FATHER AND SON

There were times when Dan felt Mildred’s English superficiality as a
sort of judgement. Flurry (short for Florence, a great name among men
of the MacCarthy family) was their child. Bawn and Tim were Dan’s
children by his first wife. Mildred had made an excellent
stepmother. Girls, even small ones, soon get to know whether they have
the right accent and the right frock, and, as Mildred knew everything
about accents and frocks, Bawn and she got on fine. Boys are
different. Boys don’t care about frocks. Tim was older than Bawn: he
stole, he told lies, and; to show his contempt for Mildred, hacked his
way through the house in his heaviest boots, speaking in a common
Cockney accent. Mildred had been very patient with him, explaining
everything, affecting nothing and boxing his ears when he cheeked
her. But it hadn’t worked. One day he kicked her savagely. Mildred, a
woman of great spirit and resource, had kicked him back, but Dan, mad
with rage, had decided he must go to boarding school. Mildred, who had
been to a boarding school herself, thought that this was really taking
things too far.

‘Oh, Danny, you do make an awful fuss about things,’ she sighed in her
weary, well-bred way. ‘Anyway, it’s nothing to the kick I gave him,
He’ll be sore for weeks, the poor little bugger.’

In spite of her words Dan knew she was as conventional as they came;
it went with the accent and the frocks, and it suited him fine, but,
he knew that though they got on better than most husbands and wives,
she still had the guilty feeling that he was Min’s husband, not hers,
Tim’s father, not Flurry’s.

During the holidays, Min wrote to say that she would like to see the
kids again before they grew out of her knowledge and asked Dan to find
her a room for the weekend in some pub nearby. As he read the letter
he was full of foreboding. It was as though he were being haunted by
the ghost of his first marriage.

‘Something wrong?’ Mildred asked when the children had left the dining
room.

‘Only Min wanting to come for the weekend,’ he said expressionlessly.

‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘Only that it may prove a little awkward. She wants us to get her a
room.’

‘Why on earth doesn’t she stay here? There’s heaps of room...Or do
you think she might be embarrassed?’ she asked, seeing his face.

‘I wasn’t thinking of her,’ he replied coldly.

‘Then why don’t I take Flurry to Helen’s for the weekend and let you
have the house to yourselves?’ she asked reasonably.

‘Can you ever think sensibly for five minutes?’ he asked angrily.

‘Really, ducky,’ she sighed in that maddening, superficial way of
hers, ‘you do make a crisis out of everything.’

‘Let’s put it the other way round,’ he said sternly. ‘Suppose you’d
been married instead of me, and your first attempt came here to see
the kids, would you have liked my going off with Flurry and leaving
you here with him?’

This reversal of parts was a favourite device of Dan’s, guaranteed,
according to him, to produce a really objective estimate of any
situation, though it never seemed to work with Mildred. Her long,
bony, aristocratic face took on its usual smooth smile.

‘Really, Dan, one of these days you’ll end up like a fly, walking
upside down on the ceiling.’

‘Never mind about me,’ he said curtly. ‘Isn’t it true?’

‘Then in that case I can go to Helen’s with an easy mind,’ she said
blandly. ‘What have I said wrong now, ducky?’ she asked when she saw
his scowl.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

And she wouldn’t. It was no use telling Mildred that nothing in the
world was so over as a marriage that was over. It was not until she
was leaving with Flurry for Helen’s that she really realized how
depressed he was.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t go,’ she said.

‘It’s a bit late to change your mind now,’ he said, rubbing it in.

‘Danny, don’t let Min upset you!’ she begged. ‘I’m a silly bitch, but
you knew that when you married me. And I’m not going to get more
sensible with age.’

He made a suitable gloomy reply, and later set off down the road to
meet Min’s train. He knew it was all going to be desperately
unpleasant.

In fact, it proved the opposite. Min came out of the little suburban
train, holding out her arms to him as though she had only been away
for a holiday. She was older and fatter, and he thought she had a
shade too much make-up on, but she was as lively and natural as
ever. Within five minutes they were sitting in the bar opposite the
station, chattering away like the old cronies they were. They had so
much to talk about; there were so many of the old neighbours who had
died or married or had families. When they got out of the bus and Min
saw the big house, with Bawn peering anxiously out the front door for
them, she pretended to change her mind.

