Yet, for an outdoorsman, he was a gentle person with a deep respect for all living things – even the spiders that climbed out of the sink and the bugs that attacked our basement, were caught and released outside in an act of compassion. He was also compulsively cautious; he never passed the scissors the wrong way round and always stayed a few miles under the speed limit even on clear roads, which drove Mary-Kate and me crazy.
How ironic, then, that one day a boy on a bicycle turned abruptly in front of my father’s car. In a moment, which still today never truly seems to exist, the boy’s life ended and my father’s life, as it had been, did too; a laughing, extroverted tenor - my father - died. Grief and despair weighted his every thought and movement, although he consciously knew the accident was not his fault, guilt carved a seat for itself in his soul.
In the summer of 1988, the British Fish and Wildlife Service, Dad’s employers, transferred him to Keswick near Lake Windermere; his be-all and end-all of beauty in Britain. He wrapped things up in our home city of Halifax and drove down to there to pick up a government car while Mum, Mary Kate and I went to visit relatives.
Dad was a skilled driver. His work demanded travel and he had driven half-a-million accident-free miles. He normally found driving relaxing but the car vibrated at dad’s usual speed of 65 however the shudder quietened at 67 and after an hour or so he settled into that speed.
In the afternoon, he cleared a small mountain range, namely a part of the Pennines and descended into a little town at the mouth of a breath-taking valley. The road was new; smooth and flat. Leaving the town, he pulled out to pass an old white-haired man driving at a snail’s pace. As he drew abreast, the old man suddenly accelerated, forcing Dad to speed up to finish passing. Noticing he speedometer was over 70 he slowed down. A lone cyclist pedalled ahead on the hard shoulder. Dad usually gave cyclists a wide berth, but he saw that he couldn’t now, because an old army truck was roaring towards him, smoking and clattering. The cyclist, he saw, was only a boy.
The Truck passed and Dad Started to pull across to the middle of the road to put space between him and the cyclist. Then -abruptly- the boy turned directly in front of him. Dad stamped on his brakes, his tyres locked, the car slid screaming, leaving 40 feet of black marks on the road.
Where was the boy?
He saw the bicycle’s front wheel roll into the ditch. When the car finished it’s long slide, Dad burst out of his car; running on trembling legs. The boy’s eyes were already dilated. Dad heard his own voice, high and strained, asking over and over, “Are you hurt? Are you hurt?” The boy was silent and still.
The army truck driver, a tall, sad-eyed man listened to the boy’s chest and thought he heard a heart beat. My father noticed a spot of blood on his leg and tore open the jean to reveal a hideous fracture. Trained in first aid, Dad gripped and raised the boy’s legs above the injury to stem the bleeding. But the blood had ceased to flow. “It’s too bad,” the lorry driver said. “I don’t know how you could have missed him.” My father heard these words as from a great distance and stored them away.
A C.I.D. officer arrived shortly after. He had questions, a camera and a tape measure. “How fast were you driving?” he asked. This question would root itself in his soul. How fast had he been driving? He remembered he’d speeded up to pass the old man, and then slowed. He hadn’t checked his speedometer. He thought he’d slowed to let the clattering truck get past and then begun to accelerate as he pulled over to pass the cyclist. He did not know how fast he had been driving and he could not know for sure… ever.
Driving to the Police station to fill out an accident form he wondered if he would have to go to jail. To a man who had lived all his life in the wide, open Yorkshire dales, this was a daunting prospect. On the contrary, the police officer told him he was free to go, just stay in touch. That wasn’t enough for dad. He had to speak to the boy’s family. The officer said he would probably need to clear it with the investigating inspector. Dad waited a day, in which every moment tortured him, before he got the phone call from the officer. As were the conditions, the officer drove him to the family’s farm.
The house was filled with people. His mother was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by lots of other women, probably friends and relatives, lamenting the loss of her son with murky tear-stained cheeks. The smell of old, worn oak wood was strong and in its own way gave the aura of a sentimentally, traditional family which bore natural warmth; it tore my father’s heart to pieces. The boy’s father had cut himself several times while shaving. His eyes were wild, but he listened to Dad with great self-control. The man insisted they drive to scene of the accident and carry out a re-enactment of the sequence of events. Jaw clenching, he feverishly threw out questions, including, “How fast were you going?”
The ordeal with the boy’s family now over, he had to tell his wife. He made the call; his throat so tight he could hardly pull words through it, hardly respond to her assurances of love. After wards, he stood in he phone box trying to breathe. The pressure inside him seemed to be squeezing his heart and lungs to a stand still.
