Plot 29
Page 20
Ledger sheet/transfer list
Francis Anthony O’Toole
Ship: Indefatigable: 31.2.52
The rating has it in him to be a good cook but he is indifferent and does not take kindly to authority. It is to be hoped he will do better in new surroundings. He has an engaging personality and I can’t help liking him.
The next entry is from two months before me, from HMS Decoy, the ship named in Barnardo’s. Both my mother’s and father’s records are written around the same time in the same tone.
Ship: Decoy 10.11.53
Professionally he is a good tradesman while in the galleys, and can take charge of Cooks cooking. He cannot take charge of himself and thus is not fit to be a leading hand since by lack of example and weakness about liquor and women outside the ship he is regarded as irresponsible and unclean. I doubt he will ever control his irregularities.
An irregular, unclean father, a morally weak mother, my peculiar legacy.
Later reports write about ‘trying to live down his fast reputation’. In June 1956 he passes his professional examination for petty officer with 82 per cent. He is not promoted. By February 1957 he is ‘drunk onshore at the Lucky Wheel bar’; in July the same year he is in the ship cells three times in six weeks, bringing on board a bottle of whisky and breaking two windows in the brig.
I hold his youth in my hands, a few sheets of grubby paper, a fading black and white photo. Here he is, stripped to his waist, fists up, pugnacious, a fighting O’Toole, another boxer to add to the family list. Another half-drawn man to be deciphered, his character read from code.
Sickly Ray this year sickened me, half-memories unearthed. More secretive the more he revealed.
So I am left with Dudley, who fostered the differences between my brother and me, who changed my identity, my luck, my life, until he too walked away. The man who sowed my seed.
Is it only people like me, with my past, who obsess over who they are? What, when, where and why? An enigma, nurture or nature? Maybe I am a combination of Frank, Ray, Dudley, all and none of them, a pick-and-mix kid. It is time to stop asking questions, time to be thankful, I think.
A year on the scent of Christopher. Watching his spoor disappear like in snow. I sketch him quickly as he too fades. Close to five years it has taken to see the hole he has left. I have more brothers now, maybe more like him than me, although they don’t share his DNA. Closer to the start (wherever, whichever, new beginning that was) Christopher and I were what we had.
The year of the brothers, conjuring Christopher, denying Tony. Teenage Christopher had become an embarrassment. All I could see was his awkwardness, his weakness, his inability to be alone. I won’t know what happened with my mother but someone had sucked his marrow before they spat him out.
I could hear his hurt when I was smaller but I lost his frequency. It was there in his need to surround himself with other boys, his dogged devotion to terrible wives. His love lived in baby talk. He had been schooled in his addiction by experts. Groomed and primed to go off when everyone was clear away.
Ravaged by his mother, rejected by his fathers, constantly compared to me. For a while I was his safe place until I, too, traded him. By the time I woke, it was way too late. Now, of course, he is gone for good. I try to retrieve trust but it has been a long lament. My garden journal now a widow’s song, I call a loved one lost at sea.
This, then, his eulogy, something spoken at his graveside if he has one, stories collected for the funeral. I carry his coffin. I bear witness. He was my brother. I mourn him still.
My rape and murder dreams are back. I fight them off. I am desperate to breathe, to wake.
It is Christmas again at the Danish summerhouse: wild, windy, still dark, the forecast is for storm, then snow. Here too I grow his marigolds, though I doubt he did again. Not recompense for turning my Judas back but perhaps penance, writing it out repeatedly, like at school.
Sometimes all is over, for the day, all done, all said, all ready for the night, and the day not over, far from over, the night not ready, far, far from ready.
Samuel Beckett, Happy Days
Postscript
Paradise haunts gardens and it haunts mine.
