A Lie About My Father (8 page)

So time passed. I was happy enough, at times, playing in the woods, making dens, finding birds’ nests in the scrap piles behind the old abattoirs. Sometimes, I would get to visit Uncle John and Aunt Margaret: Big John would take me out fishing in the loch with his younger sons, Kenneth and Anthony, even though I was too young to fish; sometimes I was allowed to stay over, and the oldest of my cousins, Wee John, who was a prize-winning chemistry student, would tell me about magnetism, or space. I remember he showed me odd experiments with water glass and metal salts, say, and I would wonder how he knew such things, when he was just like his brothers, just like me. When I grew up, I thought, I would know things like that: the periodic table, which cousin John had on a chart on his bedroom wall; the migrations of birds; the distances between stars. All that knowledge felt like something substantial to hold on to, against the vagaries of everyday life.

After a while, my mother was pregnant again. My parents were excited; even my father brightened up as they planned for a new baby and, for a while, he settled down and dug in. He got a steadier job at Grangemouth, doing something that kept him out from early morning till late at night, which meant we never saw him. I wasn’t unhappy about that. They worked hard at this new beginning, and my mother tried to stay healthy, but things went badly in the latter months and, finally, when she came to deliver, the baby died. It was a baby boy; he would have been called Andrew. When my mother came home from the hospital she looked pale as death; she went to bed in the room at the back of the house and didn’t speak to anyone for days. My father kept going to work, as if nothing had happened, but I knew he was unhappy, and the nights were quiet, very still, disturbed only by the calls of the tawny owls in Kirk’s woods. I would lie awake, then, listening to the night and thinking about my brother. He was gone before he had even existed, and I’d never even got to see him, but I had a new ghost to entertain.

I knew this loss would have consequences – and, gradually, things got worse. My father was bitter about losing the baby, and this led to more frequent binges, but it was still a while before the late-night parties with the friends he’d picked up on his procession through Cowdenbeath’s worst pubs became a regular thing. I remember the men who came as exact clones of my father – big, drunk, edgy, just this side of dangerous – and it seemed to me that they were always different, new names, new faces, new unknown quantities to appease and please and outmanoeuvre. I would be in bed when they arrived, though usually not asleep. By that time I was old enough to worry when he wasn’t home, old enough to feel the tension when Margaret and I were put to bed – I have no explanation for this, but my mother always knew when he was about to go
off the rails
, as she put it – old enough to wonder whether we would all get safely through the night. I would be in bed, pretending to be asleep, not daring to slip out in case my father came home and found my bed empty when, as was more and more the case, he wanted me up and about, serving drinks, emptying ashtrays, mopping up spillages and the occasional pool of vomit or piss. All evening, I would lie awake, listening to my mother as she went about the house, hiding ornaments, tidying up, doing her best to make the place look good and, at the same time, concealing anything she thought my father and his friends might damage or abuse. Then she would go to bed and close her bedroom door. She would pretend to be asleep too – and when my father eventually got back, he would leave her to it. He didn’t want her about at such times, watching him, making the odd innocent-sounding but wholly calculated remark, asking his friends about their own homes, their own families, trying to shame them into decency.

With me, though, it was different. My father took real pleasure in rousing me from my bed and having me come through, in my pyjamas, to do those little jobs he felt I could manage, all the time listening to what the men were saying, taking note, ready to speak when spoken to. He would have me perform tricks: feats of mental arithmetic or memory, or he would tell them to ask me questions. The capital of Bolivia came up a good deal, as did the spelling of Mississippi and the attribution of various, usually misquoted, lines from Burns. It was a difficult balancing act, showing off just enough so he would be proud (the father of a smart son, naturally, because he was so smart himself), but not so much that he would be embarrassed, or shown up (maybe the boy’s too smart, a bit of a show-off, when all’s said and done). I quickly learned which questions to answer confidently, which should be hesitated over and which should be left unanswered. A bright boy, bright as a button, and good-natured with it. Not too proud to fetch a rag from the scullery and help out when there was a wee accident, or pop out to the coal bunker for more coal on a chilly night. Bright, yes, but always willing.

‘Hey, son. Pour us all another rum, will you?’

‘Hey, son. Get us a towel here.’

