A Mysterious Cloud Of Suspicion

Ever since I can remember my father was something of a mysterious man. My mother regaled me many a time about how at times my father would just disappear. He would simply put on his jacket and vanish into thin air. Nobody knew where he went or what he got up to. Then suddenly out of the blue, he would re-appear as if nothing had happened. He would take off his jacket and hang it in the wardrobe before popping back downstairs for a cup of Earl Grey tea. He never spoke about where he had been nor who he had been with. My mother knew better than to ask him questions. She was just happy to see him safely return, none the worse for his disappearance.

I sat on the edge of my mother and father's bed looking into the old oak wardrobe that had once seen much better days. It had been over a week since we celebrated my mother's funeral. It was quite a modest affair with very few attendees. This was mostly due to my mother living to a grand old age. Most of those whom she knew throughout her life had long since gone before her. There was virtually nobody left. My mother used to say how the worst part of getting old was the feeling of being invisible. Nobody saw her, nobody asked her opinion about anything. It was as if she simply didn't count, she didn't exist.

An old war jacket of my father's caught my eye as it hung limply from the steel bar inside the wardrobe. It was an old leather flying jacket that was faded and cracked for the want of a little beeswax. There weren't any badges to indicate my father's war service except for one intriguing roundel with what looked like a flash of lightning or electricity from the bottom left of the circle to the top right, up into the sky. I often wondered what it was supposed to symbolize. Perhaps it was the power of god reaching down from the heavens to create mortal man here on Earth. However, I suppose it means whatever you want it to mean, meaning is in the mind of the beholder of the thought.

I stood up and for some inexplicable reason, I reached into the wardrobe and took the jacket off its hanger and put it on. I turned to the left through ninety degrees to see myself in the almost full-length mirror on the inside surface of the wardrobe door. I looked like a younger version of my father, except I was quite a bit taller than my father. My height was all in my spindly legs. From the waist up my father and I were the same build and dimensions. We also shared the same facial looks with a small cleft in our chins. We could have easily been taken for identical twins had we lived at the same time.

I was gently rubbing the well-worn collar which I slowly pulled around my neck, when suddenly I heard footsteps coming upstairs. At the same time, I heard the light patter of rain and an air-raid siren go off somewhere in the distance. I also heard the fast footfall of people in the street, as if they were running to take cover somewhere before the bombs rained down on them. Then I heard my mother's all too familiar voice call out as she came upstairs.

"Is that you Jack? Are you back again? I didn't hear you come in darling?"

Not wishing to offend my mother, I quickly took the jacket off and put it back on its hanger in the wardrobe. The bedroom door flew open and I was shocked to see my mother, not as the old woman I had last spoken to shortly before she passed away two weeks before, but as a very beautiful younger version of herself. My mother stood in the doorway and looked straight through me as if I didn't exist.

"Oh, you've gone again. What am I going to do about all this coming and going, Jack? It's a sign of the times I suppose, I'll just have to get used to it I guess."

And with that, my mother turned and left the room closing the door behind her. I stood totally perplexed by what had happened. Suddenly I realized that the pitter-patter of rain had stopped and when I went to the bedroom window it was only to see the usual passers-by going about their usual business.

I went to the landing at the top of the stairs and stopped. After a few seconds, I called out.

"Mother? Is that you? Are you there?" There was no reply.

To Be Continued.