by Tim Dowling
At least bad weather is exciting. It takes a rare week of unbroken sunshine to remind one that nothing nature can throw at you is as testing as a week in a cottage with three children.
On the final evening of our holiday I am policing the immediate outdoors on my wife’s instructions, fishing wet socks out of hedges and picking cutlery off the lawn in the late August light. I am bone weary, and secretly glad to be heading home the next day. Actually I’m not making much of a secret of it.
The final task on my list is the retrieval of the youngest one’s new Frisbee from a tree, which takes fifteen minutes of poking with the longest stick I can find. It’s a ring-type Frisbee rather than a disc-type, so it’s really hung up good.
Finally I manage to flick it loose. It lands on the grass at the middle one’s feet. He picks it up and throws it straight back into the tree.
‘What did you do that for?’ I ask.
‘It was an accident,’ he says, grinning.
‘Well, you can get it down then,’ I say, handing him my stick. But he can’t get it down. He’s too short, and the Frisbee is now even more entangled than it was before.
Eventually I locate a branch-trimming tool mounted on a long pole, and after twenty minutes of judicious snipping I am able to cut the Frisbee free. As soon as it hits the ground the middle one picks it up again and throws it into the woods. I turn and glare at him.
‘I was throwing it to you!’ he says. I lose my temper. I use language that would earn a film a certificate that would prevent him seeing it for another four years.
‘You go into the woods right now,’ I say. ‘And don’t come back without that Frisbee!’
‘I’m never coming back anyway!’ he screams, pushing open the gate.
‘Fine!’ I shout. ‘Live in the woods!’
My wife emerges from the house, and unfortunately this is the only bit of my parenting she witnesses. I realize that, shorn of its context, it looks bad. In the end I have to go to help him find the stupid Frisbee, because it’s almost dark.
We don’t only go to Cornwall. Over the years we have experimented with taking holidays in a variety of locations. But I find going elsewhere extremely stressful, especially if I have never been to that place before, especially if I have to take work with me, which I almost always do.
‘The thing about you,’ my wife says as we pack, ‘is that you can work anywhere.’
My wife’s view of me as an essentially portable bread-winner informs all our travel plans. That’s why we’re back in the car after just a few days in London, heading for a cottage in some picturesque seaside town. This final leg of the summer holidays has been booked for months, but thinking about it causes a knot to form in the pit of my stomach. It just seems like an additional week in which something could go wrong – a holiday too far.
We arrive in the seaside town and are met by friends who have rented a cottage nearby. As we unpack, I give voice to several competing anxieties, about parking, about the dog, about work.
‘Relax,’ says my wife.
‘You have to work?’ our friend says.
‘Don’t worry,’ my wife says. ‘The thing about him is he can work anywhere.’
My wife goes off to see their cottage while I stay behind to establish an internet connection so I can start work. I try every gadget in my sack of dongles and wires. Nothing works. The air here has no internet in it. I end up standing on a dresser while holding my laptop out of the bedroom window, thinking about the many different places I have travelled to in order to work from: the field in Devon where I found a faint mobile signal, the hotel lobby in Slovakia, the Turkish internet cafe, the services on the M4.
Below me, my children and the children of our friends are conducting an incredibly loud conversation, half in the cottage and half in the street, shrieking at each other through the open front door. I go downstairs to tell them to be quiet.
‘This is not Naples,’ I say. ‘If you wish to continue to—’ I stop and look at the open front door. ‘Where’s the dog?’ I ask.
‘Dunno,’ the oldest one says. I step into the street. The dog never runs off – it’s been standing directly behind me for the last eight years – but she’s not outside and she’s not inside. It’s obvious to me what has happened: a whole summer of continual geographical displacement has finally taken its toll. The dog has suffered some kind of freak-out and is now charging aimlessly through an unfamiliar seaside town. This is not a good start to the working day.
I send the children in one direction and I go off in the other. After a few minutes, I realize I am more or less lost myself. Eventually I reach the crowded high street. I don’t see the dog anywhere, but I immediately run into some people I know.
