Her death was sudden. It only had time to sink in on the train home to Scotland. After the service, Gordon found himself handing out food in the front room while the snow fell lightly outside. The sound of his mother’s favourite music, Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, playing in the background was familiar, but the house was full of people he didn’t know very well. He was serving cheese and ham sandwiches made with pre-sliced white that came wrapped in a plastic bag. She would never have bought that bread. There were bowls of crinkle-cut salt-and-vinegar crisps on the coffee tables, and several bottles of Chardonnay and Malbec for the guests.
“I first met Lilith when Jim was at sea,” an elderly woman with a kind smile told him.
“It’s a grave affair, Gordon,” said a scholarly distant cousin he hadn’t seen in years.
“Your mother was a fine woman,” said someone who looked a little like a judge.
“Sorry for your loss,” said another woman. It was the first time anyone had ever said that to him.
My loss. I keep expecting to see her standing here, but no, she’s really gone. Outside, delicate silver-white flakes continued to tumble down from above. They melted as soon as they touched the ground. Gordon looked over at his father, who was sitting at the dining table, a floppy half-eaten triangular sandwich in his left hand. He was being talked at by a pink-cheeked, grey-haired, elderly man in a smart black blazer and matching tie. Gordon wasn’t ready for this, but then that was no surprise. Can anyone ever be ready for something like this? He knew he would stay on to help, but first he would have to build up the courage to say ‘Hello’. So far, his father was looking as stoic as usual. Unaffected by grief. Taking it in his stride. As if all he had suffered was a minor setback to his daily routine. Gordon could tell the conversation had already moved on, even though it had been less than an hour since they had said their last goodbyes to Lilith Freeman.
“…about that new fellow, Bostrom. He’s a philosopher, of course, but his theory surely connects to your work. It must make you want to enter the fray again, what?” said the pink-cheeked man. He must be one of my father’s former university colleagues. Gordon suspected his father had little contact with any of the academics at the School of Physics and Astronomy since he’d retired. From the little he knew, his father had turned his back on them just as they had turned their backs on him.
“Yes, there is a flicker of interest,” his father replied, “but it’s been a while since I took that stuff seriously.”
“Well, it’s good to see you, Valdis,” the pink-cheek man continued, interrupting Gordon’s father, “and you should know it’s all water under the bridge. If we had known then what we know now, I think it would have been very different.”
Valdis Freeman happened to glance in Gordon’s direction. Neither of them smiled, and Gordon looked away. Was it my imagination or did his face flinch when he saw me looking at him?
Gordon moved into the kitchen, which, like the rest of the house, hadn’t been decorated in years. It was still full of the same furniture and ornaments he remembered from his childhood. He perched next to a group of elderly women sitting around the table. They were sharing memories of his mother and looked up briefly when Gordon arrived. They smiled sadly in sympathy and continued their conversation.
“She used to keep me company whenever I went to the clinic,” said a frail-looking lady, elegantly dressed in black with a matching mourning hat, “A true friend she was, if ever there was one.”
“Dehs any o’ye want more tea?” Aunt Mary asked. She was one of the few people Gordon recognised.
“Hou’r ye, Gordon?” she asked, as she moved away from the table towards the kettle.
“I’m holding up, thanks, Aunty Mary.”
“You’ll be staying a wee while, then, to help your father oot, I suppose.”
“Aye, that’s right,” Gordon said, although he wasn’t sure for how long, or how his father would react to that news. Valdis would clearly need help. Gordon knew that, but it was not an exaggeration to say their relationship had been strained since he was a boy. They had barely talked since Gordon was a teenager, which was half a lifetime away. It’s high time I put that behind me.
* * *
Valdis Huxley Freeman was born in Cambridge in 1933. He met Gordon’s mother, Lilith Mallory, in 1952 when they were both studying Quantum Physics at Glasgow University. She was from the west coast of Scotland. From Dunure, where they were now gathered on the day of her funeral. It was also where his father and mother had retired to, twenty-five years ago. After their marriage, Gordon’s father continued studying at Glasgow University, becoming a lecturer, and then eventually Professor of Quantum Mechanics. His mother didn’t complete her PhD. She dropped out just before Gordon was born. She always said she would go back to it. Now she never will.
Gordon’s earliest memories were of being looked after by his mother. His father was either at the University, or behind the closed door of his study. As a young boy, Gordon learned not to disturb him while he was working, and Valdis was constantly working. He was always thinking of something, but it was never his son.
“Why doesn’t Daddy look me in the eyes like you do?” Gordon once asked his mother.
“Daddy has a lot on his mind.”
That was the way it continued, apart from the annual fortnight’s holiday in July. This was the one time when his father stopped working, or at least that seemed to be the case. Some of the happiest memories Gordon had were of his father playing with him in the sea when they visited their extended family in Cornwall. Gordon loved being with his cousins, who were the same age, and who shared similar interests.
