He taught himself the rudiments of set design by reading library books and absorbed the methods of stage carpentry from Eric. He experimented with the properties of materials (different timbers, fibreglass, polystyrene, cement, epoxy resin) in the makeshift workshop in Eric’s garage. Through trial and error, he learned ways to build things cheaply, found techniques to convert the roughest sketches into modest scenery that could be rigged and flown. He made sets for plays at nearby grammar schools and comprehensives, working from the drawings of enthusiastic art teachers, impressing them with his ability. They passed his name and number on to arts centres with am dram groups, who passed it on to community and rep theatres, who passed it on to minor touring companies. He picked up a lot of small commissions: ‘He was ten times cheaper than anyone else, that’s why,’ Eric told me, ‘and probably ten times better. I always said he should negotiate himself a proper fee, but he didn’t do the things he liked for money, your dad. He’d slave his balls off on a site for sixty quid a day, then he’d go off and build you a set for a pint and a packet of crisps. I always found him to be decent about that kind of stuff.’ For about a year, Eric let him use his garage, stash materials there, borrow his tools. ‘It became his little grotto. When he wasn’t on the job with me, he was in my garage with the radio on, using my bandsaw. He was round more often than my brother. We couldn’t get rid of him.’ His experience accumulated into something befitting a CV. ‘He never seemed to think he could make a living from it, though,’ is Eric’s recollection. ‘I mean, we all said he was good enough to be a master carpenter at the National—I used to say I’d sack him if he didn’t quit and make a go of it—but he didn’t have much belief in himself, not about that sort of thing, anyway. And when he met Kathleen, well, let’s just say I got my garage back after that.’
To hear Eric Flagg speak of my father is like reading a stranger’s obituary. In his view, Fran Hardesty was luckless, thwarted, misunderstood. ‘He lost a bit of purpose, I suppose is how I’d put it—anything he might’ve wanted for himself, Kath stepped in and replaced it. He was totally besotted with her, and she never understood that side of him—you know, that need to make something from nothing. She just wanted him to earn and pay the bills. He couldn’t earn it fast enough for her. That’s how it always seemed to me.’ But this was not the father whom I saw at close quarters. If he was ‘besotted’ with my mother, he didn’t reveal it in the day to day manoeuvres of our household. And for someone who reputedly aspired to a different life, he spent a long time avoiding the pursuit of it. He can at least be credited for not abandoning his responsibilities from the outset—stronger men than him have run out on their families, but he tried to endure.
He stopped working for Eric after I was born. ‘Contracts in my game were either feast or famine, and he needed something steadier, so that was that. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I’d hear from him every now and again, but then we lost touch. It was easier for him, I think, to just stop phoning or coming round the house.’ He took a position as a maintenance worker for the Royal Borough Council of Maidenhead and Windsor, where he was assigned duties such as pipe repair, levelling pavements, relaying tarmac, renovating public toilets, and redecorating council buildings. During these years, he gave up on stage carpentry altogether. Whatever reputation he’d established in the theatre scene dissolved.
As far as I can tell, this was the point at which his slow drift towards trouble started. He was suspended from his council job for what they termed unsatisfactory conduct: ‘remonstrating with a supervisor in a busy public concourse’. He was taken on by a large decorating company who had contracts with the NHS across the country. The hours were regular and he didn’t mind the work: he paint-rollered corridors in drab hospital tones, grouted tiles in nursing homes, wallpapered dentists’ waiting rooms, rendered the ceilings in GP clinics. But he was let go from this job, too, after an altercation with his boss about a damaged company van.
It was decided, at my mother’s urging, that he should start a decorating business of his own. She placed a notice for him in the local classifieds:
HARDESTY & HARDESTY
DOMESTIC AND COMMERCIAL PAINTING SERVICES INTERIORS & EXTERIORS, QUALITY PAPERHANGING FRIENDLY & RELIABLE, FREE QUOTATIONS
The extra Hardesty was his idea—as a cultured liar he understood that it gave people the impression of a family enterprise, trustworthy and established, so when he rolled up on his own to give an estimate he could pretend his brother or his father were occupied elsewhere: ‘We’ve a load of work on at the moment. They’re finishing a job over in [affluent local town of his choosing].’ This tactic—plus the skill of guessing other companies’ quotes and undercutting them by just enough to appear reasonable—worked more often than not.
