Small houses always encourage their occupants to live more fully away from them than in them. If a small house is all that the owner can afford, then the relative poverty of the owner limits their choice of decoration too. Unmentioned, the loss of choice becomes a powerful motive for the most powerful family members to go out particularly when their leaving makes other family members stay in. This was one reason why Dad drank, that his brothers all drank was another reason; the pubs were the family place of worship, due north on his moral compass and his most fixed point of reference for life outside the parental house. This choice had been fixed for him since he first worked and earned money enough to drink, underage, in the late 1940s.
When my parents decorated the living room his choice of wallpaper was oddly similar to the wallpaper of the pubs he visited. But it was not as tough, or as tasteful as pub wallpaper. When dad minded me because Mother was out at St John Ambulance every Thursday evening his choice of wallpaper reminded him of the pub. How could it do anything else? At the time I did not link his distant mindedness with what was on the walls, but with hindsight the link was there.
Dad worked a five and half day week until 1968, from when he worked a five day week and got Saturday mornings off. His first choice of where to go was the pub, for which he would have a strip wash at the kitchen sink and smarten himself up. I remember the first time he was forced by circumstance to take me to the pub with him. Mother took just my sister shopping that Saturday because my sister needed new clothing and I would have been an unnecessary extra if I was with them. Dad had to meet his brothers in the pub to talk about the forthcoming day trip to the seaside. They had to sort out who was going to order which tickets for which family at which Liberal club for the annual day away. What also had to be considered was how the different coaches had different pick up points in the town and the brothers all lived in different places.
The Horse and Groom was their choice place to meet. The pub was empty when dad and I got there, it was early. Still, I was scared, but I don't know what of. I don't know whether it was the atmosphere, the smell of polish, tobacco smoke and spilt beer, or whether it was dad doing maximum detachment without realising it. If I had known the word 'unwholesome' I would have used it to describe that room on that day. That the pub shared its grimy brickwork with the aircraft hanger sized factory dad worked in, as one corner of the the whole construction did not help. Pub and factory seamlessly shared each others brickwork, and both swallowed men up inside. Both spat the men out regularly too. Neither of them were places for children.
I did not know how scared I was but the following illustrates it well. I knew what the front of a jukebox looked like but I had never seen one up close before and I did not know how they worked. We were early and on our own. Dad gave me the money to play a record. I chose was Cliff Richard's anthem to positive thinking 'Congratulations'. I thought that I had to wait until one record ended to put the money in because I would make the record that was playing jump if I put the money in whilst the record was playing. Dad must have wondered at me, and been quite annoyed at my apparent slowness. In the silence between records I put the money in and my record played. His brothers arrived and I sat at some distance from the men as they talked; another sign of my nerves and their confidence with each other. The distance was good for being observant though, I noticed that dad was the least best dressed among them. At least two of the five of them liked wearing suits, ties, and white shirts, and one had horn rimmed glasses which made him look very posh and managerial.
Back to life around Mother, inside the parental house, and outside it. The first pet in the parental house was a small wire haired ginger and white terrier called Snowy who I was very fond of. Mother was fond of him too. Dad had no feel for domestic pets, so she had surely got Snowy against dads will. She got Snowy partly because she grew up with animals and partly because she knew small boys and small dogs have always gone together, and they make companions for each other. Mother was the one who cared most for him, I was the one who thought he was mine. Being able to walk Snowy on my own after I had eaten lunch at the parental house was something of a draw for me to eat faster after I was forced to eat in the parental house for eating school dinners too slowly.
The only time I got into trouble with these walks it was dealt with efficiently. Snowy was small but strong. One day going across a patch of rough ground he pulled on the lead, sniffing after something and I fell over. As I fell forward on to the clay based soil my knee landed on piece of glass exposed above a small tussock. That was the one time our distant neighbour drew close. The husband of the couple, Harold, had a car. He took Mother and I to hospital whilst his wife looked after my baby sister and Snowy. Out of Snowy pulling sharply on the lead Mother got to practice her first aid close to home, I got a ride in a car to the hospital, and a neighbour was more neighbourly of his own free will. The wound was cleaned and stitched up. I had a scar that for as long as I wore short trousers which was a cue for a win-win story.
