One of Each by Paul Kimm

One of Each by Paul Kimm

I’ve moved back home because of my father’s health, and my mother’s, and because I’ve had enough of living abroad. Twenty-five years all over the place to come back to the poky seaside town I was born in, as were my parents, and theirs, and beyond that I don’t know how many generations, but I’d bet many. It’s a town small enough to merit the answer ‘I’ve never heard of it’ whenever people ask me where I’m from. The kind of place that seems to have only a few dozen different surnames amongst its residents, a town where an accent from no more than fifty miles away raises an eyebrow. A town with a dozen restaurants, thirty pubs, and a handful of churches, two clinics, a police station, and a non-league, amateur football team. A sleepy town, a retirement town, and at fifty-six years old I’m only a few years above the average age of its residents.

My parents’ health is not the only reason I’ve returned. I wanted to come back, to sample my hometown again, that I’ve written about before, and used as a backdrop for several short stories, the place that keeps coming back to me when I sit down to write. Every time I’ve visited home in the last thirty years, after the few days spent there, my pocketbook is filled with new story ideas. Half my lifetime has been lived in other places, and I remember from an early age having a sense I’d leave, that I wouldn’t stay there like the generations before me, that I’d go elsewhere, I’d be the one to leave town. All the same it’s the place I take the most inspiration from for my short stories. Stories that feature a version of my father, my mother, the many aunts, uncles, cousins, my grandfather, and his long-gone wife; my nana, long lost friends, acquaintances, the town’s characters. So, I figured coming back, in the severe twilight of my folks’ lives will also make my writing more prolific.

It’s a year since I was last here. My father has been in a care home for six months, so the last time I saw him he was still at home, but my mother was already struggling with him. I can’t help but look at those small words around the word ‘home’, the brutal shift in meaning that swapping the preposition ‘at’ for ‘in a’ brings. That tiny lexical twitch, a meaningless change next to most other nouns, but the gulf between my ‘father at home’ and ‘my father in a home’ is a starkness that feels too big to be propped up by minor grammatical fillers. It’s almost callous, a cruelty, to keep the word ‘home’ when it’s known that ‘home’ and ‘a home’ are the opposite of one another. To leave ‘home’ to go into ‘a home’ is to be not home anymore. My father doesn’t live at home anymore, he’s left home, no longer fit enough to live in his home, and is unlikely to come back.

My mother tried, but the forgetfulness, the incontinence, the anger he projected at himself and others for simple things; not knowing the location of objects in the home that hadn’t changed their usual location, how to switch on the TV, the direction to take from one room to another, all this became too much. His need for the simplest of things, a piece of cutlery already right in front of him, or clean underwear in the drawer it was regularly placed in for decades, the trying of different doors for the toilet out of the four doors available on the top landing, any of these, or several dozen other requests to which he previously had the ingrained, automatic answer to, have vanished from his knowledge and turned into a full rage about where ‘the bloody hell’ they are. These three words, preceded by; ‘what’, ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘how’, or ‘when’ followed by a bellowing ‘the bloody hell’ has been a linguistic feature of my father’s vocabulary all the life I’ve known him. But since his fall have become a near constant linguistic tic.

His fall kickstarted the decline. A fall that has only ever been described by the doctors as a suspected stroke, but drove my father down to the floor in a fraction of a second, on the top landing of the house we grew up in, where he lived, and we all had since the late 1970s. A fall that kept him flat on the carpet for a good ten minutes, unconscious, quiet, asleep, gone away, melting something inside him, whilst my mum, assuming he was changing into his pyjamas after his shower, watched Coronation Street, this being their ancient routine. Only when it got to several minutes after the soap opera’s credits rolling, this being already an unusual break in their nightly schedule, did she go upstairs to find him decked across the floor, and managed to rouse him. She got him into a sitting position, his back against the banister, and called for an ambulance, which came to collect him, and take him to the town’s hospital for overnight monitoring.

Already the next day it was clear part of him had gone. He returned with his full physical body of course, but only half of everything else he’d been before it. Half his loud, joking, short-tempered personality gone, half his memories, all seventy-five years of them, sliced away, half his ability to understand his own home, his own friends, and his own family drained, vacated, no longer in him, just gone, evaporated. A full body with half a person left in it. And, this half of him left, the half still here, is a half that contains his occasional jokes, his ‘what’ and ‘why the bloody hells’, a fifty percent that one day remembers when he was in the army, that remembers taking me to school on my first day, these exact same memories he forgets the day after, but brings into view others that weren’t there the day before, a daily dusk and dawn of selected memories brought to the surface by the half of him left available. The anger he’s always had is still there in half measures, short bursts that last nowhere near as long as they did when we were kids, now more focussed into blurted exclamations such as ‘where the bloody hell are my slippers.’ A moment of rage that still has his old thunderous volume, a noise that filled the house and made us believe the walls and windows shook when he we were children.

