Free Father of the Man by Stephen Benatar

window above a bakery in Lamb’s Conduit Street, had just happened to glance up and meet her eye—he remembered the geraniums on her sill and the glimpse of something red in the shadows beyond her (could it have been a dressing gown hanging from its hook on the back of her front door?)—and they had smiled at one another, that was all. And it was silly, he knew, but this trifling incident had provided him with such a disproportionate glow of pleasure that as a consequence he had gone that way again tonight…although disappointingly she hadn’t been in evidence and the window had been closed. The point was, however, that he’d reflected last week about the time when he himself would be old, and about the fact that if he were then on his own he might wish for something similar, where he could sit by the window and watch life going on in the street below; have his bed tucked into an alcove, a gas fire that looked as if it burnt real coals, all his cherished bits and pieces close at hand, a wall lined with his favourite books, an affectionate cat to keep him company…it sounded so comfortable, a haven, such a fine and private place in which to spend whatever time remained.
    When he was old…he grinned…just twelve months or so in the future, it sounded like, or possibly right now, or maybe even last year. Or conceivably he’d been born old? On his tombstone they could write: Home at last! Half of him was here from the beginning .
    Well, anyhow, at least he could smile about it. Surely that was something in his favour. Even smile about it tonight, here at St Pancras. So who knew but they might add a mitigating footnote: “He was able to laugh at himself, even if some people, mother included, often considered him a pompous ass.”
    (Yet he didn’t believe his father thought of him like that—although why in fact he should believe this he didn’t know. Simply a feeling. Sometimes he felt he talked more freely to his father, which was odd really, considering how unalike they appeared to be…Oscar always seemed to have more in common with their old man.)
    This meditation on tombstones didn’t strike him as at all macabre. Indeed, he recollected one particular stroll he had taken with his dad and Polly on a Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the month. “Instead of the park, Rodge, let’s wander round the Lace Market! It’ll make a change for Polly; give her a whole new range of smells. Remind her of her scruffy London past and her disreputable salad days!” They’d gone as far as St Mary’s, where Dad had shown him, inside the church, the moving inscription to Lieutenant James Still, RN, and in the graveyard the monument commemorating Alexander Gordon Donaldson. “In years to come,” he’d asked, with his blue eyes sparkling, “what would you choose to have written about you on just such a monument as this?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t worry me.”
    “Then perhaps it should. You see, I’m asking you about your priorities, what you’d like to be remembered for. Apart from being my son.”
    “Apart from being your son? What else is there? Disreputable salad days, maybe.” He didn’t know why he’d said that. Just one of those silly things one did say. He didn’t at all regret having no memories of a misspent youth.
    But at least he’d been given the chance to acquire them. One man who’d grown strangely important to him had scarcely been allowed that. Lieutenant James Still had died in his twenty-second year…‘a victim to the ravages of the Yellow Fever, on board His Majesty’s ship, The Pheasant, while stationed off Sierra Leone, on the 12 th of October 1821. That he possessed the best feelings of the heart was manifested in his unwearied watchfulness over those whose aid he was in sickness. That he was endued with the spirit of Enterprise was proved by the testimony of those who had witnessed his skill, and admired his gallantry. That he was characterized by suavity of temper and