by Neil Rowland
Finally I let Angie into my secret. This came as a terrible shock, but it wasn’t something from an adult bookshop. She has every right to beat her retreat. We couldn’t drag her back if we tried. She’s always tugged at the baby reins; she never liked being buckled into the sling on Lizzie’s back. In these ways, your kids never change. You have to accept that. Otherwise? My last wish as a condemned man could have sounded like an order. It’s a beautiful but scary world, it’s understood. Nowadays, the young have different struggles.
I don’t know if Angie is trying to deceive me, saying she will treat Adam Jakes as just a friend. She thinks she has escaped me finally. I’m not the only parent on guard duty. Elizabeth is going to be suspicious about her highly sociable life. Lizzie’s senses have always been keener than mine. In and out of the sack.
The girl’s very dear to us - special. We don’t talk about that much, Liz and I, but we understand the reasons why. My ex-wife can’t dream about any degree award ceremony in the future. It would be better than a parole board.
Angela said that she’s interested in running a business. She didn’t specify which type. She’d like to run a company and feel the responsibility. She’s been saving up some money? I recall. What is that for? How?
The problem occupies me for many flying miles; as I skim the atmosphere between the stars and terra firma.
Then I have an idea, of that type that strikes when high in the sky. Maybe this is only another mental disturbance. I’m gazing down at the moon dusted woods and fields, when I have the thought that Angela could become the managing director of Sheer Dirigibles. She can take over when I leave. There’s a nice euphemism.
Luke’s indifferent to my kites and balloons. Angie is the eldest. I was getting primitive on primogeniture. Forgetting that eldest daughters can be born leaders. I was trying to make the girls sing backing vocals again. My own girl’s lead guitarist and vocalist. What took me so long to recognise her abilities?
When I’ve landed this machine and reconnoitred with James I’ll brief him. He’ll not be impressed by the idea of a twenty-something boss. But he’s come around to my brilliant brain wave. He’ll see this as a positive outcome and absorb the radiation. He’s a good friend, with a good business brain and financial judgement; and I offered him a similar opportunity once. Man, he’ll be excited about this smart young girl at the helm.
Angela hasn’t expressed much interest so far. The last time she tried flying a kite there was more ribbon in her hair. She’s street wise and able to think on her feet. We’ll put our heads together and discuss the idea, after she returns from the festival. No point hanging around in Mike’s café, with only a serviette tucked into her strings.
What will my former wife and living breathing woman have to say? I’m looking forward to telling her. I can already imagine Angela making revolutions in my swivelling chair.
So maybe I didn’t make a wasted journey after all. When we imagine we are in a dark and hopeless situation, we can take ourselves by surprise by finding solutions. I wouldn’t change or take anything back in my life experience. Love is the most powerful and creative force that we know. In love there’s happiness unimagined.
Daughter’s Epilogue
My name is Angela Sheer, a thirty-something lawyer in Bristol, married for the past five years, with no children at the moment but considering, with my husband’s participation, the strong idea of starting a family in the next year or two.
Don’t begin assuming that you are reading my story though, because I’m the daughter of the writer. It feels strange to be footing up the narrative in this way. That first paragraph sounds really like my Dad, and it’s scary; maybe we’ve got similar thought patterning, who knows? I am featured in this book. You might say I am a character in this story. That feels strange too, but then it’s my Dad’s account of his life, which includes his family and me, his eldest kid and only daughter, too. So I am “in it” if you like, along with my two brothers and my mother, Liz, who has these days retired to Bournemouth.
The point that Mum’s now a pensioner, will give you an idea in which time the story is set, which is at the end of the 1990s. So you can tell that a few serious events have taken place in Britain since then. As an immigration and asylum specialist my job in the law often touches on those big events, but I am not a big shot involved with international issues. It is merely a decent length of time to pass before I thought about publishing my Dad’s writing: his autobiographical story. His account gets close to his own ideas and attitudes about life, and particularly his family and friendships, during those years, that culminated with Maggie moving into a suburban new-build; although it was not budgerigar sized like the homes they were building for ordinary people around that time.
There we are again, I’m sounding like my Dad. Does this happen more obviously when I am writing something? I’m not so aware of that when I am speaking, or living my life. For one point, I voted Tory last time, and he’d be upset and horrified by such a statement; although he understood that politics doesn’t say everything, or even very much, about somebody, or hardly anything in terms of general elections. He would say I was deluded and brainwashed, but I make my own mind up. Dad came from that generation that wanted to change the world, but I have different views because I know that the world does constantly change, not to how you would want it.
