On dads and disappointments
‘MY FATHER could not look at me as we sat in the back of a white sedan on our way to the police station. But I looked at him. He was staring straight ahead through all the years his son had disappointed him.” Anthony Lawrence.
The last room my father occupied had barely been interfered with.
My uncle was coming to stay and so it was time to clear things out. The cupboard protested as I gently prised it open.
Two old suits sagged limply on their hangers. The last time they would have been worn was 30 years ago. Three-piece suits were all the fashion.
I remember him. In the height of apartheid’s brutal sun, the waistcoat and jacket never left my father’s shoulders.
I folded the suits gently and then unfolded them quickly. I tried on the jacket. It was a perfect fit.
Deeper and deeper, I peered into the darker recesses. In the corner was a Nu Shop plastic packet. It was tied tightly at the top.
I wondered how I had missed this in the aftermath of his death when I found his old attaché case in the opposite corner of the cupboard. I still have the beige case with the twin locks. It was all the rage in the late 1970s.
I snipped open the packet. Lots of mouldy papers. Crumpled. One by one I straightened them and placed them in neat piles. At the bottom were three aerograms. Light blue in colour.
I recognised two with my handwriting. Sent from Walthamstow, London in 1977.
And a third. From him to me. It had never been sent.
For a long time I traced the outer edges of the letter, my fingers trembling at what lived under those folds.
My mother shouted from the lounge wanting to know what I was stealing. How did she know, this woman who can barely see, that I was up to no good?
I paced around the lounge for a couple of minutes. But the yearning to read the letter never sent was just too much. With infinite care I opened the aerogram. By now, the glue had caked and cracked and it fell apart, as if it could anticipate my fingers.
My father always wrote with a Scheaffer fountain pen. I remember so vividly the whole process of filling the ink, squeezing the dark indigo liquid from the bottle.
The careful way in which each word was imprinted on a page. Did this slow writing make us think about our words much more?
What I read in that letter will haunt me for the rest of my life.
The date – March 25, 1977. I must confess. I am totally against censorship. But some of the lines in the letter I cannot share. Not right now anyway. Dear Ash Thank you for your letter. I still wonder why you have decided to work at Unigate dairy. Where would that get you? The job will not last forever. You are so very young and the lifestyle that comes with it worries me.
When I think about your excesses I think about my own growing up. Remember how my father lost his farm in Seaview and we were left destitute? My father left to India and I was never to see him again. My two younger brothers saw education as a way of improving our lives. It was tough. Seven of us living in Hoosen’s Building in Queen Street. My mother turning over the collars of my shirts so I could go to school with some dignity. My sister giving up her own ambitions so she could work to support us.
As I have told you before I was broken-hearted that there was no money for me to go to medical school. After teaching at school for a whole day I still went to work at Jadwat’s Shoe Store to earn a little bit more to keep the home going. I know you heard all this before and are probably bored by now.
I wanted you to have what I never had. A chance to study fulltime. To get a degree as early in life as possible. To have independence. Despite all your excesses I have always stood behind you.
But your last letter displayed all your arrogance. Every line hurt me so terribly. I could not even show it to your mother who believes you can do no wrong.
When I came to London to visit, it was a dream come true. There were great times. Going to the Spurs training ground and meeting Pat Jennings. Walking with you through Carnaby Street. But you seemed so distant, as if I was intruding. On the last day after promising to accompany me to the airport you abandoned me at Grosvenor Court. This too I did not tell your mother but rather lied and told her how you took me all the way to Heathrow and gave me a hug.
What happened about your dreams of studying journalism? So far away I have the sense that I do not know what escapade, what trouble you could be in next, (it) worries me.
Every time I want to give up, turn my back on you, I think about you as the beautiful small boy who would never give up. I think of all the times you ran on the tennis court when you were three or four and tried to grab the ball. This is the Ash I know. Your letter of giving up on studying and working in the dairy has broken me into small bits.
I enclose a photograph of you on a tennis court in Clairwood. I carried it with me in my attaché case every day. It reminds me of when we were best friends.
I cannot send you any money immediately but I send you my love and prayers.
I wanted to crumple the letter, tear it into bits, throw it on the floor and stamp it to oblivion.
As if reading my maddening thoughts, my mother was making her way slowly from the lounge shouting “stop stealing my money Ashy boy, stop stealing my money”. I put the letter back.
But I knew that no matter what I did, those words were etched in my memory. Forever. There was no delete button.
The only thought that keeps me going is the knowledge that you only know the power of a relationship in its betrayal. How did Derek Mahon put it? “Love like fire can only reveal its brightness on the failure and beauty of burnt wood.” Desai is Professor of Sociology at the
University of Johannesburg.