Little Big Man

by Katy Regan

  So this is my chance to do this for him, to stand up to my parents and face whatever wrath comes my way, because I am a good mother. And I do know what’s good for my child.

  I tell Dad we need to meet. ‘Somewhere private, somewhere that Mum won’t find out, or turn up to.’

  ‘I see,’ Dad says after a pause and I can hear him swallow. ‘I know … I know a good place.’ It’s like he knows what’s coming.

  Dad is already there when I get to the Jubilee Cafe that afternoon. Having not been down the docks in ten years, this is my second time in the past couple of months and everywhere pulses with nostalgia; I have that disorientating sense of everything being different, and yet nothing having changed at all. This place certainly hasn’t. Not one bit in ten years: same blue plastic seats stuck to the bare-tiled floor, same checked plastic tablecloths and naff paintings of seascapes and men with lobster pots on the walls. Dad is sitting in his old place too, at the back on the right – and yet where is the man I knew and loved from that time? My hero daddy who went to sea, with the wild black curly hair and whiskers stiff with sea salt that I loved to bury my face into, as he scooped me up, fresh off the boat. This one has grey hair, short back and sides; tired, sad eyes. Like a man defeated by life. I suddenly have a fierce sensation of missing the old dad.

  ‘I got you a tea,’ he says, as I take off my jacket and put it over the chair. Outside the two chalet-style windows that face us is a still, steel-grey sea, a murky horizon, broken only by a few brightly painted boats. ‘And took the liberty of getting you a toasted teacake, too. You’re not on a diet, are you?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think yes, but you’ll have it anyway, just not eat for the rest of the day,’ he says and I laugh – we both do – and that moment of being known, that small, father–daughter intimacy, feels incredibly precious. It’s been so long.

  ‘So this is nice.’ Dad speaks first, but his eyes – the only part of his face I can see over his mug of tea – look scared. I want to get this over with.

  ‘Dad, you know when we came on Easter Saturday and Zac was asking questions about Liam and it all went a bit wrong and you and Mum both got upset?’

  ‘Mum got upset,’ he corrects with a firmness that surprises me but encourages me to go on.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s about Liam.’ Over his cup of tea, his eyebrows rise; an alarm is raised. ‘Dad, Zac wants to find him,’ I say. ‘More than that, he’s started looking for him.’ He puts the tea down. I force the last words out. ‘And I’ve said I’ll help him.’

  For I don’t know how long (but long enough for the bloke in the overalls at the counter – the only other person in here – to order his tea and sit down) Dad is silent. There’s no going ballistic about Mum, no incriminations or what have you dones. And it’s strange, but in that moment, I suddenly see what I’ve always known: that Dad wouldn’t be angry with me because, apart from in those first few weeks after Jamie died, there hasn’t been any anger from him. He’s never supported Mum on her blame crusade (although to be fair, he’s never challenged her either); he’s merely gone along with it. For him, instead of anger, there is just that deep, deep sea of sadness that I can never seem to reach across. I’ve always sensed he’s on a different plane of grief to Mum, but he’s never come out and said which one.

  ‘He’s desperate for answers, Dad; and for the facts – you know what he’s like with his facts. It was getting harder and harder to keep information from him and I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I couldn’t. It felt like too much of a responsibility to keep it up. And he’s desperate for a father figure.’ I’m rambling, the words are coming in a torrent, but it’s such a relief to get them out – even if I’m not being a hundred per cent honest about how far I’ve already gone down the road to finding Liam. ‘Not just a father, but a dad. It’s heartbreaking. Do you know what I found?’ Dad is cupping his mug, his head bowed, but I can see the tension in his face. ‘I found this file that he and Teagan made, listing all the dad-aged men they knew, and how they’d rate as dads; who would make the best one … There are dads of kids from school in there, Mr Singh who owns bloody Costcutter on our estate!’

