by John Dysart
I noticed that the wine bottle was almost empty. “So, as it seems that I’ve just discovered I’ve got an older half-brother – and he’s paying for the dinner – I reckon you’d better order another bottle.”
Pierre’s face relaxed into a contented smile. He clearly had hoped that I would not be too shocked by the news and he made appropriate signs to the waiter who appeared shortly with another of the same.
Conversation after that was naturally a little slow as we both adjusted to the fact that the news was out. I would occasionally stop in mid-sentence and shake my head in surprise.
We both were intensely curious to explore each other’s experiences of the last sixty-odd years. He was clearly desperate to know about his father but didn’t push too hard while I took my time to get used to the idea. I was fascinated to learn about his upbringing in Normandy and what he had done with his life and conversation started to flow more and more smoothly in direct correlation to the diminishing level of the wine in the bottle.
The manager eventually threw us out – or politely asked us to vacate the restaurant – at about half-past eleven. By then I was in no fit state to drive so he kindly offered to drive me home. Pierre and I parted at the door, agreeing that we should give ourselves a day to get used to our new relationship.
Just before parting company one of my habitual off-piste thoughts came into my mind.
“Pierre, you don’t by any chance play golf, do you?” “Where did that question come from? Yes, actually, I do.”
“Good or average?” “I used to play to eleven or twelve, but that was a good few years ago.”
I smiled. “Right. It must be Dad’s genes. Day after tomorrow I’ll take you to my club. It’s very near here and he was a member there for as long as I can remember.”
Pierre said he’d be more than happy and I was levered into the car to be escorted home.
Next morning I awoke rather late. Although it was May, the night had been very cold and there was still rime on the grass at ten o’clock. But the sky was clear and the air was fresh, which was more than could be said for my head. I was getting past it, I said to myself. A whisky before dinner, a full bottle of Bordeaux and a couple of brandies after. There was a day when I would have taken that in my stride. Not now.
The state of my head reminded me of the discoveries of the previous evening. I decided to go for a brisk walk up to the post office to get some milk, in the hope that the exercise would bring me more or less back to normal. Why did Mrs McLachlan‘s voice sound twice as loud as usual? I made it back home and headed off into the kitchen to make myself a cup of strong coffee.
I walked past Dad’s photograph on the wall. It was a larger, framed version of the one that Pierre carried around in his wallet. I stopped and looked at it with an affectionate smile. I’d walked past that photograph hundreds of times but from now on it was going to be with an added piece of knowledge.
“Well, Dad, how are you this morning?” I asked him. “I’ve just found out something about you!”
The expression on his face didn’t change – if it had I would have thought I was in Harry Potter country – but the eyes looked out at me, smiling. His silence about that year in France now took on another meaning. We had assumed that his reticence had to do with the horrors he’d seen or the friends he’d lost. I knew now that there had been another reason. What a pity we had not been able to talk about it. Perhaps if Mum had gone before him he might have let it out but that hadn’t been the case. She had survived him by four years and he would never have talked about something like that while she was still alive.
Next problem. How do I tell Mike and Heather? I had asked Pierre if he was aware that he had acquired, apart from me, another younger brother and a sister. He had known, he had told me, and I suggested he leave it to me and I would organise the breaking of the news to them. The question was “What was the best way to do that?”
Heather was eighteen months younger than me and we had been close playmates as children. We had, however, gone to different schools and different universities so our paths had separated. We remained good long-distance friends, seeing each other two or three times a year. Her world was very different from mine but we kept in touch. She had married a farmer and lived in the centre of the country outside Doune, where she had dedicated her life to her two kids and a never-ending collection of horses. She had always been keen on horses and had studied veterinary science at Edinburgh. It was through her work that she had met Oliver and that had settled her life for her. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.
Mike was a very different kettle of fish. Mike had come along six years after Heather, so he was my junior by seven and a half years, a difference which had meant that we had shared very little when we were young. When I was discovering the fair sex he was still playing with his Lego.
But we had both inherited the combativity and competitiveness of our father, expressed through different outlets. I confess to have done reasonably well at my rugby and cricket and had found that I could turn my hand to most sports. Mike also had that gift but took up pursuits that I had not – squash, hockey, biking and the like. The only area where we had a real common interest – and that developed later – was on the golf course.
Mike had gone into the army. He had discovered that if he joined up as a student he could earn a salary whilst studying. The only commitment he had had to make was to stay in the service for seven years after graduating. This didn’t bother him at all and he had stayed on after his seven years and carved out a satisfactory career for himself. He had been able to retire in his fifties with a perfectly adequate pension.
He had seen the world, with service in the various trouble spots across the disappearing British Empire, until he was, much to his regret, superseded by a younger generation. During the last fifteen years of his service he developed his administrative talents in a series of logistics postings. He had never married and now lived in Forfar, in striking distance of the Cairngorms, with Oscar, his black Labrador, where they could both continue to keep fit by wandering off into the mountains for a few days whenever he felt like it.
