A.J. is dead.
A.J. passes away at the home of Olga, his daughter, in the village of Barkston, Lincolnshire.
Were he and A.J. ever fully reconciled? He cannot say. The old man could never bring himself to praise his son unreservedly. Always there remained words unspoken, resentments unrevealed.
What did A.J. want: a son like Chaplin?
No, never that.
A son who plowed furrows in the earth from city to city, music hall to music hall, the tours dwindling as the circuit contracted, waning as the venues died, the great stages turned over to picture screens and bingo callers, so that when at last all went dark, he would expire with them? A son who kept the family name, and did not trade under another, as though A.J.’s patronymic and A.J.’s vocation were not good enough for him?
Perhaps.
And now A.J., who rejoiced in a name rejected by his boy, is gone.
Dead the father, dead the son.