Not My Father's Son (21 page)

“Oh aye,” he said again, and began walking up the yard away from us, whistling for his dog as he did so.

The walk was a very long one. We went all the way down to the other end of the estate, nearly to the Garden House where as a young boy I’d gone to pick the raspberries that now adorned its once ornate terraces. At this point, my dad turned on Tom, goading him about how often he saw his eldest son, from his previous marriage. It was as though our father really was trying to equate his actions with our failed relationships, and perhaps he had a point, though not the one I am sure he intended. A successful relationship requires a level of self-knowledge and comfort with oneself, and neither Tom nor I had much of that at the moment. We were stumbling towards it, but only just. These past few months had completely changed us both. We had spent so many nights on the phone, relaying to each other a new memory, backing up dim visions with the assurance that the other had the same memory. That what we remembered was real.

It is a startling thing, the need to feel utterly believed. Memories that were so tender and tentative could not be entrusted to anyone who might possibly doubt them during those months I was sequestered in Primrose Hill,
sorting myself out
. Tom and I were only just beginning to believe and fully understand the scope of what we’d been through, so it was so important to us to hear that we were accepted and understood.

Luckily we had waited until our arsenal of memories was so vivid that our father’s most intense scare tactics and mind games could not shake us. But believe me, he tried his hardest. Nobody plays nice when he is cornered, but for a man like him it was the most uncomfortable and painful place to be, and he was not equipped for it, aside from falling back on his default behaviors of manipulation and intimidation.

My most vivid memory of our conversation is of my father’s utter silence. I had said that I knew he must remember some of what we were speaking of, and his silence, aside from a whistle for the dog and the vicious thump to the inside of his boot with his stick, was proof that he did.

“What was your childhood like?” I asked him. “Did Granddad hit you?” I was both fascinated and scared about the prospect of my father not being able to break a circle of abuse because that might mean I would be unable to too. He ignored me.

“Did you never feel bad about hitting us?” Again he started off in front of us, desperate to avoid. But we were in the middle of the estate’s most huge and sprawling drive. There were no cars coming, there was nobody around. There was nowhere to run. I scampered after him.

“D’you think you hit us because you were so unhappy in your marriage?”

He turned to me, fury in his eyes.

“My marriage was over four years after Tommy was born,” he spat.

I stopped in my tracks, shocked, and watched him as he walked away.

“Thanks,” I called after him. “That’s two years before I was even born. That makes me feel great.”

Tom was beside me, his hand on the small of my back, propelling me down the drive to catch up with him.

“Why didn’t you leave then?” I demanded when we had caught up with him.

“I had kids to think of,” he replied with a mixture of indignation and righteousness that was both galling and horribly predictable. Of course he would be able to justify his presence in our lives, the very presence that allowed his sons to be repeatedly abused, with his fatherly duty to protect them.

“I had kids to think of,” he actually said, staring at the very kids who were then doing their best to explain to this man that he had never once thought of their welfare. That his care of them had not been care at all.

“Where were they?” I said to his retreating back. “Where were these kids you were thinking of? Cos they sure as hell weren’t Tom and me.”

His only response was the usual litany of spitting, banging his boot with his stick, and whistling for the dog.

Finally we were back at the house and wrapping things up. We had said everything we had wanted to. We had countered every trick and bullying technique he had tried to pull with solidarity and strength. I had thought he was actually going to hit me once, when I’d said that if he thought that his abusive behavior was not connected to unhappiness or events in his own life, then he was basically admitting that he was psychotic. It was a big word, I knew. But seriously. Again his stick had banged against his boot several times, and eventually he turned his gaze towards me and stared deep into my eyes. I knew what he wanted to do. I had seen that look many, many times before. But what would happen now if he tried it? I would most certainly retaliate. Tom would come to my aid. During this stare-off I visualized my father on the ground, restrained and spitting like the angry, bewildered animal he was.

But he backed down. “I am not a psychopath,” he seethed and marched ahead once more.

“Thank you,” I said, and I truly meant it. “Thank you for letting us come here today and get this off our chests. I hope you understand how much we needed to do this. And I hope you understand that we want to move on and put this behind us, and if you want to have a relationship with us, we are willing to have one with you. But you’ll need to make an effort; you have to reach out. You need to show us that you care about continuing. We are not coming to see you out of duty any more. This has to be a two-way thing. So the ball’s in your court.”

We got back in the car, and as soon as we were out of sight of the house we both burst into screams of joy and relief. I couldn’t believe we had done it! Not just done it. We had triumphed! We had spoken honestly and without malice, we had stood up to him, we had truly given back to him that which was not ours and which we should never have had to deal with in the first place.

“You did great, Alan!” Tom smiled at me. “And you hardly looked at the script at all!”

As we were getting into the car, our father had started to back away from us and turned quickly towards the house. As he did so I could see there were tears in his eyes. I could tell we had truly connected with him. Maybe there was hope that he would step up to the plate after all.

I never heard from him again.

I
t’s amazing how quickly your life can return to normal. Well, that is if your normal is getting up at 5
A.M
. and spending a couple of hours transforming yourself into a lady and then pretending said lovely lady is in various states of distress, mourning, or sexual compromise.

With each day that passed, I filled my head a little more with my work and my coworkers, and every day brought a new scene, new actors, often a new decade. And of course new costumes. Desrae was not a twin set and pearls kind of gal. Even off duty from the club, and doing a spot of light shopping with her adopted daughter, she dressed to the nines. The runaway, Cathy, was played by Joanna Vanderham, a fellow Scot I nicknamed “Perth” because of her birthplace, and with whom I spent many a morning chortling away at the latest ensemble I had donned.

