While Greg could agree with the sentiments his father expressed, he found it difficult to equate them with anything his father might have said while he’d been alive. His father had never spoken ill of anyone – especially family.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Dad: you’re sounding a bit… how shall I put this… a bit hot under the collar.’
‘I am hot under the collar! I’m two thousand degrees Fahrenheit hot under the collar, if you must know. I wanted to be buried next to your mother, not put in a goddamn incinerator. That’s where they burn rubbish – not people!’
‘I was in America when that decision was made,’ Greg replied, in an effort to extricate himself from any guilt his father might be imparting.
‘You’re always in America,’ his father shot back. ‘That’s where you live, for God’s sake! You can’t use that as an excuse. You’ve got a goddamn phone like everyone else, haven’t you? Huh! Any chance of avoiding responsibility and you’ll take it, lad. You were always that way!’
Greg was unsettled by the anger, by the accusation – even if he did know it to be true – and he sought to take command of this strange conversation. ‘Is there anything in particular you want, Dad?’ he asked.
‘There are a lot of things I want, Greg, but most of them I can’t have now. That’s the problem with being dead. How long have I been dead, anyway?’
‘Just over three weeks. The funeral service was on Friday.’
‘Three weeks? It feels more like three years! Three years of being bandied from pillar to post and now back to bloody square one. Jesus Christ!’
Lyle paused when he saw his son’s expression and his tone became more conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry, Greg. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. Taking things out on you. It’s you I came to see, lad – you I wanted to see. I think I’ll go up to the loft for a bit. Get some rest and calm down. I’ll be different when I return, I promise you. More like my old self. Bear with me, son. It’s important you bear with me.’
Greg nodded. ‘When you come back, Dad, can you wear some clothes? I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but those dangly bits of yours are a bit of a distraction.’
Lyle looked down at his pecker and was surprised to see it swaying around like a divining rod.
‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’
Greg looked at his watch. ‘Going on for eight-thirty.’
‘I’ll be back at ten, then. Don’t go anywhere!’
Lyle’s outline disappeared and Greg was once more alone in the room. He stood there immobile, his arms hanging limply. Slightly dazed and totally confused, he walked to the dining room and picked up the bowl of stew he’d been eating. It was now stone cold and he scraped the contents into the sink and turned on the tap. When the last of the hash had disappeared down the plughole he went to the pantry in search of something more substantial – alcohol – and found his father’s Christmas sherry.
He poured a generous amount into a beaker he found in the kitchen cupboard and moved to the dining room. There, he took a piece of scrap paper and the pen his father kept by the telephone, sat down in one of the easy chairs and, resting the paper on an old dictionary, started to write a narrative of his strange experience – and also a list of questions to ask his father if, in the event, his father did return.
But how could his father return? His father was dead. The prismatic outline had been a daydream, a trick of the mind; there had to be a rational explanation for its appearance. But what was it? Delayed jetlag came to mind, but he quickly discounted the idea; he was more than familiar with its discomforts and just as aware now that he wasn’t suffering from any of them. It had to be something else.
He retraced the events of the day. He’d climbed out of bed, showered and then gone downstairs and joined Billy at the breakfast table. Jean had handed him an orange juice and… that was odd. When had Jean ever poured him an orange juice before? She’d always banged the carton down on the table and told him to help himself. What if she’d slipped something into the juice, a slow-releasing Mickey or something? The more he thought about this the more convinced he became that his grudge-bearing sister-in-law had drugged him. ‘What a bitch,’ he muttered, though more out of relief than anger. That would explain everything. But how would squeaky-clean Jean know where to get hold of such a drug? She’d never moved in the right circles.
It was then that a more uncomfortable thought crossed his mind: he’d moved in those circles! Maybe Jean hadn’t drugged him after all; perhaps he’d experienced a delayed reaction to one or another of the drugs he’d voluntarily taken as a youth. But what drug, and why after all this time would he suffer its after-effects when he’d never suffered from flashbacks before? It made no sense. No sense at all. The sherry, however, continued to make sense, and he poured himself another generous measure.
The more of the fortified wine he drank, the less he believed his father would return, that his appearance – if indeed he had appeared – had been a one-off mental aberration that would forever be unaccountable. Oddly though, the more he believed this, the more he found himself wanting his father to return. He’d always preferred the unusual to the humdrum.
Greg wasn’t to be disappointed. At precisely ten o’clock, the door to the dining room opened and Lyle walked in wearing a red ruche taffeta ball gown and a flat corduroy cap.
‘How’s this?’ he asked. ‘Is this better?’
Greg, who was by now on his sixth sherry, answered his father directly: ‘Yes, much better, Dad. But why did you choose to wear one of Mum’s dresses when you have your own clothes hanging in the wardrobe?’
‘For one thing it’s more comfortable,’ Lyle said. ‘My todger’s still going like the clappers down there and the dress gives it room for manoeuvre. For another, I don’t seem to be able to wear trousers anymore. I can wear things that hang from the shoulders, but nothing that requires tightening around the waist. There’s no point asking me why because I don’t know why. All this is new to me.’
