Unnatural Justice

Eighteen.

There was no sign, though, that Jay was looking at me any differently.

He behaved towards me in exactly the same way he had before the life episode. That had not been mentioned since, or even hinted at. As the days and weeks went by without further mention of the Neiportes in the Courier, or any other newspaper, my bad dreams began to ease, and I began to feel more secure.

In the last few days before shooting began on Mathew's Tale, I decided to go up to Enster to visit my Dad. I hadn't seen Mac the Dentist since Joe's funeral, or heard from him, and I wondered how he was. So I stuck my clubs in the passenger seat of the Lotus… there's nowhere else for them to go, and headed east.

As it turned out he was in good form all round, even on the golf course, although my new, home-tuned game was too much for him in the end. After our round, we paid a return visit to the Golf Tavern… it's more my style than the Elie club-house… where the atmosphere was much easier than on our previous visit.

I didn't raise the subject of his problem: I'd never intended to. But he did. Just as I was finishing my pint of orange squash and picking up my second crab mayonnaise roll, he reached across and squeezed my arm. "Thanks, son," he said, quietly.

"For what?"

"For helping me through that thing, for putting some backbone into me and showing me the way."

"Nada," I muttered. I assumed he'd read the Courier, although he didn't say.

"It wasn't nothing at all. It was…" He paused. "It's a funny thing, Oz, we go through our lives thinking of ourselves as role models for our children, and then a day can come when we realise that they've outgrown us, and that it's the other way around."

"Bollocks," I responded, cheerfully.

"I don't know about them," he remarked, and the moment had passed.

"How's Susie?" he asked me suddenly. "How's Janet? And how's my next grandson?"

"The first one's still working her socks off, although I'm trying to get her to slow down. The second seems to have appointed herself class captain at her nursery school. The third may actually be an elephant, going by the size of his mother."

He laughed. "Naw, he's a Blackstone male, that's all. You were exactly the same. Your mother was like an elf with Ellie, but she was like a fucking pillar box when she was carrying you."

"Don't say that to my wife, for God's sake." I looked across at him.

"How about your other grandsons? Fences mended?"

"With Colin, certainly. He's a corruptible wee sod, right enough; those skates did the trick: them, and a sincere apology. As for Jonny, he still acts a bit different towards me. Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever be the same with him."

"Probably not, Dad, but don't put it down to what happened. Jonny's growing up fast; the absence of a father has… I won't say it's robbed him of his childhood, but it's accelerating his adolescence.

I've got great hopes for him, you know. He's a special kid."

"He's you."

"So Ellie says, but he's not. If he was I'd know everything that's in his head, but I don't. There's something in him that wasn't in me when I was his age. I see it in the way he looks at his mother, and his brother. It's a sort of worship."

"You mean you didn't worship me?" my Dad asked, quietly.

"You're a fucking dentist," I reminded him. "There have been, and are, people on this planet who've worshipped cows, birds, cats, the Sun, the Moon, their ancestors, living emperors, money, precious stones, graven images, actors, musicians, racing cars, and the people who drive racing cars. But never across the great span of human history and endeavour will you find a case of anyone worshipping a fucking dentist."

He was still chuckling when he waved me off, after I had driven us back to Anstruther in his Jag and said "So long' to Mary. I could hear his laughter all the way home. I had been lying, of course. I did worship him.