On the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel my father laid an unsteady hand on my shoulder and steered me into the library for a little chat, as he called it. He bade me sit on an upright chair in front of his desk while with ponderous solemnity he locked the door and pocketed the key. Then he sat down opposite me with his fists clenched before him, grimaced over a stifled sour belch, and gave me briefly one of his awful icy grins. He was half shot already.
‘Well Gabriel?’ he began heartily. ‘I suppose you know what we're here to talk about? I've dropped enough hints, eh? No? O…O well now.’ His eyes slid away from mine and gazed dully past me toward the window. It was a restless bright day, full of wind and misty light. The sight of the flushed spring garden seemed to annoy him. He unclenched his fists and drummed his fingers on the green blotter, regarding me with one eyebrow raised and one eyetooth bared. For Papa, the ideal of a son never fused with my reality. On those rare occasions when he could not avoid acknowledging my existence, it was with a vaguely disconcerted eye, a faintly rueful frown, that he considered me, his little pride and joy.
‘Well what I want to say to you Gabriel is, this house…’ He waved a hand before him, lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and sat quite still for a moment, frowning. Then he pushed back his chair and wrenched open a drawer, took out a flat leather-covered flask and tipped a shot of brandy into the cap, and hurriedly, almost angrily, threw the liqour down his throat. ‘Ach! frightful stuff. Anyway, Gabriel, this house, what with your mother sick, and, well, everything, I've been thinking-and your Aunt Martha thinks so too-that it's not really the place for a growing boy to grow up, you know? Look, son, what I'm really trying to say, now I'll be honest with you, straight from the shoulder, between men, what I'm saying is…’ He was silent once more, and looked at me glassy-eyed, helpless, his mouth moving feebly. Out came the flask again, and this time he left it standing by him, his right-hand man. Eventually, having circled the subject for as long as was possible, he came to the point. I was to be sent away to school.
I did not react at all to this supposedly stunning notion, but sat with my hands folded and waited for him to continue. He was surprised at my calmness, and disappointed too, I think. Did he expect tears and tantrums, a fit on the floor and drumming heels? If he did he knew nothing of his son. He rose heavily and plodded to the window, where he stood looking out, and the fingers of his clasped hands played with each other behind his back.
‘Mist is lifting,’ he said. ‘Be a grand day presently. I remember when I was your age, here. Better times.’
He came back again and sat down with a sigh, pressing his knuckles to his forehead. He took another drink.
‘It was easier then to be…for your grandfather to…I mean I was happy! I had plenty to occupy me, friends, people used to come here. The parties we had! And then Martha, your Aunt Martha and I were very close, very…close.’ He glanced at me swiftly, with a shifty eye. ‘We were like pals, great pals. We had grand times, plenty of laughs, parties, all that. Things were better.’ He gazed glumly at his hands, shaking his head sorrowfully over the dead past. ‘People had more time, it went slower then, there was more…time. Yes. Great pals. And, you see, your Mama is going away too, into a…into a home.’
We were silent. He was getting old, beginning to crack. It was nothing to do with wrinkles or gray hairs, but it was a slackening of an inner fibre, a loosening of grip, his great word, grip. Keep a grip, boy, just keep a grip and you'll be all right. One did not need to be strong, only strong enough to keep one's weakness hidden, that was what he meant, I suppose. I watched him there, guzzling cheap brandy, good old Papa. What does one feel for a father? Resentment, disappointment-love? What do they mean, these words? Once I had respected and feared him, captivated by his violence, his arrogance, his pain. Now I only disliked him, found him distasteful. He would not send me away, for I was gone away already. Birchwood was dead. He started up again, like an ancient engine.
‘I haven't much advice for you, boy. Always try to play fair. Nobody likes a sneak, you know the kind of chap I mean, a bit of a mama's boy, a cissy, always mooning around the place, always…’ He stopped, perhaps realising that it was precisely my type he had described. ‘Well anyway, be a man, learn what life is about. Do the right thing! That's what I mean. And you won't go wrong.’ He lifted a clenched fist between us and grinned again. I knew what was coming. ‘Grip,’ he said softly. ‘It's your only man.’
For a moment he was his old self again, agate-eyed, bright-toothed, the tiger of Birchwood, but the moment passed, and he was back to brooding, sighing through his nose, grinding his teeth. He sat sideways at the desk with his legs crossed and one elbow on the blotter, his chin sunk on his breast. The flask was empty. I turned away from him. How gay the garden seemed, how bright, beyond this room with its dead books and dust, its weariness. Michael crossed the lawn, a small distressed figure against the windswept trees. He disappeared behind the glasshouses, going toward the hayshed. Papa stirred. The chair groaned under his heavy thighs.
‘Yes, learn what life is about, the hard way, the way we all had to. It's not all poems and roses, take it from me, no, not by a long chalk. I learned, aye. I was like you once, I was, full of dreams. O I was going to do great things, great bloody things, make a mark on the world, yes indeed. I soon learned.’
He stood up, faltered, clapped a hand to the desk to steady himself, and then began to pace up and down behind me, waving his arms excitedly. Bits of white grime gathered at the corners of his mouth.
‘No bed of roses, that's for certain. You have to learn that lesson before you go out in the world, because if you don't, take it from me, you'll make a ballocks of it. Look around you, you can start to learn here, anywhere, it doesn't matter a damn. Take a look! Well, what do you see?’ Together we considered the room. ‘Aye. Aye. That's the way it is all right.’
He flung himself down on the chair again and thrust his face across the desk at me, the veins in his neck straining, his bloodless lips parted, eyes brimming with a passionate sorrow and distress, agonised and mute. For fully a minute we sat so, our noses nearly touching. His fervour slowly drained away, leaving his large grey face with its violet shadows and moist eyes lugubrious and weary. When he spoke his voice was a harsh whisper.
‘We get up in the bloody morning, and we go to bed at night, and there's nothing to do. We think we're doing things, making the world sit up and take notice. We give ourselves heartburn, we're so busy running up and down, and all the time, nothing. And we're sick of ourselves. Look into your heart, boy, listen to it. What does it say to you? What does it show? Nothing. And that's what you'll learn is there. Say it after me. Nothing. Say it!’
I turned my face away from him again, to the window, to the wide world. I said softly,
‘Nothing.’
He relaxed, and withdrew his head, an old tortoise, and contemplated me in silence for a moment, nodding slowly, and then he said, in a tone compounded of a little pride and great disgust,
‘You're your father's son, no doubt of that.’
He unlocked the door for me, rattling the key in the lock, and laid his hand awkwardly on my shoulder. The falsity of the gesture made his fingers tremble.