He then sat down in the chair next to his son and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.
‘I loved this chair, Greg. Me and your mother bought it. It cost a fair bit but it was quality – and quality lasts. That’s a fact worth remembering. And about earlier: I think I owe you an apology for some of the things I said. I probably meant them, but I shouldn’t have said them. I never used to talk like that and I certainly didn’t use to cuss when I was alive. But I think I’m more myself now, so let’s enjoy the time we have together. I’m not due back for another twenty days.’
This was more like the mild-mannered man Greg remembered, but whether he wanted to spend the next twenty days in the company of this strange apparition was another matter entirely. He glanced at the notes he’d made on the scrap of paper and cleared his throat.
‘This is all a bit weird for me, Dad. I mean – don’t get me wrong – I’m glad to see you and everything, but I can’t help thinking that I’m not seeing you, that I’m having a dream or a sort of breakdown and that I’m talking to myself.’
‘Completely understandable, Greg. Completely under-standable. But I’m here. You’re not having a dream or a breakdown.’
‘And you’re dead?’
‘Dead as a herring, son.’
‘So why are you here then? Why am I seeing you?’
‘There’s something I need you to do for me, Greg – for the family. I’m counting on you.’
‘You’re counting on me?’ Greg exclaimed. ‘I’m the last person people count on. You know that better than anyone, Dad. You said earlier that if there was a chance of me avoiding responsibility then I’d take it. And you’re right. I’m not proud of the fact, but that’s the way I am – the way I’ve always been. Wouldn’t you do better talking to Billy?’
‘I can’t. Billy’s a part of the problem you have to fix. Now hear me out, will you?<
br />
‘There’s probably no convenient time for a person to die, but my death came at the worst time possible. There were matters needing my attention that I’d been putting off for too long. Family matters. And Billy’s one of them.
‘It’s always been a great sorrow to me that you and your brother never really got along, and that for the last few years you haven’t even been talking to each other.’
‘We’re talking now,’ Greg said.
‘And what did it take for that to happen? My death is what! Don’t you think it would have been better if you’d started talking to each other while I was still alive? I don’t know the ins and outs of what went on between you two, but I do know one thing: you were always hard on your brother and, in my opinion, unfairly so. That’s something you need to understand.’
Greg poured more sherry into his beaker and braced himself for a lecture. It was familiar ground.
‘You had it all, Greg – the looks and the brains. You never had to try. Everything came easily to you. You won a scholarship to the grammar school, sailed through exams with the minimum of effort and got accepted by good universities. And no sooner had you graduated from the University of Arizona than you walked into a well-paying job in Texas and became some hot-shot academic.
‘Billy, meanwhile, fails to get into the grammar school – and how you rubbed that into his face. You never let up on him, did you? Always told him he was stupid. He wasn’t stupid: he just wasn’t as bright as you were. But something he was that you never were was a tryer. It used to break my heart when he only scraped through his exams when he put so much effort into them. Do you know how disappointed he was when he didn’t get into university and had to settle for a polytechnic? Probably not, or you wouldn’t have kept ribbing him about that either, telling him he was as thick as two short planks.’
‘I didn’t mean those things, Dad – and I certainly never meant to hurt him. I was just teasing him. That’s all it ever was. But you have to admit, Billy was a bit of a geek when he was growing up: all that lifting his cap and touching his forelock. Everyone thought he was odd.’
‘If a geek’s a person who’s polite, a person who doesn’t swear and a person who doesn’t break the law and get into trouble, then I guess you’re right: he was a geek. But if that’s what a geek is, then you can give me a geek as a son any day of the week.’
His father fell silent for a moment and so too did Greg. Home truths had never been his favourite subject.
‘He worked hard at polytechnic, Greg,’ Lyle continued, ‘got a degree in textile engineering and found a job in a mill. And no sooner had he started to do well there than the mill closed and the textile industry upped sticks and headed to the Far East. He tried accountancy after that, but no matter how hard he studied he could never get the hang of it and had to find something else.
‘When he went into sales, I admired him. It went against his nature, took him outside his comfort zone. He was never particularly confident or outgoing – and a part of that’s your doing. But he’s made a good fist of it, and he’s even got a couple of people reporting to him now.
‘But when it comes to real promotions, he’s always been passed over. I could be wrong, but to my way of thinking there’s only so high a person of 5’ 7” can climb in the corporate world. When it comes to choosing between tall people and short people, charisma and substance, the tall person with charisma wins out every time. It’s why this country’s in the mess it’s in. I’ll admit that Billy’s a bit light on the charisma front, but the lad’s always had substance.’
‘So, what’s the matter with Billy?’ Greg asked. ‘You said he was part of the problem I have to fix?’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Lyle answered. ‘That’s what you have to find out. I know for a fact though that there is something wrong. I could always read Billy like an open book and I know when something’s troubling him. I thought for a while he was having problems with Jean, but he assured me he wasn’t – or at least no more than usual.’
