Not My Father's Son (22 page)

I used to hate Christmas because it would mean working late into the dark, freezing night cutting trees, carting them to the sawmill yard, pushing their prickly, sappy carcasses through a tube to encase them in nylon netting, and carrying them to the buyers’ cars or piling them high onto carts to be transported to shops in local towns. I also had to fake civility with my father in these cases. He was careful to appear strict but fair whenever we were in groups of people like this, careful to vent his habitual ire in the safety of the house or in the dark corner of a shed.

Now, though, he had to
ask
me for my help, not order me. I was seventeen. I was a man. I was working as a subeditor in a publishing house in Dundee and I paid for my own keep. Each morning I cycled past my father up the sawmill yard, still mindful of his disapproving eye. In my rucksack I would have my preferred clothes (tight red jeans, black suede Tukka boots, and a jacket with pins of my favorite bands’ logos on the lapels), and after I’d left the estate premises, his fiefdom, I’d change into them behind a tree and make my way down the hill to the village of Barry, feeling liberated and edgy, where I’d be picked up by a coworker and driven to the big city of Dundee.

I’d auditioned for drama school late in the spring. Mum had gone to Glasgow with me and was waiting on the steps as I came running out to tell her I’d been called back for the second round of improvisation later that afternoon. We went for lunch, but I could barely eat, I was so excited. Then, at the end of the day, we got the train back home and I daydreamed about the life that seemed tantalizingly within my grasp.

I had no idea you could actually go to college and study to be an actor. I hadn’t even really entertained the possibility that it could ever be anything other than a hobby for me. Then I heard that a girl a couple of years above me at high school had gone to somewhere called the “Academy.” It sounded so impossibly grand and out of my realm, but the more I researched, the more I knew it was where I wanted to go, where I needed to go. It was my salvation.

My parents were initially very wary of the idea, but the fact that I’d get a degree at the end of it reassured them. The phrase “something to fall back on” was oft repeated around that time. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was I would be falling back from or on, but I didn’t care. I just wanted out.

“There’s a letter for you,” my mum said, thrusting the envelope into my hand as I came in the door still sweaty from the bike ride up the Marches hill. The postmark was Glasgow. It was typed, not handwritten. I flipped it over, the return address confirming that this was indeed the letter I’d been waiting for.

“I’ll leave you to open it on your own,” and she was gone into the kitchen.

My hands trembled. The next few seconds would either change my life or . . . what? I hadn’t auditioned for or applied to any other schools. I was still too young to be considered for university. I would have to wait another whole year before I’d have a chance like this again.

“I got in!” I yelled in joy, and immediately the kitchen door flew open and Mum rushed in to hug me.

“I start in September!” I said in disbelief. I was going to be free.

“I’m so proud of you, son.” She turned away from me, sobs gurgling up from somewhere deep. I went upstairs to the Big Room and sat staring out at the fields and fields of green. I was numb. It was actually going to happen.

When I went down again to eat, my father was home. Mum had obviously told him my news.

“Aye. That’s the response you were looking for, was it?” he said, as he passed me on the way to the kitchen.

“Yes,” I replied to his back.

I
remembered that Tom was copied on the e-mail too, and I picked up my phone to call him, but I knew that I couldn’t have that conversation here. I needed to be alone and at home, so I tried to calm myself down enough to be able to walk to Hodges’ car and get back to my apartment.

I picked up my bags and opened the trailer door. I said friendly good-byes to crew members I passed, signed my name on the union time sheet, took my call sheet for the next day’s filming, and then I was off.

You know how sometimes you don’t intend to do something and then you do and it turns out to be the best thing you ever could have done?

I told Hodges.

“I have to phone my father tonight and tell him that I am actually his son, Hodges,” I blurted.

The old man’s eyes widened, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“I think you need to start at the beginning, Alan,” he said calmly.

