It’s a rarity for me to spend time with family. I fought with my mum but damn we loved each other so much and knew it. We had each other for my twenties at least before the booze claimed her. My dad was a very different fish.
“You probably spent more time with him than the rest of us,” Rupert tells me. This baffles me. Maybe though.
I used to have a jacket reminding me that he was “World Champion Powerboat Racer” in multiple years including the year I was born and the next year. That was in the Bahamas and I was definitely in Jersey. But actually, maybe… maybe. He started to slow down in his mid sixties and I was a teenager. Formative years. And I was gasping for a male role model.
Three very different boys have been sharing memories. We have all imitated the fucker, whether consciously or unconsciously. Faddy diets, career decisions, adrenaline addiction. We all remember what an arse he could be. Mealtimes were a minefield. His grandfather would beat him up after supper I think as a matter of course. If he’d been punished at school the punishment would be repeated double at home. Somehow as a result, meals were a tense time – for the rest of his life. He would take it out on people. He never learned to drop the rage, but the principles of self knowledge were never put to the front for that generation. Arguably it was the rage that fueled his astonishing success.
I’d forgotten how horrible he could be to waiters, because my mother’s mother could be worse. But Good God I remember the atmosphere around the table at Eyreton (in the IOM). The constant possibility of explosion. It was a minefield, breaking bread with him. Things could get very horrible very suddenly and very profoundly. I was afraid to ask for condiments. I just wanted to eat and go. Porridge is a complicated food for me, although Lou has been helping me recalibrate that. I still hoover up my food generally, but without elbows on the table, rarely asking for condiments, usually trying to use my knife and fork correctly and sit up straight and be discreet with the napkin… trying to eat as fast as I can but without doing anything too noticeable in case it draws the eye of his memory. He wasn’t a propriety nut. He was just looking for an excuse.
I haven’t really thought about it until I write this. He’s not watching, in any pernicious way, anymore. Maybe his spirit is bemused at these creatures he had a hand in making…
Memories like that resurface when we are together. We don’t do it much. Jeremy carries many of his childhood bruises to this day. He’s much older than me. Sometimes listening to him talk about things that happened before I was born it feels like I’m in a Museum of Spent Matches. I know I’ve lived in the present too long and I need to get much better at planning. That’s my thing for this year. But I’m glad that these dredges like sitting at the table eating too fast – I haven’t carried them with me on purpose. Our past informs our present but it shouldn’t shape our future. “When did you finally leave that trauma behind as a thing that was holding you back?” I asked tonight as he told us all again of a particular beating from my uncle. “Oh I told him x when I got to x stage in life” “And that is how you finally let go of it? How did it feel to not be held back by it anymore?” I think the thought around “D’ya know, Al, I think I’m still being held back by it” was what I was hoping for. I’m not a therapist but I’ll always try and shift a stuck record. What am I still carrying? Is it helping me? If not, how to shift it?
We went to the beach and lollygagged in the sun. It was glory. We found summer. And we are finding each other. It’s good to know we can do it despite opposing worldviews and piles and piles of baggage. Sad we don’t have Jamie anymore – he was the one who woke up magic in me, and Parkinson’s took his body and eventually his ever youthful spirit.
I’m happy to sleep here again, deep in peaceful France, surrounded by his things. Joy.
AlBarclay 