BITING CHILDREN DOESN’T WORK
‘Bite him!’ Ian lay squirming on the floor in his pale blue babygro, his golden hair pale atop
the floridness of his face. He was decidedly cross. ‘Bite him!’ The District Nurse’s words
rang in my head. ‘If he bites his brothers, just bite him. Then he’ll know what it’s like.’
Something inside me told me that it was not going to work; that biting a year-old baby was in
itself a bad thing, a wrong thing and that the object of my attention would not associate what
he had just done to his brother with what his Daddy – his hitherto trusted Daddy – was about
to do to him.
‘If you bite your brothers, I’m going to bite you,’ I said with as much conviction as I could
muster. Ian yelled and licked the rivulet of snot on his upper lip. ‘Now I’m going to do it.’
Ian watched as I rolled his sleeve up. I felt for a fleshy part of his arm, bared my teeth and
put them against his skin. Quick as a flash, he was there. His teeth sank into my hand and I
grabbed a tissue from my pocket to wipe the blood from the carpet. Had it been my evident
lack of conviction that removed from the situation all fear from Ian’s mind? Had I been
simply too slow? Should I have struck while Ian’s teeth were still on his brother’s skin? She
was the professional. She must know best. It was one of the first pieces of advice I had
received and I knew it was wrong. When I had been a teacher, I knew before the law banned
it that corporal punishment gave out the message that authority had no idea what to do and
was simply replicating the same wrong behaviour that was being reacted against. It was
illogical and in any case it didn’t work.
At that moment, I felt emboldened. I knew better than the professional. I just knew that the
way to stop Ian biting his brother was to remove him from the proximity to whichever brother
he might be tempted to bite until his passion had cooled. I lifted him up, put him in the
playpen and let his two brothers roll around the nursery unencumbered by the bars of the
cage.
‘And there you stay until you calm down. I’ll put you back in here the moment you bully a
brother.’
Twelve years later, in the summer of 2013, I reminisced in the silence of my car on the
motorway to The North. ‘What on earth am I doing?’ I said to myself as the wipers whisked
away the rain that had dogged us since my three sons and I had left their school sports day
and a weekend at home to spend 12 hours in Salford Quays courtesy of the BBC. ‘How
much easier it would be if I had simply been allowed to get on with my life. Was it really so
much to ask? I suppose it’s a compliment, though, to be seen as the Father’s Day dad. The
one who appears on Breakfast News. The one who has shown how it can be done, that a dad
can bring up a family on his own and that the results are… The results are…’ The results
were silent over their three ipads, the glow from the screens suffusing the interior of the car
with an eerie blue light. Three 12 year-old boys. My sons. Boys who, I had decided in the
pre-children past that seemed another life ago, I would bring up just as I had been brought up
in the 1950s. Boys who were as comfortable with their virtual friends as they were with the
real ones; who would play games with schoolfriends who were in their homes in Doha or
Winchester; all of whose social connections lived across several counties. They knew no one
in their home town. ‘How could it get to this?’ I wondered. Their lives bore no resemblance
to my childhood whatsoever. Indeed, there was hardly anything that featured in their lives
that had been invented when I was a child. ‘The Headmaster said they were lovely boys’, the
Registrar of the school to which two of them were going and from which one had been
rejected told me. ‘That’s nice,’ was my reply.
‘Lovely boys.’ Yes, that was nice. Twelve years before I was told by a religious affairs
correspondent that I had ‘created three disabled children’. How times had changed. Or was
it simply that I was ‘doing the job’; that, against all the odds, I was being a dad, a loving
single dad of three boys who had been conceived via surrogacy and been brought up by a
single parent? And a ‘job’ it was. Being a parent is a huge privilege and responsibility and
carries with it the power that comes from being the person in charge, the example to set, the
final arbiter of what is right and wrong, moral or immoral, acceptable or not. What an adult
would do on a whim needs to be thought through by a parent.
I need to see ‘the future in the instant’. The words Shakespeare gives Lady Macbeth are
potent. I have to analyse, even in the blink of an eye, whatever it is I want to do to ascertain
what the consequences might be, either to change the initial decision or to accommodate what
its ramifications might be. It is something I have always done, generally subconsciously, and
often very quickly.
HAVING A BABY
It’s arguable that the most difficult era in history to look back on is the immediate past as the
detachment that an historian needs to make a judgement is clouded by emotional reaction.
