‘Hullo, son,’ and a smile came like a scar across his face.
‘Hullo, Feyther,’ and Charlie carved a careful answering smile of his own.
His father was laboriously pretending to feel no pain, pursing his lips. There was a chair beside the bed with a newspaper lying on it. ‘Tragedy in a Tenement’, Charlie noticed before he sat down.
‘Is everythin’ a’ right at the university, Charlie?’
‘Aye, Feyther, it’s fine,’ Charlie said, wondering what difference that made to anything.
It occurred to Charlie that it might be difficult to find things to talk about. What did you say to someone who was dying? Everything he could think of was double-edged, and did not mean for his father what it meant for him. But his father solved the problem by easing himself up in bed, ready to talk. He obviously had something he was very anxious to say. Charlie saw that he was excused cliches. This was to be a monologue.
‘Ah didny send for ye. Sooner, Charlie,’ his father said, pain punctuating his breath at random. ‘Ah knew ye wis busy at the studyin’. An’ Ah didny want. Tae gie’ ye any more worry than Ah had tae.’
‘Aw, Feyther,’ Charlie said. What did he think, anyway, that he rated lower than class examinations? That he had to die out of term time, organize his death to suit the syllabus?
‘Naw, Charlie, Ah didny want tae do that. But Ah don’t ken how much time Ah have now. An’ Ah wanted to see ye.’
‘Ah, mebbe ye’ve some time yet, Feyther,’ Charlie said, the sight of his father denying the words as he said them.
‘Naw, son, naw. Ah ken. An’ Ah’ve had a long time to think. Lyin’ here. A long time.’ Pain suddenly prompted him to hurry. ‘You keep an eye to Elizabeth, son, will ye? She’s a good lassie an’ Harry’s a nice boy. She’ll be all right. She’s mature now. A sensible lassie for her age. She’s had to be, God bless her. Takin’ a mither’s place before she was a woman. Doin’ two jobs. She’s made a good job of herself. She’ll be all right. As long as you’re there just to look after her a wee bit. John’s got his ain family now, ye see.’ Pride flickered for a moment in his eyes, the ghost of an emotion. ‘He’s got his wife an’ son to look after now. God bless them.’
He paused, fighting the pain. It was harrowing to watch him, a man numbering his children in his will. All he had to give them were blessings.
‘An’ yersel’, Charlie. Now. Ah want ye to keep in. At the university. It’ll no’ be easy. Ah know. It’s no thanks to me if ye do make it. Fur it’s little. Ah can leave ye. But listen, Charlie. In the jacket of ma blue suit. In the wardrobe. Fifty pounds. Inside the lining o’ the sleeve. It’ll be a help. An’, Charlie. The funeral’s all covered. By the insurance. There’ll be no expense whatsoever from that. There’ll maybe be somethin’ left over.’
It was all arranged. His death was to cause them as little inconvenience as possible.
‘Feyther,’ Charlie said. ‘We’ll be all right. Don’t worry about that.’
‘An’, Charlie. In the inside pocket of the jacket. A key. To ma lock-up down at Fore Street. There’s a lotta metal there. Mick an’ me stripped it off old gas-masks. Ye’ll get a few pounds for that. But Mick. He’s got to get his share of it. He helped me. The key’s in the inside pocket.’
Charlie looked down at his hands. Why was he so concerned with money at this time? The key to the lock-up. It was like a macabre mockery of a fairy-tale – the legendary treasure told of by a dying man. A few bits of metal. He was apportioning his worldly goods. Everyone was to get his share, even Mick, the model-lodging ne’er-do-weel who had played Sancho Panza to his father’s Quixotic dreams of financial success.
‘It’s no’ much, Charlie. But it’ll help to tide ye over just now. Ye must stick it. At the university. Ye’ve got to, Charlie. Ye’re no’ goin’ to be like me. A nobody. You’ll make a success of your life. You’ll be different from me, son. You’ll be different.’
‘Ah don’t want to be different from you, Feyther,’ Charlie said. He couldn’t believe that his father was saying that. Why was he speaking like this? ‘What is there to be different about?’
‘Naw, son. You’ll be different. You’ll no’ make. The mistakes Ah made. Ah can see ma mistakes now. Ah see them. When it’s too late.’
‘Ye never made mistakes, Feyther. Don’t say that.’
‘Aw naw, son. Ah was wrong. All ma days. All the time Ah was wrong. Full o’ mistakes. Ah see them now. Ah see them.’
Charlie said nothing, struck to stone by the terrible sincerity of his father’s voice. He saw with sudden horror how real these ‘mistakes’ were to his father’s mind, like spectres gathered about his bedside. He sensed how they must have haunted him these past weeks, the agony they were giving him at this moment. This was really what he wanted to tell Charlie. And Charlie listened in disbelief while his father talked on through his pain as if he had something terrible to confess before he died.
‘Don’t be like me, son. Ah never did anything wi’ ma life. Ah had nae education an’ Ah never made anything wi’ whatever Ah did have. Whit’s ma life, Charlie? Where is it? Ah wis a terrible failure, son. Nae money fur ye, nae security. Whit wis Ah ever use for?’
Use for? He was use for being a man, that was what he was use for. He was good at just being a man. All the times Charlie remembered him by were all just human moments. He remembered him laughing, moving, talking. He knew him by his courage and his physical strength. He remembered long before, when Charlie was small, how he would come in, muscled like a pony from the pits, and dispense good humour through the house. He remembered his kindness, his presence like a lightning conductor for trouble, making them safe. And wasn’t that enough? Who said it wasn’t? Who made it that a man had to measure himself against money in the bank or what he owned or how far he ‘succeeded’ or ‘security’ ? Who decided that a man had to be judged in terms that had no connection with manhood, that coinage was a yardstick for a man? When had it happened that this man had accepted that everything he had was nothing when set against what he didn’t have, an eight-room house with his name on the door, a car, a bank account? Who passed that judgment on him? How did it happen?
‘Ah know now where Ah made ma mistakes, Charlie. Ye see -’ Charlie saw by his father’s face that what he was going to say was made difficult by more than the pain – ‘ye see, whit yer mother did that time. Goin’ away.’ Pain gave way to hate on his face. ‘Wi’ that bugger Whitmore !’ The words shot out like bile, and he subsided. ‘That was me, Charlie. It was me. She wanted things. An’ Ah jist couldn’t get them. She was used. To them, ye ken. Everybody wants them. Don’t blame ’er, Charlie. Everybody wants them. An’ she wanted them. An if Ah couldn’t give her them. There was somebody who could. It was ma fault, Charlie.’
That was it, a poison six years in taking effect. A kind of hemlock. Slow death. But leaving no trace. She left him and gradually he came to believe that she was right to leave him. And why shouldn’t he believe it? What did he have to dispute it for him? All around him, that was the only measurement he could see. And he didn’t fit it. He was a failure. Charlie remembered how he himself used to be exasperated at how often his father changed work. That would be mainly at the time before his mother left. He had always had a slight suspicion that it had been part of the reason for his mother’s leaving. Now he saw that it was the other way round. It had been his father’s pathetic and desperate attempt to be what he thought he ought to be, what he had been convinced he should be. He started several ‘businesses’, trying to sell cars, or ice-cream, or fruit and vegetables. They all folded. Charlie had found it laughable at the time. When he was given a form to fill in at school he was uncertain what to put for ‘father’s occupation’. He knew now. His father had never been anything more than a