In The Name Of My Father Chapter Three

The Conversation Continues:

Helen brought herself back to the conversation sharply. “Look Ailsa, your father and I parted many years ago. I wasn’t enough for him then, so I can’t imagine why on earth I should re-enter his life now. In fact, I can’t believe that he would want that either.”

“Oh puleeze!” Ailsa wailed. “How many times do we have to go over this?” With her hands clenched in frustration as she strained to keep her phone balanced between her ear and her shoulder, giving up on the idea of tying up her shoe laces. “You know Mum, I could have written the script for this conversation. I really could!

“Believe it or not, I don’t have to be reminded about Dad and his ‘philandering’ as you call it. It’s not the first time you’ve alluded to it. I realize he didn’t do the right thing by you, and I can understand that you found it inexcusable at the time. BUT, I really think it’s time for a reality check.”

Helen stiffened, wondering if she could possibly be prepared for what was coming.

“Meaning what, exactly?” her tone even, and just a little guarded.

“I’m looking at this from an adult perspective, so forgive me if I’m a little frank with my suggestions. I think it would be great if you could accept the fact that things happen in life, for one, and that marriages, all marriages, are peppered with their ups and downs. Because of that, they fall apart for a whole myriad of reasons. Even when you think that things are going along swimmingly, and your relationships seem to be watertight, opportunity just plonks itself on the doorstep, a gift just begging to be opened.”

Silence…one of Helen’s boldest of responses, the recipient being obliged to fill in the resultant space! It had the effect of tilting Ailsa’s nerves, albeit temporarily. She could visualize her mother there and then, shoulders raised, drawing in her breath, waiting on the line of defense, ready to pounce when the time was right, so she quickly threw in one of her favorite lines, just for the hell of it:

“By the way, you know what Oscar Wilde said about temptation, don’t you?”

“You know I don’t, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me, so enlighten me Ailsa.”

“He said that the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

Ailsa loved nothing more than a bit of drama. No better moment than right now! So with the best stage voice that she could muster, she went on boldly. “Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself.”

Had the occasion been right, this would certainly have earned her an Oscar, she felt.

“Don’t you see? We’re all human, Mum…ALL of us, not just Dad! Oscar Wilde recognized that all those years ago, so why not you?

“Now, I know I’m going to blind you with my knowledge here, but I’ll ask you nonetheless. Did you realize that caving in to temptation became all the rage with Adam and Eve? AND, I know we’re only talking about an apple here, but the apple is purely figurative. You DO understand that, don’t you?”

More silence.

Ailsa gulped. It had never occurred to her that her mother would never even have considered the idea.

Ailsa listened to the rhythmic beat of her heart, the only life breaking the silence between them.

Those long breaks, peppered between strained conversations, were exactly what Ailsa loved most about her mother…free-flowing aimless chats that left her spent of energy. Why, after all these years, was her mother still so puritanical, so strait-laced that she couldn’t laugh about things, and heal herself, or pretend, if she couldn’t quite get to that stage, instead of living her life as she did, bound as tight as a small-size constriction stocking on a plus-size dummy?

Clearly somebody had forgotten to tell her that life isn’t a dress rehearsal, and that in order to grow and develop you have to suck up the good with the bad and move on with a gut full of wisdom.

Was it the case that she was still a tad envious, that she was focusing on her father’s blessings rather than her own, despite the years of separation?

Maybe it had little to do with being sanctimonious, and a lot to do with missed opportunities, chances she didn’t take, ones that could have changed her life. Fear is often on the other side of opportunity…what if I fail…what if…what if?

But what if she had realized when it was all too late, that she might have learned to fly? How might that have impacted her? And without warning, from somewhere inside her mouth, Ailsa found herself saying,

“Besides it could just as easily have been you.”

The air was suddenly filled with the pervasive smell that appears from nowhere, when feelings are tampered with, on one side, Ailsa wondering if she had gone too far, and Helen on the other, struggling with the accusation, veiled as it was.

“I beg your pardon Ailsa,” Helen retorted after a while, her voice small and sad, as if the very idea of straying from her ‘commitment’ would have been something that she would never have thought about. “I don’t have to listen to this. It could not and would never have been me. I committed to marriage with your father at twenty-one, I was married in church, and to this day I respect the sanctity of the sacrament. So please, take me out of your ‘could have’ equation. Either you are in or you are out of a marriage. Your father chose otherwise. He elected to have the affair. End of story.”

“That’s all well and good, but maybe you just weren’t tempted…or worse still, you WERE, but just didn’t grab the opportunity! Had it presented itself, there’s a good chance that you might have been.”

“Been what?”

“Tempted!” she answered more sharply than intended. “Did you listen to anything I said?” but without waiting for an answer she continued breathlessly.

“See, the trouble with temptation, especially when you resist it, is that it may never come your way again. Now that doesn’t even bear thinking about, does it? With hindsight you might come to realize what an absolute waste of opportunity you had decided against. And then, as you might imagine, if there was never another opportunity, which I personally couldn’t even contemplate, but it happens I’m told, a period of mourning would follow, regret for what might have, but didn’t, take place.

