Fathers and Sons Page 22
To understand all is to forgive all.
On the very morning of Geoffrey’s abandonment, William and Thomas and Sarah explained to the frantic boy standing before them the exact nature of the agreement with Henry. From that moment he had not the slightest doubt that he had been pawned by his father, and that the ticket with his name on it could only be redeemed when he was twenty-one. From the very first, he understood the fate that had befallen him and who was responsible for it. And yet he forgave them all.
He understood Henry’s predicament all those years before. And he forgave him for the way he had resolved it. The alternative–to condemn his father for the betrayal, rail at his mother for her submission to it, curse his siblings for their good fortune at his expense–might have been satisfying and more than justified; but ultimately it would have been nihilistic.
Geoffrey wanted to rebuild and reconnect, not destroy.
My father, in his turn, understood the reasons his father had slowly evolved into a man who found it so difficult to demonstrate affection. He knew Geoffrey’s back story well enough; he told it to me enough times, and sympathetically too. But like his father before him, he wanted to salvage what he could from a poor situation. He had no interest in playing the blame game.
The one thing he never really understood was why he’d been packed off to Denstone, but he chose to write that riddle off and refused to take his father to task about it. Instead, he tried all his life to build bridges with Geoffrey. And he succeeded. They both succeeded in the end. They found a language through which they could, at last, communicate emotionally. Music was the salve and blessing that healed and united Geoffrey and Christopher. I know it was. I saw it with my own eyes, working on them, bringing them closer.
And me?
To understand all is to forgive all.
My father’s extraordinary confessional to his young son on the road from London to Shawbury the morning after he had beaten me so recklessly and severely, was a defining moment in both our lives. I instinctively accepted the explanation for his behaviour, and trusted his sincerity when he promised me it would never be repeated.
I understood and I forgave. He never gave me cause to regret that.
And Jack?
I think it’s time my son spoke for himself.
Epilogue
I never met my grandfather Christopher and so, for reasons that I’m sure are more to do with my painfully short attention span than my dad withholding information, I never knew the story of his life, or his father’s.
The occasional conversation I had with Dad about Chris and Geoffrey left me with a vague awareness of my great-grandfather’s abandonment, but in my mind our family history was always coloured with an atmosphere of mystery and adventure. They were merely bedtime stories, or casual but interesting and insightful anecdotes Dad would relate to me whenever we found ourselves on a day out together, or sharing a long car journey. Simply put, these were stories and nothing more, tales that I could never truly identify with because I’d never actually met either man. Both had died long before I was born.
If I’m brutally honest, up until a few years ago, I couldn’t even remember my grandfather’s first name. I would constantly confuse it with my mother’s dad’s. This other grandfather also died before I was born, and his name too had little meaning for me. In fact, if anyone were to have shown me a photo of the two men I would have had a tough time deciding who was who.
Then, one afternoon in 2001, Dad came back from his mother’s house with a collection of photographs documenting his childhood, adolescence and early professional life. I remember sifting through them, smiling and cringing at the woeful 1970s progressive folk-rock haircut he sported throughout his late teens and early twenties. It was weird seeing him at the same stage of life that I was now passing through–the same awkward, lanky teenager I saw each time I looked in the mirror. These glimpses of my own father’s youth–hanging out with his mates, smoking cigarettes, generally messing around–had a distinct and profound impact on me. They provided me with a strange comfort. I was a difficult teenager, and I think between the ages of fifteen and seventeen my dad and me found our relationship under strain, for the first time. As Christopher had lamented to his wife years before, there was simply ‘too much testosterone in the house’.
Looking at those photos for the first time allowed me to see my dad in an entirely different light, one that was much-needed so I could understand one of the most undeniable truths of myself and my father’s relationship; the fact that we are the same. However much I deny it, however much I try to ignore it, Dad and I are pretty much identical in terms of our most inherent character traits. For example, our tempers are bloody awful. Although Dad has had nearly three decades more than me to work on his inner Zen, we both needlessly get wound up by small and insignificant provocations. Our memories are also useless, something Dad has had to shore up through a much-laughed-at system within our house of writing notes for himself; notes to remind him of even the most basic task he has to perform that day.
In short, I was able to see my dad as a person, a human being as opposed to simply my father. I think this understanding was a seminal point in our relationship, and one that brought us undeniably closer.
