My father always had an inferiority complex. He left school at twelve and a half. For seventy years my mother belittled him, but before that he had already given up. He has always been totally lacking in ambition, and rejected opportunities that were given to him. That is a family trait, shared with his own father, my brother and my youngest sister.
I used to worry about what I would say if I were to give a eulogy for my parents. I was spared giving a eulogy for my mother by my son. For my father there are things I could say, even though I tend to be more aware of how I felt he failed me. So firstly the good things.
My father loved his work. He was always happiest being a tradesman, a painter and decorator, engaged in domestic work. It was his life. probably his greatest love, as he loved it in a different way to how he loved my mother. He never tired of rubbing down, of prepping, of enamelling and paperhanging. He said recently that decorating the synagogue in Exeter probably gave him the greatest satisfaction, as there he could use his skills as a grainer, and be able to stand back and admire his work. He never had difficulty facing a day's work. When he came to visit he was happy if he could use his skills to decorate a room, whether in my home, or at my grandfather's in Italy, or other relations in Milan and Verona. decorating was his great skill and was how he communicated with others. Talking about his customers and their jobs still gives him pleasure now.
He took a huge pride in his work, giving detailed specifications and estimates. He looked after customers' homes. He gave good advice, although his taste was much more conservative than my own. I inherited from him my delight in practical skills, and I garnered many more practical skills in consequence. He had me work with him, and he taught me his skills, and he insisted on high standards. He understood colour, and he was brilliant at mixing the correct shade of a paint.
My father's happiest years were his four or so years on active service in North Africa and Italy, where he was respected in his squadron, and where too his skills with a paint and brush were appreciated.
Strangely my father completely lacked ambition. He had the promise of a successful and well-paid career with the decorating firm Holdings in Manchester, but he opted to work for his father in his business, in a lowlier role. My grandparents never had ambitions for their children, any more than their parents had for them, or my parents had for us. My father worked for his father for twelve years, and he was rewarded with the large Victorian villa in Alexandra Park where I was born, and where I lived from the age of ten when my grandparents left, but he always felt cheated, despite the generosity of this gift. I believe that on the day my grandparents left the house to live on the farm in Devon my father went indoors afterwards and wept with disappointment. I think he expected a large cash bonus too, but my grandparents were stretched to find sufficient funds to be able to purchase the farm, and in addition the deeds of the Manchester house had to be used for several years as security for the mortgage to purchase the farm, so that my father felt that he didn't really own the house. I always felt that my grandparents were generous, but I suppose my father felt that he too had been generous in working for his father.
My father was very close to his parents, and especially to his mother. He was her first child and her favourite. To me it felt that my grandmother always expected that her children would always stay with her, and when they chose marriage it came as a bitter blow, spoiling plans. I don't think it was conscious, just an assumption and expectation, and something I have always found rather strange.
My father is an extremely modest man, acutely aware that he left school when only 12 and never received a proper education. His years at St Margaret's he hated, as he was shy and bullied. I think in this he resembled his own father. Every Sunday morning at 9am my father would share a very long telephone call with his mother, standing n the cold hall of our house—phones were always situated there in those days—and sharing everything with her. My mother was always jealous, as he was closer to his mother than to her. Each autumn my father would attempt to visit his mother for a week in Devon, but it was rarely that long, as after three or four days my father would surrender to my mother and drive back to Manchester. She always won, she always did. My father missed seeing his mother at the end of his life, and my mother missed my grandmother's funeral. She missed all funerals of my father's family, she only ever went to funerals of her own family, and that was only thrice.
My father spent seventy years married to my mother, and he spent every day of those seventy years terrified of her anger, and would do absolutely anything to try and pacify her and avoid her explosions. We didn't share the same goal as teenagers, and would 'answer her back', something seen as a terrible crime. I remember his phrase, 'Why did you say that, you know it upsets her?' He never resisted my mother, stood up to her or set any kind of boundary. My biggest hurt is probably that he did nothing to protect us. Growing up with my mother was a nightmare, and we were hurt by the constant anger and criticism from her.