“This is all about being human Mum,” she whispered sincerely, “about being a human being complete with frailty. It’s normal to be tempted, and it’s also normal to surrender to it.”

Ailsa waited anxiously. She knew in her heart that she’d gone too far, and so it was HER heartbeat that was accelerating. Having transgressed the line of demarcation, she was not sure that her mother would still be on the other end of the line.

But she was, and much to her surprise she answered, the reply shocking her…just a little!

“Everyone’s tempted from time to time. As you clearly state, we’re all human, and weakness is part of that. It’s how you deal with that weakness, or temptation, that matters. As far as I am concerned there are too many excuses these days…temporary happiness for short-term gain. The only way you might ever give in to temptation is to open the door for it. It’s as simple as that!”

‘Was this a hint, albeit subtle?’ Ailsa mused.

Ailsa tried to envision her mother’s face. Never in a month of Sundays could she entertain the thought of her ‘succumbing’ easily to desire. The vision of it was too horrific, and way beyond the imagination of the most talented playwright.

Of course at this point in the conversation, drawing a close to the exchange would have been her preferred and probably much safer option, but somehow she felt that this was opportunity at its best, an excellent chance for a lot of rubbish removal, and this time, she wasn’t giving in. Opportunity knocks but rarely, and so, gathering all her courage and daring she continued:

“That’s all too virtuous for words Mum!” she sighed, hardly daring to stop for breath. “Sorry, but I just don’t buy it. Tell me…the truth now…nothing but the truth! Why are you still so angry with Dad? Why can’t you step forward and forgive him, even temporarily, after all these years?”

“Who said I was angry?”

“I did! At least it comes across as anger. You can’t even look back and rewrite the narrative, the story that might have played out for you had you allowed it to happen. You know why?”

“I don’t! Enlighten me.”

“Because you won’t go there, AND it’s so much better to stick with the story line that suits you and feeds your misery. At twenty-one, nothing is forever. People are still finding themselves, looking for the greener grass, wondering about everything, and excited about the possibilities that may be over one horizon or the next twenty.

“There are many horizons you know!

“Think about it. At that age people are still searching for meaning, looking for inspiration, hoping to be stimulated by something more exotic, or physically attractive, and because of that, they often readjust their focus about what is really important, or otherwise, to them. Consequently, shit happens.”

Helen chose to ignore the vulgarity, and raising her shoulders in defeat she answered:

“Not when you’ve made your vows in church. That’s when you make a firm commitment to God, to resist temptation, and I kept true to that.”

“Bullshit no matter which way you look at it…absolute crap!”

Helen winced, wondering when it was that her daughter had mastered so dexterously, the fine art of foul language. Still she continued the banter:

“You see, somehow I don’t believe you. It’s just a hunch on my part, but I think there’s more to it. If I were to dig deeper say, would I discover that you were just a…just a teeny bit angry with Dad because YOU were the one left here in Australia with two snotty kids, while he was having fun, as you imagined it, overseas? Am I on the money or not?”

As expected, there was no response. Silence was her mother’s best and well-honed skill, but Ailsa was undeterred, instead feeling an even stronger inclination to press on. Something wasn’t measuring up…something! She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she sensed a LOT!

The quiet on the other side was filled with possibilities, unspoken answers begging to be told, but the need to fill the gaps for Ailsa, was imperative, so impetuously she rushed on:

“I mean I get it. I really do. Even if, like in Dad’s shoes, I HADN’T actually succumbed to temptation, I’d still have been the one out enjoying the high life, dining in the best restaurants and hobnobbing with so many different free-and-easy people, attractive, beautifully-dressed, stylish, well-heeled women, while you were left tending to demanding, whinging babies, struggling through sleepless nights, and cooking food that we kids might, with any luck, eat, with no ‘you’ time. Not a fair deal wherever you stand.”

More silence filled the space between the two, so that Ailsa sensed that the onus was on her to continue. Gingerly she posed yet another question:

“Then just maybe I’ve cracked the code. Have I?”

“I have absolutely no idea what you are getting at!” her mother answered in a tight, controlled voice, just a tad too tight as far as Ailsa was concerned.

“Oh my God, spare me, spare me. How else can I put it? Could it be that you resented being unfairly cloistered in your marriage, doing something that you thought was ‘required’ of you, stressed to the damned eyeballs, crying out for just one night’s uninterrupted sleep, or even enjoying something as small as a coffee get-together with a friend, and then you found out Dad had freed himself up, not only for the good social times, but also for being a big fat cheat?

“Tell me mum. Am I anywhere near close? Just tell me.”

