The Good Father (10 page)

My father under-estimated his illness; he didn't expect it to rob him of his mobility quite as quickly or as suddenly as it did. I know he intended to burn all the diaries himself before he gave himself up to the cancer. Instead, much to his horror, he had left it too late.

One afternoon, I heard him fall and ran upstairs to find him on his hands and knees by the fireplace in his bedroom, his face as white as the paper he was trying to destroy. I hadn't seen his diaries before, I had no idea he kept them. As I carried him back to bed he raged at me, gasping through his agony that I was not to read a word – not a word! I laid him on the bed, reassuring him, saying anything at all that I thought might quieten him. He grasped my arm and pulled himself up so that his face was near mine.

‘You will burn them, every page.'

‘Yes, of course. Of course.'

‘And you must promise me – promise me most faithfully that you won't read a word.'

‘Hush. Hush now.' As I tried to ease him down onto his pillows, I had an idea he was delirious. He was certainly not himself, not the man who would ever dream of extracting a promise from me, being certain that I would never keep it.

He gazed up at me and for a moment his face cleared of pain. Then he said, ‘What does it matter now?' He snorted. ‘Nothing matters now. Read them all – burn them all, do what you like.'

I sat with him until he slept, until it was almost dark, so that when I got up I stumbled over the diary he had been about to burn when he fell. I picked it up and saw that it was for the year 1954. I put it down on the mantelpiece; I had no interest in what he wanted to write about that terrible year. I went into my own room and got ready for bed. Then I went downstairs and made cocoa and listened to the news on the wireless before locking the doors and climbing the stairs. I did all these habitual things automatically and thought only of 1954, that November when Carol was killed.

1954 had been, until its end, a rather good year for me. My recovery had been a slow process, so slow, so many tiny, shuffling steps towards believing I could have something of an ordinary life – the first time I went to the cinema on my own, for instance, and managed to convince myself that I wasn't being stared at or whispered about because I looked so strange, a skeleton whose clothes had miraculously failed to rot along with his flesh. Dressing one morning, I'd caught a glimpse of my naked body in my wardrobe mirror and was startled. I made myself confront my reflection full on, something I hadn't done for years, since my discharge from hospital where there always seemed to be mirrors and weighing scales and tape measures to alienate me from myself. That morning in the spring of 1954 I saw in the mirror an almost ordinary man. Because it was Sunday, as usual I walked to Carol's house to sit with the twins while she, Jack and Hope went to Mass. Carol smiled at me, puzzled.

‘What's happened?' She took a step back as if to see me better. Looking me up and down she said, ‘Something's changed.'

I grinned, scooping up the boys, one in each arm. ‘Nothing's changed – nothing of any consequence.'

She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘You've met someone – I can see it in your eyes. Jack!' She turned to him as he came out from the kitchen, rushed as usual, frowning. ‘Jack – Pete's met someone!'

He turned his frown on me. ‘Really?'

‘No. Carol's jumping to conclusions.' I smiled at her, hoping to see something in her eyes that betrayed even a little jealousy of this suddenly invented woman. ‘There's no one else. I just feel happy this morning, that's all.' I kissed the boys and put them down; immediately they clamoured at my legs to be lifted up again. Carol went on gazing at me, unconvinced. Perhaps there
was
some jealousy in her eyes, in the way her smile faltered. She became brusque, scolding the boys for being too noisy for poor Uncle Peter; she wouldn't look at me as she kissed my cheek before she left. Behind her back, Jack rolled his eyes. He patted my arm. ‘My wife wants everyone married off,' he said. He laughed shortly. ‘God alone knows why!' There were times like that when I thought that he hardly knew his wife – that he barely even looked at her; at those times I could have punched him.

So, in 1954 I had stepped a little from the shade into the light, and I had my work – lots of it. I had found a publisher of children's books who liked my drawings and there seemed so many children about in those days, so many new parents to buy storybooks to read at bedtime. I saw pregnant women everywhere, many already pushing a pram and tugging a toddler along by his hand. I drew these mothers and children for a series of schoolbooks designed to help infants learn to read – my bread-and-butter work – and so I was able to save a little money, beginning to hope that the woman Carol had invented for me might come along. If she did, I would have enough for us to set up our own home, away from my father. I began to imagine I was ready to leave him in the autumn of 1954.

