by Hatch, Ben
‘Did you?’
‘We were very secretly.’
‘You must have been very secretly. And Granddad will be very pleased.’
A taxi behind hoots. I step out of the car. Dinah gets out to hug me. I open the kids’ doors in turn and kiss Charlie in his seat and then Phoebe in hers.
The sinking feeling starts in the queue for my ticket.
CHAPTER 8
‘Daddeeeee!’ Phoebe’s Dora bag bounces on her back as she
Druns full pelt along the platform towards me. I bend to one knee, drop my bag and take the force of her in my arms. I hug her head and pick her up. She squashes my cheeks together. It’s been three days but already she somehow looks indefinably different.
‘Guess what?’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Mummy stood in my poo.’
Charlie toddles over, beaming from ear to ear, waving a Thomas the Tank Engine toy. I scoop him up too.
‘As hard as you can,’ I tell him.
He squeezes.
‘That’s very hard.’
‘I a big boy.’
‘You are a big boy.’
‘Thomas,’ he says.
‘Wow. Is that yours?’
Charlie grits his teeth and pats my cheeks matily between his palms like Eric Morecambe. I carry them towards Dinah as Phoebe informs me the car stinks ‘to high heaven’.
‘To high heaven. Really? Hi, love.’
I hug Dinah.
‘How was it?’ she asks.
I rock my hand back and forth.
We’re at Leicester train station. The car’s parked on Conduit Street round the corner. We head there.
‘Why does the car stink to high heaven?’
‘Phoebe! Daddy doesn’t want to hear that.’
‘He does,’ I say.
Dinah starts to say something but Phoebe squirms in my arms. ‘Let me tell him. Daddy, we were in the car heading for the first attraction.’
I laugh at how the word attraction has entered her vocabulary and Dinah smiles.
‘DADDDEEEE,’ she twists my face away from Dinah’s.
‘I’m listening, pops.’
‘Right.’ Phoebe wriggles contently. ‘We were heading for an attraction and I needed a wee. Well, I thought it was a wee anyway.’ She laughs, putting her hand in front of her mouth. ‘But it was actually a poo…’ She squeezes my cheeks together again. ‘… as well as a wee so then…’ Phoebe boggles her eyes ‘… so then Mummy stopped the car and I had a nature wee. You don’t know what a nature wee is.’
‘One outside that’s unplanned.’
‘You’re cor-rect. But the poo sort of slipped out. Oh my goodness me. And then Charlie ran off. And Mummy was cross because we were near a big, big road and the cars were going whooosh really, really fast. And Charlie was crying and…’
‘I’m so pleased to be here,’ I say.
‘Dadddddeeee!’
Dinah kisses me.
‘Dadddddeeee!’
‘I’ve missed you all so much.’
‘Dadddddeeee, you’re not listenin’ to me.’
‘Phoebe, let Daddy talk to Mummy as well.’
‘But I’m telling my story.’
‘OK pops, carry on.’
‘So the cars were going whoosh and Mummy was running after Charlie and that’s when she trod in my poo. And got it all over her ’spensive shoes,’ says Phoebe.
‘Been a bit like that has it, love?’
Dinah closes her eyes and nods.
‘Daddy, listen!’
‘I am, pops.’
‘And because Charlie was running away Mummy didn’t notice what she’d done. It was very foolish, Daddy, because she didn’t notice the poo on her ’spensive shoes so she got it all over the petals in the car.’
‘Pedals, Phoebe.’
‘Mummyyyyy! I’m telling the story.’
‘All over the pedals what you press with your foots when you drive and so the whole car stinks to high heaven.’
She sighs.
‘Can I have my present now, Dad?’
The train was late into King’s Cross and Dad was in bed when I arrived. The next morning he was reading The Times when I came downstairs. His eyes looked more yellow, or maybe I’d forgotten how yellow they were before. Over the kitchen table I watched him eat two boiled eggs.
‘Two! That’s excellent, Dad.’
‘It is good,’ said Mary.
‘Fuel,’ said Dad.
‘You don’t enjoy it at all?’
‘He feels full all the time, don’t you darling?’
‘My tum,’ said Dad.