He earned a good profit from the first few house-painting jobs he took on, and his calendar soon filled up with others. He put an ad in the job centre, seeking an apprentice, and hired a gangly teen called Wes for measly pay. (Wes became enough of a fixture for me to know him as a gangly adult, the quiet passenger in my father’s Volvo with a dog-howl laugh and a pink crust of psoriasis on his cheeks.) It was at some point in the early years of his business when my father got an unexpected call from a vicar in Bradenham—the church needed a set for a nativity play and could he do them a Christian kindness? He’d been recommended to the vicar by a member of his congregation—my grandmother, as it turned out (she didn’t see the harm: wasn’t her son-in-law supposed to have some talent, after all?). It was what my father liked to call ‘a beggar’s favour’, but he agreed to do it, and I guess it reawakened him to the pleasures of the work.
After this, he got in touch with some of his old contacts in the theatre. He enquired about stage carpentry work and found himself presented with more opportunities than he’d expected. This must’ve been one of the only moments in his life when he hit a wellspring of good fortune—he was told that the amount of skilled labour had dwindled at regional level; a dozen master carpenters in the West End had retired and most of the good craftsmen had found permanent positions. And so he was engaged as a freelancer to help build sets for shows in Stowe and Windsor, Castleford and Canterbury, Hastings, Northampton, Bolton, Aberystwyth, Wrexham, Maidstone, Newcastle, Poole, High Wycombe, and various other pinholes on the map—pick a region of the British Isles, he’d probably served a theatre there.
Between decorating jobs, he drove to workshops up and down the country, taking his instructions from whichever master carpenter had hired him, sleeping in the car when it was necessary, or in the beds of women he encountered (I hate to think how many). He was called further afield—to Dublin, Jersey, the Isle of Wight—by other carpenters who vouched for him whenever work arose, staying on their couches and earning little more than his expenses back. His heart was in the fabric of so many productions in this six-year stretch (from 1986 to 1992), even if his work left not one smudge upon the national memory: from the highbrow plays (Chekhov, Pinter, Shakespeare, Beckett, Ibsen, Brecht and so on) to silly pantomimes with tenuous celebrities (snooker players, Winter Olympians, television chefs).
These experiences could well have prompted him to chase something more permanent in a London theatre, to apply for master carpenter positions that would’ve been more lucrative and gratifying—not to mention stable. But, as he once wrote to my mother, ‘At that level it becomes a job like any other. I love that I can come and go from it, pick and choose the work. I love the variety. Being in charge is too much hassle. Ask me to make something and I’ll make it. No point adding on a load of stress.’ He seemed content to fill out the dead spaces between carpentry assignments with decorating jobs. This became the settled mode of his career. He spent a lot of time in other people’s houses and little time in his own home—I can only infer that this was how he wanted it, and maybe this was the contented state he should’ve stayed in.
When I think about the last few years he lived with us, the symptoms of his presence are what I recall, not the feeling of
his company: the dry throttle of his car returning to the driveway in the dark, the sudden brightening of our landing curtains, the tired percussion of his keys on the hallway table, the uneasy rumble of his conversations with my mother in the bathroom, his washed-out jeans and overalls spread out to dry on radiators at weekends, the tinkling of aluminium ladders being carried from the garage, long spring evenings punctuated by the grinding of a mitre saw. I’ve come to the conclusion that what he liked about his life as a stage carpenter was being appreciated for something he was good at—and who could blame him for wanting to maintain it?
But television was my father’s ruination. It changed the way he saw himself. First, it gave him false humility, which is worse than having no humility at all: ‘Yeah, people keep telling me it’s such a special project to be part of, and I suppose they’re right,’ he’d say to us. ‘You just have to look around and see the kind of talent they’ve got working on this show, it’s frightening—and there’s me in the middle of it. I keep saying, are you sure it’s really me you want? I mean, that’s Dame Maxine Laidlaw—surely I’m not good enough to be standing in a room with her.’ Later, he behaved as though the platform of success he had ascended to was nothing special. ‘You don’t want to hear me droning on about this stuff again,’ he’d say, then carry on regaling us with details.