He was inordinately proud of his dog, claiming to have trained him to sniff out drugs at twenty metres, and he maintained that he could find his way home on his own from anywhere within fifty miles away. I hadn’t believed this piece of boasting and, a couple of years ago, Mike had proposed a bet (a green fee at Gleneagles) that he would prove it. We had driven forty miles up into the mountains and he had simply stopped out in the wilds, let Oscar out of the car and we had driven off back home. He had turned up two days later for breakfast. And on top of that Mike had beaten me three and two over the King’s course the next Tuesday.
I decided I would tell Mike first about his new brother and then we would both discuss breaking the news to Heather and Oliver.
I phoned Forfar and got him at home. “Hi, Mike, how’s life?” I asked. His cool, laid-back voice came back down the wire. “Fine, but unfortunately a bit quiet. I’ve been planning a hike but I’m going to have to delay it because the forecast is looking a bit dodgy.”
“Good,” I replied. “Fancy a bite to eat this evening? We haven’t seen each other in a while and I have to be over in Dundee this afternoon. Why don’t you drive down and I’ll buy you supper?”
We arranged a time and place to meet and I spent the rest of the afternoon going over all that Pierre had told me – trying to adjust to the concept of the newly-enlarged family.
Everything he had said had rung true and I found I liked him. I had absolutely no reason to doubt his story but, on the other hand, I had no way of checking any of it. Dad was dead and he had kept nothing from his time in France. Also, if it was all made up, what possible reason could Pierre have of inventing such a tale? It’s not as if there was an estate to claim or any potential material advantage that could come his way. Could there be some other motive? Then I remembered that he had said that there were two reasons for the dinner invit
ation. What could the second one be?
Chapter 3
Mike arrived at the small Italian restaurant just five minutes after me. I was already seated at the table which I had reserved in advance. He breezed in, causing a few female heads to turn as he made his way over to me.
Although still a bachelor, and liking it that way, he had never had any trouble in attracting the opposite sex. He was not a big man but he had presence. His graying hair was kept short, military fashion, his features were clean cut, his skin tanned from his outdoor life and he projected an aura of total self-confidence, without any hint of egoism. I’m here, I enjoy life, take me as I am or leave it, it doesn’t bother me.
Not long after he had bought his current house and decided to settle down I had paid him a visit. I had been amused to discover that, in his living room, he had a collection of fifteen or twenty framed pictures on the walls and on the bookcases of attractive women of various ages and seemingly different nationalities.
“All your conquests?” I had asked him. “Not all,” he had replied with a grin. “A bit strange to put them all on display,” I said. “It sort of happened by accident,” he replied and then proceeded to explain.
“In fact the whole idea started as a bit of joke years ago. I had a couple of pictures then and I once forgot to hide them when I invited someone back for the night. On that particular occasion the girl stayed for about a week and then left to go back to Australia. A week later I got a parcel through the post with that photograph over there inside it”.
He pointed to the photo of a fun-looking brunette smiling at the camera, perched on the roots of a palm tree on what looked like a tropical beach.
I strolled over and picked it up for a closer look. As I was putting it back I noticed the message scrawled in blue ink on the back “For your collection! – X”.
“So I decided to leave them out permanently and the collection has just ‘kinda grown’ – like Topsy,” he said with a grin. “I suppose I must attract the type of girl that doesn’t have any permanent designs on me so they think it’s rather fun and when they send me photos ‘for my collection’ I stick them up!”
I didn’t mind his collection at all, but I did know that Heather was rather disapproving of it.
“Well, how’s tricks?” he asked, as he sat down, “and what world-shattering event has induced you to put your hand in your pocket to buy your wee brother a meal? It’s you that’s paying, isn’t it?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’ll tell you after we’ve ordered – and, yes, I’ll pay this time.”
We dispensed with the logistics of ordering lasagne and a bottle of wine, and after a bit of small talk – Seen Heather recently? – How’s Oscar? – I decided to plunge in, but not without dipping my foot in the water first to judge the temperature.
“Mike, did Dad ever talk to you much about the time he was in France during the war? He never discussed it much with me but, you being in the army, I wondered if he spoke to you about any of his experiences.”
“Nope – hardly a word. All I know is that he was some kind of a liaison officer with the Resistance and it was a question of living on your nerves non-stop for months. I think he lost a few friends and I just assumed he didn’t want to drag up old, bad memories.”
Or perhaps old good memories, I thought to myself. We had, all three, been very fond of Dad – perhaps the relationship with the boys had been closer because we had had more common ground – sport especially – and he had been an only child and hadn’t been quite so comfortable with girls. I was hoping that Mike’s reaction to the news I was about to tell him would be much the same as mine. I suspected it would.
“Why?” He looked at me thoughtfully, put down his fork and took a sip of his wine. “That’s something we’ve never talked about before – so what’s the reason now? Has something cropped up to do with that?”