That morning we watched telly together. Dad had stopped talking. I’d heard it from Buster who’d heard it from Mary. Dad was retreating into himself, spending long hours watching snooker on TV. Before I came down, I thought to myself that I’d open him up, be the one to make him talk, make him feel less lonely. But in the telly room that day beside Dad on the adjacent sofa, watching old war films, occasionally getting up to adjust the cushions under his head or to answer his phone (‘Hello, David and Mary’s phone’) and having my questions stifled by reluctant replies, I realised this wasn’t going to happen. Dad seemed slowly to exhaust himself, gradually winding down, becoming slower in his responses like the second hand of a failing watch, so that by 11 a.m. he’d fallen asleep.
I tried to help but there was nothing to do. They had a housekeeper, a gardener. Meals from Pen and Mary’s mum, Kathleen, dropped over in foil containers. Buster, visiting from Cyprus, had already changed the two down-lighter spots that had gone and mended the leaky sink. It became a small joke. ‘I want his lights to fail, his plumbing to cause a flood, then I can tidy up his shoddy work. What can I do, Mary?’
‘Just watch television with your father.’
That afternoon Mary went out for walk so I heated up Dad’s fish pie for him. But every time I did anything I made a mistake.
‘Less than half, and can you put some ketchup on it?’
‘Thank you, but can I have the dessert on a tray, my son?’
‘Whipped cream please on the strawberries…’
‘Can you put that down for a few more minutes?’
‘No, my son, no Roquefort salad. NO. OK?’ said sternly after I bought the ingredients to surprise him.
After lunch we watched more telly. The Guns of Navarone. We watched Gloucester versus Leicester Tigers.
‘It’s a thrashing,’ I said, when Leicester reached twenty-one points.
Dad made a noise.
‘Good game,’ I said, at the end.
Dad made another noise.
People rang and I answered the phone, handed it to Dad if he nodded and replaced it on the receiver when he finished. These were the moments he came alive, talking to showbiz or actor pals from his comedy days at the BBC. He’d laugh, manage a joke – ‘I ain’t going anywhere just yet’ – but then afterwards, his wrist flaccid, he’d hand me the phone to replace, a small piece of him used up, it seemed.
The next day was the same. I watched more telly with Dad – Wolves v WBA, Man U v West Ham. Buster came over.
‘I’m going back Thursday,’ he said. ‘I said I’d come back every ten days. Too soon, Dad said. So I’ll come back in a couple of weeks.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Mary spoke to the GP. He’ll sleep more and more. Eventually he’ll slip into a coma, but nobody knows when.’
‘Is that what she said?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus!’
‘I know.’
‘And there’s nothing they can do?’
‘They might fit a stent. There might be some targeted chemo. It’s all long shots.’
When Dad fell asleep after Buster left I sought out Mary in the living room of the barn conversion.
‘He’s pleased you came,’ she told me. ‘He said he’d had a lovely time.’
‘Did he?’
Her face shifted
. Her eyes filled. I had to look away.
‘It isn’t the worse thing,’ she said. ‘He’s in no pain, his mind hasn’t gone.’
‘Small mercies.’
‘Your dad doesn’t complain. Nor should we. I’ve had a good life, that’s what he says.’
‘Although that’s changed slightly.’
‘I know,’ said Mary. ‘He’s very sad now. He doesn’t talk to me.’
‘I thought he’d talk to me.’
‘He doesn’t talk to anyone.’
She held up her book, How Can I Help? Mary read me a section called ‘Towards The End’.
‘Cancer sufferers retreat from the world. First they stop going out of the house, then they stop answering the phone. Eventually,’ said Mary, ‘they end up in one room. It’s a common response.’
She looked away.
I stared into the front garden.
‘Your dad loves you all,’ she said, looking back at me. ‘He’s seen you all married. All your children. He was terribly pleased when you married, Ben. He was worried you wouldn’t settle down. Your mum never saw that. Or your children.’
‘Small mercies.’
Mary laughed. Her face crumpled again. ‘We’d be opening a bottle of wine normally now. I try to think of positives but it’s hard. Just six weeks ago he was in the doctor’s surgery in his multicoloured jumper bouncing around. Doctor, I look yellow. Then bang.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s the nights. I keep thinking he’s going to die beside me, which in one way would be good.’
‘Nice way to go.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But…’
Mary looked away.
