Find Another Place

by Ben Graff

  Why David Cameron was the worst prime minister in history and things of that ilk formed equally safe ground. We once watched Barack Obama give a press conference where his microphone didn’t work. He had to ask if anybody had another one, which we both thought was quite funny.

  My father was impressed by very few people, or at least so far as I knew. Long-dead scientists and pyramid builders perhaps, Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Beatles, I suppose. All politicians were automatically idiots, but Obama was the exception. A man of substance, somebody to be admired. This was something we were agreed upon.

  Our own children joined the ranks for football in later years. That final match with Dad in the line-up, although we did not know it at the time, was on the day he first told me he didn’t feel well. It was a Good Friday, at Matt’s house. My mother had always said that she could not imagine Good Friday as a normal day, and this one in hindsight turned out not to be. Reuben jumping about, pretending to be a horse, as he often did. Maddie chatting away with Evie, Annabelle playing with care and thought, shepherding Gabriella away when she wandered onto the pitch to see what was going on. Francesca demonstrating skills that none of the rest of us had, partly the product of coaching but not just that. Dad played mainly as a goalkeeper, alert and neat with the ball but rarely pushing up field.

  Later I was to wonder as to what he might have been thinking about as we played. Not so much whether he knew how ill he was as I do not think he did, more what seeing his children play with their children and with him was like on that perfect spring day. The natural order of things, I would suppose. We were following in the same traditions, now a generation on from games with Martin and the other grandparents and my mum, with him as the bridge, the oldest survivor in that moment. In that sense, we were parenting much as he had. Things were always at their easiest during a game.

  Perhaps this was what had drawn me to chess, had pushed me deeper into it, after that day when he had taken the wooden pieces out of their box and shown them to us for the first time. There was much about chess that was simpler than real life, with all of its rituals and processes to be followed. Shake hands when you first greet your opponent at the board, then again just before you start and finally when the game is over. Ask your opponent if they “want to have a look at it”, if you win, but in no way be offended if they do not. In extremes, if you have lost and are distraught, no words have to accompany the final handshake. But not to shake at the end will always be viewed as a breach of etiquette akin to deliberately running the victor’s grandmother over in the car park.

  For all the possibilities, chess generally rewards time invested in thinking and studying openings, middle games often generate positions with recognisable tactical themes, identifiable pawn chains, squares that are clearly strong or weak – a sense of what might need to be done. Endgames are hardest, but how to use your king, where to place your rooks, when you need to gain or lose a tempo, are all things that can be learnt, perhaps not perfectly but well enough to do for most. Even in those positions that seem to transcend all this, there are rules and tests to fall back on. Questions such as, what is threatened, or, what is the position of my worst placed piece and how can it be improved, mean a chess player is rarely wholly without resource.

  Life is never really like that, perhaps because it is not confined to sixty-four simple squares and two players. It is harder to predict who might do what, still less why. Chess pieces are much easier to assess. Knights generally seek central squares (a knight on the rim is very dim, the old saying goes), rooks need open files, bishops long diagonals, the king shelter – at least while there are a lot of pieces on the board. It is altogether a more certain and predictable world, which is why it provides refuge to so many. Even though he had gifted it to me, my father never really entered properly into its realm.

  I don’t think he ever told me what he thought I was like as a parent, beyond the occasional observation that we should be stricter. Perhaps the football and the many other games were all the affirmation he thought was needed, his participation how we knew that we were doing alright.

  We watched a lot of sport together in his last few months. We talked about the limitations in Alastair Cook’s captaincy of the England cricket team, about which we felt we knew a lot, and the technique behind Phil Mickelson’s golf swing, about which we recognised we knew less.

  He had been unlucky in football, that much was clear. Growing up in London, the non-local team that stole his heart turned out to be absolutely terrible. Whatever moment had grabbed his attention, there had not been many others. For all the pain it had brought him, few could challenge his support for Wolves as lacking in authenticity. It was a cut above being an Aldershot-born Manchester United fan, as I was, which made me a glory seeker in the eyes of many.

  A Wolves game we watched though was not a success, if not for the usual reasons. The cheers from the stadium, even filtered through a television, proved too much for him. It was not the noise itself, just the distance between him and those cheering, happy people. He faced things that they did not, much more imminently at any rate.

  In that last bit of time, we watched a programme about 9/11 with Maddie that discussed the way in which the conspiracy theories surrounding the day were actually part of an elaborate plot to distract attention from the real questions that were not being addressed. Namely, the failure of American intelligence in the run-up to the attacks, the role of Saudi Arabia during them, and the complete collapse of America’s chain of command immediately afterwards. I ask my father what he makes of it all and he just shrugs.

  “It’s not so much that I don’t think there is something in that, it’s just I am tired,” he says. “You always think things will become clearer to you, but everything seems just as inconclusive now as it ever did.”

  I am intrigued, but I can see in his face that he does not want me to pursue it. He would rather rest and then play another game.

  We generally stuck to watching sport, then The Big Bang Theory.

