The Confirmation

by L G Dickson

Much later, Annie learned that her father was desperate for them all to move to Geneva but Helen wouldn’t entertain the idea for a second. After he moved away, her mother inexplicably began to ooze resentment. The whole thing was completely perplexing to Annie, given that she’d appeared to go along with the move in the beginning. It was something she would never quite understand – the whole abandoned wife thing.

  ‘Never mind abandoned wife, Annie, what about abandoned child?’

  ‘I tried not to think of it like that. It was just his work. Well, that’s what I kept telling myself.’ As she spoke the pain returned. It was the almost indescribable feeling of panic and fear that had overwhelmed her as she tried to fathom what her life could possibly look like with her father gone. They told her she was overreacting but as far as Annie had been concerned they were ignoring the blatantly obvious truth. Her father could exist perfectly happily, somewhere else in the world and without her. Annie pulled herself back from the brink. She didn’t want to go back to a world of hurt and humiliation. And all because she hadn’t mattered quite as much as she thought she had. She pushed the dismal thoughts away, composed herself and continued.

  She spoke of regrouping and establishing a new family norm. It had been strained but Annie and her mother rubbed along well enough for a few years. Helen clearly resented Hugh upsetting their safe, structured suburban life and Annie resented him for leaving her to deal with all the fallout. She hadn’t been allowed to visit him, not even in the holidays, and was entirely dependent on her father’s forays home.

  ‘God, you were only a child, Annie. Being abandoned like that by your father and then your mother’s reaction. None of that is fair, none of it. Losing a parent is horrendous. I know he didn’t die or anything but somehow this seems almost as cruel. He’s gone but he comes back occasionally and you don’t know when you’re going to see him. I’m sorry but it’s just cruel.’

  He spoke with such feeling, such anger at her pain that it made her want him all the more. He was on her side. Someone was on her side.

  She spoke of her father’s visits home becoming increasingly tense. The parents barely tolerating each other and Annie spending less time hanging on to his every word and more time trying to avoid his attempts at offloading. Her mother was being completely unreasonable, all he had ever wanted was to support his family as best he could, blah, blah. He’d suggested that all he wanted was for his family to be with him and that Helen had no intention of supporting him and his career. He even discussed Annie leaving Edinburgh and living with him permanently in Geneva.

  But for all Helen’s coldness towards him, Annie just couldn’t bring herself to side with him against her.

  She was sure she must have been making it sound worse than it was. Yes, it was bad but lots of kids go through that kind of thing. You just have to get on with it. Try to see both sides, equalise the love, don’t cause upset. But whatever she did, it didn’t seem to matter. Her parents’ contempt for each other only grew and Annie was just grateful to escape to university.

  A few years later, and with Hugh’s visits home becoming more and more infrequent, Helen announced that her father had fallen for a young Swiss research scientist – name of Céline. The name sounded so smart, so sophisticated. But what was happening wasn’t terribly sophisticated – it was betrayal, plain and simple. Annie let the news gnaw away at her for a while until finally she felt able to climb out and away from the twisted and tortured morass of half-truths, downright lies and character assassinations. For years and with no logical basis for believing it, she had thought her parents would somehow find a way back to each other, eventually. But now… now she was reconciled to the fact that the only hope, for everyone’s sanity, was that Helen and Hugh might finally untangle themselves from this ugly mess of a marriage.

  The weight had gradually lifted until all that was left was the burden of her mother’s humiliation. The move to Geneva had been hard enough for her to explain to her social circle but now Helen had to suffer the indignity of an extra-marital relationship – the final degradation being Annie’s decision to visit her father and Céline. It wasn’t easy but Annie felt the need to at least try to be adult about the whole thing and go some way to acknowledging his new relationship.

  ‘He was still your father, I guess. Still loved you.’

  James could see it from her side. She had never really escaped trying to manage each of her parents’ expectations but at that age, as a young student, she had matured enough to know she needed to make this new situation work, however flawed the people concerned and however difficult they might make her life. Forgiving him, forgiving both of them was another matter but she had had to put all that to one side. For her own sanity she had to forget about her fourteen-year-old self, just forget about her. It wasn’t going to be the same, it would never be the same but she needed her father in her life. She would always need him in her life.

  And then as fate would have it, Céline turned out to be incredibly sweet and welcoming. She was so very pretty, perhaps more striking than pretty. Her hair was long, straight and dark with a funny little fringe that curled under halfway down her forehead which made her look even younger than she was. She was quite petite and altogether very different from Helen.

  Hugh and Céline lived in an amazing house, beautifully designed by Céline but even early on it had seemed to Annie that her father wasn’t entirely happy. They were clearly very comfortable with each other but there was a veil of despondency that seemed to hover over him. He laughed and smiled at all the right moments, he was attentive and affectionate towards both Annie and Céline but it was his eyes. They had just looked so sad, yearning even, as though something very precious was disappearing from his grasp and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  Then as Annie began to tell James about her father’s illness she felt the dragging sadness return.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Annie. Not now, not if you don’t want to.’

