Dear Fatty (24 page)

Mum had so many dodgy moments in that place. On the whole, she loved the dogs and would give them all a chance not to bite her, but if they persisted in objecting she would have to muzzle them to get the job done. Only loose muzzles of course, the kind greyhounds wear before the race that make them look like famished Hannibal Lecters. She had little poodles who needed new pompoms to show off, and big English sheepdogs who hadn’t been brushed in years and had maggots growing in their matted hair. She had airhead Afghan hounds who were so snooty they couldn’t look her in the eye, and feisty little Westies who looked like skirted clouds as they trotted out giving her a beady sideways glance and a snuffle with the triangle of black dots that was their eyes and nose. She dealt with droolers and farters and nibblers and panic wee-ers. And that was just the staff! Once,
a
big black poodle got his head stuck in between the bars of the kennel and the fire brigade had to come and saw him out while the owner waited, unaware, downstairs. Not only was he a poodle, he was called Bunty
and
he’d got his head stuck at Felicity’s. Quite a dollop of cringing canine shame to deal with, poor mutt. I remember some old dogs simply found the whole experience too overwhelming and would faint. Or, even worse, die! Mum was known to have administered mouth-to-mouth on more than one occasion to resuscitate a pooch that had passed. After all, there’s no tinkle in the till if the dog is delivered back in a carrier bag stiff and cold. She would proudly hand the panting, resurrected creature back to its grateful owner, having kissed it back from the brink of death five minutes before.

Mum took all comers, from cheeky Heinz 57 variety mongrels to aloof pedigrees, and endeavoured to send them out perky and clean. Our own dogs, a couple of dirty-grey West Highlands, looked on with great amusement. As is so often the case in any trade, they were the last to be plonked in the sink, too much of a busman’s holiday. Sometimes Christmas would warrant a spruce-up, if they were unlucky.

I remember how tired Mum was after a day of such labour-intensive work. I remember how hot and dirty she used to get, how the dog hairs would stick into her pores – she said they felt like a thousand tiny jabbing needles – and how they would sometimes get infected, just like the endless bites she sustained. She was constantly boosting her tetanus levels, in order to give the dogs another chance. And in order to give us another chance. This second income was crucial at this time, so she had to make her business pay.

I expect it didn’t help your self-respect to realise that, conversely, things were sinking your end. Nobody in our family would have echoed that feeling but you were an old-fashioned man, believing that the head of the household, the man, ought to be the one bringing home the bacon. I see now that must have been hard for you but I also see that everyone was just trying to do what they could to get by.

I have written fondly in my diary about a time, before I went away to the States, when I was off school for a couple of weeks and so I could be at home with you. Mum had to keep working, Gary was away at uni, and it was obviously deemed necessary for someone to be with you, watching you, watching over you. Did people fear then that you might take drastic action? I write that you’d had a nervous breakdown and were feeling ‘poorly’. You were in bed for a few days but then I write that you are up and about, laying a floor in our bathroom and we are laughing a lot together, drinking coffee in the garden. I like to think that I was unknowingly part of your recovery on that occasion, maybe serving to remind you how much your family loved you.

Then I went away for the year in America, where we all kept in touch by letters and phone calls. I came back to find you bearded and gaunt. There’s no doubt that you had a haunted look about you. You told me things were a bit rough with work but that it would all be OK and not to worry. Despite my concern for you, it was difficult to be anything other than euphoric on my return home. I’d had an amazing year in the States but I was ready to be back with you, with my family, and you made it clear you were so happy to have me home. On the long drive back to the West Country from Heathrow, we babbled
on
, hardly stopping to draw breath, catching up on all the stories, all the gossip. Yes, we had spoken on the phone while I was away, but only in that ‘well, I won’t keep you, it must be costing a fortune’ sort of way that we all did then, ever-fearful of the costs – and of the phone itself for some reason! Of course, I was now a ‘fiancée’. You hadn’t laid eyes on me since I had become a ‘fiancée’. I fancied that I looked entirely different, more mature and desired and mysteriously unattainable. No, you assured me, I just looked more American. Back in Saltash, I made contact with all my pals and family, rushing about recounting details of my exchange-year experience, boring them all with tons of photos. David was due back from a long trip on his ship and I was beside myself with excitement to see him. You liked him, I think, yes? Obviously it took a bit of time to get used to the idea that I was dating someone in the NAVY, but you knew he was decent and that he looked after me. I imagine the handover from dads to son-in-laws is always a bit fraught, but overall I think you approved.

