L'Homme Tranquille

by W.R. James

Father died today. Which he didn’t, it was more than a week ago, but I wanted to start this like that because I wanted it to be like the book by Camus. That’s why I called this L'Homme Tranquille, The Quiet Man, because of the books by Camus, especially the one about his childhood, unfinished, Le Premier Homme. That sounds right, it fits. It fits because it’s unfinished, and because he died too. That’s what this is, what I’m trying to do. Not to write a book, but finish this, my life with and without my father. To quantify the small relationship we had and to understand. A local paper wants stories about fathers, for Father’s Day. Something to tug at the heartstrings, to celebrate fatherhood, which is a first in a society that doesn’t seem to want fathers, or boys for that matter, anymore. The paper wants something different, a positive, so why not? That’s why I’m writing these words. Not that I expect to get published, I’m using it as an excuse to write this and confront myself and my father, so here goes.

My father is in a box, on a shelf, in my bedroom. Next to my books, books by Camus and others. Not that I’m an intellectual, I just happen to have read those books because I wanted to, like taking a train somewhere because you wanted to go there, on a whim, not planned. That’s how I discovered my father, on a whim, it wasn’t planned, my mother saw to that. They divorced when I was eight and, until the Big C got her ten years later, my father was a stranger to me. I spent my time until I was fourteen, not knowing my father. I hadn’t known him up to the age of four because he wasn’t there. Well, he was, but I couldn’t see him. Then after that, I only knew what my mother told me about him, which, as it turns out, were mostly lies. But as a child, you believe what your parents tell you, well, the one you happen to be with. It is only later that you realise how they manipulate you and “Fuck You Up”, like in that poem by Larkin, not that dad did, he never had a chance.

I guess she divorced him, I don’t know, but that’s what I think. The statistics back it up. I could quote them, but I won’t, as this is not about them but about him, so mother can stay in her grave. As I said, I didn’t know my father until we were thrown together when mother died. Grandma tried to get me, said she wanted me. Well, up until I started to misbehave, that’s the polite word for it, now I would be toxic, so it was dad who got me, the only one who would take me, the only one who wanted me with no ulterior motive.

I didn’t see it like that at the time. My sister, who was eighteen, pissed off to uni. She had no time for dad, nor for me, so it seems. She didn’t mind taking Dad’s money, of course; it was her due. Like mother, like daughter. Funny how they can detest someone and yet still make use of them. Dad wasn’t like that, although I only found that out later, when it was almost too late.

I was trouble for my dad. I played up and was violent towards him. I said things that my mother had said about him, which he never questioned. He never got mad or hit me back when I hit him. He stood there, more often than not, we were standing, and took it. He could have told me that what I was saying, what I had been told, wasn’t true. That it was all lies, but he didn’t. He could have told me to piss off, but he didn’t. What sort of man does that? I thought a weak man, a waster. Then, not now. I tell you what sort of man does that, a man who loves you. He even used my anger against him to help me; that’s the sort of man he was. He took it all to help me. No doubt the way he took it from this twisted set-up we call society.

He told me that if I wanted to get out, to leave him and poke him in the eye with a sharp stick, that I had the power. I could do it and show him what for. Wait a few years, then blow him away. Like my sister, I could piss off to uni, and I would never have to see him again. And that’s what I did, I did just that. Studied, took the exams and pissed off. I’m an engineer, I have my own practice and have worked on some pretty damn prestigious projects and make money, lots of it. And Dad? No complaints, no recriminations. Like Scott, in the Antarctic, in his last letter, no blame, that was Dad.

He sent me a congratulations card on my First at uni. I never knew how he found out about it. I guess there are ways, but I burned it, his card. Even though I took his money, I didn’t have the decency to acknowledge him for what he had done, so I’m no better than the rest of them, so there you go.

Well, what comes around, goes around. He got the Big C, prostate. Mom had breast cancer, and all the support she needed. He was third class and got next to nothing from the dear old NHS. They didn’t even think he was important enough for a test before it was all too late. He never told me or my sister about it, probably didn’t want to worry us, or something worse. Anyway, I only found out when his GP got in touch, off the record, when Dad had run out of steam and was in trouble.

Even when I finally went round to see him, I was circumspect. I hadn’t seen him for ten years. At the time, I was only on my way, not having reached my destination, but with a house, a partner and the two kids. The cost of care then, as now, was prohibitive, and a question was being asked that I didn’t want to answer. My sister didn’t want to know; after all, she had everything she had wanted from him. I was the same. It wasn’t love or obligation that made me come to him,  to look after him. Not much for a lifetime of work to ask for something back, but it was for me that I went, and I resented it. It was the cost, you see, a cost that would have been little compared to what he had paid; I was even too mean to accept that gracefully. It was Rebecca, my partner, who said I should go to him and was willing to accept the compromise to our lives, for however long. (Isn’t all life a compromise? Well, a life worth living.)

