The silence somehow got deeper as it lengthened.
The vicar patted him reassuringly on the arm.
Then Oliver straightened his spine, fixed his gaze squarely at the back of the room, and began to speak.
"DAVID BLACKWOOD," SAID OLIVER, "WAS a loving husband, a devoted father, and an absolute demon on the golf course. We all remember him as…as.…”
He looked down at his cards.
“David Blackwood,” said Oliver, “was a loving husband, a devoted father, and…”
He looked down again. Then he looked up. And his eyes moved over the crowd, pausing just for a second on me before he fixed his attention back on a neutral point.
“David Blackwood,” he said, “was a complicated man, and the last words I said to him were ‘go fuck yourself.’”
The nice thing about Oliver’s family being incredibly British and middle class was that nobody had any way to react to that, so everyone stayed very still and very silent.
“I wish they had not been,” Oliver went on, “and I suppose that might seem obvious. After all, who wants their last words to their father to be ‘go fuck yourself’？ But I think what’s not so obvious is that while I’m sorry he’s dead… I hope no one here would think that I’m not sorry he’s dead. I’m a vegan criminal defence lawyer, for fuck’s sake, neither of which my father approved of, incidentally, but in general I don’t believe death ever solves anything. Another thing my father disapproved of… He was a proponent of bringing back hanging, which he apparently thought would fix knife crime; the economy; and, if I recall from at least one conversation, immigration.
“But my point is that although I’m sorry he’s dead—and this might be the part that surprises people, and Mother, in particular, I’m sorry if this surprises you—I’m inordinately glad I told him to go fuck himself. As I say, David Blackwood was a complicated man. And, indeed, one of the questions I find myself asking now is whether he, too, had he survived, would have been glad I told him to go fuck himself.
“I believe that if he lived by the principles he espoused, he would. After all, as well as hanging, he was also a great proponent of speaking your mind—when he did it, that is, not so much when other people did. And standing your ground—again, primarily his ground, not necessarily anybody else’s. But I hope that the double standard he applied to those virtues when it came to his employees, my schoolteachers, tradesman, waiters, most of his friends, and his sons’ various romantic partners might, at least, not apply to his own children. I like to imagine that maybe, one day, after perhaps a year or two had passed, he’d have shaken my hand and said, ‘You know what, Oliver, I had that coming.’
“Because I’m afraid from my perspective he did, indeed, have it coming.
“And again I don’t want to… I don’t want anyone to think that I hated my father. Or that I wanted anything bad to happen to him.
When I say he was a complicated man, I mean it. He wasn’t good or bad, he wasn’t always right or always wrong—although he would personally have disagreed with you on that score—and I should also say that all I can really talk about now is the David Blackwood I knew, who won’t be the David Blackwood my mother knew or Uncle Jim knew. He’s probably fairly similar to the David Blackwood that Christopher knew, but he won’t be exactly the same.
“That’s the thing about people. I suppose…I suppose in a way we’re all complicated men, or women, or nonbinary people. And, thinking about it, if there’s one thing I’ve done today that would really, truly offend David Blackwood, it’s bothering to acknowledge that nonbinary people exist at his funeral. ‘Why do you have to be so bloody politically correct, Oliver,’ he might have said. ‘What about women’s bathrooms?’
“Where was I? My original draft of this speech opened with, as you might recall, ‘David Blackwood was a loving husband, a devoted husband, and a demon on the golf course,’ and all of those things were true. Well, except the thing about golf. He was actually quite bad at it. And so when I say he had it coming, with reference to—in case you’ve forgotten—my telling him to go fuck himself, I don’t think I really mean that. At least, not as it came out. I think what I mean was he needed to hear it and I needed to say it. Because my father provided for me and cared for me and supported me, but he also undermined me, made constant jokes about my sexuality while also being incredibly offended by any suggestion he might be even a little bit homophobic, and wielded his disapproval like—I’m sorry, normally when I’m speaking for work, I’m rather better prepared so I don’t have a good simile to hand. But I spent my entire life repulsed by his beliefs, terrified of his scorn, and desperate for him to think well of me.