As I glanced through those old, dusty photos, I gained my first proper understanding that my dad had…well, actually had his own dad. This may sound ridiculously naive, and of course I knew that my father had not been raised single-handedly by my grandma. But every third or fourth photo that I came across depicted my father with a tall, smartly dressed man with strong features, a wide grin and broad shoulders. To my eyes he looked the very model of a real-life incarnation of Clark Kent (the precise description Dad would later offer, in this book).
To see my elusive grandfather staring back at me, happy, smiling and alive, triggered a strange feeling of emotional connection. The only other time I had ever felt anything like this was when Dad took me to see his father’s grave in Essex. Yet the feeling that gripped me the first time I witnessed, in the photos, my father sitting, laughing and joking with his father, was very different. I could suddenly see my dad, not as a father, but as a son. And in the strangest way, I at last saw my grandfather, Christopher, for the first time.
A sense of guilt began to build within me. I felt selfish and self-absorbed. I had never given Christopher any thought. The idea that I was part of a legacy, of sorts–that my life and upbringing was inexorably linked with such recent generations–had never even occurred to me before. Before this mild epiphany, the only part of Christopher’s legacy that I recognised resided in my father’s desire to keep a healthy heart. After quitting smoking nearly two decades ago, Dad became a keen cyclist and walker. This, I assumed, was down to a very natural desire to escape his own father’s fate. To my mind, this was the extent of ‘Grandpa’s’ psychological and physiological legacy to his son. As to what kind of father he had been to my own, I hadn’t a clue.
Now I know. The pages preceding these have provoked a similar but much stronger reaction to the one I had years ago when I flicked through those old family photographs. The life of my great-grandfather Geoffrey–permeated with a constant feeling of loss, disappointment and abandonment–is an unimaginable world away from the comfortable, affectionate upbringing afforded to me. The bleak and harsh reality Geoffrey was confronted with at such a vulnerable age encompassed not only loss but, obviously, a deep sense of betrayal. Henry’s decision was by no means an easy one, but it is hard to imagine any father now resorting to such cold, sad practicality. But this is the problem, for me. I find it hard to imagine because the relationship I have with my father is a loving one, built on a mutual feeling of trust and care. Essentially, I know that Dad will always be there for me. As I will for him. This may sound cheesy or clichéd, but it is sincere–absolute certainties that I hold very close to my heart.
I was fascinated by the sentence my father used to describe Christopher’s reconciliation with his own father: ‘It�
�s never too late to salvage something from the wreckage.’ Henry’s ‘deal’ with his brother spawned deep-rooted psychological issues that I think are, even now, being confronted by my dad. In the end I found the answer to an eternal challenge; one that Dad grappled with following his father’s last, terrible beating of him. Fathers & Sons is an exploration of the power of forgiveness and the importance of change. Geoffrey forgave Henry, Christopher forgave Geoffrey, and Dad forgave Christopher. The only difference with me is, I have nothing to forgive. It seems the dark repercussions that plagued these men who preceded me have finally been dissolved by the writing of this book.
Rather than compiling a mere documentation of a family legacy, my father has–perhaps unconsciously–succeeded in performing a kind of exorcism. The sins of the father that were visited upon Geoffrey, Christopher and Richard have quietly evaporated in the telling.
That I was spared from them is something I can’t thank my own dad for enough.
JACK MADELEY, Cornwall, June 2008.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank firstly my mother for her endless patience as I bombarded her with questions about the past. While it gave her immense pleasure to return to some of the memories, others were painful and recollection brought tears. Not only her own.
My cousin Peter was immensely helpful with factual details of our grandfather’s early life and gave me an alternative family account of how Geoffrey might have been left behind at Kiln Farm in 1907. He also corrected long-held misconceptions about Sarah who, I discovered, had tried so hard to be a mother to the abandoned boy.
My literary agent, Luigi Bonomi, came up with the idea for this book after a long lunch during which we swapped our family histories. His advice during the writing of it was invaluable.
Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster gave unstinting guidance and support, as well as friendship. Her wise notes to me after I submitted the first draft of Fathers & Sons were a model of how to reconcile tact with frankness. Her encouragement throughout was endlessly reassuring.
Finally, my son Jack, who somehow found time to read the manuscript while taking his finals at university, and wrote the touching epilogue. I will never threaten to lock him in my car again.