Derek Jarman, Derek Jarman’s Garden
Sunday summer afternoon in the other garden in my life, four doors down, where my daughter Kala and her kids Leah and Dylan live. I look out over this space to see them watering the flowers we sow: cosmos, poppies, cornflowers, calendula (of course). I watch as they deadhead the annuals and train their roses, as they thread jasmine through the trellis. I can hear Kala scream as she finds another spider. I see them lying on the grass, sitting and eating and talking with friends.
Kala’s garden is a collaboration. I buy too much seed and try to persuade her to let it grow wild, while she and Henri ruthlessly sort it by height and colour. We sow summer annuals on Kala’s birthday in May and plant spring tulips in the autumn. It is an urban family flower garden. It is much used and loved.
Today there is a barbecue. Radha, my younger daughter, is first to arrive, with two of her children: Lene and Taylor. Liam, her eldest son, has lived with Henri and me since he was 13. I woke him today at noon, half an hour before everyone is due to arrive. It is his last year as a teenager. Like a cat, he can stay out most of the night and sleep through much of the day. Kala is cooking in her kitchen – jerk chicken, a family favourite. Leah, just back from an Ibizan summer, is preparing her potato salad. Henri and I have brought tomatoes from the terrace, cooked beans and courgettes from the plot.
We are joined by my son Jaime and family: wife Rebecca, Tara and Emily. Tara is four years old, Emily two; both are blonde haired with big blue eyes. It is easy to see myself in them. Immediately, they are swarmed by cousins and aunts, rugs laid on the grass and games laid out, giant wooden noughts and crosses. Dylan and Lene let Tara win. It’s a smart and loving move. Emily laughs and claps her hands.
The sun shines, the flowers gleam, there are long hugs and many kisses. Miraculously, we are a tactile family. It has always been important to me.
The barbecue is glowing pleasingly pale. The table is laden with food and jugs and jars.
Taylor is 14 and football mad. He grins and shows off ball-spinning tricks. Everyone is impressed. He has grown tall in the past year. Liam is six foot three. He has been leaning down to hug me for a long time now. He and Taylor huddle together.
Jaime joins me at the barbecue. We grill Kala’s chicken. Henri and Radha busily mother around, pouring lemon drinks for the little kids and prosecco for the rest.
Kala’s cosmos sway in the slight breeze, ethereal pink. The Mexican sunflowers are covered in bloom. The garden is a little gaudy, like us. Plates are passed and emptied, filled again.
Karen, a photographer friend, takes pictures. It is hard to gather all together except at Christmas. I want always to remember these moments. As I raise a toast, my eyes spill with fresh tears. The family I have been looking for this past year, my whole life, I say, is the one I have with me here.
Acknowledgements
First thanks must go to Henriette for her patience and love as I mined deeper into my childhood. To my sisters, Lesley and Susan, for sharing their secrets and for reading the manuscript. To Mary and Howard for their friendship and for sharing Plot 29. To all at Branch Hill. To Louise Haines at 4th Estate for commissioning the book and her encouragement as it grew. To Araminta Whitley at LAW for pithy advice. To Nigel Slater for inspiration. Thanks, too, to some of the people who sheltered me as a child.
Photographs
Summer ’59, aged five. Christopher (left) and Alan Jenkins with Lilian Drabble in Aveton Gifford: first day with new clothes, new home, new mum.
Summer ’65, aged 11. Peter Drabble’s last year at the village school.
Autumn equinox ’71, aged 17. Peter Jenkins with Hawkwind at the Chalice Well, Glastonbury.
Permissions
Excerpts from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, ‘Digging’ from
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney and ‘Sunlight’ (part I of ‘Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication’) from North by Seamus Heaney all reproduced with kind permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.
‘I Love The Nightlife’ Words and Music by Alicia Bridges and Susan Hutcheson © 1978, reproduced by permission of Sony/ATV Songs LLC, London W1F 9LD.
‘Nobody’s Child’ Words and Music by Cy Coben and Mel Force © 1949, reproduced by permission of Sony/ATV Milene Music, London W1F 9LD.
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