Not My Father's Son (28 page)

The idea that my father would have left anything to us had never crossed my mind, though I had wondered if I would ever receive that letter he had spoken of, the one that originally would have been the harbinger of my true lineage. In the intervening months I had often thought how lucky I had been to have had the chance to talk to him and get to the bottom of all this whilst he was still alive, rather than be presented with a letter after his death. The idea that I would never have had the chance to question him, challenge him, and of course be able to tell him he was wrong was completely inconceivable to me now.

Under the terms of Scots Law you are entitled to a share of your late father’s estate irrespective of his Will. This share is called Legal Rights.

What?! Irrespective of his will?! Scotland has a law that overrules a father’s will?

Legal Rights are calculated by taking the net moveable estate (the moveable estate excludes any property such as houses or flats) and dividing it into two. One half share is made over under the terms of the Will and the second half forms what is known as the legitim or bairns’ part.

It was all starting to come clear. “Bairns” is a Scottish word for children. Basically my country, at some point in its history, saw fit to enact a law to stop errant fathers from not providing for their offspring after their own death.

It is this share that is then divided between the number of children. In your father’s case it would be divided between you and your brother Alan.

Over the next few days my brother and I were thrown into yet another tailspin of my father’s doing. We swung between thinking we should take the money—it was ours, after all, legally—and then thinking that by taking it we would be in some way accepting blood money.

We truly felt that passionately and extremely about it. It wasn’t about the money, though obviously that was a nice surprise; it was more the feeling of being beholden to someone we did not respect, who had made it clear he did not respect or love us.

Both of us were so riled that we were so riled, and we knew our father would have loved to think of us spending so much time agonizing over an edict of his.

Eventually I spoke to the solicitor.

“We haven’t decided exactly what to do yet, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions to clear a few things up,” I began.

“Fire away!” he replied.

“Did my father know that this would be the outcome of his will? I mean would he have been told about this?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” the lawyer said unequivocally. “He would have been told about the Legal Rights issue when he made his will.”

“And so, even though he knew that we were entitled to half his financial estate, he still made a decision to not name us?” I was incredulous, and couldn’t bear to think where this conversation was going.

“That is correct,” the lawyer said.

“So he decided to actively keep us out of his written will in order that we would have to make the decision to take the money that was legally due us?” I responded.

“That would appear to be the case,” came the reply.

I then called my father a name that I rarely use and do not approve of but in this case was the only appropriate moniker for such a loaded and manipulative and cowardly gesture.

So basically my dad
wanted
my brother and me to be having the dilemma we were having right now. It was one last blow to our hearts, one last fuck with our heads.

I could see my father’s face as he was told the ramifications of making his will as he did. I saw him thinking of Tom and me being made to question and struggle and suffer as we interpreted his actions, and enjoying the prospect of us doing so.

That was it for me. After a short chat with Tom I called back the solicitor and told him we were taking the money. I was calling the old bastard’s bluff.

I wanted him to be the provider, finally, of something positive in our lives. I wanted to use the cash to do something as a family that would be happy and meaningful and positive, and I knew exactly what that would be.

M
e, Grant, Tom and his wife, Sonja, and Mary Darling made what I suppose can only be called a pilgrimage to Malaysia, and retraced both my and Tommy Darling’s steps.

We flew from London, and even after a seven-hour layover in Abu Dhabi we arrived not exhausted, but refreshed and lean, as we had slept the sleep of champions in our first-class pods and had massages in the lounges of both our ports of call. I could see, watching Mary Darling, where I got my lounge addiction from.

We had a driver, Khairy, who had been on the
Who Do You Think You Are?
shoot, and were helped by Alan D’Cruz, who had been the show’s fixer, as it is called in filmy circles.

The first night we met up with Alan for drinks at the Coliseum Café, and I could see the gleam in my mother’s eyes as she sat having a drink and imagining she was in a bar where her father had once been.

The next day we went to the Malaysian archives and were shown to a private room by the lovely Gowri. We pored over the correspondence detailing Tommy Darling’s death and the ensuing stream of letters back and forth to Granny. Tom, Mum, and I all marveled at the idea of seeing Granny’s handwriting in a little room of an archive on the other side of the world. We found out more about Tommy Darling’s life there, and again it was wonderful to see my mum so engaged with her father’s legacy.