My father was still working at the bank at that time, the manager of the Leeds & Pennine on the High Street, leaving the house at eight-thirty prompt every morning, returning just as promptly at five. Mrs Hall cooked our meals, cleaned the house and did our laundry. I discovered how little my father paid her and increased her wages with my own money. I discovered too, quite soon after I returned home in 1946, just how much my father was drinking.

He drank each morning, a swift, stiff short to see him to the bank. He filled a silver hip flask with Scotch and slipped it discreetly into the inside pocket of his jacket to be reached for just as discreetly whenever he felt the need; it was reverently added to his morning coffee, served at eleven in his office by one of the bank girls, and just as reverently to his afternoon tea. He called these sneaked drinks his
tipples
, his
little
snifters
, and it was a kind of boasting because he knew I hadn't the stomach for alcohol – another of my many failings at manliness in his eyes. He drank steadily all day, seemingly immune. At night he drank himself into oblivion and this suited me. I'm ashamed of how much his drinking suited me.

After Carol was killed I had reason to be ashamed, more reason than enough to be sick with shame and guilt – so sick that I lost the little weight I'd managed to gain. Not that I cared, not that I ever looked in a mirror again after Carol was killed.

He killed her. There. I shall be honest now and not look at her death obliquely as I always have in an effort to excuse him – to excuse myself – and to somehow make her death less cruel. After all, it's kinder to believe that a loved one was killed by accident than to know that she was murdered. But even at the time I knew my father murdered Carol as surely as if he had squeezed his hands around her throat.

He had been drinking all day, as usual, only that November evening he had a dinner to go to, a rare enough occurrence – he disliked socialising with colleagues, with anyone. I remember that he threw himself about his room, looking for cufflinks, turning out drawers in a search for clean handkerchiefs that were properly folded and pressed for his breast pocket. He asked me to help him fasten his bow tie, scolding me for not being quick enough, but never the less subjecting himself to my ministrations – a foretaste of what lay in store for us both in the years to come. He cursed the bloody fool who had organised this dinner for branch managers, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he swallowed a mouthful of Scotch from the tumbler on his dressing-table. I suggested that he shouldn't go – only wishing that he would. He gazed at me scornfully. Of course he had to go! Of course he had to, if one believes in unchangeable fates.

The house was so peaceful when he'd gone; I haven't known such peace since. I worked on an illustration of Snow White finding the dwarves' cottage in the woods; it was never finished. Weeks later, I crumpled it into the hearth and burned it, unable even to look at it because it seemed so invested with hope, my foolish, optimistic hopes for a future that ended that night.

I was in bed by the time he came home. I heard the front door slam, heard him blunder about in the hall, and thought that I would turn out my lamp in case it should encourage him to come into my room and berate me for something I had neglected to do. Instead, I placed my book down, listening. He was weeping, crying and moaning an anguished stream of words. I heard him stumble on the stairs, his crying becoming louder. Such a sense of dread filled me, and a panic that had me tossing my bedcovers aside and running to him. He was in the lavatory, on his knees, vomiting and vomiting; at last he fell against the wall, dishevelled, there was mud on his shoes and trousers, a dark stain on his white evening shirt. I crouched beside him.

He grasped my hands. He looked at me with the kind of desperate relief I had seen only on the faces of men who believed I could save them from dying. ‘Help me,' he said. He jerked me towards him and I could smell the vomit and alcohol on his breath. His tears splashed onto the backs of my hands. ‘Help me, Peter.'

I don't think he had ever used my name before that night; I know he never used it since. At that moment, for the first and only time in my life, I felt that I was his son and he was my father and that there was a bond of love between us. I remember that I brushed away the strand of his hair that had fallen across his eyes and that I tried not to betray my panic. I spoke to him then as I was soon to speak to Hope and the twins, saying that everything would be all right, soothing them with a conviction that shamed me and that later I was to marvel at: I had no idea I could lie so well.

