hate writing those words) or not, but perhaps it does not matter any more, perhaps it is best forgotten. Perhaps, after all, nothing happened. The silence was just silence. Stunned after your brother’s death. Two boys, daring each other, jumped. One hit his head on rocks and broke his neck. The other almost drowned. Nothing.
I still see him, you know – Paul. It is not something one would admit in polite society. I see him here in the house. I see him running through the sprinkler, hear his laughter, see him curled up at the other end of the couch. I see him asleep, this golden boy, feel the warm breath from his mouth as I lean in to kiss him.
I live with ghosts here, but I have never wanted them gone. That is why I have kept the house all these years, even though it is too big for me (you may be wondering). These visions. This house contains everything I love, everything I have loved. I could not have got rid of it.
The day you left was not my proudest moment. I should have come in to the terminal with you instead of leaving you outside. I did, in fact. I turned the car around and parked and went inside, but you had gone through security and I asked them to let me through. I caused a bit of a scene actually, but they refused and it was all I could do to persuade them to allow me to stay and watch your plane take off.
I am not sure what I would have achieved, but it would have been better to say a proper goodbye.
I wish you well. I hope you continue to be a success and I hope one day you, too, will marry and have children. Maybe you will even mention their grandfather to them, in a kindly way. I would have loved grandchildren. But it was not to be. I have had much joy in my life and many happy years. The years before Paul died with the five of us in this big house were more than most people get, more than most deserve. I loved what we had, all of us, out here in this windswept corner of nothing, our own familial Eden.
I hope one day you, too, will know such a time.
Love Dad
The fifth of October 1999. Twelve years ago. I was twenty-four, recently graduated, and had just been taken on at Lloyds. I had not had any contact with my father or brother for at least four years. I go through the numbers. My father died twelve years ago. I last saw him and Peter eighteen years ago. It sounds too long. Eighteen years – a lifetime. I think back over what I have done in that time. What I haven’t done. I made a lot of money. I met Rachel. It is not much.
And during that time, during those eighteen years, my father and my brother, here, sitting where I am, watching over me from afar. My father with that doubt he should never have had. He should have had the truth, no matter how hard.
I sit in the chair with the letter in my hand. After a while it slips and falls to the floor.
For a long time I stare out of the window at a spot at the edge of the garden. I stare, while around me the heat haze breaks up the garden, the house, the sky. They swirl above me, forming, reforming. Everything I can see floats, drifts away.
I can see this, I can describe it because I see it as if from afar, as if I am perched halfway up the wall, looking down on a man sitting crumpled in a chair, a man who does not look like me at all, a man half my size, crushed by the walls that surround him.
8
I sit sweating in the chair in the bungalow. For a second I am adrift. I do not know where I am, and how I got here. I focus on the screen. A man reads a letter. The screen begins to jump, as if the man is trembling.
I feel in my pockets but there is nothing in them. I run next door and into the lounge. The letter lies on the floor next to the chair. I pick it up again and read it. The same words appear. I fold it carefully and place it back in the envelope.
I get into the shower and am standing under the water, my eyes closed, when I hear a crash from the ground floor. I jump out and run down the stairs and into the kitchen. I am naked and still
I still see him, you know – Paul. It is not something one would admit in polite society. I see him here in the house. I see him running through the sprinkler, hear his laughter, see him curled up at the other end of the couch. I see him asleep, this golden boy, feel the warm breath from his mouth as I lean in to kiss him.
I live with ghosts here, but I have never wanted them gone. That is why I have kept the house all these years, even though it is too big for me (you may be wondering). These visions. This house contains everything I love, everything I have loved. I could not have got rid of it.
The day you left was not my proudest moment. I should have come in to the terminal with you instead of leaving you outside. I did, in fact. I turned the car around and parked and went inside, but you had gone through security and I asked them to let me through. I caused a bit of a scene actually, but they refused and it was all I could do to persuade them to allow me to stay and watch your plane take off.
I am not sure what I would have achieved, but it would have been better to say a proper goodbye.
I wish you well. I hope you continue to be a success and I hope one day you, too, will marry and have children. Maybe you will even mention their grandfather to them, in a kindly way. I would have loved grandchildren. But it was not to be. I have had much joy in my life and many happy years. The years before Paul died with the five of us in this big house were more than most people get, more than most deserve. I loved what we had, all of us, out here in this windswept corner of nothing, our own familial Eden.
I hope one day you, too, will know such a time.
Love Dad
The fifth of October 1999. Twelve years ago. I was twenty-four, recently graduated, and had just been taken on at Lloyds. I had not had any contact with my father or brother for at least four years. I go through the numbers. My father died twelve years ago. I last saw him and Peter eighteen years ago. It sounds too long. Eighteen years – a lifetime. I think back over what I have done in that time. What I haven’t done. I made a lot of money. I met Rachel. It is not much.
And during that time, during those eighteen years, my father and my brother, here, sitting where I am, watching over me from afar. My father with that doubt he should never have had. He should have had the truth, no matter how hard.
I sit in the chair with the letter in my hand. After a while it slips and falls to the floor.
For a long time I stare out of the window at a spot at the edge of the garden. I stare, while around me the heat haze breaks up the garden, the house, the sky. They swirl above me, forming, reforming. Everything I can see floats, drifts away.
I can see this, I can describe it because I see it as if from afar, as if I am perched halfway up the wall, looking down on a man sitting crumpled in a chair, a man who does not look like me at all, a man half my size, crushed by the walls that surround him.
8
I sit sweating in the chair in the bungalow. For a second I am adrift. I do not know where I am, and how I got here. I focus on the screen. A man reads a letter. The screen begins to jump, as if the man is trembling.
I feel in my pockets but there is nothing in them. I run next door and into the lounge. The letter lies on the floor next to the chair. I pick it up again and read it. The same words appear. I fold it carefully and place it back in the envelope.
I get into the shower and am standing under the water, my eyes closed, when I hear a crash from the ground floor. I jump out and run down the stairs and into the kitchen. I am naked and still
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