In fact, the only mention of my being overweight appeared in a school report from my sports master, Mr Stott. To continue in the tradition of my family I was battling with Rugby without much success. Mr Stott explained why when he wrote, ‘Keen, but hindered by corpulence.’
The equanimity and security of being a member of the choir was an important factor in my life because at home the world was changing. My father was increasingly unwell. One evening, when he was in hospital, I heard the telephone ring and suddenly my mother burst into my bedroom and told me to get into the car. She rarely drove but this night grabbed the steering wheel and after a couple of wild gear changes reversed past the house and on to the street. I tried to ask what was going on. But, my mother just keep saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ As we lurched into Lewisham Hospital, nuns came running out. The Mother Superior, her rosary thrashing across her habit, pointed past a wounded statue of Christ to the stairs. This was a nightmare worse than anything I had ever imagined. My father was standing in a surgical gown. Plastic tubes were dangling from his body. He had climbed from his bed, ripped out all the drips of life and now he stood at the top of the stairs shouting, ‘I want to go home.’ I was a small, terrified boy. Now, what I remember is the commanding force of his defiance and his courage.
Some months later, when he had recovered, my mother prevailed upon my father to attend an Evensong at the Cathedral. Alec agreed to my joining the choir with the firm directive I was not to move on to Christ’s College. But, he had never heard me sing.
I was nervous that evening. The choir occupied the two sides of the chancel. The boys facing the organ loft and Foster Browne were called Cantoris, the boys on the other side, Decani. It was a strict rule of the choir that you were not permitted to turn your head and look at the congregation. We were required to stare into the not always angelic faces of our fellows. I strained to make out the congregation from the corners of my eyes, but saw no one I recognised. He hadn’t come. Then, I spotted Anita Bridge, my mother’s close friend. I knew it was Anita because she was very large. She was also always elegant, her fingers sparkling with emeralds. Beside her was the smaller figure of my mother and next to her the dark-suited question mark of my father.
We sang the opening hymn. The Dean began reading a short extract from the Bible and then there was a loud clatter and some muffled talk. I was desperate to turn and look but the rule was rigid. Later, during the sermon, I did look and saw three empty chairs. My first thought was that my father was ill again and with a fluttering heart prayed for the Evensong to end.
We finished singing. I tore off my surplice and cassock and rode home. My father was in bed. My mother was sitting at the dining room table holding a cup of tea. Anita Bridge was slightly out of focus in the background clasping a glass of unknown liquid. ‘What happened?’ I asked.
My mother told me to calm down. ‘After the hymn your father said, ‘I enjoyed that and now I have heard the boy sing I shall go home.’ I went to bed crimson with pride.
Cathedral life was dominated by the presence of two formidable men. The Dean was Martin Sullivan, a dynamic Christian whose sermons were thunderous orations. Although physically small, he had a rich, potent voice. Martin Sullivan was also a commanding authority on the Anglican Church. He later became the Dean of St Paul’s in London. While his presence in the pulpit was powerful, he had an uncanny knack of expressing the complexities of religious duty in a quiet, clear and understandable voice. This was a skill not shared by another senior cleric of the time. Bishop Alwyn Warren was a tall, dignified man with a gravity that seemed to place him apart from other members of the clergy. I remember once being scared out of my wits by the bishop as the choir waited for a funeral.
We rarely sang at funerals and this was my first. Rigidly staring ahead and not watching the approaching procession, I caught the swaying movement of the coffin in the corner of my eye. Then, in full voice, Bishop Warren roared the lines from John’s Gospel, ‘I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord:’ and I dropped my hymn book and nearly fainted. I had just heard the voice of God.
Alwyn Warren was imposing but his sermons could be long, complicated and, to small boys, unintelligible. The length of the Bishop’s sermons had been carefully noted by Foster Browne. This was the only occasion during a service when he left the organ loft. He would quietly slide along the seat and disappear behind the organ console. We knew he was going because Foster Browne wore special slippers to play the organ’s bass notes and they squeaked. Moments later a thin blue plume of cigarette smoke would rise silently into the air.
At one Evensong, the Bishop, perhaps tiring of his own voice, abruptly ended his sermon after ten minutes. This was our cue to begin singing so we stood up. Nothing happened. The blue smoke continued to rise. There was some slight shuffling from the congregation. Then, the silence in the Cathedral must have reached the organ loft for suddenly there was a sound like the scattering of mice as Foster Browne leapt back into his seat in his squeaky slippers. The organ roared, the service continued but I can’t recall ever seeing cigarette smoke behind the console again.
It was a grey August morning when I cycled down Manchester Street to the Cathedral. The previous evening I had spent some time in my parents’ large bedroom at the front of the house. It was unusual for me to be there. Certainly, I would sneak in when no one was looking. That’s how I discovered my father’s Masonic apron and wondered why he never wore it around the house. It’s also when I found the round leather stud box in which he kept his shirt studs and his waxed, detachable collars. When he caught me wearing one he chased me into the back garden.