You’ll find out about my Dad, Noah, soon enough as you read on. He was writing this account for the months before he died at a shockingly early age. I feel that I am fast approaching that age myself, and it seems strange to get there, as if he’s going to show up again, just long enough to wave at me as I pass by. Don’t begin to get squeamish at the prospect of reading about a man’s death. There’s nothing gory or mawkish about the story, I hope you’d agree. It’s not possible to offer a rolling news story about your own demise; so Dad couldn’t play god to himself either. Although I should say we get close to Dad’s last hours, because he was writing constantly, almost up to the end. Dad knew that he was unwell and wished to leave his voice behind, while he hoped or expected to recover from his heart problems.
Dad kept his writing journal with him all the time. Maybe that was a characteristic of his generation too, as they were eager to create, to make their mark and to have their voice heard. He was to be seen scribbling away in the park, or in a café, or at his desk at work and, obviously, at home. He used to carry a stylish bag over his shoulder, in the times when a ‘man bag’ was not an acceptable masculine accessory. The bag was famously with him and he grew frantic if he left it behind somewhere, in one of those middle aged male moments. I didn’t realise that the panic of loss was directly linked to the contents of his writing.
Sadly in those months he had plenty of time almost alone to compose his book; with only interruptions from my little brother Tim, who was only a little kid then. I definitely feel some loneliness of a divorced guy, not only a guy who understands the fragility of his health. These days my youngest brother isn’t so little and drives HGVs across Europe for a living. Not maybe the intellectual job my parents would wish, but he does have partial ownership of the company.
So Dad was continuously adding to his story during that period, in fascinating folios he got from a specialist shop in Bristol; now closed and forgotten. He’d write segments and fragments in these notebooks and, we assume, transcribe them later into a better draft, before bashing them out on his old typewriter (these were still old technology days: Dad once tried a computer but packed it back into the box after half an hour).
The emergency services found a notebook in his rucksack on the day of his death; along with his Walkman device and navigation equipment, among other personal objects. That last notebook was inevitably rough in its jottings. He’d not written up his thoughts entirely for that day, or had any chance to smash them into a final form on the old typewriter. But for the sake of this book, I have put them into a better form w
ithout, be assured, trying to change his ideas or style.
It was incredibly traumatic for me to go through those testaments, into that journal again; to fold back some of the pages and to recognise his writing again. The final book was worst, as it was clearly folded and creased, suffering the trauma of his last fatal heart attack and crashing back to earth. But it wasn’t easy to read through any of them; never mind to try to edit and prepare for publication. But I didn’t change much, as I’ve already assured you. There are some gaps in the narrative. In one or two places he must have torn out pages, or he scribbled a paragraph out, thinking of going back. That irritation, or self-censorship, was quite rare though, as he knew or feared there might not be time to go back and rewrite or rephrase. I had to tidy up in places and change the sequence a few times. Some of the stuff that he wrote made me want to censor him. But I restrained myself.
The notebooks have been at the top of our wardrobe for many years. I haven’t known what to do with them. Except that I could never bring myself to throw them away or to condemn them. This was the voice of my Dad; his account of his life and his view on the world. I went back to our family home in Bristol, on the day we lost him, and I found a stack of writing folios. Glancing through them I understood what they were about and I decided to take them away with me: at first I took them to my own room in the house and then they left home with me.
I got some insight that this was Dad talking about us, about his life. He had left behind his thoughts, without understanding the purpose. In particular I knew that Mum would wish to destroy them, or certainly never allow me or anyone else to read them. She was angry with my father, in the various ways that disaffected wives become angry. Maybe she had good reason for that antagonism towards Dad. Men often pretend to be forgiving after divorce, while really they are even angrier than their ex-wives and just hiding their emotions. But I’m not interested in family law - not as a solicitor anyway. Mum still sniffs through her nostrils at the mention of Dad, after all these silent years, so I’m sure she would have cremated his last thoughts along with him.