‘Why the bloody hell are you sending him’ was a weekly one, when my mother sent me to the chip shop to get our Friday suppers in. A five minute walk around the corner from our house, but to which I, as the oldest of us, was sent weekly, despite my father’s also weekly claim that I was incapable of getting it right, incapable of deciphering the complex system of ordering where ‘one of each’ meant a single portion of chips and a single fish together, ‘two of each’ meant the same twice, but you couldn’t say ‘three of each’, two somehow being the lexical limit of ordering with that syntax, so that if three fish and three portions of chips were required, that was what you asked for; ‘three fish and three chips’. Our weekly order was ‘two of each with an extra fish, one with scraps, and two mushy peas.’ An order I’d got wrong once at age twelve by both the portions of fish and chips having scraps with them rather than just the one. A mistake that came with identical weekly feedback from my father up to when I was fifteen, when I was finally absolved of the task that my sister took over once she reached twelve years old. Three years of ‘why the bloody hell are you sending him. He’ll just get it wrong’.

So, I’m back and staying with my mother whilst I sort out a place to live, a small flat where I can start doing my job online, hopefully work on my writing more, and be not far from my father’s care home, or as they’re called in my town, his ‘old folks’ home’. I’ve been back two days, so going to see him is due, if not overdue, but he also doesn’t know I’m back yet, so my tardiness won’t be reprimanded. The last time we spoke was a year ago and my sister has told me to try not to be surprised, that he might seem different after six months in the home. I’ve told her I want to go and see him on my own and she’s explained I can just turn up and tell them who I‘m there to see, which relative I am, and they’ll take me to him, no need for any ID or anything like that. She tells me the address and name of the place. They apparently give the residents of the home their lunch at midday, so I set off at eleven, making sure the twenty-minute walk means I’ll be with him for a maximum of forty minutes before he has to go and eat. I figure it’s better to keep the first visit on the shorter side. Whether I think this is better for him, or for me, I try not to let myself think about.

Reaching the door of the home on Bridge Avenue I peel my phone out of my pocket before ringing the bell and see it is 11:22, then I push the button and I can hear the muffled digital chiming behind the porchway. A busy seeming nurse opens the door for me. I tell her ‘I’m here to see my father, my dad’ and then hear myself saying his name, something I haven’t said in years, if ever. She asks me again for his name, I repeat it, feeling again the strangeness of my own voice saying his first and last name, as though he’s not only left home, but also been given a new identity, had his fatherhood over me removed. She tells me to follow her and as I step into the home it immediately smells of cleaning products, a violent use of air freshener, but veiling a slight stench of historic urine, and behind that my nose detects something further-off, almost a memory of a smell, like school dinners from my infant school, a kitchen cooking masses of food, potatoes, soups, gravies, preparing near-extinct recipes. As we walk to his room, she warns me how I might not even recognise him, laughing about how they’ve managed to cut his hair that morning, ‘the grumpy old sod’, and ended up giving him a crew cut as the clippers are safer to have near him than scissors, and laughing again about how he kicked off and shouted and made such a fuss about it. Her impression of him is quite good and I suppose he can’t have changed much since I last saw him.

She is still chuckling about it when we get to his room, and holds open the door to let me in. He is sitting by the window, looking out of it, or his eyes are pointing in that direction at least, his head shaved like I’ve never seen before, but he has his usual silver rimmed glasses on. He looks thinner, taller than I remember him from this angle, but he doesn’t turn to see me. I call out, ‘Hello, dad. It’s me, Paul’ and then he turns, his eyes meet mine, but he doesn’t speak. His eyes don’t say anything either. I go up to him, plant my palm on his shoulder and say again, ‘Hi, dad. It’s me, Paul.’ His eyes are still on me, and I look at his, but neither of us says more. He looks too thin, too tall, his nose slimmer, chin longer, and it’s only on examining his face more closely that I realise the nurse has brought me to the wrong room. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t my father’. Her smile disappears, she apologises, and asks me again the name of my father, which I repeat, and she apologises once more, ‘Oh my, so sorry, I thought you’d said Andrew Mills was your dad’. I say ‘no’ and pronounce my father’s name slowly, stressing every syllable, to which she shows mild offence. She replies ‘I’ve said sorry, haven’t I? Follow me, and I’ll take you to your dad then.’

My father is sitting in the conservatory. He looks more similar to Andrew Mills, the man I said ‘Hi, dad’ to just five minutes ago, than I expected, and this gives me some solace that I‘m not too uncaring for saying ‘hi, dad’ to someone who isn’t him, that I haven’t categorically failed to recognise my own father. In fact, apart from the longer hair, the slightly wider cheeks, my father looks a great deal like Andrew Mills. I say the exact same words to him that I said in Andrew Mill’s room, ‘Hi, dad. It’s me, Paul’ and my father looks at me, not showing surprise, happiness, or any particular emotion, and replies with a flat ‘hello’. I wonder if he knows it’s me, or thinks I’m my brother, or an uncle; one of his brothers-in-law, or even if he ponders who I might be, or he just knows it’s me, Paul, his eldest, who he hasn’t seen for a year. I repeat, ‘It’s me, Paul’ and he says, ‘Hello, Paul’, in the same remote tone. I feel I could have used any name, and he would have replied with that name; ‘It’s me, John’, ‘Hello, John’ or ‘It’s me, Zebedee’, ‘Hello, Zebedee’, or even ‘It’s me, any noun whatsoever’, ‘Hello, any noun whatsoever’. I tell him I’ve moved back to our hometown, that I’ll be here permanently from now on, not living overseas anymore. He acknowledges this with ‘Alright, you’re back then’ and nothing more than that. I realise that he can respond, but he can’t continue a conversation. The rest of our chat is a transaction of short answers in return to my questions about the home he’s in. ‘Does he like the food?’, ‘Is his room comfortable?’, ‘Do they look after him well?’ No matter what I ask, the answer is a simple variation each time of ‘yes’, ‘not bad’, ‘it’s fine’. We keep this going until about ten to twelve by which time I know his lunch will be served soon, so I use that as my excuse to leave. Looking down at my wrist I see it’s been twenty-eight minutes since I rang the bell, and after meeting Andrew Mills, probably no more than twenty minutes with my father.