  We played Scrabble regularly in the conservatory. We had long since agreed that Monopoly was just a game of luck. Bridge and chess provided an insufficiently level playing field, but Scrabble was where we could meet. It was often just the two of us. Sometimes Matt, who was the strongest Scrabble player, or Sheila, my father’s partner, would join us. His game was not much weaker than it had been, but he did lose more than he won.

  “All I want is your best game,” he said, re-racking the letters with a look of determination and focus. A week before he dies we play for the last time. He is behind, but the point deduction for unused letters at the end does for me and he wins by two.

  All Our Christmases

  It starts with choosing the tree from a neighbouring farm, always the same place, with its barns and tractors and winter mud. They make more from the trees than a lot of other stuff, apart from the European subsidies, the owner mutters to Dad, who nods and continues to assess the Norway spruces as if conducting one of his scientific experiments. Fortunately this does not take quite as long as those other experiments involving multiple test drives of numerous potential second-hand vehicles we might buy, or the dozens of tester pots of slightly differing shades of magnolia that will have to be daubed onto any wall before a decision can be made. Even so, there is a moment where the time we are spending on choosing a tree feels comparable to either of those scenarios. He always thought he could completely solve a problem if he applied the right tests, gave the problem enough thought.

  The trees all look the same to me and Matt, but apparently this is not the case and the fact that we do not recognise this annoys him. Finally though, he will choose, and we will load the thing into the car and head for home. Putting the lights on will be an extremely long, tense task that Dad will make clear requires no input from any of us. Tempers fray, his especially. The tree often leans at the wrong angle in the pot, and one year leaves a mark on the ceiling as it
stubbornly refuses to be manoeuvred into place. But, eventually, it will stand straight, and much later still his light-stringing agonies will be over and it will be time to decorate.

  Baubles of blue and silver and gold, with frosted white patterns on them, will be lifted from tissue paper-filled shoe boxes. Some find prominent places every year, for others it can depend. There is never tinsel, but there are fir cones and tiny pretend parcels to hang, a felt Christmas tree made by Matt, red plastic apples, and a gold star for the top; you can smell the sweetness of the tree sap as it is pushed into place.

  Caspar comes to sniff the pot and half-heartedly swipe at low-hanging spheres, before the need for sleep overwhelms him and he curls up in his basket by the Rayburn. We pin Christmas cards to the kitchen’s ceiling beam and place others on the sitting room mantelpiece. There are certain cards that must be visible because of who sent them, with others it depends on the picture. Mum and Dad prepare the spare bedroom with fresh sheets and pillowcases, strategically placing a mat over the stain on the thin blue carpet, stacking any stray books and papers into one of the cupboards.

  The larder groans with food. There are places we are not allowed to look.

  The build-up will have seen school pantomimes and shows, weeks of rehearsals on ever darkening winter nights, Mum and Dad sitting proudly in the audience while we parrot our words, all those drives to rehearsals through November rain and December sleet now worth it. When offstage, we loll in the music room, eating chocolate Rice Krispie cakes and drinking Coke from throwaway cups, listening to the music thumping through the wall from the school hall. There is a pattern and a rhythm to the season. School shows, a trip to the theatre to see The Wind in the Willows, or some such, carol singing on poorly-lit frosty village streets, and then at last the day itself draws close.

  It is always the same. Theresa and Dave will arrive mid-morning on Christmas Eve, car filled to the brim with food and presents. Those she’s done tidily wrapped in red paper, his contribution often in newspaper, held together with masking tape. They are late converts to Christmas.

  There will be crisps and sweets and biscuits and Turkish Delight and Christmas crackers and other things that will be viewed by Mum as being of varying degrees of help. The turkey they bring one year ‘just in case,’ will not be well received. Dave will insist on wearing his slippers as he goes to and from the car to unload, dragging country mud onto newly hoovered carpet.

  When they are finally all unpacked, we will go to the pub for Christmas Eve lunch. Not The Bell, but further out, not so far from the fields that would later reveal the secrets of notorious serial killer and self-styled King of Ledbury, Fred West.

  It is usually before the snow and the real country cold at this time of year. Rarely white, more brown and damp, in the day at least, the gloom of the low-ceilinged pub only softened by its own Christmas decorations that glint in artificial indoor light somehow diminished by the weakness of the winter sun.

  The air is scented with smoke from the neighbouring snug bar and bleach from the toilet, if we are unlucky enough to be seated by the door. I will drink tonic water and eat croquet potatoes, chips and beans. Mum asks if anyone else has ever requested it, but apparently even at the bargain price of £1.50 they have not; they have put it on the menu so the bar staff will know what to charge. Matt will fidget. Theresa will suggest that her pie is in fact recycled leftovers. Dave will share thoughts on Thatcherism and will sing under his breath. “Ben, Ben, Ben. Matt, Matt, Matt.” Mum will drink a large glass of wine.

  On Christmas Eve afternoon, we will sometimes go to the Christingle service at Bosbury Church. Never Dave or Dad, occasionally Theresa, always Mum of course. The biggest tree of them all stands here, in the knave next to the board that lists all the vicars back to 900AD. I always sniggered at the thought of Dad trying to put the lights on this tree, and then felt guilty yet again.

