Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [120]
A few years later, in 1998, a Canadian journalist, Michael Woloschuk, took it upon himself to track down my real father, only to find out, when his search was done, that the man he was supposed to be, Edward Fryer, had died back in 1985. I suppose it shamed me into setting about a search of my own, or at least an attempt to authenticate his findings. I didn’t get very far. The trail was muddy and I was never convinced that this man was really my dad. At best all I could do was verify what the reporter had already found out. All through my life, people had asked about my father, to the point where I had taken an “I don’t want to know” stance just to close the subject. Consequently, I had always resisted any impulse to find out the real truth, and by the time I did try, it was, it seemed, too late.
The most powerful of the new songs was “Tears in Heaven.” Musically, I had always been haunted by Jimmy Cliff’s song “Many Rivers to Cross” and wanted to borrow from that chord progression, but essentially I wrote this one to ask the question I had been asking myself ever since my grandfather had died. Will we really meet again? It’s difficult to talk about these songs in depth, that’s why they’re songs. Their birth and development is what kept me alive through the darkest period of my life. When I try to take myself back to that time, to recall the terrible numbness that I lived in, I recoil in fear. I never want to go through anything like that again. Originally, these songs were never meant for publication or public consumption; they were just what I did to stop from going mad. I played them to myself, over and over, constantly changing or refining them, until they were part of my being.
Toward the end of my stay in Antigua, I chartered a boat for a two-week trip around the islands with Roger and his wife. I have always loved being by or on the sea, and although I have no ambitions to be a sailor, I find the scale of the ocean very calming and revitalizing. The start of the trip, however, wasn’t a great success. Roger and I were still at loggerheads over various things, and the atmosphere was chilly. Later we were joined first by Russ Titleman, and then by Yvonne Kelly and my six-year-old daughter, whom she had named Ruth. This lifted the mood, and the cruise took an upward turn.
Among the letters that had come in about Conor was one from Yvonne, in which, to help me in my loss, she had offered me the opportunity to become fully acquainted with Ruth as her father. It was an incredibly generous act and gave me some direction until the fog cleared. This little sea cruise was in fact the first of many small visitations that took place to test the waters for this idea, and it worked. It was great to be in the company of a child again, my child. I will always be grateful to Yvonne for giving me this second chance. It was a lifeline in a sea of bewilderment and confusion. Over the next couple of years I visited them in Montserrat, slowly establishing a rapport with my daughter, until Yvonne decided that in order for Ruth to get a proper education, and spend more time with me, they would come home to Doncaster, the Yorkshire town where Yvonne had been brought up.
So far as helping me cope with the death of Conor, developing a relationship with Ruth was, at first, no more than a Band-Aid solution. It wasn’t until the pity was taken out of the equation and we started to have fun that it became a real thing for me. It took time because first I had a lot of work to do repairing myself, and until that was done, my ability to be emotionally intimate with my daughter was seriously limited. As for discipline, I had a lot to learn and was very unsure of my entitlements with her, but slowly, bit by bit, we got to know one another, and I learned through therapy how to express my disapproval when necessary. Looking back on those years, I realize what a profound effect she had on my well-being as a whole. Her presence in my life was absolutely vital to my recovery. In her I had again found something