by Ruby Soames
‘What was my dad like?’ I’d ask my mother after gauging a safe mood for her to talk about the past.
She’d ponder. ‘A marsupial.’
‘A what?’
‘He had hairy hands, he was all round and his nose twitched. I used to call him Mr Wombat. Mr Wombat! And he called me Mrs Wombat. Come here Mr Wombat. Mr Wombat wants a …’
‘I got it.’
So is that Mr Wombat sitting a few seats behind me? Yesterday I went to my father’s wedding and today we’re going on a family holiday.
Pop goes another champagne cork.
Henry Hardwick. We both stepped onto the airplane at the same time, and I was that close to him. His new wife sashayed down the First Class aisle, and then turned round to him and shouted, ‘Oi! Over ‘ere!’ She just couldn’t wait to start their honeymoon even while the groom was standing at the entrance of the craft catching his breath. As I searched for an excuse to approach him, the flight attendant led him to his seat. They’re now behind a curtain, isolated. I hear her laughter, see the flight attendant coming back and forth with chocolates and canapés, disinfected cloths to wipe up their mess.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been convinced I’ve seen my father. At school I would stand at the gates looking out onto the busy road, watching men pass, waiting for one of them to stop and recognise me as his daughter. I regaled my peers with stories of my father – the underworld spy, the explorer lost in a jungle with only a crumpled photograph of me to keep him going, a world champion boxer and raconteur. When home, I’d sit watching TV, replacing the hero of every programme with my dad.
Of course I looked for him. He could have been anyone in a crowd. Anyone being served in a queue: the homeless man outside the tube station, the father of a friend of mine, any one of the be-suited professional men anywhere in the City.
Henry Hardwick.
I’ve created so many scenarios about what I’d do if ever I saw him. I’d imagined receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, waiting for the applause to die down before I could make my speech, and after everyone stopped cheering there would still be one person at the back clapping. As the audience turned to him, he’d proclaim, fighting back tears of pride, ‘That’s my daughter! That’s my Sarah.’ Perhaps one morning he would turn up on my doorstep. I’d make him tea and sandwiches and we’d each tell the story of our lives. He’d fix my leaking radiator, stand over a sizzling barbecue on hot Sunday afternoon and serve sausages to my friends. He’d pass on wise aphorisms about life that I’d later tell my kids: ‘Now I always remember my old father saying, ‘Wash your hands before you eat, you never know –’
Henry Hardwick. Maybe he’d be poor and old, unable to die without the forgiveness of his long lost daughter. I’m sent for. We come face to face in the hospital room. I bring my ear to his dry mouth and listen for his last croaky words … The script finishes there.
I have to see him one more time. I walk down the aisle to the furthest set of toilets and pass the curtain where Henry and his wife have made their burrow. I peep through a gap. Their seats have been elongated into beds and they lie with their arms around each other, mummified in airline blankets and fashion magazines. His mouth is open like an upturned drain, a nest of her hair hovers above it. He’s grey around the temples and wears long socks. I try to understand why the intensity of my mother’s love for him never changed despite what he did.
His head lifts. He opens his eyes, looks straight at me, squinting. His lips move as his fingers curl up around the edge of the blanket. He goes back to sleep.
Henry Hardwick. Well, here he is. What do I do now?
3
The heat eases me down from the plane onto the tarmac. The chill of the last three months evaporates from my skin, and I feel I can move easily. Like the dogs I’ve walked for the last six months, I’ve only been able to see in shades of grey, but now I’m blasted with the full spectrum of colour.
A man in a chauffeur’s uniform holds up a card with the name of the hotel. He leads me into a white van, slides the door closed and tilts his hat over his eyes. I look out for Henry Hardwick, but haven’t seen him since we landed.
The driver points out little villages of pastel-coloured houses; he hoots behind rusting white and yellow buses packed with people, animals and crates and thudding with music. From the road I can sometimes spot white Palladianstyle homes set behind immaculate lawns. We bump along until we hug the electric-blue sea lined with uninterrupted stretches of sand.
