Read by Paul Clarke
Fail #1:
Day one, minute one, and smack off the bat you’ve fucked up.
My wife, bleeding to death.
Your own mother.
As if you hadn’t caused her pain enough already, you have to go and kick her on your way out, you clumsy little twerp. A massive postpartum haemorrhage, they said. No doubt aggravated by this and that and what-not, I grant you. But I’ve seen how babies flail and thrash.
Fine fellows, all of them. If I’d wept, they’d have understood.
I do hope this doesn’t set the tone for your future. I really do. But something tells me I’ll be disappointed.
Fail #2:
Day two.
That’s it. She’s gone. After a valiant struggle, she’s gone.
Are you satisfied? Are you finally satisfied?
My angel. My Athene. My life. Twenty-nine years old, for Christ’s sake! Practically a child herself...
I know what you’re thinking. Or at least, I know what you would be thinking, if you were capable of it. You’d argue this is just an extension of Fuck-up # 1, that the damage was already done yesterday.
Well I’m afraid you don’t get off so lightly.
She insisted on holding you, you see. Her eyes were full of tears, and I could see she was trying, like the angel she was, to forgive you. But there’s no doubt that final exertion is what did for her.
And what the hell’s the point in a ten-pound infant anyway? I was barely half that weight at birth, and it’s quite clear my mother never felt a thing.
Fail #3:
Day three.
This morning I held you for the first time. Only for a moment, just long enough to check your heart was beating. Your pulse is lamentably weak. Not diseased or anything, just... weak. A non-sound, like lips parting, again and again and again and again.
Anyone else - without my expert ear – would have taken you for dead.
Or they would, if you hadn’t decided to piss down my shirt-front.
No, I don’t blame that damn fool of a trainee midwife, or her failure to fasten your napkin correctly. I blame you.
Because it’s now quite clear.
Every day of your life, you’re going to fuck something up.
Every single day.
With the dull, despicable regularity of a healthy sinoatrial node.
It’s inevitable. I can see that now.
I only hope you’ll find it in your heart - once in a blue moon - to try and make me proud.
Fail #31:
One month a father.
Shortly after lunch, I was disturbed by a ring of the doorbell. Christ knows where the housekeeper was. Whoever-it-was kept ringing and ringing, and in the end I had to answer it myself.
My father stood outside, his hair properly grey at last, his body half the size I remembered.
He was dressed in the usual three-piece suit and watch-chain, but since his face wore a smile, he might as well have been in carnival costume.
“Hamish,” he stammered. “I heard you had a son.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, staring.
“Hamish,” he repeated. “I wanted to congratulate you. Please, let’s... I want to make things up to you. Please.”
“There’s no child here,” I told him.
That’s when you started crying.
His eyes lit up. Yellowed slivers of enamel peeped beneath the moustache.
I closed the door in his face.
You were howling now, although the only thing I could hear was galley drums. I clutched my wrist and ran to the my office for the pill box. Two minutes later I vomited them up, along with my lunch.
Your doing. All of it.
Fail # 1,496:
The lissom bottle-blonde I had the foresight to engage as your nanny came to see me, holding a ragged scrap of paper.
“He drew this for you,” she whispered, stroking my jaw.
At the top of the page, she’d written I love you Daddy in pencil. A cloddish wax crayon veered and swerved in a vain attempt to follow the lines.
“Who’s that giant pig supposed to be?” I asked. “Or is it a bear? The one surrounded by flowers.”
She laughed and guided my hand to unbutton her blouse.
Afterwards, I spent a long time studying the drawing and shaking my head. I’m certain that at your age, I had a far, far greater mastery of perspective.
Fail # 5,621:
A “C” in Woodwork?
Might has well never have taken the subject, you dolt.
I told you not to bother, didn’t I? Not because it’s unimportant. As a matter of fact, it’s the most important discipline a boy can learn. I just knew, somehow, that you’d fail.
Your father, on the other hand, hacks his way into three chest cavities per day with a circular saw, then wires them back together in time for tea.
So don’t try and distract me with the A’s you got in all your other exams.
I mean, what use is a fellow who’s no good with his hands?
