*Honour
thy Father (II)*
I finished going through my father’s papers today.
It wasn’t a hard task. He kept everything shipshape and kept nothing without a reason. There were no old letters, no journals, no outdated personal papers. The only thing that could be remotely considered a sentimental keepsake was an old sailing manual, with notes in what I recognised as a youthful version of his own hand. Everything else was practical, well ordered and told me nothing whatever.
When I had done I sat for a while staring at my hands. His hands. Just like his hands used to be before old age made the knuckles swell and skin hang loosely. My mother - stepmother rather - told me once that my feet are like his also, but I don’t look like him in any other way. Whether I resemble my real mother, who died when I was born, I don’t know. No-one ever described her to me and there are no pictures.
I’ve never missed her. My father’s second wife was as good a mother as I could ask for. It was with my father that I felt something.... not wrong exactly.... lacking. Of course he was away a lot when I was younger, but a lot of boys have fathers in the services. The sadness was that we never knew what to say to each other when he was home. We never talked to each other beyond the commonplace.
He was different with other boys and young men. My cousins liked him. My mother told me when I was young it was more difficult for him with me because I was his son. I don’t understand that, but I think it might be true.
I was always proud of my father. I always admired him, wished to live up to him. When I was a boy I used to ask him to tell me of his victories, but he never would. When I was a man he published two books of memoirs, cool records of the actions he’d served in, no doubt of great interest to students of naval tactics. I read both eagerly, but by then I wanted to know, not what he’d done and seen, but what he’d thought and felt, and the books contained no hint of that. I know nothing of his early life, save the bare records of his career, nothing of his parents save the facts on their tombstone. Nothing of him, save what’s common knowledge and a few odd things my mother told me.
He was a good father in many ways. He never beat me, rarely lectured or criticised. He didn’t lay down harsh rules. He was generous with money. I don’t doubt I could have gone to him in trouble, but I never did. I never landed myself in serious difficulties, minor ones I took to my mother or one of her brothers. I didn’t fear him, but I feared very much to be a disappointment to him. I would rather have cut off my arm than lost standing in his eyes.
I don’t know why he urged me to join the army, when I wished to follow in his footsteps. I don’t know why he wouldn’t agree to my naming my oldest son Horatio. I don’t know why he kept me at arms length, always, resisting every attempt I made to know him better.
I don’t know why he had affairs with other women. Not so many, two perhaps three to my knowledge. Many married men have more, but he seemed incapable of being discreet about it. Strange, when he kept his life so well organised in other ways.
“Of course I didn’t expect him to be celibate all the times we were apart,” my mother said on the day following his death. “But he -” she stopped then, changed whatever she had been about to say. “Well, one must make allowances.”
I think that was the only time I felt truly angry towards him.
That same day she said that he’d been proud of me. I don’t know whether that was truth or just kindness. Maybe he told her, he never told me.
I sit and I know that we were never more than mere acquaintances. I know I’ll never understand him. I know I’ve spent my whole life hoping for some sign, not of affection, that was not my father’s way, but of approbation. I know I’ll never have it now.
~finis~