‘No.’

‘If he’s dead they’d have some record.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. ‘I could, but I was thinking, if you had some sort of record?’

‘Right … what was your name?’

I told her. And Dad’s. How it would’ve been the late sixties, early seventies, judging from the age of the letter. She asked, What letter? I told her. From a shipmate he’d been with on the night. She said, ‘If that’d happened there’d be some sort of record. Newspapers, even?’

‘I guess. But I thought, for a start, if I could find out?’

She’d taken a deep breath, thought about it and said, ‘Hold on.’ Putting down the phone and walking away. I’d waited two, three minutes before she returned. ‘Got it.’

‘Great.’

‘You’re the son?’

‘Yes. What’s it say?’

‘Wilfred Albert Whelan. Joined September 1971.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Signed up, paid his dues, that’s the last we heard.’

‘So there’s no way of finding out?’

‘There’s a referee: Bob Jones. Wilton.’

‘Wilton?’

‘It’s a suburb, down the Port.’

And that was it. I looked him up: Jones, B 34 Gould St, Wilton. I spent the next few days wondering what to do. Call? It was a hard decision, but I made it, and waited until Mum took Pop to the shops, then sat, dialled, and listened to the voice: The number you are calling has been disconnected. So, then, whether to bite the bullet. What could he tell me?

Thirty-four. Per square inch, the neatest house I’d ever seen. I opened a little gate and walked down the path. Old concrete, but clean, swept, sinking into the perfectly clipped lawn with its six or so gnomes. The screen door vented roast beef into the afternoon. I knocked. ‘Hello? Mr Jones?’

The races, of course, from the back room. ‘Mr Jones?’

A chair scraping on floorboards. ‘Hold up.’

The silhouette of a stooped man, emerging from the darkness, claiming a halo and approaching from the kitchen. ‘Hold yer horses.’

He opened the door and said, ‘None today, thanks.’

‘I’m not selling anything. I’m Clem Whelan.’

His face screwed into a little ball. All shaved, of course. ‘Whelan?’

‘I think my dad used to work with you.’

He smiled. ‘Wilf?’

This was enough to get me into the kitchen, and a beer, the radio turned down. He sat and said, ‘I seen you before.’

‘When?’

‘Just a bub. Few months old. We were working somewhere, and yer mum brings you in … and yer dad’s showin’ you off.’

‘Mighta been my sister, she’s two years older.’

‘No, it was a boy, I remember. Clem, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ And we shook.

Half a glass later (with the form put away) he said, ‘I gave yer dad that job. Sixty-eight, nine, when I was foreman with Blackie’s.’ He squeezed my arm. ‘Look at you, all grown up. I remember that day. Your mum brought you along and yer dad’s sayin’, Number one son … not bad, eh? Like that. Not bad? Proud as punch. Course, a man is with his first son.’