“I knew right then, you’d grow up quiet,” my mother would say. Well, she was right. I studied hard at school, did as little sport as possible, and preferred the library to the playground. At home, my father’s den became my refuge. He’d collected thousands upon thousands of books, and started me with parables and other “wisdom stories”, including the Fables of Aesop. I grew up, quite literally unable to hurt a fly. I would open windows to release them. I would lift worms from the baking summer paths and make a burrow for them with a finger-poke of the nearest soil, covering them over to shield them from the sun. I turned down my parents’ offer of pets, aware that everything had to die and that I would miss them terribly when the time came. Nobody ever called me “odd”; not until very recently. But then you know all about that, don’t you?
What you can’t know is that I thought my upbringing normal and untroubling, and still do. After school, there was university, and after university a lengthy period of speculation as to what should come next. Lecturing appealed, but I was torn between Comparative Religion and Philosophy. I could train for “the cloth”, but felt two generations of church service was perhaps enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God (though I had doubts, as many young people do); it was more a feeling that I would be better suited elsewhere. My father had taken to his bed, in thrall to the cancer which had slumbered inside him for years. My mother was strong, and then not so strong. I helped as best I could — shopping, cleaning and cooking. Between chores, I would retire to the den — it had become mine by default — and continue my studies. I learned at long last to drive, so as to be able to visit the supermarket, loading the car with porage oats, smoked fish and loose-leaf tea, tonic water, washing-powder and soap. Once a week I wrote out the shopping-list. Other days, I stayed home. Sometimes we would manoeuvre my father into the walled garden, a rug tucked around him, the transistor radio close to his ear. My mother would pretend to weed, so he couldn’t see she wasn’t able.
Then the day came when he asked me to kill him.
The bed had been moved downstairs, into the sitting room. There was a commode in one corner. Some furniture had been removed from the room, meaning the hallway was more cluttered than before. A few of his old congregation still visited, though my father was loath to let them witness his deterioration.
“Still, some people find it necessary,” he told me. “It strengthens them to see others weaken.”
“But it’s kindness, too, surely,” I answered. He merely smiled. It was a few days after this that, having just accepted another small beaker of the green opiate mixture, he said he was more than ready to die. I was seated on the edge of the bed, and reached out to take his hand. The skin was like rice-paper.
“That stuff you keep giving me — don’t think I don’t know what it is. Liquid morphine. A couple of glassfuls would probably do the job.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“If you love me, you will.”
“I can’t.”
“You want to see me get worse?”
“There’s always hope.”
He gave a dry chuckle at that. Then, after a period of silence: “Best not say anything to Mother.” I know now what I should have said to him: it’s your fault I’m like this. You made me this way.
It took him another six weeks to die. Three months after his funeral, my mother followed him. They left me the manse, having bought it from the Church fifteen years before. The parish had moved the new minister and his young family into a new-build bungalow. After a time, I was forgotten about. My parents’ old friends and parishioners stopped visiting. I think I made them feel awkward. They looked around the rooms and hallway, as if on the lookout for expected changes of décor or ornament. The bed, freshly made, was still downstairs. The commode was dusted weekly. The lawn grew wild, the beds went unweeded. But curtains were changed and washed seasonally. The kitchen gleamed. I ate sometimes at my father’s old desk, a book propped open in front of me.
The years passed.
I became a keener driver — maps plotting my course into the countryside around the city, then further afield — west to Ullapool, north to the Black Isle. One daring long weekend, I travelled by ferry from Rosyth to the continent. I ate mussels and rich chocolate, but preferred home. Books travelled with me. I became adept at finding cheap editions in Edinburgh’s various secondhand shops. Every now and then I would see a job advertised in the newspaper, and would send off for the application form. I never got round to returning them. My life was busy enough and fulfilling. I was reading Aristophanes and Pliny, Stendhal and Chekhov. I listened to my parents’ records and tapes — Bach, Gesualdo, Vivaldi, Sidney Bechet. In the attic, I discovered a reel-to-reel deck with a box of tapes my father had recorded from the radio — concerts and comedy shows. I preferred the former, but concentrated fiercely on the latter. Laughter could be disconcerting.
Oh, God.
I say “Oh, God” because it’s now time to talk about him. No getting around it; pointless to tell you any more about my shopping trips, tastes in music and books... All of it, pointless. My life has been condensed. For all of you, it begins with the moment I met him. Everything that I was up to that point you’ve reduced to words like “bachelor” and “loner”, and phrases like “son of the manse”. I hope I’ve shown these to be reductive. I’m not excusing myself; I feel my actions merit no apology. It was a country road, that’s all. Not too far out of town, just beyond the bypass. A winding lane, edged with hedgerows. The sun was low in the sky, but off to one side. Then a bend in the road. Dvorak on Radio Three. A fence, with trees beyond it. Smoke, but not very much of it. A car, concertinaed against one of the largest trunks. Tyre-marks showing where it had torn through the fence.
I pulled to a stop, but only once I was safely past the bend. Flashers on, and then I ran back. A blue car, leaking petrol, its engine exposed. Windscreen intact, but frosted with cracks. Just the one figure inside. A man in the driving seat. He was conscious and moaning, head rolling. The airbag had worked. I managed to yank open his door. It made an ugly grating sound. He was not wearing the seatbelt.
“Are you all right?”
It was an effort to pull him from the wreck. He kept saying the word “No” over and over.
“You’ll be okay,” I assured him.
As I hauled him to safety, hugging him to me, his face was close to mine. He half-turned his head. I could feel his breath on my cheek. There was warm blood running from a wound in his scalp.
“Don’t,” he said. And then: “I’ll do it again.”
I realized almost immediately what he meant. No accident, but an attempt at suicide. Seatbelt unfastened, picking up speed as the bend came into view...
“No, you won’t,” I told him.
“Just leave me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”