“Not something, but someone.” He looked intrigued. “Someone who was out there with him? Whoever it is he must be in his nineties by now. Go on.”
“Well, yesterday I had a visitor – a Frenchman – who said he was over here on holiday and he invited me out to dinner at Fernie Castle. He seemed a pleasant enough guy so I accepted.”
“Very nice too. But how did you manage? You don’t speak much French.”
“Oh, that was OK. He speaks perfectly good English. And shut up for a minute. Don’t interrupt while I tell you what happened.”
As I explained the whole story to him Mike’s face went through a series of expressions which would have done justice to a chameleon.
When I had finished he looked at me thoughtfully. “And you believe him?” “Yes, I do. He seemed perfectly genuine. His story’s perfectly plausible. But the real clincher was the photograph. It’s a smaller version of the same photo that hung on the wall in the parents’ bedroom all these years – the one which we now all have a copy of. How else could he have that photo if not from his mother?”
“And the other photo. What did the girl look like?” “Brunette, good looking. A bit in the style of Mum actually.”
Mike sat back and rubbed the top his head with his hand.
“Wow! The old bugger never told us about this.” “He wouldn’t, would he? He came back to Mum, got married and here we are – all three of us. This man – Pierre Collard is his name – insisted that his mother never found out that she was pregnant until Dad had gone back home and, as she had known he was engaged, she never told him. She probably wouldn’t have known how to contact him anyway. I don’t know about you but I can easily imagine how it happened. If she was in the Resistance and Dad was undercover liaising with them life must have been bloody dangerous. I suppose in circumstances like that you would, let’s say, ‘forge mutually comforting relationships’. You certainly would, that’s for sure!”
Mike didn’t comment. “I’ll bet there are hundreds of similar cases. And probably most of the kids born like that were simply told that their fathers had been killed. Easier for everyone.”
Mike sat back, thinking it through. He took another sip of his wine and put the glass gently down on the table. He looked across at me with a grin.
“So what do we do now?” asked Mike. “I suppose we’ll have to tell Heather.”
“First of all, you’ve got to meet him. He plays golf – maybe it’s Dad’s genes. Anyway I invited him for eighteen holes at Ladybank tomorrow. I thought you might come along and hack your way round the course with us. Gives you an opportunity to meet him and, if your feelings are the same as mine, we’d better cart him over to meet Heather and Oliver.”
Mike was obviously still absorbing the news and only half-listening. He was slowly shaking his head from side to side then a wide smile spread across his features.
“The randy sod,” he said, – but there was a genuine tone of affection in the way he said it, “But then, I suppose . . .” His voice trailed off.
“What was that you said? Golf tomorrow? OK, what time?”
“Eleven. I haven’t told Pierre that I would bring you so it’ll be a surprise for him. It’ll be interesting to see his reaction and you’ll get an opportunity to come to your own conclusion about whether he’s telling the truth or not.”
It would also give me the chance to really see what kind of a man Pierre was. It’s difficult to judge the true personality of someone over a couple of bottles of good solid red wine but on a golf course it’s a different matter.
The way a person reacts to success or adversity is a good pointer to their character. And there is a lot of that in a round of golf. How he reacts on losing a hole, or winning a hole, on missing a three-footer on the last green or on driving two balls in a row into the deep rough are all very good indicators of personality.
We caught up on each other’s news for the rest of the meal – my attempts at gardening, Mike’s recent hike in Skye with Oscar – finished off with a coffee and I settled the bill. We made our farewells on the pavement outside the restaurant. Mike promised to be down by
nine thirty the next morning and we’d go over to the course together.
I had arranged to pick up Pierre from the hotel. Mike and I arrived just before ten. I left him in the car and went into the reception to find Pierre. He was waiting in the bar reading the newspaper when I walked in. We greeted each other as recently acquainted friends would.
A “Good morning” and “How was your headache yesterday morning?”.
“I decided that I needed some fresh air yesterday,” he grinned, “So I went off to St Andrews for the day. I also thought I’d better get myself some clubs because I haven’t brought mine with me.”
“You needn’t have bothered. You could have hired some at the club for the day.”
“It’s not a problem,” he replied. “I’ve been meaning to get some new ones for a while.”
I then told Pierre that I had a surprise for him. He looked at me curiously.
“I’ve invited your other half-brother to come and play as well. I thought it was a good opportunity for you to meet him.”
I’m sure that he paused for a split second as he was getting up from his chair but he covered it up with a slight stumbling movement, as if he had caught his thigh on the table. A slight look of concern crossed his face – as if he would rather that I hadn’t – but the moment passed very quickly and his composure returned. It had only been for the briefest of moments but it did make me think that perhaps I should have discussed it with him beforehand.
“You don’t mind, do you?” “Not at all,” he said. “I was hoping I would get to meet the others while I was here.”
We walked out to the car, and as we approached it the door opened and Mike climbed out.