Page 94 (1/1)

1 Beckham Noble

The city was charcoal gray Rain clattered down theas I looked out at the passing buildings The regal Croydon Clocktohizzed by in a raindrop-streaked blur The Ashcroft Theatre looked different than the last time I’d seen it, with an entirely new es and square boxes

It all felt like hoer to me

Of course, things had changed I hadn’t been back in London since I’d moved to the States After my father and I threw fists at each other After he kicked me out of the house and I never looked back

I o I had been twenty-three, a younghimself out, when I felt like my past in London was too much for me to bear I packed up my shit and made a life for myself across the world

Now I had just turned forty and no longer needed to figure myself out or explain myself to anyone Least of all my father And even if I wanted to talk to him, that wasn’t a possibility

The reason I had come back to London was to put our past to rest with him Once and for all

It was my mother who’d talkedshe could to get me back into the house She was ready to divorce my father and sleep on the streets with me until we found a place to stay I didn’t want that, and I knew my relationship with my father was irreparable So I cut all ties with both ofday by day until I started working at a pub That here I met a private eye ould talk to me every day about his job, his cases They weren’t all riveting cases, but he talked about each one with a contagious excitement

Years later, I spoke tolike it had been e-old wound, scabbed over with ti everything she loved in life, she had thrown herself into her sewing and dress Her passion bled into her pieces, and she soon found huge success, changing her life around

Someti of sorts They spoke over tea and found soot better, until eddifferent about hied even the way he se of the ater of trau underneath us, but I felt like there would be no way I couldn’t speak to him I couldn’t face him

And then I got a call about his death It was my mother, and she had sounded pretty shaken up She asked me to promise that I’d be at the funeral, at least to provide soth to her

I didn’t want her going through that day alone I i herself and surrounded by no one she could reach out for I couldn’t have that I booked ht and made it to London in time for the burial

The funeral went by in a blur I didn’t speak, but y for the man she had known before the alcohol took over She talked about how, in those last few years, he had seemed to have turned his life around Positivity had bred in a place where negativity held dominance for his entire life Too little, too late for me, but as h for her She looked frail in her older age, but her shoulders never slu Even at the burial, she stayed strong, holdingsmall shudders

It was at the end of the burial, when I thought all was done, when a sense of per there, it was then that a woht e, with soft brown eyes moist at the corners from fresh tears

“You’re his son, right?” she asked

“’Scuse me?”

“Robert’s son You’re Beckham?”

I nodded She opened her black jacket and pulled so out from an inside pocket “This is for you He wanted you to have it”

I narrowed my eyes The envelope hadand bent at the edges, and I could already tell I wanted nothing to do with it I had come to this funeral because my mother asked ot rimy London streets That hen my father died to me, back when I was a sixteen-year-old kid, lost in this world and just looking for a little guidance