by Hatch, Ben
Pen saw Dad first the morning after he died. ‘Go and have a look, it makes you feel much better,’ she told me, when I came downstairs. In the room Dad was lying propped up in bed. He looked totally different. Miraculously he now looked more alive, dead, than he had for several days alive. His sunken face had filled back out. His eyes looked not empty but full of gentle amusement, a sentiment perfectly reflected in his hint of a smile, the line of his lips slightly wonky. He looked so alive, so much his normal self, I half expected him to make a joke at my expense.
‘I think it’s lovely,’ said Pen when I came out and it was, and somehow it got me through the day. It counterbalanced the suffering, because in that look Dad seemed pleased with where he’d ended up. It was what we kept saying to each other all morning, Mary, Pen, Buster and I. We wandered in and out of the room and spoke to Dad. It was lovely. Dad was smiling. Whatever you said, he just smiled.
Mary’s nieces, Katie and Claire, arrived. We urged them to go in. ‘Go on – it’s amazing. It makes you feel so much better.’
And eventually they did but when they came out Katie said Dad’s face had filled out because his bodily fluids had flowed back from his stomach. She looked concerned when I told her how much we were enjoying going in to see Dad because, ‘There’s a fly in there, sweetie,’ she said.
I didn’t understand.
She put her arm around me, ‘It’s a hot day, sweetie.’
The funeral directors picked Dad up in a jeep. We had to move the dining table to get the stretcher through. Up until this moment Dad’s death felt removed somehow. It was akin almost to a king having died. A figurehead. Someone mighty whose absence left a giddying feeling of uncertainty. But on the doorstep, watching the jeep pull out of the drive with Katie, Claire and Mary clustered around looking on, it hit me: my dad was dead. Pen and Buster felt it too and the three of us collapsed into a scrum, squeezed our faces together to block out the rest of the world and cried so hard into each other’s eyes we scared everyone else back inside. The strange thing happened after that. Back in the house Mary said, ‘I’ve just seen a mouse in the garden. A cheeky little mouse just ran over my foot.’ Mouse was Dad’s nickname for my mum because she was as quiet as one. Pen, Buster and I stared at each other: that was why Dad was smiling, I decided. We had Mary now and he was with my mum again.
We’re on the mezzanine level in the barn, sitting around the table that Mary has Dad’s obituaries spread out across, listening to her tell the story about how she met and fell in love with Dad.
‘I was hungover. I had just turned fifty the night before. I was sad about that because I was still on my own. And I really didn’t feel like going out but it was at Terry and Helen’s. If it had been anywhere else, I wouldn’t have gone.
‘And Helen had put me next to this man,’ says Mary. ‘He was wearing turquoise socks.’
I laugh.
‘And yellow trousers.’
I look at Dinah. She smiles.
‘And he was a lot older than me,’ says Mary, staring at the ceiling. ‘And he was round.’ She looks back at us. ‘He wouldn’t mind me saying that. He had a little belly. He did, didn’t he?’
I nod and glance across at the painting on the brick wall opposite of my dad and Mary. Dad’s wearing a red jumper and is standing behind Mary, who’s sitting down on a chair. The picture has perfectly captured Dad’s smile, his easy joyfulness. It’s how he looked before he got sick and lost the weight and his face changed.
‘I have to tell you David Hatch, your dad, was the least likely man for me to fall in love with. The LEAST likely. So we’re sat there and I said to him, ‘I was very sorry to hear about your wife.’ And he said, ‘Thank you.’ And we talked, and despite his turquoise socks and his yellow trousers, I rather liked him. I could see he was kind. And he made me laugh. And at the end of the night he asked if I would like to go to the proms one day. And I gave him my number.’
Mary motions to write down a number.
‘And the next morning my friend Trish asked me what she always asked me whenever I’d been out. Was there anybody there you liked more than yourself? I said, actually I think there was.’
Mary bites her top lip and looks away. I have to do the same.
‘“Will he phone?” she asked,’ Mary says. ‘I said, “I think he will.” Well, he called me at nine o’clock.’