‘There’s no nice way to go,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Mary, recovering. ‘And at least he knows we love him and we know he loves us. Every day he tells me. You must do the same because you never know, you know.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Although you tried hard not to like your dad.’
‘I think I realised I couldn’t be like him so I rebelled and went the other way.’
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘And he was a rebel in his day. For the first ten years at the BBC.’
‘I know. He carried a letter of resignation around with him permanently.’
‘Anything he wasn’t happy with.’
‘Wallop.’ I slapped the table.
‘I know,’ said Mary. ‘He was only later absorbed by the establishment. And I bet his father was none too pleased when he took up the stage. That wouldn’t have gone down well.’
‘I’m going to be more like him,’ I said. ‘I’m going to try to be.’
Dad was awake in the TV room when I went in to say goodbye. I gave him a hug. He pointed to the table. There was £40 there. I said no.
‘Towards the fare,’ he said.
‘It’s free. I’m writing a box about the Midlands main line.’
He became angry. ‘Take it.’
I folded it into my pocket. I knelt down and hugged Dad. I kissed his stubbly cheek. I closed my eyes and he rubbed my back.
‘I’m going to become more like you,’ I said. ‘That’s my strategy.’
‘Please don’t,’ he said.
‘Not completely. Only the best bits.’
‘We’re a close family,’ he said.
‘We’re lucky.’
‘I love you, my son.’
‘I love you, Dad.’
I packed my bag, left out cards for both of them in the kitchen that I bought in the village and wrote the night before because it was what my dad would have done. But when it was time for Mary to take me to Gerrards Cross station I felt an explosion inside me as I hugged my dad one more time. I stroked his thinning grey hair and the tears flooded into my eyes. It was like a spring breaking free. My stomach compacted, expanded like a sponge in water. I had to breathe heavily. I looked at Dad. He seemed serene, to be feeding, gaining strength from this. I blew him a kiss at the door. And in Mary’s car I slumped back. I said to her, ‘It’s hard to say…’ and I went on the word goodbye. Mary went too. I felt sick and exhausted. We drove though the rain to the station. I bought my ticket at the machine after hugging Mary goodbye. She waited in the car for the £20 note to take in the slot. I waved my ticket at her. And she looked so lost in the driver’s seat behind the rain-flecked windscreen I thought about her words, ‘You tried hard not to like your dad.’
‘OK, have a guess where we’re going now, guys?’ I ask the kids on the Leicester ring road.
‘To another museum?’
‘Yes, but this is a special museum,’ I say. ‘Phoebe, this is a museum that tells you… WHAT HAPPENS TO POO!’
‘In real life!’
‘In real life, Phoebe.’
‘As if they haven’t obsessed enough about poo already today,’ says Dinah.
‘I know.’
‘CHARLIE!’ shouts Phoebe. ‘Did you not hear that? We’re going to a POO MUSEUM!’ ‘Hooray!’ shouts Charlie.
Dinah and I lived in Leicester for two years after our Bucks Herald days. She worked on the features desk at the Northampton Chronicle & Echo. I was a general news reporter on the Leicester Mercury. We lived together in a rented terraced house off Victoria Park, drank in the Clarendon and communicated sometimes in headlines, pretending our lives themselves were newspapers.
‘What’s your front page?’ I’d ask.
‘That nice letter from my mum. What are you splashing on? Is it still the EDF refund?’
‘That’s page three now. I’m going with what Gus told me about Jacey’s tattoo.’
We had another running joke about Dinah’s impressionability. She was very easily influenced. If she met a marine biologist, for example, I could guarantee within days there’d be an announcement. ‘Ben, I’ve applied to do a post-grad oceanography course at University of Plymouth. Please don’t try to stop me. I’ve longed to study plankton for years.’ There was her human rights lawyer moment after watching Erin Brockovich. Not to mention the time she wanted to be an MP’s researcher after speaking to one for ten minutes on a plane. ‘You must know that about me! I’ve had a fascination with Westminster all my life.’ It’s strange, but when she started talking about wanting children so soon after her sister Lindsey gave birth, I actually thought it was part of the same thing. I didn’t take her seriously. I assumed it would blow over. She was suddenly making a beeline for any under-two in a room, stroking baby pictures in magazines. She was teasing me, I assumed. It was a joke. Then my mum got sick and six months later she died and the next thing I knew Dinah, tired of waiting around for us to get married, have kids, move on to that next stage, had slept with some guy who worked in a record shop and she’d left me. Cue a year of misery and chaos before we eventfully got back together.
