when I heard about his bird’ – Dad knew all the sordid details now – ‘it was like a double whammy. Like he’d left me twice. There I was, thinking at least I was coping, plodding on, when all of a sudden I was back at the starting line again. Miles behind it, in fact.’
Dad stroked Mitch’s coat and waited. He’d always known how to listen.
‘And the odd thing was,’ I stared up at the ceiling for concentration, for clarity, ‘I somehow felt I’d let him down. That it was all my fault.’ I came back, shook my head. ‘Ridiculous, really.’
‘Guilt,’ he grunted quietly, making a long arm to the tap and adding some water to his whisky. ‘And if you felt like that with your tit of a husband, imagine how I felt that Boxing Day. When your mother was haring around trying to be all things to all people as usual.’
It was said lightly but it struck me Dad’s burden of guilt must have been tremendous. And he’d never shown it. Oh, we’d cried buckets together, great torrents of grief – Dad said he never trusted a man who didn’t cry – but he’d never saddled me with the more complicated, adult feelings of culpability. He was made of sterner stuff than me. Suddenly I felt rather ashamed of my recent little collapse in front of my own children.
‘I suppose the only good thing that’s come out of it,’ I went on, feeling my way, ‘is that recently I haven’t felt so bad about not grieving him enough initially. I sort of feel vindicated, if you know what I mean.’
‘I do,’ he said shortly.
We were silent a moment.
‘Anyway,’ I swept on, taking a great gulp of my coffee which was cold. ‘I’m not here to dwell on that. The thing is, he left me some money.’
‘Did he?’ Dad said distractedly, reaching down to take something from the beagle’s mouth. ‘Well, that’s something. What have you got, you little minx?’ This, not a reference to my financial gain, his commercial acumen being about as acute as mine, but to Blanche the beagle.
‘What has she got?’ I peered as he removed something cream and pearly.
‘My false teeth. The little tyke gets them from by my bed. Oh, it’s OK,’ he said, seeing my face, ‘they’re my spare ones.’ He got up and rinsed them under the tap.
‘Well, that’s a relief. Wouldn’t want those sported on the cocktail-party circuit, would we? That wouldn’t impress the sexy widows.’ Dad and I had an ongoing joke that one day he might meet one of those.
He snorted with derision. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
I watched his back at the sink. ‘D’you want to know how much?’ I asked.
‘How much what?’
‘Money.’
‘Oh, all right. Go on, then.’
I did go on, and even my father, impervious to such things, dropped his teeth in the sink. He turned.
‘Good grief.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s a lot of money, Pops.’
‘I know.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Well, give some to you, for a start.’
He stared at me. Then scoffed. ‘Bugger off. I don’t want your money.’
‘To do the house up, Dad. Fix the plumbing, that type of thing. Not holidays in Mauritius or anything. I’ve got masses.’
He fixed me with a clear blue eye. The sternest Dad ever got. ‘I don’t want the money, love. Not yours. Certainly not Phil’s. I won’t take a penny. Put it in the bank. For a rainy day.’ He turned, retrieved his dentures, rinsed them again and set them on the draining board.
‘Perhaps I should offer some to Marjorie and Cecilia?’
‘Would they offer you some? If it was the other way round?’
‘No. But that’s not really the point, is it?’
‘No, it’s not.’ He shrugged. ‘Up to you, love. Entirely up to you.’ My father never told me what to do. Instead he bent and rummaged in what passed for a larder: an old pine cupboard beside the sink. ‘Now. Lunch. There’s the Full Monty but, disappointingly, no one takes their clothes off. It’s a complete bacon, egg, sausage and beans affair in a can. A new one on me. What d’you think?’
He turned and brandished it, complete with full fry-up illustration, and I knew that was the end of it. The conversation. Knew, before I came, that Dad would no more take money from me than go to the dry cleaner’s. But it had been worth a try.
I sighed. ‘Go on, then,’ I said, making room on the table amongst a pile of old newspapers.