by Tom Cox
There were no exhibits or statues on the seafront at Dawlish so my dad did not stop to air-box or wrestle as we walked. It was also too cold for him to pause for a spontaneous nap in a starfish position. The stretch of railway line that runs in front of the beach here, where Deepest Devon ends and the cliffs turn red, is the Elizabeth Taylor of train tracks: beautiful but constantly troubled. When you’re on the train, passing along it, you feel like you’re in the sea itself. On a windy day, waves will often crash into and over the side of the train. This had been a rare winter when the sea hadn’t broken the track into bits, causing lengthy closures and replacement bus services. Nonetheless, the wind was fierce, gnashing at our cheeks as we walked west, the waves thudding angrily against the track’s new rocky defences. There were lots of other families walking the footpath but I noticed that, unlike mine, the dads in those families did not periodically shout ‘KEEP AWAY FROM THE EDGE’ as they strolled beside the steep drop to the beach.
‘Have you been to get your bad tooth looked at yet?’ my mum asked me.
‘KEEP AWAY FROM THE EDGE!’ said my dad.
‘I was thinking that bamboo I gave you might be best planted on the far side of the garden – the same side as the oil tank,’ said my mum.
‘KEEP AWAY FROM THE EDGE!’ said my dad.
‘Mick, stop saying, “KEEP AWAY FROM THE EDGE!”’ said my mum. ‘We’re miles away from it.’
‘YOU’RE NOT. LOOK AT TOM. TOM, STOP DOING THAT. YOU COULD FALL IN AND DIE.’
During the drive back to my house my dad asked if I had used my new headtorch yet, a present he’d bought me for Christmas but had delivered to me several weeks early because he was so excited about it. I admitted that I hadn’t and apologised. ‘WHAT?’ he said. ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. USE YOUR HEADTORCH. AND WHAT’S THIS YOUR MUM TOLD ME ABOUT YOU TURNING DOWN THE CHANCE TO GO ON BREAKFAST TELLY?’ I told him I had no interest in ever being on telly, detailing another couple of opportunities I’d turned down in the last six months. ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU. YOU’RE UNFOOOKINGBELIEVABLE. YOU’LL BE BACK WORKING IN TESCO IF YOU’RE NOT CAREFUL.’ The rest of the evening passed quietly, in contrast to the previous time my parents had stayed when, in his sleep at 3 a.m., my dad had shouted, ‘THEY LET ME OUT SOMETIMES, YOU KNOW.’ The next morning he got up early, threw some more cooked meat at the cats and packed the car, ready for the long journey back to Nottinghamshire. My mum checked my dad had not erroneously put any of my possessions in their suitcase, such as the four clean pillowcases he took last time. I felt much as I always do when I’ve seen my parents: tired, ready for a quiet sit-down, but sad to see them go and wishing I saw them more frequently. ‘WOFFAL!’ said my dad, which was the acronym version of ‘WATCH OUT FOR FOOKWITS AND LOONIES!’ that he’d become fond of using lately. ‘WEAR THAT HEADTORCH!’ he added as he and my mum walked to the car. I promised I would and tried to remember where I’d put it. I asked him if his black toenail had fallen off yet and he said it hadn’t. When they arrived home five hours later, the wooden head was on the ground in front of the door.
My dad’s black toenail finally fell off about four weeks later. Over the phone, my mum told me that it had dislodged in the swimming pool changing room, upon which my dad had proudly shown it to all the regulars. ‘Was this before or after his swim?’ I asked. ‘Before, fortunately,’ my mum said. I asked her where the toenail was now and she began to repeat the question to my dad, who was upstairs.
‘IS THAT TOM? TELL HIM TO WOFFAL,’ I heard my dad shout.
‘I don’t need to tell him. I’m sure he can hear you. He wants to know where the toenail is,’ said my mum.
‘IT’S ON A SHELF UP HERE IN MY OFFICE,’ said my dad.
‘Why?’ said my mum.
‘I WANT TO KEEP IT AND GET IT FRAMED. IT CAN BE A MEMENTOE. MEMENTOE! DO YOU GET IT?’ said my dad.
‘Yes,’ said my mum.