No reply, but in the silence she sensed a roar, leading Ailsa to believe she really was on her way to discovering something BIG. It wasn’t often she felt the desperate urge to dig so deeply, to attack the very cornerstone of her mother’s tight-arsed response to life, but right now she felt bereft of choice, so with steely determination she went on:

“So why stay? You could have passed him over to the ‘other party’, or however you like to refer to it, left him to have that ritzy time you thought he was having, and…”, but Helen broke in angrily.

“I was married for heaven’s sake. AND I had two children. You can’t walk away from responsibility.”

For Ailsa there was something in the way her mother’s words had trailed off. She didn’t often do ‘quiet’…silence yes, but not quiet. Now fully exasperated, she could have given up and backed out, but consumed with the need to reach for the truth, to turn over a few revealing sods, and maybe, with any luck, break open the parched earth of past happenings, she went on:

“Geez Mum, this is the 21st century. Hello! And even if it weren’t, breakdowns happened in Victorian times too. Right throughout history people had affairs, illegitimate kids were born, many of them. People strayed from ‘the path’, whatever that is, because of their humanity, not because they were depraved, or loose, or wanting, or cheap, or whatever. They were just people.

“Believe it or not, and this is not an earth-shattering revelation I know, but sometimes things happen that are not in the grand plan. I’m not even sure why I said ‘sometimes’ because life is a serendipitous journey whether we like it or not. We can plan all we like, but we also have to be prepared for things not working out. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the road. In your case, hurt as you chose to be, you could have eventually dusted things off, you could even have talked things through with Dad, you could both have agreed to try harder, or you could have taken another pathway.

“But you didn’t. YOU Mum, not Dad. As far as I can see, you blew it up out of all proportion and filled in the missing parts to suit your anger, and worse still, you refused to forgive. To be honest that’s hard to understand.

“If you had really wanted to save your marriage, you could have taken the reins, IF, you had wanted to! You could have given him half a chance, organized a wild, dirty weekend when he got back home, and served him a mind-blowing experience that he could never in his wildest dreams have forgotten.

“You could have, but you didn’t, and since then you’ve lived your life like a cloistered nun, a tad bitter and twisted one…and, I hate to say this, too sad for words!”

Ailsa sat back, her phone angled towards her ear, just in case her mother might miraculously say something. It had now become something of a one-sided combat, and though she worried about where it was going, she was determined to complete what she’d started. What had she to lose?

“You know what Buddha said?” she asked.

“No, I don’t! Surprise me!”

“He said that holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Does that resonate with you by any chance? The anger you hang on to is like the poison, except that, in your case, it doesn’t kill you. It simply stops you moving on with your life, so you might as well be dead.”

More SILENCE…but pregnant with opportunity. Ailsa was more and more convinced that she was inching towards a truth she might not necessarily be prepared for.

“Hello…earth to Mother!”

“Really Ailsa…I do worry about your eternal soul. Where on earth do you learn all that smutty talk?”

“Clearly not from you, Mother…a pity though, but what you haven’t factored in, is that, believe it or not, I AM a grown up, and I do have choices about what I think, and say, and do.

“Okay, so I do try to shock you a little, but…you ASK for it. You’re so shrouded in your voluminous, sanctimonious cloud, it scares the hell out of me. Dad hardly ever speaks about your past lives, but at least he’s not bitter and twisted. Life for him has gone on.

“The truth is I’m trying to work you both out. My goodness it’s little wonder that Craig and I can’t settle down. On the one hand we have you so churchy and holy, and virtuous, and Dad who pretends he’s had more flings than hearty dinners, which, by the way, I know isn’t true, flings that is! I can’t vouch for the hearty dinners! But as long as you continue to be so prim and proper, and as long as you refuse to cut him some forgiveness, he chooses to play the Lothario, the bigger-than-life, unscrupulous womanizer, with a floozy waiting for him with bated breath, in every capital city.

“I mean, HELLO, this is MY DAD we are talking about!”

Helen flinched, ‘MY DAD’…rocked and confronted by a fallacy that had determined the course of her life, and now, unable to think up a response. Her heart raced alarmingly, and she fought to be strong, but nonetheless, tears filled her eyes, her lips trembled, and for the first time in however long, she realized how mentally and emotionally bereft she was.

So close she came to blurting things out, the truth, the cover-ups that she had hidden behind all these years, but then the realization that Ailsa was still talking, hit her.

“But whether he has or hasn’t, had an army of floozies, I have to ask you this. Did you ever search your own soul? Tell me the truth. No fabrications, the plain truth even if it makes my hair curl even more! Remember, I AM a big girl! Was your side of the fence so squeaky clean? Is there anything in your past that might mitigate Dad’s ‘sinning’, as you see it?”

“Oh my God”, Helen whispered to herself, wondering how she could possibly deal with the onslaught. But to Ailsa she answered tightly, holding onto the wall for support,

“Not sure what you mean.”

