Not My Father's Son (14 page)

When I joined Twitter I described myself as “Scottish elf trapped inside middle aged man’s body” and I still think that’s accurate.

But that day as I ambled listlessly along the platform at King’s Cross, I worried about how my father’s latest intervention in my well-being might manifest itself. I had already reclaimed my lost childhood. What could happen now?

Minutes later I found myself at the cashier of a souvenir shop, buying a Noddy doll. Noddy and his friend Big Ears were characters invented by the beloved children’s author Enid Blyton, whose books I had devoured as a boy.

The little boy was obviously still there . . .

I hope he never goes away.

I
woke up in Lille after another anxious night’s sleep. I had eaten in my hotel room alone, the crew having had to go and get some location shots before the sun went down. As much as I knew it was necessary for me to have time on my own to process everything that was happening, and to allow myself the chance to give rein to my emotions, I also yearned for company. I Skyped with Grant back in London, which offered little relief. It was great to be able to see him, not just hear him, and for this I am grateful to modern technology. But at the same time, seeing the one you love but not being able to touch, when their comfort is what you crave most, actually makes you feel worse, and more depleted, than if you had not seen them at all. As Macbeth says, “’Twas a rough night.”

The next day I found myself waiting. As is usual in the film and television business, one spends a lot of time waiting for filming to begin. In this case, my location was a flat, open ploughed field between the villages of Violaine and La Bassée. I stood waiting for the crew to set up and make a plan of how to shoot the forthcoming revelation. I was asked to do endless walking shots, necessary for the potential voice-overs. All I wanted was to know what had made Tommy Darling such a hero, and I was standing next to a little historian who was itching to tell me, but of course nothing could be said until we were in the optimum position for the revelation to be revealed and my reaction properly captured.

I realized I was trapped in a sort of genealogical aspic, both in my real life and in my TV life. Both of us were being kept waiting for the truth.

All that was inscribed on Tommy Darling’s medal was “Bravery in the Field,” but it was becoming apparent that it was a much bigger deal than it sounded, what with the trip to Buckingham Palace and also the way the crew were whispering and preparing for the revelation I was about to hear.

Finally, this little historian, called David, was allowed off the leash. He began to tell me the story of the day my grandfather earned his medal. The 1
^st
Cameron Highlanders, my grandfather’s battalion, were defending La Bassée against the Germans. David pointed to the right, back along the road we had just driven up to get us to this field.

I could tell David was excited about the story, as excited as I was to hear it. He continued on, explaining where the Highlanders were based in Violaine, in relation to La Bassée. And that on that fateful day, the German general Rommel had directed his fleet of tanks across a canal and across the very fields we were standing on.

“There are about three hundred of them, and this is perfect tank country: it’s flat, there is no cover.”

I looked up. He was right. I could see for miles across the smooth plane of the French countryside.

My grandfather’s role was to carry messages and orders from the battalion base to the members of the company who were ahead, closer to battle in La Bassée. That day, David told me, my grandfather had done just that. But that wasn’t all.

I could feel my pulse racing. It was faintly surreal to be standing in the mud, in northern France with a film crew and a little academic with regulation leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket, being handed an ancient tome that would reveal something so important about a blood relative I had never known. How did this become my life?

I began to read from the book David handed me. “‘The forward Companies were supplied with ammunition and in one case with a Bren gun, by the work of 2928278 Lance Corporal T. Darling, who on his motorcycle, and laden with ammunition boxes and other necessities for the Companies in La Bassée, made repeated journeys from Violaine to La Bassée along the fire-swept road.’”

“For ‘his gallantry and devoted conduct,’” I continued reading, “‘Lance Corporal Darling was recommended for, and later awarded, the Military Medal.’”

I looked up, awed.

The road behind us, David said, was most likely the very road that Tommy Darling had so bravely driven down. His bike, loaded with boxes of live ammunition, was a ready target for the German tanks. And yet Tommy Darling had kept going, fearlessly, to help his brothers in war.

