The solicitor’s letter had come as a bolt from the blue, but its arrival was timely as I needed to escape from London for a while.  Reading the formal phrases telling me that my father had died, and that his cremation had already taken place, I wondered whether it was unnatural of me to feel no emotion except a kind of curiosity.  I supposed that grief would have been a more natural feeling, but why would I grieve for a man who had abandoned me when I was only five?

I didn’t even feel anger any longer, despite having felt angry with him for much of my life.  In recent years, thanks to his absence and lack of interest, my father had become a stranger linked to me solely by our blood tie and by our colouring.  We both had green eyes and dark hair with auburn tints.

I had finally found it simpler not to think of him at all than to think troubling thoughts.  How long it had taken me to comprehend that there was no need to hold him in my head, directing my behaviour and ultimately my relationships!  Holding him prisoner meant that I had no freedom.  My father had not insisted on occupying my mind.  I must somehow have invited him in – and had seen eventually that it was down to me to banish him.

His banishment had not been easy but I had succeeded in the end, more or less.  And now he was dead.  I waited again, half expecting to feel something stronger than I had felt upon registering the gist of the letter.  I was just curious, though, about my legacy.  For Father had left me his cottage by the sea, expressing the wish that I at least visit it before thinking of selling.  There was a rider that said: ‘Benjamin Delgarne was of the opinion that Sea Echoes, if properly used, could prove the making of you.’

© P.G. Glynn  www.pglynn.co.uk

THE PORTRAIT