Issue No. 23: THE FAMILY - DAD

In my childhood and early adolescent years, children mostly accepted the word of their parents without question. This was the case with me and Mam and Dad.

My recollections of my father are of a large man who was older than most of the other dads in the neighbourhood. For some reason best known to himself, he told me he was born in 1918, making him 34 when I was born. Many years later I discovered that he was, in fact, born 10 years earlier, in 1908. I saw him six days a week (never on a Sunday) but only for half an hour at dinner (lunch) times and for a couple of hours at most at tea times during the week. On Saturdays, he would be there most of the morning. He very rarely stayed the night. Mam explained to me, when I was about five or six, that he worked for the local Council as his main job but he also had a job with the Territorial Army, which meant him being away from home both during the week and at weekends. She showed me the photographs of him, with his Regimental Sergeant Major’s armband on and the three stripes on his sleeve, leading the marching troops from the barracks. Although other kids had their dads at home nearly all of the time, I was proud that mine was different, and that he was in charge of so many soldiers.

Although I saw him fleetingly most days, he still exerted a huge and dominant influence over the family. As you would expect from a ‘RSM’, he was opinionated and used to getting his own way. He was obsessed with timekeeping and hated tardiness. He didn’t expect me to slouch and remarked on many occasions that he had seen me round-shouldered in the street and told me to straighten up, walk briskly with my head up, chest out and swing my arms (I’m not kidding!). He didn’t like foreigners. He had served in the Desert War in the 8^th Army during World War 2 and in Italy, and had a particular dislike of Egyptians, Libyans, (etc), Italians and, for some unknown reason, Chinese waiters. Years before the U.S. Army applied the term in Vietnam, Dad labelled all Chinese ‘Charlie’. I guess this was a reference to the 'Charlie Chan' films.

Dad said that he had had a Grammar School education and, by sheer force of will and apparently superior ‘book knowledge’, he intellectually dominated my mother. She deferred to him in the matter of my education. In this, he spent quite some time (when we were together) ensuring that my spelling and arithmetic were up to scratch, before I sat the 11 plus exams. As I got older, into adolescence and then manhood, he became more strident in his views as to what I should do with my life, what courses I should follow, what career I should choose and what political views I should hold. He had an opinion on everything I did or wanted to do and was quick to tell me I was wrong if he thought otherwise. This lifelong domination caused a dichotomy in my adult life. I rebelled against practically every view or opinion he had on the world, whilst at the same time becoming domineering and overbearing with my own family. Psychologists say that, often, people try to escape from the spectre of a domineering father so fast that they end up morphing into one.

Bats and Boots

He loved sport and urged me to participate. In this, at least, he was successful. However, he had some odd ways of encouraging me. I was 11 and he knew that I was keen on (without being any good at) cricket. One day he brought home a cricket ‘bat’ for me. However, it wasn’t a normal cricket bat. It was handmade, apparently by someone who had never seen a cricket bat before. Butch, the dog next door, could have made a better one. The whole thing had been roughly hewn from a wooden block; you could see the chisel marks. The handle was uncovered and too short, so you couldn’t really get a proper grip on it. The rest of the bat was too long and too narrow. Worst of all, it was about two to three inches thick, which meant that it was unwieldy and that I could hardly lift it. The other kids laughed at it, which didn’t help. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, so I said nothing.

Knowing that I also loved football (but unaware that I was still crap at it) Dad said that he would bring home a pair of football boots. All of the boys at the senior school had new, lightweight, low-slung boots. I was eager with anticipation. Dad came in one tea time and handed over a large paper bag. This was it! I lifted out a pair of battered brown, high-sided boots, which reached past my ankles and half way up my calves. On the sole, instead of studs, they had hard leather bars across. I looked incredulously at Dad. He was beaming at me. I smiled weakly in return and said thanks. The boots caused gales of laughter in the school dressing room before games lessons. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t have any studs. Why did they have bars instead? Were they Dad’s old footie boots? Is this what they wore after World War 1? Were they footie boots at all? Had he taken them from the corpse of a German or Italian soldier in the desert? It must be a German, I reasoned, no Italian would be seen dead in boots like these. The bars on the soles of the boots accumulated massive clods of mud in between them. I could hardly raise my feet from the mire, never mind run and kick a ball. Nevertheless, the overall effect of this was that I was the only kid to emerge from the field literally head and shoulders above the rest.

The Tooth Fairy

Dad was adamant that everything he said was right. My faith in him (and his opinions) was first shaken when I was twelve, still in short trousers and had to have a tooth out. This was the first time I had ever visited a dentist. Not many of my peers had experienced such a visit either, although there was some unusual speculation concerning a rumour that there was a homosexual dentist in town (‘gay’ wasn’t then part of people’s vocabulary). As with most rumours, everyone attested to his existence but nobody could actually say who he was. His identity took on mythological characteristics and he quickly became dubbed ‘The Tooth Fairy’. Two questions hung over this mystery. First, what did a homosexual dentist do (to patients) that made him different to other dentists? Secondly, how did you find out if your dentist was ‘The Tooth Fairy’? When I visited this particular dentist I pondered these questions (beneath the pain) but wisely (I thought) resolved to keep my mouth shut. However, given the circumstances, that was one resolution I could not possibly keep.

Dad had said that having the tooth out wouldn’t hurt. He was wrong. The needle was excruciating and, furthermore, I yelled with pain when the dentist pulled the tooth out before the anaesthetic had properly taken hold. I came out of the surgery into the waiting room and Dad was there.

‘I said that it wouldn’t hurt, didn’t I?’ he said, too quickly.

‘Ith hurth like hell!’ I shouted back, spitting out blood as I did so.

I refused to speak to him all the way home on the bus. He got the message.

‘Look’, he said, ‘I’ll make you some nice soup to drink. Is that okay?’

I said nothing.

He was smiling and cheery, in an anxious and forced way, when we returned home. Mam hadn’t yet arrived back home from the biscuit factory where she worked. He heated up some canned lentil soup and brought it to me on a tray as I sat beside the living room fire. I took a few spoonfuls, but my jaw was still paralysed by the anaesthetic and I couldn’t move my mouth properly. I dropped some of the soup onto my bare, untrousered knee and yelled as it burned me. Dad hadn’t let the soup cool. When the anaesthetic wore off, the pain from my scalded mouth kicked in and I couldn’t eat anything for days.

The one thing I could never properly comprehend as a child, but still unquestioningly accepted, was Dad’s relationship with my older brother, Tom. They hardly spoke to one another and seemed to keep their distance as much as possible. It was clear that Tom didn’t much like Dad but, more worryingly, Dad never had a good word to say about Tom. Tom hadn’t passed the 11 plus and Dad didn’t help him with any school work and showed no interest in him. For as long as I could remember, Dad disparaged him to his face and was unkind about him behind his back. He encouraged both Mam and me to join in this constant criticism, and this lasted until Dad died. Dad criticised me too, but never in such a cruel and sustained way. It was when Dad died that an explanation for this very odd behaviour was revealed. It brought into question all of my previous life and the childhood certainties upon which it was founded.