“Had a bullet hit one of those boxes of ammunition,” David said gleefully, “he would have probably gone up like a Roman candle.”

Then he handed me the official citation, which explained exactly why Tommy Darling had been given his medal.

I read aloud once more: “‘Lance Corporal Darling took forward on a motorcycle two Bren guns and a supply of ammunition as reinforcement. He carried out this hazardous and difficult operation under mortar and machine gun fire’!” At this last piece of information my voice trailed upward in disbelief.

“Whoa! It’s like the Commando comics!” I joked, referencing the jingoistic World War II comic books we had all been plied with in my youth. “Mein Gott! Gott in Himmel!”

I suddenly imagined that Tommy Darling might appear any second now, bursting through plumes of smoke from around the corner where the trees abutted the road, rounds of ammunition and guns strewn about him, tanks and snipers shooting at him as he sped by on his bike, a determined and heroic smile spread across his twenty-four-year-old face. I felt such a deep surge of sadness, just then, that I had never known this man. I suddenly realized. My grandfather was Steve McQueen!!

“He’s so reckless!” I said aloud. I had no idea just
how
reckless Tommy Darling would eventually prove to be.

“He’s reckless,” David agreed. “I think he’s also driven by two things.”

“What are they?” I asked.

And then came the final blow, when David led me to the realization that Tommy’s battalion, the men he had thought of as his family for seven years at that point, were who he was risking his life for, and eventually that day, as the Germans surrounded the forward post, he must have realized there was nothing more he could do to help them.

“And they’re trapped in La Bassée,” I said, the full horror of the situation dawning on me.

“They’re either trapped, or they’re dead,” David added bluntly.

I realized my grandfather and I had something in common. I too craved what I hadn’t found in my childhood—security, approval, the love of my father—and throughout my adult life I have sought to re-create the experience of family. He seemed to be always in search of one, but now his actual family was many hundreds of miles away and his army family was literally dying all around him.

Despite his efforts and those of his fellow soldiers, German tanks quickly advanced on their positions and the regiment was split in two. More than three-quarters of them were trapped in La Bassée, where they were killed, captured, or went missing. Tommy Darling was one of the few who were left at battalion headquarters in Violaine. They retreated and were eventually evacuated from Dunkirk. Of the original eight hundred Cameron Highlanders who went to France, only seventy-nine answered the roll call when they returned to Britain.

It was time to leave the field and start the journey back to London. David talked a little more about the retreat to Dunkirk and the emotional and psychological toll it took on the men involved. One thing he said about my grandfather in particular stuck in my mind.

“He’s probably wondering,
‘Why me? Why did I get lucky?’”

I began to feel I was at the scene of the beginning of the end of Tommy Darling.

On the train back to
London, I thought constantly of my grandfather. He was becoming real to me. Not just a photograph on my hallway wall, but a man, my granddad. Someone who, had he lived, would have had a very big impact on my life. Someone I think I would have liked, and who, maybe, I was quite like myself.

“He’s so reckless,” I had said only this morning. And I began to think of how that word has often been used about me. I have a bit of the devil in me, you see. I am the one who wants to do handstands at a party or take the shortcut down the dark alley or jump into the roaring ocean after a few tequilas. Now, for the first time in my life, I saw where all of that came from.

It was quite an eerie feeling to be recognizing traits in myself from a dead man.

I am lucky to have a partner who is a good counter to my recklessness. Sometimes Grant is the voice of reason, and talks me down from doing something impetuous and, though fun, probably ill advised. Other times I poke him and remind him he’s being overcautious. I hoped my grandfather had someone in his life like Grant. The recklessness he displayed on that road in France was amazing, and rewarded with the highest accolade, but ultimately it was for naught: he couldn’t save his friends. I worried that Tommy Darling was left with a distorted view of what was worth risking his life for.