  ‘How far’s he got?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How far has he – you and Zac – got, you know, in finding him?’ says Dad, not meeting my eyes.

  ‘Not very far.’ I’m still tentative, not knowing what Dad is thinking, how far I can go with this. ‘You’ll know, since that awful Easter lunch, that I’ve told him some stuff – that he’s got the same eyes as him, that Liam was a deckhand but that what he really wanted to be was a chef. He loved that,’ I say, remembering how his face lit up. ‘He loved the fact that they shared the same ambition.’

  The same ambition as Jamie, too, I can see Dad thinking.

  ‘Anyway …’ I stop. Maybe I’ve already said too much. ‘I just need you to know, but to hold off telling Mum for now. I’m not saying you need to help us find him, just please don’t tell Mum, OK?’ But he’s not saying anything. ‘Dad, say something. Are you angry with me?’

  He shakes his head but as if he still isn’t taking this in; he’s lost in his own thoughts, and the worst of it is that I still haven’t told him everything. What was the point of coming here today and not telling him everything? I won’t get this chance again.

  Dad is rubbing his face with his hands now; he looks like he might cry. There was I thinking he’d go mad at me, and he’s just going to cry. I lean forward and speak as quietly as I can, even though there is only us and one other person here, because I am still frightened there is about to be an almighty explosion. I can’t believe he is just going to sit here, looking so lost.

  ‘Dad, he knows everything,’ I say then. ‘Because I told him. He knows that Liam didn’t leave until he was nearly three weeks old, he knows what happened that night with his dad and Jamie … He knows everything.’

  And then Dad does – he puts his face in his hands and his shoulders shudder as he starts to cry.

  He mumbles something, but so quietly that I don’t hear it. Then he draws breath in through his teeth like it takes all his mental power to say the next bit.

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  I stop. ‘No, no, Dad, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ he says again, looking at me, tears trembling in his eyes. ‘It is my fault.’

  ‘But Dad, you couldn’t have known what Liam was going to do that night,’ I say. ‘You couldn’t have stopped what went on, any more than I could have – you weren’t even there. It was a tragic accident. But that’s all it was: an accident. A tragic accident.’

  But Dad is shaking his head vehemently. ‘No, it’s my fault. It is, it’s mine.’

  And I understand then why he’s behaved so oddly all this time. Just as I blame myself for not being there for Zac, for not being able to protect him from the bullies, he blames himself for not protecting Jamie from Liam or what happened; he blames himself for not being there that night.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Mick

  One morning, in late July after the June that Jamie died and Liam left Grimsby, Lynda came into the kitchen, holding a letter. She handed it to me over the breakfast table with a shaking hand. ‘How dare he? How has he the audacity?’ She was seething, the words spitting from between her teeth. ‘He knew there was every reason we’d see it before Juliet – and he expects us to give it to her?’

  I looked at it. There was no mistaking that sloping, left-hand scrawl and anyway, since Jamie died, I’d been expecting this; I always knew we’d hear from him again. I presumed, sooner or later, that he’d call Juliet. But clearly, even if that was the case, she hadn’t responded, so this was his only remaining method of communication.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t think we’d recognize his writing,’ I said. I felt sick and hot.

  I was in the middle of my breakfast. I put my spoon down and turned the envelope over i
n my hands, looking up at Lynda as if for some idea as to what to do with it. She looked back at me, incredulous.

  ‘Well, rip it up then,’ she said, appalled. ‘Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in one word that man has to say – he makes me sick – and if he thinks Juliet is going to know he even sent it, he’s got another think coming.’

  She stared at me for a moment or two longer, and when she realized I wasn’t going to do any such thing, she marched out of the kitchen in disgust, calling me spineless – which, of course, I knew was true.