The next day we went down south towards Cha’ah and I knew to a part of the trip that might be very painful for my mother. I needn’t have worried.

As we turned the corner into the street where Datuk Rahman and Raji Ali lived, I was shocked to see it so busy. Car after car was parked all around the house, and I saw a marquee and crowds of people all waving at us. I realized that these two little old men had got out the bunting, quite literally, for the arrival of the daughter of Tuan Darling.

The whole town seemed to have stopped. All the elders of the village were gathered for a feast at the brothers’ home, and Mary Darling was the guest of honor. If she had not understood the magnetism and the legacy of her father, she must now, surrounded by people who, for the most part, had never known him but who had felt his influence and his charisma in the very fabric of their lives.

After lunch we went to the town square, walked along Darling Walk, and sat in Darling Recreational Park. The brothers told Mary Darling the details they had told me of that morning in 1951. I could see her try to maintain her composure. As fascinating and revelatory as all this was, and as kind and beautiful as these men were, she was still the little girl finally understanding where her father had been. At one point they wanted to take a picture of her at the very spot where he had shot himself. I could see her steel herself for it, not wishing to appear rude, but I could also instantly tell the toll it was taking just imagining the horror.

“Are you okay, Mum?” I asked.

“Yes,” she gulped, unconvincingly.

“You don’t have to take the picture if you don’t want to.”

She signaled to me she didn’t, and I subtly but firmly broke the moment.

At a market I admonished my mum for constantly running off and then made her promise to tell us if she was going to go to a stall in another direction.

“I’m worried I’m going to lose you, Mum,” I had said, and let it hang in the air for a moment before she nodded and we both knew that something had altered forever. It was as though Tommy Darling hung over us, and we all were made aware of the frailty of life, the importance of family, and the power of love.

Eventually we drove to Singapore, and it was there, after we all visited his grave, that I heard my mother say something that made my heart fly. It made me take heart to hear that I had done a good job in arranging this trip, but more importantly, that doing this TV show, in fact, being famous, was all worth it.

I had walked away from the grave and gone to stand under the nearby tree to take a video of everyone else leaving. I was shooting Grant and Mary Darling as they walked towards me, and just before they left my frame I heard my mother say,

“Well, they say dreams do come true. . . .”

When we arrived back in New York, Grant made an observation.

“You know the best thing about this whole trip?” he asked.

“What?” I replied.

“Your father wasn’t mentioned once!”

And it was true. We none of us ever mentioned him at all. Not through some desire to expunge him from this experience, not because we felt awkward that he was inadvertently paying for this amazing odyssey. No, none of that. We just didn’t think of him. He wasn’t that important to us. He no longer had any power over us.

Part Four

T
hat was supposed to be the end, you know.

Under that tree, beneath a cloudless Singaporean sky, with Mary Darling walking past me saying her dream had come true, with the man I love accompanying her, and my amazing brother and sister-in-law following them. That was supposed to be the end of this book.

Then, about eight months later, just after Christmas 2012, Jack, my mum’s companion for twenty-five years, died after a long illness. Grant and I flew to Scotland for the funeral.

The night before the funeral we all stayed over at Mary Darling’s—me, Grant, and Tom. At dinner I said that on our way back from Forfar, where Jack’s funeral was, I’d like to go to Panmure Estate, have a drive around, and show Grant where I’d grown up.

I knew that over the years the estate had ceased to operate as I had known it. The farms and the plantations were divided up, the sawmill closed down, and the various workers’ houses were sold off to whoever wanted them.

We entered from the east gates, late afternoon sun throwing long shadows of the leafless trees across our faces like a strobe machine.

It was so beautiful. I realized I had grown up in spectacular beauty but I hadn’t noticed. I suppose my mind was elsewhere.

We drove the route that Tom and I had walked on that last visit with our father nineteen years before.

We stopped at the bridge and I hopped out of the car and ran the path along the top of the cliff, though it is too leafy and sloping to really call a cliff. I arrived at the stone engagement seat that some earl or other had built at some point for his fiancée to sit on during their courting walks through the forest. Grant ran behind me, trying to keep up, snapping away with his camera.