But the truth was otherwise. Once again she was guilty of her well-honed art of duplicity, yet another lie, when she could have come clean and told her daughter how things had really been. It wasn’t as if Ailsa was so young and naive that she would have been shocked. Far from it! Hers was one strong daughter, able to face adversity, and go further if need be. So when in heaven’s name would she herself ever find the strength to explain how things had really been, to release the truth, and more importantly, and the thing that scared her most, to wear the consequences of what might happen?

When?

Tension mounted in her body as the past came flooding back, a tsunami, a veritable groundswell of regret, a force that threatened to consume her. Fearful wild thoughts, secrets she pretended she had buried long ago, flashed before her, opening up a vista of times gone by, so that she shivered uncontrollably as Ailsa continued her rant.

“Well, did you ever think for a moment that the reverse could have taken place? This conversation is becoming a bit one-sided by the way!” she added flippantly, though she felt far from flippant!

“If you’re talking affairs, no, I did not. You should know me better than that.”

Yet another monstrous fabrication had escaped from her mouth with the ease of melted butter. In that moment it dawned on Helen that more than likely, she would never ever have the courage to face and confront the ghosts of her past. And acknowledging that that was the case, she came to the realization that the rest of her life would be played out as a giant canvas of repeated evasions of the truth.

What a bleak future she’d carved out for herself!

And also, in that exact moment, she knew that Ailsa was right. She had stopped living all those years ago, and from thereon in, her life had basically limped along from one day to the next, all the time with her on guard for an occasion when she might be forced to come clean.

Still Ailsa blathered on. She was a determined woman, and Helen, now cornered, had nowhere to hide.

“Oh come on Mum. There must have been others YOU fancied. Believe it or not there are no angels in this world. Like I said before, our humanity ensures our frailty, and that allows us to cave into desire from time to time and live for the moment…AND to enjoy it, dare I say? This is the gospel according to Ailsa by the way. You won’t hear the likes in church!

“So, shall I ask the question again?”

“What question?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Mum, were you listening at all? Take a really good look at yourself! You’re a fine, attractive woman, even if you aren’t willing to believe it! Photos tell me that in your youth you were a lot more than just attractive, so, surely, in the right circumstances you could have been tempted to step out of your limiting correctness, whatever that is, and paint the town red.

“Tell me the truth…PLEASE…just this once!” Ailsa hoped that it wasn’t something she would live to regret.

Yet another lengthy intermission followed…one of those silent, yet powerful ‘screams’ that left Ailsa struggling to maintain momentum, but she’d come this far, and now she was stopping at nothing. Today was the day for excavation, an archaeological digging up of the past.

“Or were you so strong,” she continued doggedly, “so personally robust, and so immaculately perfect, that you could stare temptation in the eye and defeat it, because, if you were, I have news for you.

“YOU, my dear Mother, are more blessed than the Blessed Virgin, and because of that, you stand apart from the whole human race. Imagine that!”

“Please Ailsa! Must you? I’ve had enough for one day.”

“No, hear me out. I understand that being at home with kids was probably not the right environment for Mr. Better-Than-The-One-Who-Cheated-On-Me to come along and sweep you off your proverbial feet, but hey, if you’d wanted to, you could have put yourself in charge of the orchestra, and beaten Dad at his own game. If you had ‘tarted’ yourself up, just a little, and had a few drinks with the girls, had you wanted to, who knows where things could have gone…know what I mean?” Had you done all of this, the outcome could have defied all your dreams. Oh my god …how different your life and your attitude to things could have been! With retrospective twenty-twenty vision, you’d have to agree that, assuming there WAS that fork, or two, on the road, and believe me there would have been, the life you actually chose was all a damned waste!”

Ailsa lowered the tone of her voice to a more alluring, seductive one. Shock tactics were needed now.

“Do you realize that some of my best dates have been with men I met over a drink or two? Actually, one of my best finds”, she went on, (fast-paced in case her mother wanted to back out of the conversation…not that there was much conversation going on!), “I don’t think you ever met him. He was such a dishy guy. I bumped into him in a coffee shop. He was nice, really nice, with the most amazing eyes, and a body just dying to be explored. It could have been love at first sight…probably was actually, but he had other, let’s just call them, ‘responsibilities’ at the time.”

Instantly Helen felt her mind swim, her heart beating much more rapidly than before, her head spinning out of control, and any effort to speak sounded like little more than a tight strangulation in her throat. A guy in a coffee shop…amazing eyes…and a body just waiting to be…the ghost of Christmas past! “Please, please don’t go on,” she begged quietly to herself.

But she pulled herself together, grateful that at least her daughter wasn’t anywhere close by to witness her lack of color or her heightened level of distress.

“My religion doesn’t allow for ‘others’,” she struggled. “You should know that.”

“Oh for goodness sake Mum, that’s just an excuse. Religion has bugger all to do with it. Had the right person come along and massaged your ego, or any other part of your body for that matter”, (sometimes she just couldn’t help herself!),” and had he said all the right things…maybe even plied you with a few drinks,” (always a winner!), “I THINK you could have been flattered enough to have given in to some fun. Actually flattered isn’t the right word, but you catch my drift, don’t you?”

