Page 71 of The Promise
‘Does your dad know you were coming here today?’ my mother asks as she does what she usually does when I come home. She makes me take off my winter coat, she sits me down on the comfy chair which was always my favourite as a child and she puts on the kettle for a cuppa.
‘I only decided to make the trip last night,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve been filling my weekends with all sorts of activity since Kate left, but this is the first Saturday I’ve had nothing in my diary so I made the decision last night and got a last-minute flight.’
‘Oh,’ she says, stirring the cup of tea before she hands it to me. ‘He’s in bed most days now for a nap around this time, but I told you that on the phone already. He doesn’thave the same energy to be as bitter and angry any more. Even his congregation, who used to hang on his every word, have noticed how much he has mellowed. He isn’t, let’s say, as forceful and energetic as he once was.’
I blow on the tea in my mug and go over in my head what it is I want to say to him, but the truth is I have no script.
‘How is Kate?’ Mum asks, making my heart leap when I hear her name.
‘She’s – she’s doing OK, I suppose,’ I reply, feeling my heart break all over again as I think of how geographically we are now so close, closer than we’ve been for most of this year. ‘I rode in a taxi through town from the bus station to get here and imagined I saw her in every shop doorway, just as I used to when I looked for her after the bomb.’
‘Does she know you’re home?’ she asks me. I shake my head.
‘I think I’ll go up and see Dad now.’
‘That’s OK, honey,’ Mum says to me. ‘I’ll just go and let him know you’re on your way. I think he’ll be very glad to see you.’
I go into my father’s bedroom, now in a different room to where my mother sleeps. It was always known as the spare room when I was growing up, and has hosted many famous names from the world’s clergy, but its majestic decor is now faded and old, a bit like the man who lies beneath the covers.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he says to me. His voice is lowand fragile, his face is thinner and the redness from before has gone, but it’s his hands that catch my eye the most. They are the hands that once held a bike for me as I tried to ride it without stabilizers for the first time. They are the hands that many times threw a ball in my direction so I could score a goal between the posts he made with wood that left his fingers splintered. They are the hands that once helped me roll a snowball into a snowman so large that I was the envy of all my friends when I was only seven years old.
‘I wanted to … I wanted to come here and make peace with you once and for all,’ I say to him, and I see a tiny smile climb onto his face. It’s not a smile of happiness entirely, but more like one of intense relief. ‘I know we’re both stubborn fools, but one of us had to make the first move and I’m stepping it up right now to say I’m sorry for any trouble I’ve ever caused you and that I forgive you for the hurt that you, intentionally or not, have caused me.’
He licks his lips which are dry and flaky and takes a deep breath.
‘You know, David, our time apart has not been entirely pain-free on my part either. I’ve had a lot of time to think and ponder over a lot of what I said to you down the years,’ he says to me. He pats the bed and I sit down at the bottom of it, the familiarity of the satin throw bringing me right back to my childhood.
I almost lose my breath.
‘I had a visitor here one day,’ he continues slowly. ‘A very unexpected visitor, and since we spoke and cleared the air it made me realize that perhaps I’ve been a hypocrite in many ways and that my expectations of others, especially you, were sometimes out of reach.’
‘A visitor? Who?’
I await his answer as he pauses in thought.
‘Peter O’Neill,’ he whispers eventually. ‘Kate Foley’s father.’
My eyebrows rise and my mouth opens in disbelief.
‘We talked in depth about everything – from love and regrets to fatherhood and religion – and we aired our very different opinions on life. He asked me to pray for his safety,’ he tells me, clasping his hands so his knuckles are white as he does so. ‘He seemed afraid and desperate, but he wanted to meet me and he asked me to pray for his soul and for you and Kate, to give you strength.’
‘Oh Peter.’
‘He died shortly afterwards.’
I shake my head slowly, trying to take this in.
‘Since that day I’ve written you letters and thrown them in the wastepaper basket as I lacked the courage to send them to you, but as time has worn on, I’ve realized that I was at risk of leaving it too late. I was being a coward, David. I was preaching to others about forgiveness, and all the time I was turning my back on my own son simply because he loved a woman whom I stubbornly chose not to understand.’
I’m deeply shocked at all of this, and at the same time overwhelmed that a conversation with my father for once might just be going in a direction in which we can both find peace.
‘I’m glad Peter reached out to you,’ I whisper, picturing the man, so frail and worried, yet who took the time to come and try to help Kate and me in any way he could. ‘He may have held the most opposite political beliefs to yours, Dad, but his heart was the size of a lion,’ I tell my father.
‘I could see that, once we put our own bigotries to the side,’ he agrees. ‘We have had very different lives in the very same tiny little part of the world, and we had very similar regrets.’
I gulp back tears as I imagine the efforts both men must have gone to, all for the love of Kate and me, and to give us a chance.
‘When Peter died,’ I explain to my father, ‘the love and outpouring of grief from his family – who had had many differences with him – taught me that his words to me were true. We are all just people, trying to do our best in life as we face very similar battles on a daily basis. We all want to be the best father, the best son, the best husband and the best friend. If you peel back the layers of religion or race or politics, you’ll find that we are all craving the same things, and most of that comes down to a very basic human desire, which is to be wanted and to be loved. Sometimes, thepeople we love most are the hardest to reach, but it’s so worth finding their hand when you do.’
