Fathers and Sons Read Online Free PDF Page B

his ship nosed into the Western Approaches–so recently a hunting ground for German U-boats preying on Allied shipping as it neared British waters–and set course for Canada. He was, he realised, sailing across a wide ocean towards a deeplyuncertain future. There had been very little communication with his parents in the years after they left. They had, of course, written to let him know that his eldest brother had been killed in France. Changes of address, too, were notified.
    Such desultory correspondence was not particularly unusual in those days. But it meant my grandfather really only knew his family from fading memories, memories which were frozen in the year 1907. There had been the extraordinary encounter with Douglas and John in 1917, but this had been more of an emotional electric shock than a reunion.
    It was one thing to dream rosy dreams of reconciliation and rapprochement. As the liner drew inexorably closer to the mouth of the St Lawrence River, Geoffrey realised he was about to confront a group of near-strangers.
    What a strange voyage it must have been for the young man. As the days passed, how he must have rehearsed what he was going to say to them all. The last time he had addressed his mother and father, he had been a little boy, and they had spoken to him as a child. What would they make of this tall Englishman when he walked into their home? What would he make of them? If they had some kind of disagreement or falling out, would he find hot words of suppressed anger and recrimination rising, unbidden, to his lips?
    He was probably the most preoccupied passenger on board.
    Henry and his family had put down roots in the little town of St Thomas, close to the shores of Lake Erie and at the heart of the Great Lakes Peninsula. It could hardly have been more different from Worcester, or Shropshire, come to that. This was tobacco-growing country, surprisingly hot and humid insummer, but true to the stereotypical image of Canada in winter when thick snow blanketed the ground for months.
    Granddad must have written to let them know he was coming, or perhaps sent a telegram. He would not have arrived unexpectedly. But he had, at last, arrived. A journey twelve years in the making, and thousands of miles in the travelling, was done.
    A series of trains and buses brought him to St Thomas and the address his family had been living at for the last few years. He stood stock-still outside the simple frame-built house on a quiet street and stared at the front door. It represented the last remaining barrier between him and his family. The emotional weight of that moment must have been colossal. Finally he stepped forward, and knocked.
    A pause. Then steps approaching from the other side; a woman’s tread. The handle rattling and turning; the door swinging open.
    Geoffrey looked into the eyes of a middle-aged woman.
    His eyes.
    Her eyes.
    His mother’s eyes.
    She stared at him, and slowly shook her head. ‘Oh…I’m so sorry…I truly am sorry…I never buy anything at the door.’ She closed it in his face.
    The last exchange of photographs across the Atlantic had obviously failed to imprint my grandfather’s mature features on his mother’s memory. In her mind’s eye she still saw him as the little boy she had last seen twelve years earlier.
    Geoffrey had sometimes wondered if he would recognisehis parents when he saw them again. It never crossed his mind that they might not recognise him.
    He didn’t know what to do. None of his fantasies about this moment had included this scenario. Eventually, he knocked again.
    Now the woman looked annoyed. He spoke quickly, before she could send him away a second time.
    ‘It’s me, Mother. I’m your son. I’m Geoffrey.’
    Slowly, Hannah saw the man standing on her doorstep as the boy she once knew. Her eyes widened and she put her hands to her mouth.
    ‘Mother…are you all r–’
    ‘Geoffrey…oh, Geoffrey !’
    Her child had crossed the years, a war, and an ocean