The day had now faded into evening, the weather too foreboding, he stopped at a motel. There, all alone, he contemplated his future. His life seemed as remote and useless as dust yet with all the consequence of a power to destroy life.
“There you go, just the way you like it” smiled Melanie, “Hey…”
“Yeah... oh sorry, caught up in my own head you know,”
“Never mind, anyhow, as I was saying...” resuming her slightly impatient tone “apparently, the person who ran her over, some young guy, took her to hospital himself, talk about brave! If it was me I probably would’ve been one of those needing urgent medical attention myself, imagine havi...” breaking off she tutted and muttered something about ‘ caffeine, drugs and overdose’.
‘I had only known too well what she meant,’ I thought sipping the coffee. Before Mary-Kate and I had seen dad again, after our vacation, mum had told us he might be changed. I distinctly remember looking into his face, trying to negotiate some difference - but finding none. I was mistaken. My father had embarked on a double life; to his daughters and colleagues he presented a face of implacable calm. Yet there were times when this man, who hadn’t cried since childhood, wept in the arms of his wife. And he no longer sang.
Then a peculiar fear began to grow inside him. Perhaps to balance the scales, God might require the life of one of his own children. He had always believed in a loving, fatherly God. Now, unable to comprehend how God could permit this accident, he feared a harmful, revengeful deity.
One day I begged to go out fishing with Mary Kate at the lake across the road. The wind was blowing three-foot high waves straight onto the beach. We were good swimmers, having always competed and sometimes won in local competitions, but still, he hesitated. I begged. Reluctantly, he agreed. He was just beginning to settle back into his work when a noise outside snapped him to his feet. Through the window he saw me running to the house, shouting, panic in my voice.
Instantly he knew that Mary Kate was in trouble. She was drowning. He tore out of the room snatching my wrist as he ran toward the lake. From a distant Dad could see her clutching my rod. As he drew closer he saw the finishing line running into her eye. He noted with relief that the hook had only penetrated the flesh below the right brow. Being properly trained from work, he delicately cut it out of the small entry wound. Mary Kate’s eye was undamaged. He held the hook in his fingers with astonishment. Then a smile broke through his emotional imprisonment. For the first time in along while, he laughed out loud with pure relief. And, holding our hands, he led us home.
“Oh my God!” I blurted out suddenly noticing the time; I had completely forgotten about picking up my little three-year old Jessica from nursery. I leapt up off my chair, dropping what looked like a five-pound note and ran outside. I got into my car and started the engine.
“Honestly, what kind of mother am I?“ I said out loud in an effort to scold myself.
I drove out of the old street and turned onto my left. I was driving along when, as you do when on a long journey, again my thoughts swam around in my heads and turned towards my own parents - dad.
Perhaps Dad’s recovery started that day when he saw that God did not exact a compensatory sacrifice for his accident. One spring evening, while out in our third holiday to America, to the state of Arizona, almost two years after the accident, I saw him climb the wall of a canyon and shortly afterwards I heard his powerful voice streaming out in the natural amphitheatre of song. It was his whole soul and heart letting go the despondent guilt and tormenting fear that had held him captive for so long. I felt that my father, the exuberant tenor, had returned to me. Yet, I felt he was changed; he was a man who had come through a dark fire and survived. I can only assume it was a trapped feeling of my own, the sorrow of lost hope I had felt when I could not reach out to him, the impossibly handsome father whom I had so once adored, but for whatever reason - I remember letting flow a silent torrent of tears.
Suddenly attentive again, I turned towards the nursery and managed to park the car in an empty space, before I dashed out in the direction of the nursery, noticing I was 10 minutes late.
“Mummy!” someone shouted from afar.
“Oh Lolly,” I said as I hugged and picked her up.
“Sorry for being late!” I turned to say apologetically to the assistant.
“No problem, we didn’t mind did we Lolly?”
I turned around, Lolly holding onto my hand and sat down into the leather car. Then it hit me. What if that ever happened to Lolly’s dad or me? Or maybe even one day, to Lolly? How would we cope?
Then I remembered my dad and how one day, he sat me down and told me the story as I recalled the story now. I can’t really think why he had - I had never showed curiosity towards it. But thinking about it now - as a mother, it became clearer to me. To show me, if ever I needed to be rescued, to be salvaged from the ominous feeling of guilt he had once felt, that God did forgive and then with that assurance maybe we could learn to forgive ourselves.