“Clearly you don’t know me,” she responded tightly.

“Oh I think I do Mum. I know you better than you could ever imagine. And what saddens me is this. By your very attitude you have allowed yourself to miss out on so much happiness, so much life, and one helluva lot of living.

“I’m going to say this and I know it is contrary to your beliefs, but it’s something I truly believe. LIFE, short as it is, is about seizing the moment, about letting go, about being happy, and about sharing togetherness.

“It’s got nothing to do with painting yourself into a safe corner, doing good deeds, and begging to be recognized and respected for your virtue. That’s a long, miserable road to nowhere and if that’s what you choose you might as well be dead.”

Ailsa waited. She hadn’t planned the tirade on her mother, but somehow the words had just poured out, a free release of pent-up emotions that had surprised even her, HAD been said, and though more vicious than she would ever have intended, in some way she was glad that they were now out in the open.

The silence between them was heavy, for Ailsa, a where-to-from-now was as much as she was capable of thinking. She wasn’t sorry as such, but she did regret the effect that her words had probably had, so she softened her tone, just a little.

“Honestly Mom I don’t know where you collected this righteousness of yours. It’s the exemplar, the epitome of ‘sexually correct’ behavior, whatever the hell that is! But let me tell you this. I know you won’t like it, but I have to say it. It’s cost you dearly, and sadly, it’s strangled your heart.”

And though hush determinedly stretched its wings over them, Ailsa sensed that her mother was still listening, and she hoped that whatever else she had to say would be forgiven by her at some stage, some time later, if and when she was ready to face things. Whether her mother liked it or not, there was a chance, a small chance that this tirade could help free her from her self-imposed prison and allow her to begin the journey of crawling back to life again, so gathering her dwindling vestige of courage she went on:

“The way I see it is this. Forgive my crossing the borders of mother-to-daughter correctness, but the way I see it is this, “she repeated. “The one part of your body that was designed for pure pleasure has lain dormant in your body, an unused jewel, because you, a slave to your religion, couldn’t forgive and move on. Like I said, it is the 21st century and you, unfortunately, forgot to hop on board.”

“Must you? I really don’t need this Ailsa.”

“Well, whether you think you need this, or want to hear it or not, I think you do. Look at you. For whatever reasons, you are sad and lonely, and too emotionally correct for comfort. Why, for heaven’s sake? Plenty of people survive hurt in marriage and their lives go on, so why not yours?

“Think about it. A failed marriage is not the end of the world. Failed isn’t the right word anyway. A more appropriate way of putting it is that the needs of two people have changed. That happens…to a helluva lot of people, would you believe?

“To be perfectly honest I can’t fathom how any one person can be expected to live with just one other person for forty, fifty, or, perish the thought, sixty years, and not have times when each would want to rip the other apart. There must be days when two people who were once madly in lust now hate the sight of each other, times when they want to get the damned dagger out and end it all, and dare I be so bold as to suggest, times when somebody else, standing on the horizon inviting one of them to a change of ‘scenery’, could be just a teeny bit more attractive and tempting.

“Those ditches in our relationships are often the times when we should gladly open the doors to the odd fling. And gee whizz, it’s not the end of the world if it happens. In fact a fling could be the very poison that keeps a rocky relationship afloat, maybe even help it paddle back to shore. IF the shoreline is still attractive!

“Actually, come to think of it, flings should be factored into everybody’s wedding vows…for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, and give or take a few healthy flings that each of us will choose to ignore, maybe even endorse, until death us do part.

“Oh my god, I’ve just had an idea. I could do weddings as a side hustle. What do you think?”

“Hardly a true wedding Ailsa,” Helen answered tightly.

“It would be as sincere as all those churchy ones. They’re no more successful than the fun, civic ones.”

“I don’t see them as valid marriages.”

“There you go again. You’ll be telling me soon that all those garden weddings, dare I even mention same-sex ones, are going to spend eternity in one of Dante’s circles of hell. Do you really believe all that stuff?”

“You know how I feel.”

Ailsa’s shoulders slumped. She felt beaten. Just for a brief few minutes she’d thought that she might be getting somewhere, that her mother might just see the lighter side of things, but clearly not, and in that moment she was suddenly reduced to feeling no better than a wounded dog, quietly licking its wounds. So much energy she had spent and yet she’d got nowhere, so resignedly she continued.

“Well, for what it’s worth…I know I’m going to shock you here, so let me apologize now. I’ll have you know that each and every blessed day of my life I personally have to buffer off those scary bits of you that I see in me. They compromise who I am determined to be, and I’m damned if I am going to embrace sanctity just because you would be happier for it.”

“Can we stop now please Ailsa? I can’t believe I’m hearing this…from my own daughter!”

“Now don’t start the daughter thing with me Mom. Like I said before, I am a fully-grown adult, just as you are, and I’m damned sure I’m not saying anything that you haven’t already thought. Believe me I didn’t go all out to offend you. It seems like it, I know, but I just needed you to face a few realities. How can I put this?

