiresome child with whom he had to be patient.

  As evenly as he could he said, ‘Guy, I was going to have some supper. Have you eaten?’

  Guy glanced at him, only to return his attention to Ava. ‘I’m not hungry. And anyway, shouldn’t you be dieting?’

  ‘Guy, please. Come downstairs with me now. I’ll make us some cheese on toast – you like that.’

  Turning from the bed, Guy gazed at him. In the dim lamplight, he looked younger than his eighteen years, a slight, slim boy who so resembled his mother. A week ago he had been expelled from his boarding school, the last school in a long line that had failed to tolerate his oddness and disruptiveness, his absolute refusal to conform to any set of rules. ‘He believes he’s rather too clever for us,’ his last headmaster had told Harry when he had gone to collect Guy. ‘And perhaps he is. I believe he is quite brilliant – but I’m afraid brilliance may be quite wasted on him.’

  Harry believed that brilliance wasted his son, charging him up so that he was unable to concentrate on anything except his own frustrations at the slow stupidity of the rest of the world.

  Placing himself on the chair beside Ava’s bed, Guy said, ‘I’ll sit with her for a while.’

  ‘There’s really no point.’

  ‘All the same. Go on – you go and eat. We’ll be fine.’

  Harry decided he wasn’t hungry and went to his study to work. He reread Tom Wright’s will, and, just as he had when the old man had first sat in his office, he thought how nasty he was. Then, and even more so now, he wished that Wright had found some other solicitor in Thorp to do his dirty work; but, a year ago, Wright had walked into his office on the High Street, leaning heavily on his walking stick, his knuckles white around its brass handle. Wright’s face was a deathly, putty grey, and Harry would have pitied him for the pain he was obviously suffering, and because death so closely shadowed him, had it not been for the malicious glint in his eye. Those glittering eyes of his never seemed to tire of being amused by the rotten joke he was about to play on his son, Peter. Sitting on the edge of his seat, his big, knobbly hands clasped on top of his walking stick, Tom Wright had smiled his death’s-head smile.

  ‘My son needs to be shaken up, Mr Dunn,’ he said. ‘He needs to make his own way in this world. My money, my house will only hold him back, make him even more feeble than he is now. So,’ he sat back, making an effort to appear inconvenienced rather than overwhelmed by pain, and drew breath. ‘So, I have decided to leave everything to a family friend – a man in great need, I might add, a man who has children, who has made more of his life than my son ever will. I am here to make my will to that effect.’

  He was to leave his son, Peter Wright, nothing. He was matter-of-fact about this, too matter-of-fact, rather over-playing his hand so that ironically there seemed to Harry to be an absurd theatricality about Wright’s manner as he told him everything was to be left to John Jackson. In the unlikely event that John should die before him it would all go to Jackson’s three children, divided equally among them. Harry had wanted to ask him why; rarely curious any more about his clients’ motivations, he found that he did want to know what had caused this old man to hate his son enough to disinherit him. Wright must have expected to be questioned because he smiled that dreadful smile, his unnaturally bright eyes searching Harry’s face. ‘Fathers are not legally bound to love their children, Mr Dunn.’

  This was to be his answer then to a question that in his professional capacity he hadn’t and couldn’t have asked, but which the old man had anticipated with relish. The son simply wasn’t loved. Nor, he had no doubt, was the father. Perhaps, he’d thought at the time, they deserved such a miserable relationship, each as meanly vindictive as the other. At the time he hadn’t seen Peter Wright. Because he had only to see him to know what type of man he was.

  Standing in the cemetery as Wright’s coffin was lowered into the grave, having observed the son’s conduct throughout the funeral, he knew that Peter Wright was not a man at all, but a ghost, a shadow, one who smiled and smiled to try to fool real, substantial men and women that he was just as vital as they were.

  Harry leaned back in his chair; he covered his face with his hands and groaned softly. He hadn’t wanted Peter Wright to be like this; he had wanted him to be as resilient as his father so he wouldn’t have to think about him. On Monday he was to tell him that he was about to become homeless – penniless too, for all he knew, because he couldn’t imagine that Wright had much money to his name. The old man had told him that his son was a draughtsman. Harry could still hear the sneer in his voice, the way his face had become even more pinched. He remembered that there had been a sil
ence between them then as he’d watched Tom Wright contemplate just how worthless his son was. The silence went on and Harry had shifted in his chair, beginning to feel the kind of discomfort he had not felt since the war when other, younger men had sat opposite him, men who were just as steeped in the justifications of their own hatreds. Not wanting to, he had thought of Hans and had begun to tidy papers on his desk to distract himself from such thoughts. Tom Wright had laughed shortly, as though he guessed at the effect he was having. ‘Shall we get down to business, Mr Dunn?’

  Putting the will back in his desk drawer, Harry got up and poured himself a gin. He drank it down in one and poured another, taking it back to his desk. He wouldn’t drink any more than this tonight; he would be strict with himself. Lately, with each drink he was reminded of his father, saw his reddened, coarsened face smiling with all the unfocused, good-natured befuddlement of his permanently half-cut state. When he was growing up, everyone told him that he was the image of his father; that had been fine by him. His father was a grand man, the most generous man in the whole world – all fathers should be like his, their pockets full of sweets and pennies to be given away with smiles and winks. Those smiles and winks! Sometimes as a young child he half-expected his father to ask him his name, just like some affable uncle at a friend’s house. His father’s spiritual absence was disguised by his jolly generosity – how could such a magical, larger-than-life presence not actually be there? – but it was an absence, all the same.

  He had told Val that he had been brought up by Father Christmas. She hadn’t laughed as he had expected her to. Instead she had gazed at him, her expression soft with concern. ‘Tell me about him,’ she’d said. They had been in bed, in that hotel where the huge bay window looked out over the sea, where he and Val had stood on the balcony and he had, for a few seconds, been able to imagine them both far, far away, free of anxiety and guilt. And for a few seconds in that hotel bed he had imagined telling her about his father as she’d asked him to, but his father mattered less and less to him; he had almost forgotten his name; it was only when he took comfort in a drink that he was reminded. Besides, in that bed, time was exquisitely precious. Val lay in his arms, such a wonderful luxury that could not be squandered on remembering. He had kissed her breasts, felt her fingers curl into his hair. Soon he would be groaning her name, all thoughts, all memories annihilated – the greatest luxury of all.