by Hatch, Ben
CHAPTER 9
Buster always had my dad’s shoulders back temerity. Confident, fun to be around, upbeat, trusting, generous spirited, he shared my dad’s swarthy looks and athletic prowess. Pen was bossy like Dad, bright, innately kind, very organised and talked like a Hatch woman, Dad said – very fast and a little too often. A good-natured chatterbox, skinny, full of energy, she inherited Dad’s artistic talents, played the piano and won school debates. She cartwheeled around the windmill like a tumbler, rode horses to Buckland Common, acted in plays and sang in choirs.
I unmistakably looked like my mother, had her temperament. Her pale skin, ginger hair. Shy, reserved, I was timid and fearful. My dad despaired of me. As a kid I slept facing the door to give me time to parry an attacker with my double-scoop Gray-Nicolls cricket bat I kept down the side of the bed. ‘You’re a funny boy,’ Dad would say after I turned down a trip to a farm and the opportunity to stroke a dirty pig because I’d rather add another cardboard extension to my teddy bear cardboard box warren. ‘You’re a funny boy,’ he’d say because I hated going to other children’s houses as they might have a bitey dog or a brand of Bejam jelly I wouldn’t like. My dad had a cricket blue from Cambridge, had played rugby for his house. Yet I couldn’t work the swing in our back garden. ‘Stretch your legs out. Now pull them in. I said pull them in, pull them in, in, in, in!’ And without a word he’d stalk back into the house his head held back, appealing to the heavens for the patience deserting him. In the camper van I made sure the lock poppers were down. ‘Safe,’ I’d say. ‘Safe,’ I’d make Buster repeat. I hated bonfire night more than our cat Boots and watched, through the kitchen window, as Dad let the fireworks off, wincing at every bang, only coming out for my sparkler at the end, which I pretended to enjoy but really was scared of, fearing spark-related blindness. Any fair ride above the adrenalin level of the dodgems was a no-no. The waltzer seemed like Russian roulette, the big wheel was asking for it, and the ghost train might get stuck in the tunnel leading to a panic-stricken stampede for the exits and trample deaths. For years I was convinced I’d be the Yorkshire Ripper’s next victim, that he was working his way towards me. I dreaded the Ten O’clock News bongs. Bong. Ripper Strikes Again. Bong. Another step nearer to me. Bong. Another sleepless night.
I was stubborn. Food was a battleground. ‘Get it eaten!’ I can hear Dad shouting. A faint but pig-headed voice, the words said quickly with lips ready to jam shut at the approach of a spoon: ‘I don’t like puddings with a biscuit base’… ‘It’s the tomato’… ‘It’s touching the mayonnaise’. In bed I’d hear my mum (my ‘great protector’, Dad called her) through the floorboards over the drone of the telly. ‘He didn’t mean to break it/drop it/bite it/steal it/ smash it/eat it/say this/do that/not do this. It’s just that he’s… he’s sensitive.’ At some point I think I must have decided if I couldn’t be like my dad I’d become the opposite of him. He was hardworking so I chose laziness. He was extrovert; I became shy. He was trusting; I cultivated cynicism. He looked for good in people; I searched for the bad. Whatever he said I doubted. Whatever he did, I questioned. It’s really no wonder I entered journalism, the one profession he despised.
The best moments of this trip are the same: checking into a new hotel (What facilities have they got? Do they have CBeebies? Have they got us down for a free meal? Will the manager gift us a bottle of Prosecco?) and checking out, moving on – turning the radio on full blast (‘Whack it up, Dinah’) to get a family sing-song going as we pull away to see and do something else none of us knew anything about until I read the itinerary at breakfast. We always sing loudly, we always open the windows (‘Roll ’em down, Dinah!’).
Leaving Leicester it’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ by Bonnie Tyler. And we give it all we’ve got. Every one of us. Charlie claps and smiles his little head off, his dimples sucked in. Phoebe, with a cheeky shoulder twist, sings back the words she doesn’t understand but knows we want to hear, ‘Total slips of the heart.’
‘Again, Phoebe.’