‘That’s so Dad.’
‘Nine on the dot.’ She nods. ‘He said, “I don’t think you look after yourself very well so I’m going to look after you. I’m taking you out for lunch.” He took me to the Full Moon, next to the windmill, where he was very pleased to tell me everybody knew his name.’
I laugh. So does Dinah.
‘Two dates later I received a letter from David. From your dad. In it he said he loved me.’ Mary looks away again. She turns back to us. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I could NOT believe it. I barely knew him. But I also felt wonderful. In the TV room down there, for the first time in my life, I kicked my legs out and danced for joy.’
‘You danced for joy?’
‘For the first time in my life.’
‘That’s so sweet, Mary,’ says Dinah.
‘I kicked my legs out. I was so happy. And I’ve been so happy for the last ten years.’
I pat Mary’s back on one side. Dinah does the same on the other. Mary recovers.
‘And now we must look after each other,’ she says.
‘We must.’
‘As he would have looked after us.’
I hug Mary. Dinah strokes her back.
‘Because I’m your adopted mum now whether you like it or not.’
Charlie and Phoebe appear at the top of the stairs.
‘And look, come here, my darlings, I have all these grandchildren now too.’
We stay for lunch and afterwards I walk up to St Mary’s Church graveyard with Mary to see the wooden cross they’ve just put up for Dad, while Dinah takes the kids to the swings in the village. The graveyard is on a hill with views across the Chilterns. The cross, to be replaced with a stone one when the ground’s settled, has Dad’s motto on it. ‘Love, life and laughter.’
Back in the house afterwards Mary is saying to me: ‘I thought he’d like you to have it.’ In my hand I have a brown leather box. Inside is Dad’s Ebel watch.
‘My wedding present to him,’ she says. ‘The second hand’s a bit erratic. Your dad wore it in the bath. But you can send it off to Switzerland to be mended. Better it’s worn.’
I put the watch on and shake it down my wrist, the way Dad used to do.
‘Thank you, Mary.’
She goes upstairs and comes back with a sports bag.
‘Bits and bobs. Just give to charity what you don’t want.’
I open the bag. Inside are a dozen of Dad’s shirts, a pair of black leather shoes and his striped kaftan. I slip it on and walk up and down doing Dad’s walk.
‘You got it,’ says Mary, laughing.
We leave shortly afterwards.
‘I’ll come down and see you in September,’ she says. ‘take you out for a meal.’
‘That will be lovely. And my postcards will continue,’ I tell her.
She laughs. We strap the kids in. She hands them Smarties through the open windows. I watch Mary’s face as I reverse down the drive until it is out of sight.
CHAPTER 27
Draft Copy for Guidebook: Bristol, or Brissel as it is pronounced, is famous for the Clifton Suspension Bridge and as the birthplace of Archibald Leach (Cary Grant), as well as all the members of Bananarama. It’s also where the Plimsoll line, Ribena, tarmac, Wallace and Gromit and Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard are from. Its family attractions include Brunel’s SS Great Britain and its pretty zoo gardens, where our kids enjoyed a lion talk and my wife revealed in the marine room that if she were to marry a fish, it would be the porcupine puffer fish ‘for its beautiful blue eyes’. Nearby Bath was a popular retreat in Georgian times, and its beauty hasn’t altered in 200 year
s, and probably never will with planners so mindful of it they’ve actually built a shopping centre here with an entire mock Georgian facade and car parking for up to 850 hansom cabs. This being home to the eighteenth-century arbiter of manners, Beau Nash, expect to be tutted at for eating with your elbows on the table. Worth a look are the Roman Baths and Pump Room, while at the Jane Austen Centre there’s a film about the author, as well as an interesting Language of the Fan display where we learnt the following:
1) Fan in left hand covering face below the eyes – I wish to be accompanied.
2) Carrying fan in right hand and open in front of face -Follow me.
3) Drawing closed fan across forehead – You have changed.
4) Fan open, held behind head – Do not forget me.
And finally 5) Fan in pieces – my toddler son has got to the display while my back was turned looking at a bonnet.