I can’t remember much about this period except that I was so happy to be home. I knew that you had a horrible bout of piles, which had been a regular ailment, and that, to avoid waking Mum in the night, you were sleeping on the sofa or in the spare room. You’d long suffered with this affliction, but I could see that this time, more than before, it was difficult for you to move about easily, and that you were tired from lack of sleep. I didn’t know that this discomfort was just the tip of the iceberg, that underneath, inside, you were in hell.

On 10 September 1977, I waltzed off with a casual farewell to you and Mum. I was going to stay with David at the home of
a
friend of his and the friend’s wife who lived in navy quarters in Devonport. It was one of those nights where I was playing at being a grown-up. Let’s have dinner with our grown-up married friends and stay in their grown-up married house and sleep in the same bed as if we were grown-up and married, for soon, my love, we shall be grown-up and married. Well, I grew up fast the next day.

How did it start? Was there a phone call? I can’t remember, but suddenly, early in the morning, David and I were dressing hurriedly and racing back to Saltash in his car. When I arrived home, Mum was sitting, ashen-faced. Gary looked like it was raining inside him, grim and beaten. Oh God. What? Where’s Dad? What’s happened? Who told me? Mum, I think. Yes. It was Mum, because she said you had been suffering badly all day, and that last thing you went upstairs together, with quite a struggle due to your discomfort. You kissed her goodnight. You told her you loved her. You shuffled out to the other room. So as not to disturb her sleep.

When she woke the next morning, she said she had a strong sense of disconnection immediately. Something felt wrong. She called out to you and there was no answer. Then there was a panicky frantic bit where she and Gary searched for you, shouted for you in the garden. The car was missing. I don’t know how or why he looked there, but Gary drove, on his motorbike I think, up to the field where you kept some of the rabbits near Pillaton. He found you. God. That must have been dire, sickening. You had planned it. A hose on the exhaust, fitted carefully, fed through the window of the car. A bottle of sherry, so that a teetotal man might drink himself into the oblivion necessary to
start
the engine and lie back. And sleep. For ever. No more hell. Did it feel lovely? Like the grasp of anaesthetic? Did you feel giddy from the sherry? Was your head swimming? Or were you howling in agony, raging in your depression? Did you go out still fighting? Or did you surrender to the stillness, willing it to take you? Did you weep? Did we cross your mind? Did flashes of our life together show inside your head like a splendid movie? Or did you have to extinguish any thought of us so that you could do it? Did you say goodbye? To what? To whom? To the night sky, or the inside of the car, or the life lived? Did you sputter and drown? Did you choke? Struggle? Did you just float away? Did you see a light? Did you hear a voice? Did dead beloveds hold their arms out and welcome you to their dead place? Is that where you are? I’ve lost you. Where are you? Can you see me? I’m in fucking agony, you selfish bastard, don’t you care? How could you do this to us? How dare you steal our happiness? Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you give us a chance to stop you? Was it our fault for not noticing? Did you want us to stop you? Did you pray that someone would knock on the car window at the very last moment and drag you out? Did you consider that we couldn’t – can’t – live properly without you? So, you lied when you told me you would always be there for me? Were you so very alone with your hopelessness? Did you think we would be better off without you? Did you think you didn’t matter? Did you think you had failed? Failed us? Did you feel ashamed? Did you suppress your sadness so much that it started to eat you from inside? Did you decide not to drag any of us into your black pit with you? Did you think this was the most selfless thing you could do? Did you think it was the
only
thing
you
could do? Did you think about it many times before and battle against yourself to stay alive? Did you just need to go? To find any sort of quiet? Away from the clanging racket of your mistakes, reminding you constantly that you have spoilt everything? Were you racked with wretchedness and unable to see light, anywhere? Was it dark and terrifying in your head? Did you want to be in a light place, to be hushed and tranquil? What did you hope it would be like? Like a lazy hot sunny day on the moors, or like a walk on the beach in Rock, or like bobbing about on the ocean? Like going home, maybe? Or did you just want it to be
anywhere
but here? The unbearable place where you felt savaged. The misery was too much. Maybe our happiness was too strong a contrast to bear? You wanted us to be happy but it tore you apart to not be able to include yourself in it any more. Your torment was a monster, and to kill it, you felt you had to kill you. That was the only way it would die. The only way for you, and us, to be free of it. You were slaying the monster so that life could continue for those who deserved to live it. You were being the dad. Protecting your family. From you. I understand. At least, I understand that I don’t fully understand. But if I love you, I have to try to understand. And I do love you. So much. And I miss you. Profoundly miss you. And I do forgive you. Because what do I have to stay angry about? That you have found your peace? That you did what you needed to do, however heartbreaking that is? I feel no regrets for you, no shame. Just awfully, awfully sad. For myself. For a 19-yearold with your skin, your eyes, who felt strangely responsible until I worked out your illness wasn’t my fault. And even
that
I worked out by tapping into a synergy I always had with you. By thinking,
‘What
would you wish for me now, in this pitiful grief?’ and, of course, you would wish me to live my life to the full, and not waste a single second or a single chance at happiness. You would want me to relish those chances, and I do, Dad. I live my life fully, as a tribute to you and in the full knowledge that you couldn’t so I will, for both of us. I carry you with me, not as a heavy weight or some kind of sorrowful burden, but as my energy and my engine. You are around me and part of me, my father, my dad. My darling dad. Denys Vernon French.