‘Hello!’ one of them says. ‘You look lost.’
‘I’ve lost my dog,’ I say.
We chat for a while, but we’re not really on the same wavelength. They’re on holiday and I’m having a panic attack. As we talk, a car drives by with someone else I know in it. He waves at me.
As I walk along I begin to think that everyone looks familiar. Across the street a door opens and a woman I vaguely recognize steps out. Most people have sunglasses on, so I can’t tell whether or not I should say hello. What kind of town is this? I think. Has the whole of Shepherd’s Bush decamped here in order to experience substandard WiFi provision? What’s relaxing about that?
I find it too stressful to remain on the high street – what if I meet someone whose name I can’t remember? – so I duck down a quiet little lane to my left. Up ahead I see the dog coming towards me. We stop and stare at each other with sad, freaked-out eyes.
‘Where have you been?’ I say. ‘Who have you seen?’
We sometimes go to America during the holidays, but then I’m not really on holiday, because I’m home. Once I enter the family house in Connecticut, I’m more son than father, and more brother than husband.
It is the week of my father’s ninetieth birthday, and my entire family is gathering under one roof for the celebration. The little boathouse over the road has been hired for Saturday evening and sixty people have been invited, but when we arrive on the Tuesday before, very little else has been achieved.
At the morning pre-party briefing, before my brother and sister go to work on Wednesday, several decisions are made and unmade, and I am given a list of things to buy. At the Thursday morning briefing, our previous decisions are reconsidered and I am admonished for my failure to purchase certain items. Party planning is not our strong suit.
There is another problem: the boathouse lies in the potential path of Hurricane Irene, whose arrival may or may not coincide with the party. Hundred-mile-an-hour winds are forecast, along with a ten-foot storm surge, widespread flooding and power outages. In the shops, people are panic-buying bottled water, generators and torch batteries. I am panic-buying cocktail napkins.
At lunchtime, my brother emails my sister and me spreadsheets labelled Headcount, Timeline, Menu, Bar and Supplies. My sister’s reply says simply, ‘Nerd alert’. I can’t even open the spreadsheets. In the afternoon, I panic-buy cheese and olives from shops stripped bare of essentials, and then take my wife to drop off some panic dry-cleaning. In the car we listen to reports of closed highways, suspended train services and the hurricane’s northward progress. We consider cancelling the party, then decide not to, and then decide to decide later.
On Friday, my father’s actual birthday, the guy in charge of the boathouse makes the decision for us: he cancels our booking – apparently they need to fill the boathouse with boats. We call off the party and schedule a smaller emergency celebration – family only – for that night. I attempt to break the news to my father, but I’m not certain he has his hearing aids in. ‘The boathouse thing is cancelled,’ I say.
He picks up the newspaper and sees the date on the front page. ‘Today’s my birthday?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say.
He shakes his head. ‘I could’ve had a free coffee,’ he sa
ys.
My brother and I spend the afternoon shopping for party food, starting at the fish shop.
‘No one’s panic-buying lobster today, I see,’ my brother says to the proprietor.
‘Not really,’ the man says.
‘We’ll take ten,’ my brother says.
‘Is this a good idea?’ I say.
‘He’s ninety,’ my brother says.
Elsewhere, it is impossible to buy water, candles and most kinds of soft fruit. We call my wife and sisters, who are busy getting their toenails panic-painted, and have an argument about cake. By the time we get back, my Aunt Gladys is already there, expecting food. We finally manage to get supper on the table at 10.30 p.m., after panic-drinking much of the alcohol bought for the original party.
On Saturday, I take my wife to pick up her panic dry-cleaning, but the dry-cleaner’s is shut because of the hurricane, so we panic-buy some cupcakes instead. Later, at about the time the first party would have started, I find myself at a loose end. There is nothing to panic-do. I’ve already lashed the canoe to the back deck. I decide to make an early start on my column, because of the hurricane. I find a quiet place to work and write more or less to this point, when the phone rings. There are nine people in the house, so I’m hoping someone else will pick it up, but no one does. Reluctantly, I answer. ‘Hello?’ I say.