  We know most of the villagers. It is half full, which makes it one of the busiest services of the year. We have wrapped red ribbons around oranges. Four cocktail sticks, with fruits and sweets, which we nibble on as the service progresses. White candle in the middle, pushed deep into the flesh of the orange.

  One year a girl’s hair catches fire and for a moment the smell of it burning is stronger than that of the pine and stone and all of the memories of the ancient building that can be inhaled with every breath. Then the vicar hits the side of her head with his vestments and the crisis passes.

  I always knew that I didn’t really believe any of this. Not really. Still too young to experience the full surprise of realising that other people actually did. I guess it was the one thing Mum would have changed in me if she could have done, not that she ever said.

  But on Christmas Eve, in a village church, it is impossible not to feel a part of something more. In amongst the candles and the decorations, family tombs and stained glass, cross above, gas heating glowing but unequal to the task of warming this ancient place with its smooth stone floor. Sitting on a pew that so many have sat on before you and so many more will long after you are gone, considering your own mortality, you think to them all. Their hopes and fears. Either washed away by time or still yet to form, probably not that different from our own. But here in this moment it is me and those around me who are carrying on these traditions. Ancestors and descendants watching on silently; the owners of other moments, other times, but still partial sharers in the here and now.

  In later years I will wonder if it might have been different if she had been low church Protestant instead of Catholic. Discussions about the state of the church roof over coffee, vague half-doubtful, half-formed hopes quietly mumbled, more my thing perhaps. I accept that this might not be everyone’s definition of low church, but it is just possible I might have found a place within it.

  Pascal’s Wager, you lose nothing by believing in God, never worked for me because of the second wager inherent within it; who’s to say that God doesn’t prefer the honest doubter to the scheming chancer? Perhaps I thought to all these things as we stood in the church, with the oranges and the candles, Christmas excitement mounting as the service draws to a close. But I think mostly I was focussed on what my presents might be.

  Although I liked the idea of a faith with different views about the afterlife, I never really considered being Jewish from a religious perspective. I was aware of this side of me too late to feel it spiritually; it was more like a memory of something I might have been, something I still was in part, a whole history somehow beyond reach. In some ways it was hard enough to work out who you were meant to be without all these extra layers of ambiguity.

  In the evening they will lock themselves away to wrap. It’s a big job. We’d listen to the rustle of the paper and the screech of the Sellotape outside their door, the muffle of their voices, which are occasionally raised, until discovered and shooed away. Dave will read the Mirror. He might play the mouth organ or even his guitar, or ask to record us playing the piano, all of which we will find annoying. He will assume responsibility tomorrow for clearing away the rubbish, forcing discarded wrapping paper into black bin liners. At some point on Christmas Day he will offer to wash Dad’s car. Theresa will knit, ball of wool at her feet; jumpers, scarves and cuddly toys emerging from the tangle, melding incrementally with every click of her needles. I’ll watch television with Matt, Caspar nestled up on the sofa.

  After what seems like many hours, Mum and Dad will emerge and bright blue pillowcases will be placed by the tree, empty at this stage. They will drink mulled wine, Theresa and Dave will pretend to, and they will all eat mince pies. We are in for Christmas.

  A memory from much earlier still, watching a Willo the Wisp cartoon about Halloween one Christmas Eve. An interesting piece of scheduling, but I was at that age where things become firmly imprinted, such that I often think back to witches on broomsticks at this time of year. It might have been the same Aldershot winter that it did snow and the three o
f us walked through the wood as the evening bled into night. Somebody threw snowballs at us and we couldn’t see who it was. Looking back now, perhaps it was Dad, it’s hard to know. Either way, we felt safe with him, there in that wood on a Christmas Eve night, when we were very little.

  Four o’ clock in the morning starts became six, eventually later still. Pillowcases in the morning, main presents after lunch. Things for my railway, another engine; I was top heavy with them, but whenever I looked at model railway catalogues they were what interested me most, even if strictly speaking I did not need nine. I had an unorthodox set-up, ranging from a Cornish tin mining tank engine through to the Flying Scotsman. A real mix of liveries and eras, to the point when I would eventually decide it was all a preserved railway.

  I would have done it differently had I not started it as a seven-year-old. Carriages, trucks, a signal box, new track, points and miniature trees and moss all featured over the years. Martin constructed all my station buildings himself in our garage, doing all the cutting and joining, while I handed him the screws and kept my hands warm by clasping a cup of coffee.

  One of the engines which we bought together from a second-hand shop on the Isle of Wight would breathe actual steam, if you put oil in its funnel. I could chart the history of Christmas presents, birthday presents and summer holiday savings through my growing rail network, and if I looked more closely I could see Martin’s hand in its incremental development as it sprawled over more and more of my bedroom. Perhaps the seminal moment had been when my grandfather had sawn my fitted wardrobe in half so that we could build a new station and siding complex over what was now the much lower top of it. We had both beamed with pride when the work was done and were somewhat taken aback by my mother’s reaction. Where I was now going to hang my clothes had not entered into our calculations.