On the way out the nurse who let me in and took me to the wrong father stops me. She apologises again, and though I tell her it’s no problem, she continues to apologise and follow me to the exit. Her repeated ‘sorries’ grate on me a bit because no matter how much I tell her it doesn’t matter she still persists with asking for forgiveness, and I tell her that as long as Mr. Mills is fine, then it really is not bother. It’s then I understand the need for her constant apologies because she tells me he isn’t okay; he’s quite upset as he now thinks his son was here to see him. She tells me, ‘It’s the first we’ve heard of him having any son, but he’s in a bit of a state, so would I mind going in to speak to him?’ Even though I know she’s serious, I still ask her if she is kidding. She says she isn’t and before I can think twice, or even once, I’ve agreed to pop into Andrew Mills’ room again.

I walk back into the room and I say, ‘Hello again’ and Andrew Mills looks up, his eyes seem wet, and he says, ‘Hello, son. It’s lovely to see you again.’ The nurse is behind me, and when I turn to look at her, raising my eyebrows to demonstrate my incredulity, she winces a smile and nods at me to go further in. I go and sit on the bed facing Andrew Mills and say to him, ‘The nurse is going to stay with us, aren’t you?’ and she nods again making sure Andrew Mills understands. I tell him I can’t stay long and ask how he is, I say the words ‘How are you keeping?’ He talks to me about how he’s fine in the home, he likes it there, they look after him, there’s enough to keep him occupied, and then asks me how I’m ‘keeping’. I find myself replying that maybe I can tell him more next time, as it’s time for his lunch, the other residents have gone for theirs. He says, ‘No bother, son. Tell me next time then. When are you coming next?’ And, for the third time, I hear words come out of my mouth without being able to believe I’m saying them, ‘I’ll be here next two days from now. I’ll see you then’, taking the count of using the word ‘next’ to two-all between me and Andrew Mills, a quartet of ‘next’s meaning I’ll have to come again. And, that’s not the worst surprise I’ve given myself, as I almost end my ‘see you then’ with the word ‘dad’.

The nurse accompanies me out repeatedly thanking me in the same dogged manner in which she was apologising just fifteen minutes before. She asks me if I really don’t mind popping to see Andrew again when I next come to see my dad, if I didn’t just say I’d be back soon in order to get out quickly. I tell her, if she’s sure it’s not against some sort of policy, if he has no family that comes, and if it’s just a few minutes each time, then I suppose I don’t see the harm. She thanks me again, apologises again, and I repeat I don’t mind, as long as it’s not ‘dodgy’, then it’s fine. At the door she lets me out, and we say goodbye. I walk down Bridge Avenue and decide to have a walk along the sea walls on the North Side before returning back home. As I walk, I keep repeating in my head the three things I said that surprised myself: ‘okay, I’ll pop to see him’, ‘hello again’, and ‘I’ll be here next two days from now’ with that word ‘dad’ teetering on the end of my tongue.

I take a long cut home. I need to clear my head before going back to my mum’s house. Turning right at the end of Bridge Avenue its only five more minutes to the North promenade which I know will be quiet this time of year. It adds around twenty minutes to my walk back, but the sea air, the lack of people around, almost all the cafes and souvenir shops being shut, I feel sure will help me gather my thoughts. On reaching the North Bay I’m reminded how long and sprawling the sands are with their huge expanse at low tide, the sea taking away and giving back a hundred yards of surface to walk on twice daily. I venture down to the beach and the edge of the North Sea, having a tame day, a grey glass sheet of saltwater, and walk on the soggy, wet sand right up along the thin waves lapping in and out. I walk in an undulating path allowing this gentle tide to oscillate my route. The sound of the sea is soft, like its resting, breathing in and out, just the faint veneer of its vast water in a placid slumber. This helps my mind to wander with it.

I reach a spot I have a distinct memory of. The approximate place where my father took me fishing for the first and last time. I remember him assembling his beach casting rod, almost twice my height at the time. Then how he threaded the hook and weight, tilted the rod behind him, a foot of line dangling from the end and whipped it forward, the invisible line slicing and whistling through the air for a few seconds and then plinking in. After about fifteen minutes the end of the rod started twitching like it was living thing of its own. My father reeled it in and when the end got to the shallow inches near where we stood there was a fish, its tail, fins, and head fighting between air and water. My father told me to take out the hook, but for me the alien, flatfish body, both eyes on one side, wild with movement, battling for release, gulping against the air all around it, made me freeze. I couldn’t touch something so massively alive. At my inaction, my father removed it, tossed it into the shallow tide, called me useless and we immediately went home. Those twenty minutes still make up the entire time I ever spent fishing with him, and the memory is as vivid now as it when it happened almost fifty years before.

