The Paris Agent(4)

“I lived such a wonderful life with your mother, you know,” Dad says. “Truly, we shared so many wonderful years—”

“But she was only fifty-three,” I interrupt him sharply. “You were meant to have more time. Don’t you feel cheated?”

“Cheated?” He considers the word, then gives me a soft look. “There would never have been enough years, love. I’d never have had my fill of that woman! And think of all we shared. You…your brother…a beautiful granddaughter. We built a marvelous home, and we supported one another in our careers and we spent all of those lovely Saturdays in the garden and honestly, when I look back, it feels like a glorious dream.” When Dad becomes emotional, his speech slows even more, the slur becoming more and more pronounced. He pauses now, collecting himself, then adds roughly, “I’ve felt stuck since she died.”

“That’s how I feel.”

“A few weeks ago, I was looking at our old photo albums and I found one of us standing together outside of her family home in 1941. Just a few weeks before that day, I’d learned that my family was gone and the look on my face… I was still in shock when that photo was taken.” He pauses, overcome with emotion again, and my heart aches at the pain in his voice. He was the eldest of five children, but his parents and siblings were killed during the Liverpool Blitz when their home was destroyed in an air raid. “I could barely drag myself out of bed but your mother told me I needed to find a way to move forward. She had much the same advice for me in the dying days of the war when I was confronted by a whole other kind of grief. She used to tell me ‘Noah, you will not bring any one of your loved ones back for even a moment by refusing to live your own life.’” I look out to the water, my eyes stinging with tears. I hear those words as if she’s whispering them to me herself, but I still don’t have a clue how to apply them. “Twice already she brought me back to life by pointing me to look beyond the immediacy of my loss. This time it was the mere memory of that advice that woke me up. I need something to focus on so I’ve decided to take on a new project.”

“At work?”

Mum was a schoolteacher, just as I am, but Dad owns a small chain of auto mechanic shops—his pride and joy, second only to those of us lucky enough to be his family. He reaches down into the newspaper to withdraw a fat but likely cold chip. Wrigley watches hopefully as Dad raises the chip to his mouth, then slumps again when Dad chews the whole thing in one bite.

“The idea came to me when I looked at that photo, actually,” he says. “It got me thinking about those days again. You know I served.”

He rarely talks about the war, but I’ve seen photos of him as a young man in uniform, and in one, I recall he was holding a spanner.

“You worked as an army mechanic, right?”

“Well, no,” he says carefully. I glance at him in surprise. “I left school at sixteen to enlist.”

“Sixteen,” I breathe, shaking my head. “Dad, that’s so young.”

“Yes, I was young enough that they’d only take me with my parents’ permission, but my mum and dad were thrilled to give it. I’d never been good at school, but I was good with my hands, so it made sense for me to enlist and learn a trade. They were so proud when I qualified…” Dad trails off, draws in a deep breath, then finishes slowly, “…as a flight mechanic.”

A flight mechanic? I turn to Dad, eyebrows high.

“Wait. Are you telling me you trained on planes before cars? Why don’t I know this already?”

“It was always my dream to work on airplanes, right from when I was a little boy,” Dad says wistfully. “And it was incredible work. I loved the problem-solving and the challenge of it—I mean, honestly Lottie, it was just so bloody cool. I spent my whole school years feeling stupid, but I felt like the smartest man in the world once I knew how to make a plane work.”

Dad’s always shown a vague interest in planes, but he’s never seemed especially passionate about aviation. Not like this. Even as he’s speaking, there’s a wondrous glint in his eye.

“But you work on cars,” I say stupidly, as if he might have forgotten. “You always have.” Dad glances at me, and I add weakly, “At least, as long as I’ve been alive.”

“I came out of the war a changed man. I knew I needed to reinvent myself and to be completely frank, my mind wasn’t up to the challenge of resuming aviation work. I mean, cars are still plenty complex. Still challenging. But given my…” He waves toward his head, and my eyes widen.

“The car accident? I thought you said that happened when you were a kid.”

“Well, I was a kid. I was only in my twenties. And it probably was a car accident but…”

“But what?”

“My memories of that day aren’t perfect, that’s all. Anyway, after the war, it was helpful for me to go back to basics and learn a new trade. So, I went right back to the start of an apprenticeship, this time with cars.”

“You never told me any of this,” I say. Dad and I are close and I thought I knew his life well. It stings a little that this is a part of his past he’s never shared with me.

“There’s a lot I never told you, love,” he says gently.

“Well? What else?”