August 1991
The summer Dad was ill, we went often to Sall Church. It has the tallest tower in Norfolk and its high vaulted ceiling and delicate columns are unexpected in a rural church. Anne Boleyn’s ghost haunts it and so do a thousand others. Up a steep stone stairway off the nave there is a whispering gallery. Gargoyles grin down from the ceiling like stars, orbiting the central sinister face of the Green Man.
Dad found walking a great strain, and sat in the pews contemplating the altar and the great yew tree which swirled behind it through warped green diamond panes of glass.
He and I had many outings, and they filled me with nostalgia for my childhood. Dad was very proud; he never complained about his illness, and I caught his courage and submerged my sadness and my fear. Life’s circle felt smugly, horribly complete now as I, not he, drove a large car along narrow lanes, while he, not I, sat in the back and called for lemonade. But Dad made it impossible and impertinent to be sad. His verve and his pleasure in the landscape welled over into me, and we drove slowly, admiring a line of slender poplars stalking a grey skyline, or a great beechwood canopying us in underwater light. Dad existed in a state of perpetual worship of the beauty of the countryside, combined with a sense of the ridiculous.
‘The Norfolk landscape sends a shiver through my soul,’ he said. ‘It really is exquisite, is it not, my love?’ Seconds later he sighed, and in a voice buoyant with mirth said, ‘I say, I really am a crashing old bore, aren’t I? Shut up, Patrick, for Christ’s sake.’
We reached a café at tea-time to be told that it was closed. Dad, dark glasses and fisherman’s cap making him look like a spy on holiday, laughed. ‘Ha, it’s sublime! What can one expect from a hole like this!’
The po-faced proprietor continued to sweep the floor. Dad advanced, his faded blue eyes melting with charm as he sweetened his voice to ask, ‘My dear fellow, may I have the honour of sitting outside your establishment for a moment and drinking a glass of your water?’
The proprietor gave up, put down his broom, and two minutes later Dad was sitting, wickedly delighted, behind a pot of tea and a plate of uninspired cakes.
We were in Balton, a godforsaken village framed by scattered caravans which looked as if they had been taken up by the wind and hurled, cars and deck chairs sprawling beside them, against the few stubby hedges. Balton was a pit-stop during the hunt for a Ford Cortina.
Dad’s Mercedes had come back with him from an Italian trip five years earlier hot and shuddering like a racehorse. Dad had driven from Assisi without stopping and the Mercedes responded gallantly until it reached our drive. There it stopped and died. Dad fiddled with the engine to no avail and the car was heaved by all my brothers as its pallbearers to its grave in the barn. With dignity it stood there, rotting and rusting but still beautiful. No scrap men were allowed to touch Sadie Bens; Dad had plans for her. On a good day he was sure it wouldn’t take much to get her on the road again; on a bad day she was earmarked as his hearse.
‘I shall be buried in my Mercedes,’ he said, stroking the dust from her flank and polishing her star with his red spotted handkerchief.
When Sadie Benz perished Dad had replaced her with a souped-up Ford with customized wheels. Other Fords followed annually, and now we were looking for this year’s model. Dad was feeling rich and jubilant, having taken three hundred pounds out of the bank to buy a car. The money was burning a hole in his pocket and the quest thrilled him. We set off with Jim, who had moved on from dam-building and was constructing a river-view seat for Dad from the skeleton of an oak tree. Jim was our expert on engines. It was his lot to damp the fanciful urges Dad and I had for every Ford Cortina we saw parked in a drive or speeding along the road. By evening we had covered eighty miles and Jim’s veil of diplomacy was wearing thin.
We arrived at a council estate and penetrated the Legoland streets to a central point which was marked by a golden car. Dad and I were adamant that we should not return home empty-handed and were sure that this Cortina was our Grail. The guardian of the golden car was a young man with no shirt; his back was tattooed with an intricate and lavish portrait of his wife Leila. As his muscles moved beneath the skin, Leila winked and smiled at Dad and me; he and I were hovering, dumb with admiration, while Jim conducted the deal.
My father drove his new Cortina home, skidding round the hairpin bends to Mildney. The car gave him freedom and became his salon. For the rest of the summer he conducted all conversations from its brown nylon seats and invited his children on perilous journeys which we dreaded but dared not spurn in case he broke down and was left stranded, alone.