My mum told me she had some other, bigger news: they had solved the mystery of why the wooden head kept falling on the ground. ‘You will never guess,’ she said, and she was right. I had turned all the facts over in my head numerous times, and even the most logical conclusions I had drawn – that the head contained the reincarnated spirit of an Egyptian demon from the year 11 BC, for example – seemed wildly improbable.
‘Your dad caught Casper from next door throwing it at the door.’
‘But . . . how?’
‘He kind of scoops it up with his paw then flicks it at the handle. I think he just wants to be let in.’
My mum and dad’s neighbours’ cat, who is all white and named Casper after the famous friendly animated ghost, had been a regular visitor to their house for years. Between 2012 and 2014 he was never happier than with the tongue of my parents’ previous cat, Floyd, deep inside his ear. After Floyd was killed by a car in the autumn of the latter year, Casper began a new love affair with George, a ginger and white stray I had rescued from the mean lanes of Devon then donated to my parents. Casper and George, who bears a startling resemblance to the Belgian international midfielder Kevin De Bruyne, sleep with their limbs entwined at least once every day and gambol about my mum and dad’s garden, playwrestling and chasing one another up trees. Both of them have been neutered, but my mum has walked into upstairs rooms on several occasions to find George taking Casper roughly from behind. Casper is the heavier cat, but it is George who plays the dominant role in their relationship. Casper knows how to be assertive too, though. Before he started asking to be let in by throwing the wooden head at the door he had already worked out how to bang the brass knocker on the door with his paw.
It wasn’t until the beginning of summer that I next visited my mum and dad. The wooden head was on the flagstones near the porch’s entrance when I arrived, its mean, furrowed face staring up at a heavy sky. I took my shoes off but chose not to leave them in the porch beneath the head’s perch. I entered the living room and found Casper sitting upright on the sofa, not unlike a small human. Missing only a remote control and a can of Tennent’s Extra, his pose was one that brought to mind the term ‘catspreading’. He gave me the most casual of glances then continued to watch rolling news. Not finding any sign of my parents in the house, I put my shoes back on and wandered down to their new wildlife pond, which had come on in leaps and bounds since last year. Broad-bodied chaser dragonflies flitted about above the water’s shiny surface, and a little egret belted by overhead. ‘I’M GOING TO GET A SWAN FOR IT,’ my dad had announced when drawing up plans for the pond. ‘Where from?’ I’d asked. ‘I BET YOU CAN GET THEM OFF THE INTERNET,’ he’d replied. He had abandoned this plan, but moorhens, ducks, water beetles, frogs and newts had already arrived on or around the water, of their own volition. My parents had worked tirelessly to transform the space from the remains of an old pigsty into what it was now, my mum referring to their efforts as ‘pondering’. I noticed too that the plants my dad had appropriated from my own pond were thriving.
My pond is a fraction of the size of my mum and dad’s but was full of life in the summers of 2014 and 2015. At the start of this particular spring, the following year, it had become somewhat weed-choked and I’d begun to de-weed it but not got all that far by the time my mum and dad last visited me in March: the one time I’d seen them between now and our Christmas outing to Dawlish. My dad had dipped an arm in to take some specimens for his pond then got a little carried away for the next fifteen minutes. I’d left him to it, said bye and gone off for a walk on Dartmoor. Two hours later a photo popped through onto my phone from my mum, showing my dad in the middle of my pond, topless, up to his waist in water. I returned home to find the pond entirely clear of weed and algae. Tired and keen to relax and refresh myself with a hot bath after my long walk, I thought about what a kind gesture this had been from my dad. The feeling of gratitude lasted all the way to the bathroom, which, upon entering, I discovered now boasted much of the former contents of my pond, and subsequently took me over an hour to clean.
Despite visiting a cou
ple of nearby large bodies of water with a jam jar in an attempt to restock it, my pond had been a bit bland and sleepy since then, so I was excited to see all the buzzing activity in my mum and dad’s. Casper and George had now joined me to watch the hubbub. As they began to do cat kung fu on the water’s edge, I tiptoed out onto a small rocky promontory in an attempt to see a water beetle.
‘DON’T FALL IN!’ said my dad, arriving behind me and almost causing me to fall in.
We walked back up to the house, past a bed full of thriving spinach, a riot of stoned-looking bees on a giant scabious, the stump of the fateful eucalyptus and the wooden head. In the kitchen my dad picked up a piece of rock from on top of the plate cupboard. ‘KNOW WHAT THIS IS?’ he asked.
