The Good Father

by Marion Husband

  I was as much of a stud as she’d hoped; it took only a few tries of this carefully timed fucking before she stood me down. When Jack discovered she was carrying twins he became cock-of-the-walk, forgetting for a little while that he hadn’t wanted one other child, let alone two. Hope had been enough for him.

  Hope. I would have called her Grace, and my sons would be John and David if I’d had any say. But I was just one among many at the christening, not a godparent because she believed, with a perceptiveness that was rare in her, that I would be insulted by such a title. I watched strangers hold my boys, passing them around so carelessly, used to small babies as I was not. I was shy of them. They were the most beautiful, perfect little creatures I had ever seen and I wanted to run away from them before my heart became too badly damaged and fell apart. But I’ve written before of how strong my heart is, how much it can withstand. I stayed: where else was there for me to go?

  Nowadays, I sometimes say that I am their godfather because people are suspicious of me, a bachelor who loves children with whom he has no blood tie; but people also think artists are eccentric and can be excused certain behaviours. Also, I am Jack’s poor friend who has been made harmless by a lifetime of bullying – in the eyes of some I am little more than a child myself. So, I have my camouflages. And Jack has never suspected. Even when I stand beside Hope and her eyes and mouth and nose are mine, and the way she carries herself and the way she smiles and laughs . . . He doesn’t see her except as his; it’s perfectly understandable, he’s human after all. The boys are less like me; they are more like my father, and I see him in them sometimes. I believe he loved Martin and Stephen more than he loved anyone on earth.

  There has been a storm tonight, a quite spectacular thunder and lightning show. On nights like this I’m afraid the boys may be frightened, because I was at their age. ‘The angels are moving their furniture about’ – isn’t that what fathers are supposed to say to reassure their little children? Most likely they’re sound asleep and not disturbed at all; they are such confident creatures, so certain that they are loved and protected. This is how it should be, of course.

  I slept eventually and the noise of the rain invaded my dreams because I dreamed of the rain in Burma, its relentlessness. I imagined that if I died beside the railway track, my body would be pounded into the ground by the rain, returned to the earth before they had a chance to dig even a shallow grave. In reality we were allowed to bury our dead with a little dignity. I believed I remembered much of the funeral prayer, although I let most of it go and asked God only to welcome the deceased into heaven. I believed in God at those gravesides, although most of the time He had slipped away from me; I thought that if only I could concentrate hard enough, I would win Him back, having finally grasped the concept that everything was in His plan. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so hungry. Perhaps if that first Japanese officer I met had slit my throat I would have been accepted into heaven with my faith intact.

  I made breakfast – porridge, tea and toast and marmalade. I thought about going next door to Val and asking her to forgive my outburst, only to wonder at the explanation I might give – that I was hurt and angry because my daughter believes I am nothing more than a filthy pervert – a good enough excuse after all for allowing my emotions to run away with my mouth.

  Or I could tell Val that whenever I’m close to her I imagine how beautiful she would look naked, and how much I want to make love to her, and these thoughts interfere with my sense of propriety. I’m not myself around Val. I imagine few men are because, even clothed, Val’s body is perfection, breasts and waist and hips in classical proportion. It’s a body for bearing babies and a part of me wants to warn her about Jack, the truest reason for my outburst last night. But it’s not my place; besides, I need to protect my children. All the same, I think of her despair in the future as the babies fail to come along, despair that no doubt will be as raw and ugly as Carol’s was, just as clamorous and demanding, consuming her love for Jack until there’s nothing left.

  There was a knock on my door and I left my second cup of tea to answer it. Guy stood on the street, hunched and furtive as a runaway, his head turned as though he was afraid he’d been followed. His clothes were filthy and there was a smear of dirt on his face. I stood back, opening the door wider. What else could I do, after all? Brave boy – he only hung back a moment before he followed me inside.