The time of my own childhood is now a period in history that is studied and reflected on by
those who never lived through it – post-way austerity to the swinging sixties. Some consider
it a ‘golden age’. My emotional reaction to this misconception is that it is nonsense. People
did not lock their doors because there was nothing to steal; society was stable because it was
comparatively static and the ubiquity of freedom provided by the private car was some way
off. People knew their place. There was nothing like the fear of a thrashing for keeping
childish behaviour in check. While I am not so good on the ‘40s, I know with increasing
clarity what life was like through the ‘50s. I could look back on my 12 year-old self in 1959
as a contrast to my own 12 year-olds. In 1959 we were told we had ‘never had it so good’,
the Mini was on the roads and man was in space. Society was coming out of its period of
reconstruction and, in common with most ‘baby boomers’, the life of a pre-teen could be seen
as secure and predictable. I no longer shopped with my mother carrying a ration book. There
was still a ruling class to which one was deferential, but they knew best and ruled with a
benign condescension so that there was really little difference between parent, school and
government. The order was established and had worked well. Had I thought about it – and I
was not encouraged to do so – and lived a thousand years earlier, I would probably have
come to the same conclusion about feudalism. Life was full of stifling inertia. If I think back
to when I was a prospective parent in 1999, although what I saw as ideal parenting was
actually 52 years behind the times, there was much that was sound and worthy of
preservation if it were seen in perspective. Stability and predictability are virtues, but only
when balanced with a realisation that these have often been achieved with a control that has
stultified the individual’s freedom. So what I determined I would do was take the best from
my own childhood, recognize that it was a product of the time I was born into, see it in as
detached a way as possible, get rid of the nonsense without throwing the baby out with the
bathwater, and give my child the benefit of experience with the enlightenment of the lessons
learned from it.
In October 1999, I made the decision to have my own child. This was something I knew I
wanted to do, could do, would have fun doing and that whatever child resulted would have a
life that would be as good as I could make it. There were some drawbacks. There was no
potential mother. I was 52. I was the carer of my 91 year-old dementing father. Yet in that
instant, I knew that it would turn out well; that I would take modern technology and pair it
with experience of the tried-and-tested variety; that I would be a good dad; that I would learn
from the only experience of parenting that I knew – my parents.
On 2nd September 1939, the day before war was declared, my parents had married. They
spent the first night of their honeymoon, my mother told me, on a blacked-out train, eating
fish and chips and throwing the bones out of the window. My father was in the Home Guard
as a leg injury from his rugby-playing days had left him with a limp that precluded his joining
the armed forces. I arrived with the many born after the clouds of war had cleared.
It was my mother’s unexpected death in September 1999 that had precipitated my decision.
At that point I was alone with my father who was in an advanced stage of dementia.
My mother had been a couturier who could sketch a design in seconds. Her deft fingers at the
sewing machine transformed mere fabric into stunning creations. She loved the buzz of
London life and her frequent flights to Paris. My earliest recollections are of a slim, elegant
figure. ‘My mother’s a lady. You’re a woman,’ with childish insouciance I told one of the
several nannies who came and ere long went.
‘I think your son needs you,’ the doctor had told her when I was three. ‘Your constant
presence may help him overcome his stammer.’
Without giving it a further thought, she stopped work. The nannies disappeared. So did her
income. She expressed no regret. My father had gained promotion in the civil service and
they moved out of London to Newbury in Berkshire where he worked at the Atomic
Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston. Not one to sit still, she cultivated a small
clientele at the US Air Force base at Greenham Common who appreciated bespoke women’s
fashion. I became used to American accents in the house and huge Buicks outside the door.
They loved her creativity and flair.
Stunningly de mode in comparison with my friends’ mothers, her love and care shaped my
life. She was an artist who translated her ideas into sketches and her sketches into creations. I
relished the colours and feel of the fabrics that came into the house—a contrast to the grey
austerity and rationing that was post-war Britain.
On the 2nd December 1955 everything changed. I was eight. I knew, in the way a child
senses without being able to rationalise, that something seismic had happened.
There had been a car crash. The knock on the door. A policeman. ‘I’m afraid there has
been an accident.’ A group of men who worked at the Atomic Weapons Research
Establishment at Aldermaston had a car pool to and from work. An American driving on the
wrong side of the road had hit the car in which my father had been a front seat passenger. The
accident had not been a serious one and had just sent the car into a ditch. It was a new car and
the driver had tried to get it out of the ditch by accelerating. The nearside wheels stayed in the
ditch and the car cannoned into a telegraph post. Unrestrained by belt or bag, my father was
flung through the windscreen.
Those were the days when men wore hats. His saved him from more serious injury.
He stuck the part of his nose that had been sliced through back on and held it all the way to
the hospital. It was stitched and he was sent home. Apart from this temporary re-arrangement
of his facial features, he seemed to have been lucky.
In 1955, there were no routine brain scans. It was a full year before recurrent
headaches led to his head being x-rayed and a fractured skull, broken cheekbone and
damaged sinuses being diagnosed. He was in and out of hospital for several more years
undergoing operations during which his eye was rolled out of its socket to gain access to
internal organs. The possibility of brain damage was never mentioned, never considered.
He was awarded £1000 compensation four years later and replaced his pre-war Austin
8 with a gleaming MG Magnette, the latest model: black, befinned and with whitewall tyres.
