Not My Father's Son

by Alan Cumming

  I told a couple of people the story. It just came out over a drink, but it was too soon and too weird and too inappropriate to really unleash it all. When I got home to New York I knew I’d have to start the process of normalizing this chapter of my life, making it something that had happened to me, not something that I was still living.

  I had that empty, nagging ache inside like someone had died, or I’d been attacked. And of course, both things were true. My father was dead to me now, but he’d certainly left his marks on me before I’d shut the door on him. Technically, I suppose he’d shut the door on Tom and me sixteen years ago, that cold November afternoon when he walked back into our childhood home with tears in his eyes. That would probably have been the last time I’d ever have spoken to him had this not happened. I decided I was actually thankful for the opportunity to have proper closure. Bizarrely, after all these years and all that had happened, it felt like an amicable split. No hard feelings, just gobsmacked amazement. I wished him well. I truly did. And, for perhaps the first time in my life, I felt sorry for him.

  Over the next few weeks I spoke to Tom and Mum often. We checked in with each other, gauging where the other was in the grieving process, for that is truly what it was. My mum had dreamt of the outcome of my appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? as giving her the answers about her father she had always longed for. Instead, my father had intervened and ruined her chance for pure happiness. Mary Darling had no idea that her husband had harbored such beliefs about her for all those years. In the many talks with her that followed, I began to formulate my initial theories about why and, more importantly, when he had begun to believe that I was not his son.

  Mum remembered the night in question, all those years ago in Dunkeld at the dance in the hotel. But her version of events was quite different. She had not gone to another room. They had not been discovered. She told me that the man in question, my supposed father, had a bit of a drink problem and she remembered him needing to talk about it that night. So not only was my father gravely mistaken in his impression of what had gone on between them, he had also seen an act of kindness and consideration on my mother’s part as betrayal and deceit. Of course that made perfect sense. I remembered how easily my dad could see the negative in any exchange.

  More and more, as we dug further into the past, I began to remember how deeply and often my father twisted reality into the paranoia-filled world he inhabited. I relived many occasions in my childhood when his anger erupted illogically. He would suddenly take against someone or something for reasons that were often impossible to fathom, certainly to a little boy, and because usually he would not voice them. As soon as his mind was made up, there could be no mention of the person or thing without risking his rage. Whether we liked it or not, we too had to make that person or thing disappear.

  But in the case of my conception, there had been no outbursts or fury. My father’s version of the event at the hotel, with him grabbing my mum and saying, “Well there’s no point in staying here any longer,” did not ring any bells with her at all. It was as shocking for her to hear it as it had been for me.

  I asked Mum if she could remember anything at all in his behavior while she was pregnant with me that hinted at his suspicion. She couldn’t.

  Indeed she told me a very touching story about my father rushing down the hill to get her fish and chips from the village to quell her pregnancy cravings, and also how happy he had been when I was brought home from the hospital. But with that story of his rare thoughtfulness came another bit of truth.

  “A man like your father, Alan, a proud man but an angry man, would never have let me through the door if he thought I was carrying another man’s child.”

  She was right of course. Although it had been easy to believe the issue was never discussed between them in the years that followed, like so many dark secrets in our house, it made no sense whatsoever that my father would not have confronted her when she learned she was pregnant with me. His pride would never have allowed him to stay silent.

  So it became clear that at some point later, who knew when, he had decided it was the truth.

  I absolutely believe that my father had not made up this tale as an attempt to hurt me, or derail my life, although he had succeeded at both. It was too multilayered and complex a deceit for that to ring true. Also, and this was both a revelation and an arrow to my heart, I knew he didn’t care enough about me to go to such elaborate lengths.

  It became clear that this myth had been hatched to benefit only one person: himself. Somewhere along the line, my father had decided this was true to make himself feel better about the way he was treating my mother, and the way he was abusing me. Of course the awful, glaring flaw in this logic is that he had also been a monster to Tom too. It didn’t make sense. But of course it shouldn’t and it couldn’t. I was trying to fathom my father’s psychopathic behavior that was based on a huge delusion. Surely it was not a big leap to think he might have found his own logic to merit Tom’s abuse too? But every night, just as sleep began to smooth out the rattling of my brain, I would return to the same thought: I couldn’t believe I was related to him. Maybe I had wanted it to be true so much, maybe that wish had actually seeped into my psyche, but now I couldn’t accept that I was his son. And although I was, I most certainly was, I had the documents to prove it, I knew with every fiber of my being that there was nothing aside from blood that related him to me. And that’s what kept me going. I may have been a robotic transvestite acting machine by day, and a preoccupied and cheerless dinner companion by night, but there was a light at the end of my tunnel: I was not my father’s son.

  SUNDAY 20TH JUNE 2010

  I returned to New York and immediately dove into work. I was to perform in concert for a week at Feinstein’s, Michael Feinstein’s eponymous cabaret space at the Regency Hotel on the Upper East Side. I had played for a week there earlier in the spring to a great reception. I knew my song choices were probably a little idiosyncratic and certainly politically challenging for the club’s regular demographic, but I believe if you’re honest, true to yourself, and committed, and especially if you use humor as a tool as well as a balm, people will respect you perhaps more than if they agreed with everything you said. It’s actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you’ll be okay.