‘Mahogany Grove,’ says the driver, explaining why the light has been temporarily obscured by huge trees. I spot a green monkey. Then another. Through the forest we come to a bridge across blue lotus flowers floating on the water and then we see the sea again and the main entrance to the Paradise Beach Club.
My heart beats like a Motown tune when we stop at the glass doors. Inside, a receptionist says my name as if she’s been waiting for me all her life. A tall man with superb posture stands by my side in what looks like an admiral’s uniform. This is Ferdinand, I’m told, my ‘personal butler’. He smiles when I go to shake his hand and asks me to follow him.
There’s a heady silence, broken only by the faint clicking of expensive shoes over marble, and colourful little birds chasing each other through the front of the lobby. We pass a flower display the size of my room at Tash’s place.
‘Wow!’
‘Splendid, aren’t they? They are known as The Pride of Barbados. Look inside the petals, and there are colours we don’t even have names for.’
I must look like a bedraggled stray cat in these surroundings. But I look down at Joe’s T-shirt and my worn-out trainers and reassure myself that in a place like this, you could only be exceptionally rich to dress like me.
We stop outside two enormous wooden doors. Ferdinand swipes his magnetic card, and the antique, carved arms of the door click open. I gaze into the vast white room softened by the billowing mosquito net over the bed.
‘Ma’am,’ Ferdinand places the key card on a dresser and looks back at me. ‘Ma’am? This is the Walter Raleigh Suite. If it displeases you, you can see another?’ he looks anxious, hoping my stunned silence isn’t unprecedented disappointment. But it’s only the fear that this brilliant vision of perfection might pop and leave me under the duvet in Tash’s apartment.
A large four-poster bed populated with pillows, a fireplace, a large white armchair. There’s a cinema-sized plasma screen which spells out my name, and a letter written in ink explaining how dedicated the hotel staff are to making my stay as pleasant and luxurious as possible.
Ferdinand opens the door to the bathroom, clicks on the lights. We see ourselves in the mirror above a huge round bath. In the corner there’s a large shower and towers of bouncy white towels. Back in the bedroom, he points to another door, ‘Here is the dressing room, the safe is in this cupboard.’ I nod as he opens teak shutters, ‘Your terrace leads to the sea.’
He returns to the centre of the room and holds up the only unsightly object in the hotel, my bag.
‘I’ll have the maid unpack your belongings while you visit our gardens.’
I almost rugby tackle him for the bag. We lock eyes. ‘I hardly have anything. I’ll do it.’
‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’ he asks, bewildered.
‘Yes. It’s perfect, thank you.’
‘When you want a tour of the hotel, or if you need me for anything, I shall be outside your door, If not, dial 0 for reception and ask for me. Ferdinand.’
‘Thank you, Ferdinand.’
‘Or Ferdi. Everyone calls me Ferdi, ma’am.’
‘Ferdi. Call me Sarah, not “Ma’am”.’
‘Is there anything you require? A rum punch, daiquiri, club sandwich, coconut, papaya cocktail, hum … or a –’
I shake my head.
He bows, ‘Ma’am.’
The door closes behind him as I fall back into the chesterfield sofa and squeeze a cushion to my chest.
4
The terrace outside my r
oom is furnished with a hammock the size of a small rowing boat, a table, chairs and a sun lounger. I walk around self-consciously before sinking into the hammock. I look up at the sky and, all that I’ve left behind seems unimaginable. I want to paddle in the sea, feel my toes in the sand. Turning on my side to eject myself from the netting, my foot gets caught. I lunge to the ground with an ankle still twisted in the fabric. I try to walk my hands forward while flicking out my feet and fear that I may never get out of this trap, or worse, that I’ll have to be rescued by my butler. I stop, let go of the struggle and gradually my foot is free. I spring up and check no one saw me upside down.
Next to my room is another suite with a little terrace attached to mine. I peep over to see if anyone’s there. The shutters are closed, the terrace chairs folded. All clear; no Tash, no journalists, no mother, no dogs nipping at my ankles. Just space – just two whole weeks to myself.
I walk down to the end of the garden and the beach. Again, I’m almost the only person but for a family with a toddler. The sand crunches under my feet and I stand in the froth, watching my feet disappear under the water. Turning my back against the sky and sea, I look between the rows of palm trees and bushes full of flowers where two men are tugging out a red and green fishing boat. They wave, I wave back.
