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Making Allowances
Chapter 5, Part 1
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I awoke the next day to the awful
realisation of a shattered ambition and a family life which, in the space of a few drunken
minutes, I had damaged beyond repair. Granddad, who had cleaned me up and
helped me to the armchair in the kitchen where I had slept, was first up and wasted
no time in offering his own reprimand. “ You stupid boy, “ he began,
“ Better stay out of the bloody way today. Your Mum spent the rest of the evening in
tears. You’re lucky your Dad didn’t give you a bloody good hiding. I would have, if
you’d said and done that to me. Bloody idiot, you.” Mum was down next, I still felt very hung over and was
about to feel much worse. “He wants you out. I’ve never
seen him so angry. What on earth possessed you to say all those things? How could you be
so hurtful after everything he’s done, all the love he showed you over the years. What made you say it?”
she demanded. I remembered the reason. Slowly, I
reached into my trouser pocket and recovered my School Report Booklet. I threw it
onto the table. “This.” “What about it?” asked Mum “Look at the Grades, the English
Grade.” Mum read, sighed, tutted, then
sighed some more. She was in no mood to offer any comforting words, and I couldn’t
blame her. “They’ve written me off. Why
didn’t they tell me this two years ago. I could’ve got a job, made things easier for all of
us, enjoyed myself. We’ve been to hell and back over the last couple of years, it
could’ve been so different.” Mum waited several minutes before
she responded. “Well, you’ll just have to get
on with it and prove them wrong.” “What’s the point Mum?” I
protested, “the damage is done. What if they’re right? I will have been wasting my time.
I’ve wasted too much time already. I think the best thing that I can do is go and get
myself a job, right now.” “You can’t just finish school,
like that!” Mum insisted. She heard footsteps coming
downstairs. She threw me a coat. “That’s your father, hurry up
and get out of here before he comes in.” All that day, I was kept away from
Dad. From afar I noticed how he would take a greater interest in what the girls
and my baby brother were doing, building a fence around himself which I had no hope
of scaling. Later that day, I asked Mum how he was. “He’s OK with us, but every time
I mention you, he just shuts off.” I began to feel very alone. I
searched for a foothold in this “fence” he was building. “Didn’t you try to explain to
him?” “He wasn’t interested,” Mum
said with a shake of the head, “you’re on your own”. “Didn’t he say anything?” Mum reflected, “Yes, when I said
that you were thinking about leaving school.” I hoped that would provoke a
response. “What did he say?” “He said ‘Good, he’ll need
some money for rent , wherever he lives’.” I stayed in my room all Saturday night, with the radio
and a thermos for company. It was like being in solitary confinement, with no
immediate prospect of parole. I had asked Mum if she thought it
would be worth me trying to apologise to him, but for most of the evening she had
replied in the negative. At about ten o’clock she called in
to say that everyone had now gone to bed, including her, and Dad was on his own in the
front room. I was desperate to tell him how sorry I was. Slowly, I crept
downstairs and into the front room. He was sitting in a chair up at the far end,
like the Emperor, or the Judge. He must have known it would be me coming into
the room, but he did not look up. “Dad?” “Dad?” For a brief, flickering moment, his
gaze diverted from the newspaper. He looked through his eyebrows at me for a
split second and, with a deeper breath than normal, returned to his paper. “Dad…look, I’m really
sorry.” With this, he folded the paper down,
placed it gently on the floor, stood up and, avoiding any eye contact with me,
walked out of the room. It was another long night. On Sunday morning I left the house
early and set off, on foot to the riverbank. It was some three or four miles
away, but a place I nevertheless used to visit quite often, particularly when I
was in need of some time for quiet contemplation. The river was over a mile wide at
this point, the views spectacular, promoting a great feeling of being small, yet
at one with nature and the elements. It also had a special significance for me.
Because my mother’s parents had lived with us for a great deal of my life, I
looked on them as a second set of parents. My grandmother had died a couple of
years previously and I still missed her dreadfully. We often walked down to the
riverbank and often, when I went down there, I would find myself trying to talk
to her when I needed some comfort. I carried a picture of her in my wallet, with me, as a
little boy standing on the riverbank at that very same point. In this way, when
I went there, I felt a strong, almost supernatural feeling, as if this was the closest
place on Earth that I could get to her. I even felt I’d let her down. What
would she have said? She would have helped me, wouldn’t she? On this day, the supernatural must have been at work, because within a few minutes of my arrival, I heard a car pull up in the otherwise deserted car park nearby. Looking around, I saw Dad walking towards the bank. My heart lifted momentarily, but as he approached, I could see the same cold gaze as yesterday.
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