Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
IAIN
The cacophony of car horns made Iain’s last nerve prickle.
It was ten minutes past the time he’d told Maisie to be ready for. He’d circled the one-way streets around her flat four times already. And now he blocked the single-lane road beneath her window, listening to the dial tone of his car-phone disconnect yet again.
“Why won’t you pick up?” he said through his teeth, planting the heel of his palm on the centre of his steering wheel for another three seconds.
The horn blared. Again.
He was too jumpy for this. It was going to take two hours to drive north through the mountains to get to the farm where he’d struggled through his childhood, and he didn’t want to give the people who called themselves his family any reason to give him shit because he was late.
The car behind him honked, arms gesturing in Iain’s rearview mirror.
“Fuck’s sake.”
He didn’t want to wait any longer. If Maisie wasn’t going to answer her phone or come on time like she’d promised him she would, then he was just going to go by himself.
She’d said that she would be here for him, and she wasn’t. Nor was she the first woman in his life to break her promises.
Iain shifted into gear, put his foot on the accelerator pedal, and drove straight for the turning to take him out of town.
He stopped his car on the gravel driveway, leaving himself enough space to turn back.
Ten years … and nothing had changed. The same fences still stood. The same old barns with the same leaky corrugated roofs. The same green view of the mountains in the valley all around them, white dots grazing on the hillsides. He knew that being here again would swirl nauseating feelings within his gut, but he never expected to feel so numb. Time could heal some wounds but not all of them. Some still oozed and wept every now and then, whilst the others formed jagged, silvery scars.
Underprepared for the shitshow that was to come, Iain put his car into gear and crawled up to the farmhouse. Its brown walls looked just like any other made in the mid-century, with white paint flaking off the window frames.
A welcome committee was the last thing he expected to see. His two brothers stood from the bench under the porch, and Iain parked his silver city car between the dirt-covered Hiluxes and Jeeps .
Giving a final, white-knuckled squeeze around the steering wheel, he killed the engine and stepped out into the wind.
“The prodigal son returns.” Rhys, ever the joker, sidled up to him first.
“Cut the crap.”
“You look old,” Lewis said in Welsh.
“So do you,” Iain remarked in kind, turning up the collar of his coat.
Their grey hairs were more prominent than his, which wasn’t that surprising when he was the youngest. The stress in this line of work would make any man age quicker than he should.
Each of them exhaled frustrations that this is what their brotherhood had come to.
Rhys stepped up again, his arm coming around Iain’s shoulders. He let himself move into the embrace. “We miss you, Iain,” his brother said in his ear. “We know why you can’t be around here, but we still …”
Iain’s eyes drifted shut as he sighed.
It wasn’t them that he couldn’t be around – it never was them. But how he left had made a real mess of things. They felt betrayed, Iain knew that. But so did he. The way that they’d seen the way their father treated him but never spoke up to his defence at all hurt more than them being oblivious ever could.
“I know. I wish it was different too.” He clapped Rhys on the back and moved to Lewis.
“We didn’t believe it when Da told us you were coming,” Lewis said when they let go of one another.
“He turned up to my rugby game without me even knowing he was there.” Iain still wasn’t impressed by that.
“Yeah … He said you’ve found a new lady.”
“ Do .? * ”
“Are you happy?” Rhys asked.
Not knowing how he should answer that right now, he brushed it aside. “Where’s Da?” he asked instead.
“Inside.”
Iain followed to the door that was still the same white plastic, stained from years of hard-hitting rain and muddy boots kicking up dirt.
“Da! Iain’s here,” Lewis called when they filed inside.
Iain took in the hallway, the picture frames on the wall of the nephews and nieces he’d only met when they were born. The plain wallpaper was different but chipped, and the rug had been replaced.
Rhys cocked his head in the doorway to the living room, his quietened voice saying, “In here.”
Iain breathed deeply once more and gathered his bearings. His brothers were there but he still felt as though he walked through that doorway alone.
The space was as gloomy as the overcast sky outside, as if the heavens were about to open and unleash their torrent of rain directly into the living room. At least if they did, it might wash away the mustiness that clung in the air and the undertone of disinfectant.
His eyes shifted from the walking frame to the wheelchair, landing on his father last. Maisie was right, he didn’t look well; Iain could tell just by looking at him sitting rigidly in his sofa-chair. His features were gaunt, sunken around the cheeks.
“You came.” A hint of a slur touched Alun’s voice, his heavy accent not helping.
“I was convinced.” Iain stood in the middle of the room, his brothers beside him leaning against the frayed sofa. “Where’s Mam?”
“She don’t live here no more.”
Iain’s face whipped to his brothers. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“With Aunt Alys,” Lewis answered, patting down the spike of worry in Iain’s veins.
Good . It was about time she left this place too.
Every single thing in sight was falling apart in some form or another. His brothers lived with their wives and children twenty minutes away on the other side of the mountains and drove here every day. As far as Iain was aware none of those arrangements had changed, but looking at his father now, there was no way he was strong enough to last a whole day of work in the mountains without their help. And, looking at the medical equipment dotted around the room, it looked like he was getting help at home too.
His focus shifted back to his father. “Why am I here?”