‘Is this Mildred’s house?’ she asked. ‘My God, I feel like the new
maid!’

Bawn came running up the path and Min gave her a great hug.

‘Child of grace!’ she cried. “Where did you get the looks from? Not
from your father?’

Tim appeared, a bit red and a fraction of a second off the beat, and
Dan could have murdered him. He had a heavy, sullen, angry face,
though he did warm up a little when he saw Min.

‘Oh, Tim,’ she cried, ‘you’ve grown such a great big man!’

Dan and she got the supper together. She was all lit up, and it
wasn’t only the effect of the children and himself. It was plain
inquisitiveness as well. She poked her nose shamelessly into cupboards
and rooms, commenting loudly on the taste and utility of
everything. Dan suddenly felt curiously guilty at having put her to
sleep in the spare room. He could hardly have put her anywhere else,
because there wasn’t room for another bed in Bawn’s little den, but
with all of them together, it seemed. uncouth, as if he were
emphasizing a gap that was already only too plain.

It wasn’t that she attracted him any more but that he could not erect
artificial barriers between himself and someone who at any moment
could let drop a remark that brought back all their past life
together. Her remarks about the neighbours had already reminded him of
Tim’s infant crush on the tall girl next door who used to advise him
about the garden. Those two nice sisters and their kindly old
mother—how could he have forgotten them so completely?

The telephone rang and Dan answered it. It was a long distance call,
and he was sure it must be Mildred, reassuring herself about
him. Instead, it turned out to be a man, who apparently wanted to
reassure himself about Min, and he found himself raging against
Mildred—and the man, Then he grinned, amused at his own touchiness.

Min returned from the hall, red and laughing, obviously delighted at
having been rung up and embarrassed at having to explain it.

‘Just a friend giving me a tip for the big race tomorrow,’ she said
modestly.

‘Oh, still keen on the horses!’ said Dan. The horses had been one of
the things they disagreed on. He was a prudent and censorious man, and
Min had far too much wildness in her for his taste.

He felt a bit of a fool when he went to her room to show her how the
electric fire worked. She did one of her sly schoolgirl acts, joining
her hands behind her back and raising herself on her toes. She felt
none of his awkwardness and was getting great fun out of his
embarrassment. At last, she made him laugh too and he threw a cushion
at her.

‘Ah, don’t stop, Dan,’ she said. ‘Mildred’s made a proper toff out of
you.’

She went to the kitchen and made another pot of tea, and they sat over
the electric fire till late into the night, discussing the children.

‘Of course, Bawn is lovely,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Anybody would get
on with Bawn.’

‘Ah, Tim is all right too,’ Dan said defensively. ‘It’s just that he’s
so moody. That’s why I sent him to school. Not that it seems to have
done him much good.’

‘I fancy there are times when Tim hates the whole damn lot of us,’ Min
said. ‘He’s more sensitive than Bawn, really.’

‘Don’t let me disillusion you,’ he said and kissed her goodnight.

‘Goodnight, love,’ she said, and gave him a warm embrace in which
there was no mockery. After it he found himself very wakeful. He was
all churned up inside, going over his own conduct and Min’s and
getting so heated over it that he felt like going downstairs and
having it all out with her again. Then he wondered if she wasn’t
feeling the same. For a few moments he even fancied he heard her
crying.

Crying in a sleeping house had always been a peculiar horror to
him. He imagined he heard it even when there was nothing to hear but
the wind. It was like no one you knew crying about anything you could
understand. It was more like the whole world crying in its sleep. A
couple of times this weakness had got him into extraordinary
situations, even to holding the hand of a drunken old woman in a
boarding house while she complained of her daughter-in-law. Faces you
saw in the street or about the house rarely told you anything; it was
only faces that you scarcely saw at all that told the truth.

Now, in his cautious way he got up and stood on the landing for
several minutes listening. Either the crying had ceased or he had been
imagining it. All the same, he tiptoed down the stairs and listend at
Min’s door till he heard her breathing evenly.

Next morning, when he returned from a brief visit to the office, Bawn
beckoned him into the kitchen.

‘Daddy, I wish you’d talk to Tim about the way he’s carrying on,’ she
said.

