Fathers and Sons (10 page)

Sometimes we would motor as far as Epping Forest and explore. Over time we became expert at finding our way through the thousands of acres of trees. Most visitors scarcely penetrated the timber beyond sight of their cars and we would leave these timid souls far behind. We had our own ‘private’ glade deep in the heart of the forest where no one else ever seemed to go and where we shared undisturbed picnic lunches.

My father was extremely playful. I am sure the games we enjoyed were as much for his benefit as for ours; he was compensating for all he had missed out on during his own childhood. Our little family of four would play rounders, French cricket, badminton (without a net, which made it slightly pointless) and, occasionally, on my mother’s insistence, baseball.

That was just on outings. At home, my father instigated a nightly tradition which started when I was about three and continued until I was ten.

We called it ‘The Play’. After supper, my father and I would retire to my parents’ room, climb on the big double bed and try to shove each other off. Simple as that. You could use arms, legs, push, pull–whatever it took. Of course my father let me win these contests and my mother, sitting downstairs, would sigh each time another thundering crash shook the house as my father toppled to the floor of the room above.

He built me a train set, and spent far more time playing with it than I did. The little electric locomotives had funnels you could put drops in, and fake smoke would stream behind the train as it chuffed around the track. My father laid in stocks of the special chemical so that rolling stock would always look as realistic as possible when we–or he–played with it.

Bonfire night was a very big deal. As soon as fireworks were in the shops, father and son were there, carefully choosing that year’s display. We considered ourselves experts and were lofty in our judgements on various brands. Standard, we decided, were most reliable, if a little dull. Brocks were livelier,
but you got more duds. Astra we never touched after half of one box failed to go off. My father and I sulked for days after that. Later, whenever anything broke or failed in some way, it was described contemptuously as ‘an Astra’.

Sometimes my father would drive us half a mile up the road to Crow Lane to see some real trains. The main Liverpool Street railway line ran parallel with it and we would park on top of an embankment and wait to see what my father called a ‘proper’ train–one pulled by a steam engine–rush past us like a snorting dragon. This was thrilling, and one day it resulted in the first great regret of my life.

One bitingly cold, snowy Saturday afternoon we saw the telltale puffs of smoke rising into the air far down the track and knew we were in luck. Soon the great black engine appeared round a distant bend and thundered towards us. I could see the fireman shovelling the coal and the driver standing on the footplate. Suddenly he noticed the tall man with two little children standing on the slope above the track and, as the distance closed, gave a huge theatrical wave.

‘Come on, Richard–he’s waving at us. Wave back, quickly!’

But I couldn’t. It was as if a god had taken personal notice of my existence, and I froze. I could no more return this fabulous creature’s wave than I could drive his train. And a moment later the chance was gone as the engine rocked past us and into a tunnel.

‘What a shame…you won’t get a chance like that again.’

I knew my father was right. I had let a wonderful opportunity to exchange waves with a train driver pass and tears of
disappointment and self-recrimination sprang from my eyes. I may have been too young to understand the words ‘
carpe deum
’ but I resolved there and then to seize my chances in future. A seminal moment. Today when I dither I tell myself: ‘Remember the train driver.’

Before long the steam engines had been comprehensively replaced with electric and diesel trains and a great decade of change was under way. My mother had taught me to read and count, and one evening my father arrived home with a gleaming, freshly minted coin. ‘Can you tell me what year is stamped on this, Richard?’

I studied the glittering sixpence for a few moments. ‘Um…it’s 1961.’

‘Yes. Well done. You can keep it. In fact, it’s time you started getting pocket money like your sister. I’ll give you sixpence every week from now on, all right?’

