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I never really understood why I had an affinity for libraries until I stepped into the one in my grandfather’s house.

The last time I’d seen it was when I turned ten, and we visited him the day after my grandmother had died.  I remembered that day very clearly for two reasons.  First, my grandfather said I was too young to go, so I was left with the housekeeper and allowed to go into a large room with thousands upon thousands of books.  By myself.

So many, in fact, I was so immersed in them that I hadn’t realised my parents had come back and it was time to go.  Not until I heard raised voices coming from outside the window.  My father and grandfather were in a full bare-knuckle fighting stance, with my mother standing between them.

That second reason, it was also the day my father stopped talking to and visiting my grandfather.  I had seen him once, in all the time leading up to my grandmother’s funeral, and never again.  The only references to him I found were in the newspapers, along with words like patron, philanthropist, politician, and patriot.  My father said he was evil, but he never told me why.

There was a lot of fallout from that day of the funeral.  Not only had my father stopped talking to his father, but also his two sisters and brother, all of who were a mystery to me.  Later I learned that I belonged to a very dysfunctional family and that my father was the sanest of the four siblings.  Of course, that was my mother’s assessment, but I also learned later, my father marrying her had got him disinherited.

But to be honest, at 10 it didn’t seem a big deal.  I didn’t know them, and having said no more than a dozen words to my grandfather, it was not as if I knew him enough to miss him.  I did remember that library though, and that huge house by the lake.  My father never said he’d grown up there, just that his life had been spent in boarding schools and the military.  Enough of a life though, to give me a university degree, yes, you guessed it, in Library Science and Information Management.

That I knew so little about him made it all the more difficult to write a eulogy.  For him, and my mother who had basically died a few days after him.  I wanted to believe she just didn’t want to live on without him, but that was too fanciful.  She had been worn down by what I now believed was a very bitter man.  That bitterness had caused me to stop visiting home about a year before when relations between us sunk to an all-time low.  I spoke to my mother by phone every week, but it was not the same, not being able to see me, and that I hadn’t made it back before she died was a sin I would spend a long time atoning for.

Nor did I have any siblings to turn to for help.  That ship had sailed after I was born when my mother discovered she could have no more children.

But, here’s the thing.  I had not heard that either of my parents had died until I got a call from my parents’ Pastor of their church.  Had he not called, I would not have known.  My initial reaction was not to go, that was how deep the scars were from our fractured relationship, but the pastor insisted that I would not get closure if I didn’t.

I still believed it was a huge mistake as I was getting on the plane.  I told Wendy, a girl whom I had just become more than friends with that I would have to go, it surprised her because I had told her that I was more or less like her, an orphan.  I had met her after the final altercation, and I didn’t think it necessary to bore her with my parents’ odd behaviour.

By the time the plane arrived, I was past the misgivings and telling myself just to get it done and go home.  One day, two at the most and it would be all over, filed under, don’t come back to haunt me again.

Shock number one:  A girl, about my age or slightly younger, dressed in what might have passed as mourning clothes, was standing in the arrivals section where people held signs of names of people they were to pick up.  She had mine, or maybe not.  It could be someone else.  I went over to her, cautiously.

She smiled when she saw.  “My God; Lindsay, you look just like your father.”

How could she possibly know who I was, or what he looked like?  None of his family had ever made themselves known or came to see us.

“How…”

“Your photographs.  My dad is your uncle by the way, and I’m your something or other, someone explained it to me but it was too much.  Your mother sent thousands of photographs and letters to your uncle and aunts and we know about you.  It’s just a pity we couldn’t meet until the old bastard died.  Now, it’s like we’re old friends.  I’m Allie by the way.  Wow!”

Wow, indeed.  My mother the traitor!  She always seemed to have a conspiratorial look about her and now I knew why.

“Travelling light,” she said, seeing my backpack.

“Wasn’t intending to stay.”

“Can’t do that now Lindsay.  You have a lifetime of catching up to do.  I hope you have a spare week up your sleeve.”

I followed her out of the terminal to the car park. 

“Where do you want to go first?  By the way, I’m your chauffeur for the duration of your stay, and you tell me, that’s where we go.”

“Haven’t you got better things to do?”

“No.  I had to beat up my sister and brother to get this privilege.  This is not a  chore Lindsay.  And I get first dibs to talk to you about everything.”

She had a strange way of talking, so I let most of it go over my head.  “Perhaps the funeral parlour, I think the pastor said they were in one of them near the church.  Not their church, either.”

