One of my recent lovers told me that what happened might well have happened without the intrusion of Arthur Beamish. But how could it have?
In my early teens, my mother bought a cottage in Kent with some money she’d inherited from her father. And for the next three years, Mum, Dad, and I went there for holidays and weekends. I used to invite friends. Dad built a den for us in the garden. Those times were such fun, I never wanted them to end.
But of course they did end. It was shortly after my mother took up ballroom dancing that she said she was going to have to rent the cottage out. And from then on, she only went there on her own ‘to sort things out’, while Dad and I stayed at home. Dad rented an allotment and spent his free time working there. He said I could help him, but it was no substitute for the cottage. I preferred to stay in my room.
Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that my ignorance of Arthur Beamish’s intrusion lasted so long. I had my own concerns. I was trying to work out what to do with my life, and once those weekends came to an end, I didn’t give much thought to anything or anyone else.
One thing I did notice was that my mother’s attitude towards my father changed. She started telling me things, such as she could have really made something of her life if she’d had a good man by her side. She’d never said anything like that before. I suppose she was consciously or otherwise laying the groundwork for what was to follow. Dad, in the meantime, seemed to withdraw into himself, spending more and more time on his allotment.
I was wondering if I should join the Navy, but my mother said that a friend of hers thought I should consider the police force.
‘The police force?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘My friend says it’s a good job. His name’s Arthur. He works in insurance and he knows about life.’
I didn’t think anything more about him or his suggestion. It didn’t occur to me that my mother’s ‘friend’ might be a threat to our family life. I knew she went out dancing a lot and I knew she went away some weekends, but I assumed it was either with women friends or something to do with the cottage, and I didn’t think anything more about it.
Then I was coming out of our local cinema one Saturday afternoon when I bumped into my mother holding the arm of a man. Funnily enough, he looked like my father, and I guess I was dazzled a bit by the sunlight because I thought it was him at first. I started to say something, then realised my mistake. My mother was equally flustered.
‘This…this is my friend Arthur,’ she said.
‘Glad to meet you, son,’ he said, removing his hand from his trouser pocket. It was warm and moist.
I didn’t like him calling me son. He had a pencil moustache which followed the contour of his top lip and he gave off an overpowering smell of aftershave. He told me that I shouldn’t be going to the cinema on my own, that I should get myself a girlfriend. He said that when he was my age he had two or three girlfriends.
‘Oh, Arthur!’ my mother said, laughing.
I got away as soon as I could and hurried home to wash off the touch of that clammy hand.
Later, my mother asked me what I thought of him.
‘I don’t know him,’ I said.
‘You’d like him if you did,’ she said. ‘Everyone likes Arthur.’
She told me what a wonderful dancer he was and how he knew about foreign places.
I wish she hadn’t told me anything about him. I wish I hadn’t met him. It was a terrible burden for me to carry, almost like a physical pain. I wanted to tell Dad, but how could I?
I left school soon after that and started work in a furniture warehouse. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I had to do something, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that I didn’t like it.
I’d been working for about a month when my mother told me she was going to move into the cottage with Beamish. She didn’t seem to notice the blood drain from my face.
‘I’ve only stayed with your father because of you,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve left school, it’s time I started thinking of myself.’
On the day she left, when I got home from work, Dad was opening some tins for supper. He looked confused.
I would have preferred to have gone upstairs to my room, but I sat down at the table and waited.
‘Your mother’s gone away,’ he said after a while.
‘Really?’
’She’s not coming back. She left a note.’
He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I. I wish I could have talked to him about it. I wish I could have told him that Arthur Beamish was nothing special with his silly moustache and clammy hands. Or even hugged him and told him I was sorry. Anything would have been better than the silence. The trouble was, I was my father’s son.
My mother wrote to me a few weeks later. She wanted me to visit her the following weekend.
She was out at work when I arrived, and I had to spend an hour with Beamish. The smell of his aftershave was as sickly as before. He was sitting in an armchair with his highly-polished shoes sticking out as though he owned the place, and he told me how I should phone my mother more often.
‘Why should I?’ I said. ‘No one made her leave.’
‘Now then, that’s enough of that.’
I still didn’t like anything about him. I didn’t like the way he spoke or the way he looked. And I didn’t like the way he was sitting in my mother’s cottage while she was out at work. I was old enough to see what was going on.
It was an awkward weekend altogether, but the worst part came on Sunday afternoon. My mother and I were having a friendly argument, and I said that something she said was stupid.
‘How dare you say that to your mother!’ Beamish said.
‘He didn’t mean anything by it, Arthur.’
‘I’m not having him or anyone else talk to you like that in this house. Apologise to your mother.’
‘What for?’ I said, bemused as well as embarrassed.
‘Don’t try and be clever with me.’
‘Arthur, there’s nothing for him to apologise for.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
I looked at my mother.
‘Well?’ Beamish said. ‘We’re waiting.’
I shook my head, then went upstairs to pack my bag. I heard my mother pleading.
‘It’s no use, Margaret. I have never tolerated insolence, and I’m not about to start now.’
I went downstairs with my bag and did my best to smile at my mother as I opened the front door. She tried to say something, but Beamish stopped her.
I tried phoning her a few days later, but he answered, so I put the phone down. She sent me a card to say that she loved me, but it seemed to me that she had made her choice.
And so Dad became my only family – and he wasn’t exactly fun to be with. I might have left home if I hadn’t felt guilty about leaving him. Not that he lived much longer.
He was on his allotment having a bonfire one weekend – apparently burning some things my mother had left – when he suffered a heart attack. Someone on one of the other allotments saw him keel over and called for an ambulance. But by the time the paramedics got there, it was too late.
My mother didn’t come to the funeral – it was just me and two people from Dad’s office. I phoned her a few weeks later to say I was joining the merchant navy. She said she was sorry she hadn’t been able to make it to the funeral.
‘I would have liked to have been there,’ she said.
She didn’t need to tell me that Beamish had stopped her. I was relieved that she didn’t mention him. I didn’t want to know anything about him. I never wanted to know anything about him. As far as I was concerned, he had no right to a place in our lives.
Ever since then, I suppose I’ve hoped that one day my mother would think the same. Not that I’m holding my breath. We don’t speak or see each other any more; it’s been nearly ten years now. I occasionally send a postcard from wherever I am, but that’s all. David, my present lover, says I should move on, but it’s all right for him; he is close to his mother—that’s something I might never be again.
