Nor All Your Tears by Keith McCarthy Page A

not move, does not bother, does not raise its head and does not appear to be in any way menacing, this thing will destroy as surely as acid and as completely as a fusion blast, without any of the fuss, any of the bother, just all of the devastation. Yet all of us have to deal with it; sometimes when we are young, sometimes when we are old; sometimes many times, sometimes on just one, completely overwhelming occasion. And for each of us, there is a different way of dealing with it. Nowadays there are advice lines (many different kinds), counsellors (many different kinds) and therapists (even more different kinds). In the nineteen sixties, there were only the now alien concepts of friends and family, and nothing else; if you didn’t have those (and Dad and I didn’t), society provided only one other resource.
    Yourself.
    Don’t get me wrong. Dad and I loved each other, but each of us found our grief for the loss of my mother, his wife, too personal and intense to be shared by anyone. We both knew her so well, yet we knew her in entirely different ways; his memories could not be mine, nor mine his. We both had intimate remembrances, but they would always be completely personal to each of us; and we both understood that, even without saying anything about it. Perhaps it was because nothing was said – and that was because nothing needed to be said – that we drew so close without any wailing, or gnashing of teeth, or tears when we were in each other’s company. We had lived through the experience, perhaps even grown through it, because learning to live with a disability (and the scar that bereavement leaves is, believe me, a disability) empowers you.
    Yet it also tethers you.
    Without saying a word, without ever acknowledging our bond, we had become conjoined as completely as any pair of stage Siamese twins, as irrevocably within each other’s orbit as binary stars. We had a common centre of gravity around which we spun, trying to live our present lives; it was one that was an absence, as dark and as powerful as a black hole, and just as inescapable.
    That night, something happened to disturb the harmony of our system, though.
    Dad and Ada arrived at about eight thirty that evening, tired either from the weekend or the journey home, or both; they wasted no time in announcing their engagement.
    The following morning Jane, our practice nurse, seemed oddly compassionate when I told her my news. She said, ‘Never mind,’ and said it in a tone full of sympathy, which struck me as odd as I didn’t think I was in need of sympathy.
    â€˜Never mind what?’
    She looked nonplussed, as if it was all obvious; it was not an unfamiliar situation to be in when Jane and I talked things over. She saw things in a different way from me; I hesitate to say that she saw them with greater clarity, or greater depth, but she certainly always brought a refreshingly insightful and novel view with her. Then she took a deep breath in and, with a slow nod of her head, sighed, ‘Oh, I see.’
    â€˜See what?’
    â€˜You’re not bothered, then?’
    â€˜Why should I be bothered? If the silly old fool wants to plunge into the deep end of the matrimonial pool for a second time, why is it anything to me?’
    The body language of my father and Ada had been instructive and told me at once that something had changed. They sat in my living room on the sofa, perhaps a little bit closer than they ever had previously, whilst on my father’s face was a slight but noticeable smirk, one that I always associated with him when he had achieved some success in one of his lunatic schemes. Little did I know how lunatic this particular scheme was, although there was the usual kerfuffle that is associated with my dad and his doings before Max and I were released from our state of naive ignorance.
    â€˜We got a lift with the AA man. Very nice, he was,’ he said, sipping some red wine. Ada nodded; she was