So far then, so good. Chris was turning out to be the very model of a modern father. Putting aside what today we describe as ‘quality time’ for his children. Taking them out by himself once a week. Excelling in the demonstrative affection department–he was extravagant with his kisses and cuddles. I don’t think a day went by when I wasn’t swept into the air in a bear hug, had a huge raspberry trumpeted on my neck (unfailingly hilarious, this), or was showered with kisses at bedtime. The only occasions these offerings were muted were when we stayed at Shawbury, or if my grandparents visited us. Then a touch of formality entered the atmosphere; there was a faint air of reserve about my father and he would be less boisterous with his children. I didn’t mind; it was simply part
of having to ‘be polite’ when Grandma and Granddad were around.

On the long drives from Romford to Shawbury, my parents would inevitably discuss my grandparents and my father’s upbringing. My sister and I would shamelessly eavesdrop, even to the point of demanding: ‘Speak up!’ or ‘What was that again? I didn’t catch it.’ My parents were usually tolerant and would merely flash the occasional warning glance over their shoulders. ‘Not a word about this at Shawbury, you two…’

We had no radio in our car and these conversations between my parents often lasted well over an hour. I absorbed many of Kiln Farm’s secrets as I stared, unseeing, at the countryside slowly moving by. My mind’s eye was busy with pictures from the past. I saw a little boy running in panic through the near-deserted farmhouse, calling for his parents. I saw the grief etched on my grandparents’ faces as they buried their little boy, and Geoffrey’s shock and panic when his uncle’s will was read. I saw Denstone’s forbidding face and the dormitories with their straw palliasses where my father had slept. I sailed with him across the Atlantic through icebergs and storms, and felt his humiliation when he was sacked before he’d even started his new job. All these things I learned on the road to Shawbury.

My father’s openness and affection meant that, by the time I was about seven, I thought I’d worked out how he’d react in most situations involving me and I loved him in an uncomplicated, trusting way. But things weren’t that simple. There was still a lot of unresolved damage caused by the past. Dad had done extraordinarily well in laying many of his ghosts. I
wish he were alive today so I could tell him that. But he was still haunted by pernicious phantoms and they were about to make an appearance.

I think the first hint that my father might have darker dimensions to him came in 1963. I was in hospital recovering from a tonsillectomy. He had hurried over to visit me during his lunch hour, in one of his habitual charcoal suits, bringing presents and telling jokes. After he’d gone a curious nurse wandered over to my bed. ‘Was that your dad, then?’

When I said yes, she made a little moue. ‘He looks very strict.’

I was astonished. ‘Perhaps it’s his glasses,’ I managed. ‘Maybe that makes him look a bit strict. But he isn’t at all, honestly.’

She nodded, unconvinced, and wandered off again.

I kept puzzling over her remark and, a few weeks later, believed I’d witnessed some powerful defence material to present if I ever saw her again. I saw my father cry for the first time.

The whole family had settled down in front of our black-and-white television set (we always called it a television set, not the telly or TV) to watch comedian Harry Worth’s weekly show. A big treat for me–Harry came on after my bedtime but I was allowed to stay up and watch him.

The BBC continuity announcer was introducing the programme when suddenly the screen cut away to a caption that read ‘Newsflash’. I was sitting on my father’s lap and rocked slightly as he sat up straighter. A newsreader appeared, holding a piece of paper. The words he spoke were uttered nearly
half a century ago, but I have a clear recollection of most of what he said.

‘We are getting reports that President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, Texas. The President is believed to have been wounded and has been taken to hospital. We will bring you more on this when we can.’ There was a pause and then the screen faded slowly to black.

Before either of my parents could say a word, the screen brightened again and the newsreader was back, being handed a fresh piece of paper. For a few moments he looked dumbly at it, and then cleared his throat.

‘I am very sorry to have to tell you…that President Kennedy is dead.’ I felt my father’s entire body stiffen and my mother gave a little wail. Newscaster and nation stared blankly at each other for a few moments longer until the screen darkened again.

The trauma that swept around the world was fully represented in our small living room. My parents clung to each other in instant, overwhelming grief. My mother kept whispering: ‘Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,’ and my father pressed one hand to his eyes, tears dripping through his fingers. My sister and I stared at them in awe, but particularly at my father. These were the first sobs we had ever seen wrung from him.