  I didn’t read it that day – I couldn’t bear to, for reasons that were different from Lynda’s – but, obviously, she didn’t know that. Two days later, however, and I couldn’t resist. It was like an act of self-harm. I wanted to take that letter and metaphorically beat myself over the head with it. I can remember unfolding the piece of A4, my fingers sliding with sweat as his writing revealed itself: black ink, tall, thin. It was a piece of him, a reminder that this wasn’t going away; the truth of it all, what I’d done, what I’d not done, not said. The utter and total weakness in me.

  The letter was two sides long but I only made it through the first page, which was one apology after another, him saying he understood that what he’d done was unforgiveable, but that he loved them; he only wanted a chance to be heard, if not forgiven. He just wanted a chance, that was all. It’s the not being able to hold you and Zac, not being able to touch you that’s the worst, he wrote. I’ve got a constant pain in my chest with the longing. That did it for me, I couldn’t carry on. The thing was, he didn’t even need to say it; I could feel the longing for both of them in every millimetre of that pen stroke. There was no address, but there was his mobile number written in the top right-hand corner. Obviously he knew Juliet had it, didn’t need reminding of it. But then it wasn’t meant as a reminder. It was a desperate appeal for her to get in touch – but she never would, because she’d never know he’d written a letter at all.

  Me folding that letter and putting it back in its envelope was the moment at which I think I loathed myself the most – the most I’ve ever loathed myself. Because this letter meant another secret to add to the secrets I was already keeping about what really happened that night. He’d reached out, with all the risks of rejection that entailed, laid himself open and pretty much begged for a chance to be part of Juliet’s and Zac’s lives, and because of me, they’d never know about it.

  Oddly, I didn’t feel that guilty about Zac at that time. He was too little to know any different; to miss what he’d never had. But Juliet – she was different. You could see her mourning the life she thought she’d have every day. Losing that spark she’d always had – certainly any dreams she ever had of going to university, becoming a teacher. She’d make a fantastic teacher.

  Me and Lynda had lost our son and, God knows, that was hard enough. But our Juliet, she’d lost her brother and the father of her child – the man she loved. I could have done something about that – but in order to save my own back, I didn’t. You couldn’t get much lower and I knew it, I felt it every time I looked at her.

  Five more letters arrived in the following year or so, each of them harder to open, harder to read. It felt like Liam’s yearning for Zac in those letters grew at the same rate as my love for him – for this child who had lived in my house, who I saw smile and walk and laugh properly for the first time when his own father was missing it all. My guilt grew too; but my resolve to do the right thing, to tell the whole truth – since I knew if and when I did, it could mean me losing everyone, including Zac – waned. I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to look my daughter in the eye either, knowing what I did about that night; those letters; what I’d done.

  The more time passed, the less I could imagine ever telling – that possibility was floating away from me like an iceberg on the sea and the further away it got, the more I hung on to Lynda’s words: He was always no good. Just like his father, he was – it would have come out in the end. The whole family is better off without him. I never believed those words before Jamie died; I didn’t even believe them when I said them, to Liam’s face in the hospital corridor. I regretted them the instant they left my mouth because I knew why I’d said them, and it wasn’t because they were true.

  There were no letters for a couple of years. Zac turned two, three, and then suddenly, at the beginning of 2009, a letter arrived with the postmark Northallerton barracks, West Yorkshire on it. Liam had joined the army. He’d been posted to Afghanistan as an army chef.

  I wanted to do something drastic, he wrote, to prove to you and Zac that I was a man, I suppose, that I wasn’t like my dad, that I was made of different stuff. Most of all, though, I needed to prove it to myself. When Zac was born and I fell in love with him instantly, I’d never felt more confident. My love for him and for you was so huge and real that I knew I’d never let you down. I knew it. I trusted it one hundred per cent and it was the best feeling in the world. But then what happened happened that night and your dad let me know in no uncertain terms that I was my father’s son and that I’d already turned out like him, and I believed him. I felt like, who was I kidding? I was my dad, through and through; I’d let you all down and you were better off without me. But that fight I started was the first and last fight I have ever started. I know my regret about the consequences of it won’t change a thing but I need to tell you this. I need you to know I’ve never thrown a punch since. It’s taken me a long time and a lot of soul-searching but I believe with all my heart now, that four years is enough to prove I never will. I believe I am a good person, Juliet, that I could be a good father too – but do you? That’s the question. Can you believe me?