I told him everything. He already knew all about
Who Do You Think You Are?
and Tommy Darling, as he had shared my excitement in the lead-up to the start of filming and was anxious to hear the revelations on my return. But I hadn’t told him about my father. He listened in silence as I unraveled before him. It seemed even more surreal and ridiculous when I heard it spoken out loud. We had arrived at the apartment building and I was still going, so Hodges turned off the ignition and waited patiently for me to finish.

“So now I’m going upstairs and I’m going to speak to my brother and then I’m going to call my father and tell him,” I said finally.

“You must not do that, Alan!” he said quietly but firmly.

I was startled into silence. I looked across at his unblinking eyes trained on me. He was sad for me, which was clear. But he looked serious too. He meant what he had said.

“You are angry. You have a right to be angry, and you should be angry, but you must not call your father in anger. Speak to your brother, get it out of your system with him, and then sleep. Call your father tomorrow when anger will not cloud what you need to say to him.”

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. He was right of course.

“Thank you, Hodges,” I managed eventually.

“You are welcome, Alan. Sleep well.”

Wisdom and guidance can come from the most unexpected places.

Tom had the same reaction as me: rage. We spoke for a long time, going round and round in circles trying to make sense of it all. Why had he done this? Was it the last hurrah of a heartless dying man? Did he really set out to confuse and upset us one last time? Surely not. Surely not even he was capable of such cruelty.

But if not that, then why? Had he truly believed this? Had he harbored this suspicion all my life and only now, when he thought it might come out publicly, had he felt forced to reveal it?

That didn’t make sense either. We talked about our early childhood, before his affairs and our beatings had become so regular and prevalent. If he had believed this from my birth, why would he have waited so many years to enact his warped revenge? Was he seriously waiting for me to grow old enough that he could start beating me? What about the way he treated Tom? He was his undoubted heir, and he beat him just the same.

The only sense we could make of it was that yet again we were his victims. After all these years he was still able to surprise us with the depths of his . . . what? Cruelty? Cowardice? Check. Madness?

I had always thought my father was an angry, violent man, frustrated and trapped like an animal in a cage, lashing out at those weaker than himself to blame them for, and validate, his situation. But now I was beginning to think there might be more to it than mere venom. I started to consider the possibility that my father was simply mentally ill.

But I realized I couldn’t go down that particular rabbit hole right now. There was something more pressing and more important to think about: Mum. We would have to tell her this story, and I knew it would devastate her. Not just by the enormity of the lie that my father believed to be true, but by the longevity of its effects on us all.

I said good night to Tom. We were both exhausted, but the chat had done us good. It was exactly two weeks since that night in London when Tom had come round and we had gone onto the roof deck. Two weeks in which I had clung eagerly to the belief that I was not my father’s son. Now all that was dashed. Now I had to readjust to the fact, the absolute medical fact, that I was. Of course it was good to know the truth, but it was hard to let go of the fantasy I had carried and nurtured for the past fourteen days.

“You know, I was so happy not to be his son,” I said, as Tom and I were hanging up.

“But at least now I know I’m your full brother.”

A
s soon as the first assistant director called lunch, my stomach clenched. I went back to my trailer and ate the food that was waiting for me. I had never chewed my food so well.

I reached for my phone, and dialed his number.

“Hello,” he said. The signal was scratchy and weak.

“It’s Alan,” I began.

“Oh yes.”

“I’m calling to tell you I got the results of the DNA test and I want you to know that I
am
your son.”

Almost immediately he replied, “Well I’m very glad to hear that.”

Then the line went dead.

I leapt back in my seat. What? What had he just said? He was
glad
?! And did he hang up on me? He couldn’t have. It must be the connection. I rang again. The line was slightly better this time.

“Yes?”

“I don’t think you heard me properly,” I began again. “I got the results and I
am
your son.” I had never enunciated so clearly.

There was silence at the other end of the line. I wondered if I’d lost him again.

“Well I’m very surprised to hear that,” he said, sounding genuinely shocked.