My father would do anything to pamper my mother. She had full control of the family finances, but was a hopeless spendthrift. Every weekend my father would buy a very expensive piece of fillet steak from Tennant's the butchers in Alexandra Road, purely for her, and he would beat it and marinade it, and serve it to her in the evening on a tray in bed. My mother spent a lot of time in bed. She rose late, after hot lemon juice and coffee in bed each morning. She didn't work, except for a brief period in the 1950s, at Fairey Aviation and Lewis's department store jewelry department, and briefly in the 1960s helping Noni in her ladies' fashion shop in Alexandra Road. She stopped this when she realised she was facilitation Noni's affair.
I remember particularly my father's lack of love and closeness with us. My father worked the long hours normal for a working-class man in the 1950s. In addition to working six days a week, and cycling six miles each way to Manchester, plus long overtime on Summer evenings painting outsides, he also spent Sundays helping his father with the paperwork of the business. I suppose my father was tired, but I missed him in my life. I lacked a male role model pretty much completely, and I lacked any protection from my mother's anger. In my case I withdrew into myself. I played out on my own for many hours. I discovered reading and books and lost myself in them.
For my siblings it was different. My sister Rina is only two years younger than myself, and although her birth meant I was suddenly weaned, I don't remember that. I do remember though how my mother always had 'Baby' as her favourite, and I lost that role after two years. Rina though was 'Baby' for six years, and her ejection from this favoured role was brutal. She was terribly hurt. I remember how she would cry for hours left alone in the outside toilet. To me it seems she has spent the whole of her life trying to gain my parents' love, showering them with over-generous gifts, effusive encomiums and making great sacrifices for them. It has always saddened me.
When 'Baby', my sister Dana, was ten, she too was ejected when my younger brother was born. I tried to fill the gap by being there for her, giving her attention, making reading books and reading to her, and she sometimes slept in my bed. However, it was only two years later that I left home and went to university. Over the next few years, her teenage years, my father took a huge dislike to her, and treated her with contempt and cruelty, something that he now acknowledges but cannot explain. It was verbal and emotional, not physical.
When I was a young teenager I have clear memories of being punished by him, usually by thumping me hard repeatedly on my head. This was always in response to my mother's complaints about my reactions to her anger and bullying. Dana was spared this, but my father colluded with my mother to make her life awful. Dana did pass her 11+ and go to grammar school, and I continued my support, even arranging cello lessons for her, but she has never realised her full potential, never believing in herself or her own abilities.
Although my father had a warm relationship with my brother, unlike the rest of us, it wasn't better for Adrian. It is true that my father would play with him in the mornings for an hour or two, and that my parents were financially generous, so that he had toys we could never have dreamed of, and he went away on holidays with them to Italy every year, or so it seemed, he also had the misfortune to be alone with my parents, where he had to deal with my mother's anger and bullying by himself, and of course he had no protection from my father. He may have been doted on but he had to grow up alone in the madhouse. I once took him out for the day to Chester for a treat. Another time he went away from Brana and myself for a youth hostelling holiday in the Cotswolds. Another time he stayed with us in Bideford, and together we made Punch and Judy puppets, built a puppet stage, and performed Punch and Judy in Iddesleigh. It was not long after though, that he really couldn't stand living with his parents any more, and left home, without O-levels and without A-levels. Like my father he has always felt that he has suffered from his lack of education, and although he was very successful as a DJ, and his life has gone pretty well, he's probably right.
The lack of a father-figure in my life, for whatever reason, has always affected me. I never learnt to kick a ball or catch a ball. I lacked a role model of a strong, self-confident male. I lacked a male who cared about me, engaged with me and encouraged me. I didn't look for a father-figure, though I did I suppose for a while, in turning to religion. God and Jesus were useless father substitutes though, and only made things worse, by putting blame, guilt and sinfulness on me. I was desperate for a brother but my real brother came to late. I saw how my first two sisters had a bond that strengthened them, they were allies against my parents.
