by Alan Cumming
I was obviously being used by my father in some way, but how? Was I brought along to remind this woman that despite their obvious and public entanglement, he was still a family man with responsibilities, and that their affair would always have to remain just that? Or worse, was I there as a sort of decoy, to somehow show a softer, kinder side of my father to balance the more brutish front he presented to the world? Maybe he felt my being there made him and the woman seem more like a family and therefore less illicit to others around us?
Back home, giddy with both the rare attentions of my father and the sugar high of the soda and the strawberry tart, I came crashing down to earth when I saw my mother so angry. Soon after that, my Saturday mornings were no longer my own, as I was put to work on the estate, peeling posts in the sawmill or weeding the seedbeds in the nursery. It was backbreaking work, but I was glad to avoid such compromising situations. Even strawberry tarts had lost their luster.
Now, several years later, I could sense a mile off that my father’s willingness to take me to the Angus Show had conditions.
My mother looked up from her knitting and smiled kindly at me.
“No, you go to the show, pet. I know how much you want to.”
Saturday came, and at the appointed hour we set off in silence. I had my wages from the brashing burning a hole in my pocket. I hoped my father would let me have some time on my own to go and spend it.
We had to park far away from the showground, but I loved the walk, the sounds and smells wafting ever nearer us as we approached. My father walked with determination to the agricultural machinery section. There were stands with tractors and combine harvesters, and you could climb into their cabs and pretend to drive them. I didn’t, of course. I was too old for that now, but I had done so as a little boy, and seeing other kids do it now made me happy and nostalgic for that time. Then, standing nonchalantly by a stall where you could collect leaflets and key chains with the tractor company logos on them, I saw her. It was not the woman I expected, yet she was not a stranger to me. We said our polite hellos, and they pretended it was a total coincidence we had bumped into each other in this seething mass. Then my father strode off and she followed. I knew better than to linger and dutifully scampered after them.
Thus began a weird dance. She and my father would be ahead of me, and suddenly they were gone. Fearing the wrath that would ensue if I became lost, I began to panic and scanned the area, leaping up and down to see over the heads for a sight of them. I wove my way through the crowds to rejoin them, marveling at how quickly we had become separated and vowing to myself to be extra diligent from then on. Stalls that would normally have caught my eye I ignored. At one point we stopped at an army recruitment trailer, and as I glanced at the photos of burly men driving helicopters and tanks I waited for my father to start in on a story about his days in the forces. His National Service in the Royal Air Force was a source of great pride for him, even though, as I grew older and began to ask more questions, I realized he had only worked in his barracks’ kitchens and had never seen any actual combat. Still, the order, the discipline, the unquestioning acquiescence to rule had obviously made a great impression on him. Of course it also crossed my mind that Tom and I were now his soldiers.
But the usual story of some fellow squaddie’s ineptness never came that day. I looked up and my father was gone. She was gone. They had both disappeared into the crowds, and I knew in an instant that they had intended to do so, that they had in fact been trying to lose me for the last quarter of an hour. I had doggedly pursued them, fearful of my father’s wrath, little knowing that he was trying to engineer their flight all along. My father had purposely abandoned me.
My instincts were that I should try to find them, but knowing that they had purposely tried to lose me quieted the panic that was rising from my stomach. I told myself that I had done everything I could. Surely my father would not have the audacity to punish me for this? I also started to make a plan. I looked at my options. It was light, there were many people around, and I had money. But I knew that telling anyone about what had happened, even the public “I’ve lost my dad” version, would not be tolerated by him. And taking a bus to Muirdrum and then walking the remaining several miles to the estate would be too much of a transgression also, so that was out of the question too. My only option—and I thought for certain the option my father both wanted and knew I would take—was to stay in the park, wander around until they returned, and take my chances. There was nothing else for me to do.
There’s a thing in Scotland called “smirr” and it’s miserable. It comes off the sea and it’s not quite a rain but it’s thicker than a mist. Well, right then, it started smirring.
Being alone in that showground turned out to be one of the most exciting times of my thirteen-year-old life. In the midst of one of my father’s terrorizing, psychotic mind games I was suddenly given freedom. I realized that whatever I did in the time it took for him and the woman to do whatever they had snuck off to do was up to me. They hadn’t just accidentally lost me in the crowd; they had run off, they had abandoned me. I then remembered his van being parked so far away, and wondered if the seclusion had also been part of his plan. I felt flushed with the feeling that for the first time ever, I held all the cards.
But soon that glow evaporated and I began to worry that they might not return, or worse, he would return alone and she would not be there to supply the buffer to my father’s wrath that I was counting on. I felt lonely and yet liberated. Euphoric, and afraid.
At that time my brother Tom and his fiancée were busy creating their “bottom drawer,” a collection of household items for their life together that would be accrued throughout their engagement. Each time they bought or were given something to add to it filled me with panic, for it meant that the day Tom would leave me alone in our house was coming closer. And also I felt jealous, for each pot or bedspread was a sign of a future, other life, and a symbol of hope that I, as yet, could not imagine.
