Daniel was lying on the sofa bed in his father’s office listening to Neil Young’s On the Beach. He hadn’t heard the album for forty years, at least. He had forgotten it existed.
Only minutes before he had been idly flicking through Malcolm’s LP collection and scoffing. Jazz, folk, sixties and seventies rock’n’roll – some artists he knew but most he didn’t. He’d always been repulsed by his father’s choices. Back then he’d preferred ABBA, Boney M and the Grease soundtrack to the stuff his dad played. Then he spotted the cover of On the Beach and memories flooded back to him. He stared at it and recalled doing the same as a child. It had been so strange to him then. An outdoor table and chairs on a sandy beach, replete with fringe-edged yellow umbrella, beside a buried fifties Cadillac, with only its fins and brakelight visible, like the tip of an iceberg. In the background stands a man looking out to sea. It was still strange now. And it annoyed him. It was purposefully eccentric and implied meaning it just didn’t contain. Like so much of the culture Malcolm enjoyed. It seemed designed to make you feel stupid if you didn’t get it, or didn’t pretend to get it, which is what Daniel suspected most people did.
On the Beach had been one of his father’s favourites. At least he remembered seeing the album sleeve on top of the record player often. But he couldn’t remember anything of the music.
That’s why he had removed the disc from the sleeve and had popped the record on the turntable. But he found he didn’t remember the music at all.
As he lay on the sofa listening to it, he felt more and more disheartened. For some reason he thought by playing the album he’d unlock some key to his past. Something to fill the ever-deepening void he felt within him. Staying with Helen and Malcolm had focused his attention on the life he’d shared with them as a child. They were asking him to look again. To reassess. But instead of changing his views, he seemed only to confirm them.
He remembered Malcolm would only ever play his music when Helen was out. This was something he’d never questioned until now. But it meant she hadn’t shared his taste in music either. And though his father really enjoyed music, he had to wait for an opportunity to play it.
Daniel had always supposed it was because Malcolm, when not sleeping, was either writing or reading, and he required complete silence for both. But it was because Helen was always there with them.
And those days when he would hear the music were the days when it was just him and his dad at home. But apart from the music, he couldn’t recall anything they did together that was different from all the other days.
The silence of all the other days. That is what he remembered most clearly from his childhood. Living in dread of disturbing Helen and Malcolm. He closed his eyes and once again felt the oppressive weight of that silence. Children are not silent. And they shouldn’t be expected to be silent. He would never think of asking his own boys to be silent all day. And yet his parents had yelled at him for making the slightest sound. Then they would send him out to play with the other boys.
An exile for art’s sake.
Malcolm entered the room. ‘You remember this, do you?’ he asked Daniel.
Daniel opened his eyes and looked at his father. ‘What?’ he asked, contrasting the man before him with the man of his memories. The Malcolm standing in the room was softer, more reasonable and gentler than the man he remembered. As though all the hard edges had been worn off over time.
‘The music. Why are you playing it?’
‘I don’t know. I was flicking through all that fucking Bob Dylan you have and then I spotted this,’ he said, lifting the album sleeve off the bed. ‘Something about the cover art. I think I remember you playing it.’
‘I used to. Side two, really. I rarely played side one.’
Daniel sat up, reached across to the turntable and flipped the disc. He heard the scratching needle and, sitting back down, listened intently as the music started.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, lying back on the sofa. ‘I remember this. Jesus. When were you into it?’
‘I don’t know. Sometime in the seventies. That was when I made friends with some of the Californians at university. They would have introduced me to Neil Young.’
‘I can’t believe it. It has to be forty years, but I remember the sound so clearly.’
‘I used to listen to it if your mother was out, just after I put you to bed. You never seemed to mind.’
‘I remember you playing it pretty loud.’
‘I couldn’t play it loud, the neighbours would come knocking. You remember what that was like, don’t you?’
‘I remember lying in bed with the lights off listening to the mournful guitar and sad drums.’
Malcolm didn’t say anything. He walked to the chair at the desk and sat down. They listened for a few minutes as the song ended and the next began.
‘It’s bleak, Malcolm.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Well, it’s not ABBA, is it?’
‘I’ve never thought of it as dark.’
‘Well, it is. It’s damned depressing.’
‘There’s an optimism in the lyrics, isn’t there? Things are shit, but we’ll get through it.’
‘It’s not very convincing,’ said Daniel, and he reached over and turned it off. ‘Makes me want to slit my wrists.’
Malcolm smiled grimly but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m not built like you,’ said Daniel, sitting up. ‘You have no fear of the dark. You stare into the void for kicks. The music you listen to is depressing. The books you read are depressing. The books you write are depressing.’
‘Some say A Hundred Ways is quite funny.’
‘If you’re the Grim Reaper, maybe. It’s fucking awful. It’s darker than anything you’ve ever written.’
Malcolm stared hard at his son.
Daniel put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know how you two do it. This fucking life is hard enough without holding every speck of it up to the light for examination. Don’t you ever wish you could turn your head off for good?’
‘Never,’ said Malcolm, though without much conviction.
‘You must have such a high capacity for pain. I don’t. I have no capacity for pain. None. I have to be so cautious. Everything in this life frightens me.’
Malcolm felt as though his son had punched him in the stomach. He could barely breathe, but knew he must say something.
‘You just need time to adjust, Daniel,’ he said, but it was more of a whisper.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘You need time to adjust.’
‘Adjust to what?’ asked Daniel, standing. ‘Geraldine leaving?’
Malcolm nodded. He wanted so much to take the pain away from his son.
‘I’ll never adjust to that. There’s no adjusting.’
Malcolm stood, intending to try to embrace his son, to give him some comfort, but he took longer to rise than he expected and the moment had passed. Daniel had already left the room.