The Sadness of Trudy's Dad: Part 4

Once her husband, who had escaped a hero’s death, died from fury, Trudy’s grandmother married the quiet widower next door. It seemed to the neighbours of that close community, that the two of them had crept home from the Register Office with utilitarian smiles and sprays of heather, only minutes after her husband clutched his chest with one hand and the table cloth with the other. In those last minutes it was the only thing standing in the way of his death, and so he let it go.

There was speculation of course that the affair was going on long before the heart attack occurred, even that they engineered it somehow, but no-one could prove anything . They wondered where she’d have had the opportunity since the brute had eyes in the back of his head.

The truth was simple. As Arthur grieved for his lack of a wife, he had heard the thumps and the bumps and the sobs refracting through his wall; a shard of violet disappointment, a shot of yellow iodine, the green curve of denial with a hint of blood and overarching hopelessness.  How could anyone have something so precious and treat it so cruelly?

With little else to do except work, he kept an eye out for his unfortunate neighbour. He’d watch the bastard come back from the pub, fag ash balanced on his lip like a diver lost his nerve. Arthur could hear the singing from the bottom of the street and then the cursing.

The first time she noticed him was when she stood in the front garden with tears and a bruise and a cloth smelling of antiseptic that she had used to bathe the stinging scars of her son.

The Sadness of Trudy's Dad: Part 3

Trudy’s father, like all 7 year olds, saw monsters under the bed. They had stethoscopes and needles and white coats, and masks full of gas that brought never-ending darkness.

 But there were angels too. Their starched aprons were filled with brisk cuddles for a little boy so utterly alone and desperately ill though no-one knew why. In her father’s child-like world, there was only himself and the stuff of nightmares. He spent his young years un-mothered and un-brothered in sterile corridors where pockets of comfort were laced with terror, exhaustion and pain; trapped in a nether world. 

 His mother never quite got the hang of him being away but she stopped fretting so much because at least he was being cared for. Instead, she presided over illness and unrelenting viciousness in her own home with soup and cigarettes. 

When Trudy’s father returned home to his wife and children, he often felt overwhelmed with love and luck and determination. But at others he could see only what he could lose in his never-ending fight with death and his anger grew.

 It grew and he fed it and he knew what it should look like because he’d seen it in the shine of the buckle and heard it in the screams of his brother. He’d seen it in the chipped cup that held the tea-time whisky and in the cowering of his mother as she tried to squeeze past the dining table unnoticed. He fanned it and he flamed it; but because he felt nothing but gentleness towards his wife (who mothered him at last) and his healthy children, he railed instead at the TV; at politicians; at unfairness and injustice and at his faceless illness. 

But all the while, the clock was ticking and he lived on, forgetting that the life he had was precious and he was missing it by staying alive, and furious.

The Sadness of Trudy's Dad: Part 2

 She could put on a really good show though, could Trudy's mum. Her handsome, gentle husband would never have approved of such petulance and she couldn't face his disappointment. So, she would let her big, bad wolf out whilst he was at work and stuff it quickly under a cushion the minute that she heard his key in the lock.
Trudy looked forward to the end of the day because it not only meant that she could see her dad, but that they’d all start a game of pretend; pretend to be safe. She discovered that she could actually be happy, just by pretending – as long as she never let her guard down.

 Before her dad even knew who he was, he was ill for the very first time though no one knew why - even when the doctors looked and shook and took his temperature. His mother ignored it at first, thinking that he was attention in a house that couldn't spare it. Then when he got none and still nothing had changed, she would stay up all night at his bedside fretting. She was to become an expert at fretting since his younger brothers would be ill in a year or two, each with their own illnesses to baffle the doctors with.

Her husband was not much help. He came back from the war an angry man made angrier. In those dark days when fathers and husbands were strength without weakness, he buried those terrible foreign memories alongside his cold and harsh childhood and they festered there unnoticed till they seized a belt by the soft end and lashed his sons with the buckle for no particular reason.
Trudy’s father was the second of 4 brothers The eldest, who was not ill and not always in a hospital bed being poked and prodded and examined, was lashed enough for both of them. In time, he was lashed for 4 as spines grew longer and limbs grew twisted and doctors would have seen the welts.

The Sadness of Trudy's Dad - Part 1

Trudy never knew if her father was coming home. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he’d turn up unexpectedly, swaddled in blankets and wheeled through the squeaky gate into air that was thick with concern, only for him to disappear again without notice when she was at school. Sometimes there were months in between, sometimes days and too often, hours.

He’d sometimes cry a lot and look a funny colour. It had been this way since she was small. Well, not really small. When she was really small, they were a proper family and very often, happy.  She had the photos to prove it. A perfect 25 year old with drainpipe jeans, shoes that were built to pick winkles, a skinny white T-shirt and a quiff the girls must have gone wild over.