My dad greeting me after several weeks apart by showing me an obscure object he’d found in the ground near the house was nothing new. Objects he’d found in the ground near the house before included some ancient dog teeth, a sheep skull, a sea of writhing, unusually colourful worms and an extremely bendy courgette. ‘Is it some kind of old-fashioned brick?’ I said, evaluating his latest find.
‘GOOD GUESS. I’M GOING TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT IT IS LATER ON, AND I WANT YOU TO LISTEN. I’VE JUST HAD A BATH AND SWALLOWED A BIG LOAD OF RADOX BUBBLE BATH BY MISTAKE.’
‘Can you not just tell me now?’
‘NO. DO AS YOU’RE TOLD, YOU BIG STREAK OF PISS. I NEED YOU TO SIT DOWN AND I NEED YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION.’
My mum arrived in the kitchen and gave me a hello hug. She seemed a little flustered and explained that she’d lost her ticket to a literary event organised by her book group.
‘IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR CRAZY LIFESTYLE,’ said my dad. ‘YOU’RE WORSE THAN LINDSAY LOHAN.’
Later we sat down for dinner and I talked to my mum about the wooden head. I’d recently found a new home for the Devil-headed letter opener she bought for me – with my friend Jo, who had drained its dark power by keeping it in a pot on her desk alongside several brightly coloured plushies. Now some of the wooden head’s occult strength had been compromised by Casper, I wondered if my mum might finally feel confident about giving it away. She said she’d rather not and that the head still troubled her. I agreed. At this point she turned to my dad, who was wearing a stained orange T-shirt. ‘Mick,’ she asked. ‘Did you know that you’re wearing one of my painting rags?’
We watched the extended Brexit edition of Channel 4 News, and my dad pointed out some politicians he thought were fucking bastards and some other politicians he’d previously thought were just bastards but now thought were fucking bastards too. Then we went into the other room and my dad picked up the piece of stone again. ‘NOW THEN,’ he said. ‘SIT NEXT TO ME. AND LISTEN.’
‘I need to nip to the loo first,’ I said.
‘IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME,’ said my dad. ‘PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS LEAVING ME.’
‘I’ve already been holding it for half an hour just to be polite.’
‘DON’T WEE IN THE TOILET. GO OUTSIDE AND DO IT IN THE BUCKET IN THE SHED. I NEED IT FOR MY COMPOST.’
My dad had found the piece of stone while he was doing what he calls fossicking. This is when, after very heavy rainfall, he walks down to the river to find good firewood that has been washed down it by the flood waters. After picking the stone out of the shallows, he had taken it to the swimming pool to show Pat, whose experience as a mining geologist, my dad thought, might enable him to identify it.
‘You took it to the actual swimming pool?’
‘NO, JUST TO THE CHANGING ROOMS. I FORGOT MY TRUNKS THAT DAY AND HAD TO BORROW SOMEONE’S SPARE ONES. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT I TOLD THE HAIRDRESSER THE OTHER DAY. I TOLD HER I SWAM NAKED BUT JUST KEPT MY LEGS REALLY TIGHT TOGETHER THE WHOLE TIME.’
‘And what did Pat say about the rock?’
‘HE SAID, “It’s just a bit of limestone, Mick.” BUT I WASN’T SATISFIED WITH THAT. SO I SHOWED IT TO MY FRIEND PHILIP. HE USED TO BE AN ARCHAEOLOGY LECTURER. HE KNOWS ALL SORTS OF THINGS. HE’S SIX FOOT FOUR AND USED TO LIVE IN A THIRTY-TWO-ROOM HOUSE. HE LOOKED AT IT AND TOLD ME IT’S A BIT OF MASONRY THAT WAS MEANT TO BE ON A MEDIEVAL HOUSE. THIS BIT HERE WAS A JAMB, AND THIS BIT WAS MEANT TO GO IN A WINDOW, BUT WHEN THE MASON GOT TO THIS BIT, WHICH IS CALLED AN OOLITH, HE REALISED IT WAS THE WRONG SHAPE AND CHUCKED IT. AND NOW IT’S MINE. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD HAS GOT A STORY TO IT. GENGHIS KHAN DIED OF A NOSEBLEED ON HIS WEDDING NIGHT. NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT. SOME PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES AND SOME PEOPLE AREN’T.’