I also couldn’t get a comment David had made about him out of my mind.

“Why me?”
he’d surmised my grandfather would have thought.

As a little boy I often wondered the same thing.

Why did my father hit me so much? What did I do to make him so angry?

I came to believe that I, and my failings, were the cause of
all
my life’s woes: my father’s rage, my parents’ crumbling marriage, my not being able to do anything right. The only time my father even noticed me was when he hit me. Then, and the preceding few moments, were the only time I knew I had the full focus of his attention. But even as a little boy I knew that my association of something so awful with my father’s attention was unhealthy. So then I began to feel guilty for thinking that way, and more convinced it must be my fault that he hit me in the first place. It was an easy spiral to observe from the future, but to a little boy it seemed justified. My father loathed me, so it was only natural I should loathe myself.

My mother countered him, though. She told me I was special and loved. And actually, having two such opposing messages, although confusing, was ultimately pretty healthy. My father told me I was worthless, my mother that I was precious. They couldn’t both be right, but they evened each other out and I began to make my own mind up, not just about myself but about everything that was going on around me. I think this was also good training for my future career. I didn’t fully believe what either of my parents said about me, and I’ve taken that approach in dealing with critics of my work. “If you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones” is my mantra. The most important opinion, of both my work and my conduct in life, is my own.

I looked at my watch. We still had a long way to go. I normally love a long train journey but not today. I began to wonder if my connection to Tommy Darling was just some pathetic attempt to lessen the blow of “losing” my father. It was certainly nice to have something else to think about. Every waking minute that I was not on camera was filled with questions about how I was going to navigate my future within my present family, and my potential new brood of relations, should they even want to acknowledge me. I kept thinking of the half brother my dad told me about. What was he like? Would we ever meet, ever be friends? And my new father, what would he feel about his new son being a celebrity, a famous actor now in need of fatherly love that he felt he had been denied? Did I even want that from him?

None of it could be resolved now. Not until the DNA test was done.

The kit had arrived the day before, and Tom had come up that afternoon and given a swab of his saliva. Now when I arrived back in London I would do the same, and we’d send it off to the lab and wait. We’d been told the results would be back in a few days, but that seemed so far away. However, I remembered that less than a week had passed since I’d been standing on that stage at the Hôtel du Cap, with a fuming Patti Smith, and I laughed at how fast life could carry you along. I tried to remember what I felt like back then, who I was even. So much had happened that I barely recognized myself in the pictures from that night, scrolling through them on my phone.

When I got home, the DNA test box was sitting on the dining table, waiting for me, like a lie detector test in some murder mystery movie. It scared me when I saw it. This was it, this was real, and this was definitive. I was taking a test to see if my father was telling the truth, and my mother had an affair, and I was the outcome. It seemed so crazy. Everything did, though. My life, pretty hectic and idiosyncratic on normal days, seemed utterly surreal now. I was moving through this moment as if I were trapped on one of those moving walkways that carry you through an aquarium, with sharks and manta rays gliding above and around you. I was in the middle of it all, unable to make it stop, and all I wanted to do was get home and stay there.

What I was about to do would either make it all stop, or unleash a whole new set of challenges. I would know if my father was telling the truth or not. I couldn’t imagine why he would lie about this, but I also knew I had never been able to fully trust my father in my entire life. Regardless, the hardest, most upsetting part of knowing the truth was going to be telling my mother. Telling her I now knew the secret she had kept from me for forty-five years would be devastating for us both. I knew she would never do anything to hurt me, but I also knew she would be guilt-stricken by her own deceit. She must have had her reasons, I kept telling myself. And as much as I wanted to know them, I also never wanted to see my mother in distress again.

And what if it wasn’t true? Where did that leave me then? What on earth would my father do when I confronted him with his lie? What if it wasn’t a lie, but a misunderstanding? How would he treat me if he knew that this child he had tormented was indeed his son?