I plod back to my room thinking about what kind of swimming costume I’ll buy. But right now, I’m tingling with tiredness.
Snuggled into my white waffle cotton bathrobe, I lie on my bed, feeling the honeyed breeze strolling in and out the open windows. My body is cool after a long shower and I can’t remember the last time I felt such calm.
Someone knocks on the hotel door, and I hear the shuffling of shoes and a low cough. Another tap. I turn the handle to see Ferdi.
‘I apologise if I’ve disturbed you, ma’am, but I thought you might like something special to drink before you rest.’
‘That would be lovely. “Sarah”, please.’
‘Yes. Miss Sarah. I would like to offer you this.’ He hands me a tall green drink dressed with mint, rosemary leaves, bits of pineapple and shavings of what looks like tree bark.
‘Does it have a name?’
‘I call it, Mother’s Special Drink. It’s a wonder for jet lag. For anything really. A few sips and you’ll feel refreshed.’
‘Thank you Ferdi, it looks delicious. What’s in it?’
‘I can’t say, ma’am. It’s a secret passed down through the female line of my family.’
He places the drink on the table, and waits for me to drink it – which is a little embarrassing as I was hoping to flush it down the toilet.
I take a sip. It tastes strange – creamy, spicy with a few woody lumps which catch on my tongue.
‘You have to finish it all to experience the full benefits.’
I pick up the drink again and wonder if this is standard procedure at the Paradise Beach Club Hotel.
‘You’re from London, aren’t you?’ He rolls onto his toes which turn up under his light canvas shoes, then drops back on his heels.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Very cold country.’
‘You’ve been there? Ferdi, do sit down. ‘
He doesn’t, choosing to smooth out my bedclothes instead. ‘Yes. 2009-2011. They were difficult years for me.’ He lowers his head as if ashamed.
2009 … Joseph and I had left university and were renting a flat together in London. We used to have all our friends over on Sunday afternoon to play parlour games. I see him now, one word, two syllables … When will the time come I don’t convert every date into what I was doing with Joseph at that time?
Ferdi shifts his weight, looks at me as if he expects another question.
‘Where did you stay?’
‘All around, but I did my hotel training in Hyde Park. Do you know it?’
‘Sure. Did you like it?’
‘No, ma’am. I hadn’t planned to work in the catering profession. I went in the hope of making it in the film business. That’s my dream, you see, to make films. I believed Britain would offer more opportunities than America and went laden with my scripts and a show-reel, but alas, doors did not open for me. It was very cold, ma’am. Everyone talked of cut-backs and redundancies, but what I saw was not merely a shortage of money but a recession of the heart.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ I looked up at a fleet of white sails scudding across the water. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the right time for you.’
‘That’s what my mother said.’
‘The film business, it’s never easy, but don’t give up if that’s what you really want.’
‘No, ma’am – Sarah – I haven’t. I love working here and I meet very interesting people, like yourself, and of course, many people who come here are in the film industry, so, who knows? One day, maybe.’ He opens his palm for the empty glass. ‘It’s in the lap of the Gods.’
My mouth is now burning.
‘Now I shall leave you to rest. And you’ll have the most healing and restorative of sleeps. If you wish for anything –’
‘I’ll call you,’ I manage to say through my scorched vocal chords. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s a long flight I know. Such travel, for us, is not a natural state; we aren’t birds. The body, mind and soul need to recover. Enjoy your sleep.’
Ferdi leaves me with the fragments of his life and very sore lips. I can’t imagine him in London traffic.
I lie down under the slow fan as the blades turn the air and time around.
5
‘Tell me something else about my dad?’ I’d ask my mother as we lay in her bed, me bridged over her legs, her tray of coffee perched on her knees. She’d lean against her pillows and stretch.
‘Pass the Codeine. Here, open it. Bloody thing’s childproof.’
I’d twist the top open. ‘About my dad?’
‘Ugh! What more do you want to know?’ she’d ask pouring her pot of black coffee into a mug half filled with whisky.
‘You know, how you met, stuff –’
‘You know it all already.’
