Last of the Line by John MacKay

Author:John MacKay [MacKay, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
Published: 2012-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

11

CAL ENDURED AN internal struggle as he thought through everything he had found and journeyed towards an inevitable conclusion. He had never seen a baby tag in his own home. It was the sort of memento a mother might keep, likewise the lock of hair, but his own mother had nothing of the kind. Mary did.

He left the letters on the bed and went back downstairs to the box in the dresser which contained the return-to-sender letter. He didn’t need to open it, the date stamp was enough. It had been sent the month before he was born.

Cal slumped back in the armchair, closed his eyes and tried to come to terms with the enormity of this emotional upheaval.

‘Was Mary my mother?’ he whispered aloud, the utterance of the words an attempt to bring order to the tumult in his head. Flashbacks and segments of conversations rushed through his mind, overwhelming any rational consideration.

There was Mary, gentle, kind Mary through the years and finally at her end. She had wanted to see him and maybe he now knew why. He thought of his mother, still young in his mind’s eye, comforting him, loving him as a mother should. Contrasting the image of her and the sacrifices she had made for him with the thought that she might never have been his mother made him cry. And he heard his father’s repeated admonishment, ‘No son of mine…’

If it were true, perhaps he could understand now his father’s resentment: he was being required to raise a child that was not his own. It would explain too, his apparently irrational friction against the softness of Mary. With understanding would come forgiveness for his father – or the man he knew as his father.

Cal was starting to feel that his whole life been based on a lie. The possibility seemed to crush him physically. He felt his chest tight and breath short. His face burned. He forced himself to stand and make for the door, grabbing his jacket on the way. The breeze outside was a balm, swathing him in coolness, and the peat smoke in the air was curiously comforting.

Cal strode through the wild grass of the garden and climbed the fence into the croft. The barbed wire was sagging and by swinging one leg over as he pressed down on the top strand, he could actually stand astride the fence on his tip-toes before adjusting his weight and bringing his other leg over.

He set off across the reseeding towards the moor with no destination in mind, just the need to feel the fresh, new air fill his lungs and movement in his trembling limbs. With the physical activity, his heart stopped pumping so wildly and his breath became even. His mind, though, continued thrashing between the wild scatter of imagination and the steady pull of sense.

If Mary was his mother, then who was his father? The Canadian boyfriend? ‘I’m glad it is one of our own who is making you happy,’ his grandmother had written.

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