Closing The Circle

Damn the traffic. Three hours sitting in a traffic jam, horns blaring, angry drivers thumping their steering wheels even though it was futile. The sun went down in a blaze of red, burning like hot coals. It was a stunning contrast to the concrete of the motorway, the traffic moving slowly now, too slowly. I had meant to get there in daylight. I'd hoped to see the outside and inside of the house, a house I'd left hurriedly twenty years before. It was not to be.

I dissociated from all the cars. My mind was full of the past, the rustle of beautiful clothing, deep red lipstick, her wonderful perfume and her warm, comforting arms holding me as a child. After all these years I still desperately missed my mother. 

At last I arrived. The garden was alive with movement. Totally overgrown, bushes and trees swaying in the wind. It was so surreal to be here. In the glare of my headlights I could see the kitchen window, grimy, paint peeling. It wasn't boarded up. It should have been. 

My friend Lisa, who still lived in the village, had told me when my father had left ten years ago. He'd gone to the south of France for his health and had never returned. Therefore the house should’ve been locked up, boarded up, everything inside covered in dust from years of neglect and absence. I felt a deep sense of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.  

Headlights off I forced the car door open against the strengthening wind. The sky was completely black, devoid of stars. An icy cold finger traced down my spine. I had a vision of my flashlight sitting on the table back in my flat over two hundred miles away. I'd forgotten to pick it up. Cursing under my breath whilst staggering along in the dark and trying not to get blown over, I followed the overgrown path towards the suspicious looking kitchen window as best I could, moving slowly, being scratched by brambles. I held my arms out in front of me so I wouldn't hit the wall.

My sense of direction had not let me down even after all these years, and soon I could feel the peeling paint of the window frame under my fingertips. Face up against the glass I peered into the kitchen, not just for old time's sake, but to see if there were signs of life. The inside of the house was just as black as the outside. I tried the back door. Locked.

I moved on to the left, letting my fingers use the brickwork as my guide. I'd decided this was the safest thing to do or I might lose myself in the huge garden and not be able to find the house again. A right handed corner. Good. I was doing well. On I went, the brickwork rough under my fingers. I still stumbled here and there, where the unkempt garden had grown unchecked and was partially obstructing the path. 

I finally reached another corner and the bricks changed to stone. Underfoot was gravel. I knew where I was now. This was the front of the house, the massive family mansion, my childhood home, but there was light and for the first time I could see. What was going on? An even colder finger traced down my spine.

The dining room and sitting room windows were throwing rectangles of light onto the gravel. There must be at least one person inside. Fear rose in my throat. Lightheaded at this new discovery I had to hold fast to the wall to stop myself falling. The house was in the middle of nowhere. Could I be walking into a dangerous situation? 

I had known from the start that this would be a once in my lifetime visit. Abandoning it now just wasn't an option. I'd accepted a permanent job in New York so this was my one and only chance to search for the treasured belongings I'd left behind during my hasty exit.

I must get to a window. I had to know why there were lights on in a house that should’ve been standing empty for years. The house I grew up in, the house where my father had spoken those words that had sent me away. Away from him, away from the appalling childhood he'd created for me.

Had my father sold the house and that's why there were lights on? No, he would never do that, never want to lose all the memories of my mother even though he was now too far away to experience them. Or was he? I still had a key to the front door. I was hoping the locks hadn't been changed and I could slip in unnoticed.

What if I bumped into him? I couldn’t face my father's wrath even after all these years but I forced myself on towards the first of the lighted windows, the stone becoming slippery now from the sweat on my palms. There was nobody in the dining room. The long dining table was covered with a bright, white cloth. Then another to protect what I suspected was food underneath. The other furniture in the room I remembered from my youth. In stark contrast to the overgrown state of the garden, the room was spotlessly clean.

My heart beat faster. The curtains. I recognised the heavy blue curtains, a bit frayed and worse for wear. It was just like my father not to have replaced them but why were they not drawn? The curtains had always been fully closed in every room no matter the time of day as my father hated outside light. To make things worse he had very dim lamps on all day. Both of these things I came to realise, were part of his way of dealing with his grief, the grief he never showed.

Normality had left my life after the death of my mother. Killed in a car accident when, on an unlit country road, she was blinded by headlights coming towards her. The two cars had scraped past each other but it was enough to send my mother's car over the steep drop at the side of the road, rolling over and over until it was a mangled wreck. The other car, whose blue paint was so obvious on her white one, was never found. 

I had been only six at the time and didn’t understand. I only knew that my darling mummy was gone and daddy, whom I had worshipped with all my heart and soul and who had reciprocated all of those feelings, didn’t love me anymore. The cuddles, the bedtime stories, how he would play games with me or carry me around on his shoulders, everything stopped. If I tried to sit on his knee he would roughly remove me and leave the room. My heart ached to have my old daddy back but he didn't want my cuddles and I didn't know why. He employed a nanny and made sure that my playroom was in another wing, as far away from him as possible. 