  But she carried on. There was no point stopping now. Her father had always smoked, cigars mostly, but he seemed to smoke a lot more after his move to Switzerland. And so came the almost inevitable lung cancer diagnosis. Oddly enough, Céline had been part of a team looking into the development of a vaccine that might treat lung cancer; something designed to boost the body’s immune response against the cancer cells.

  Annie recalled being at the hospital with her father, trying to make sense of it all. Why it was that cancer seemed to be the thing that put up the biggest resistance in our fight against ill health and death. Any sign of insurgence from the white blood cells and cancer just knocked them for six and, of course, here was Céline – right at the cutting edge of that research and yet powerless to help.

  The company he worked for had been great. He had access to the best specialists, new treatments and latest drug trials. Annie recalled feeling strangely proud that they really had seemed to value him. He’d steered the company through a very difficult merger and, unlike many of his colleagues, had stayed loyal. He didn’t look to jump ship to competitors who paid more money. He just wanted to do a good job and help the company to succeed.

  She remembered the endless round of debilitating treatments, the strain of waiting for test results, life being put on hold. It was difficult for her but it just got too much for Hugh and Céline. The foundations of their relationship weren’t strong enough to cope with such a brutal impact, and although Annie never doubted that they loved each other, it had been a love rooted in their life as was. They had enjoyed the finer things and Céline was so much younger, ambitious and used to living life at a hundred miles an hour.

  Annie had watched from the periphery, dealing with her own emotions, wanting to help but not sure how to. Her father had grown frailer and she watched them both struggle with failing health and failing love. And then, without warning and with little associated drama, her father came to a decisi
on. It felt to Annie as though he wanted to salvage what was good so he could remember that Céline had made him really very happy in ways he never had been with Helen. But just as importantly and perhaps more so, he didn’t want her to feel any guilt for being unable to cope when he needed her most. And so he left.

  Annie explained that the company owned a few properties in the centre of Geneva that they used for visiting clients and so Hugh moved into one of them. From a practical point of view it had been ideal. Everything was on the same level, a housekeeper cooked and cleaned, shopped.

  Annie had told her mother everything and of her decision to visit her father, regularly. There was no room for debate. She might be losing him for good now and needed to cling on for as long as possible. Helen had accepted the position – whether it was with good grace or not was hard for Annie to tell. She just didn’t say anything at all but then after one of Annie’s trips over to Geneva, Helen had rung and asked to meet. Annie assumed she was just to go round to the house and so felt slightly unnerved when Helen suggested meeting in the lounge of the Roxburgh Hotel. She’d only just started her legal traineeship and it felt as though she was being asked to go along and give a deposition to her mother.

  Helen had wanted details. What had happened, how it had happened and when it had happened. She didn’t want any extraneous nonsense, nothing about Céline understandably and so Annie presented the facts of the case, as she knew them.

  When Annie had finished, her mother began to drink her coffee. Must have been stone cold by then but Annie remembered how she just kept looking at her over the rim of the cup.

  ‘Will Daddy stay in Geneva?’ Annie hadn’t heard her call him that for years but she merely shook her head. She had no idea what his plans were. It was when they got up to leave that her mother stumbled slightly and then turned, her face drawn, anxious looking.

  ‘Would you mind asking Daddy if he might call me?’

  Annie hadn’t really known what her father’s response might be but she just didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course I wouldn’t mind,’ she’d said.

  She recalled at that moment taking her mother’s arm to walk out of the hotel and feeling quite suddenly that whatever the future held for them they were all meant to face it together. The Anderson family, the three of them, would deal with all of it – the light and the dark.

  And so her father had come home. Annie was never terribly sure how it happened. She had been down in Cumbria with the gang for a long weekend, came back and he was home; it was as if he’d never been away. Annie went round the following weekend for Sunday lunch. She found him gaunt and frail and eating only puréed food but he looked content, settled. It wasn’t as though her mother fussed over him; she just saw to him. She seemed to anticipate what he needed and when he needed it. He, in turn, seemed to appreciate the little kindnesses; imperceptible to most people but clear as day to Annie.

  ‘I don’t know, James, it was just meant. I can’t really explain what happened between them but it was just right that they were together at the end. They didn’t suddenly become different people; they had the same flaws, the same frailties. In that last year, they just found each other again.’

  The tears fell. James gently wiped them away with his thumb and kissed each still damp cheek.

  ‘People do find each other when they need to, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think they do.’ Annie looked up, smiled, and then burrowed back into his shirt.

  *

  Kirsty and Duncan walked hand in hand down the cobbled street to the St Vincent bar. The cobbles were sleek and shiny after days of persistent drizzle and Kirsty’s shoes were slipping on the wet surface.

  ‘Hold on, Duncan, not so fast. I’m likely to go arse over tit at this rate.’

  Duncan laughed and put a protective arm around his wife’s waist.

  ‘Wonder if JFK is going to be any more sociable now that he’s been under our Annie’s influence the past couple of months. At the very least I would hope he’s learned some manners!’