Fail # 6,094:
This morning, when I came into your room, as I nearly always do, and upended your scruffily-made mattress, a pack of razor blades fell out and scattered across the floor.
I was shocked, to say the least. Shocked and disappointed, because after all, razor blades are a girl’s way. I know all about self-harm, believe me. I’m a doctor, or had you forgotten that?
Besides, what kind of cataclysmic shit-for-brains hides his contraband beneath his mattress when he knows full well his father’s going to come in and toss it?
It’s almost as if you wanted me to find the things.
Or perhaps you imagined those hospital corners of yours might finally be up to scratch?
Well, I’ll say it again: until you’re old enough to join the army, the only place a boy like you can hope to learn hospital corners is in hospital.
But then, I’ve put you in hospital a good few times, haven’t I? And it still didn’t bloody work.
Fail # 7,884:
You hammered and hammered, crying and begging me to let you in.
Begging me not to do it.
But as a wise lady once said: “Boy, you do manage to look ludicrous when you give me orders.”
I finished the brandy and placed the revolver’s barrel against my temple.
Only then did you think to try and force the door. As the lock gave way and you fell into the room I pulled the trigger, saw your eyes wide and gormless with terror and love.
Late again.
Weak as always.
Fail # 7,889:
You blubbed all the way through my funeral, disgracing me.
The eulogy you gave showed how little you understood your own father.
And please, please, tell me the homely, simpering chestnut mare who gripped your hand throughout the burial is not my future daughter-in-law.
Christ, why can’t I get comfortable in this damned box?
Fail # 11,351:
For fuck’s sake, boy. Have you learned nothing from the way I raised you?
I mean, he is my grandson, so I suppose I have some right to comment?
You told him to get down from the coffee table. He refused to get down from the coffee table. So why the hell are you kneeling there, trying to reason with the filthy little smeg-bubble? It’s a coffee table, not a twentieth storey window.
Just clout him round the head and be done with it.
Fail # 16,425:
My, this is a biggie. One of your finest yet.
An entire career flushed down the pan. Half a lifetime’s work reduced to nothing.
It hurts me all the more, you see, because I’d very nearly forgiven you for choosing Law over Medicine (for full details, see Fail # 6,579). Something to do with your becoming the youngest partner in your firm’s history. I mean, you can’t argue with that, so I didn’t bother trying.
And then you have to go and jack it all in to found a fucking charity! For fuck’s sake! All because you wanted to do something more meaningful with your life! Oh, please...
D’you think I became a heart surgeon out of love for humanity? Ha!
Fail # 23,728:
I’m hurt beyond expression. And it’s pretty hard to feel hurt when you’re dead.
I mean, without me, you wouldn’t even be receiving this bloody knighthood. Not just because you’re the fruit of my seed, but because this organisation of yours, whose work in the field of mental health is so fulsomely lauded, was founded in my name!
Thanks to me, you’re a supporting character in your own autobiography! That’s quite some achievement, and one I don’t shy away from.
And yet, despite all this, you neglect to wear the family tartan to your investiture.
Enjoy your success, son. If that’s what you call it.
It’s easy to forget where you came from, isn’t it? Easy to forget who put you there!
Fail #33,333 (AKA Success):
Oh.
Okay, I like what you did there.
No nonsense, no fanfare, no histrionics, no hysterics.
Just stopped breathing.
In your ninety-second year, lying in the same bed you’ve slept in for sixty-plus years, with your wife and three children, your seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren all there with you, clustered round the bed. Plenty of crying, but you couldn’t really call it sorrow. Plenty of smiles and holding hands. A glowing obituary destined for every one of tomorrow’s broadsheets.
Makes my own demise look somewhat vulgar by comparison, I’ll admit that.
Well done you.
We’ll be together again soon, in this place, wherever it is.
Or maybe we won’t.
I hope we are.
Because the fact is, I’m alone here. And it’s dark.
I love you son.
(c) Jim Cogan, 2015
As a freelance copywriter and corporate filmmaker, Jim Cogan (left) grapples on a daily basis with the big themes: global skincare trends, potato cultivation in Essex, mailroom technology and risk mitigation policy in local government. He is also the go-to guy for making asset management software sound sexy.
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