As I became a teenager I still had to put up with his strictness and his strange ways until that night when I’d left, never meaning to come back.

I stumbled again over something on the ground. I needed to concentrate if I was to stay on my feet but it was hard when emotion strewn flashbacks kept intruding. I had to finish what I'd started. So with palms still sweating and my legs shaking I gritted my teeth and ploughed on. 

What if there was someone in the living room and I was seen? Wait. There was something else wrong here. Noise. A lot of noise, the combination of many voices all talking at once. My father had been the life and soul of the party before my mother died, according to her sister, my Aunt Trish. He was a very amusing man back then. My mother had always been immaculately presented, constantly smiling and making everyone feel welcome. I had been allowed to stay up for a little while, wearing a pretty dress, feeling like a princess and being spoiled by my mother's friends. 

After her death my father had developed a strong dislike of noise of any kind. Another one of his weird ways. As a motherless child I soon learned to be seen and not heard on the odd occasions I was allowed to be in his presence. Everything had to be done with the minimum of noise, no banging doors and no friends over to play. Even his beloved classical music records were no longer played

At school they had tried to draw me out of myself. The poor little rich girl whose mummy had died but who barely spoke a word.

A therapist's dream I'd seen plenty of them through the years after I'd left though none had managed to truly eradicate the anger I felt towards my father. They had discussed ad infinitum the reasons for his behaviour and why he was unable to deal with a child.

I had to see what was causing all the noise. It was completely out of place. As I peered round the edge of the living room window, I saw dozens of people, all of them thankfully with their backs to me. 

There was a huge, framed photograph of my father propped on an easel. Oh, how I recognised that stern look! It was the same one he had given me during that last massive row, the one that had caused me to leave.

It had been such a simple matter. I had gone to his inner sanctum where he sat all day in his high-back chair, like a king on his throne. He read the papers and smoked cigars all day although he did occasionally go out into the garden to give the groundsman his instructions. My mother loved roses so he had the rose garden extended, even though he couldn't stand the scent of the cut flowers in the house.

I'd asked if I could have brighter lamps in my room as I was studying for my first year of A levels. His moods were so erratic and irrational that he erupted into an angry outburst. 

"You'll never be content. You're just like your mother. Nothing is ever good enough."

My anger matched his own. "How dare you! My mother was a saint to put up with you. It was you who was never good enough. I may only have been a child but I remember her crying a lot behind closed doors. She wasn't happy with you or she wouldn't have been having an affair in that last year!"

My father rose to his feet, full of rage and raised his hand as if to strike me then thought better of it. I knew I had gone too far.

"Tosh! How could you possibly have known such a thing as a child? I'd be careful how you answer as you've crossed a line." 

I looked at the floor. "Trish told me last year. She said you knew all along, that mother was making up excuses, saying she was taking me out to places whilst she was actually meeting him. She hadn't taken me to a party the night she died. I was with Trish where she always left me to be with him. I was sworn to secrecy on the promise of a new toy." For all that I loved my mother with all my heart I hated her for that, making me a pawn in her romance, especially at such a young age.

It was as if my father had not heard my words. He paced up and down, muttering to himself as he continued with the fantasy he knew wasn't true. "If your mother hadn't gone out that night to collect you from the party she'd still be alive," he'd said. "It was your fault she died and I wish you'd never been born!"

His hand flew to his mouth as soon as the words were out so I knew he regretted voicing them but he couldn't unsay them, anymore than I could unhear them. So many things fell into place, how he'd treated me since the accident because he couldn't accept the blame that was his. No, my mother had not been content.

I couldn't stay. I'd hurriedly stuffed a few clothes into a backpack and ran out of the front door, almost blinded by tears. As retribution for my grief I had slammed the front door, hard. 

I lived with Trish for about a year, until I got into University. My father knew I had nowhere else to go but he never came near. Trish would have shut the door in his face anyway.

As an adult, I understood his behaviour but I had never forgiven him. My father had been looking for someone to blame. Unable to accept that his wife was seeing another man because she didn't love him anymore, he'd chosen to blame me instead.

A sudden drop in the noise from the room dragged me back to the present. One by one the people were leaving, each one looking back as they did so and it was only when they had all gone that I saw what their bodies had hidden. The light from the gleaming crystal chandelier was glinting off the handles and the highly polished wood of my father's coffin. I had inadvertently crashed some sort of memorial. He had no friends that I knew of so who were all these people? Busybodies and people seeking a free supper?

The front door was unlocked. My room hadn't changed a bit other than the thick covering of years of dust. I filled two backpacks from the wardrobe with stuff, having made a list beforehand of what I wanted to take. Then for the second time in my life I left, only this time I knew it was for good. It felt like I was closing the circle. The one that began with my mother's affair and ended with my father's death.