As it turned out, it wasn’t for long, six months. The cancer had inveigled its way from his balls to his body. Not that he took the full treatment for it. The chemo. He took the pills, but even those reluctantly. I’d like to say I didn’t press him to defend himself against it as I wanted to honour his wishes. I would like to say that, but I can’t, because I didn’t.

It’s difficult. We are so conditioned now to accept and expect to be inundated with emotion that, when someone keeps their own counsel, we resent their insularity, their refusal to play the game. Now, not then, I see what it was about, his silence, the nature of the beast. I understand it a little better. Unlike mother, who bemoaned the unfairness of it all. Moaning about life, not grateful for one more day in the sun, but resentful because of the sunny days they think they will be cheated of. That wasn’t my father. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve and, because I had been brought up to resent this self-control, I despised him for it. I can now see what we have become, us, in touch with ourselves and our softer sides, our underbellies, that we lose touch with everyone else. Like spoilt brats in the sweet shop of emotion, stuffing our faces with more and more emotional confectionery until we spew it all over the floor and expect both understanding and forgiveness. And, even with the stench of our emotional vomit still in our nostrils, we reach for more, more self-pity, more self-indulgence. I was like that, after all, I had been brought up to be like that. Not Dad.

It all changed when he was so weak and in need of care, some consideration, that he was deemed ill enough for a place at a hospice.  I hadn’t realised how ill he had become, I guess you don’t when you live with such things, day in, day out, but distant. Not that it was day in, day out for me. I went to work, like he had done when I was a child, saw my partner and my children and gave him what was left. Not so very different from dad when I was a kid, although I roundly condemned him for it, for not being there when I wanted him. I saw nothing wrong in my actions; you never do. I did go to see him, though, and I give myself credit for that, in the hospice. Most days, on my way home from work, I’d give half an hour of my precious time to look in and say nothing, anxious to be gone.

I visited at weekends too, in between tidying out his life from the house, getting ready for the inevitable and minimising the expense of having two homes by being ready to put it on the market pronto. I’d even contacted a few estate agents in anticipation. That’s when I found them. The shoe boxes under his bed.

This is the hardest bit and what all these words have been leading up to. Words I see I have used to hide behind. It’s de rigueur now to condemn people like my dad, people who don’t talk nonsense all the time, because they know that most words have little or no value in themselves. I remember at school, the teachers chastising us for making a racket, telling us that empty vessels make the most noise. Well, that is certainly true today. Like chicks in the nest, squawking for more and more and giving no thought to anyone or anything, just their need to make the most noise so they can get the most, more than their fair share. Well, not my dad.

In the boxes, I assume he had taken from my mother’s house when she died, was the truth to the lie. Letters and cards. Letters to me and my sister, for our birthdays, Christmas and Easter. Not a full ten years’ worth, but enough to make me understand that he hadn’t deserted us, as Mom had said, that he did care and had thought about us all the time.

I think he sent something every year, but we had never got them; Mother saw to that. The letters talk about presents we never received and how he’d like to see us when we were older and could make up our own minds. Not in the early letters, but later. Almost in desperation. Why didn’t he tell me? When he had the chance, after mother had died. After all, who was left to hurt, and it might have helped? He could have shown me, and that would have been proof enough. I would have listened, unlike sis, who reckoned he probably wrote them to himself and never sent them, just to make himself feel better. But the envelopes have postmarks, so I know enough now to know this wasn’t the case.

Anyway, that’s it, pretty much. I never told dad I found the letters, I never asked either, why he didn’t tell me. I think I know. I think he didn’t want to burden us with something he felt wasn’t our fault or concern. I’m not saying he was right, but I kind of understand it.

It was that discovery, the discovery of my father, which is helping me discover myself. In the last few months, he was with me and, for once, I used the time well. I visited him every day, and Rebecca came with the children at weekends, I asked her to, so she did. I took him out to the local pub occasionally, against orders of course, and we sat in the summer warmth, not regretting what we were losing but valuing what we had, for as long as we had it. We didn’t say that much. As said, I never asked about the shoe boxes, and he never tried to justify himself. When I say we didn’t talk much, we didn’t have to because, somehow, some way, we knew. We’d watch the world go by. A car getting it wrong, or a person passing by with their sartorial slap in the face to the world or the violence of a luridly dyed head. He would look at me in understanding and smile. I would laugh as I lacked his generosity of spirit and consideration. We didn’t have to speak; we knew.  And I’m learning still. I think I will always be learning from now on. Learning that silence is more often than not, more potent than words. That acceptance can be something to be proud of. That’s why I call him the Quiet Man,  L'Homme Tranquille.

I think I have said too much, and it is time for me to stop. I will probably never send this to the paper, no bleeding heart of mine to be hung in the butcher’s shop of self-pity for all to see. Like dad, I’ll keep my counsel to myself. I will scatter his ashes here, amongst the birches and the dogwoods, at the bottom of the garden, so I never lose him again.

I hear Rebecca calling me. I want to tell her I am here, I have been here all the time, like my father, although sometimes, of late, I get frightened she does not see me. But I won’t call out to her; I will let her find me, as I found him. And, if she does, I too will be L'Homme Tranquille.