‘Where’s the toilet, wee man?’

I would pour the rum, or the whisky, or the beer, and I would know I was pouring away our food for the week, the insurance money, probably the rent. I also knew never to let this show. On party nights, we were the richest people in the world. Our hospitality knew no limits. And we regretted nothing.

Sometimes my father came home earlier in the evening. This meant he was running out of money, and somebody had offered to chip in on a carry-out. When that happened, his usual partner-in-crime was Paddy, a friend of his from the Woodside, his favourite drinking hole. My mother had once made the mistake of saying that Paddy was a gentleman, which allowed my father to pretend, on these early returns from the pub, that he had brought Paddy home to say hello. On the nights when Paddy came back, my father would make sure they brought something for my mother to drink, a Babycham, say. My mother didn’t like alcohol, but she would drink a Babycham now and then to be sociable. My father also knew that she wouldn’t make a scene in front of Paddy, that she would sit nicely for a while, then excuse herself and go off to bed. Maybe she would venture a parting shot along the lines of ‘Don’t sit up too late, now’, or ‘Remember, they’re asleep’. I would hear this as she stood in the hallway, on her way to bed, and I knew what would happen next.

One night my father came home about nine thirty and discovered that my mother had already turned in. All her life, she suffered from anaemia; she would get headaches and mysterious dizzy spells; if she sat down for any length of time, just knitting, or listening to the wireless, she would suddenly fall asleep and sit, head slumped forward on to her chest, lost to us. Sometimes, when my father was out, she would send us to bed at the usual time, then she would go through to the living room, turn the lights off, stoke up the fire, and go to bed, presumably because she thought my father would be out for hours, and she could get some proper rest. I think that was when she was most content, alone in bed, drifting away, letting her worries slide. That night, she’d had a headache, though, and she looked pale and thin-mouthed, with dark blue circles around the eyes. When my father got in, I was pretty sure she was asleep, but I knew he wouldn’t disturb her anyway.

Half an hour passed, before he slipped into my room. ‘Hey, son,’ he said, peering down at me. ‘You’re no asleep already, are you?’ He could see I wasn’t. ‘Come on, put your jumper and your trousers on. There’s somebody here to see you.’

I got up and slipped my clothes on over my pyjamas. I didn’t really want to see Paddy – oddly enough, I felt more uncomfortable with him than with my father’s other, less gentlemanly friends. With them, it was just a matter of doing what needed to be done, but Paddy embarrassed me. I think he embarrassed himself, when he’d had too much to drink. He at least knew he could do better.

Paddy was sitting in the living room, by the fire. There was always a fire in the grate, except in high summer: the prefabs had no other heating, and where we were, by the woods, it was damp. Damp was much worse than cold, everybody said so. You could walk miles in a freezing gale, as long as you stayed dry, but everybody knew stories about the wifie who’d just washed her hair, then popped out for some coal and died two days later, in a high fever. So the fire was there to keep out the damp, and it was a godsend to Paddy, who always looked a little damp himself, a man in a worn suit that looked like it had just come off a rail in a second-hand shop, and still needed a bit of an iron.

‘You no sleeping yet, son?’ was his greeting. As always, he looked embarrassed.

I shook my head.

‘Paddy’s not had his tea,’ my father said. ‘I bet you’d like some chips. Would you like some chips?’ I didn’t know who he was talking to, me or Paddy. He took a banknote from his pocket and held it out to me. ‘Run down to the shop and get us a couple of fish suppers,’ he said. ‘And some chips for yourself.’

‘Aw, come on, Tommy,’ Paddy protested. He looked more embarrassed than ever. ‘You’re not sending him out like that, are ye?’

My father kept his eyes on me. ‘He’s all right,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you, son?’

I nodded.

‘Well, he’ll need a coat on,’ Paddy said.

My father gave a snort. ‘He’ll not need a coat,’ he said. ‘Will you?’

I shook my head. I didn’t really have a coat. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

My father nodded his approval. ‘He never feels the cold,’ he said. ‘Do you, son? Takes after his Dad.’ He looked at my feet. ‘You better put your shoes on, though,’ he said. ‘We don’t want your feet getting cold.’ He turned away, heading off towards the kitchen.