For the record, if push came to shove – and I refuse to give my reasons – if I had to marry a fish myself I would choose a giant gourami fish.
We’re at the top of Glastonbury Tor watching a column of Hare Krishnas processing up and down, while grey pony-tailed hippies in floaty clothes wander about humming the lyrics to John Lennon’s ‘#9 Dream’. From where we’re sitting we can see across Somerset, Wiltshire and Devon. Behind us is the roofless St Michael’s church, destroyed by an earthquake in 1275 and believed (by people probably with enormous beards and bells on their toes) to be the opening to a fairy kingdom, whilst to our left we can hear excitable chatter about ley lines from two men carrying books with wizardy-style lettering on the front.
‘This is nice,’ says Dinah.
‘The view or the nutters?’
‘Both.’
She holds my hand.
We’ve been researching the ‘London and Around’ chapter, staying at one-room Premier Inns and Travelodges, belting around on the sweaty Underground. Before that it was Kent and the last few days, Wiltshire and Somerset. It’s been hard. My note-taking’s been sloppy. I haven’t bothered taking pictures. I’ve felt bored for the first time. We seem to be doing similar versions of things we’ve done before. Wookey Hole was our fourth cave complex. Canterbury our seventh cathedral. We’ve been to eight zoos, six aquariums. We’ve ridden nine sightseeing buses.
According to the legend, Jesus visited this 500-foot high mound nobody knows which civilisation constructed with his great-uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. He built Glastonbury’s first wattle and daub church and after the crucifixion returned and buried the Holy Grail below where we’re sitting.
‘What you thinking?’ asks Dinah.
‘I’m thinking about what Mary said that time. That I tried hard not to like my dad.’
We’re heading into Bristol and when Cheltenham Road becomes Gloucester Road I start to recognise the streets: Cromwell Road, Wolseley Road, Shadwell Road. We’re visiting two uni friends of Dinah’s, Gemma and Pete. They live at the bottom of Sommerville Road, which is coincidentally the road I lived on in 1986 when I was briefly at Bristol Poly. We’re early and Dinah wants to give the kids a little more sleep so I shoot past Gemma and Pete’s and carry on up the hill. I park outside number 67. Leaving Dinah in the car trying to snooze herself, I step outside to call my old school friend Gus. When I first left home I wasn’t equipped for independence. That’s the most favourable way of interpreting my behaviour. Not only did I cowardly go to the same poly as Gus, turning down a better place I had at Warwick University, we even took the same course – social science. We lived in the same house – Mrs Ward’s at number 67 – and even shared a room here. Gus quit after nine weeks because he was missing his girlfriend, Liora. I clung on for a further week before I did the same. ‘You’re not,’ he says, when I tell Gus where I am.
‘I can see the front door from where I’m standing.’
‘Mrs Waaards,’ sing-songs Gus. We go through the story again. How pathetic we must have been, how everyone must have thought we were gay.
‘Ben,’ Gus says. ‘It was even worse than that. We had the same poster over our beds.’
‘That Laurel and Hardy one. Where they’re sat on that bench.’
‘With the white dog.’
‘With the white dog.’
I laugh.
‘What must people have thought of us?’
‘Do you remember hiding our records?’ Gus asks. ‘That cool guy came round.’
‘That’s right, you made me hide my “Ghostbusters” single under my bed.’
‘We hid them all under your bed, Ben. Steve Arrington, DeBarge. You had “The Inch Worm” by Danny Kaye.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You fucking did.’
‘Nooo!’
‘We weren’t sure what to do with Dire Straits. We thought they might be OK,’ he says.
‘I do remember those girls coming round. Do you remember? We were such idiots. It was 9.30 in the evening. They liked us. They came upstairs to our bedroom…’
‘And we were in our fucking pyjamas,’ says Gus.
‘And I showed off the way I ate Dairylea triangles by putting the whole triangle in my mouth with the foil still on and sucking out the cheese and then spitting out the foil. I made them have a go. People were taking drugs. I was experimenting with soft cheese.’