Yet I knew that I shouldn’t want to broadcast his memoirs immediately. I hardly thought about my reasons at the time, but that’s why Dad’s notebooks gathered thick dust in our main bedroom: Who regularly dusts the top of their wardrobe? Those writings just stayed there for years, forgotten thoughts or experiences of long ago - which is exactly what Dad’s writings were. When my partner complained about the old dusty notebooks, as he did about five years ago now, I refused to throw them away or even to move them; it was painful to discard or to stir these memories. He insisted that I do something with them, but it was years before I finally did. Maybe that was the reason: these were ghost books full of cobwebs and hauntings. Eventually these books did find their way down. My interest and courage revived, so that I was able to smear away the grime and to turn the yellow pages again; finding my father’s thoughts as fresh and funny as the day he penned and typed them; but more crucially returning me to that time, bringing my father back to me, when he is no longer here in body; hearing (or imagining) his voice again, long after he was lost to us.
While I stayed up through the night, re-reading them, spilling coffee drops and cigarette ash on to the foxed sheets (sorry Dad, I still don’t want to kick my nicotine habit), tears dripping off the end of my chin on to the paper, laughing in places and complaining in others, I knew that I wanted to type this up into Word and allow other people to read too. So I hope that you get some pleasure and entertainment from this account: some sense of who my father was, the times he lived through, how he felt and thought about life. Publishing the writing in this way isn’t easy for me, even if a decade and a half has passed; even if patches of my hair are silver now and I keep up my own household; even if my partner and I are beginning to think of my most fertile days and trying to snatch breakfast before he has to jump into the car and snort his way to Templemead: the poor guy has to wait for a temperamental fast train to London, and I have to get my head around that stack of documents balanced on the far left edge of my desk.
Then our mother is still alive and we have to consider her feelings (if not all her thoughts about our late father). Ultimately I decided to go ahead and publish before her end, as she’s probably as long lived as her name-sake Queen Elizabeth. I would like people to read our family story before we - my brothers Luke, Timothy and I - are pensioners ourselves (although working pensioners no doubt). Liz is unlikely to read about this book, but she will hear about it before too long.
Aside from that issue, of Mum’s offended feelings, there are other issues that made me think again about publication. My brothers had to agree, as they eventually did. Luke is a successful gaming engineer, who hardly reads a book in any form, even electronically. If he does read anything on his device, it is usually a military story or an adventure story based on true facts and events. In a way you could say this book is based on facts and events, while covering the emotional territory that soldiers and explorers tend to avoid. My brother is blissfully married and has three sons of his own. He can afford to. Luke was annoyed by some of the things Dad said and thought about him, but there is nothing here to offend him. They were definitely close, and Luke remains close to Dad (even if Noah didn’t always see that). Even less to offend our little brother, who never really lived with us. There’s more in here to offend me; which was one of the issues for me, as I was reading, re-writing and preparing Dad’s account. I kept saying to him “are you for real here? How dare you?” I felt young again. Or youngish.
I ran a helter-skelter range of emotions as I was reading and working on these memories.
Dad had his own way of looking at the universe, as do we all. He was outspoken and controversial at times. Partly that’s because he was talking to himself, not expecting anyone to read. There is a lot of criticism in here about me, as I already mentioned; over the way I was living my life and conducting myself at the time. It wasn’t all about smoking, drinking and staying out late. Dad was aware of his contradictions, a man with radical views from the Sixties who was fearful of his children’s freedom and nervous about their personal behaviour. Maybe he was justified to be worried when I had a very dodgy boyfriend. I can see that now. But what father actually pops up in the middle of his daughter’s bedroom when she’s making love? Aren’t there boundaries for parents too? I don’t want to spoil anyone’s pleasure, but that was hard to take. Over fifteen years later it is still difficult to accept or to forgive everything. Still, there it all was, and remains, in his own words, uninterrupted by my own!
He didn’t need to worry as much as he did. Finally it was only a bit of drinking and after-hours misbehaviour, as with nearly every young generation - when they get the chance. It’s interesting now to look back and see such panic and paranoia towards the young. Let that be a warning to us. Noah should have known better himself, but I understand that it was just his love and concern. Perhaps I will go through the same syndrome myself, if and when we have kids. Hopefully I will keep a tighter grip on my fears. I wish Dad could have seen the way we turned out -how I turned out. It was definitely a phase. It wasn’t too bad finally.
So, yes, I had a theme-park selection of emotions while reading and working on these memories. I’ve already admitted to being surprised, hurt and, at times, even offended by Noah’s remarks. But the book wouldn’t have been published if that had been my verdict. However difficult his attitude towards me, he was always honest and caring. I felt as if I had come close to my Dad again. It wasn’t hard to imagine him being in the room with me, as I listened to him, feeling his hand on my shoulder again as he followed my activity, even as I was considering his thoughts. I love him for all his faults, as I hope he loved me for mine.
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