Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

The call came as Darren was finishing work. He was wondering about what to have for dinner. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew he should eat. The chances were that he’d head to the pub and have a liquid starter. After that, dinner was a boring necessity. Seldom did he muster up the enthusiasm to cook for himself. The food he made was rudimentary at best. Spending time on himself seemed like an indulgence. Yet another thankless task in a life lived alone since Tracy walked out and took the meaning to his life with her.

He did not recognise the number as his phone screen came alive. But he did know the area code. Seeing those numbers gave him enough of a clue as to who was calling and why. He expected to hear that the old man had had a fall. That’s how it went after a certain age. Everything began to wear out and then it gave out. The fall itself was the killer. Shattering hips and more. The death certificate would cite something else though. Pneumonia took the blame far more than it ever should.

The hospital didn’t give much away. Told him he should come as soon as he could. That told him all he needed to know. This was the final straight of a life and the chequered flag was unfurled and ready to wave. The old man was in his eighties. That was a fair innings in Darren’s book. Probably more than he’d deserved. Surviving Darren’s mother wasn’t in the script as far as Darren was concerned. She was younger and could have done with a few years free of a marriage that had been very much about service of the one-way kind. Servitude to an ideal that made precious little sense if looked at logically. But then affairs of the heart shunned logic at the best of times.

Darren felt the resentment building as he hit the first motorway. A dull conveyor belt of tarmac that went on for more than two hours. A drive that would not be justly rewarded at the other end. This had always been the case. Familial obligation was a cheese grater of an experience. It always took from Darren and left him raw and confused. He knew this was not how it was supposed to be, but he had never had a clue as to where the gordian knot was, let alone how he would unravel a chaos that had no doubt been unthinkingly handed down from generation to generation. A can kicked along the road in the hope it wouldn’t blight today too much. Always accumulating more and more debris until it was no longer something you could kick without breaking your toes. Still, he knew he would have handed it onto his children if he’d had any. In that respect, Tracy had done him a favour. Then she’d swiftly done his best friend a favour by bearing him a son within a year of walking out on Darren. Their shows of happiness pained him but he smiled all the same. A smile was expected and Darren knew it was the done thing to fulfil the expectations of others. That accorded with the line of least resistance after all.

If Darren had not been feeding the fires of his resentment already, the hospital car park would have done the job for him. Finding a space was the first torture. Then there was the rigmarole of using his phone to pay for a suitable length of parking. As he had no idea how long he would be at the hospital he paid for twelve hours. He couldn’t pay for any more than that. Which financially was just as well. The sky high charges must’ve been paying for his old man’s care. So much for a free health service.

Darren hated hospitals. This was a place where people came to die. A building where you could catch any number of serious ailments. The heating was always turned up to debilitating levels as though to nurture the nastiest of the lurking diseases. He marvelled at how the staff managed to work in such conditions. Had no idea why anyone would choose to do so. Supposed it was a similar calling that his mother had answered when she met the old man. A sacrifice that some people felt they should make. Whether that was payment for past sins or a better life next time around was anyone’s guess. It seemed like a high risk bet with no real promise of reward. Darren supposed that was the very definition of life.

He got lost in the warren of corridors. There were plenty of signs, but none of them made sense to him. He resisted asking for help. Wanted to work the route out himself. Which was to say, he was content to remain lost and delay the inevitable. He fought his disappointment as he realised he’d stumbled upon the ward his old man was in. There was another swift wave of disappointment when he was greeted with supportive smiles and told that he was in time.

A nurse took a moment to explain how things were. His old man had driven himself here and checked himself into A&E. Reading between the lines, Darren understood that he’d done himself no favours in downplaying the severity of his pain and the symptoms he was suffering. He could only imagine how long he’d sat in a glowering silence. In a pain that went beyond the usual anger. When he’d passed out, they’d gotten around to seeing him. Darren was sure that there had been a few tuts of frustration from the higgledy-piggledy queue of long-suffering patients. One or two probably considered feigning a collapse of their own in order to jump the queue. Thoughts of the parking fines his old man’s car was accumulating followed quickly on the heels of this and drowned out anything further that the nurse was attempting to convey.