I look at the black, solid-looking front door and the black and white mosaic tiled path and something else comes back to me.
‘Do you remember the dog?’
‘Fucking hell. That dog!’ says Gus.
‘We were such wusses around that dog.’
‘It was a Dobermann, Ben. Do you remember leaving the house?’
He starts to laugh.
‘You’d run down the stairs first really fast before it could come out of the kitchen and then you’d leave the front door open for me,’ says Gus. ‘I’d come hacking down a minute or so later when the coast was clear and slam the front door shut behind me.’
‘And didn’t we do something with the mashed potato?’
‘We hid it in a drawer, Ben.’
I start to laugh again.
‘Why did we do that?’
‘It started with spaghetti bolognaise. You told Mrs Ward you didn’t like it so she made shepherd’s pie. You didn’t like that either – you were fucking fussy, Ben. You were embarrassed after the spaghetti so you hid the mashed potato in the drawer. I copied you.’
‘Why did you copy me?’
‘I don’t fucking know.’
‘How long did we go on hiding it?’
‘Don’t you remember what happened? One day we opened the drawer and it was all gone.’
‘All the potato?’
‘She must have found it and taken it out.’
‘She never said anything?’
‘She never said anything.’
‘How much potato was there?’
‘A drawer full.’
‘I wonder what she thought.’
‘She must have thought we were wankers.’
‘And did we get mashed potato again?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Something else comes back to me.
‘Do you remember the most embarrassing thing?’
‘The tutorial,’ says Gus. There are only certain people that make me laugh until I cry. Gus is one of them.
‘It’s still the most shameful moment of my life,’ I say with tears in my eyes.
‘Me too,’ he says, between the laughter.
The first morning on the campus at Coldharbour Lane during our first sociology tutorial Gus, who I was naturally sat beside, had to introduce himself to the group. Sat around a circular table Gus said he was from Chesham High School in Buckinghamshire. He was studying social science and had found digs with a Mrs Ward, who lived close to the St Paul’s area of the city on Sommerville Road. Gus was thanked, the tutor had looked at me and with a dozen pairs of strangers eyes upon me, all I could say was, ‘Basically, same here.’
When I stop laughing I feel so empti
ed of amusement I can’t believe I’ll ever be able to laugh again. Hanging up, I feel drained and serious now. A little edgy, too, and suddenly remorseful. I can see myself now not through my own eyes but through my dad’s. Mary’s words return: you tried hard not to like your dad.
The evening is full of strange, evocative resonances. I’m alone, Charlie lying across my arms in the darkness of Gemma and Pete’s front room, feeding him the nightly 8 ounces of formula and I can hear laughter in the next room and smell the thick gravy Pete’s preparing, when I hear the distant strain of a piano. It’s leaking through the wall of the adjoining terrace house but it might as well be coming straight from my own heart. I think of my dad on Christmas morning playing his hymns. The sound of wine corks popping in the kitchen reminds me of that hungry rasp at the back of my throat at the expectation of Mum’s turkey, of Pen, Buster and I mucking about, Dad telling us off for not helping but almost secretly laughing at mine and Buster’s attempts to get out of laying the table by sneaking off for last-minute visits to the toilet. Even Pete and Gemma’s sleek black cat on the landing as I scale the stairs to put Charlie to bed reminds me of our old family cat Boots. At dinner I keep levering my dad into conversations. Pete tells us about his DIY plans for the house and I crowbar in a story about Dad once making a table that fell apart. I don’t do it on purpose. I start a sentence and only realise halfway through it’s about my dad again, at which point it’s too late to haul it back. The third time I do this Gemma, who’s already said she was sorry to hear about my dad, asks, ‘How’s your step-mum, Ben? Mary, isn’t it?’
Pete, staring at me with wide unblinking eyes, mentions the obit in The Times.
‘I didn’t know your dad was the first producer of Just a Minute.’
‘Yeah. And Week Ending… and The News Quiz. They were going to axe Just a Minute after the first series but my dad threatened to resign if they did. So it survived. And he gave David Renwick his first writing job, you know – who wrote One Foot in the Grave?’
