大象传媒

Father Returns From the War
My father was in the war and was due to come home. He didn鈥檛 come home however when we expected, and one morning I got up and crept into my mother鈥檚 bedroom and there was a man in bed with her and I went in, in great disgust and said to my mother, 鈥渨ho is that man in your bed,鈥� and she said 鈥渋t鈥檚 your father鈥�. I didn鈥檛 really know him you see, it was really quite sad. I鈥檇 be about nine or ten maybe. Actually I think that the war ruined a lot of relationships. My mother and father had lived in a backwood for all their lives and who had only just met each other. My father while he was away saw horrific things, things that he didn鈥檛 like to mention and my mother grew as a person, but they weren鈥檛 ready for it. They came back to one another and there was this myth of magical wonderful reunions, which really didn鈥檛 come off, because he thought she had spoilt us and she kind of blamed him because he wasn鈥檛 there. It must have been very very hard for them, and it was hard and I never really got on with my father. He adored me but I could never really relate to him, I had no relationship with him really because you had missed out on all those years. It was my mother who did things with us. My mother and father were married for eight years before they had any children so my father was thirty and he went into the forces. But I was only three, which it was kind of unusual because there was no family planning or anything like that so you thought they might have had children straight away, which they normally did. But for some reason they weren鈥檛 able to have children, so it worked out like that. It was never really the same when my father came back.

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