He told me what had happened falteringly – at times I could barely make out what he was saying through his sobs. At times I wanted not to hear, to get up and leave him there, crumpled on the lavatory floor. I thought I might be sick as he had been, throwing up until my guts ached and there was nothing left but bile. But I went on crouching beside him, his hands clasping mine as he staggered over his confession. He had killed Jack and Carol, he had killed them and he hadn't meant to, Christ forgive him he hadn't meant to, he hadn't meant to. But they were dead – they were dead on the side of the road. They were dead. He tugged his hands away from mine and covered his face. He cried and his whole being shook so that I pulled him into my arms and rocked him. And I hushed him, and I saw in my mind's eye his car plough into Carol and Jack. I saw her face white in the headlights, her eyes big with awe that this should be happening to her. In my mind's eye she isn't afraid, only astonished. And a moment earlier she had been laughing with Jack and a trace of that laughter was still in her eyes, and she looked as beautiful and young and full of life as she always looked. Not frightened, not frightened at all; I comfort myself with the thought that it was all too quick for fear.

He stopped crying eventually. I helped him up and supported him along the passage to his room. There, I partly undressed him and put him to bed. I gathered up his clothes and saw that the stain on his shirt was blood. I took the shirt and his muddied evening suit and shoes downstairs and out into the garden, soaked them in petrol from a jerry can in the garage and watched the flames devour them until there was nothing left but ashes. It was dawn by then; in the grey light I pushed the car into the garage. I told myself I didn't want to wake the neighbours, but that was only a tiny part of it. In truth I couldn't bear to sit in the seat where he had been, or turn the key in the ignition and hear the engine come to life, knowing she was dead. I had an idea that the engine's noise would bring me to my senses, that I would find myself in the house telephoning the police. In silence then I pushed the car out of sight of the road and covered it with its tarpaulin. I didn't look closely at the damage to its front bumper and wing. I went inside to the kitchen and vomited into the sink.

And what was next? What else was there to do but wait stiffly, without warmth from the fire I couldn't bring myself to light, without allowing myself even to switch on a lamp. I waited, certain that at any moment the police would come.

After hours and hours of waiting, I slept, fitfully, waking to find him standing over me, his face swollen from crying. At first I believed I had woken from a nightmare, but then the truth of it came quick and relentless as a bamboo-cane beating. I staggered as I stood up, stiff with cold, and he grasped my arm. ‘You must go,' he said. He sounded quite mad, his voice hardly recognisable in its intensity. ‘Go and see them. Find out what's happened.'

I stank of the smoke from the bonfire I'd made of his clothes, I needed to bathe, to shave, but such was his agitation he only allowed me time to dress. He followed me upstairs and waited outside my room, then followed me down again close on my heels, watching as I put on my coat, telling me over and over that I should be quick. And then, as I was about to go, he said, ‘Stay! They might come for me! If you're not here . . .' He began to cry, but I couldn't bear to touch him now. As calmly as I could I said, ‘Go back to bed. Don't answer the door if anyone calls.'

In the room where he died, I went to his wardrobe, taking down the box files one by one. I found the diary for 1954 and for every year until 1958, when he no longer had the strength or the will to write. Really I should have burned these diaries, but what held me back was the idea that one day I would be strong enough to read them. Now though, all I could think of was the idea that they must be destroyed; I imagined Jack walking from room to room, going through every cupboard, every drawer, every bookcase and shelf, making his inventory. Jack is very thorough.

Bundling the five diaries together, I carried them into the garden and made a bonfire of them.

Chapter 10

Val's father had made supper, a cottage pie with cabbage and tinned pineapple and custard to follow. He finished his own meal quickly as always, and then got up to make a pot of tea. Filling the kettle, he said over his shoulder, ‘You look tired – that place not getting you down, is it?'

‘Don't start, Dad.'

‘What? I'm only asking. You've been at Davies's years now, you must be sick to death of it.'

Val finished off her last spoonful of pineapple and took her plate to the sink to begin the washing-up.

Matthew said, ‘Leave that, I'll see to it.'