“You called me , son,” Alun bristled.
“I was told you were unwell.”
“That what the redhead said?”
“You keep her out of your mouth, and you tell me what is wrong.” He might hate the man for how he treated him, but wishing whatever ailment this was upon him was beyond cruel – a level Iain wouldn’t stoop to.
“Iain,” Lewis intoned, the warning going over his head.
Alun raised his unshaven chin. “You’re being cut from this estate.”
Iain’s spine hardened. He’d wanted an answer about his father’s health, not to hear he was being severed from the farm. He supposed it should have come as more of a shock than it did. “Come again?” he said drolly.
Rhys came around the sofa and intervened like the pacifier he never was when they were young. “What he means is, when the time comes, we want to buy you out of your third of the property.” We being him and Lewis, Iain assumed. “You can take the money and use it for whatever you need to.”
“ My third?” Iain thought his name had been blacked out of all deeds and documents years ago.
“There is land here that belongs to you,” Lewis confirmed.
Rhys shrugged his broad shoulders. “Think of what that money could do for you.”
It could do a hell of a lot. It could sustain him for months out of work, alleviate the stress of affording food or his mortgage whilst he figured things out. It could fix his house or maybe even put a deposit on one which wasn’t so run down.
But it wasn’t right.
Iain hadn’t had anything to do with this place for a decade. Funding his life with money coming from something he despised for all its painful memories would stay on his conscience for years. He couldn’t do it.
“You can have the land. I don’t want your money. What I want is to know why you are sick.” He directed the masked question to his father.
“That is the other reason why you are here.” Alun pushed up out of his cushioned chair, rising on shaky arms and unsteady legs.
A deep-rooted instinct shot up in Iain to help. His boot shifted half an inch, but?—
“Da—” Lewis rushed to Alun and offered his hand, an arm around their father’s back.
Iain stole a glance at Rhys with folded arms, swiping the pad of his thumb across his lips. He was met with a look in return that said the ‘when the time comes’ wording had been on purpose. It would be sooner than anyone was admitting aloud.
Alun got himself steady on his feet, Lewis’ grip tight on his thin, diminishing body. He should sit back down and say what he wanted to from there, but stubbornness was a heritable trait in this broken family.
“A slow demise puts a certain perspective on things,” their father said, shuffling forwards in Velcro slippers. He met Iain’s eyes with tenfold more physical effort than it would’ve taken as many years ago.
Iain’s insides churned over once. “Demise …?”
“It’s Parkinson’s Disease, son. Not a nice way to go.” Alun coughed, and Iain took one step to lessen his exertion in coming near. “Your taid had it,” he continued. “Doctor says there’s evidence it can be passed on, so wouldn’t be right not telling you.”
Disease? This is what they’d been trying to contact him about all along? What was already a difficult situation was becoming even worse. Every time that his brothers had called recently, he should’ve at least given them a chance without shutting them down.
“The chance is small.” Joining the duo, Rhys added, “Ten percent, maybe. We’ve been tested, and so far we’re clear, but there’s no guarantee.”
Iain scrubbed his hand over his mouth, fingers scratching against his beard. Maisie had been right about him needing to find out if there was a chance Alun’s illness could affect him later in life too.
She was right … but she wasn’t here.
With Lewis’ aid, their father made it to stand in front of him. There was once a time when they would have stood eye to eye, but that didn’t happen today. Iain shouldn’t feel finally as though he had an upper hand, and the way his father’s held a slight tremble brought that guilt that he did so right up to the surface.
Alun said, “I want to apologise while I’m still able. I should never have tried to force you to stay.”
His entire lifetime Iain had been waiting to hear those words, and their hollow expression wasn’t enough. He didn’t need a fanfare or the man to get down on his knees and beg for his forgiveness – he just wanted to feel in his chest that what was said was meant.
Words had been his father’s weapon for long enough. Now he could use them to repent.
“If this is just to clear your conscience,” he said with a firm edge, “then don’t . Twenty-six years I was here, and most of that you made me feel as though I wasn’t worth the sheep shit on your boot.”
Alun’s eyes were withered and old. “I have … no excuse.”
“I don’t want them. What I want is an apology that I can actually believe.” Iain backed up a step, banking on the fact that he knew he was right. How he was treated wasn’t his fault. He deserved a real apology. “And that won’t happen today.”
Lewis glared at him from under his brows. “ Iain ? — ”
“I’ll give you your chance to say your piece, but it will be on my terms,” Iain cut off his brother’s attempted warning. “If you want my forgiveness then you’re going to have to earn it,” he said to his father, “just like how I strived and failed every day to earn your respect.”
Alun stared at him, a tight expression that said he’d been resigned to enduring this one meeting and one meeting only. Well that wasn’t how it was going to be. Twenty-six years he’d been controlled, and now Iain was taking that power back.
Eventually, his father nodded to his terms.
Iain’s body and mind were strung too tight to start this ‘reconciliation’ today. Too much change was happening all around him: Maisie, his job, and now this.
He needed a minute to be certain he wouldn’t fire off a thousand spiteful things, which is why he retraced his steps through the living room, his last words being: “I’ll be back again next Sunday.”
* ? Yes, I have