Cape Town was also in a state of frenzy about the looming World Cup soccer tournament. The whole city felt like it was in one of those home improvement TV shows where someone is tricked into going away for a couple of days and in their absence loads of people descend on their house and garden and remodel them in a flash. Each morning on the way to work I would see new trees along the side of the road that had been planted in the night, sidewalks being repaved, the entire population united in giving their city a sparkly makeover to counter the glare of the world’s attention. It was an exciting time to be there, to be sure, but also an anxious one. Just like on those TV shows, I worried that they wouldn’t be finished in time, and all the work would be for naught. But of course, just like on those TV shows, they pulled it out of the bag, and the world descended and was in awe at this gleaming metropolis, little knowing that the paint was barely dry.

Then of course the tournament started and the makeover frenzy turned to the competition. The South Africans called their team “Bafana Bafana,” which means “boys boys.” I loved that. Imagine how much more affectionate it would feel if Scotland, sadly a nonqualifier for this World Cup, called its national team “lads lads” or “fellas fellas”!

Sometimes, when we were working during a match, our filming would have to be halted due to the sheer volume of the locals’ cheering when Bafana Bafana scored. Sometimes we had to stop because the cheering came from some of our crew! And then of course there were the
vuvuzellas,
plastic horns that became a constant soundscape during my time in Cape Town. At first I found them fun and spirited. I myself am no stranger to a good loud whistle or kazoo at certain times of celebration. But the sheer volume, and the sheer
volume
of the
vuvuzellas
made them soon lose their original appeal and eventually become almost maddening. If you saw some of the games on television and despaired at their constant cacophony, just imagine living in a city where that sound was a constant 24-7. After a while I perfected a way to zone them out, but I was only able to do so when they were played en masse. A lone
vuvuzella
being blown in the car park beneath my apartment in the middle of the night was enough to send me spiraling into nail-scratching irritation.

It was a heady time to be in South Africa, though, so much so that when I returned to my trailer on the Friday of my first week back to find an e-mail from my office with the subject “DNA test results,” I was jolted back into a world I had almost forgotten existed. I was ashamed at how quickly I had moved on.

O
nce, a long time ago, when I was a very little boy and before the troubles started, my father went into the hospital for an operation. I know it was a long time ago and before it all went bad because I remember that on the day he was to return home I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me when the school bus dropped me off at the gates in order to get home and see him. I had missed him, you see.

When I got there, breathless, he was nowhere to be seen. I looked in the living room, the kitchen, his office, even the Good Room that nobody ever went into except at Christmas. Where could he be? I went upstairs to my parents’ bedroom to see if he was there, but no.

Finally I wondered if he hadn’t been released from hospital after all, but made one last-ditch attempt and opened the door to the spare bedroom downstairs. That’s another reason why I know it was a long time ago before it all went bad—that bedroom became my mum’s shortly afterwards, but then it was still the spare.

I opened the door quickly and rushed in, not expecting to see anything, let alone the horror I encountered. My father was asleep on his back, his face a mess of bruises and bloody bandages. He looked like Frankenstein’s monster. I was terrified.

He didn’t stir, thankfully, and I immediately turned on my heels and left the room, pulled the door carefully shut, and walked away through to the kitchen to set the table and do my chores.

I decided it hadn’t happened. I hadn’t seen him.

When my mum came home, she asked me if I’d seen my father and I lied and said no. We went through together to the spare room and woke him up. He still scared me, but the shock of seeing him had been diminished. I pretended to be more shocked than I actually was. I acted, maybe properly for the first time. My parents comforted me.

For the first time in my childhood, but certainly not the last, I encountered an upsetting experience and decided the best way to deal with it was to pretend it had never happened. And so it didn’t.

Here’s what did happen: my father’s broken nose was straightened and his breathing and sinus problems were over, and during his recovery period he was tended to by a nurse whom he began an affair with, and all our lives were changed forever.

M
y hand was trembling as I clicked open the e-mail. There was an attachment with the actual medical report, and for a few moments I couldn’t see anything but a blur of letters and numbers. Eventually I saw that on the left there was a list of the various components of the overall test and then two columns on the right that showed my results and Tom’s. At the end of every single line the numbers were the same. I looked down the list. The same series of figures. Every one.

I was gasping. Perhaps the fact that I had so willingly immersed myself in my imaginary life here in South Africa made the shock even more pronounced. I kept staring at the lists and columns in front of me, and eventually they began to vibrate and go out of focus. I sat up and walked in a circle and immediately sat down again. I e-mailed my assistant.

Brian, I’m in a state. I want to be really sure. Just confirm to me that this means Tom and I have the same father. Thanks. Alan

I got up and began changing out of Desrae’s costume. There was a knock on the door and a wardrobe assistant came in to collect my clothes. I handed them to her in a daze and wished her a good night. Then I heard the familiar
ping
of an incoming e-mail on my computer. I leapt back into the chair and opened it.

Yes, your DNA and Tom’s DNA absolutely match. He is your father. I’m so sorry.

Immediately rage overwhelmed me. I opened my mouth and let out a roar so deep and primal and furious that I scared myself. My knees buckled and I flopped down into the chair again.

I
’d rushed home from work every night for weeks hoping that the letter would have come, but each night I was disappointed.

I had a job now, and so my father had less sway over me. I didn’t have to work on the estate any more, except during times when extra hands were really needed, like the previous Christmas when I’d worked weekends and evenings selling trees. People would ring our bell and I’d walk them to the tractor shed where, on pulling open the doors, a blast of intense pine from the hundreds of felled spruce trees piled high against the walls assaulted your nose.