‘But if I ask him what the problem is, he’s not going to tell me, is he, Dad?’ Greg said. ‘We’ve only just started talking again. Wouldn’t it be better if Uncle Frank asked him?’
‘No, this is a matter for you to sort out, Greg. It’s up to you to find a way. Besides, Uncle Frank is the other family matter you have to sort out. I don’t know the full story here, either, but at least I know the start of it: he keeps handing himself in to the police.’
Uncle Frank’s unexplained behaviour had started about a year ago, after a large jeweller’s store in the city centre had been robbed. The robbery, Lyle said, had been front-page news in the local paper and, the day after the story appeared, his uncle had gone to the police station and claimed responsibility.
Although the police had immediately discounted Frank’s claim – both robbers had been in their twenties and a good foot taller than the old man now standing in front of them – procedures required that they question him before eliminating him from their enquiries. Frank was therefore taken to a small room and interviewed by a junior officer.
‘So, Frank, tell me what happened,’ the officer had said.
‘It’s Mr Bowman to you, young man,’ Uncle Frank had replied. ‘And, if you don’t mind, I’d like a cup of tea.’
Over a cup of tea and two Rich Tea biscuits the officer had generously thrown in, Uncle Frank told him he’d met his accomplice at a bus stop and that they’d only decided to rob the jeweller’s store after the bus they were waiting for had failed to arrive. Since privatisation, he added, the bus service had gone to pot.
It was a spur of the moment thing, Uncle Frank explained, and no, he didn’t know his accomplice’s name – it wasn’t as if they were friends or anything. What did they take? Jewels, of course! What kinds of jewels? Shiny ones. Any watches? Maybe – he couldn’t vouch for what his accomplice took. Where are the jewels now? He’d lost them. Why are you here, Mr Bowman? It was his duty as a citizen. Do you have a wife, children – any relatives?
It was then that Lyle had been called to the station. No longer having a car of his own and in the middle of a delicate paint job, it had taken him an hour to get there. He was asked by a detective if his brother had ever been sectioned or was currently being treated for a psychological disorder. Lyle had answered a simple no to both questions, but when asked if his brother led a full life, had replied dismissively that no person their age led a full life.
Lyle and Uncle Frank left the station together, Uncle Frank waving a cheery goodbye to Pete, the junior officer who was now allowed to call him Frank. ‘See you later, Pete,’ Uncle Frank called out to him.
And see him later he did.
On three subsequent occasions, his uncle returned to the station and admitted responsibility for other robberies: a branch bank, a building society and a travel agent’s, all of which had been reported in the local newspaper. Each time Lyle had been called to the station to escort his brother home, and each time Uncle Frank had bade a fond farewell to his growing number of friends there: ‘Bye Pete. See you later, Dave. Mind how you go, Carol – and thanks for the digestives.’
‘It beats me why they never charged him with wasting police time,’ Lyle said. ‘I think they just saw him as a lonely old man with too much time on his hands and, when you think about it, that’s exactly what he is. They liked him, though, that was apparent. Always treated him with respect. It wouldn’t surprise me if they even looked forward to his visits.’
‘Did he ever say why he did this?’ Greg asked, intrigued by the story his father told him.
‘No. He refused to talk about it. I tried reasoning with him – even shouted at him – but he never would tell me. All he’d say was that he had a plan and I could rest assured that he wasn’t losing his marbles. He said his silence on the matter was for my own good, but God knows what he meant by that.’
‘Can you remember if any
thing happened just before he started doing this?’ Greg asked.
Lyle thought for a moment. ‘There was one thing,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but it made no sense. He said the government had turned off his television.’
‘Why would he think that?’
‘I haven’t a clue, Greg. I haven’t had a television for six years. It got to the point where I wasn’t prepared to pay a licence fee for the drivel they were broadcasting. Syd was of the same opinion, but kept his television for when his grandchildren visited.’
‘So you want me to find out what he’s up to?’
‘Him and Billy, both,’ Lyle said. ‘Billy will be the toughest nut to crack, but your uncle’s always had a soft spot for you. If he’s going to open up to anyone, it will be you. Your emails were always the highlight of his week.’
(The emails Greg sent his uncle weren’t exactly emails. Uncle Frank had heard of emails, wanted to tell the few people he knew that he received emails, but had no computer. Greg had therefore written emails, printed them off and then put them in an envelope and posted them. In all but name, the emails were simply old-fashioned letters.)
‘I’m tired, Greg,’ his father announced. ‘I’m going back to the loft. What are your plans for tomorrow?’
‘Buy some paint and get hold of a structural engineer. Did you know there’s a crack in the back wall?’
‘No, but the house is old – like me. It’s not dying though, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. By the way, I found an old war helmet and gas mask in the loft. I’ll put them on the landing and save you a climb. You never know, they might be worth something. Sleep well, son. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight pm.’
Without ceremony, Lyle disappeared.
Greg looked down at the list of questions he’d prepared and crossed out those his father had answered. Two remained: why was his father speaking with an American accent and what was the Afterlife like?
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The Last of the Bowmans Page 8