  I had started singing in concert like this only the year before. For years I had wanted to do a show of my own. On the rare occasions when I sang a song at a gala or benefit, not in character but as Alan Cumming, I was amazed at how different that felt. I wanted to pursue that feeling in more depth one day. But singing as myself brought with it many terrors. As I mentioned, I had no character to hide behind. I was singing as me. That felt like an enormous and terrifying leap to make, and that is why until not too long before, I rarely made it. I also had an added issue about singing in general. I can sing. I have sung often through the years in various plays and films, and many years ago actually released an album with my friend Forbes Masson as our comedy alter egos Victor and Barry. But I am not one of those singers. You know, the Broadwaaaaaaay belters, the beautiful singers. And even worse, since I have been on Broadway and even won a Tony award for Best Actor in a Musical, I felt that more and more people expected me to be one of those singers. They expected me to have that sort of polished sound. And I just don’t. I don’t want to, mind you, but one of the troubles with becoming more and more well known (and in this case well known for something you don’t feel very confident about) is that you feel there is more and more of a chance you will disappoint.

  I think also I was hampered by the perceived notion that actors like nothing better than to stand up in a crowded room and make a speech or sing a song. Both these activities, but especially the latter, would send me into paroxysms of panic and even with major rehearsal could induce severe, almost insurmountable nerves. So you can understand why it was an experience I wasn’t in a hurry to repeat.

  I’m
not normally like that about acting. I’m usually quite relaxed about that, except for on opening nights.

  And of course the more you do something, the more comfortable you become, and the less frightening it becomes. I realized that the only way to both conquer my fear and embrace my desire about singing was to accept a proposal my manager put to me to perform a concert in Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in February 2009.

  And I was right. The more I did it, the more relaxed I became and the better I got. The more relaxed and the better I got, the more I did it. Nowadays I hop up onstage regularly to sing a song or duet with someone, and though I still get nervous, it’s the good kind of nerves, the necessary kind, that keeps you on your toes and makes sure the adrenaline is flowing.

  That first night, though, at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center, a beautiful hall with enormous glass windows overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park, I was very far from relaxed. My manager came to my dressing room to see how I was before the first show and I told her I wanted to punch her.

  Ninety minutes later I was euphoric. I had done it! I had felt the fear and done it anyway. And I had enjoyed it and so had the audience, and best of all, I had felt that connection. The rawest, purest connection you can only feel when you let the audience see inside you. I was hooked. Next stop was the Sydney Opera House as part of the Mardi Gras festival, followed by runs at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Yes, I have always believed in starting small.

  And now here I was, back at Feinstein’s, singing a song I’d written about my disdain for plastic surgery to a room filled with people, many of whom had obviously had plastic surgery; telling stories about what I thought was the essential American experience—being on an M&M’s float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; then singing a searing, biting diatribe against all that is American, written by my musical director, Lance Horne; then asking the audience to contribute to a campaign to eject state politicians who had voted against marriage equality; before finishing with a rousing ditty with the chorus “You’re fucking beautiful, and when I kiss your lips I hear those fucking angels sing.”

  You get the gist. It defined eclectic and it was exactly what I needed. Each night I walked out onto the tiny stage and for ninety minutes my mind and my body were completely disengaged from what I’d just been through. The days were spent quietly, resting and walking our dogs in Central Park. Grant and I had decided to stay in a suite in the hotel that housed Feinstein’s, as in a week I’d be off again to complete my turn on Who Do You Think You Are? and going up and downtown each day in the New York heat seemed unnecessarily exhausting. So every night, after the show, I could just pop back through the kitchens, up the service elevator, and head back to my suite, and my husband, and true comfort.

  Each night Grant and I would have drinks there with the friends who had come to the show, and each night I would recount the stories of Tommy Darling and of Alex Cumming, the two men who so completely filled my waking hours. It felt good to talk. Everyone was amazed by what I had to say. Their questions were thought provoking and sometimes allowed me new insight into what I had discovered. But mostly I felt solidarity and support and love, ironically three things I never felt from my father and three things I think Tommy Darling could have done with a whole lot more of.

  SUNDAY 27TH JUNE 2010

  When I arrived at Newark airport on Sunday morning I was told my flight to Beijing had been delayed and I would miss my connection to Kuala Lumpur. I was supposed to have arrived there on Monday afternoon, and had an evening and a good night’s sleep to acclimatize myself and prepare for filming beginning on Tuesday. Now, alas, I would not arrive till Tuesday morning and would have to immediately start filming as soon as I landed, never an ideal situation, but certainly not when you’re going to be on camera sans grooming after traveling for a day and a half!

  I managed to call Elizabeth, the director, and she eased my qualms by saying that the first day of filming was pretty light anyway, and all I’d be doing was examining a few documents in the hotel. There was nothing left to do but enjoy the luxury of the Air China lounge. As a self-confessed airline lounge whore, I had no problem with that at all.