The day he rang to inform my mother that he’d landed a position on the show, nobody was home to take the call—it was the Christmas holidays, so it’s likely that she’d taken me to see my grandparents or into town with her on errands. At this juncture of his life, he had no fixed address: the last we’d heard, he was a lodger in a guesthouse outside Gillingham. I wish someone had thought to keep the answerphone cassette that bore his message: I would like to hear it back again just once, so I could check his words against the transcript in my memory. Because I can’t tell how much I’ve misremembered the weight of his voice that day, the joyful yet mocking tone, the insinuation of I told you so that ran through it.
Still, the facts are clear enough: a carpenter he’d met while he was working at the Octagon in Bolton had been made the chargehand on a new TV show and was assembling a crew. My father had been hired and was delighted. The job began in three days’ time, and it required him to be in Leeds for several months for pre-production and filming. There was a camp bed in the workshop with his name on it, a communal kitchen and a shower room: it’d do him for a while. He planned to head north in a few days. He’d be in touch as soon as he’d got settled. It was a massive opportunity for him, he said. A massive opportunity.
I’ve often wondered what my mother might have told him if she’d been at home to answer. Would she have divested him of the idea that she still cared about his opportunities? Would she have been able to persuade him not to go?
The box was in my holdall, right where I had packed it. ‘You found it yet or what?’ my father called to me from the driver’s seat. ‘Chop chop.’ We were still in the car park. The Volvo was a dull reflection in the tinted windows of the Little Chef. An apathetic brightness steeped the sky. The engine wasn’t running, but I could smell the burned-on fumes of the exhaust pipe. I was under the spread wing of the boot door, both knees on the bumper, but my bag was slightly beyond reach. ‘I can’t get to it.’
He didn’t turn his head, just watched me in the rear-view. ‘You need to climb right in.’
I did as he suggested, trampling his possessions: a long-handled toolbox, the bin liners that contained his entire wardrobe, a bouquet of golf clubs, a bucket crammed with wallpaper brushes and old Stanley knives, bottles of turpentine and varnish. Thrown against the upright of the back left seat, upon a set of dustsheets, was my holdall. I dragged it close, unzipped it. ‘Get a move on, Dan, or I’m driving off with you still in there.’ The box was jammed in tight among the other things I’d packed, but I managed to free it.
‘Coming!’ I called, and my father started the car. I had to jump to close the boot.
‘Seatbelt,’ he said, as I got in beside him. He pressed the clutch and joggled the gearstick. ‘So, how come I’ve not heard about this before now?’ he asked, reversing. ‘They only just brought it out on tape. Mum ordered it for me.’
‘How long is the loan on it?’
‘A few weeks, I think.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so we don’t have to listen right away. We can put some music on for a bit. I’ve got The Smiths with me—you’ll like them.’
My shoulders sagged. ‘But I’ve never heard this one before.’
‘I’ve never heard it before either, and I work on the bloody show. You’re a proper fanatic, eh?’
‘Yeah. So what?’
He was laughing at me. ‘How many times would you say you’ve watched it?’
‘Shut up, Dad.’
‘Ha ha. Go on. I want to know.’
I hesitated. ‘Which episode?’
‘The whole series, start to finish. How many times?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ten?’
I shrugged.
‘Twenty?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘And now you want to listen to the book on tape—I mean, doesn’t the same old story get boring after a while?’
‘The book’s quite different from the show.’
He pretended that he knew this. ‘Not that much.’
‘And the tapes are read by Maxine Laidlaw, so they’re different as well.’
‘Okay, I get it.’ He eyeballed me. ‘You’re smitten.’
‘I just like to know as much as I can. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But sometimes knowing too much can spoil things, don’t you think? It’s like when you hear a song and the lyrics make you feel wow, this band, this band really knows what it’s like to have your heart ripped out, and then you hear them interviewed about it—turns out the song is really all about them being off their heads on LSD.’
