Chapter 32
32
FIVE DAYS AFTER I LEFT HER
The bath is cold. My legs tight from my run earlier. I’m spaced out. The beer in my hand is lukewarm when I hear the knock on the door.
‘James!’
Oh now he wants to talk. Now when I am knackered and have made short work of the six-pack that has been festering in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards for God only knows how long.
Caesar barks.
‘James! Open the door!’ Mac’s voice from outside the bathroom window is determined. He’s not going anywhere. I drain the last of the warm beer, pull myself out of the bath, wrap a towel around my hips and head downstairs. I yank open the door. My wet skin accosted by the cold wind and Mac’s stare. He glances at the tattoo of a phoenix etched around my ribcage.
‘What’s that supposed to symbolise?’ he asks, walking past me, a large shopping bag in his hand. ‘Rising from the flames of what?’ He gestures to my torso with his head, as he starts emptying the contents onto the counter. Tinned tomatoes, capers, lamb chops among other things. Water is still dripping from my hair as I close the door behind him, Caesar nudging my thigh.
‘It doesn’t symbolise anything,’ I answer, reaching for the last beer from the counter.
Mac looks better. Face back to a normal shade of Scot. ‘Bullshit. Nobody gets a tattoo that big for no reason.’
‘That’s what you came here to talk about? Not the fact that you’re my father, or so it claims on my birth certificate. That you walked out and left me to be brought up by a woman who, by her own admission, thinks I ruined her life?’
‘Aye, well, that conversation needs sustenance, more than a packet of Doritos’ – he pinches the bag in question as though it’s poison – ‘and a six-pack at any rate.’
Mac lands a packet of spaghetti next to the tins.
‘What does it mean?’ He nods to my still-dripping torso.
I think back to the day I got it. The day Kit asked Liv to move in with him and the piercing cold feeling that had made my bones ache.
‘There’s no hidden meaning; I just liked it, that’s all,’ I reply, remembering the pain after I had left the tattoo shop. The heat from it thawing the chill inside. Mac looks up to the ceiling, a ‘give me strength’ expression.
He pulls out the chopping board and starts smashing cloves of garlic. ‘Are you going to put some clothes on?’
Jesus Christ. I swear I get whiplash from our conversations.
By the time I return, the air in the kitchen is garlic-filled. Caesar is napping beside the range and Mac has poured two glasses of red wine. A breadbasket is sitting in the middle of the table. Bob Dylan is playing in the background: ‘Lay Lady Lay’. I tear off a chunk of bread, chewing quietly while I watch him chopping and stirring.
‘I never wanted to leave you,’ he says, lifting a lid, steam billowing around him as though we are midway through an already established conversation.
I swallow. ‘So, why did you?’ I say, reaching for the wine, taking a large gulp.
‘Because I was weak, because I believed your mother, because I was in love with a man… take your pick.’
‘Oh, come off it, Mac. None of that explains why you left. Why you didn’t stay in touch.’
The beers have erased part of my filter. He grates parmesan, putting it on the table next to the basket of bread.
‘It doesn’t?’ he asks as though his answer explains everything in detail. Even more jarring is the look of surprise on his face.
‘No, Mac. It doesn’t.’
‘I didn’t want to leave you; you’re my son.’
‘Yes, I am. But you still left me.’
‘Aye. And not a day has gone by that I didn’t wish I’d fought harder to stay in your life.’
He turns. Begins plating the pasta. Ladles sauce on top. He brings the plates to the table, sits opposite, spoons cheese on top. I cross my arms, eyeing his actions.
‘Eat.’ He gestures to the plate, slurping spaghetti into his mouth. I pick up a fork, cramming some in my mouth. He grinds more pepper over his plate. ‘I wasn’t in a good place back then. I started a relationship with Lynn to hide what I knew about myself. I thought that if I just tried harder, I would fix myself.’ He takes a sip of wine.
‘Fix yourself?’
‘Aye,’ he puts the glass back down and twists pasta onto his fork. ‘Fix my predilection for tall blonds with knackers instead of knockers. And who better to guide me than a God-fearing woman like your mother. It was a mistake.’
‘Nice to know I was a mistake ,’ I say bitterly.
‘Nothing about you is a mistake, James. Well, apart from running away from the woman you love.’
‘We’re not talking about my mistakes, Mac.’
‘No, not just now, we’re not. But don’t think that conversation isn’t going to be had.’ He slurps more food into his mouth, gets up, pulls some kitchen roll out, and dashes it against his whiskers before returning to the table.