After this reminiscence I continue on towards the seawall and head back to my mother’s house. I call her on the way to ask if she wants me to pick anything up, but she says no. She’s made mash and sausages with onion gravy, and she has some tins of soup in if I want that first. I tell her that sounds great, and I’ll be back soon. I pick up my pace and start thinking about what I’ll talk to Andrew Mills about when I go back on Friday. I wonder if he has a family, the nurse said none come to see him, but whether he is completely alone or not I’m not sure. If he has confused me as his son, I assume this means he has a son, or had a son. It would be too odd for him to believe me to be a son that never existed. I mull all this over and make a mental list of good and bad points about going to see him again, to pretend to be a son that has a real version or not, and decide, on balance, it’s not a serious issue, the nurse wouldn’t suggest it otherwise. I decide I’ll go along with it, I’ll be going to see my father anyway, so why not pop to see Andrew Mills as well.

The two days go fast. Moving back home hasn’t been difficult as such, but looking at a few flats, setting up my writing and working routine, and generally walking around the streets of my town seems to swallow forty-eight hours before I know it. On the twenty minute walk to Bridge Avenue to see Andrew Mills and my father I think again about what to talk about, how to guide the conversation, deciding what words to use, not to call him dad or father, not to use his name at all, simply address him with a greeting and a few general, safe questions; how he’s getting on, what he’s having for lunch, does he like his room, and so on. If I keep it innocuous, I’m not committing to anything intrusive, I’m not saying I’m his son to him. If he chooses to think that’s who I am, then that’s out of my control and no harm done, as long as it makes him happy, gives him some company, I believe it’s fine.

Within seconds of ringing the bell the same nurse opens the door for me. She asks me immediately if I mind going to chat to Mr. Mills first, her voice seems a bit urgent, but she doesn’t say anything more. I follow her to his room and ask if everything is okay to which she says it is, yet she advances ahead of me at a rapid pace. When we reach the door, she goes straight in and announces, ‘Your son is here, Mr. Mills’. I give her a quick cross look, but she just shrugs as if to say it’s no matter. I suppose it isn’t, he thinks that’s who I am anyway, and it’s her who said it, not me. I tell myself I’m not personally responsible in any lie. He turns to look at me, a huge smile cracks open across his face, and he says, ‘Hello, son, so nice to see you again so soon’. My lack of complicity in the whole ruse is shattered the moment I open my mouth, and reply, ‘Hi dad, good to see you again’.

I’m stunned at how easily I’ve let the word ‘dad’ slip out, but continue to go through the motions, and sit on the bed on the corner next to his armchair. He asks me how I’m doing, and I say all is fine, tell him I’ve looked at a few flats, and have been generally walking around the town, reacquainting myself with the streets. I don’t mention my mother of course, I don’t want to bring a phantom, fictional wife into his mind also, and then I wonder if he has a wife, had one that passed, or he never had one, so don’t ask him, the risk of such a personal conversation being too much. I’ve already gone way too far with my verbal spillage of ‘dad’. I ask him what’s for his lunch today, and he tells me, it’s fish and chips, with peas. For something else to say I ask if he remembers how I used to go to the local chippy every Friday and get them in for the family, and before I can add that he always said I had to take a handwritten note listing our items, he tells me I was ‘Always a smashing lad doing that for us’. I follow up by asking him if he remembers the order still, as it never changed in years, and he laughs that he doesn’t, that his memory isn’t up to that anymore. I smile at this, pat him on his shoulder, and say I should make a move, I’ll see him soon, and to enjoy his fish and chips. He thanks me for coming and says, ‘Bye, son’. On the way out, before saying a final see you, I tell him, ‘It was two of each with an extra fish, one with scraps, and two mushy peas. Every week that’s what we had’. He nods assent and waves his pointed finger in the air and says, ‘That’s it, son’.

My real father is in the conservatory again, in the same chair as he was two days before. He doesn’t see me walk in, so I go to him, pat my hand on his shoulder say, ‘Hello, dad. It’s me, Paul.’ He looks at me again, like my greeting means nothing, but he’s not alarmed, or surprised, more unbothered, his ability to show interest either no longer an ability he has or any kind of concern to him. I ask how he’s keeping and he’s able to tell me, ‘Alright.’ I give him monologues about what I’ve done in the previous two days, but he doesn’t respond, or show he’s listening, and certainly no questions. I don’t mention Andrew Mills of course, and even though I feel bad that I’ve called someone else ‘dad’, someone I don’t know, and was a complete stranger to me until forty-eight hours ago, I’m half tempted to ask if he knows a resident called Andrew Mills, that I’m asking because they look a bit similar, at least according to the nurse. Instead, I ask him what’s for lunch and he’s able to tell me ‘fish and chips’ and then I decide to ask if he remembers how he used to send me to the local chippy every Friday, and how he’d insist I took a note, because he thought I could never get it right, after one time getting scraps on both the orders. I ask him if he remembers any of that and all I get is ‘no’. This takes us up to midday and say I should go so he can enjoy his meal. As I leave the conservatory I say, ‘See you next time, dad’ but he doesn’t turn to look or say anything in return.