The old man was now stable. For now. He was off his tits on pain meds and may not make much sense. Darren suppressed a smile and did not voice his thoughts on this; an improvement to the lack of sense he was usually subjected to.

The tide turned when he saw the old man lying in the oversized hospital bed. It took him a moment to realise it wasn’t the bed that was too big, it was his father who had shrunk and become alien. The fragility he wore did not suit him. It was that fragility that brought out the compassion in Darren. A feeling he did not know he was capable of when it came to this bully of a man.

He was holding his father’s hand before he knew it. Some of his mother must’ve rubbed off on him after all. I’m not going to look after you if you survive this hospital stay, you old git. The thought amused him and appalled him. The irreverence of it and also the chance that he may have to make a decision about another person’s future. He’d not made much of a job of his personal future so taking on anyone else’s was a bridge too far, but he knew that he would not have a choice in the matter. Never had a choice when it really mattered. The ghost of Tracy rose up yet again. He knew she was an avatar for the many ghosts of his past. A convenient scapegoat that allowed him to live with his pain and indulge it further.

Here lay the chief of his ghosts, and as though he’d heard Darren’s thoughts his old man opened his eyes and smiled. Darren’s heart leapt at the clarity in his father’s eyes and the warmth of that smile. This was a smile he’d waited a lifetime for. A warmth he’d been deprived off as a child, but still hoped he would one day be the recipient of. He knew it was there. Had seen flashes of it when his father greeted strangers. His father had punished him with the withholding of it. Kept him dangling in a limbo of a harsh cold that burnt him far too often and far too deeply.

“John!” his father said warmly, “I knew you’d come!”

These words broke Darren’s fragile heart into hundreds more pieces. Fragments that would never return to the shape of his heart. For an age, he was trapped in this moment of mistaken identity. Wanting to rage at the injustice, but knowing that he would not. He’d never been capable of outward displays of anger. Turned it inward and did more of the old man’s work for him.

“Are you real?” his father asked in a quiet, conspiratorial voice.

Darren barely paused, then said, “of course I am Bill, I came as soon as I heard.”

“Good man,” his father squeezed his hand with a firm strength that his body alone could not contain, “I never told a soul you know.”

Darren’s face creased into a puzzled question, but he maintained the pretence, “I know, Bill. I know.”

“It was wrong what we did!” he hissed these words and Darren’s blood ran cold. The confusion caused by the nonsensical words remained, but underlying that was the answer to why his father had been the cold bastard he’d always known.

“We had to do it,” Darren said the words but could not say where they came from. They seemed the right thing to say. Besides, he didn’t want this exchange to end. He needed to know where it went.

“We shouldn’t have killed them,” the strength went out of his father’s words and his grip loosened. Darren matched that energy. He sat down heavily on the plastic seat beside the bed, but maintained his hold on his father’s hand. This had to be a delusion. A waking dream caused by the heady mixture of pain, the meds and the imminence of death. Darren had never heard of a John. He wondered if his mother had known of him. No one had ever spoken the name, let alone as to who he was.

His father’s lips were moving for a while before the words came, “we were friends.”

“The best of friends,” Darren echoed.

“That Summer, when we became lovers. That was the best time of my life.”

Darren took a deep, tremulous breath. He wanted this all to be a fiction, but a part of him didn’t think it was. Going along with it was becoming increasingly difficult, “and mine.” He squeezed his father’s hand gently, “and mine, Bill.”

“If only they hadn’t tried to blackmail us,” tears ran down his father’s face now.

“We did what we had to do,” Darren improvised.

“But the girls. Those two little girls. They didn’t deserve that. We shouldn’t have… we really shouldn’t have…”

His father’s eyes were closed now and any strength there had been in his hand had now ebbed away. Darren held it still and gazed down at the man he’d never really known, “the sins of the father,” he whispered to himself.

As though in answer, Bill’s airways rattled with his terminal breath. Darren smiled despite himself. His father always had to have the last word.