‘This is the mayor,’ says a voice.
‘OK,’ I say. The voice, it turns out, is a recorded message from the mayor. He tells me I need to evacuate immediately.
I go to the living room, where my wife is sitting with my sisters.
‘That was the mayor,’ I tell them. ‘He says we should evacuate.’
‘I think perhaps we should,’ my wife says. There is a brief, uncomfortable silence.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘These trees will crush us in the night,’ she says, looking out of the window at the giant oak hanging over the roof.
‘We can sleep downstairs,’ I say.
‘I want to go to the emergency shelter,’ my wife says.
The idea of sleeping in the building where I went to high school puts me in mind of an old, recurring nightmare.
‘That’s crazy,’ I say. ‘The storm won’t even hit till lunchtime.’
‘I want to go,’ she says.
‘I think you’re overreacting.’
‘I think you’re being a bad parent,’ she says.
I need time to parse this dilemma. I wander into the room where the youngest one and my Bulgarian brother-in-law are watching hurricane news.
‘It’s scary,’ my brother-in-law says. ‘I keep thinking I’m going to die.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I say. But in the face of the media hype and the mayor’s personal evacuation order, my insouciance is beginning to seem both hollow and irresponsible. But because I’m home with my father and my brother, I’m struggling with a competing conviction, simple and irreducible: the Dowlings don’t evacuate.
In the end, my wife and I compromise: I will take her to stay with my Aunt Gladys, along with two of the children, one of my sisters and half the wine, then return to ride out the storm with the oldest one. It doesn’t seem a terribly elegant ethical solution – more like a hasty division of assets – but at least we’re agreed.
As we wait for the lift at my aunt’s apartment block, an elderly man approaches. Our pile of blankets and rations seems to anger him. ‘This is all bullshit!’ he shouts. ‘They’re talking about hundred-mile-an-hour winds! There aren’t going to be hundred-mile-an-hour winds!’ I keep hoping the lift doors will open, but the lift has been turned off for safety reasons.
When I wake up the next morning, the cable television and the internet are both down. We do have a radio, but it gets only one station. Reports of Irene’s progress come in snatches between songs by Hall & Oates.
At 11 a.m., the leading edge of the storm arrives. The trees churn alarmingly; the front yard becomes littered with branches. Water creeps up the driveway from the flooded road. Suddenly my father bolts out of the front door.
‘Where’s he going?’ I say. We find him in the basement, up to his knees in water, trying to plug in his electric pump.
An hour later, the worst of the storm has passed, the pump is running and the water in the road is still waist-high. I look at my brother.
‘What do we do now?’ I say.
‘We untie the canoe,’ he says.
‘Can I come?’ the oldest one says. I pause to consider my moral obligation to exercise extreme caution.
‘Let’s go,’ I say.
We launch the canoe in the drive and set off, with the boy sitting in the middle taking photos on my phone. Up ahead, a fallen tree hangs on taut power lines, creating a canopy over the flooded street.
‘I don’t think we should go under that,’ I say.
‘It’s not like we have a choice,’ my brother says as the current sharpens. We shoot straight through the middle. On the other side we meet a flotilla – several kayaks, a couple of dinghies, even a small sailing boat – milling about at the intersection in front of the pizza parlour.
‘Don’t tell your mother about this,’ I say to the oldest one, even though I know the pictures will be all over Facebook by morning.
The hurricane has passed, and so has summer. All we have to do is get to the airport. Historically, this is a fraught time of missed flights, car accidents, arguments over the meaning of foreign road signs, freak weather and lost documents. That’s why I’ve left two hours for the journey from my father’s house to JFK, even though on a good day it takes forty minutes. I know this isn’t a good day: it’s Friday, the start of Labor Day weekend in America. To own a car and not be on the road today would be sort of unpatriotic.
