‘Gus… is it you?’ said my father.
He looked pale and old now, his skin grey from the weeks spent indoors. There was none of the terror left in his eyes at all.
I stared at him and found the image hard to take in. Had this pathetic man blighted my childhood and continued to blight my life to this day?
As I stared, I couldn’t feel any hatred for him. Any hatred I felt was for someone else entirely.
‘Gus, come away in,’ he gasped.
My father held out a hand to me, motioned to his bedside.
The hand looked feeble, bony and withered, the fingertips purple where his weak heart failed to pump enough blood to keep the circulation going.
I stared at his hand and wondered if it really was the same hand that had made me tremble in fear. As I stared I wanted to find the words to say how I felt. How I felt as a boy, and how I felt right now. But I couldn’t find any words at all.
‘I’m glad you came,’ said my father, his voice trembling over his grey lips. ‘I’d hoped you would.’ He coughed, spluttered, grasped for breath. ‘I’d hoped you’d give me a chance to explain.’
I nodded. I still couldn’t find any words. My voice was somewhere else, hidden in the depths of me, to sound a breath felt beyond me.
My father reached out and took my hand, spoke for us both. ‘I know why you came, son. It wasn’t for me. I don’t deserve any visitors. Your sister and brother came, but you stayed away, I don’t fault you for that — you were a different case, but I hoped you would come.’
Why was I different? Why was it me sat there and not Cathy or Michael? He’d fathered three children. The idea that he had singled me out hit like a bolt in the belly.
‘Why?’ I said. The word burned my heart, nearly choked me on the way out.
‘You were the firstborn, son, and I was hard on you.’ He spluttered when he spoke, his dark eyes looked blood red and circled in black. ‘I learnt to be a mite gentler on the others, but the habit with you was hard to break.’
‘Why?’ There it was again. It had always come down to the same question.
‘I had such high hopes for you; my first boy. I wanted you to be my boy, but you were always your own man. I thought I could win you round by being hard on you — it was all I knew. I got what I wanted by being hard, a hard player I was… I thought you needed the same.’
‘You were wrong.’
‘I know it. I know it now, son. I see it now, I do, I see what I did was wrong.’
‘Why didn’t you see it then?’ I spoke through my teeth, jaw clamped tight. ‘That was when I needed you to see it.’
‘I saw what was in you, and it wasn’t the same as was in me, Angus. I wanted to change it. I wanted to make you more like me.’
‘I could never be like you.’ I spat out the words. I wanted to look at him when I said them, but I couldn’t face him.
‘You are better off being nothing like me,’ he said, ‘my flower bloomed only briefly.’
‘I never missed it… and neither did Mam.’
‘I know it. But now the Lord’s close to his harvesting it feels like I finally understand.’ My father brought his hands up to his face, tried to cover the tears in his eyes. ‘You are a very different man to me, different entirely, I tried to shape you the only way I knew how, but I was wrong. You cannot mould a child, it’s wrong to try. The best you can do is live your own life well and hope the child follows your example.’
For the first time in my life I thought I understood something of him. I saw he felt sorry, I didn’t need to hear the word.
‘Angus, son, you have a good head on them shoulders. I always knew that. It only confused me though. I never knew what to do with you. Me a muck savage, how could I?’
I looked at him. ‘It’s all right,’ I said.
‘No, son, you don’t understand. I know I’ve ruined you. All these years though, it’s been too much, too much to think of what could have been.’
‘Stop now.’
‘I was a coward. It was hurt pride that sent you away, pushed you away like I always did. And why? Jesus, son, I’m sorry. I was a fool then, but we’re always learning right to the end so we are. That’s why it’s never too late, it can’t ever be too late to change, to say you’re sorry, can it?’
I looked at my father, wasted away in the bed before me. He looked exhausted now, the effort shown in his face shocked me.
‘No,’ I said.
Wasted. Wasn’t that what he had done with most of his life? Wasted it away. Playing for his country, the adulation, it all meant nothing to him now he was dying.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, something in me felt sorry for him, the old man dying before me needed comfort, ‘we all make mistakes.’
‘Don’t make mine, please.’ As he closed his eyes it was like watching a light go out inside him.
I gripped my father’s hand tight, then left his bedside.
I closed the door and went back downstairs, where my mother sat waiting for me. She rose as I entered the room.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘I think he’s gone, Mam.’
61
On the day of the funeral my mother hung a black crepe scarf on the door of the family home. A white card told when the remains would be taken to the kirkyard.
I tried to straighten my tie in the mirror, not easy when you find it hard to look at yourself.
I didn’t know how to feel about my father’s passing. He felt sorry, yeah, but the memories were still there. Every time I felt sympathy sneaking up on me I had to ask was it really myself I felt sorry for?
All I did know, the person I was wasn’t the person I wanted to be any more. My father had tried to shape me with lashings and harsh words, but look what he’d done. Look what I was. A waster, basically. An alkie loser.
Deep down though, I knew I couldn’t blame him. I’d been over it a million times. If I’d had it better, who’s to say I would be any different? Kids who are showered with affection develop their own problems. They go into the wider world looking for a kind of love they’ll never attain. My problems felt like mine alone. For years I’d been nurturing them. Perhaps now it was time to let them go. I knew that was what my father had tried to show me.
The coffin was balanced on the dining-room table, my mother sat beside it, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Cathy stood beside her, a hand placed delicately on her back.
‘The others… are they coming to the house?’ I asked.
‘In a while. Michael’s talking to the television people.’
‘The telly?’ I wondered why Michael had been asked to do this, I was the eldest, and Christ, I had the media experience.
‘They’re doing a slot for the news.’
My mother spoke up: ‘Do you think anyone will remember him?’
‘Mam, he was a big name in his day,’ I said. ‘There’ll be loads of interest.’
I knew this wasn’t the case. Football had moved on. To the fans of today, he was a relic. A strange remnant of a bygone era when men were men.
‘Och, I don’t know, it’s all that David whatsisname these days. One married to the skinny girl off that Spice group.’
‘David Beckham,’ I said. ‘We can be grateful he’s nothing like that pretty boy. My dad never once wore shin guards; can’t see Becks taking ninety minutes of tackles like that.’
I’d surprised myself. Here I was defending my father.
‘Do you know what George Best said about Beckham? “He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn’t score many goals. Apart from that he’s all right.”’
A few smiles were raised. For once, I’d done some good.
‘Angus, son,’ said my mother, ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
I knelt down, beside her. ‘Sure, anything.’
‘Now, I don’t want you to feel you have to say yes — really, I don’t want that.’
‘Mam, what is it?’
‘There are some men from your father’s old club coming to help carry the coffin… and there’s Michael, but I thought…?’