Walking back to my mother’s I keep making and unmaking the decision to not visit Andrew Mills anymore. Between figuring it’s harmless, even altruistic and benevolent, and then thinking it’s cruel and unethical I realise, as I turn the corner for the final two minutes of my walk home, I’m only thinking about Andrew Mills, and not my own father. I haven’t considered my own father at all in any of my thoughts on what to do. The guilt of this, the realisation that visiting Andrew Mills has become more important to me already, in just a matter of two days, makes my decision final. I’ll visit him one more time, try to explain who I am, or rather who I’m not, in as sensitive a way as possible, and stop pretending to the poor old man that I am his son. When I go there on Monday, I’ll tell the nurse, will not accept any pleading from her, and then let him know.

When I get home I ask my mother if she fancies having a pub lunch at the village a few miles up the North coast from our home the next day. She agrees, saying how nice it will be, and I call them to book for two o’clock for two people, in my name, our surname. For the rest of the day I potter around the house, trying to help my mother out with any household chores, but know she likes things to be done the way she prefers them, utensils put in drawers in her own precise way, tea towels folded perfectly in half and draped over the oven handle door, porcelain ornaments, rarely with a hint of dust on them, aligned in their decades long positions on window sills, the wall to wall carpets of the whole house hoovered daily, despite only herself, and for the last week, me, living there. In the end, the most she lets me do is make a cheese and salad cream sandwich, pour a glass of orange juice for myself, and then allows me to wash up, dry the small plate, knife, and pint glass, but then insists she’ll put them away in their right place. The rest of the day fades into watching random television programmes, reading a little, and thinking about Andrew Mills and my father.

I wake up early the next morning, and peeking open the curtains I see the sky is just starting to fuzz out of its dark grey dawn into a softer, partially orange, but chilly looking hue. I open the bedroom window, breathe in a bit of cold air and decide I’ll walk to the pub where we’re going to have lunch. I’ll order a taxi for my mum for twenty to two, and if I set off a little before midday, we’ll arrive there at the same time. I leave at quarter to twelve. The first part of my walk takes me down our street, which is the longest in our town, the house numbers reaching close to two hundred at the posher end. As I go from the low to the high numbers, the houses morph from flat fronted terraced, former council houses, to bay-windowed semis, up to grander, fully detached houses, with high hedges, keeping out the prying eyes of pedestrians, who can catch a glimpse of the majestic facades, and the frequent trio of cars parked in front, only when walking past any driveways with their gates open. After the end of the street, it’s just a few more minutes to get down to the North beach from where there is a two-mile length of stony beach available, the end of which has steps built into the cliffs that lead up to the pub I’m meeting my mother at for our pub lunch.

The beach is quiet, and apart from a couple of dog walkers and a father with his two sons inspecting the rock pools that appear at lower tides, there is no one else. There is a choice of how to traverse the beach when the water is out of whether to quickly cover ground over the firm, wet monotone brown sand nearer the edge of the sea, or to take more time ambling over the stones, and then rocks that grow in size closer to the cliff, navigating around slippery, seaweed covered boulders that border the rock pools. Knowing I have more time than needed to reach the pub, I zigzag between the smooth parts near the sea and then up to the bigger, rockier parts near the cliff.

As I walk, quick memories of growing up flood back to me, not forgotten memories, but small moments, nothing in themselves, but collectively make up the nuts and bolts of my childhood. Some of these memories are senses, sounds, tastes, smells, sights, the landscape of my younger years. The daily cawing of seagulls, a year-round noise that permeated the pre-waking up minutes of school days, the distant moo of the foghorn on misty days, the waft of the harbour, its tidal smell of huge fish hauls braying far into the town when the wind carried it. Long summer days spent on the beach, being local, but living like the tourists who flocked here, playing with sand, building arm shaped tunnels with friends we shook hands with under the sand when completed. Endless sandcastles, patted firm with wet enough grains, flipped over, tapped out, to be inevitably jumped on and crushed, and packed lunches with egg mayonnaise, Yorkshire ham, sandwich spread, all of them ultimately seasoned with the grit of sand grains that the sliced bread seemed to be a magnet for. Other sensory recollections come to me, the days of rough seas smashing thunder on the sea walls, the pinging and dinging of amusement arcades, the sugary stink of candy floss and doughnuts stands, the vinegar and sizzling lard of chips shops, the streets that end when they meet the sea. The soundtrack, the visual backdrop, the scents of my youth.