Paddy sat staring at me dolefully. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You have to keep your feet warm.’ he said. He looked wretched and it suddenly occurred to me that he was going to die, not some day, but soon. He looked like he knew it, too. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

For the week or so after one of these parties, we ate soup and scraps. My mother would go traipsing around the high street, come Monday morning, asking the butcher for offcuts as a treat for our imaginary dog, bits of bone with a little meat on, or bacon rashers, to give the soup a little body. We had free milk in school, but we either didn’t qualify, or were too proud to take, free dinners. Sometimes, Mr Kirk from the poultry farm would give us a few eggs, after I’d supposedly helped him out with his birds, and there was always plenty of flour in the house, for real emergencies. One autumn afternoon, when school was out and we were hungry, Margaret came home with a couple of turnips that she had found on the road. My mother was suspicious, but she started preparing vegetable soup, with barley and a few scraps of fat, right away. It was always a pleasure, watching the prefab windows steam up while my mother cooked us soup, and we were all gathered round, my sister and I sitting at the kitchen table, my mother standing at the cooker, when the farmer arrived. He explained that he’d seen a girl pulling turnips from his field, and that he’d followed her along the Old Perth Road. He wasn’t annoyed with her, he said, he just wanted to say that, if she wanted a neep for Halloween, she should just come and ask, and he’d be happy to let her have one.

My mother didn’t know what to say, other than to apologise. She was standing at the door, in her apron, the smell of boiled turnips filling the room.

‘I hope she doesn’t plan to eat thae neeps,’ the farmer said. ‘They’re meant for fodder.’ He looked past my mother to where we were sitting at the table. Margaret shrank into her seat. ‘For the beasts,’ he continued, being helpful.

‘Oh, no,’ my mother said. ‘It’s – something for school. An experiment. I’m sure she didn’t know – ’

‘I don’t mind,’ the farmer put in quickly, sensing, now, what he had stumbled into. Maybe he knew all along, and had come to see if he could help. ‘Just – well, if she comes and asks me, next time.’

My mother promised she would, and the man went away. I thought she would be angry and send Margaret to the bedroom for what she had done, but she wasn’t angry, and she didn’t say anything. She just walked back to the cooker and turned down the gas. Then she stood, stirring the soup, gazing out of the window. She was doing her best to seem calm, but I could tell she was crying.

Secretly, my father still had more than the odd flutter on the horses. I think my first real prefabs era memory is of running lines for him: think, rather than know, because there are other, earlier scenes in my head, incidents on a beach, or on our Sunday walks in the local cemetery, that have been described often enough, during family conversations, in the endless whiling away of time, to be imprinted in my mind, almost real, almost mine. Yet, in spite of that, if I were asked for a first memory, it would be of learning a series of words and numbers, taking possession of a fistful of banknotes, and running a mile or so to a shop on the edge of the next town, where a man who seemed to me extraordinarily old would take the money, listen to what I had to say, and send me away with a bag of sherbet lemons or a bottle of Cherryade. I’m not sure when all this happened: I was five, maybe six, and one day, when my father let me choose a horse from the list in the paper, I took Nicholas Silver, a big, strong grey who won the Grand National in 1960, at fifty to one. I got to bet a shilling – though at the time I would rather have had the money, or the sweets it would buy – and I liked it when I was presented with my winnings, an impossible sum that seems to grow magically out of mere guesswork.

How a grown-up comes to forget the terrors of childhood is a mystery to me, but he does. No one who remembered what it was like to thread his way through the backstreets haunted by the strange and violent dogs of my childhood would ever keep a Rottweiler or a bull terrier. But then, dogs were part of the pathology of all the places where I grew up. Big dogs, in particular. It’s mostly about power, I suppose: a big dog makes a small man bigger; imagine what it does for a frightened child. At first I wanted a black Labrador, then I longed for a husky; then I didn’t want a dog at all. I’d met a stray one day, when I was around seven, and it had followed me home, a black-and-white mongrel with a curious, intelligent face that no boy could resist. When I asked if I could keep it, my mother assumed that soft, quiet tone she reserved for non-negotiable situations. ‘You’re not having a dog,’ she said. ‘And that’s that.’