Alas the life of Snowy was seriously shortened when Jehovah's Witnesses in their long off-white raincoats came into the back yard, and knocked at the back door. They knew somebody was in by the washing on the line which obscured that the gate was open. Whilst they talked to Mother about Jehovah, Snowy played in the back yard. As they tried to draw the conversation out and draw Mother towards subscribing to The Watchtower Mother lost focus on where Snowy was and simply wanted the Witnesses to leave. They did leave in the end and shut the gate behind them. In the meanwhile Snow had got out, into the back lane whilst the Jehovah's Witnesses were talking. When they left Mother realised Snowy was not in the house or yard and she and I searched and found Snowy who could not go far on his short legs. Mother mildly cursed The Jehovah's Witnesses for the time they had forced her to waste both listening to them and getting the house back to order after they left. What we did not know was where he had been.
A few yards down the back lane there was a bakers. We knew that with the flour they stored bakers attracted rats, just like the grain store that always smelled yeasty or of vinegar that was also close by. Not long after the escape Snowy went off his food and fell ill, and hid behind one of the arm chairs. Mother knew what had happened, Snowy had unknowingly drunk rats piss which was poison to the livers of dogs. So the dog was dying slowly in pain behind the armchair that backed onto the front door in the living room. Dad was about, Mother felt frozen between being watchful of dad as he was inattentive for the television being on, and wanting to disturb dads peace by seeking to somehow humanely end Snowy's suffering.
I was distraught at the death of snowy, if life is a hard lesson to learn when you are in single figures, then death is an even harder lesson to learn. No doubt I was soft soaped by comments like 'Snowy is in Heaven now', perhaps due to my age I had to soft soaped like that. The alternative was much worse and lasted for much longer.
For decades Mother blamed The Jehovah's Witnesses for the death of the dog. I blamed them too. But as I found a life away from Mother, in which she had little to no bearing on everyday life, so I began to to recognise afresh the difference between symptom and cause, causation and coincidence, conditionality. It was true that the Jehovah's Witnesses were mainly to blame for the death of Snowy with how they sought to distract Mother. But equally the world Snowy was part of was always a place that was more dangerous to him than he, or we, could know.
Soon after the death of Snowy Mother started renting her first allotment. In an isolated spot she was the only gardener around and enjoyed gardened on her own. No doubt an armchair psychologist would point towards mental and physical healing properties of growing things, and making your own decisions after living too long with the decisions of others. I am sure that played it's part. But it was not the first space she choice and control. When she lived in bedsits she had her own front door inside the front door of the house, but that period felt like a lifetime ago to her as she worked that first allotment. There was a small ramshackle shed on it which was big enough to store the tools that Mother brought with her with a little room to spare. She also started to put in that shed items she previously stored in the attic of the parental house. Chief among them was a chair that had once been her grandmother's. To Mother, Grandma Clifton's rocking chair was a special chair and she had nowhere to keep it where she could trust that the personal value that it held for her would not be derided by the owner of the space. It was padded on the seat and the back with a faded green and grey cloth. The rocking motion was quite small. She used to talk to Grandma Clifton whilst sat in the chair on her own, and sometimes pray in the chair too. It was no ordinary piece of furniture to her, and she feared other people seeing it so.
As a piece of land it had been left untended for a long time. But it came with new life, the allotment had it's own cat, whom Mother named Sooty. It took a long time for Mother to gain the trust of the cat, much food was left out whilst Mother quietly did her own thing, the better to let the cat approach her. Eventually Mother coaxed the cat into being carried, and she brought him to the family house. Mother was right to do this. I was too young to imagine the difference between cats and dogs, the trade offs between an animal's relative autonomy and the safety of the animal.
Sooty rebalanced the parental house in a way that Snowy never could. Sooty took up where Snowy left off, in making the parental house a more friendly place, and with his cat-like mix of autonomy and neediness Sooty was a strong character. He was dad-proof as well. When dad was being gloomy and distant Sooty gave us an increased resistance to dad being like that. Also dad could tease Sooty and Sooty did not mind, his claws were a match for dads teasing any day. Dad's favourite scene with the cat was putting his left hand down the over the arm of the chair and rubbing the cats belly on the floor. If dad was rough then the cat drew it's claws and got them into his wrists or the cloth of the armchair. All whilst dad never turned away from his television.
My favourite scene with Sooty was my knee being the his personal cushion whilst I was sat on the settee and Mother ironed and listened to her small portable radio set to Radio 2. My baby sister would be sat on the settee too and she was nearly as quiet as we were meant to be. Often when Sooty sat on my knee I read 'The Daily Mirror', the red top newspaper we got every day. As I puzzled over the stories and columns in it I am sure that I misunderstood a lot. But I misunderstood it quietly and the quiet was the virtuous quality that Mother appreciated most in this new way that the the parental house seemed to be evolving.
Find Chapter 5 here
Find the introduction and chapter guide here.
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