My father, like my mother, was selfish and egotistical. They were both first-born children. Was that the cause? They had wonderful holidays together over the years, whether in Prestatyn at the holiday camp, in Italy in their motor caravan, or in later life in regular holidays abroad and cruises. I was never part of that, but I did appreciate being allowed to escape regularly to my grandparents in Devon. My parents' lack of interest or involvement in my life meant that I got away with repeating (unnecessarily) my A-levels when I lost a year caring for my new-born brother.
My father's weaknesses were expressed by the 1960s in his alcoholism. He wasn't a pub drinker, he wasn't a drunkard, but he drank a half-bottle of whiskey each day which he purchased from the off licence at the corner of Greame Street. I suppose he drank as an escape from the torture of living with my mother. He didn't have the inner strength that could sustain him through her onslaughts. I was used to protecting him. I hid his empty bottles, I covered up for him, and when he gave up alcohol I went with him to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I rushed to St Mary's Hospital in Manchester to support him when my mother was fighting for her life at the time of my brother's birth, and I defended him over the next forty years when my mother constantly belittled and taunted him for his drinking habits in the past.
My father did not allow himself any interests beyond his work and satisfying my mother. For a while he was interested in frogs, which led to a glut of gifts of model frogs, books and other ranid memorabilia. Of course that was dismissed by my mother, mostly because it ate into time that could be dedicated to her. My father's great passion in recent years has been, like for many men of his kind, a passion for his war years, which has led to a similar glut of gifts to do with WW2, Monte Cassino and the Italian Campaign. When he tried to write letters my mother would complain. She was desperate for total and complete attention and he was unable to deny her.
I have often thought that my parents' attitude is demonstrated well in their children's weddings. My eldest sister organised her own wedding. My parents' plea was that January was financially difficult. i suppose it was, but both my parents were utterly improvident. My father never did anything at all to do with money, except to pamper my mother. He entrusted it all to my mother, perhaps thinking that this would make her happy, but she squandered the money. My sister Rina's wedding was a nightmare. I discovered that absolutely nothing had been done about it, so that in a couple of weeks I had to find a venue and arrange all the catering, which I did myself, with my left arm heavily bandaged following a motorcycle accident. Auntie Mabel and Auntie May worked behind the scenes with me to put the show on, setting the tables with neighbours' cutlery that we borrowed, buying plates from a cheap shop in Moss Side. My parents never paid for the venue, St Augustine's church hall at All Saints.
It was Rina who arranged Dana's wedding generously and impressively, complete with a pipe band.
My parents did come to my wedding, but the only gift we received was a candlestick purloined from a customer. I don't think it was any better for my brother. His first wedding was, I think, at an Italian restaurant in Manchester. His second wedding was all arranged by his wife's parents in York. It feels that the message was that we were somehow not important, and that fits well with my mother's statement once that she never really wanted children, she just wanted my father. Well she certainly got him, body and soul, and she kept him with the use of her body, till the very end.
My father still seems to be incapable of thinking about others. It is his 96th birthday in a week, and of course I've sent him a present—something he has never done for me—and of course I'll send him a card, though it won't have the effusive praise that my sister can write. He always 'jokingly' reminds me before each Xmas how he is looking forward to opening all his presents, and I always cringe, but I always oblige.
Why do I persevere, even though I am obviously hurt by all this? I do have a sense of duty. he did his best, within his very limited capabilities. I survived and made a good life despite everything. He was always generous with his decorating skills, which I suppose is how he expressed himself. His was the language of the paintbrush and pasteboard, his only language, how he shared of himself and gave a thank you and some love. If he dies before me, just as I felt with my mother, I shall feel a twinge of sadness that we weren't closer, that he wasn't ever able to overcome his low self-esteem, that I never felt he was ever there for me, but at least I shall feel that I did my best for him, even if I didn't become a painter and decorator and work with him, like he once hoped.
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