“I try not to get involved in heavy family stuff.  But I think you’ll find my father had something to do with that.  Blood is thicker than water, he says.  He says a lot of stuff I don’t understand.  Your dad like that?”

We reached the car, she unlocked it and we got in.  A RAM 2500.  Better than anything we could afford.

“Your car?”

“Mine, hell no.  This is Dad’s special truck, only comes out on hunting weekends and special occasions like weddings.  Damned if I know why he let me drive given my track record.” She shrugged.  “Perhaps it’s another of his tests.”

It sounded like a family trait because my father used to do the same.  I left her to the driving and pondered this whole other life that went on around us, ignored simply because my father hated his family.  Obviously, there was some deep-seated resentment generated at some point before he struck out on his own, and maybe I could find out.  Certainly, it seemed I was not going to be able to escape as easily as I had first imagined.

What worried me was suddenly meeting a whole host of people I’d never seen before but apparently knew everything about me.  I’d never have suspected my mother going behind my father’s back, but there was always that air of defiance in her, and in some of their arguments, they didn’t go nuclear, but she did stop talking to him or doing anything for him until he backed down.

A lesser woman would not have been much of anything up against him, which was why he married her.

Our first stop as requested was the funeral home.  There I was shown into a special room where both were in their caskets.  It was an open casket viewing, and while they had been restored to some of their former glory, my mother was almost unrecognisable.  I had the room to myself, and thankfully Allie didn’t come in because there were tears, even though I told myself there would not be.

My father, of course, never changed and looked the same forbidding person he’d always been.  I was sure somewhere within him there was kindness, but he never showed it to me.  Even so, it was still a shock to know that he had passed.

After a half hour, I came back out into the daylight.  Allie handed me a cup of coffee.

“I didn’t know if you wanted or needed something stronger, but we can drop into a bar on the way for some fortification if you like.  The next stop, I’m afraid, is the church.  Got a call to say the Bishop has arrived.  Our family has some brownie points and got the Bishop to come and say a few words.  I’m not a keep churchgoer either Lindsay.”

Were any of the younger generations?  Those attempts of his to put the fear of God in me never worked, probably because they tried too hard.  A more gentler and persuasive method would have had better results, but the priest was all fire and brimstone.  I don’t think I could remember one Sunday where the sermon had any levity in it.

“Perhaps if they tried to move into the 21st century, it might be better.  I heard that my father’s church Pastor is coming too.  He’s as old as the hills, and hopefully, he will not remember the errant and disappointing child I was.”

“Don’t count on it.  They keep everything in a big ledger, and it’s opened the day you go to heaven or hell.  Hell’s where I’m going, I’m sure of it.”

It was an amusing thought.  “Perhaps you’ll see me there, too.”

The Pastor was there with the local church leaders, and the Bishop, all very severe-looking men.  Granted it was a sombre occasion, but a little levity wouldn’t go astray.  I noted, firstly, the look they gave me was one of surprise, though I had no idea why, and secondly, they hardly approved of the mourning outfit on my chauffeur.  Granted it was low cut and the hem high, but it suited her, and in my mind rather a fashion statement, and appropriate.  This was not the nineteenth century.

That led to shock number two.  My father’s paster recognised me instantly, and the change of expression told me he remembered everyone one of my sins, some of which I still had to atone for.  That was not the reason for the shock, the fact I had to write a eulogy and read it was.  He had intimated such in the phone call but I had told him I preferred not to.  Perhaps he had been hard of hearing.

He was warm in his greeting though.  “Lindsay, so glad you could come, and, my, you have grown up into a fine young man.”

Grown-up, may, fine, that was debatable.  “They haven’t retired you yet?”  It was not meant to be antagonistic, but some memories of injustices never left you.

“There’s still a lot of God’s work to be done.  I see you have lost none of your candour.  Let us not dwell on the past, and consider only what lies ahead.  Your father was a good man, despite your differences, and his disposition.  I had urged him, in his last days, to reconcile with you, and I believe he was going to.”

“You knew a different man to me, Pastor.  But as you say, let us not dwell upon what was.  I think I said I preferred not to participate in the service.”

I saw the other Pastor and the Bishop approach.  I thought I remembered the Bishop, but not as a Bishop but as a simple priest, many years before.  The trouble was, they all looked the same to me.

“Marriot here tells me you are going to read your eulogy as part of the service.  I believe it’s the right thing to so, a fitting end to a life devoted to service to his country and his church.”

