Free A Lie About My Father by John Burnside Page A

names, new faces, new unknown quantities to appease and please and outmanoeuvre. I would be in bed when they arrived, though usually not asleep. By that time I was old enough to worry when he wasn’t home, old enough to feel the tension when Margaret and I were put to bed – I have no explanation for this, but my mother always knew when he was about to go off the rails , as she put it – old enough to wonder whether we would all get safely through the night. I would be in bed, pretending to be asleep, not daring to slip out in case my father came home and found my bed empty when, as was more and more the case, he wanted me up and about, serving drinks, emptying ashtrays, mopping up spillages and the occasional pool of vomit or piss. All evening, I would lie awake, listening to my mother as she went about the house, hiding ornaments, tidying up, doing her best to make the place look good and, at the same time, concealing anything she thought my father and his friends might damage or abuse. Then she would go to bed and close her bedroom door. She would pretend to be asleep too – and when my father eventually got back, he would leave her to it. He didn’t want her about at such times, watching him, making the odd innocent-sounding but wholly calculated remark, asking his friends about their own homes, their own families, trying to shame them into decency.
    With me, though, it was different. My father took real pleasure in rousing me from my bed and having me come through, in my pyjamas, to do those little jobs he felt I could manage, all the time listening to what the men were saying, taking note, ready to speak when spoken to. He would have me perform tricks: feats of mental arithmetic or memory, or he would tell them to ask me questions. The capital of Bolivia came up a good deal, as did the spelling of Mississippi and the attribution of various, usually misquoted, lines from Burns. It was a difficult balancing act, showing off just enough so he would be proud (the father of a smart son, naturally, because he was so smart himself), but not so much that he would be embarrassed, or shown up (maybe the boy’s too smart, a bit of a show-off, when all’s said and done). I quickly learned which questions to answer confidently, which should be hesitated over and which should be left unanswered. A bright boy, bright as a button, and good-natured with it. Not too proud to fetch a rag from the scullery and help out when there was a wee accident, or pop out to the coal bunker for more coal on a chilly night. Bright, yes, but always willing.
    ‘Hey, son. Pour us all another rum, will you?’
    ‘Hey, son. Get us a towel here.’
    ‘Where’s the toilet, wee man?’
    I would pour the rum, or the whisky, or the beer, and I would know I was pouring away our food for the week, the insurance money, probably the rent. I also knew never to let this show. On party nights, we were the richest people in the world. Our hospitality knew no limits. And we regretted nothing.
    Sometimes my father came home earlier in the evening. This meant he was running out of money, and somebody had offered to chip in on a carry-out. When that happened, his usual partner-in-crime was Paddy, a friend of his from the Woodside, his favourite drinking hole. My mother had once made the mistake of saying that Paddy was a gentleman, which allowed my father to pretend, on these early returns from the pub, that he had brought Paddy home to say hello. On the nights when Paddy came back, my father would make sure they brought something for my mother to drink, a Babycham, say. My mother didn’t like alcohol, but she would drink a Babycham now and then to be sociable. My father also knew that she wouldn’t make a scene in front of Paddy, that she would sit nicely for a while, then excuse herself and go off to bed. Maybe she would venture a parting shot along the lines of ‘Don’t sit up too late, now’, or ‘Remember, they’re asleep’. I would hear this as she