I also recall memories of my father. My earliest of having a sponge-foam Mickey Mouse being broken by the neighbour’s child, and my father’s consolation informing me it was time to grow out of ‘all that crap’. Age four, learning the word ‘crap’, then using the word in return, followed by a swift clip around the ear telling me words like ‘crap’ and his ubiquitous ‘bloody’ were words that were off limits for me, yet had no limit for my father. The time I asked him why Scottish singers don’t have an accent when they sing met with a ‘don’t be so bloody stupid’, and any futile attempts to ever change the TV channel whilst he slept on the sofa came with a roar of ‘I was bloody watching that’ despite the programme he’d been watching finishing over an hour previously. Then, the incessant, never tiring pisstaking. I was once caught writing a love letter, aged six, to a girl in my class named Angela, using a different felt tip colour for each letter, too young to realise my father might catch me, which he did, and which then resulted in a decade of frequently singing the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ to me. One time, as an adult, using the word ‘forte’ to hear from him for years after, lifting his hands under his chin, holding an invisible, tiny handbag, and in a high, whining voice, ‘Ooh, it’s not my forte!’ Finally, I comb my memories over the extent of his sustained disinterest, never once looking at my school reports, not coming to the two school plays I was in, never asking how a job was going, what I was studying at university, how I was settling into a new country, nothing. Our lifetime of interactions based on reprimands, mockery, and indifference. By the time I reach the pub doorway, roughly ten minutes before my mother should arrive, I’ve changed my mind about Andrew Mills. I will keep visiting him.

In the next month I find a suitable apartment, just a fifteen-minute walk from my mother’s house and even closer to Andrew Mills and my father. I have a routine of a few hours work in the morning, then either a stroll on the seafront, lunch with my mother, or a visit to the home on Bridge Avenue. Every time I go I spend some time with Andrew and then some time with my father, always making sure it leads up to their lunchtime. I take more or less the same conversations into both visits, an update on whatever I’m up to, which hasn’t varied much, a check on how they are doing, and a recollection from my childhood. I’ve covered the first time fishing, the love letter to Angela Morton, mentioned places I’ve travelled, dropped the word ‘forte’ into conversation, and many others that have come back to me in the last few weeks. Each time, Andrew Mills’ subconscious mind feigns a recognition of what I’m saying, his responses peppered with phrases like ‘ah, yes’, ‘I remember’, and even agreeing that something is indeed my ‘forte’. With my father the responses are littered with his fossilised replies of ‘I don’t bloody remember’ or ‘how would I bloody know’, and I always get the strong sense his words are now just verbalised spasms, strings of lexis, with their meaning gone, them having no relation to what I’ve said, but more of an echo, ghosts of words from before his fall, simply sounds he’s repeated so many times in his life, that they now spill out in response to whatever’s said.

By the start of the second month since I’ve started visiting these two fathers, I realise that the time I’m spending with Andrew Mills has crept up to two-thirds of the time I spend there, leaving a maximum of ten minutes with my real father during each visit. I still speak to the nurse when I see her, but I’ve started going to Andrew’s room without her escorting me, and that seems to be an accepted routine. However, the realisation that my visits have slid in Andrew’s favour, something I hadn’t noticed until this point, makes me recognise that the time with Andrew is more enjoyable. The unevenly distributed minutes I’ve come to share with him show that, and I know, when I ask myself why this has happened without me noticing it, that the truth, the guilty truth is, I prefer my minutes with my fake father to my real one. This makes me want to speak to the nurse and check for sure, to be absolutely certain, that what we are doing, what we are colluding in, is ethical, is not against any codes, that it’s causing no harm. Yet, when I see her, I don’t know exactly how to ask, how to make it sound like my question is objective, how I make sure I don’t appear personally concerned, don’t want to betray any sense of my own guilt, and so I fumble my greeting and without getting to my point she says, ‘It’s all okay, you know. Anyone can have a visitor. It doesn’t have to be family.’ I try to hide my mild alarm that she understands what is on my mind and thank her and express my gratitude for her reassurance. All the same, as I leave the home, I make a promise to myself to watch the clock on the next visit and give them fifteen minutes each.

I time my next arrival precisely for eleven-thirty, giving until quarter-to-midday to Andrew Mills and until twelve, their lunchtime, with my father. As soon as I ring the bell, within the first note of its musical chime, the nurse swings open the door. She grabs my elbow, panic on her face, and tells me I can’t go to see Andrew today, or perhaps any day. I feel the same panic take hold of me and ask the reason. She explains that his real son is here, they had no idea he was coming, no idea he had one, but he’s here, right at this moment, in Andrew’s room, and so there is no way I can visit him. It’s over. I want to gasp at the air, but don’t want her to see my upset, and then she asks me if I still want to see my own dad. This question, the words ‘still’ and ‘own’ deliver a precise sting to her words, and I unleash a tirade back at her, ‘Of course I do! That’s why I come here, to see my father. I only see Andrew bloody Mills because of you! Because of your stupid bloody mistake!’ She storms off, saying I know where he is, he’s in the conservatory as always, so make my own way there. Her voice is trembling and angry, and I know I’ve overstepped, and shown my own emotional involvement more than I want to. I decide, after the thirty minutes with my real father, I’ll find her to apologise

The first thing I say to my father is the lie that I’ve decided to come earlier so we can catch up a bit more this time. He doesn’t respond to this, or even acknowledge I’m there, so I ask how he’s keeping. His same monosyllabic ‘fine’ is the response. I do my best to eke out longer conversations, deliberately asking him questions that require more from him, building up from ‘what did you have for breakfast, dad?’ which receives ‘the usual’, to which I ask what exactly was on his plate, and the reply is ‘I don’t bloody know’. I try other topics, TV he’s watched, who else has been to see him, what he’s going to do for the rest of the day after lunch, and I get ‘nothing’, ‘no one’, and ‘I don’t bloody know’. I feel like I’ve asked fifty questions and obtained few more than fifty words back in response. I look at my watch, and it’s only a quarter-to-twelve, fifteen minutes to go, I let out a sigh, and my father says, ‘Got to bloody be somewhere, have you?’ It’s the first question he’s asked me on any of my visits. I tell him I haven’t and start to ask more questions, and to which his terse, single word replies, his signature ‘bloodies’ return, but his question was a surprise, a genuine jolt in our otherwise pained chat. At twelve I stand up, tell him to enjoy his lunch, and say I’ll see him next time, that I’ll come for half an hour from now on, and ask him if that’s good for him, to which he says, ‘Aye’.