“I was trying to get you to loosen up on what you see as principles. It’s one thing to have ‘values’, not just you, ALL of us. They mold the environment that we are most comfortable in, the parameters that we can live within. BUT, given that we are all human, those same values don’t always hold dear.”

“Values don’t change Ailsa.”

“Oh I think they can and they do, and they damned well should! To be honest, from where I’m standing, it would be wonderful if they could be acceptably more flexible to suit the occasion, if that’s what a person wants. But the reality is this. However tightly we believe and hold on to them, they can be suffocated, snuffed out like a candle in the height of…oh dear god, am I allowed to say the word?

“PASSION…there…I’ve said it.”

Once again, Helen’s heart began to beat erratically as Ailsa continued her tirade. What was she trying to do to her?

“It doesn’t mean that the ethics of the persons involved are diminished. It’s just that in the heat of the moment they are naturally rendered weak. Consequently they come crashing down, momentarily, their cue only heard later, when the shindig is over.

“And just for clarification Mum, I’m talking wild, passionate sex here. It is a load of fun you know…the sex, and believe it or not, worth every day in hell, IF there is a hell.

“But see, unfortunately that’s when virtuous people like you suffer the after-the-fact feeling of ‘guilt’. If they succumb to one temptation, just one bloody fling, between two consenting people, the result is personal crucifixion at its finest, forever punishment that stymies their ability to ever move on and live, I mean really live, again.”

There was a muffled sob from Helen, but Ailsa knew that she had to finish what she had started. It was now or never…a lethal conversation that had to be completed, one so dangerous that it could go either way. Consequently it was HER heart that was now beating rapidly as she maintained the momentum.

“This all gets back to being brainwashed, in your case, CATHOLIC brainwashing. There should be a law against it, because it robs people of their right to think for themselves. And once established, that damned, well-honed conscience, is there forever, hovering, ready to pounce, just in case, perish the thought, you have some fun in your life.

“This conscience that I’m talking about is the one that kicks in immediately after a sexual experience, without invitation, without a by-your-leave, and as an uninvited guest, negates all pleasure you’ve just had. Where’s the fairness in that, I ask you?

“Instead of that feeling of amazing, out-of-this-world elation that should follow the act, the experience makes you miserable, frightened even, too scared to get into your car and drive home after it’s over, just in case you have an accident and die that night before you’ve managed to get to confession and been given absolution, so that you now can freely pass through the pearly gates.”

It was a breathless Ailsa who wiped the perspiration from her forehead, and stemmed the tears that escaped so freely from her eyes.

She heard the sob, stifled, but a sob nonetheless, causing Ailsa to backpedal just a little and, once again, soften her tone. Gently, but resolutely, she continued:

“The fact is this. It’s not the actual act that you or anyone else hates. You don’t resent it in the least. How could you? BUT, the conditioned ‘you’, does! The normal ‘you’ has just, for a brief point in time, had the most amazingly wild, all-too-natural, built-into-your-psyche, sexual experience.

“How can anyone say that is bad? How can any sane person ever marry wonder and awe, and pure and utterly delicious ecstasy, with guilt?”

Helen felt as if her heart might explode through her chest. In that moment, her running from her sins had stalled, and her past was catching up to her at a rate of knots.

All those years ago when she struggled with her guilt, she remembered thinking that the only way she could cope with her one mistake, was to kill it, which is exactly what she set out to do. She prayed endlessly for forgiveness and guidance and when she sensed that she had been pardoned, her serious, renewed allegiance to Church took shape.

“Look,” she began.

“Mom, just listen. Just listen this once, and I promise we will never revisit the topic ever again. I know I’m scaring the hell out of you, but the fact is I worry so much about you. What kind of life do you have? You’re cloistered in your house, often alone, and I rarely see you smile. Why is that?”

“I have friends.”

“Yes you have, but they’re all such tight-arsed characters. You’re never going to find a date there…well certainly not a dishy one that you deserve! You need someone who’s fun, somebody who’s risk-taking, and interesting, and challenging, and intelligent…somebody who will push you out of your nest and force you to fly.

“Someone like me, actually, when I think about it…a male version, I mean. I can see you with a strong, fun type, tall, and dark, and sexy. Actually, I could probably hitch you up with one…if you are game?”

Not in her wildest dreams could Ailsa imagine her mother being game, but she went on nonetheless:

“The way I see it is that there’s so much LIVING you have missed out on and I swear that the reason you’ve never been tempted to enter new relationships, if that is true, is because, that you’ve never allowed yourself to be in the situation. You have avoided all possible places of SIN!

“What also concerns me is that, in the eyes of established religion, we are all sinners. We are all ‘sinners’, for want of a more appropriate term, because we are alive, on a journey, and on any journey mistakes are made.