  I forced myself to read on. He explained that he was on his first tour of Afghanistan; that it gave him great satisfaction to be boosting the soldiers’ morale, but that he’d lost friends already, he’d seen horrors, had to cook on the frontline too – had to be a soldier, in short. After that, I didn’t dare open any letters. What if he got injured or even killed on the frontline (it seemed unthinkable, but then I’d already lost my son, and unthinkable things happen to people every day) and I’d never owned up to my part in that night? Then there was what I’d said to him in the heat of the moment in that hospital corridor; how it had destroyed him and driven him away. How could I live with myself, after that, if he died thinking I really believed that of him? Especially when, actually, I only said it because it was easier to tell him he was just like his father than admit the truth: it’s me who’s the chip off the old block.

  After that, three more letters came, and I opened none of them. Until today …

  Because I need clues – clues as to where Liam is now. If I can’t do anything to change the past, then I need to change the future. I need to use all the power I have to reunite Zac with his dad. And my daughter with the only man she’s ever loved. She’s never said that, of course; this family are masters at not saying things. But some things don’t need to be said.

  Lynda is out, the house is quiet except for the TV on very low – something about neighbourhood wars; I couldn’t tell you, because I haven’t been watching it, I just always have the telly on low to drown out the voices in my head. My demons, which are there day and night.

  I’ve kept the letters all this time, at the bottom of an old golfing bag. I took up golf when I got sober. It was something that could take me out of the house for long periods of time and keep me occupied, and the bag was somewhere I could guarantee Lynda would never go. There are four letters here – I’ve no idea if there will be anything in them that will help but it’s worth a try. I pray to God he hasn’t emigrated to Australia or, perhaps worse, that he has written to say that if I should ever be man enough to come clean, that he no longer wants to know.

  The dates of the letters vary from 2010 to the most recent – 2013. I start with that one – that surely will give me the most up-to-date information; potential clues as to where he might be now, if and when h
e left the army. I thumb the envelope open and slide out the folded paper, but something loose flutters to the floor. It’s a cheque, made out to Juliet, signed by Liam, and the blood rushes to my face with emotions I can’t fully identify: a toxic mix of shame and regret. How many more cheques are hiding in the letters I was too much of a coward to ever open? How many did he send, before he realized they weren’t being cashed? I open the letter; that tall, thin writing, and with it, his voice. It fills the bedroom; it fills my head. It fills me up with regret.

  I am writing because I thought you’d want to know that as of this week, I fulfilled mine and Jamie’s dream …

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zac

  Fact: Maggots can be used to heal people’s wounds. It’s called ‘maggot therapy’.

  ‘Grandad, do you want to know one good fact about maggots?’

  Grandad smiled, his eyes crinkling up in the sun. ‘Are there any good facts about maggots, Zac?’ he said, opening up the tupperware box to see them all wriggling around. (Maggots smell disgusting, like wet, stinky dog. When you open the box on the first fishing trip of the summer – like this one – they can make you nearly puke.) He put one on the end of the hook, then chucked some in the canal for extra bait. ‘Having said that, if there are, I know that you of all people will know one.’

  ‘I do,’ I said, as Grandad cast my rod for me. (I’m only good at pole fishing, I still can’t really do the reel that well.) ‘I know a really good one. Maggots can be used to heal people’s wounds. Say, like if someone is diabetic and their skin doesn’t heal very quickly, the doctors can give them “maggot therapy”.’ (I looked it up under ‘maggot facts’.) ‘It’s where they put maggots on the wound so that the maggots clean it and it heals up quicker.’