‘It's all right –'

‘No, I'll do it. Sit down, have a rest with this cup of tea. That lad will be here soon – are you going out like that, or are you going to get changed?'

‘I'm going to get changed.' She sighed. ‘Dad, I'll tell you this so as you know. I like working at Davies. Jack is not a
lad
, he's a grown man with kids. And . . .' She stopped herself from saying what she had been about to say, that she didn't much care if he turned up for their date tonight at all, whether he saw her in her work clothes or dressed to the nines. She thought about the sex they'd had, how wrong and horrible it seemed now, that the first time he'd made to love to her it should have been up against a back alley wall. And he had behaved coldly afterwards, as though he believed she was as cheap as he'd made her feel.

She sat down and a cup of tea was placed in front of her. Standing at her side, Matthew said, ‘I think he's a decent fella, anyway. And if he's got kids . . . Well, at your age you can't expect a man not to have them.' He snorted. Under his breath he said, ‘At least he's not got a wife.'

‘Dad, don't. Just don't go on.'

‘I'll go on until you see sense.'

‘See sense about what, for goodness sake?'

‘About going after that lad with everything you've got! A man like that – with a good job and his own home, a nice, smart-looking lad – you should be counting your lucky stars. They're not queuing round the block, you know, men like him.'

‘
And I'm not getting any younger
.'

‘Well, you said it. You said it, not me. But now you have said it, I'll say this – you've wasted enough time. And one day you'll look in the mirror and know the truth of it. There. I won't say any more.'

‘Yes, you will.' She shook her head, exasperated. ‘You like Jack, then?'

‘Aye!'

‘You think Mam would have liked him?'

‘Your mam would be telling you the same as me.'

Val stirred sugar into her tea. Looking down at her cup she said, ‘
I
don't think she would have liked him.'

‘Why not?'

He asked so sharply that she looked at him, thinking that perhaps he had the same suspicions she had about Jack Jackson. Carefully she said, ‘Maybe I'm wrong. He's smart, like you said.'

‘What are his kiddies like? Well-behaved, are they?'

‘Yes.' She didn't want to think about his children, especially not the cool, haughty Hope. Unable to help herself she said, ‘They're posh little brats, really. Snooty. Their grandparents pay for them to go to private schools. The boys will be going to boarding school eventually.'

‘That's good – gets them out the way.' He smiled at her. ‘No one's ideal, pet.'

‘No.'

‘And I think your mam would have thought he was dapper.'

‘
Dapper
!' Val laughed. ‘Did she think you were dapper?'

‘She might have.' After a moment he said, ‘You like him well enough, don't you? He seems pretty keen on you.'

She thought of the way Jack had pushed her against that stinking wall, how he had entered her so roughly, how his face was taken up so much with his own satisfaction, his expression closed to her, contemptuous, even. He didn't seem very
keen
on her after he'd withdrawn, after he'd tossed the slimy Johnny down and buttoned his flies. Without wanting to, she thought of Harry, his gentleness, how he had always looked at her with such love. Even in the early days of their relationship, when there had only been lust between them, when his desire for her had been so exciting, so flattering, he had always treated her with respect.

Gently, her father said, ‘Don't look so sad, pet.'

‘I'm not, not really.'

‘If you don't like this Jack enough, well . . . '

‘Plenty more fish in the sea?'

‘It's no good crying over that bastard, anyway.'

Belligerently she said, ‘Which bastard?'

‘You know who I'm talking about – the Big I Am.'

‘Don't call him that! You liked him! You liked him more than you've liked anyone.
Anyone
! So don't pretend you didn't.'

‘I liked him well enough until I found out he had a wife at home.'

She got up. ‘I'm going upstairs.'

Matthew caught her hand. ‘Listen.' His voice changed. ‘Don't think about going back to him, you hear? I don't want to see you hurt again.'

‘I wasn't thinking of it.'

‘Good.' He let go of her hand. ‘That's good.' More gently he said, ‘Now, off you go. When Jack comes I'll give you a shout.'