‘I did right by your mother, married her, stayed for two years, a year before you came along and a year after. I tried to make it work. She wasn’t all bad you know. She had a wicked sense of humour and we liked the same music, the same films, but… she changed when you were born, when she discovered the truth about me and my sinful ways.’ He smirks when he says sinful, as though this is all a big joke, but I can see there is more to it than that, more hurt behind his eyes. He takes a sip of wine. ‘I tried… for a long time, to bury the truth. I hated the man I was, the men I was attracted to. I hated God, my parents.’ Mac leans back, glass in his hand, eyes focused on the contents as he tips it left and right. ‘And when Lynn found out my preferences ’ – he takes a large gulp – ‘it was like she amplified every last bad thought I had ever had about myself.’
I hesitate as I imagine the hurt and turmoil he must have gone through.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘That you had to go through all of that.’
‘Aye. Well, I’m not the first to be judged for my taste in men and I doubt I’ll be the last. To be fair to your mother, I think it was more the fact that I’d slept with another man and had humiliated her, rather than the fact that I’m gay, that she took issue with.’
I nod. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why you left me. ’
‘Left you?’ he shakes his head. ‘That’s what she told you?’
I push the plate away and nod.
His eyebrows furrow, a look of pain there. ‘I didn’t leave you, James. I tried to see you. I came around every weekend, worked three jobs to live close by. But she wouldn’t let me see you.’ I can’t remember a time where I have considered Connor McDonald as a man who regretted leaving us. The image Mum had forged was of a man who had walked away without the merest notion of regret. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s since had plenty of other opportunities to get in touch with me.
‘So, you just accepted that?’
‘No. I went to a solicitor, filed for joint custody. Lost, of course. What judge would allow a man, a wife beater , to look after a one-year-old boy?’
I feel sick, the food and wine sharp at the back of my throat. ‘You hit her?’
‘Och, did I bollocks, but she’s a clever woman, your mother. She told close friends at church that I was violent. She even suckered poor old Alan into her lies. He was on the scene before your second birthday. After I lost the custody claim, I kept working, sent them money, tried another solicitor but couldn’t get anywhere near you. I went off the rails a bit. Turned up pissed at the door on your third birthday. A well-meaning neighbour called the police and I spent the night in jail.’
A memory. Fleeting but there. A dark shadow at the door. Shouting. Police lights. ‘I think I remember that.’
‘Aye. That was all I could picture when I sobered up. The way you looked at me, tears down your face, Alan holding your hand, Paddington Bear under your arm.’
The memory takes on a more solid form. The smell of Alan’s sweater and the soft brown synthetic fur of the bear. Mum’s large stomach beneath her navy dressing gown. I remember the fear of this large looming man stumbling on the lawn. Blue lights were flashing as he was pushed face down. The neighbours’ curtains had let shards of light onto the street.
‘Nobody was going to believe I never hurt her after that, or that I was fit to care for you.’
I twist the stem of the wine glass, eyes focused on a splodge of sauce on the table.
‘I left for a while then. Dad was sick; I was needed here. I came back, after a few months, met with Alan, tried to make him see sense. He’s a good man, but he was just as duped as the rest of them. Told me that if I really loved you, I should move on. I sent you cards, presents. I’m guessing she never gave them to you?’
I shake my head. I have the mad urge to laugh. How many birthdays had I run to the door to check for a birthday card from the mysterious man who had left us?
He nods. ‘I’d figured as much.’
‘So, you never came back after then?’
He leans back, looks me in the eye. ‘I came back lots of times, watched you playing with your brother in the garden, making sure I was never seen. You were happy, called Alan, “Dad”. Even Lynn looked less… pinched. Calmer. It was best I stayed away. It was better for you… and for me,’ he adds. ‘I had to let you go, James. It hurt too much to be able to see you and not hold you, not teach you to read, or to swim, or tuck you in bed. I only caused you pain.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, even though I don’t know what I’m sorry for. For me. For him. For Liv. For Kit.
‘Lucas tried to convince me to come and find you again, a few years back.’
‘Lucas? The guy in the photo?’
He nods. ‘He found you on social media when you opened up the boxing club. ’
‘So why didn’t you get in touch?’
‘We found out he had cancer. It was quick.’ His eyebrows furrow. ‘Painful.’
‘That… must have been tough.’
‘Aye.’
Mac gets up and stands next to me, a firm hand on my shoulder. ‘He’d have liked you. He was hot-headed, stubborn but had a heart of gold beneath it all. He was the best of men.’ Mac squeezes it and I place mine on top of his. Tears fill my eyes as I hold on to his hand. ‘I should have fought harder for you.’
And for the first time since I left Liv, something like contentment fills me.