The Parent problem

Death is somehow magnified a thousand times when you inhabit a land where the total population is in single figures.

 

Alun’s mother had died when he was born. Not during childbirth, but immediately afterwards, from an accident whilst opening a can of beer. Her last words were: “Pass me a beer, I’ve not drunk for nine months, I’m gasping. Ow, those bloody ringpulls, why do they have to be so sharp?”

 

It was a tragedy that Alun would take years to comprehend the full consequences of, though from a very early age I remember joining Alun on his weekly visit to his mother’s grave every Sunday morning, when we were avoiding his father’s sermons. (Alun’s father got so passionately engrossed in bellowing out his sermons that he failed to notice that there was nobody there listening to them).

 

“Have you ever wondered who your father is?” Alun said to me during one of these visits.

 

“Father?” I said. “I don’t have a father. I have a mother. It’s you who has the father.”

 

“But you must have a father as well. Just as a novel must have both an author and a publisher, so must a child have a mother and a father.”

 

“Didn’t Dickens publish his novels in his own magazine,” I said. I may have been hazy about the mechanisms of reproduction, but I knew my Dickens.

 

“You can’t count vanity publication of your own work Jed, that’s not proper publishing. It’s why I never take Dickens seriously as an author. Anyway, you’re changing the subject, you must have a father. Everyone has a mother and a father, even if,” he nodded towards the grave, “they are sometimes wrung away from you.”

 

I was doubtful about Alun’s claim, after all having both a father and a mother seemed an unnecessary excess. Alun and myself managed perfectly well with just a single parent apiece. Frankly, two parents each would simply have been too much for us to cope with.

 

But in spite of my doubts, that night, while my mother was milking the geep, I asked her who my father was.

 

She didn’t speak to me for the next six days.

 

“I can’t understand it,” I said to Alun. “All I asked was who my father was and she’s treating me as if I’ve done something really naughty. She’s not been like this since that time I asked her what the mainland was like.”

 

“Well, that was understandable at least,” Alun said. “It’s wrong to ask questions about the mainland. My father told me that.”

 

“I guess I’ll never know whether I have a father now,” I said.

 

“We can always try Plan B,” Alun said.

 

“I don’t like Bs, they sting.”

 

“Nonsense, it’s bizarre myths like that which cause some children to develop a stutter. Letters of the alphabet can’t hurt you Jed, it’s only words that can sting you.”

 

“And wasps.”

“It’s only words and wasps that can sting you, Jed.”

 

“So what’s Plan B?”

 

“Well, we’ve asked your mum about your father, and that got us precisely nowhere. Plan B is that I’ll ask my dad.”

 

It seemed a sensible plan.

 

That night Alun asked his dad about my father. His father didn’t answer, indeed, he refused to speak to him again for another six days.

 

“I don’t understand it Jed,” he said, “our parents haven’t been like this since they caught us reading that magazine.”

 

“I told you we shouldn’t have been reading that magazine.”

 

“But it was such a fantastic magazine, Jed,” he said. “It had all the TV listings for Mainland TV 1 and Mainland TV 2 for the next week.”

 

“You know all mainland literature is banned. It was bad enough getting caught with Great Expectations, but the Radio Times was a step too far.”

 

“Well, we mustn’t give up Jed. If Plan A failed and Plan B failed we need a new plan.”

 

“Plan C?”

“No Jed, Plan B Plus.”

 

“What’s Plan B Plus?”

“Well, we’ve asked your mother, we’ve asked my father. There’s only one option left.”

“What, ask each other?” I said, confused. “But we don’t know.”

 

“Not each other Jed, I mean the boatman. The boatman knows everything.”

 

Later that day we walked down to East Bay to await the lunchtime boat.

 

“What mischief are you two lads up to today then?” he asked (it was a Tuesday, which is officially mischief day on Happy Island, coming as it does between ‘behave nicely day’ and ‘pretend you’ve got a ferret down your trousers day’.)

 

“We’re asking awkward questions today.” Alun replied.

 

“Oh yes,” said the boatman. “I approve of that. That’s proper mischief. Asking questions always gets you into trouble. So what questions have you been asking?”

 

“The same question,” I said. “I asked my mother who my father was and Alun asked his father.”

 

“Hmm …” the boatman said. “And how did they react?”

“They’re both refusing to speak to us.”

 

“I’m not surprised,” the boatman said. “Your mother doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Why,” I said, “was he a murderer?”

 

“No, he was, he was …”

 

Was I imagining it? From the look on the boatman’s face, I got the distinct impression that, in the boatman’s eyes at least, my father was worse than any murderer, something so unspeakable that he was struggling to find suitable words.

 

By this time, though, I was determined to know the truth, no matter how horrible it may be. Was I some freakish hybrid, half man half baboon, was my father an alien, or perhaps some pesky god that had raped my mother whilst disguised as a rain cloud? There was only one way to find out the horrible truth. I forced the words out of my mouth.

 

“So who was my father then?” I asked.

 

“There’s no easy way to say this Jed,” the boatman said eventually. “Are you really sure you want to know?”

 

I nodded, as by this time I was too nervous to be able to form words.

 

“Your father was a mainlander Jed,” he said.