‘Total slips of the heart.’
‘One more time.’
‘Total slips of the heart.’
It’s a sunny day, we all slept well, there’s a clean shirt on my back as Dinah caned the laundrette yesterday, and today it feels great to be on the trip. Wonderful to be alive. Nobody needs formula, a nappy change or to be led gibbering with fear away from a tortoise enclosure. Nobody’s scared of a wax mannequin of Queen Victoria. Today we won’t get lost. Today we’ll have fun, we’ll see amazing things. Today will be the best day of the trip so far.
It makes me feel giddy with joy, this singing. It’s like we’re the greatest family, like there’s no family in the world better and I want everyone to know it. We’re touring Britain. We’re fitting together the fragmented jigsaw of all our memories of this country of our birth and we’re doing it with the people we love the most in the world. What could be better? We all sing now at the very top of our voices: ‘Total slips of the heart.’
‘Again, Phoebe!’
‘Total slips of the heart!’
I was twenty-four when my dad kicked me out of home, after the NatWest accidentally credited me £2,000 and I bought a Ford Transit camper van with the money. For the three years since leaving university I’d been getting periodically sacked from mundane jobs whilst spending most nine to five hours in a dressing gown working through a list of the 200 greatest works of literature. (‘I’ll clear away my lunch things when I’ve finished this Maupassant chapter, Mum.’)
‘What a wanker you were,’ Dinah never tires of pointing out and she’s right. I was a wanker. The accidental £2,000 largesse I saw not as thieving (my dad’s verdict) but as an opportunity. Emulating John Steinbeck, the idea was I’d tour the country in my camper van, take its pulse, and write a great novel like The Grapes of Wrath. In fact, I visited The Tales of Robin Hood in Nottingham, my ex girlfriend Julie in Melton Mowbray, who thought my cooking facilities were ‘dinky’ but still wouldn’t sleep with me in the banquette bed, and Chester Zoo. It was outside here, while I was settling down for the night with a book on the history of the Labour movement, that the van was set upon by louts. They rocked it, forced ketchup-covered chips in through a slit in the passenger window and threatened to come back when I was asleep to block my heater vent. The following day my windscreen wipers packed up and I not long after this I developed a wisdom tooth infection that spread down my neck to my jaw muscles clamping them shut, meaning I could only consume soup and food no wider or harder than Dairylea triangles. Back home in disgrace, recovering on antibiotics, I received two letters – one from the NatWest demanding immediate repayment of the £2,000 (something that eventually took seven years) and another from my dad, explaining why all my things were out in the front garden covered in dew.
Seventeen years later here I am back in Nottingham outside The Tales of Robin Hood. In 1991 when I came with my pompous literary aspirations the attraction was state of the art. Listening to a costumed Maid Marian chewing gum discussing with Robin Hood a night out at the Oceana Club later, it seems tired now. And with Dinah uninterested in my camper van reminiscences (‘Sorry, but they’re not exactly Che Guevera’s The Motorcycle Diaries, Ben’) I give Phoebe some context.
‘Now Phoebe, that man dressed up there is Robin Hood.’
‘Red Riding Hood?’
‘No, Robin Hood. He takes from people with lots of things and gives to people with few things.’
‘Is he going to give us something, Daddy?’
‘Er, no…’
On the fifteen-minute monorail pod ride through a fibre glass Sherwood Forest we see skeletons hanging from trees, stuffed wolves with shiny, cruel eyes, creepy faces amongst tree branches, lightning flashes, torture victims and animal skulls, while a voice softly insinuates, ‘Remember – the forest isn’t always your friend.’ Charlie cries and Phoebe’s so scared I have to haul her back into the pod when she tries to escape. Holding her down, my hands over her ears, she
cries until I promise her favourite treat – an ice cream with a flake.
Her appetite for lunch ruined by 11 a.m., we roll on to Nottingham Castle. Built in the eleventh century, it’s where the final showdown took place between the evil Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood. It’s also where, in the Sherwood Foresters Regimental Museum, we discover the Robin Hood Rifles, the 1st Nottinghamshire Volunteer Rifle Corps, disappointingly didn’t actually use bows and arrows at all. We read a few stoic citations in the gallantry award gallery while Charlie ogles the guns.