  Chapter 28

  Guy sat at Wright’s kitchen table watching as Peter made him tea and toast. He asked, ‘Do you like jam or marmalade, Guy?’ as he placed the tea pot, toast-rack and butter on the table.

  ‘Neither.’ Guy cleared his throat. ‘Thanks.’

  Wright sat down. The table was placed beside the window and he glanced out at the small back-yard where puddles of last night’s rain had collected. ‘Quite a downpour we had, but at least you weren’t caught in it. You found somewhere to shelter.’ Turning to Guy he said, ‘It’s obvious you stayed out all night. Won’t your parents be worried?’

  Guy avoided his gaze. He felt about five years old, shaky and fearful; he also thought that he stank of sweat and dirt and worse. He closed his eyes, sickened all over again by what he had found beneath the cellar’s earth floor. His fingers went to the metal box in his pocket only to draw away, repelled. He said, ‘May I wash my hands?’

  Wright kept a bar of carbolic soap by the sink and Guy worked it into a lather, welcoming the soap’s harsh scent.

  Taking a clean towel from a drawer, Wright handed it to him. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Drink your tea. Perhaps you should have some sugar in it. Isn’t sweetness meant to be good for shock?’

  Guy did as he was told, his newly clean hands shaking a little as he picked up his tea cup. For all the soap he had used, he could still smell the cellar’s terrible stink. He knew that Wright was watching him, that he must be curious at least, but the man remained calm, that gentle air of his unruffled. After a while Wright said, ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?’

  Guy laughed brokenly and thought how appalling it would be if he burst into tears. He couldn’t remember ever crying and perhaps he was in shock as Wright had said, not just appalled and disgusted, but in shock as though it was an actual place you went to get away from yourself and your horrible imaginings. Because he had been imagining quite a lot: the terror and the panic and the sheer bloody horror of what must have gone on in that house. He looked at Wright, making himself meet his gaze for the first time. He thought of the picture of the beautiful knight and the goblin grimacing from its lair. The man who drew such a picture must know about wickedness; he must have known everything about it just from living above that cellar.

  Looking down at his tea cup, Guy said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘I broke into your house.’ He managed to look at him again. ‘Last night, when the storm started . . . I knew it was empty.’

  ‘Because you’d been there with Hope.’

  Guy nodded miserably. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  He expected a lecture but Wright kept silent; he had never known a grown man to say so little, who allowed so much silence.

  Falteringly, Guy said, ‘I found this.’

  He placed the metal box on the table. It was silver, a little longer and wider than a man’s hand, its lid intricately engraved with flowers. Soil had collected in the grooves of the pattern and the metal was tarnished; there had once been a lock, but this had been broken, its catch hanging by a single tiny screw. Inside there was a lining of blue velvet, the deep colour preserved from the light so that it had kept its richness. Guy glanced at Wright, wanting to see if he displayed any sign of recognising the box. But he only looked puzzled.

  Catching his eye, Wright said, ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In the cellar.’

  Wright raised his eyebrows so that he looked more puzzled still. ‘Really? Then it was well hidden – I’ve never come across it before. You must have been searching pretty hard. What were you sea
rching for?’

  Guy gazed down at the box. ‘You need to look inside. There’s a photograph.’ He gulped. ‘Your mother – I think it must be your mother – and you – when you were a baby. I’m sorry.’

  Wright picked up the box, hesitating for a moment before opening it. Guy imagined he smelled the grave again and held his breath as Wright took out the photograph and absently placed the box back on the table, his eyes fixed on the picture of a young woman posed in front of a studio backdrop, a baby on her knee. He turned the picture over and read what was written on its reverse: Emily and Peter, July 1922. My darling girl and boy.

  Wright placed the picture down gently beside the silver box. After a moment he picked it up again, turned it over again to read the inscription. The handwriting was an old-fashioned copperplate, neat and controlled. The name of the photographer was printed in the bottom left corner, alongside the studio’s address on Thorp High Street. Putting the picture down, Wright turned to him, his face pale and troubled.

