First newsagent’s I hit, I asked the shopkeeper for a carrier, placed the box of ashes carefully inside.
‘Twenty Regal as well, please,’ I said.
I lit up — one after the other — until I found myself two streets from my family home. As I reached it, the place that held so much hurt for every one of us, I drew deep on my cigarette, then crushed it soundly underfoot.
My sister stood at the window, tucked behind the twitching net curtains.
‘Hello, Gus,’ she said as I walked through the door.
My soul screamed as I went in. Every fibre of my being begged for alcohol.
‘Can I take your coat?’ said Cathy.
‘Yes. Oh, and can you put this away?’ I handed over Milo’s ashes.
‘What is it?’
‘An old friend. Take care with it, please.’
She placed the carrier on the top shelf of the hallstand, waved me into the living room. I stood in the doorway for a moment, my palms gathering sweat.
‘Angus,’ called out my mother. She stood up, held out her arms.
‘Hello, Mam… How are you?’
She held my face in her hands, placed a kiss on my cheek. ‘You’re as white as a maggot!’
‘I’m fine, really.’
‘When did you last have a square meal, son?’
‘I’m okay, Mam. There’s no need to fuss.’
‘Sit yourself down. I’ll make you something to eat. What would you like?’
‘Nothing, I’m not hungry.’
‘Nonsense, you’ll take a sandwich.’
I shook my head. ‘Mam, I’m here to see… Dad.’ The word caught in my throat like a razorblade.
My mother sat back down. ‘Of course. You’ll want to see him as soon as you can.’
What I really wanted was to turn around and walk out. Wait for the funeral, dance on his grave. Said, ‘Sure.’
She stood up again, smoothed down the sides of her skirt, then patted at her hair. ‘I’ll see if he’s ready. The doctor’s given him something to make him sleep, but he may be awake again now.’
‘All right.’
She left the room. On the stairs, she turned. ‘He’s been asking for you day and night, son — you know that, don’t you?’
I looked up. ‘Yes, Mam, I know.’
60
‘ I think he’s fit for visitors now,’ said my mother.
I stood up. My knees felt weak as I tried to walk. Why was I here? Nothing he could say would change how I felt.
I didn’t want to feel like this. I knew my bitterness had hurt me just as much as any of his blows. But here I was, turning the handle on his bedroom door.
‘Gus… is it you?’ said my father.
He looked pale and old now, his skin grey from the weeks spent indoors. There was none of the terror left in his eyes at all.
I stared at him and found the image hard to take in. Had this pathetic man blighted my childhood and continued to blight my life to this day?
As I stared, I couldn’t feel any hatred for him. Any hatred I felt was for someone else entirely.
‘Gus, come away in,’ he gasped.
My father held out a hand to me, motioned to his bedside.
The hand looked feeble, bony and withered, the fingertips purple where his weak heart failed to pump enough blood to keep the circulation going.
I stared at his hand and wondered if it really was the same hand that had made me tremble in fear. As I stared I wanted to find the words to say how I felt. How I felt as a boy, and how I felt right now. But I couldn’t find any words at all.
‘I’m glad you came,’ said my father, his voice trembling over his grey lips. ‘I’d hoped you would.’ He coughed, spluttered, grasped for breath. ‘I’d hoped you’d give me a chance to explain.’
I nodded. I still couldn’t find any words. My voice was somewhere else, hidden in the depths of me, to sound a breath felt beyond me.
My father reached out and took my hand, spoke for us both. ‘I know why you came, son. It wasn’t for me. I don’t deserve any visitors. Your sister and brother came, but you stayed away, I don’t fault you for that — you were a different case, but I hoped you would come.’
Why was I different? Why was it me sat there and not Cathy or Michael? He’d fathered three children. The idea that he had singled me out hit like a bolt in the belly.
‘Why?’ I said. The word burned my heart, nearly choked me on the way out.
‘You were the firstborn, son, and I was hard on you.’ He spluttered when he spoke, his dark eyes looked blood red and circled in black. ‘I learnt to be a mite gentler on the others, but the habit with you was hard to break.’
‘Why?’ There it was again. It had always come down to the same question.
‘I had such high hopes for you; my first boy. I wanted you to be my boy, but you were always your own man. I thought I could win you round by being hard on you — it was all I knew. I got what I wanted by being hard, a hard player I was… I thought you needed the same.’
‘You were wrong.’
‘I know it. I know it now, son. I see it now, I do, I see what I did was wrong.’
‘Why didn’t you see it then?’ I spoke through my teeth, jaw clamped tight. ‘That was when I needed you to see it.’
‘I saw what was in you, and it wasn’t the same as was in me, Angus. I wanted to change it. I wanted to make you more like me.’
‘I could never be like you.’ I spat out the words. I wanted to look at him when I said them, but I couldn’t face him.
‘You are better off being nothing like me,’ he said, ‘my flower bloomed only briefly.’
‘I never missed it… and neither did Mam.’
‘I know it. But now the Lord’s close to his harvesting it feels like I finally understand.’ My father brought his hands up to his face, tried to cover the tears in his eyes. ‘You are a very different man to me, different entirely, I tried to shape you the only way I knew how, but I was wrong. You cannot mould a child, it’s wrong to try. The best you can do is live your own life well and hope the child follows your example.’
For the first time in my life I thought I understood something of him. I saw he felt sorry, I didn’t need to hear the word.
‘Angus, son, you have a good head on them shoulders. I always knew that. It only confused me though. I never knew what to do with you. Me a muck savage, how could I?’
I looked at him. ‘It’s all right,’ I said.
‘No, son, you don’t understand. I know I’ve ruined you. All these years though, it’s been too much, too much to think of what could have been.’
‘Stop now.’
‘I was a coward. It was hurt pride that sent you away, pushed you away like I always did. And why? Jesus, son, I’m sorry. I was a fool then, but we’re always learning right to the end so we are. That’s why it’s never too late, it can’t ever be too late to change, to say you’re sorry, can it?’
I looked at my father, wasted away in the bed before me. He looked exhausted now, the effort shown in his
