Page 45 of Little Wing
‘No biggie.’
‘What?’
‘Hello, son.’
Dougie was next to him now. ‘Dad?’
And there they stood, eyes pin-balling around each other’s faces while their brains rebounded in cul-de-sacs.
‘Hello, son,’ said his dad. His voice. His face. Him being here. Dougie’s curry and gym kit slid to the ground and he put his arms around the man who used to be so much taller than him.
‘Jesus, man,’ Dougie said. ‘You’re freezing.’
While Dougie was in the shower, Gordon stood in the flat feeling as though he was inside his son’s body. This is how he lives. This is what he smells. This is what he sees around him. Gordon absorbed it all, cataloguing every book, taking in that the TV was Sony, his grandfather’s map of Harris, a box set of something calledThe Sopranosthat didn’t look like opera, a roller blind – not curtains – walls a bit thin really, compared to home. Sounds from the shower telling him the water pressure must be quite good in these parts. Gordon walked softly down the short hallway to the galley kitchen. Does his washing-up, my boy. Not much in the fridge. The calendar he’d sent him,Hebridean Light, but nothing written on it. Back in the front room, Gordon ran his hand along of the edge of the semicircular table that flapped open from the wall. On it, the curry sweating inside the polystyrene, inside the plastic bag. He was warm now, but so hungry. He was fantastically tired and had trouble remembering why it was he left home this morning to come here.
Having settled his father in the front room with a steaming cup of tea and a blanket which Gordon said he didn’t need, Dougie stood in the shower feeling that his brain was detaching. On the other side of this very wall, his dad. His dad had, on a whim, taken two planes, a train and a cab and come to see him. He could make no sense of the situation at all and he felt alternately so happy and yet utterly appalled.
My dad!
Christ – what the heck is he doing here?
Reappearing, Dougie regarded Gordon sitting on his sofa, noticing that he’d rolled the blind down. He’d refreshed his tea. He’d warmed up, there was good colour to his cheeks and the stiffness had gone. He remembered that shirt and that jumper – he’d asked his mum to buy his dad a nice jumper one Christmas when he’d been too busy to shop before the long trek home from college. It had cost £19.99 and she wouldn’t hear of Dougie giving her the money for it.
‘You hungry, Da?’
Gordon didn’t want to say I’m starving, didn’t want the boy to worry. He paused as if having to think about it. ‘Aye,’ he shrugged.
‘Well, there’s curry – and I’ve bread in the freezer. Beans and cheese too. Or eggs.’
‘Oh,’ Gordon shrugged again, as if anything would do – because actually, it would.
‘Tell you what, we’ll share the curry and top it up with bread and butter – how does that sound?’ And it amused Dougie to hear how his accent was now just a little more Scottish than usual.
And so they ate together, quiet and appreciative. Dougie insisted on washing up so Gordon made tea. He’d brought some Tunnock’s teacakes with him – he knew they were sold everywhere, but it wasn’t the same. Yes, Dougie agreed, not the same. And thank you. No – thankyou.
‘I have to leave quite early in the morning,’ Dougie said, too tired to tackle the elephant in the room. ‘Got a big job on – in Earls Court.’
Gordon nodded, rolled the foil from the cake into a ball, focused on his tea, sipping down on his struggle for words.
His father’s discomfort was awful; Dougie couldn’t head for bed. ‘Dad?’
‘All good, laddie, all good.’
‘But,’ said Dougie, ‘you are here?’
Gordon took some time to think about this. ‘Aye. So I am. But.’
His dad sounded as though he was leaving one of his answering-machine messages. He didn’t need to travel hundreds of miles to do that.
‘Are you OK, Da?’
‘Me?’ Gordon laughed. ‘Oh aye, oh aye.’
‘But – you arehere.’
Gordon fixed Dougie a look that his son had not seen in many many years, then he got up and straightened himself tall.
‘I’m come to take you back home. For a wee while.’