There was one family holiday, though, of which he had a very different memory. It was 1978, and Gordon was 13 years old. They’d gone by car to the Lake District, and Gordon’s best friend, Danny, had joined them. Gordon was very happy about that. The family were camping on the coast at Solway Firth. So far so good, until the massive family argument that happened half-way through the holiday. The ensuing accident was something from which none of them fully recovered. Gordon and his father essentially stopped talking to each other. Except for necessary transactional communications, they hadn’t really spoken much since.
What was that argument really about? I remember it well. It seems so trivial now. We’d stopped in a pub for lunch and mine and Danny’s attention was caught by a large print of a strange photograph on the wall.
The photograph showed a little girl, kneeling in a patterned green dress, holding a bunch of flowers in the foreground. In the background, just above the girl’s head, there was a strange white blur. It looked like it could be the figure of someone standing behind her, wearing a hat or a helmet. After they had looked at it again and again, both Danny and Gordon were convinced it was an astronaut. It captured their thirteen-year-olds’ imagination. Danny and Gordon had just been introduced to Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which was full of ‘true stories’ of how the Earth had been visited in ancient times by extra-terrestrials. According to the writer, those alien beings were responsible for building the pyramids in Egypt, and for laying the Nazca lines in Peru. He argued hose lines were runways made so their spaceships had somewhere to land.
The publican spotted their intrigue and told them the story behind the odd-looking image. A local man had taken the photo in 1964 (coincidentally the year Gordon was born) when he was out on Burgh Marsh. Only when the pictures came back from being developed had the spaceman figure appeared. The photographer said he hadn’t noticed anything when he’d taken the photos.
The imagination of the boys was fired up, and Gordon’s mother and the bartender smiled as the boys expressed their fascination, linking the photo with von Däniken’s book. Just then, Gordon’s father returned from the bar, drinks in hand. Gordon pointed at the photo and told his father the story behind it. His reaction? Valdis laughed in his son’s face for being taken in by “a cheap trick that the photographer created for attention.” Valdis also used that moment to very publicly dismiss von Däniken’s work, which he said was “a load of mumbo jumbo” and “pseudo-science at its worst”.
Danny went silent, shocked at the outburst. Gordon was devastated, and his mother and father started arguing. I remember her ticking him off for deflating us.
“It’s not all science,’ she said, ‘there’s a place for stories too.”
Valdis didn’t accept her argument, and they continued bickering during the drive back to the campsite. Gordon’s father said he would not accept he had brought up a son who filled his head with “stupid sci-fi theories” and that from then on he wouldn’t allow that kind of book to enter the house.
Gordon knew the holiday was ruined and he felt a mixture of anger, disappointment, guilt, and frustration. His parents never argued, but now they were fighting, and it was his fault. Looking back on that day now, I understand that trip was the moment my childhood ended. Gordon also remembered fiercely cursing his father silently in his head, over and over again. He wished him the worst of luck. After the holiday, when Valdis’s reputation and career at the university faltered, Gordon became convinced that it was his fault for cursing him. He didn’t feel any remorse. He thought his father deserved it.
The car accident, that was different. Gordon believed his curse was indirectly responsible for it, and for leaving poor Danny in a coma. He knew his father was directly responsible for the accident.
* * *
Back in the front room, some of the guests were starting to say their goodbyes. Gordon returned coats and scarves and ushered people out, while his aunt Mary, and the odd volunteer, collected plates and glasses and ferried them to the kitchen. It was cold outside, and the snow was trying hard to make an impression on them all.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Gordon.” There it is again. I am getting used to it now. I can even picture myself using the same phrase in the not so distant future. When our own words are insufficient, we fall back on set phrases. How much of what we usually say is because it’s expected? Thirty per cent? Fifty? More?
It seemed to Gordon he was like a player in a computer game who was talking to non-player characters. Those NPCs were shallow, programmed people who repeated the same thing again and again no matter how long a player talked to them. In those types of video games, you spent a lot of time talking to NPCs, trying to glean information that would tell you what you needed to do next. Gordon knew none of the people he was saying goodbye to at the door would be able to help him with that. He needed to speak to one person in particular, and he was putting it off. That person was the only one in the house that day whose loss was greater, or at least as great, as his.
* * *
When the last of the guests left, Gordon cleared up, and washed and dried the remaining dishes. He made a quick telephone call to his flat in London to report on the day, but there was no answer. Lindsey must be out. Then he went back to the front room and saw his father had dozed off in the armchair. He took some time to look at the man. The few occasions he’d played out this scenario in his head, it had never been like this. It had always been his father who died first, and he had seen himself comforting his mother. Now that it was the other way around, he wasn’t sure of his place, or how he should act. Gordon roused his father by shaking his shoulder gently. How long had it been since there had been any physical contact between them? How many years? Decades for sure.
“Time to turn in?” Gordon suggested, even though it was still early. They’d not spoken about what had happened since he’d received his father’s very to-the-point phone call. In fact, they hadn’t spoken much about anything at all in the last forty years. Gordon yawned. After driving up from London in the early morning in time to meet everyone at the funeral, he was shattered. There’ll be time to speak about all of this tomorrow.
Without a word to Gordon, without looking at him, his father picked himself up from the armchair and started his long, lonely journey upstairs to bed.
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