We hit congestion just after we get on the main highway north, but this was predicted, and it dissipates after a few miles. I’m pleased to see I have just under a quarter of a tank of petrol: it’s my aim to leave the hire company almost none of the fuel they made me buy off them.
‘This car is incredibly efficient,’ I say. ‘I’ve hardly put any petrol in it while we’ve been here.’
‘That’s amazing,’ says my wife, who is doing her best to find me interesting during this tense interval.
Overall the mood in the car is surprisingly calm. We’re already almost halfway there, we’ve used up only thirty minutes of our two-hour window, and I still have an eighth of a tank of petrol.
Traffic suddenly slows to a crawl. ‘This is worrying,’ my wife says after fifteen minutes.
‘Not really,’ I say. ‘It’s to be expected, with everyone converging on the bridge. We’ve got plenty of time, and …’ I glance at the petrol needle, which shows I have a shade over a sixteenth of a tank, although the true figure might be best expressed in thirty-seconds. I turn on the traffic report. There are, it says, major delays on the approach to the Whitestone bridge.
‘Are we going to miss the plane?’ the youngest one asks.
‘No,’ I say, lowering my voice, ‘but I’m a tiny bit worried about petrol.’
‘Why don’t you stop there?’ my wife says, indicating a service station up ahead. Traffic begins to thin out as we approach it.
‘It’s not that bad,’ I say, sailing by the exit. I realize my mistake almost immediately. Arriving late is no longer the worst-case scenario.
The tailback at the bridge is huge. Flashing signs estimate the journey time to JFK at forty-five minutes. The toll booths that accept cash are at either edge of the road, and when the left-hand queue stagnates, I cross eight lanes of angry traffic to try my luck on the other side. This manoeuvre is not compatible with my personality, and I find myself making a distressing keening sound.
‘Stop it,’ my wife says, ‘you’re going to have a heart attack.’ At this moment, a coronary event sounds like a welcome deliverance.
Traffic on the bridge proceeds by inches. As we rise towards the middle of the span, the petrol gauge dips below zero, and so do I.
‘Oh God!’ I scream. ‘We’re going to run out of petrol in the middle of the Whitestone fucking bridge!’ It is a startling failure of leadership.
‘I don’t understand why you didn’t get petrol back there,’ my wife says.
‘I should have!’ I shriek. ‘But I didn’t!’
‘Why don’t we get off and get petrol now?’ the oldest says.
‘There is no off!’ I shout. It’s true. Even after we cross the bridge, every subsequent exit leads to some other choked parkway twisting up and over us. There’s no telling which roads lead to petrol and which to ruin. I press on, inch by inch, teeth clenched, knuckles white, eyes wild.
Six miles from the airport, I crack, pull off into an unfamiliar part of Queens, buy some unleaded, and get slightly lost retracing the route. We arrive at the airport exactly two hours after we set off. Perfect timing, I think. But I don’t say that, or anything else, for a long while afterward.
CHAPTER SIX
My father was a dentist. I know how easy it is to ignore a lecture about the evils of sugar, even when it’s being given by a parent who is at that moment also drilling out a cavity in one of your upper molars on his day off, in his tennis whites and in a hurry, because he has a court booked for eleven.
Back then neither of us could have imagined how perverse society’s approach to eating would become: for the sake of convenience, we basically live on poison. I’m well aware of the importance of instilling in my children a healthier attitude towards food than I actually possess myself, but I also suspect that The Way We Eat Now, dysfunctional as it is, may be scant preparation for the ingestion practices of the future, when sugar is all that’s left. For all I know, our present approach to eating and mealtimes may be just the training my kids need. Fortunately it doesn’t matter if I get it wrong, because I’m their father: they don’t listen to me.
My son and I are lying on a couch apiece, watching the penultimate instalment of the MasterChef final. I love MasterChef: I can’t think of any show on television that asks less of me.