We were utterly broken, Gary, Mum and I. All of us just kept on breathing, but we weren’t really living. We were numb with grief. Mum tried to be strong and distracted herself with getting on and organising stuff. I offered to stay at home for a year, to defer my place at college, and stay with her. There was no altruism in this – I was in pain and wanted the comfort of home. Mum was stunning – she refused outright to let me stay. She said that we had to work through it and be busy, that she couldn’t endure any pity heaped on top of the harrowing heartache.

The house was full of family, my clearest memory being of Mum’s three brothers, Terry, Owen and Mike, the triumvirate gathering around her. She had cared for and looked out for all three in their lives and now it was time for them to look after her. They helped with everything, the funeral, the money, the planning. You had been a mixture of father and brother to all three and they too were devastated by what happened.

I also clearly remember when one particularly insensitive (different) uncle, the brother-in-law who had been at the centre of so many of the troubles leading up to your death, made a very big mistake by walking into the midst of the sorrow in our
home
and demanding the return of the tools he’d recently lent you. Gary literally flew from one side of the room to the other, where this dolt was, and put his hands round his throat and started to throttle him. If the triad of uncles hadn’t been there to pull him off, I genuinely think we would have witnessed a murder. I had never seen Gary so incensed with rage. His grief and fury combined to make a combustible force he couldn’t contain. He became the man of the house the day he found you, Dad, and it was hard for him, but he took his role seriously and has been there to watch out for Mum and me ever since.

I couldn’t go to see your body. Everyone encouraged me to, to know that you weren’t here with us any more, and to say goodbye. I hadn’t seen you since that night when I casually breezed out the door, same as always, chucking goodbyes over my shoulder in my haste. I can’t even remember what you said, what your last words were. It could so easily have been ‘I love you’, you said it so often. Was it that? Did you know that what you were saying to the back of my head as I rushed out was the last thing you would ever say to me? No matter really. It just crosses my mind sometimes. I only pray it wasn’t ‘Don’t go’. I didn’t want to see you because I was afraid I would have that final lifeless image of you etched on my brain instead of all the vital happy memories that were and are so clear. Mum said you looked like you were having a nap. So that’s good.