“You lose things, you forget things, you turn corners, you learn new things, you bump into people, you hurt others, you form relationships, and as a result you sample different forms of love. Some work to your advantage. Some don’t.

“And if they don’t, it doesn’t mean that we’ve taken the wrong road and that we should now pack it all in, beg forgiveness, and return to a life of purity. Jeez, if that were the case, we’d all be bumping in to each other, trying to get back to forgiveness base.

“A mistake is not a sin!

“There is such thing as sin. It’s a manufactured word, made up by religious groups. The word sums up that feeling of guilt you have when you do something that the church has taught you is wrong. Sinning can actually be sweet, and in so many situations it can be comforting, but see, it’s the fear bit, the expected punishment that we have been saddled with, that we can’t deal with.

“The fact is that the sinning bit just happens to be somebody else’s perspective, in your case the perspective of Church, on how people elect to behave. I just don’t get that. I never did and I never plan to.

“I’m not sure you will understand or agree with me on this, but there are a lot worse things in life than being comforted in love, which is one of the church’s perceived major sins, is it not?. I’m not saying we should all go out and have a fling with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Even that turns ME off. I DO have standards, but who are you hurting if you give in to healthy sexual desire just once in a while…with someone you are seriously attracted to…somebody you might end up with?

“Look at the birds and the bees, and the rest of God’s creatures. They copulate without that piece of paper, or a church edict that says, ‘now it’s fine’. They just go ahead and mate because it feels right, and often they have little babies as a direct result. AND, bet your bottom dollar they’re not consumed with guilt, or fear, once the passion is over and they’ve come back to reality and their day job clicks in.

“And we’re God’s creatures too remember, so why a carte blanche rule for them and a constraining one for us? Makes no sense to me whichever way I look at it.”

“Ailsa…I…”, but she didn’t stand a chance. Her daughter was still on a roll.

“See that’s the thing. We take people for better, or for worse, at a time when we are myopic in our naivety. We are blinded to the notion that there could be a gazillion of partners out there for us. And so, somehow we choose ‘the one’, the one that comes with the marriage contract, who puts the ring on our finger, the unique person who’s going to service us and provide for us in perpetuity…the partner who will keep us from straying…the one who will free us from further temptation and will preserve our eternal soul.

“How bloody limiting is that? To be honest it’s hard to understand why the church institution has stood the test of time.”

“I was twenty-one!”

“Correct! You were little more than a baby, AND you were living in different times. I’m almost nine years older now and I’m still nowhere near ready to commit to somebody for life. I doubt I ever will, to be honest.

“But I can’t see why anyone would…except for if you feel the need to take a back seat in life and let somebody else decide your living.

“You know what? I actually think it’s more normal to meet somebody well-suited, a life partner, if that’s what you want, when your backpack is filled to the brim with a shit-load of amazing, heart-stopping experiences.”

“Oh Ailsa!”

“Okay, forgive the profanity but I’m sure God has better things to do than listen to me swearing.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Okay I’m doomed. There’s no hope for a foul-mouthed creature like me. My tally sheet will be listing more dangerously than the Titanic!”

“You could easily find other ways of putting things.”

“I could, but somehow they wouldn’t sound as juicy and wouldn’t convey the message in the same way. Am I allowed to go on, or is my side of the conversation too tainted? But hey, before you answer, let me assure you that YOU are safe Mom. YOUR checks and balances won’t be affected by whatever I say. Trust me. God won’t blame you. Not even your parenting skills will be in question, given that I am a fully-fledged adult in charge of my own tongue. So can I keep going?”

“What?”

Ailsa decided to overlook the question.

“Okay, so this is what I think. Marrying young, in your case, when you were hardly out of school, is one of the reasons why we have so much sadness in our world. I’m truly convinced of that.

“It’s also why we have this inordinate mushrooming of those bloody opportunistic divorce lawyers. They’re the chameleons with the super-sized legal ledgers that would be better put to use as exercise steppers…might even help to reduce their enormous guts, come to think of it. They’re the ones whose eyes bulge with greed, happy that yet another sucker has called them, one that is willing to part with a sizable amount of dough…usually a figure the person can ill afford, all driven by little more than client revenge.

“Thankfully you and Dad didn’t go down that pathway, so you must have some respect for each other…or for your dough! You know, you could so easily have taken Dad to the cleaners. But to hell with that. I’ve said too much already. Just promise me that you will talk, if and when you are ready. We owe it to each other. Are we still friends?”

“You’re still my daughter,” Helen responded quietly.

“Right then…I’ll take that as a yes, but now, I need to get back to where we started, and that was about asking you to help with Dad’s place. I get that you don’t want to, and that is your choice, but if your Christian virtue is going to withstand any scrutiny, then surely a little forgiveness would go a long way?

“At this point in Dad’s life, when he really needs us, IF you were agreeable, you would surely be granted absolution of any UNLIKELY sins you may have committed before or after Dad committed HIS way back in the dinosaur ages, IF you were to choose to help. I have a feeling that something magical could happen for you. Forgiveness allows all of us to move on in our lives. It doesn’t change the past of course, but it surely can brighten and enhance your future.”