  In this bubble, this fancy no-man’s-land, I found myself decompressing after a week of cabaret and confession. I brought my mind back round to my grandfather, and the outcome of his story, which I knew was going to be explosive. As much as I was eager to solve the mystery of how he died, I was also wary of what I might learn.

  TUESDAY 29TH JUNE 2010

  I began filming in a hotel room overlooking the myriad beauties of Kuala Lumpur, which were, this morning, being drenched by a huge thunderstorm. From our sky-top vantage point we could see the dark clouds careening towards us, and the lightning reflecting across the dozens of glass towers we looked down upon.

  Elizabeth’s assurance that the first bit of filming would be “light” buoyed me as I struggled with jet lag and the crew set up. On a table in front of me were some official-looking documents, facedown until the cameras would roll.

  It was nice to see everyone again. I’d only known these people for one week before our monthlong hiatus, but it was quite a week in terms of what we’d all gone through together, and being back amongst them felt comforting. And suddenly the next week and the inevitable bombshell of Tommy Darling’s demise felt less daunting.

  That feeling was not to last long. As the cameras began to roll, I turned over the first document. It was Tommy Darling’s death certificate.

  It had come from the Malaysian National Archive. It read,

  ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE OF DEATH. POLICE LIEUTENANT T. DARLING. CAUSE OF DEATH: G.S. WOUND IN HEAD.

  G.S., gunshot, wound in head. I went on to the autopsy report . . .

  ON 22ND JUNE 1951 AT 8 A.M. I PERFORMED AN AUTOPSY ON THE BODY OF AN ADULT MALE EUROPEAN IDENTIFIED BY P.C. 10112 AS T. DARLING, POLICE LIEUTENANT, AGED 35 YEARS. THERE WAS ONE GUN-SHOT WOUND OF ENTRY ABOUT THREE INCHES BEHIND AND LEVEL WITH THE RIGHT EAR. THERE WAS NO CHARRING OF THE SKIN. THE OCCIPITAL LOBES OF THE BRAIN WERE GROSSLY LACERATED AND A VERY MISSHAPEN BULLET WAS RECOVERED FROM THE LEFT OCCIPITAL LOBE OF THE BRAIN. CAUSE OF DEATH: SHOCK AND HEMORRHAGE FROM GUN-SHOT WOUND OF HEAD.

  Brutal. I was so unprepared for this. If today was “light,” what was the rest of the week going to be like?!

  ONE GUN-SHOT WOUND OF ENTRY ABOUT THREE INCHES BEHIND AND LEVEL WITH THE RIGHT EAR.

  This was all wrong. I’d been told he’d died in an accident while cleaning his gun. But you don’t clean your gun by pointing it to the side of your head. And then another thought struck me.

  You don’t kill yourself like that either. Had my grandfather been murdered?

  What was going on here?

  As if on some supernatural cue, a huge, deafening clap of thunder exploded across the sky. I leapt out of my seat.

  The fact that there had been no charring of my grandfather’s skin could only mean that he was shot at extremely close range, and the fact that the bullet entered the back of his head suggested he was executed in some paramilitary manner. Suddenly, finding the truth about Tommy Darling’s end seemed menacing, and not at all liberating as I had hoped.

  I had been given some information about Cha’ah, the village where Tommy had been stationed. Because of its position on the main route through the country of Malaya, it had become a hot spot for terrorist activity and was policed twenty-four hours a day by my grandfather’s security force. I feared that Tommy Darling had met a vicious and violent end at the hands of the Maoist insurgents, possibly in a raid on his police station. What a sad and lonely way and place to die, I thought.

  That night, I dreamt vividly of Tommy Darling and the horrors he must have faced in his dying moments. In my dream he was blindfolded, on his knees, hands tied behind his back, as a young, skinny, trembling Malayan boy held a gun to the back of his head. Everyone was screaming and panic-stricken, but Tommy Darling was stoica
lly calm, except for a single tear that slid out from behind his blindfold and plopped down unnoticed onto the jungle floor.

  WEDNESDAY 30TH JUNE 2010

  I awoke sweating and disoriented at 4:30 A.M. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t really want to. I got up, did some yoga, but that didn’t help. I decided to go for a walk. The sun was just beginning to peek out over the horizon. The gardens of this hotel were lush and airy, with pools at either end, and beyond the perimeter fence the jungle in all its primal, fertile plenty beckoned.

  I thought of my grandfather standing here looking out at this natural bounty, this explosion of nature.

  This is the air he would have breathed, I thought.

  It was beautiful. It was magical.

  I thought of what his life must have been like back in St. Albans, all frost, loneliness, twitching net curtains, and mean little hedges. No wonder he came back here, where there was this, where he was someone.

  I swam in the pool. It felt good to be submerged. Under the water my jet lag had no purchase. I was the lone survivor in a postapocalyptic paradise.

  As I stretched out on a chaise, contemplating what my day would reveal to me, a door to the main building behind me creaked open and a little man carrying a huge bundle of towels appeared. I watched him as he struggled towards me, his face peeping out from behind his load from time to time, checking that he was still on the right path.

  He arrived at his station and dropped the towels into a basket, then picked up one and came over to me brandishing it with both hands and a little bow.