But now, alone in a showground with people positively bursting to sell me things, and with my wages just waiting to be spent, I did something that filled my heart with joy, and surely held a deeper symbolic meaning. I bought myself a dinner service!
I didn’t mean to. I was thirteen, after all, and not likely to be throwing any dinner parties for quite a while hence. But I needed to feel comfort, I needed to know there was a future for me that did not involve my father and a woman who was not my mother running around like schoolchildren trying to hide from me, dashing off to the back of a van carefully parked in a quiet side street. I needed to imagine a home where I would not be tormented, where I would be in control, where I would be the one inviting others into my space, and I would be providing for them. I needed to jump-start the process that my brother was embarking on, for myself.
It took me ages to gin up the courage to bid. The stallholder said he had a half dozen of the sets to sell off at this never-to-be-repeated price, but I waited till the very end of his rant, when he’d said it was his absolute lowest offer at least ten times, and then I gingerly raised my hand. A box was almost thrown towards me. I felt people looking at me sideways, wondering why an unaccompanied child was bidding for tableware in the rain. I walked away from the crowds towards the animals’ section where I sat on a bale of hay and peered into the cardboard box of treasure, of future, that I had just acquired. Beige and bland with seventies-style flowers printed on every plate, bowl, and cup, I thought they were the most sophisticated things I had ever seen. They were my ticket out. I would be eating off them in a place where there were buses and taxis and where I would never have to wait in a public place for hours, cold and damp, wondering if my father had concluded his liaison, and if or when he would come for me.
He did, of course. Both of them did. It was dark and the field was nearly empty and they actually had the audacity to pretend they had genuinely lost me. But I knew they were lying. The very fact that he did not explode when he saw me was immediate and t
otal proof. And though it doesn’t give me much pleasure to say it, he wasn’t a very good actor.
NOW
Up until very recently I still had one of the saucers from that dinner service. The rest of the set had gradually been broken or given away to charity shops during my many moves through student flats in Glasgow and marital homes there and in London. But I always hung on to that one saucer because it was a talisman of my escape to adulthood from my dark years as a child, and reminded me of the actual day when I had the first inkling that I might actually get away.
Sadly the saucer did not survive my move to America, but I can still see it in my mind. It still glows in my heart.
SATURDAY 22ND MAY 2010
I woke up in the white attic and Tom was gone. I lay awake for some time, too exhausted to move.
The day was a blur. I had lunch with Elizabeth, the director of Who Do You Think You Are?, and the only moment I acknowledged anything was wrong came at the same time as the bill.
“I just wanted to say that I understand there’s going to be surprises during the shoot, but can I just put it out there that . . .” I hesitated, not quite knowing how to convey what I meant. I just needed to give myself an out, somehow.
“I’m feeling a little delicate right now. You know, I’ve been traveling and I’m tired and a bit overwhelmed. If there is anything really big and completely from left field, you’ll give me some sort of hint to prepare myself, won’t you?”
Elizabeth looked me in the eye, a little taken aback.
“Well, of course, I can’t tell you anything in advance, but I will be as respectful to you and your family’s feelings as I possibly can.”
I thought that was really tender and comforting, and exactly what I needed to hear. Of course the reality was a little less tender and comfortable.
Saturday night was spent with my London friends, people I have known and loved long, but see less and less frequently. I was in a daze throughout dinner, but acted like the person I wanted to be in that scenario: happy, secure, open. I pulled it off, mostly. Months later a very perceptive friend told me she had suspected that night that I was really ill. I was certainly not in my right mind.
All day my mind had been a constant rotation of memories of what had been inconsequential moments that now seemed full of portent. I mentally scanned all the childhood pictures of myself and Tom and remembered how I’d always joked about our different body types—Tom the skinny boy athlete with his washboard stomach and me the rosy-cheeked little brother with his wee belly. Now it made sense.
I swam that afternoon, the water the perfect place to soak up the whirring of my mind. As I was walking home I suddenly stopped outside Foyles bookshop just off Charing Cross Road. I was quiet for a few moments and then said aloud, “That’s why I don’t have a hairy chest!”
NOW
Recently I attended an interactive theatre piece in the Brooklyn Museum. Towards the end of the evening I was taken into a corner by a soft-spoken Japanese lady. She sat me down, took my hands in hers, and asked me, if the world were to end and I could choose one person to save, did I know who that person would be? I told her I did. Then she asked me if I thought that in the same circumstances, the person I had chosen would choose to save me. I said I knew that they would. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.
“You are so lucky,” she said. “Some people don’t even know who they would save.”
One of the good things about having had more than a few relationships before I met Grant is that when we did meet I knew quite a lot about myself. And so did he. We should have done, I suppose, we were both thirty-nine, after all. And so along with the euphoria and passion of our coming together was a conversation that was adult, honest, and frank. We’re all so conditioned to entering relationships hiding our baggage. Now he and I were laying ours out unashamedly and embracing it. It felt very good. It still does.
