As the year of 2004 drew to its troubled close, things had reached such a pitch in Jim Perrin’s increasingly resentful behaviour and envenomed accusations against our sister’s sons that she began to dread the meetings between them.
To put this into perspective: it was not the case that either son still lived at home, although their own bedrooms were there for them whenever they returned. One son was by now teaching in Sheffield and the other was completing his course at University in London; and too, with their free time taken up with travel and other youthful involvements, they were not all that often in Wales. When they did go home they were frequently ‘out and about’ locally, meeting up with their old school friends. Normal life, in other words, for those in that age group, and a pattern which will be recognised by parents everywhere. They were initially, as we all were, really very happy for their mother, ref. our post Jac’s relationship with Jim Perrin, and completely supportive, and they just got on with their lives as before.
Nevertheless Jim Perrin had very soon, after moving to our sister’s house in the Autumn of 2003, convinced himself that her sons were, in his words ‘against’ him — simply not true; and attributed to them all manner of misdemeanours and disrespectful and insulting behaviour. He managed always to imbue their home-comings with feelings of unease.
A particular son, as we have described before, ref. our post ‘Swallow Falls’, became the one who from then on bore the brunt of Jim Perrin’s anger.
A print which had been in storage in Jac’s barn and which had to him a sentimental association with his recently deceased son, had been damaged. That is to say, more accurately — the glass in the frame had been broken. It simply cannot be explained how the fury which was provoked in Jim Perrin came to be focussed on this son. It was entirely ‘his’ doing — it was deliberate vandalism! Neither of these things were true. Afterwards a family member took away the print and had it professionally re-glazed; returned it to him as good as new and tried very hard to reconcile him with the mystified ‘culprit’. Jim Perrin and Jac’s son ‘shook hands’ and Jac and her sisters hoped that the episode was over.
Unfortunately it was not to be, and Jim Perrin continued to brood. He was sure that he had been correct in his original assumption that Jac’s son was ‘to blame’ and he accused us all of ‘closing ranks’ against him.
It was altogether a sorry affair — ‘perrinoia’ — and more indicative of his innate suspicion and tendency to blame him, than of anything else. He chose to nourish his hatred rather than to ‘let go’, and desperately ill as our sister was by now with her cancer and deeply troubled as she had become with all his animosity towards her family, yet he relentlessly, heartlessly, pursued his vendetta against her youngest son.
This was the reason why, when her ‘Yorkshire’ sister visited her just before Christmas 2004, she found Jac on tenter-hooks, and anxious, knowing that this son was coming home for a pre-Christmas visit and all too aware and fearful of Jim Perrin’s animosity towards him.
Jac’s sisters.