In the bathroom, stripped to her waist, Val washed. She brushed her teeth; she combed her hair and sprayed perfume on her wrists and at her throat. She peered at herself in the mirror and thought that perhaps she was beginning to look her age. She had put on weight recently because she ate too much when she was unhappy. She should have been losing weight again, too love-sick to eat, just as she was when she first met Harry. Closing her eyes, she gripped the edge of the hand-basin. ‘I don't love you any more, Harry.' She said this every day, like a spell to ward off spirits.

Dressed in slacks and one of the cashmere sweaters Harry had bought her, she went downstairs again. She put her coat on to be ready to leave at once when Jack arrived, and her father came out from the kitchen. ‘You have a good time.'

There was a knock on the door. As she was about to go, Matthew said, ‘Don't be late, Val.' He looked at her pointedly, concerned. ‘I mean it. Don't be late.'

They went to the cinema and saw a film about the Battle of Britain. During the scenes where the pilots ran across the air-field to their waiting Spitfires, Val glanced at Jack who was smoking steadily, his eyes fixed on the screen, his expression unreadable. Once, he caught her looking at him and he smiled, eyebrows raised as if he thought the film was absurd.

As the lights came up, as the rest of the audience began putting on their coats, Jack sat on, yet another cigarette only half-finished between his fingers. She sat still too, thinking that it was probably best to wait until the scrum in the cinema's lobby cleared – more dignified. It suited Jack to be dignified, just like those frightfully, frightfully proper men they'd just witnessed shooting up the skies. It seemed that all the men she had ever known had been involved in war, even her father, whose old wounds still ached in the cold, who still missed his brothers lost at the Somme.

Gazing at the yards and yards of plush red velvet curtains that had been drawn across the screen, she remembered her father's words to her as she'd left the house. He knew she'd had sex with Jack – he presumed so at least, because he knew for certain she had slept with Harry. Feeling ashamed all over again, she stood up too quickly so that the cinema seat flew up, trapping her coat that she'd been sitting on.

Jack smiled at her. ‘Are you in a hurry?'

‘No, but they'll come and shoo us out any minute now.'

He sighed cigarette smoke. ‘What did you think of the picture?'

‘What did you think?'

He laughed bleakly. Standing up, he released her coat from the seat and helped her on with it before squeezing her arms. ‘Let's go and have a drink, eh?'

In the snug of the Castle and Anchor, Jack was quiet, smoking more than he usually did. She wondered what memories the film had stirred up in him, and she wished that there had been something else on instead. A comedy would have been best, even if it hadn't been funny. She managed to glance at him without him noticing and she saw how tired he looked, even sad, so that she felt herself soften towards him. He was a good man, after all; a good man who had wanted her too desperately and so had behaved as desperate men do. He would never have treated his wife like that. This thought had come to her unbidden, meant in his defence, but at once it had become an accusation. Her heart hardened a little, although she still noted how vulnerable he looked; she thought of those pilots she had just watched, and despite her bitterness, thought how much she would have liked to have known Lieutenant Jack Jackson splendid in his blue uniform.

Jack picked up his pint of beer and took a long drink. Stubbing out his cigarette, he turned to her. ‘We're two sad sacks tonight, aren't we?' Gazing at her, he said, ‘I'm so sorry about the other night. Truly. It was unforgivable.'

‘I forgive you.'

‘It's all I've thought about. I was amazed when you agreed to see me tonight.'

He had come into the typing pool, pretending he needed a document copied urgently. As head typist, it had been her job to take the bundle of papers from him, to make a note of how many copies he needed, and he had stood a little too close to her, his voice too clipped so that she knew how embarrassed he was, how aware of the many pairs of eyes watching him over the clattering typewriters. Very quickly and quietly, as he was about to go, he said, ‘Will you come out with me tonight?' She'd nodded, also aware of the girls' eyes on them. As he left, June and Barbara had wolf-whistled after him.

He took another long drink. He said, ‘Am I really forgiven?'

‘Yes. And anyway, it takes two, doesn't it?'

He laughed, turning his glass round and around on its beer mat. Eventually he said, ‘Are we the talk of the typing pool?'