 He married at 22 and by 23 he was devoted to two little girls. One was brand new and squeaky clean with a shock of black hair, and the other was 22.  Her mother knew she had a rival. That’s why she couldn’t quite love her. Later, she was to look at the freckle faced 4 year old, bouncing on the sofa in anticipation of his return from work and she knew. She knew that despite the washing and the ironing and the having moved so far away from her family; that he would come home dirty and tired with eyes for someone else and nothing left for her and she hated both of them for that. 
When was her life to start?

She had only had him to herself for 18 months. Proud and happy, she left that family where her cold mother had survived the war with the taste for work, leaving her eldest daughter to bring up the rest.  Trudy’s mother  was a woman whose childhood had barely started. As a result she could still throw a spectacular tantrum.  Now that she had some power at last, she would pinch the other kids in the house and did not shy away from giving them a swift and sneaky kick. 

Since she had had to share every private moment, even night’s sleep, every ribbon and pair of shoes with 4 siblings, now she refused to share anything at all, not even with her own child. Moreover nothing, nothing was ever her fault. Sometimes, she would lie awake all night, forcing the facts into something that didn’t resemble the truth of the matter; like a magician twisting balloon animals, or making a balloon hat. Trudy’s mother was an expert at making her appalling behaviour into a hat. And even then, the hat wasn’t hers.  In this way she remained the heroine of a storybook filled with the inexplicable behaviour of others. In this way, she hid from herself.

The Sadness of Trudy's Dad

After a break of a year
I am returning to Blogger with a new project. I am 

Hey SK!

Dear SK
I'm resisting the urge to ask how you again are feeling and to imagine you with all sorts of emotions that you may not have. The experience is yours alone; tell it or not.

I'm not quite sure how I am going to get this letter to you, nor how you will feel about it when I do. Furthermore my spacebar is only working intermittently so writing it as well as reading it will have its challenges. Oh, and one of my fingers has stopped moving. It's a bit like an engine that won't turn over though it starts eventually and it clicks whenever I use it, which makes me squeamish.
Anyhoo, typing finger, spacebar and nausea aside, I will press on.

The time is 3.20am and I woke in a cold sweat an hour ago after dreaming of pythons being delivered to a married couple in a lift. Lots of constricted breathing, purple faces and syringes later (in the dream that is), the couple tried to murder each other. The wife got away thinking she’d killed him but the husband had only dashed down the fire escape to have her declared insane. If that's not my marriage in a nutshell, then I don’t know what is.
Anyway, the dream has done me a favour,  because upon waking I suddenly realised what I have been wrestling to get a hold of in my brain since we met. Bear with me.....

I have a commission from the local aspirational magazine to write that piece we discussed about Couchsurfing...700 words. This is significant because I finally decided to give up worrying about getting a job, to have some confidence and to put all my energies into writing. Do or die, now or never. Many people encouraged me to do so and it's a real relief to give in to it, just as you finally made me believe you on another matter entirely. The magazine was the first I approached after my decision and they accepted immediately and so this gives me heart. The Editor is a published author himself and very complimentary of my writing as is an academic I know. I have decided to believe them too.

I am sure many people more accomplished than I have asked you this already,( and I don't know if you'd be interested at all so soon after the journey), but when you are ready,  how would you feel about telling the story of your walk with a view to getting it published? Not for my local rag (though I will give the link for donations) but as a piece of journalism for a bigger newspaper or magazine or in book form as a record of th journey. I'd have to pitch it but it'd be a learning curve for me. You have such great stories to tell and the walk hit a note with so many people that I am certain there’s an audience for it; (and you may also raise more cash along the way) the river- floating, the busty 60 year olds on their way to serve at a Beerfest, the eccentrics in the country home; the reason you walked out one midsummer morning in the first place. It would serve as a record for you and the family too. It would also be great to chat to some of the people you met and stayed with along the way for their view of being part of such a journey. I really think I'd do it justice. But if I don't then someone should.

Would you be interested? If nothing else, it might spark a major newspaper to pick up the story ( if they haven't already) and increase awareness, but that may not be something you’d want to happen. Have a think. You may simply want to move on,or wait till time has passed or are resolved to write it yourself or or...

In the interests of full disclosure, I will reinstate some of my blog posts so that you can see what I can do.

As for the mechanics of it, I would go at your pace, by your timetable and whatever method you prefer -phone, Skype,email, plain old letters.. whatever.

 As you know, your visit was significant to me and you seem to have that effect on people. Your wall is covered in similar sentiments which is why I know there would be interest. You seem to bring out the poetry in people, all of whom are so eloquent about what you achieved.


If I have been cheeky and presumptuous then forgive me and I hope it hasn't ruined a friendship however remote.
I hope you are well and have recovered physically at any rate. If there's any justice, you'll now get a bit squidgy round the edges like the rest of us.

Eat more biscuits.

Much Love
L x

 PS. Still working on being Parisienne with a different date looming. I have even bought a hat ! My daughter says I look like a gay man in it, but then I did buy it in Brighton  :)

www.postcardpam.blogspot.co.uk