  ‘Where in the cellar did you find this?’

  ‘In one of the storerooms along the passage. A paving slab had been lifted – I think the twins had been digging. There were some bones, so I started to dig . . . ’ Shaking his head he said again, ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry.’

  ‘There were bones?’ Peter stared at him. Then sharply, he said, ‘Tell me! Tell me what you found!’

  ‘A grave – it was quite shallow. There’s a body, a skeleton – I think she must have been pregnant.’ He looked away, remembering the tiny bones of the unborn child within its mother’s pelvis, and heard Wright gasp in shock.

  Guy suddenly thought how stupid he was to have come here. For all he knew, Wright had buried the body himself; maybe it wasn’t his mother and the photo meant nothing. But Wright was staring at the picture. He seemed hardly aware that Guy was there at all; his expression showed only a deep, despairing grief.

  ‘Have you told Hope about this?’ he managed.

  Guy shook his head.

  ‘There was nothing else? Only . . . ’ Wright closed his eyes. Painfully he said, ‘Only the box and . . . ’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  Wright seemed not to hear him at first, his face expressionless as he gazed down at the photograph. At last he looked at him. ‘I’ll go now, see for myself.’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I will – I don’t mind.’ Guy stood up. As calmly as he could so that he might seem older and sensible and not the child he suddenly felt himself to be, he said, ‘I don’t think you should go alone.’

  Guy could hardly bring himself to go down the cellar steps again. He remembered how he had dug into the square of earth exposed by the lifted paving slab, and found more of the hand and finger bones that the boys had already uncovered. He lifted out the next slab and the next until the whole floor of the coal store was exposed; sweating with the effort, his muscles aching with the strain, he felt compelled to go on, possessed by a terrible fascination. As he began to dig, the spade hit against the box; he crouched down and his hand brushed bone as he lifted the box out. On his knees, he put aside the spade and began to uncover a skull with his hands, gentle as an archaeologist excavating ancient treasure. He saw how shallowly the body had been buried and fetched a garden trowel, carefully digging away the two or three feet of soil until the whole skeleton was exposed. It seemed that only then he realised the horror of it. He staggered to his feet, his legs stiff with kneeling for so long. Snatching up the silver box, he ran from the house.

  He went home. In his father’s study he poured himself a Scotch from the decanter Harry kept topped up and thought that perhaps he had imagined the skeleton, that his mind had played some trick, a kind of waking dream. Then he looked at the box that had just fitted into his jacket pocket, remembered how it had bounced against his hip as he’d run home. He took it out and opened it and looked and looked at the photograph of the shy-looking, beautiful young woman and her baby. She looked like Hope, just like Hope, and it occurred to him that this was the evidence he’d originally been searching for.

  He read the photograph’s inscription over and over as though it might be a code, as if it held back some vital information he could decipher if only he wasn’t so befuddled. His fingers scrambled around the box, feeling through its lining in case something was hidden behind it. There was nothing, only that stink of earth and what he imagined was decaying bone.

  He went on sitting in an armchair as the dawn broke and the garden became alive with birdsong. He must have slept, fitfully, afraid each time he jerked awake. He heard his father get up, and knew he had to leave the house, unable to face him. Remembering Hope had told him that Wright had moved to Inkerman Terrace, he went there, knocking on doors until he found one of Wright’s neighbours who knew who he was and the number of his house.

  Now he stood at the top of the cellar steps, and Wright said, ‘You can stay here, if you can’t face it.’

  ‘No.’ Guy thought that he should face what was down there, knowing that he had made it even more terrible in his imagination and that he needed to see it again, to tell himself that it was only the sad remains of a human being, if he wasn’t to be haunted by the horror of it for the rest of his life. Close to tears, he looked at Wright, who smiled at him painfully.

  ‘Shall we do this together, Guy?’