But, this night was different. All the lights were turned off except one small lamp beside the bed. My father lay motionless. My mother stood quietly in the shadows. For months, I had been increasingly aware of my father’s decline. His doctor, a man called Les Blain, was such a constant visitor his calls became a ritual. He would examine Alec and then have a whisky with my mother. They would talk in muted tones and Blain would leave promising to come back the following day. My mother explained that my father had refused point blank to be taken to hospital. However, she never made clear what was wrong. Perhaps she didn’t want to disturb me even though I knew from numerous experiences that my father and his body had long parted company. There was the faint odour of tobacco in the room and another smell I recognised immediately.
My father was very white but his eyes were clear and shining. He put his hand on my head and said, ‘Be kind to your mother and when you have children be proud of them.’ Someone came into the room and gently began to usher me away. I swung back to look at my father but the hands on my shoulder became firmer and I left him.
The next morning I set off on my green Raleigh Sports cycle with the fully enclosed chain — a birthday present to encourage me to ride home at night. I was wearing grey trousers and a plum-coloured blazer and cap. On my back was a large leather bag containing my homework, a huge and largely unused pencil case and three blackball sweets with fluff on them. I didn’t have any lunch. I cannot ever remember carrying food to school and I recall little about what I ate when I was young.
My father always had porridge with salt and milk as well as poached eggs sitting on piles of spinach that turned the whites green. This was a normal, natural morning. I’d had toast, kissed my mother and climbed on the bike. We spent an hour in the choir room with Foster Browne making us beat with our arms the rhythm of whatever we were rehearsing. One, two, three, four. After a day at school, the choir returned to a congregation of generally ten people for Evensong and then, in the dark, I cycled home. A normal, natural day. But, it wasn’t. There were lots of men in the house and they were all quietly drinking whisky. There was a smell I didn’t recognise — it was the smell of lilies — and I couldn’t see my mother. Neil, my brother, and the one to whom I always felt closest, took me outside and we sat under the cherry tree at the back of the house. Uncharacteristically, he put his arms arou
nd me and said, very softly, ‘Granna is dead.’
Later, after my mother hugged me and sobbed into my hair and the sandwiches and sausage rolls were passed around, I slipped away. He was still in the large room with the ornate reproductions of Queen Anne furniture and the single, lonely light. I walked up to the wide and now forever single bed and lifted the sheet. They had closed his eyes and he looked utterly pure. There was the bony chest that I’d been pressed against, the thin arms I’d inherited, the determined mouth as ready for laughter as for anger. I stood in that long room and looked at my father. I touched his face. It was stone and I was alone.
Chapter 4
AFTERLIFE
There was still my mother, of course. No, more precisely, ‘off course’. She changed into an attractive widow very quickly. Her mourning had been deep and repetitive. For a time Foster Browne nobly filled the gap my father left. But the absence of Alec in that large and lonely house made every room seem frigid. Now my father was dead, friends didn’t visit as often. The long uneasiness about my mother, her youth and vivacity, her wild-spirited freedom and her failure to fit into the jig-saw of Christchurch society, began to re-emerge.
My sister and my brothers didn’t know what to do. Freda was ensconced in the family home, with the anomaly called David, and nothing seemed to be happening. Then something did happen. It came in the form of a small man, Robert Heaton Parker. He made much of his middle name because his surname was commonplace. My brothers and my sister regarded him as a lizard with Brylcreemed hair. Where he came from was anyone’s guess. The stories changed weekly. He and a woman, who presented herself as his mother, rented a flat from Freda in Colombo Street — a block built by my father for his children. Gradually, the tenant became a more frequent visitor at Manchester Street. I found myself being sent to bed more often, but accepted that intrusion as part of my growing up. At the age of nine I gave my mother away to her new husband during a curious wedding ceremony at St John’s in Latimer Square. I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.
The marriage split me from my much-loved family. There were two reasons. My sister and brothers were suspicious of Robert: my mother was a wealthy widow and Robert Heaton Parker was a storeman at an electrical warehouse. Besides, they felt his history was murky.
Certainly, he had served in the Second World War, but after the war had stayed in Britain where it was alleged he had relatives. Now he was in Christchurch living with his mother. But, my mother’s marriage caused even more offence because it came only nine months after my father’s death. Freda’s response to my family’s mistrust and their open dislike of Robert Heaton Parker was to end all contact with the McPhails.
For many years I did not see my family. The children I had played with and who, in a less complicated family would have been my cousins and not my nephews and nieces, disappeared from my life. What remained was my mother, Robert Heaton Parker and a large woman named Ethel. I did not resent the new arrangements. I was simply puzzled.
I justified my mother’s actions by reminding myself that she had nursed my father tenderly through the years of his illness and now deserved a little happiness. There had been talk of a legacy from my father, but I didn’t ask about it and was only slightly startled when Robert announced the house in Manchester Street was to be sold and the happy couple would then leave for a ten month tour of the world. I was to be placed in the care of Ethel. I did raise the possibility of some time with my family but this was dismissed as being too complicated. So, I prepared myself to spend nearly a year in the company of a woman I hardly knew.