I want to leave the home on Bridge Avenue as soon as I’ve finished with my father, and as quickly as possible. The smells of the place, the municipal aroma of the food being cooked, the ingrained, distant scent of old urine, the persistent reek of bleach, and furniture polish, all these pronounce themselves more than I even remember on my first visit. This collection of stench I thought I’d grown used to, that my nostrils had forgotten the existence of, flood back to me. I rush to the door, holding in the urge to vomit, but as I reach the exit, the nurse is there waiting for me, and only then remember I planned to apologise. Before I can do that she tells me, almost orders me, that I can’t leave yet. I move my arm past her to open the door, needing air, and she places her right leg in front of the door. ‘Let me out!’ I yell, but she doesn’t waver, and moves her body more in front of the door. I reach for the handle, but before I grasp it she takes it, gripping it closed, and says with urgency, her words firm, ‘I need you to see Mr. Mills before you go’. I manage to mumble ‘I can’t’ and look down at the doormat. At this she takes her hand off the door handle, takes both my hands into hers, and pleads, ‘Please go to see him, this one last time at least. He doesn’t believe his son is his son. He’s in serious distress. Please!’ I take a deep breath with my eyes closed, the desire to be sick leaves me, and once again, I surprise myself by agreeing to see him, yet knowing, within me, I want to see him, I’ll be his son if he needs me to be, for now, until the recognition of his real son returns. I don’t know how keeping up my imposture will help this return, I know inside that it probably won’t, but my wanting to do this, to pretend to be the son of Andrew Mills, overwhelms any common sense. Within a minute I’m in his room, his eyes look wet, his head is down, looking at the carpet, and when I walk in and say, ‘Hello, it’s Paul’, he turns to look, his face lights up, and he says, ‘Hello, son. I didn’t think you were coming today.’

His response, his joy at me coming in, makes me think to attempt a further deception, one that might just help his memory. I sit down on the bed, in my usual spot, the position facing him that I’ve sat in a dozen or more times now, I reach over, pat the side of his right arm, and say, ‘What do you mean? I was here earlier today’. He looks back at me confused, but his face faintly suggests he knows he’s being tricked, and so I say, ‘I know it’s odd, but I popped out to get changed and I think that’s thrown you, dad’. I don’t give him the chance to reply to this or to continue this risk I’m taking. The nurse is still in the room, giving me a look that knows this is a risk, but going along with it, thinking it might work, that he might manage to reconcile the earlier visit with his real son, and me, his fake son, returning to his room now, as the same person popping to see him twice. It also might be a disaster, but the nurse gives me a look that says, ‘Let’s see’. I then tell Andrew Mills that he’ll be missing his lunch if he doesn’t go and get it soon. The nurse reminds him that it’s ‘fish and chips day’ that he shouldn’t miss it if he wants a good-sized helping. With that, I stand up, pat him on the shoulder, and say, ‘I’ll see you next time, dad’ and head out. The nurse follows me and agrees that what I’ve said might work, that I can still see him again, if I go on days when his real son isn’t there. I say that I’m not sure, that I’ll see, but I know that I’m lying to her too, that I’ve come to need Andrew Mills as much as he seems to need me.

As soon as I’m back outside, on the pavement, walking past the home on Bridge Avenue that houses my father and my fake father I start to have second thoughts, the layers of deceit in this now, the lying to everyone involved. I’ve mentioned nothing of Andrew Mills to my mother or sister, and I figure that’s another level of dishonesty. Most of all I’ve hoodwinked an innocent old man into believing I’m someone I’m not, I’ve blamed it all on the nurse, and kidded myself that it’s harmless, and even a nice, sweet thing to do, but it’s not. It’s an outright lie, a lie that suits me because I want to convert the memories I have of my youth, to hold up Andrew Mills like a pair of rose-tinted glasses in front of my childhood, so I can look back on it differently. A hollow contrivance of my own making for my own selfish needs.

As I ponder the mess I’ve made, I am reminded of a childhood lie, a fabrication about a school report I received. I was given one of the worst five reports in my year at school, and with that I was required to deliver a letter from the headmaster to my parents, outlining my poor performance and that my parents were to take action of some kind to help improve my grades. The report contained a total of twelve E grades, six double Es for ‘effort’ and ‘attainment’ each. Walking home from school that day, straight after my first ever meeting in the headmaster’s office, with the report and letter in my school bag, I trembled over what the reaction would be, slowing my walk as much as possible without returning home conspicuously late. I knew it would be the first report of mine my father would ever look at, and so my fear grew as I drew closer to home, and then before I got there, an approximate hundred yards from our front gate, on impulse, I retrieved the letter from my satchel, and dropped it into the grate of a drain. Later that evening, up in my room, I studied the calligraphy of the Es in the report, noting their colours, and resolved to collect pens of the right colour and shade, and then carefully forge the twelves capital Es into twelve capital Bs. Once I’d committed this forgery, I lacked the confidence to hand the report to my parents, and it was only when, a couple of weeks later, my mother found it in my bag she asked why I hadn’t given it to her. When I explained it wasn’t a very good report, she had a skim through and even said that the grades were good, even though the comments seemed a bit negative. My deception had worked, they never found out, and still don’t know, but I wonder if that was a start of a belief in lying, and trust in untruth that may have followed me in life. Whether that’s true or not, I decide I must come clean with Andrew Mills next time.