‘What’s LSD?’
‘It’s something you shouldn’t . . . Never mind,’ he said. ‘All right, you win—we’ll put the first tape on, if it means that much to you. But just the first one, okay, or I’ll get queasy.’ He waited for a clearing in the traffic and rolled us back onto the carriageway. ‘I don’t see the point of talking books myself. Same person whining on at you for ages. I’d rather use my own imagination, make up my own voices.’ He glanced down at the box again. ‘How many tapes are in there, anyway?’
‘Four,’ I said.
‘Bloody hell. That must be hours’ worth!’
‘You swore again, Dad.’
‘Oh, come off it, that’s not swearing.’
‘Yes it is. And so is damn and piss and git.’
‘What?’ He laughed. ‘Who told you that? That’s ridiculous!’
‘Mum says that piss is rude. And damn is only half swearing, but it’s still bad.’
The ‘Oh’ of recognition he made was long and exaggerated. ‘Well, your mother’s got her good side, but she’s wrong most of the time. Have you seen her record collection? Two of the worst words in the English language for you there: Simply Red.’
I let him go on chuckling at himself, until a lorry tried to move into the lane in front of us without indicating. ‘Look at this moron!’ My father hit the horn. As we accelerated past, he stooped to glare up at the driver in the cabin. ‘Dickhead,’ he muttered.
‘Can I put the tape on now?’ I said.
He gave a little exhalation, just to register his annoyance. ‘Yeah, go on. But no shirking on the map reading. I still need those directions.’
The cover illustration on the box was quite unusual: a pencil crayon drawing of a rangy silhouette emerging from a forest. In plain red lettering across the top, it said:
Now a major ITV series
The four cassettes were housed in moulded plastic, packed so snugly that the first tape squeaked as I lifted it out. I clunked it into the mouth of the stereo and waited. It was the inaugural airing
; I’d been saving it especially for our trip and I felt a sudden apprehension that it might not be as good as I was hoping for, that this might reflect poorly on me. ‘You’d better crank it up a bit,’ my father said. ‘Speaker’s blown on my side.’
White noise filled the car. And then there came a throaty voice, familiar but different, more present in my ears than it appeared on television. Her otherworld accent was much less pronounced—barely discernible, in fact—and her articulation of the words more ponderous, theatrical. ‘The Artifex Appears,’ she said. Long pause. ‘By Agnes Mosur.’ Long pause. ‘Read by Maxine Laidlaw.’
‘Crikey,’ said my father. ‘She doesn’t speak this slow in real life.’
‘I can’t believe you know her.’
‘Oh, sure.’ He let a small moment of hush settle. ‘She’s very friendly, Maxine, actually. Quick with a joke. You’ll see.’
‘Chapter One,’ said Maxine Laidlaw.
‘I mean, I wouldn’t say we’re best mates or anything—’
‘The Compartment.’
‘It’s more of a nod-politely-at-each-other-in-the-canteen state of affairs.’
‘On a cold bright day in late October, the Artifex appeared—’
‘But, yeah, she knows who I am.’
‘Shush,’ I said. ‘You’re talking over it.’
‘Oh, well—pardon me. Here, wind it back.’
The final carefree moments of my life unfolded on a section of the A1 between the villages of Colsterworth and Sprotbrough, as nondescript as any other length of highway in Great Britain. It’s an ordinary stretch of asphalt that joins the heel of Lincolnshire with the base of Yorkshire, so devoid of character that to drive along it is to undergo an anaesthetic at seventy miles per hour. But when I think about that slice of road I find its uninspiring details have stuck with me. I suspect this has a lot to do with yearning. If I could reset the clocks to any point in time, it would be the hour we spent en route to Sprotbrough, listening to Maxine Laidlaw read The Artifex Appears in her slow, lurching voice. I know what I’d do differently. I would tell my father that I loved him more than any television programme. I would make it clear that my respect for him wasn’t contingent on his level of success or what other people thought of him. I would tell him that I admired him more for taking me on this trip to Leeds than for anything he planned to show me when we got there. I would tell him that he had nothing to prove to me, even if it wasn’t true.
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 5