‘Why? What’s Tim up to now?’ he asked with no great interest. As a
small child Bawn had made quite an art of getting Tim into trouble and
she hadn’t altogether got over it yet.

“He won’t even make an effort to be nice to Mummy,’ she said
angrily. ‘I’ll fing something at him if he goes on. He just sits there
with his book and his disapproving air as if Mummy were the Penitent
Thief or the Prodigal Son or something.’

‘It’s probably only strangeness, you know,’ Dan said defensively.

‘You can call it that,’ snapped Bawn. ‘I call it plain snobbery. Mum
isn’t good enough for him now. And the trouble is, she cares more
about that fellow’s big toe than about my whole body.’

Dan reflected for a moment on the remarkable understanding that girls
showed of their mothers, and wondered whether this wasn’t the reason
that their mothers usually appreciated them so little.

‘If I catch him at it, I’ll knock the snobbery out of him,’ said
Dan. ‘Where is Mummy?’

‘In your room, dolling herself up,’ Bawn replied guiltily.  ‘You
can’t even see your face in that old bathroom mirror.’

Dan gave a snort of amusement. It was plain that whatever grief Tim
had caused them, Min and Bawn had been having a heavenly time, trying
on Mildred’s dresses. However differently they might feel about her
personality, they were at one when it came to her frocks.

‘By the way, did Mummy tell you her friend had bought a new house?’
Bawn asked, trying hastily to divert him.

‘Which friend?’ asked Dan cautiously.

‘The lady who rang her up last night.’

‘Oh, the _elderly_ lady,’ said Dan, amused at Min’s access of modesty
and relieved that there were limits even to Bawn’s understanding of
her. ‘Yes, I believe she goes in for house property.’

But he also realized that Bawn had not been making it up about
Tim. At lunch he was sulky, silent, superior, scowling at them all
from under heavy brows.

When Min asked him when they got up at school he corrected her
bluntly.

‘We rise at seven,’ he said. ‘We retire at nine thirty,’ he added.

‘And when do you go to bed?’ asked Dan.

‘At nine thirty,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

Bawn handled it magnificently in a way that, Dan knew, would have
really endeared her to Mildred. A high-spirited, working-class, Irish
girl in a snobbish English school, she had a hard time of it, but she
made it sound so funny that Dan and Min both laughed outright. The
attention they paid her seemed to irritate Tim.

‘It’s entirely your own fault if they treat you like that,’ he said in
his deep authoritative voice.

‘How is it Bawn’s fault, Tim?’ Dan asked, trying to keep the rancour
out of his tone.

‘She behaves exactly like the Stuarts,’ said Tim. ‘She treats other
girls as the Stuarts treated their parliaments.’

‘I’d sooner be Charles II than your old Cromwell anyway,’ Bawn said.

‘I was not defending Cromwell,’ said Tim.

‘And how do you manage, Tim?’ asked Dan.

‘I model my conduct on Queen Elizabeth,’ Tim said solemnly.

‘And if Queen Elizabeth had the girls in our school to handle, she
mighn’t be such a model either,’ spluttered Bawn.

That evening they all went to the pictures and had tea in the kitchen
when they got home. Having had one restless night Dan went straight to
bed. This was a bad mistake, as he discovered when he tried to
sleep. He put the light on again and began to read. Then he thought he
heard a noise downstairs and opened the bedroom door. This time there
could be no mistake about it. He could distinctly hear the weeping. He
went straight downstairs to Min’s room. He would have done the same if
Mildred had been there. All he wanted was to take that stupid,
pig-headed woman in his arms and comfort her for the wrong she had
done to himself and the children.

‘Asleep, Min?’ he asked, opening her door.

Her breathing was enough to tell him he had guessed wrongly. ‘Then
real panic swept over him. He closed Min’s door quietly and rushed
back to Tim’s room. He switched on the light.

‘What’s going on in this house?’ he asked in a jovial voice,

Tim started up with a brave show of astonishment, but his red eyes
betrayed him.

“Hullo, Dad,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Too early for me,’ Dan said, sitting on the side of his bed. ‘I
suppose you didn’t hear any noise?’

‘No, Dad,’ said Tim. ‘Did you?’

‘My imagination, I suppose,’ said Dan.