When the day comes round to go and tell Andrew Mills I’m still at a loss on how to approach it. Over the weekend I’ve mulled over how to tell him the truth, played scenarios through my mind on how to phrase it, what words to use, whether total honesty is genuinely the best policy or not, or some concoction of half-truths is better, or a further stretch of lies to get the right end result, that he learns I’m not his real son. I don’t want to hurt him, but I can’t work out a way to say it, to actually sit with him and tell him who I’m not. It seems too malicious a way to do it, and yet I have no ideas, I draw repeated blanks on how to get the most compassionate version of the truth to him. My nerves have built up all weekend, and on the morning itself I can’t face breakfast, so by the time I set off I haven’t eaten for close to twenty-four hours. I resolve that the best option is to seek out the nurse first and ask her advice when I get there before delivering the message to Andrew Mills. As it turns out she’s waiting just inside the entrance when I arrive.

I immediately tell her I need to speak to her, I need her guidance, that this can’t go on, and we have to fix it. I rattle off why we can’t do this anymore, I ramble saying that I realise it’s my fault, that she meant well, and when I say ‘we’ I simply mean myself and Andrew Mills, the innocent Andrew Mills, she’s done nothing wrong at all, nor has Mr, Mills, that I shouldn’t have agreed, called him ‘dad’, that I’ve put it all in his head, but I need her help, her expertise on how to get the truth to him in the most careful way possible. All this time she is holding up her hand, waiting for me to stop, and so when I take a breath, she tells me, ‘It’s over. He’s gone. His son took him over the weekend. Permanently.’ We’ve not moved from the entrance way, and at this news I feel my knees quiver. I lift my left arm and plant my palm on the wall. The nurse asks me if I’m alright, and I tell her I am, that I’ve not eaten for a day, then feel stupid telling her that. She offers to take me to the canteen and get me something, there is time for a snack before for my usual fifteen minutes with my father. I realise I haven’t thought about my own father over the weekend, haven’t even factored in speaking to him on the day I’m telling Andrew Mills the truth. She puts a hand on my arm and says, ‘Come on then’, but I pull my arm away from her, open the door and flee into the street and almost run down Bridge Avenue.

I hurry towards the beach, the North Bay, and keep my pace across the clifftops, looking down over the expanse of the low tide, sixty yards below me. I stride to the outskirts of the town, and then a little further to the town’s nearest village, which has the one pub, the one small store, and the one fish and chip shop. When I see its open my hunger hits me with force, and I go in to buy something to eat. There is no queue and I ask for ‘one of each, large, with mushy peas, scraps, and a bread bun please’. I order a can of dandelion and burdock as well, a drink I haven’t had since I was a child. Within a couple of minutes, I’m walking out with the hot newspaper bundle cradled under my left arm, the piping heat warming my left side, the smell of the paper baking from the hot meal inside it, and the roof of my mouth is watering.

I find a bench around the corner, on a small side street with no one around, sit down, put the parcel of food on my lap, the warmth instantly heating my legs and unwrap it, the aroma of it hits my face in a cloud of tasty steam. I prise the plastic lid of the polystyrene container of mushy peas and empty it onto the chips, take the chip fork out of my pocket, and shovel a bunch of chips, mushy peas and scraps into my mouth. I crack open the can of pop, the metal gasp it makes seems overly loud, as I push back the ring pull. Before I can get my next mouthful in, a scruffy dog walks up to me, and whimpers for me to share some food with it. We look at each other and I say, ‘What the bloody hell do you want?’ The dog cocks its head to one side, and I say, ‘It’s ok, you’re a smashing lad’. The dog’s ears perk up, and I chuckle at myself for what I’ve said to it. I say the phrases again, but in that tone meant for dogs, ‘What the bloody hell do you want you smashing lad?’ I laugh to myself at the words again, and tear off an end of the battered fish, hold it out, and the dog wolfs it off me in one gulp. I start laughing out loud, I can’t stop laughing, like an idiot, perhaps like ‘a bloody idiot’ I say to myself, and I laugh more, tears come to my eyes, tears of what I’m not sure, but I keep laughing. I take turns with a piece of the fish for me and one for the dog. By the time I’m done, there’s just a few greasy scraps on the paper, the content dog is lying at my feet. I take the final sip of my fizzy drink, look down at the dog, pat his head, and tell him it was nice to meet him, that I’ll be back in a few days with another ‘one of each’ to share with him, as soon as I’ve finished visiting my father.

* * * * THE END  * * * *
Copyright Paul Kimm 2025