The Good Father

by Marion Husband

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Sagas; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

The Good Father explores the nature of fatherhood and the bonds between fathers and their children in a gripping story of love, betrayal and adultery. When Peter Wright's father dies he leaves his entire fortune to Peter's best friend Jack. Over a few weeks in the summer of 1959 the consequences of the old man's legacy seriously affect three men?s lives, Jack, who has brought up his three children alone since his wife was killed, Wright's solicitor Harry, who is trying to rebuild his relationship with his estranged son Guy, and Peter himself, whose friendship with Jack is threatened by his father's death and the terrible secrets he has kept since his return from the Japanese POW camps.The Good Father explores the nature of fatherhood and the bonds between fathers and their children in a gripping story of love, betrayal and adultery.

Release date: January 17, 2013

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 261

Sample

Chapter 1

Thorp,

Spring, 1959

Hope came to the funeral. I noticed her as I followed the coffin through the church porch, where I had to pause whilst the bearers shifted their load discreetly on their shoulders. Standing at the back of the church, she turned to me and smiled that delicate schoolgirl’s smile of hers, lowering her eyes almost at once, not expecting me to respond perhaps, possibly believing that smiling was some breach of funeral etiquette. And maybe it was, but I smiled all the same, although she didn’t see me. No one saw me because my father’s coffin blocked the congregation’s view of my face. For those few seconds, as the undertaker’s men synchronised themselves and Hope lowered her eyes from her brief, shy smile, I thought how lovely she was; if I were poetical I would say that my heart seemed to expand a little, that I felt suddenly generous and good and hopeful. As the bearers began their slow progress up the aisle, I made my face solemn again.

We sang ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’ and ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’, hymns my father had chosen years ago, planning for his death well in advance, as he planned everything. There were not many mourners. Dr Walker was there of course, Mrs Hall, Mr Hall, a few of the neighbours my father so despised. I had informed cousins whom he had not seen for years and I have never met, but they declined to attend, citing ill-health and old age. So I stood in the front pew alone. The wreath of white chrysanthemums that graced the dark coffin filled the air with its peppery scent, and the bright cubes of light from the stained-glass window were cast at my feet as I sang the hymns and said the prayers, all the time thinking that if I turned around I would see Hope, her head bowed to her hymn book. I thought I could hear her voice above all the others, sweet and clear, singing the too-familiar words of lambs and green pastures; I thought too that I could feel her eyes on me, her soft, concerned gaze. How wrong it would be to turn around, what a bad impression I would give of myself, a man who couldn’t concentrate on his grief, on the solemnity of the occasion, but glanced about the church like a tourist. But it would have only been a glance. And although I longed to, I didn’t. I was as well-behaved as ever in my father’s presence. I was right and proper and straight-backed, and I sang not too quietly, not too loudly but clearly and with my head raised so that I looked straight at the window that shed its coloured light at my feet, the window that depicted the Good Shepherd, a benign and sadly smiling Christ, pale and blond and tender as Hope herself.

The vicar, the congregation and I followed the coffin out into the graveyard. The sun shone and the sky was a rare, beautiful blue, the blue one only ever sees in England in springtime. Earlier, the verger had cut the grass around the old graves and there was a neatness and tidiness about the place, enhanced by the daffodils that grew beneath the sticky-budded chestnut trees and along the gravel path. The gravel whitened my shoes and felt sharp beneath their thin soles, making me think of penances and returning my mind to the funeral lunch. Mrs Hall had prepared a tongue and salads, bread and butter and a fruit cake. Too much food, as though she was expecting hungry hordes of mourners and not just this sad little gathering. I thought she knew my father better.

Beside the grave with its mound of lumpy clay earth, I watched Hope walk away along the path that led through the graveyard. Of course she would not stay, would not come back to the house as I had hoped. She would not wish to ‘intrude’ as she would think of it. I had to hold myself back from running after her. I had to bow my head and clasp my hands together and close my eyes in prayer, as sons do at their father’s funeral as the coffin is lowered and the words said.

Hope was wearing her school uniform, the navy blazer and skirt and long, brown socks that show her pale, still childish knees. Although she is very slim and tall, the blazer makes her look rather square and bulky. There was a long, golden hair on her shoulder, shining against the dark cloth. Lately there has been a kind of shyness between us. We are all awkward smiles and side-steps; she bristles away from me when once she would throw herself with such force into my arms I’d be momentarily winded. I tell myself I always knew that one day she’d grow away from me.