‘Please. Again.’
‘OK. I’ll tell you, Sarah, because you’re bright and you’re going to make something of yourself. I’ll tell you so you never think you’ve met the one, and then get pregnant, and think he’ll stick by you – they never do, never do. Got that?’
‘Yes, yes, so go on, tell me –’
I spent much of my childhood on mum’s bed. Until I started secondary, I’d miss school in three-day sequences – enough time until a doctor’s note was requested. She’d make herself a strong black coffee and a small glass of Fernet-Branca to steady her shaking hands before the first whisky. After that, drink after drink, pill after pill, the days went by. Mum only left the house if it was absolutely necessary, otherwise it was my job to buy her the cigarettes and alcohol. People never came over. Our place was cramped and airless and we were high up in a building whose lift rarely worked. By night things at home could get rowdy, usually with Mum trying to go out and me trying to keep her in. The days would end with me dragging her heavy, jerking body to her bed when she passed out. I’d stay awake, listening in case she got up again or choked. Twice she miscalculated the dose of barbiturates and went into a fit. I taught myself CPR from the TV because I figured if I lost mum, I didn’t have anybody else in the world.
‘Henry Hardwick – your father - was top drawer’. That’s what my mother would’ve called him – crème de la crème. My mother was such a snob – her dad was a brigadier. They were distantly related to some Lord, so she always wanted me to “carry on the family line”. She wanted me to learn things like “flar arranging”.’
‘Flar’ I repeated, giggling at the thought of this upper class nan that I’d never met because I was illegitimate.
‘Yes, she’d gone to finishing school. She thought she’d struck lucky marrying my dad – a man who worked at Lloyds, public school and that. So I was brought up posh – you wouldn’t know it looking at this dump. But,
I was born in a beautiful house with a garden, a grand piano, botanical greenhouse, and spare rooms and rooms to spare. Wisteria, Hollyhocks, real fireplaces. That’s why, Sarah, I love beautiful houses – I once lived like that – and darling, it’s a much, much better way to live. Bricks never let you down.’
‘Can we go there?’
‘No, they had to sell it when my dad lost everything in some insurance blow-out, plane crash or something. After that, anything they could scrape together went towards my education – I was their only remaining marketable asset.’
‘You?’
‘Yeah, Daddy only saw me as a way of moving himself up in the world – my mother, she wasn’t that much better – honestly, she had Prince Charles in mind before Diana came along and ruined her plans! So I went to secretarial college in London instead of doing A-levels because my dad didn’t think women could do any better than being a secretary – apart from marrying the boss! So I went to London, stayed with an old aunt of my father’s who lived in a little flat off Fulham Broadway – not far from here. It wasn’t bad but she moaned about me constantly. Anyway, I did the course and got a job as a legal secretary in the city. And that’s where I met Henry. Roll me a spliff would you love?’
She sipped her drink, lolled her head around a bit.
‘And? And?’
She’d gone on standby for a little bit, thinking back. I pinched her toes. ‘Go on!’ I never tired of hearing about my father although her memories dragged her down. We’d had variations of this conversation many times on unmade, dirty sheets in a landscape of empty wine and pill bottles.
‘It was a very old fashioned chambers, in Temple, it was like something out of a Trollope novel. All the men were quite old apart from one.’
‘Henry.’
‘Yup. And as soon as I’d heard the name – Henry Hardwick – I thought, that’s the one for me. I don’t know why – it just sounded … strong, important … smart, gentlemanly – I wanted to impress my parents, stop them worrying all the time.’ She looked into her drink as if she could find that silly teenager whose impulse had lead us to this flat. ‘He wasn’t dashing or handsome – no muscles on his chest or funny stories – in fact he hardly spoke. He wore glasses and seemed sort of … vulnerable, in a way. He’d been to Balliol College, Oxford – he was arrogant yet shy, very clever, they said, yet sometimes unsure. He was older, 26 at the time, quite a bit older than me. There was always quite a hoo-hah about him – his dad was a really important lawyer and Henry used to go to all the toff parties and clubs around London. The girls used to pick out pictures of him in Tatler and The Nigel Dempster column in the Daily Mail in our lunch hour.’