‘It might be the pictures,’ said Tim. ‘Pictures keep me awake too.’

‘No, I don’t think it’s the pictures,’ said Dan. ‘I think it’s having
Mother in the house, don’t you?’

‘What’s that, Dad?’ Tim asked, sitting up and feeling for his hand.

‘Don’t you find it upsetting, after all these years?”

‘I suppose I do,’ said Tim, and Dan saw the flash of fresh tears,

And suddenly Dan realized that he must tell the child everything, good
and bad. Dan was a cautious, secretive man. He knew perfectly well
that more harm was done by well intentioned people who tried to
explain themselves than was ever done by those who kept their mouths
shut, But he knew as well that Tim and he were in the same trouble and
that Tim could not handle it alone. This was something that even
Mildred wouldn’t understand. It was something that could happen only
between father and son. He hadn’t even told Mildred the full story of
his married life, and now he went through it to the end, not seeking
words, nor evading them when they came—trying to be fair to Min but
not trying too hard. After all, it wasn’t fairness the boy wanted but
some understanding of the human reality behind, even if it hurt.

Tim was in a state of enchantment. He sat up in bed, his hands about
his knees, his eyes fixed on Dan’s as though he might miss some shade
of meaning. It reminded Dan of the way he had sat years before,
listening to _Treasure Island_. Then he had tried to project himself
into a world where boys were strong and brave. Now he was trying to
project himself into a world in which grown-ups were hurt and
powerless, striking out wildly at people they loved.

‘So that’s how it is,’ Dan concluded gently. ‘I was fond of your
mother once, and I’m still fond of her, but we’ve been apart too
long. She has new friends, like the man who rang her up the first
night she came. I have new friends. The real reason I wasn’t sleeping
was that I’d behaved like a pig. I didn’t go to her room to say
goodnight as I should have done.’

‘Why didn’t you, Dad?’ asked Tim, and Dan knew he wasn’t being merely
critical. He was trying to get Dan to explain to him his own
behaviour.

‘I suppose I was modelling my conduct on Queen Elizabeth,’ said Dan
with a grin and Tim smiled sadly. Probably that bit of rudeness had
been on his conscience too.

‘For all I knew,’ said Dan, ‘she was lying awake, brooding on it. I
knew it might be years before I could make up for it. I knew one of us
might die even before I got the chance. That’s how the damn thing
happens, Tim. You pass a room, and wonder if it’s worth your while
dropping in, and day after day for the rest of your life, you pass it
again and feel you’d give anything on God’s earth for the chance of
one word with somebody who isn’t there to hear it. Nobody knows how
cruel he is until it’s too late. So I just went down to see if Mother
was asleep.’

‘And was she?’ asked Tim.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll make up for it tomorrow. Good night,
old man.’

‘Goodnight, Dad,’ said Tim. And then, in a sniffle, ‘Don’t worry about
Mummy. She knows you like her all right.’

Dan noticed the slight emphasis on the ‘you’. Half an hour later he
heard Tim’s door open and shut. This was something he hadn’t
calculated on, but he decided it was better to leave it that way. If
it was Min’s turn for a sleepless night she might as well resign
herself to it.

The weekend was a great success, and the children were to spend part
of the Christmas holidays with Min. They all saw her off and the
children’s eyes were red. When they sat together in the front room it
was as though the bottom of the world had dropped out for them. Then
Tim suddenly started up and charged into the hall.

‘There’s Mildred,’ he said, as though he had been waiting for her and
from the hallway Dan heard his voice. ‘Hullo, Mildred, welcome home!
Hullo, Flurry, old scout! You sit down and I’ll get the tea, Mildred.’

‘Don’t attempt it,’ Bawn cried, storming out after him. ‘You’ll only
make a mess of the kitchen again.’

‘Please, Bawn, put Flurry to bed for me,’ said Mildred. ‘Poor Flurry
is exhausted.’

‘I am not,’ screamed Flurry. ‘I want to play.’

Dan saw that Mildred only wanted to get him alone. She was all lit up
about something, and though he was glad to see her, he suspected her
of making fun of him.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you know?’ she whispered. ‘Didn’t you hear? What on earth have
you done to Tim? Do you know he kissed me?’

(1954)