Grant is the kindest, funniest person I’ve ever met, and I’ve known some kind, funny people. I feel so lucky to have met him because I think we should be together. We just work. And we have the same color eyes. When I look into his I feel I am looking into myself.
SUNDAY 23RD MAY 2010
Grant woke me up on Sunday morning. He had arrived home in New York, listened to the messages I’d left him, and got straight back on a plane. I suddenly felt buoyed. I had so many things I needed to do. With Grant coming, I felt I could finally take a step.
I was more and more worried about the possibility of my father giving an interview to the Sunday Mail. I had no idea how many times reporters had come to his home over the years, but I had seen the few printed articles he had supplied quotes for, and there was no way anyone could interpret those as positive experiences, so why was he threatening to do this now? Now, of all times, when he had just announced his lack of connection to me, or renounced his connection, more like. And then the panic began to set in. Was that what he was going to talk about? Was he going to spill the beans to the press before he had even spoken to me, or before I had a chance to talk to my mum? I wouldn’t put it past him.
But that just didn’t make sense. My father would never allow the last thing the world knew of him before he died to be that he had been cuckolded. He! But he was very ill, and Tom had said he had been weeping on the phone. It was all so out of character.
Tom had spoken to our dad again a couple of times in the past few days and informed him that I wanted to go ahead with the DNA test. He told me our father had begun to prevaricate and wanted to wait a few days before going ahead with any test. Why, I thought? What was that about?
I woke up on the Sunday and decided I needed to speak to the man myself. I knew from the start that I would eventually have to make this call. It was becoming ridiculous that Tom was forced to be the go-between between my father and me. This was about me, not Tom. And I could see the toll it was taking on my brother, every upsetting interaction being compounded by having to relay it back to me. Tom didn’t deserve that pain.
I asked Tom for my father’s phone number and called him. It went straight to voice mail. Understandable, I thought. He doesn’t know my number. I wouldn’t pick up a call to my home from a number I didn’t recognize. I cleared my throat and wondered if I’d be able to say what I needed to say.
The machine beeped.
“Hello, this is Alan . . . Cumming. I’m calling to speak to my . . . to Alex . . . Cumming. I really need to talk to him about some things that I think he’ll know about, and I would really appreciate it if he would call me back as soon as possible.”
I thought I was about to hang up, but found myself saying more.
“It’s urgent. It’s really urgent, so please do call me as soon as you can. Thank you.”
I recited my number and hung up. And the waiting began.
Tom had told me that my father was recuperating from an operation. He was clearly at home. In fact, Tom had spoken to him that morning and told him to expect my call. So as the minutes turned into hours, the fact that he was purposely not calling me back made me more and more angry. Yet again he had all the power. He couldn’t stop himself, I thought. He was so used to keeping me weak, vulnerable, anxious. Though I imagined that part of his failure to speak to me was also due to some trepidation on his part. I wasn’t scared of him anymore, and I think that scared him.
I called again at 7 P.M. No answer.
My father’s silence was stopping me from getting out of the hole he had just dug for me. I felt like I was back on the estate again, waiting for him to come and inspect me, but this time I was more angry and frustrated than anxious. I wanted it to be over.
I started to think of how I could deal with this situation if he never spoke to me. Grant had told me that I didn’t need him to do a DNA test, as men hand down identical Y chromosomes to all their male offspring. Tom and I could do a test, and if Y chromosomes didn’t match, that would be proof enough that my father’s story was true.
So we found the kits on the Internet
and ordered them to arrive on a night I’d be back in England. Tom would come to my house, and we’d take the test. I felt I should wait up until my dad called, but eventually my fatigue won. I was utterly exhausted, but also slightly alarmed that I was going on camera the next morning looking so raddled. There was no makeup or hairdresser available to me for this shoot, no one who could disguise the effects of all I had learned. This was au naturel, baby, and I cursed myself for not being more demanding.
As we climbed up the steps into the sleeping loft, I told Grant that whatever happened, I needed to find out the truth for myself. If my father gave me no more information than what he’d passed on through Tom, I was going to make it my mission to get to the bottom of the story, and go and talk to my real father if necessary. Once more I went to sleep, as I had done so many times as a little boy, with the full knowledge that I could never rely on my father.
I was forty-five years old. I had been waiting for a phone call from my father since I was twenty-nine, my age the last time we spoke.
I guess I should have known what to expect.
MONDAY 24TH MAY 2010
In the morning I woke early and got ready. It felt like my first day of school. Despite everything that had happened since I arrived in London, I was actually excited about appearing on Who Do You Think You Are? There was nothing more I could do about the issue of my father, or my real father, at that moment. I decided to focus on diving into the TV show. The fact that my father had backed off from the ongoing investigation in my present almost gave me more breathing space to look forward and, dare I say it, enjoy the experience I was about to undergo from the past. My progeny issue was on hold, certainly until the DNA test kit arrived and was completed, and I was ready to fully commit to Who Do You Think You Are? And the reason I had agreed to the show in the first place: to solve the mystery of my maternal grandfather, Tommy Darling.