Then bathos descended. The opening titles of
Harry Worth
were blaring out, the man himself performing his trademark sight-gag involving a reflective shop window and a porkpie hat. It was ludicrous, but Harry saved the day in homes like ours because my father managed to gasp: ‘You children stay
in here and watch this. Your mother and I are going into the kitchen to talk.’

Next morning my mother succumbed to a vicious migraine and had to stay in bed. My sister and I dressed in our smartest clothes and my father put on his darkest suit. We took a train into London and joined the long queue outside the American embassy, patiently waiting to sign the hastily arranged book of condolence. When it was full it would be sent to Jackie Kennedy. We seemed to shuffle slowly forward for hours in the cold November wind, but at last we were in a little anteroom and my father was handed a gold fountain pen by a man in a black coat.

Dad produced the scrap of paper on which he had drafted his message to the newly widowed woman across the Atlantic, and copied it carefully on to the page. Then we went home.

It was my first experience of the death of an icon. Seventeen years on I was old enough to understand the wave of shock and emotion that swept the world when John Lennon was shot; curiously, another seventeen years later, Princess Diana was killed. Just as with Kennedy and Lennon, millions would remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news she was dead, and the mass grief which followed.

But at seven, I struggled to comprehend my parents’ distress. They tried to explain but it made no sense. President Kennedy had never been to our house and my mother and father had not met him. Why then did they keep crying in the days after he died?

As I grew older, I came gradually to understand, and even vicariously to share, something of their emotion. Kennedy was the great post-war visionary of my parents’ generation. To them, he was a hero and the antithesis to the clapped-out politics that had led to two world wars. Now I can see that my father identified with Kennedy. He wore the same style of single-breasted suit, the same narrow sober ties of silver and speckled grey, and white shirts with gleaming cuffs that always protruded a discreet inch or so beyond his jacket’s sleeves. My father was not alone. For once, the glamour of the office of President was matched by the incumbent and many men wanted to be like him.

Women like my mother adored the First Lady too, and eagerly copied her fashion style. My mother was a dab hand at her Singer sewing machine and skilled at running up her own outfits. Women’s magazines often gave away patterns based on Jackie’s latest look and my mother would go out and buy the material. A couple of evenings later, she would sashay into our living room with a ‘Well, what do you all think?’ and there was Jackie Kennedy’s last party frock on display in Dagenham Road.

What with my father’s Kennedy-esque power suits and my mother’s copied outfits, sometimes when they when out together, they looked as if they were off to a party on Capitol Hill.

Jackie not only had the same effortless grace and style as her husband, she was a mother too. Washington’s press corps fell over each other to snatch photo opportunities of the young couple with their small children. The toddlers were even
photographed crawling under their father’s desk in the Oval Office. In the new prosperity of the 1960s, it was even possible to forgive the Kennedys their fabulous wealth.

Shortly before the assassination I remember my father calling me into the room where he was watching the evening news. Kennedy was making his historic speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. ‘Did you hear what he said, Richard?’ my father asked delightedly. ‘He said America is going to land a man on the moon simply because they choose to do it. Imagine that. Just because they choose to. What a country!’

I have often wondered what my father would have made of JFK’s prodigious womanising, had it been made public knowledge at the time. (This was a president who confided to a startled British prime minister that he suffered crippling headaches if he did not have sex at least once a day.) I think he would have moved swiftly into denial. Certainly in later years, when the subject could no longer be contained, he would brush it aside; nothing could be allowed to tarnish the burnished memory of Kennedy’s Camelot.

But what really sealed the young president’s hold over hearts and minds was his nerveless and adroit handling of the Cuban missile crisis. I have clear memories of this because it was the first time fear had entered our home. My parents began to disappear into the kitchen for whispered conversations, usually after the television news, and one evening I followed them.

‘It might mean a general call-up, Mary, even if we get through the next few days…’