Later, when I had the house to myself again, when even Mrs Hall had gone home, having cleared away the sorry remains of the funeral lunch, I walked through the empty house, going from room to room and thinking how silent it was, how full of silent things. Oil paintings, china ornaments of flower baskets and pug dogs, tapestry fire-screens in dull faded threads that made me wonder why their makers worked in such dismal colours. All I now own seems to be in a shade of brown that was chosen for its ugliness. The heavy drapes and swags at the windows are an odd shade of mink, faded because they’ve hung at these windows all my life at least.

Everything in this house is as it was in my childhood. Even when I returned home from the war I realised after a few days, not really caring, that in the six years of my absence not so much as an umbrella had been moved from its place. It seemed too that my father had hardly moved, sitting at his desk when I returned just as he had been when I left. I remember how, on my return, he looked up at me from a letter he was writing, saw what a poor, wretched shadow I had become and shook his head. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re back.’ No bunting for me, then, no girls to throw flowers or children waving flags, no mother to cry and laugh with relief. The war – even my war, the Japanese war – had been over for almost a year. No one cared at all that I should have returned. Not even I cared very much. In those days I felt nothing but the cold.

As I stood in the window, framed by the faded swags and tails, I remembered how my father had got up from his desk and crossed the room to stand before me. He looked me up and down quite deliberately, theatrically almost, frowning sardonically. He was shorter and stockier than me, and I felt like a great, lanky weed beside him, just waiting to be cut down. Nothing had changed between us; six years of experience might just as well have been six hours, the time I had spent away from his study nothing more than an evening at the pictures for all it helped me to stand up to him. I left as a boy and returned as a boy, only with worse dreams, nightmares that could compare with his. Soon both of us would be screaming the house down at night, neither admitting to the other that he had been disturbed.

A week ago, Dr Walker had come down from my father’s sickbed and found me in the kitchen preparing my lunch. I felt embarrassed, caught in the greedy act of seeing to my stomach as my father lay dying upstairs. Ham, bread, butter and mustard pot were arranged on the kitchen table, the kettle whistling cheerily on the stove; the wireless was on, BBC voices discussing the news, and I was spooning tea from the caddy into the teapot when, from the kitchen doorway, Walker cleared his throat.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

I quite often look startled, I think. Scared, even. I flinch often, on buses, in the street when someone brushes past me too closely or shouts out too loudly. I am a bag of nerves that was once merely a bag of bones. Now I am fleshed out a little, my nerves have jangled and jolted back to life, and Dr Walker was right – he did startle me. I had been lost in thoughts of the illustration of the Frog Prince I’d been working on, the minute changes I might make to improve the gravity of the Prince’s expression, and I hadn’t expected the doctor to be finished upstairs so quickly.

Stepping towards me, he placed a steadying hand on my arm, and said, ‘Should I make the tea?’

Dr Walker had fought in the trenches, as had my father. It should have been possible to imagine that my father would have liked him more because of this – although I know as well as anyone that it isn’t necessarily so that we should bond over the horrors. As it was, my father disliked Walker as he disliked everyone – more, perhaps, because the doctor is kind and patient, qualities my father thought of as weaknesses. Now this kind, patient man sat opposite me at the kitchen table, regarding me with some concern. He made me feel squirmy, inadequate. I remember that I hadn’t shaved and that I wore a soft, collarless shirt, its sleeves rolled up; no doubt my fingers were inky. I itched to get back to the Prince and knew that I would lose the thought I had, about his expression and how it should convey his longing, if I didn’t finish him soon. But it was obvious that Dr Walker wanted to talk, so I made myself look as though I wanted to listen.

He said, ‘How are you coping, my boy?’

‘Fine!’ I smiled, bright as a button, hoping he would take my word for it and allow me to get on but he only searched my face as though he longed to examine me. I hold quite a fascination for doctors – they’d like to know how I survived. I said, ‘I’m coping very well, and Mrs Hall is a great help. She sits with him if I have to go out.’

‘You look tired.’

‘No, not really.’

As if I hadn’t spoken he went on, ‘And your father is worried about you.’

I laughed, astonished that this sensible man should be so taken in by the old devil.

Gently, Walker said, ‘Peter, you know you can talk to me if anything is worrying you, if you feel uneasy in yourself, anxious . . .’