Helen stiffened, fleetingly allowing her thoughts to go back to the time when her children were small and demanding, with John overseas and she was doing it all on her own. Sleepless nights, incessant whinging by day, and all the time questioning her sanity, they were altogether challenging times, or so she’d thought, but nothing compared to these confrontations, these in-your-face provocations being thrown at her by her own daughter right now.

For some reason she wasn’t angry. Very scared and way out of her comfort zone, but not angry. Instead she’d moved along the continuum to wondering when and how her daughter had developed into such a confident, determined young woman, with skills she had not been aware of?

In that moment she realized two things, one that she HAD, indeed, been the victim of her self-imposed persecution, and two, that now she was no match for the robust young woman doing battle with her on her smart phone.

She needed time to think…some time…some respite…and fresh air…maybe even a glass of wine, liquid serenity as her children called it. Any excuse, any excuse at all…just time to breathe and to be…and to think…she…just…needed to sit…alone and consider things…without the pressure of Ailsa!

Collecting the remnants of her strength she babbled.

“Sorry darling. I just remembered I have to be at the charity bookshop in fifteen minutes. There’s a lot of sorting and sifting to be done, and I did promise. Let me call you back in a couple of hours. I’ll have a think about all you said…I truly will…so sorry…bye,” and before Ailsa had time to respond, and with yet another lie neatly tucked under her belt, Helen slid slowly down the wall that had been supporting her, onto the polished floor, her mind a tangled conflict of emotion, her breathing shallow and labored, unable, at that point, to extract one, single cogent thought from her mind.

And she wept.

An ocean of tears was released for all that she’d lost, for the lies she’d told to cover up her shame, and for the ill-spent years where she could just have enjoyed her children and been a wonderful mother, when she could have said to hell with those who may have judged her, where she could indeed have stood proudly as the person she had once been.

How freeing would it have been to have simply dusted off the sins of the past, and continued down the road of life, to embrace a whole new, possibly brighter future?

For a long time, lost in swirls of anguish and spent of energy, she sat there, immobile, trapped in a tangle of accusations, truths, untruths, and speculations that had been thrown at her, ones she had little strength to countenance.

In some ways it was a relief that it had come ALMOST, to a head, but once again she’d resisted and now the thought of how she might proceed was both daunting and enervating.

In a sense the tirade should have come as no surprise, but the timing had. Still that would always have been wrong, for try as she may she would never have been prepared for the confrontation. Sure she had always known that things would catch up with her…one day, when she least expected it…and from an unexpected source.

Well, that one day had arrived, in the guise of her daughter, and was now bearing down on her, a veritable two-tonne truck that she felt unable to sidestep!

Interestingly though, she had reached a stage when she felt that neither did she want to!

The passage of time, sad and lonely years, the ongoing demands of life, parenting, and work demands, had all helped to block out the inevitability of its happening. But in her darker, less confident times, often in the early hours of the morning when sleep eluded her, she had known.

She’d known her fears would come to haunt her.

The thing was, it was that very fear, the force, and the perceived lack of morality on her part that she’d allowed to mold her, to make her worry and bleed, to lie and to pretend, and to strangle her in the subsequent anxiety.

People didn’t need to know the whole truth. Truth is none of their business. But fabrications are a whole other issue and so difficult to keep track of, and so easy to trip over. Fabrications are the untruths that hang us out to dry!

How different things would have turned out.

Her thoughts trailed back to Ailsa, and she stopped short in her thinking. This amazingly confident woman, this human being who attracted so many people to her, this wonderful business woman, was the one she had based her shame on, and woven so many lies around.

She should have known.

She should have been prepared…and now she was bathed in the darkness of her shame.

How long Ailsa had suspected, was anyone’s guess, but one thing Helen was sure of. Had her real father walked into her life, she would surely have made the connection. As his female doppelganger, she would have known. To add to that she had also inherited his wit, his intellect, and his amazing thirst for living.

And despite having cried a river of tears, she threw herself on the floor and wept some more, sorrowful, anguished tears, resentful tears, tears that ripped her soul apart, tears that words could never express. Eventually with her energy spent, she lapsed into sleep, and dreamed…a challenging dream yes, but an exciting one where she determinedly threw caution to the wind, and drew back the curtain to reveal the naked truth of how things had once been.

But once awake, and though still resolute, she again wondered where would she possibly find the courage? How might she be judged?

One thing she was certain of, was that the greatest casualty in the reveal would most surely be Ailsa, beautiful, bold Ailsa who took the world by storm…courageous Ailsa who met every challenge head on, and melted the hearts of all who came close to her.

Her daughter’s words about knowing her ‘only too well,’ were not in any way true, however far she stretched her thinking. Right there and then though, the thought of having to lay open the truth, determined as she was, was a monstrous fear that struck terror in her heart.