  ‘Oh, Duncan, don’t. He must have qualities we just haven’t seen yet. Annie wouldn’t be attracted to a complete moron so let’s just be civil and enjoy a good night.’

  ‘Anything for you, darling. God, I’m gasping for a pint.’

  They entered the narrow doorway into the small, cosy pub and squeezed past the regulars standing at the bar. Virginia and Gordon were tucked away into the corner at the far side of the dimly lit lounge area.

  ‘Bloody hell, Gordon, what have you been up to? You look like you’ve just finished a bout of boxing and Gin here has just unlaced and pulled off the gloves like the good corner man she is!’

  ‘I’m a what?’ Virginia looked perplexed.

  ‘Ah yes. Was reading some papers heading back down to the office and tripped over a broken paving stone. Went headfirst, papers flew up in the air and I held my arms out to break the fall. Ended up badly spraining both wrists.’

  Gordon held both arms up for them to see. Bandages had been wound tightly round each hand, ending halfway up his arm.

  ‘His hands were very badly swollen so when he got back to the office Guy from the Sustainability Team drove him straight to A&E. Nothing was broken, thank goodness; I’ve had to do literally everything for him. Haven’t I, Gordon?’ Virginia looked at her husband tenderly.

  ‘Yes, you have, dear.’

  ‘Not everything, surely!’ Duncan guffawed.

  ‘Right, that’s enough of that!’ Kirsty interjected. ‘You poor darling. Now let’s get some drinks in.’

  ‘I’ll go; you get the seats sorted out, Kirsty, and then help me back with the drinks. Mike Tyson there isn’t much use. You’ll have to lift his pint for him, Gin! Then we can talk about preparing a lawsuit against the council.’

  Just as Duncan turned towards the bar the doors pushed open and Annie and James walked in.

  ‘Great timing, you two,’ Duncan bellowed. ‘Must have been peering in through the door waiting for me to get up to the bar. What will it be then? Usual G&T, Annie? What about you, James?’

  ‘Pint of IPA for me, Duncan, thank you. I’ll help you with the drinks.’ James smiled but Annie could tell it was ever so slightly forced. She joined the others arranging tables and chairs, listened to the story about Gordon’s mishap, all the while glancing back to see how the two men were getting along. All seemed well, she thought. As well as could be expected.

  As they brought the drinks back, Annie shuffled along the green leather bench set against the wall to make room for James. He sat down and she immediately placed a reassuring hand on his leg. James turned and smiled, raised his glass and called ‘Cheers’. The rest of the company echoed his good wishes and they settled down to drink and chat.

  ‘Following the Test match, James?’ Duncan asked.

  ‘No, I’ve never really been interested in cricket. Not that interested in sport, to be honest.’

  Duncan ignored both statements and went on to describe the latest England performance against the West Indies.

  ‘What gets me is they talk about the middle order suffering a batting collapse; like they were subjected to some kind of terrible ordeal. Nobody did it to them, James. You know what I mean? They did it to themselves.’

  ‘Well, yes, but surely the opposition bowlers must have just been too good for them at the end of the day.’

  ‘Well, they’re proficient enough, I’ll grant you, but the batsmen just fell apart. You need to stand up to that kind of fast pace, James. Stand up straight and step into the ball.’ Duncan stood up and proceeded to demonstrate the perfect cover drive, finishing off with a flourish of his imaginary cricket bat.

  ‘Maybe it was a combination of good bowling and poor batting.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Probably a bit of both.’ Duncan remained standing, imaginary cricket bat held aloft. A couple
of the old regulars propping up the bar, faces ravaged by years of steady alcohol and nicotine intake, looked on incredulously.

  Annie turned and smiled at James. He really is trying his best, she thought, as she gently squeezed his leg.

  Virginia leaned across the table towards James. ‘So you work in St Andrew’s House? That must be exciting being right at the heart of things.’

  ‘“St Andrew’s House” and “exciting” aren’t often found in the same sentence, I must say. It’s not really very exciting when all the big decisions are taken down at Westminster. We just “tartanise” them up here.’

  ‘Oh, what a funny expression.’ Virginia took a sip of her red wine. ‘I probably don’t like his politics very much but I do like the look of our Secretary of State. Ian Lang, isn’t it? He’s quite a handsome chap.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Virginia.’ Gordon looked embarrassed.

  ‘Well, I’m pretty apolitical myself, Virginia.’ James smiled across at her. ‘It’s just that my interests lie in improving land management and it’s difficult to make sensible decisions about such things remotely. I’m really interested in the people on the ground, who manage and tend the land; are its custodians for future generations. They’re the people who need to be able to make the right decisions that suit their circumstances. Anyway, that’s maybe all a bit heavy for a Saturday night!’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. You’re quite right, obviously.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re leaning towards communism there, James,’ Duncan interjected, and then swiftly downed the remains of his pint.

  ‘I don’t think you can equate advancing crofters’ rights to state communism.’

  Annie could see James’s hackles were starting to rise.

  ‘Another round for everybody? James and I will get these in.’ Annie lifted his arm and took him off to the bar.

  ‘God, he really is a prat, Annie.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’ll discuss that later.’