It dawned on me just what he was getting at: my father, even as close to death as he was, still had the energy for malice. I imagined him clutching the doctor’s hand, attempting to sit up as he desperately tried to impress on him how sick I was, on the verge of a nervous-breakdown so that it would only take his dying to push me over the edge. He would like the good doctor to certify me, of course that was it, and so he sowed his seeds of doubt about my ability to cope, gloating no doubt as he imagined this conversation we were having.

Firmly I said, ‘Doctor Walker, I’m quite well, you don’t have to concern yourself with me.’ I almost said that I was fitter, happier even, than I had ever been, that I felt like a prisoner who had been told that his release was only a matter of days away. He would think that my eagerness for my father’s death was heartless, perhaps even one of the manifestations of madness. So I only repeated that I was well, saying for good measure that perhaps I was tired, just to keep him happy.

The doctor is a handsome man, tall and blond as a Viking, although his fine hair is thinning. He has the resigned look of a man who has seen a great deal of suffering and over the years has realised he can’t do much to put a stop to it, that he has failed in his youthful ambition to do good. I would like to sketch him; his could be the face of the benevolent King in Sleeping Beauty. As I sat opposite him at the kitchen table I realised I was studying his face rather too closely – his eyes are a particularly pale shade of blue – and sensed that I was making him self-conscious. I looked away at once, apologising. He stood up, patting my arm as he made to leave. ‘If ever you need to talk, Peter. . .’

What would I talk about, I wonder.

I was a prisoner of the Japanese for four years.

I have no idea now how I survived, although I believe a great deal in luck.

I illustrate collections of fairy tales.

I think about Hope often. She is sixteen and the most beautiful, precious thing in my life.

What would Walker say to this last confession? How would those near-colourless eyes look at me then?

At the graveside today was a man I didn’t recognise – a tall, distinguished-looking figure. He stood a little way back from us few official mourners, his head bowed respectfully; I noticed that he crossed himself when the vicar said the final amen – a Catholic. Interested, I watched him, and he caught me watching and held my gaze, frank, unsmiling, sad. He looked as though he truly mourned my father, the only one amongst us that did. I began to make up a story for him, that he is an old soldier, an officer by that expression of his, and wealthy. I imagined ways he might have made his fortune – gun-running, perhaps, because he had a look of new money, of having come from nowhere. But old soldiers don’t make money from wars, they would risk too many ghosts coming back to haunt them.

As I considered, the vicar interrupted my thoughts, briskly solicitous, wanting me out of his churchyard and safely home. As I was escorted away, I glanced back to see if the stranger still stood there. He did, close to the grave’s edge now, ignoring the grave-digger who moved in from his hiding-place with his shovel. I saw this stranger toss a handful of dry earth down onto the coffin. Perhaps it’s a ritual Catholics feel they have to attend to. Hope is a Catholic. I remember her in white at her first Holy Communion; she looked so breathtakingly beautiful and innocent as a lamb.

Weary from the business of the funeral, I went upstairs for a rest. Downstairs, the house is stuffed with furniture – old, ugly, heavy furniture that collects dust in its intricate carvings, scrolls and beading; my room, however, is quite bare, like a servant’s room, empty but for my wardrobe, bed and bedside table. I suddenly realised that I could get rid of everything that belonged to my father and clear the house once and for all of his brooding presence. Never again would I enter a room and get dragged into some unhappy moment in the past by merely glancing at a sideboard or a chair. I could make the house bright and modern. I could make it so I would be less ashamed when Hope came for her lessons.

Yes, I resolved, that is what I would do. More than anything, I wanted for Hope to be happy when she came here, to treat this house as her home. Charged with purpose, I went downstairs again and made a start. 

Chapter 2

Hope watched her father comb his hair in front of the hall mirror, watched him smile experimentally at his reflection, the self-conscious smile that hid his slightly crooked teeth so that it seemed like no smile at all – not one he used on them, at least.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you’ll make sure the boys are in bed by eight o’clock?’ He glanced into the mirror again, then turned away to lift his coat from the hallstand. Shrugging it on he said, ‘I told you that we’re going to the Grand for dinner, didn’t I? It’s a dinner dance.’ He smiled his ordinary smile. ‘I thought I might bring her back here, afterwards . . . How would you feel about that?’

The girl shrugged.

‘Hope . . .’ He sighed. ‘You like Val?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes? So it’s all right if we come back here for a night-cap? If you want to stay up, that’s fine. If not, well – that’s fine too.’

‘I’ll see.’

