A Lie About My Father by John Burnside

Author:John Burnside [John Burnside]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-02-28T11:00:00+00:00

I thought I wouldn’t hear from Alastair again. I knew he wanted me to pass his ‘message’ on, but I didn’t. To do that would have been an insult to my father, a suggestion that he needed somebody to watch his back. Besides, Alastair hadn’t really said anything. I didn’t know what he had in mind, or even if he had anything in mind at all. He’d not made any actual threats, or offered any real warning. It didn’t take me long to forget him. Or almost. I knew, if I saw him, I would be on guard.

A few weeks after our near-conversation, I was in the Hazel Tree again, with the usual crowd. My father was on good form, but there was an edge to the evening, a certain electricity in the air. It’s a cliché, I know, but that is how it feels, like electricity, like the charge before a lightning storm. I had no idea what was going on, but I was there, and after a few drinks, I felt included. We were doing the usual stuff, playing dominoes, drinking, talking crap, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, other than that odd charge in the air, until my father got up and headed for the toilets. That was when I saw Alastair. He looked different from the last time I’d seen him, heavier, darker, but I could tell that he’d been watching us, and now he was following my father out into the corridor. I glanced around the table, to see if anybody else had noticed: if they had, nobody was saying anything. Quickly, I got to my feet.

‘Where are you off to?’ somebody said. I think it was Junior, or maybe Mull, my father’s best friend among the little group he ran with.

I paused. ‘Just to the toilet – ’

‘Oh, aye?’

I nodded and looked at him. His face was blank, very still, but there was something in his eyes. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I said.

‘Sit down, son,’ he said. ‘You’re no use to him at the moment.’

‘What?’

‘Your old man can look after himself,’ one of the others put in. ‘Sit down and get that wee whisky down your neck.’

I sat down. A few minutes later my father came back, looking very calm. When he sat down, Junior looked at him. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked.

‘Needed to wash my hands,’ my father replied. ‘Couldn’t find the soap.’

I looked round. A couple of boys who had been standing at the bar went out quickly and there was a noise in the corridor outside. My father paid no attention, but reached into his pocket and pulled out a banknote. ‘Get the boys a drink, son,’ he said to me. This time he didn’t slip the note under the table, as he usually did. ‘A pint and a wee one,’ he added, and he smiled dangerously, as if he knew something I didn’t know, something secret and, until that moment, beyond confirmation, a little piece of information that had only just come to light, not about the world, but about me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.