‘Listen to this one. Private Bernard McQuirt won a VC on 6 January 1858 at the capture of Rowa during the Indian mutiny when he was seriously and dangerously wounded in a hand-to-hand fight with three men, of whom he killed one and wounded another. He received five sabre cuts and a musket wound, making, I quote, “an awful mess of his head and face”.’
The cafe has sweeping views from Castle Rock over the city, which is blighted from almost every vantage point by hideous buildings like the Eastcroft incinerator, or the Clifton housing estate built in the 1950s and the largest of its kind in Europe at one time.
It’s here the day’s meltdown occurs. When Charlie gets hungry, rather than ask for his dinner, what he does is scratch other children about the same height as himself in the face. He’s like a spirited Zorro but with fingernails instead of a rapier sword and an empty stomach in place of a keen moral sense of injustice. We’re by the cutlery tray table queuing for our brie and cranberry paninis when we hear a wail of pain from across the room. Charlie toddles away from the scene of the crime, leaving a small boy from Wolverhampton with our son’s initials practically scored in blood across his face. His Black Country parents are understanding but Dinah’s so mortified she decides we must cut Charlie’s nails straightaway.
‘Before he’s had lunch?’
‘I wanted to do it this morning, Ben, but you wouldn’t let me. We’re doing it now.’
‘OK, get the chocolate buttons out.’
‘We haven’t got any.’
‘What!’
‘We’ve run out.’
‘You want to attempt this without chocolate buttons?’
An MI5 maxim holds that a city is only four meals from anarchy. On this trip we’re only ever four chocolate buttons away from a tantrum.
‘At least let him eat first.’
‘No. I’ll chase him towards you.’
After a five-minute Benny Hill-style caper round the terrace I have Charlie pinned down by a picnic table. It’s like a messy citizen’s arrest.
‘OK, I’ve got his hands. Where are the nail scissors, love?’
‘In my handbag.’
‘I thought you had them.’
‘No. Ouch! Charlie! That hurt.’
‘Stop kicking Mummy, Charlie. Can you get them, then?’
‘He was kicking me, Ben.’
‘OK, but can you get them now. I can’t hold him much longer.’
‘Please, don’t shout at me, I’m doing my best.’
‘I’m not shouting, love. But this is actually quite tiring.’
Dinah returns with the scissors but the closer she gets to his nails the more superhuman strength Charlie somehow manages to summon.
‘You have to keep him still.’
‘I can’t keep him any stiller.’
She has another go. The same thing happens.
‘No, I give up,’ she says. ‘He’s wriggling too much. You do it.’
‘You’ll have to hold him down, then.’
‘I’m not strong enough, my love.’
‘I can’t cut them and hold him down.’
‘Daddy, he’s got a hand free,’ says Phoebe.
‘Thank you, Phoebe. We can manage.’
‘Everyone’s watching, Ben. This is so embarrassing…’
‘I did say do it later.’
Afterwards, with so many cuts and welts over our faces and arms from his flailing talons that we deserve our own citations in the gallantry award gallery, we rejoin the queue in the cafe. But to add insult to our actual injuries staff refuse to heat up Charlie’s macaroni cheese in their microwave, citing health and safety rules.
‘Are you really saying you can’t heat his food up?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You saw him earlier, right? That was over one chocolate button. This is his whole lunch.’
‘I’m sorry.’
We stay the night at an old eye hospital in the city centre. It’s just off Maid Marian Way, a road which sounds quaint and olde worlde like it might just be wide enough for a horse and cart to get down, but is actually a four-lane dual carriageway jammed with beeping motorists trying to filter onto the A60. The eye hospital’s been converted into serviced apartments and ours comes complete with cable TV (which means CBeebies), two bedrooms, one with an en suite shower, a small balcony and two coffee tables whose glass tops are removable, thus enabling our children to toboggan dangerously off the sofa on them. The American-style kitchen has a dishwasher, a washing machine, a microwave which doubles as an oven and a low-level cutlery drawer that, opened without shoes on, almost shaves a centimetre from the top of my left foot. There are tea bags, UHT milk cartons and washing-up liquid, but no rubber gloves, which means that while making chicken fajitas for dinner, Dinah almost winds up in the NHS walk-in centre when she accidentally scratches her bum after she’s been chopping red chillies.