He gave me no chance of reneging, and at any rate, there was no denying a Bishop’s request, not if I wanted the wrath of God to befall me.

“Until tomorrow, Pastor Marriot said and left with the other two men.

“I can see that went swimmingly,” Allie said when she came back over.   It wasn’t hard to notice she was avoiding the Pastors and Bishop.

“An ambush.”

“Not getting out of the eulogy?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then write and read something wicked.  There’s going to be a packed house, so the audience will be in your hands.  The trouble is, people rarely bring up the bad stuff at funerals, and the lies they tell about people, it’s outrageous.  We had an in-law who died in a police shootout when he tried to rob a gas station.  Not one bad word.  It’s probably why they didn’t ask me to say anything.”

The thought did cross my mind, but no, I had enough respect for the occasion that I would say a few words.

“Well, the fun’s over,” she said.  “You now are about to meet all the people you never knew existed.”

The family had taken over a restaurant in a nearby town, and everyone had come to see the missing link.  I felt like a character out of Charles Darwin’s evolution book.

There were about 35, my father’s brother and two sisters, their children, my contemporaries, some grandchildren, and one very old lady, the sister of my grandfather who presided over the gathering like a Queen.  She was the first introduction, and from there, it was simply a sea of faces and names.

Inevitably I was asked why I had not tried to seek them out earlier, and that was complicated.  My father never told me about his family, and that one memory of my grandfather was fleeting and without context.  But the most sinister of reasons was the fact he had changed his surname, making it impossible to trace anyone.  While I knew he had siblings, I could never find them.  As for my mother, she said she would tell me the truth when he died.  That, of course, could not happen, which landed me where I was right now.  Even his priest did not know the truth until one of the family contacted him upon learning of my father’s death.

It was, quite simply, the most improbable of situations that most people could not believe possible.

The following day, over a hundred people arrived for the funeral, and it was a beautiful service on a perfect day.  My few but heartfelt words were delivered in a broken voice, by a person who should not have but was, overcome with emotion. 

Afterwards, when the bodies were lowered into their final resting place, in the family graveyard near my grandfather’s house, exactly as I had remembered it, I was sitting on the seat that overlooked the lake, wondering what it might have been like to like in such a house.  Allie had taken me on a guided tour, the house now a museum of sorts, where the family occupied the upper floors and the museum the lower, including that incredible library.

She was sitting next to me, the rock that had got me through a fairly traumatising day.

Shock number three:  She handed me an envelope with my name on it.  “We had to wait until your father died before it could be delivered.  It is a letter all of us in our generation, got when our grandfather died.”

“I’m surprised he considered me part of the family.”

“You were, and are, despite your father’s best efforts.  He knew about you, and everything you have done, until the day he died.  You can read it, or I can summarise it if you like.”

“You can tell me, I’m just too overwhelmed to read anything at the moment.”

“As you wish.  In essence, you and 7 of us, own equal shares in the old building over there.”  She nodded in its direction.  “You have a suite of rooms set aside, as each of us has, and a job helping in running the museum.  He particularly thought you would like to run the library and the research department.  There are a lot of historical documents, and books that are considered invaluable to researchers who come here from all over the world.  You might not want to, but the rest of us would love it if you did.  And there’s a pot of gold, literally at the end of the rainbow.  You can, if you so desire, become very, very wealthy.  Or just take an annuity as I do.  Too much money makes me anxious.  Now, you can stay in your rooms tonight, for as long as you want, and tomorrow we will all sit around the table and just talk.”

Just then I saw her turn towards the driveway and heard a car arriving.  She smiled.  “We also thought it might be too overwhelming on your own so we asked Wendy to come.  I hope you don’t mind?”

It was odd because she was on my mind at that exact moment she arrived, and exactly the person I wanted to see.

As I crossed the lawn and reached the car as she got out, and saw the house, there was a look of recognition, surprise and something else I couldn’t place.

“Is this where you grew up?” she asked.

“No.  I’d only seen it once when I was ten when my parents came to attend my grandmother’s funeral.  Why?”

“Because this is very, very familiar.  I lived here with my mother until I was fifteen when she died and I was sent to live with my aunt in New York.  I remember a day when a boy came, and stayed in the library, and refused to come and play with me.  I was seven, I think, at the time.  It means I’ve known you forever, even if I did hate you to pieces then.  What a remarkable coincidence.”

“Serendipity,” Allie said.  “Welcome home, the both of you.”

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©  Charles Heath 2023