  Wright had brought a torch. In the cellar’s passageway he shone the light onto the exposed skeleton, and then crouched down just as Guy had done. Guy stood a few feet away and it was as he had hoped: a little of the horror was dispelled, only to be replaced by an overwhelming sense of pity as he watched Wright touch the skull with such tenderness. Feeling that such private pain shouldn’t be witnessed, Guy turned away and went to wait on the cellar steps. After a moment, Wright came to stand in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Wright said hoarsely. ‘Into the fresh air.’

  Guy cried; he couldn’t help it, the tears just came and Wright put his arm around his shoulders and led him to a bench in the garden, not saying anything but only keeping his arm loose around him as he wept. At last, wiping his nose on his sleeve, pushing the heels of his hands hard into his eyes, Guy said, ‘I’m sorry. It must be the shock or something.’ He thought of the photograph, the woman who was so like Hope, and drew a shuddering breath, holding back a fresh wave of tears. Wright held him closer, but Guy edged away from him, ashamed of himself.

  At last Guy said, ‘Is it your mother?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Wright had been staring out across the garden and now he turned to look at him. ‘My father told me that she ran away with another man. I was a year old when she left – when he killed her.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was an accident or something.’ This suddenly seemed absurd to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and because sorry seemed such an inadequate thing to say, he shifted uncomfortably, aware that Wright was gazing at him.

  ‘Guy, tell me what you were looking for in the house.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Something valuable to steal?’

  ‘No! I’m not a thief!’

  ‘Then tell me why you were searching my house.’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing much matters any more. That poor girl, my mother . . . I can’t think of her as my mother – that girl in the photo looks nothing like I imagined her to be.’

  ‘But she looks like you.’ Forcing himself to meet his eye, Guy said, ‘She looks like Hope. You’re Hope’s father, aren’t you?’

  Searching his face as though trying to decide if he could trust him, Peter said, ‘Promise me that you won’t tell her.’

  ‘What if she guesses?’

  ‘She won’t.’

  Wright stared out over the garden again, such pain in his eyes that Guy had to look away; witnessing such grief made him feel like a voyeur. Eventually, awkwardly, he said, ‘I won’t tell her. I promise.’
r />   Looking towards the cellar’s outside steps, Wright said, ‘I should go to the police.’

  ‘What good would that do?’

  ‘I can’t ask you to keep this to yourself.’

  ‘But I will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For Hope’s sake – and for yours, because of what you mean to her.’

  Wright turned to him. At last he said, ‘I think you should go home now.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll bury her properly, decently. Out here in the garden – beneath the lilacs, I think.’ He closed his eyes, bowing his head. ‘Oh Christ,’ he murmured. ‘Sweet Christ . . . ’

  Guy stood up. He blew his nose, finished with tears now; he felt as though he had cried all the tears he should have cried for the whole of his childhood, and that the tears had made him stronger. For the first time in his life he didn’t question what he was about to do, knowing only that it was right, without any of the shades of grey that had always clouded his decisions.

  He walked towards the house, taking his time, wanting to give the older man a little time alone. There were sheets in one of the bedrooms; he would take one, using it as a shroud before carrying the remains to the grave he would dig beneath the trees.

  Chapter 29

  That lunch-time, Jack was waiting outside the typing-pool door for her. As soon as he saw her he grinned. ‘Come on, be quick. I’m taking you somewhere special for lunch.’

  ‘Oh?’ Val smiled at him, even as she was reminded of the guilt she felt over Peter. Last night, the guilt had her tossing and turning, although she told herself that of course she would never have actually allowed herself to be seduced by him. When Peter wasn’t with her she found it impossible to imagine what she saw in him that made her behave so shockingly. Desperate for sleep, becoming more and more irrational, she could almost believe that he was some kind of sorcerer, bewitching her with just a look. Now, after a morning of the down-to-earth bustle of the typing-pool, she only felt this twinge of guilt. After all, they had only shared a look; he had only held her hand for a moment. And the look and the hand-holding were nothing, not enough to hurt her relationship with Jack.