Once the kids are in bed and Dinah’s bathed her bottom in the bidet, we’re sitting on the balcony drinking wine when she says, ‘When we get to Nottingham Center Parcs tomorrow I think we need to chill for a couple of days, Ben.’
A sheen of sweat shines her face. Her hair is a mess because all her shampoo spilt in the bathroom bag yesterday and she hasn’t been able to wash it.
‘And there’s lots for the kids there.’
She looks at me beseechingly.
‘Make it sort of a holiday, you mean?’
‘We need a break. We don’t even have weekends. I was on my own when you saw your dad. I’m not saying it was easier for you but today’s been really hard.’
‘Even before you burnt your bum?’
‘Even before.’
She manages a laugh.
‘How’s it now?’
‘Honestly, it’s so painful.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Because of the bum.’
The apartments are arranged around a central courtyard. In the apartment opposite us, I can see a couple in silhouette arguing. You can tell they’re arguing from their hand gestures and sudden movements. We watch the shape of the man walk off and return. From his stance, bent forward, pleading, it appears he’s the one losing the dispute. The woman rises from the sofa. Their bodies merge for a moment and we wonder if they’re embracing but instead she walks away.
‘It’s like watching a thriller,’ Dinah says. ‘She’ll probably come back with an axe and we’ll be the only murder witnesses.’
We wait for the woman to return with an axe but she doesn’t. I pour us each another glass of wine.
‘Today reminded me of when I worked at the Evening Post,’ says Dinah. ‘Being in that square. I used to go there for my sad little lunch. I didn’t want to go to the canteen because I didn’t know anybody.’
‘I forgot about your time there.’
After Dinah and I split up, I moved to London to be closer to my family and school friends while she found a job on the Nottingham Evening Post.
‘I didn’t have a portfolio. It was awful. I just wrote picture captions and news in briefs. And I got all the six o’clock shifts because I was new. One day I left the newsroom after my shift and I was called to the phone on the reception desk downstairs. It was the news desk. Where are you going? Home. No, you’re not – come back here. They made me sit at my desk for ten minutes doing nothing until they said I could go.’
‘Arseholes.’
‘And I was seeing that Relate counsellor, who practically said what an idiot I was for leaving you. It�
��s what I thought about in the square. I never thought you’d forgive me.’
‘Tell me more about your unhappiness.’
‘You like my unhappiness?’
‘In the context of not being with me I do.’
She tells me how miserable she was when she heard I’d moved to London.
‘And do you know what I never told you about at the time?’ I ask her.
‘What?’
And I’m not sure what makes me say it. ‘Before you slept with that record shop guy, around the time my mum was sick I almost had a thing with a work experience girl at the Mercury.’
Dinah looks at me.
‘Nothing happened but it nearly did.’
‘That’s strange you never told me that.’
‘It seemed important at the time but after my mum died it didn’t seem important any more.’
‘Was she pretty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did I know her?’
‘No.’
‘And nothing happened?’
‘I kissed her in a taxi. She wanted us to go for dinner. I wrote her a letter explaining I was in love with you. My letter was pompous and tragic in tone. I think I invoked the film Casablanca.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘At the time? At the time I thought I was changing. Growing apart from you. She’d been in a battered wives hostel. She was a very serious person. Her hero was Nelson Mandela. I felt I could talk to her about sad things in a way I couldn’t with anyone else.’
‘With me, you mean.’
I don’t say anything.
‘So how come nothing happened?’
‘I think I knew deep down it wasn’t real.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Dinah says.
She sips her drink.
‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this now.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘Maybe because looking back on it I’m thinking it might not have happened with you and the record shop guy if it hadn’t been for this.’
