Stranger at Home

1983

The letters continued from then, as they naturally would, and I read all of them, although I cannot say there was much in them that is interesting to report. They mostly consisted of Harry saying he wished Jeremy could visit him one day, and how he had a small job in the prison working in the kitchen – I thought it was almost funny, being such a step down from Harry's previous job as an office worker. Like Peter Schoole, I never did get to the bottom of what Harry actually did; he sometimes referred to himself as a personal assistant in the solicitor's office, but I just think he was a secretary and did not dare to admit it. It was, and still is, unusual for a man to be a secretary, and it is frowned upon. I can't imagine Harry would have liked it that much – he was the type of person to be up and about, not sitting in an office day in day out. His suppressed hatred for his job might have been one of the contributing factors to his anger problems, I think. I only wished that he had gone into something else, something that he enjoyed more, and then Christopher might not have been killed. Then again, Harry would have always found something to pick at me for. There would always be something for him to be angry at. In a sense, he was just another John Keates – he was mad at the world, although you could never tell that in his letters - and he would always find a reason to take his anger and frustrations out on the people he apparently loved.

It was not until the May of 1983 when something different was said in one of Harry's letters, and that changed things. I read the letter first (Jeremy always gave me permission to do this if he was out of the house when the letter came – I was not just snooping around through his post). As much as I was glad to read what was written in the letter, my heart started to race, and I started to tremble all the same:

"Dear Jeremy,

I write to you with bad news. A few weeks ago, I was taken ill in the prison, and transferred to a hospital. I'm fine now, and they treated me well, but the scans of my stomach also showed something else which was unrelated to the stomach illness I had at the time. I have an aneurysm, and it's large. The doctors tell me it could burst at any time, and there is not a thing that they can do about it. They tell me I probably have five years at the very best, considering the size of the aneurysm. It's not going to be a nice way to go at all. I've even read a book which goes into detail about what happens during an aneurysm. It was stupid of me, reading that thing, and I only wish that I hadn't, because it's all I ever think about now.

Try not to be too upset about this. I know we've grown closer over the past few years, but you have a life to live. Don't worry about me – I do deserve this, after all. It's not as if I'm looking forward to the rest of my life anyway. If they ever did let me out here, which was always a possibility, my life would have been worthless anyway. I would never be accepted back into society, and I would have to move away, probably never to see you anyway. Maybe it's for the best that this is happening.

I'm glad to hear you're doing well in school still. Your exams must be coming up, so make sure you study hard. I hear things are slowly moving forward in the world, as well. I've heard rumours about a one-pound coin being introduced into the UK. Also, can you explain to me what a CD is? I'd love to listen to one of these one day, but I doubt that would ever happen. Nothing like that would ever come into here. They do let me have a television in my cell though, which to me is a bit of a God send, because I would go insane with boredom if I didn't have it. I'm still looking forward to Only Fools and Horses coming back on. I've been watching the old episodes on repeat. I've also been watching something called The A-team. Have you heard of it? It's American and there's this character called Mr. T that everyone is always talking about in here.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Your loving father"

The tone was certainly strange – Harry went from talking about dying to talking about school exam season in one line. I suppose he wanted to carry on as normal. I wondered if he was lying about the whole thing, because he knew that Jeremy would take his grief and frustration out on me. That was something Harry would do, because he was clever like that. After a while, though, I sat and thought about it, and decided that it was true. Harry wouldn't just make something like that up, because he would eventually get caught out, and that would be the end of him and Jeremy. Still, he said that he had been given five years, so that meant Jeremy could still write to him for another half a decade, probably deepening their relationship all the time with the knowledge that it would seemingly come to an end. Harry could play on Jeremy's emotions with this, but there was nothing I could do about that. I did not even dare suggest my theory to my son, because I knew that it would not end well if I did that.