Now here we are back in Leicester with the kids I said I wasn’t ready for in the back of the car, albeit several years later than Dinah would’ve preferred, heading for the Abbey Pumping Station.
The pumping station opened in 1891 and was responsible for piping Leicester sewage to the treatment works in Beaumont Leys. The grand Victorian building, now the Leicester Museum of Science and Technology, houses the largest operating beam engines in the country, although it’s not these we’ve come for.
‘Where’s the poo?’ whispers Dinah, a few minutes into our visit. The poo is what we both remember about the place. It’s why we thought Phoebe would love it.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ask someone,’ says Dinah.
‘What, you mean, “Excuse me, where’s the poo?” You ask.’
‘I’m not asking,’ she says.
‘Daddy, you said there’d be poo.’
‘I know, we’re looking for it, pops.’
Dinah tries to divert Phoebe with the children’s trail. It’s a quiz sheet asking under-fives to find small cuddly teddy bears hidden amongst the beam engines. They’re balanced on large iron wheels and inside various piston mechanisms.
‘Yes, it is. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh Daddy, you said there’d be poo. Why did you say there’d be poo?’
I tell Phoebe I thought there was poo, but I was wrong and I’m sorry, and it threatens to turn ugly until Dinah, who’s moved ahead with Charlie, returns triumphantly.
‘Phoebe! Look!’ She squats down, pointing ahead. ‘Over there!’
‘A toilet?’ says Phoebe, sceptically.
‘Yes, and what goes in toilets?’
‘POO!’ shouts Phoebe, her eyes widening.
She breaks into a run. ‘Charlie, over here! Poo!’
There’s something about the preponderance of poo, the amount of times we’ve uttered the word today and sheer joy of shouting out things like: ‘Phoebe! Over there! Look! Another toilet!’ that changes the mood of the day.
Phoebe follows the progress of poo via a see-through pipe from a Leicester toilet to the Wanlip sewage works (‘Look, Daddy – there it goes’). Charlie can, for the first time in his young life without being lectured about germs, actually put his hand down a toilet. There are teenagers around laughing at the dummy feet sticking out of the bottom of a mocked-up toilet cubicle. And how can anybody not fall in love with a museum informing you in a matronly fashion that ‘the escaping spray from a toilet flush will spread germs over four cubic metres’? Then there’s the least likely museum exhibit in England: ‘Stand or crouch? How posture assists bowel movement.’
‘Excellent choice, Daddy,’ says Dinah, outside.
‘Thank you.’
Next door’s £52 million National Space Centre has the only Soyuz spacecraft in the UK, a planetarium and six galleries of exhibits telling the story of the solar system, manned space flight and the creation of the universe. Charlie crawls through a black hole. Phoebe drives a Martian rover. Both stare in amazement at a 40-foot Thor-Able space rocket and, in slight confusion, at teenage schoolchildren pinching each other’s bums in the darkness of the stellarium. Yet all Phoebe talks about on the way to our next attraction, the Jain Centre, is ‘the poo-poo place’.
Dinah isn’t very keen on the Jain Centre a) because it’s liable to be non-child-friendly and b) because we have a prearranged guided tour, something that’s been so problematic with the kids in the past that a blue badge guide on a walking tour round the guildhall in Worcester actually made a joke about ‘using chloroform’. The centre is off the Leicester gyratory system on Oxford Street and, entering the lobby area of the former nineteenth-century congregational church, we’re met by Dr Ramesh Mehta. Dr Mehta shakes my hand and informs us shoes and food are not allowed in the more holy upstairs section. Charlie and Phoebe hand Dinah the Quavers they were bribed with to come here and take their shoes off while Dr Mehta tells us there are 1,000 Jains in Leicester, 30,000 in the UK and 10 million in India. He explains the three main tenets of Jainism. The first is non-violence in the physical realm; i.e. you’re not allowed to harm another living thing (Jains wear gauze masks so they don’t accidentally swallow insects). There’s also non-violence in the verbal realm (don’t say bad things) and in the realm of thought (or think them).