‘Yeah, that reminds me. I was going to the—’
‘NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY, YOU, BECAUSE THIS LEADS ON TO SOMETHING ELSE. BUT I’VE FORGOTTEN IT NOW BECAUSE YOU’VE TALKED SO MUCH. I’LL HAVE A THINK AND COME BACK TO IT IN A MINUTE.’
My mum and I stepped back outside into the garden. The day had started wet, but now a fuzzy blanket of transparent warmth hung over my mum’s plants. Everything seemed four times as fragrant as it had a few hours ago. The light had almost completely faded, but the stoned bees still clung to the giant scabious in cuddly gangs. Below it were three pots of lager: my mum and dad’s attempt to control the garden’s current slug population. My dad had offered me some of the same lager – which, bought in bulk, worked out at around 20p a can from Asda – and I’d declined. I asked my mum if my dad was still shouting in his sleep.
‘Not as much. But he did wake me up by saying, “A FORTY-HOUR WEEK AT FOUR POUNDS AN HOUR? WHAT’S THAT?” the other night.’
George bounded up behind my mum and me, then cut in front and thwacked his strong tail possessively against our shins. I spotted a metal grass roller, passed down first to my granddad and then my dad, that my great-granddad had made – when? During the 1920s? Thirties? I’d never given it much thought before and now I felt like a short-sighted ingrate for never having done so since clearly this was one of the most amazing and precious things on my life’s periphery. A few yards from it I spotted a familiar steel dish with a duckling pattern moulded into the outside. In it were a few chunks of leftover cat food.
‘I remember that dish!’ I told my mum. ‘Didn’t you used to feed the cat from it when I was a kid?’
‘It was actually your baby dish,’ she said. ‘I use it to feed the hedgehogs cat food now.’
I’d gone through a brief phase a few years earlier when I wanted to get rid of all my possessions and live an entirely unencumbered life. That had changed and, even before it had, I’m not sure I was ever fully down with the idea of getting rid of my books and LPs. I still understand the whole ‘You can’t take it with you’ philosophy but I’m not quite as emphatic about the way I subscribe to it. I know you can’t take it with you but I still wouldn’t mind having a small amount of it, for a bit. I can see how stuff can be a burden, but I like some stuff: stuff that doesn’t boast of its intention to alter your life, but then proceeds to do so in small ways. I’d found a horseshoe on Dartmoor and attached it to my house late the previous year. It’s just an old rusty horseshoe, but I’d be miffed if somebody nicked it. Originally, out of pure unthinking laziness, I hung the horseshoe upside down, and shortly after I fixed it to the large granite bricks on my house a few bad things had happened to me. I’d turned it the other way up a few months ago, and nothing quite as bad had happened to me since. I’m sure the events of my life are not directly connected to a horseshoe from near the village of Didworthy, but there is no way in a million years I’m turning it back the other way up. I related these thoughts to my mum as we strolled around the garden.
‘Your nan used to say that if you hang horseshoes upside down your luck falls out the bottom, but I think it’s nonsense,’ my mum said as, once again, we walked past the wooden African head that my mum did not like but would not part with for fear it would unleash terror on anyone who owned it.
Although we’d only been outside for ten minutes, I felt refreshed. Every time I see my dad, he tells me dozens of great new stories – about Nottinghamshire, about history, about who he is, about who I am – but the narrativ
e is of such a loud and experimental-jazz nature that I get easily tired. The theory has been put forward before by those close to him that my dad does not speak words; he haemorrhages them. I don’t need a long breather from his lectures, but small breaks help, as they would anyone listening to someone holding six conversations at the same time, all on their own. Now, after clearing my head, I was ready again. I sat down in the perfect place to absorb the next part of his story, which would no doubt lead to another, and another. I was keen to find out what else he had to tell me about his new possession.
‘OK, I’m all ears,’ I told him. ‘Go for it.’
But he did not reply, and when I looked more closely at him spread out lengthways on the sofa, I noticed he was fast asleep. He wasn’t speaking or snoring or singing. For the first time that day, he looked totally serene. Beside him on the arm of the sofa was the novel he’d been reading, its spine bent back on itself, like every book he enjoys. Held tight in his arms, like a favourite teddy bear, was the chunk of medieval limestone.