Seascraper

by Benjamin Wood

Their life is just a mindless trudge of work with cosy patterns of behaviour in between – he’s always known this, overlooked it for the sake of their togetherness, survival. But he cannot stand to watch her keeping up the normal circulation of their days. He wants to wake up every morning with a better purpose.

In his life so far, he’s come across two reasons for a good man’s failings: either he’s a drinker on the quiet, like Pop was, trying to numb the bruises on his heart to get him through the week, or else he’s trying to cope without a remedy at all.

‘That’s not a guarantee of anything in life. A lot of the big studio guys are straight from Harvard Business School or Princeton, and they’re quick to let you know about it in a meeting. But they never have a thought worth sharing – their whole lives are built on status. More than that: they want conformity. They’re terrified of what’s original, because it undermines them. So they get behind what’s mediocre, keep on feeding you their trash as though it’s good for you. They think because they’ve got a corner office with a Monet on the wall they understand what art is, that it’s something they appreciate because they’re near to it. But all they’re qualified to tell a guy like me is how to dodge the IRS or who should be my caddy at the country club.’

Nobody should put their own success above their children’s happiness – it’s selfish, if you’re asking him, unnatural. As a method of surviving, it’s a worthwhile trade: your family’s comfort in exchange for your own absence. But to not be present when you have the means – to shirk a father’s duty for the sake of making art – well, that’s a subtler version of abandonment. The world needs fewer men like Patrick Weir and more like Pop.

When you’re young, you think life is a string of choices. It’s either you choose this door or the other door, or jump out of the window. You don’t realise that most of what’ll happen to you is because of other people’s choices. There’s a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape.

‘Do I hear the ocean?’ ‘No.’ ‘I’m hearing water. You don’t hear it, too?’ ‘I hear the Irish Sea. The ocean’s a few hundred miles south-west.’ ‘Well, hey, excuse me.’ Edgar huffs.

He needs to reconcile the things he wants with what he’s able to achieve, and work out if this life that he’s inherited from Pop is worth bestowing when he’s finished.

You can’t just give a person licence to destroy your life, no matter if he’s family – in fact, especially then. Would you agree?’

‘How come your name is Ács and his is Acheson?’ She shrugs, but with her eyebrows. ‘Well, he thought he had to make it more agreeable to Hollywood. My son can be astute like that – he understands what it requires to be accepted in America.

So true!!