Ethel was wide-faced and big-bosomed. She spoke with a toneless English accent and was probably in her late sixties. My mother assured me I would be well looked after because Ethel was a trained nurse. This did not create in me the degree of confidence I think she expected. Then Robert and Freda disappeared in the direction of the world.
I know Ethel cared for me. It was simply that for a period of time the lights went out. I remember little of those ten months and, when my mother and stepfather finally returned with souvenir trinkets and ashtrays stolen from bars, I picked up my life again.
I have often had cause to consider my stepfather’s motives. I do not doubt that he loved my mother and I know she adored him. I do not believe his early passion — and I use that word with difficulty — was driven by avarice. But, there were strands of his life that gave my family good reason to be suspicious. Ethel was not his mother, a fact that emerged only tentatively over time. She wasn’t even related. At my mother’s insistence, Ethel’s name was changed to Parker by deed poll. Some years later it turned out Robert had a sister living in England of whom I had never heard.
I met another woman, Molly, from Auckland who was introduced as a sister but whether she was a sister, a cousin or perhaps just a girl from down the road was never fully explained. These were not lies, they were simply omissions. Robert inspired my mother to spend large amounts of money on lengthy overseas holidays and various houses in Christchurch and Rotorua. But they seemed comfortable and happy and I had no reason to believe the inheritance from my father, although not as lavish as that distributed amongst other members of the family, was insecure.
I didn’t notice the warning signs. One year my mother became insistent that some valuable rings should be given to my wife, Anne. We declined, saying she should continue to enjoy them. After all, we joked, we would get them in her will.
Later, I noticed that an oil painting from the family home by the artist Blythe Fletcher was missing from their living room. I was told hastily it was being cleaned. I never saw the rings or the painting again.
After my mother died, my stepfather’s grief was profound. The moment came to discuss the future. I avoided mentioning wills and bequests and waited until Robert’s sorrow subsided. It was a brief meeting and I knew it was going to be disagreeable when Robert said he would get my inheritance from the bedroom. He brought out a tray he’d been given on leaving an electric power board in Northern England. I tried to look into his eyes but couldn’t find them. Anne refused this tawdry gift and suggested I was hoping for something from my family home. Later, he gave me two clothes brushes, one backed with ivory and one with silver. I had never seen the silver brush before. This was the inheritance from my father.
There is an odd aside to all this. I knew my mother was about to die the morning I saw her walking to the ambulance. It was not her demeanour nor that she was pale. Freda had not made up her face. There was no crimson lip-stick or wild eyelashes. It was the only time in my life I had ever seen her like that.
Chapter 5
MEN AND BOYS
My early life was a collection of unexplained rifts and unspoken secrets. The next years would offer a different kind of confusion. My time at Cathedral Grammar School ended and following my father’s request I was enrolled at Christchurch Boys’ High School. This produced further complications. I lost contact with all my friends who went on to Christ’s College. But, it was the timing of my arrival at the high school that created the major difficulty. Back then, you started high school in what was called the third form and moved from there on to the fourth form and through to the sixth. Because my voice hadn’t broken and I could still sing in the choir, I spent my third form year at Cathedral Grammar School. When I arrived at my new high school I was, as I have been so often, an anomaly. On my first day I was introduced to a venerable master, CS Brassington, unsurprisingly nicknamed Brasso. He was required to place me in a suitable class. The information that I had studied Latin for four years and could speak French had been sent to the school, but somehow not to Brasso. He eyed me doubtfully. ‘What is your maths like, boy?’ I replied that it wasn’t my best subject. His reply remains drilled into my brain. ‘In that case, we’ll put you in the woodwork class.’ I didn’t know woodwork classes existed but, when I entered the prefabricated classroom at the back of the school, I knew this was a major mistake.
The boys in the class looked like men. T
hey were large and muscled and they spoke in a language I could barely understand. Communication was made even more difficult because the boys littered their sentences with a variety of obscenities, many that I’d never heard before. For several weeks I tried to convince senior masters I might be in the wrong class. You didn’t study French in woodwork. But, each time I was dismissed with the explanation that I was being given time to settle into the school. Once I’d completed this ‘settling in’ my position would be reconsidered. I spent two years settling into the school. My mother seemed unconcerned, arguing that woodwork was something I’d never done before and then suggesting vaguely that it would be useful. So, rather puzzled, I accepted my position in the class alongside my colleagues with their talk of Frenchies and rooting.
My early attempt at a simple bookcase convinced the instructor, Mr McLennan, I should not be allowed access to chisels or other sharp objects and I was ordered never to approach the band saw again. He agreed this would severely restrict my choices for the major piece of carpentry the course demanded but it took several sizable arguments to convince him I should construct a surfboard. ‘All you’ll be doing is gluing two lengths of wood together and rounding both ends. That’s hardly a major exercise.’ I contended it didn’t require hammers or chisels and that it probably matched my ability. Reluctantly, he agreed. So, for two terms I made a surfboard. At the end of the year I took the board to New Brighton beach. It promptly sank.
The Years Before My Death Page 4