‘Probably.'

‘Do you care?'

‘No.'

He put his glass down and reached for her hand. ‘Well, they've always talked about me, so I don't care either.'

She thought of his wife and the shocking way she was killed. Carol Jackson had been beautiful, by all accounts, a fittingly lovely bride for the dashing bomber pilot. There were rumours that she had been pregnant when she was killed; but then the gossips liked to make even the most horrible tragedy worse. One of the women in Accounts had told her that Jack had gone mad with grief and had to be restrained from throwing himself into his wife's grave.

Val sipped the gin and tonic he had bought her. There was a jukebox in the corner of the pub by the cigarette machine and she watched a young boy, his hair combed into an elaborate quiff, his jacket fashionably long, feed coins into its slot and deliberate over his choice. After punching a few buttons, the boy walked back to his girlfriend and ‘Peggy Sue' began to play from the speakers. Jack too had been watching the boy and he turned to her.

‘Would you prefer to go somewhere quieter?'

‘No.' She smiled at him. ‘Actually, I like this song.'

Jack sang softly and tunefully, ‘
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue
. . .' Then he breathed out heavily and said, ‘Something's happened.'

‘Oh?'

‘It's odd, really. It's rather thrown me.' Quickly he said, ‘And the person I would normally talk to about something like this . . . Well, I can't talk to him about it, since he's involved.'

‘Would you like to talk about it with me?'

He began turning his glass again so that she longed to take it from him. At last he said, ‘I have a friend, Peter. Friends since school, you know? He's a bit of an odd bod – always was. Anyway, his father died last week.' He laughed, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was about to say. Turning to her, he said, ‘Well, he died and he's left me all his money, house – everything. Peter came to see me last night and he told me, calm as you like. I'm rich now, apparently. Or I would be, if I wanted anything to do with it.'

‘And you don't?'

‘No!' He frowned at her. ‘I don't want to make Peter homeless – penniless. I couldn't live with myself. Pete has nothing – no wife, no family, not even a proper job. God knows where he'd end up. Living rough, probably. I told him, as far as I'm concerned, he can tear up the bloody will – burn it, for all I care.'

‘He must have been relieved.'

‘That was the funny thing. He said no, that he wanted me and the children to have it.' Jack sighed. ‘He's a very. . . oh, I don't know. He's my friend, a good, true friend – probably the best I've ever had.'

She waited for him to go on, but he remained silent. Finally he said, ‘When we were at school, he was the boy who'd get his head flushed down the lavatory, you know? I used to be embarrassed to know him. But I knew he was having a lousy time at home – his father was a real old bastard – and I felt sorry for him. And he's had a rotten life, a really rotten bloody life . . .
Jesus
. That old bastard is stirring things up even from his pit in hell! I don't want his stinking money!'

‘Peggy Sue' ended and Jack looked towards the jukebox, as if he couldn't say anything until he knew what song was to be played next. When Elvis Presley's ‘Hound Dog' began, he snorted. Finishing his drink, he said, ‘Should we have another? I'm going to have one, anyway.'

He came back from the bar with a pint and a gin, sat down and lit another cigarette. Suddenly he said, ‘All I ever wanted was a nice, quiet life.' He looked at her from the corner of his eye. ‘I'm a boring accountant. Peter's an
artist
.' Less mockingly he said, ‘He's a very good artist really, except he earns a pittance, except he doesn't know his arse from his elbow . . . except he looks like a scarecrow that's been pulled through a hedge. Poor sod.' Taking her hand he squeezed it. ‘So, I don't know what to do. He wants me to have the money, the house, says he can manage – although he can't. I say no, I don't want it, and he says yes, I must take it. I've been thinking that it would probably be best if I just ignored him. He can't actually
force
me to live there and spend his money, after all.' He waited. ‘Then I look at the children. It's not as if they want for anything, but there's so much I'd like to be able to give them. That school Hope goes to . . . ' Picking up his pint only to put it down again, he went on, ‘She's a pauper compared to most of the girls there. You should see some of the cars that roll up on Sports Day. The Jacksons
walk
to Sports Day.'