Frowning at her he said again, ‘You do like Val, don’t you? She’s nice, isn’t she? And the boys like her . . .’ He trailed off. Distractedly he said, ‘Anyway. I should dash.’

His coat buttoned, his gloves pulled on, he said, ‘I’ve left you a bar of chocolate in the cupboard beside the tea caddy. Save it until the boys are in bed. It’s your treat, for being my best girl.’

She went to the door with him, watching as he walked to the end of their road and turned the corner on to Oxhill Avenue, before closing the front door and locking it, just as he had told her she must.

Martin and Stephen were already in their pyjamas, their father insisting that they be bathed and bed-ready, as he called it, before he left. He had warned them that they must be good for Hope; he always said this, every time he left them in her care. Always she thought that he might just as well save his breath. Climbing the stairs to their room, Hope heard the boys shouting and she opened their bedroom door to see them bouncing on Martin’s bed, competing to see who could jump the highest.

Between bounces, Martin said, ‘Has Daddy gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t make us go to bed, you know.’

‘Stay up, then,’ she said. ‘See if I care.’

The two of them fell on to the bed together. Breathlessly, Stephen said, ‘We think he’s going to kiss her.’

‘Do you now?’

‘Do you?’ The boys looked at her, an odd mix of hope and anxiety on their faces. Martin said, ‘If he kisses her he’ll have to marry her.’

‘Only if she likes it,’ Stephen said. Still looking at her, he added, ‘And she probably won’t.’

Martin rolled his pyjama leg up and began picking at a scab on his knee. ‘She’ll like it if she’s after his money.’

Stephen was outraged. ‘He hasn’t got any money!’ He shoved his brother. ‘Bloody idiot.’

‘Stephen!’

‘He is an idiot! Daddy won’t marry anyone!’

They began to fight, two identical little boys grasping and pulling at one another as they rolled about the bed and bumped onto the floor. Hope watched them, thinking that she could leave them to it, that eventually they would tire themselves out and fall asleep, probably on the rug, curled up together like puppies. She thought about the chocolate her father had told her about and the novel she was reading, The Masked Ball by a woman called Avril D’Vere. The book was rubbish, terrible, slushy rubbish, but the hero was handsome; she had built him up in her head and made him more interesting, hoping to fall in love with him. So far, that magic hadn’t happened. She couldn’t concentrate on stories; her mind wandered.

This afternoon, her mind had wandered constantly to Peter. She thought of him in the church porch, in his dark coat, white collar and black tie; she thought of the way he had smiled at her, as though he was terribly pleased that she was there. She’d had to look away, and the horrible creeping feeling she had so often lately, that she had somehow encouraged him to look at her so longingly, had sent a hot rush of blood to her face.

The last time they were alone in his house, as he took out the paper and pencils she was to sketch with, she had asked how he was. For a moment he had stood quite still, frowning as though trying to make sense of what she’d said. What had been only a polite question all at once began to seem inappropriate, insensitive even. Then she realised that no one ever asked him how he was, and that her asking had touched him too deeply. Appalled, she’d seen that he looked as if he might cry, gazing at her with this desperate expression until the atmosphere between them became so charged she had to turn away. At once he began to fuss with the sharpened pencils, lining them up just so; she noticed that his hands shook a little.

She’d wanted to go home. Ashamed of this lack of pity, she had touched his arm, smiling at him as sympathetically as she could. He had laughed painfully, his embarrassment compounding hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she had said no, no, it was fine, wanting only to reassure him so he wouldn’t look at her like that again.

Peter was her father’s oldest friend, and she had loved him for as long as she could remember. But lately she was embarrassed by this love, its childishness and its over-demonstrative enthusiasm; she squirmed whenever she remembered her silly exclamations of just how much she loved her Uncle Peter. But she had been a little girl then, had known nothing. She knew more now, she had been made to understand what some men hid away in their hearts.

As well as being her father’s friend, Peter had been her mother’s, too. She remembered her mother and Peter together in the kitchen a few years ago, her mother hugely pregnant with the twins. They had been talking – serious, intent on each other – until Peter had seen her watching them from the kitchen doorway and had immediately held out his hand to her. ‘Hope,’ he’d said softly, and her name had sounded like a gentle warning.

This morning, her father had said, ‘Damn and blast and damn!’ Standing by the phone in the hallway, he turned to her. ‘That was Mr Davies. He’s insisting I come to the office – some problem with the accounts that must be sorted today.’ He exhaled sharply. ‘Blast the man!’