“I bet you are,” I replied.

I waited for him to make the next move. I could feel his mind whirring, trying to make sense of it all. The tables had turned, for once.

“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked.

“Totally. I can send you a copy of the results if you like. Tom and I have identical Y chromosomes. Believe me, if I wasn’t your son I would not lie to you about it.”

I checked myself. I was getting mean. My anger was seeping through. I needed to not alienate him. This was my last ever chance to try and understand him and why he had done this, and I mustn’t blow it.

“It never happened, Dad. You imagined it all. Mum never had an affair. None of it ever happened.”

“But I had to believe it, Alan . . . ,” he said incredulously (and incredibly).

This really intrigued me. “You
had
to?” I replied. “Why?”

“I saw them coming out of the room . . .”

“Whatever you saw was innocent. You made it all up.” I felt like I was talking to a child, or someone coming round from an anesthetic and needing to have everything reiterated again and again.

“I saw what I saw,” he said, over and over.

“No,” I countered. “You saw what you wanted to see, or what you decided you’d seen.”

There was silence. I could feel him regrouping and preparing for his next salvo.

“But you must have known . . . ,” he began.

I tried to imagine how much of a shock this must be for him, but I was the one who was shocked about his inability to accept the truth, let alone to consider what I, and Tom, had been through these last two weeks. It was utterly illuminating and predictable at the same time.

“How could I have known, Dad? It never happened. You imagined it. It was a figment of your imagination. I am your son.”

I wondered if I should just hang up. He was obviously not capable of dealing with this information, or reality in any form. Perhaps I should give him some time to process everything. I could call back in a day or two. But then I thought,
What would be the point of that?
I had more important things to contend with, like talking to Mum, and taking care of myself. That was when he blindsided me.

“I didn’t do this to hurt you, Alan.”

I inhaled in the way you do when you’re about to cry. It felt like an apology, although technically it wasn’t, but it was enough to stop me in my tracks to marvel at how it felt to hear my father show some feeling, some tenderness. But was that truly what he was doing? His first line of defense had failed—perhaps now he was trying to emotionally manipulate me.

I realized how tired I was of trying to second-guess him. I’d been doing it for over forty years. “Look, I believe that you believed this. I don’t think that you just made it up. But you have hurt me. You have hurt me all my life. And you’ve hurt Tom and you’ve hurt Mum,” I said calmly.

“But you know we never bonded,” was my father’s response. That was it.

“Maybe we never bonded because you were treating me like shit because you thought I was another man’s child,” I said.

I could feel him reel.

“There’s no need for that,” he said, anger in his voice.

“There’s every need for it. You have lived your life based on a false assumption. And the fact that you are trying to use that to justify the way you abused me is really despicable.”

And in that instant I saw the double blow of his justifying that abuse in any way at all, let alone based on a figment of his imagination.

“I had to believe it,” he offered again, scared now and repeating himself.

“No, you didn’t, because you made it up. There was nothing to believe.”

I almost felt sorry for him, but I wanted to say one last thing, one thing that needed to be said. One thing that I never thought I’d have the strength to say.

“It never happened. And I can’t believe you never talked to Mum about it, and you had to wait for me . . .” My voice squeaked a little. I was starting to lose it, but I knew this was nearly over and I had to get it out. “I had to be the one to tell you the truth. For forty-five years you never had the balls to find out the truth for yourself. You just acted upon a suspicion, you based your entire life upon a false assumption and you made all our lives hell.”

I waited for a response. Surely, surely he could give me something. Just some acknowledgment that he understood the enormity of the pain he had caused, at least in the last two weeks, if not for a lifetime.

I should have known better.

“I’ve decided I won’t be talking to that
Sunday Mail
fellow,” he said, as though what I had said had never happened. He sounded almost breezy. I could tell he thought he was throwing me a bone, giving me something positive. He reminded me of addicts I’ve known, lighting fires around themselves as a smokescreen to mask the real issue.