He had been wearing his best suit, a black armband around its left sleeve, his black tie draped around his up-turned collar, the phone call from his boss catching him out in the process of tying it. He looked down at the tie and suddenly gave it a sharp, hard tug so that it rasped against his shirt.

‘Aren’t you going to the funeral?’ she asked.

He tossed the black tie down so that it fell against the phone, only to slither to the floor. ‘No, I can’t, not unless I want to lose my job. I’ll have to call Peter.’ He turned back to the telephone as though he couldn’t think of a worse call to make. ‘Damn,’ he said again, but quietly now. She’d had an idea that he was deciding whether to make the call or not, whether he could simply not go and explain later. Reluctantly he picked up the phone.

Their conversation had been very short. When it was over and her father had hung up, he turned to her. ‘I suppose I’m relieved, in a way.’

She had nodded; of course he was relieved. Her father was bad at sympathy; he liked it best when those around him were happy enough to be ignored. All the same, he had looked bleak for a moment, only to quickly pull himself together. ‘Listen – why don’t you go instead? I think one of us should, after all.’

‘No!’ Appalled, she’d shaken her head.

‘I know it’s horrible.’ Smiling suddenly he went on, ‘Look, it’s an Anglican funeral. They have you in and out of the church as if they were renting the place out by the half-hour – nothing too over-wrought. And it will be good for Pete to see a friendly face. Go on, Hope, do it for him, if not for me.’

Desperately she said, ‘I can’t – the school won’t allow it.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ Her father sighed, exasperated. ‘I’ll write you a note – give it to the teacher. Does it matter anyway? You’ll be leaving there in a few weeks.’ He touched her arm as he stepped towards the stairs on his way to change out of his funeral suit. ‘Are the boys ready for school?’

‘Dad, please don’t make me go.’

He turned, frowning at her. ‘Hope, don’t be silly. I know funerals are a bit daunting, but just think of it as a more sombre church service.’

Then he went upstairs and she heard him shouting at the boys to stop fighting and get ready for school or he’d box their ears – another empty threat: her father had a hundred of them. It had occurred to her that if she didn’t go to the funeral he would only bluster for a few minutes and then forget he had cared. She had thought about Peter and guessed that if her father didn’t attend the funeral – if she didn’t – he would be alone in that church with his father’s coffin. She’d shuddered, resolving not to go, only to remember how much she had loved Peter until so recently, only to think how much she pitied the sudden image she had of him alone at his father’s graveside.

After assembly this morning, she had gone to Miss Vine’s office and handed in her father’s hurriedly scrawled note. A few weeks earlier, in the same room with its photographs of hockey and netball teams and its display cabinet full of trophies, Miss Vine had told her that she didn’t think she should stay on for her second year at sixth form. ‘I know your heart’s not in your work, Hope.’ Her voice had been stern but then her face had softened and she had taken off her glasses so that Hope had known she was about to fake concern. ‘I think you should learn some shorthand and typing, some office skills. Not everyone is cut out for higher academic achievement – becoming a good wife and mother are vitally important roles.’

This morning, sitting at her desk, Miss Vine had peered at her over the rim of her tortoiseshell spectacles, the spectacles chain around her neck catching the morning sun streaming through the high windows. ‘I heard that Mr Wright had died. And if your father insists you attend his funeral . . .’ The woman had sighed, as though she knew how unthinking her father could be. ‘All right. Go, of course you should go.’

And that is how she had found herself at the funeral in her father’s place.

Martin said, ‘Are you going to make us go to bed?’

Hope looked at her little brother. ‘No. I’ll tell you a story, if you like.’

‘One of Uncle Peter’s stories?’

‘Yes, all right.’

The boys whooped and began bouncing again as Hope lay down on the other bed. ‘Hush now,’ she said. ‘Lie down and listen quietly.’

Halfway through the story, she remembered it was one Peter used to tell her years ago in the months after her mother’s death, when she would sit beside him on the sofa downstairs, his arm light around her shoulders. She would place her head very deliberately so that she could hear the beat of his heart and feel the resonance of his soft voice vibrating through his chest. He would smell of carbolic soap, a clean, harsh scent that comforted her in its adult right and properness; at that time her father had begun to smell of unchanged beds and unwashed hair; his face had become blue-black and rough with bristles and his eyes looked as though someone had just said something horrid to him. Sometimes her father would grab her and hold her too tightly, and sometimes he would lock himself in his bedroom for hours. Peter would come . . .