As the days of domestic staff had gone, my mother kept the house going and saw to me
during the years my father was in and out of hospital for the operations that sought to cure his
headaches, delighting in my successes and commiserating over any setbacks.
Although practical to a fault, she could be delightfully dizzy. Back in the days when you
simply parked in town at the side of road and did not think to lock your car while you were
shopping, my father and I found her sitting in the back seat of one parked several cars away
from our own. He tapped on the window and she wound it down. ‘Whatever are you thinking
of? This isn’t our car.’ ‘Well, it was black like ours,’ she said later by way of explanation.
‘But the seats were green! Ours are red.’
Years later I would drive her to the Post Office on market day each week to collect her
pension. Yellow lines now flanked the roads. Car parks were on the town’s periphery, not
within walking distance for her. I would drop her, drive round and collect her. One day, I was
at the traffic lights just along from the Post Office. I saw her waiting for me on the pavement.
A small black hatchback stopped in front of her, caught in the traffic. My mother disappeared
through the passenger’s door. She reappeared a few seconds later, mouthing apologies to the
driver. ‘Well, it was the same colour as yours.’ ‘But mine’s big with four doors!’
She took her driving test six times. On the day she passed, my father let her take the
wheel. She leapfrogged ten yards and stalled.
‘Ian drives,’ he said, opening the door for her. She never drove again.
FOPRTY YEARS ON
It was forty years after the accident before the full extent of my father’s injuries was revealed.
That year, after I had served lunch to both my parents, he had complained that he had not had
anything to eat and had lunged at me with a screwdriver. My back was turned, I saw him
reflected in a window and ducked. For years his anger had been brewing. He meant to hurt
me. My mother and I arranged a private brain scan and an appointment to have the results
analysed.
‘Your father has frontal lobe damage of long standing’, the psychogeriatrist told my
mother and me almost as an aside. ‘It almost certainly happened during the car accident.’ The
revelation was like a physical impact.
It finally dawned on me that my father had not been the only victim of that crash. I
knew what had shaped my life since 1955.
As a child I was aware that there had been a change. I am not sure that I knew my
father had changed or that the placid man who had left for work that morning would never
return. No one told me he had suffered a personality transformation. I knew about the
headaches because he told us he had them. I knew about the temper tantrums because they
were directed at me. I just assumed it was my fault and that I could never please my father.
I sensed that if I were not there, my mother would be on the receiving end of his
displeasure. He would turn on her in a way I had not seen before, demanding aggressively
that she answer for my ‘attitude’ towards him. I saw myself as her ally, but also as the reason
why she was in trouble with him. I admired her for siding with me, not him. I felt a special
closeness and warmth.
It was not constant, but the fear of incurring an impending rage was omnipresent. I
became wary and cautious, confiding my observations to a diary.
‘Daddy was really angry today. Took my boots and went out collecting planeria at the
gravel pits with Chris. Played at ‘Swallows and Amazons’ all day. Came back.’
It was not that I thought he didn’t love me. It was just that he loved me more than I
thought I deserved. How could he love me when I didn’t shape up?
That he did love me, I knew. And he told me he did. And I loved him.
Unconditionally. That faltered, but fundamentally never changed.
Off I went to the cricket matches he was playing in. My mother would be a scorer. I
would drift away to the edge of the field or the railway embankment to look at the trains. I
wished I could be more interested. I should have been into sport. My father was a sportsman.
But I wasn’t. I scribbled some stories; some poems. I would rather have achieved ball skills
on the field; wished I could; knew it was a failing in me, but I couldn’t see the point. Still
can’t to this day.
Rages would spring from nowhere. ‘Why won’t he play cricket? I’d take him.’ He
arranged golf lessons.
‘The boy’s got a natural swing,’ the pro told my father who proudly communicated
this to his friends.
Yet hitting a small ball across grass held not much more appeal. The ideas that sprang
from the pages of books were what I craved. I found refuge in reading and could get through
a Doctor Dolittle and a Rider Haggard in a Sunday morning. Here was excitement and
adventure that was for me more real than chasing a ball.
Perhaps, even at that early stage, I considered that being simply competent would
never have been acceptable. I did well at school. He was hugely supportive and there were
few causes for complaint, but he would look around in other areas. I sensed a resentment
simmering never far from the surface.
It is only by looking back, by analysing the minutiae of my father’s life, that I can see
how the damage simply escalated, although no one linked it with what had happened. The
man who had been placid, jovial, spontaneous, became a driven workaholic.
The high standards he expected of himself were also directed towards me.
Achievement had to be followed by a greater achievement. ‘If you are doing a repetitive task,
something you are used to, you can disguise the dementia that is building up’, the
psychogeriatrist told me later.
There he was with undiagnosed damage and there we were dealing with dementia
without ever having heard the word.
It was in that surreal instant of clarity, I knew that I had always been a carer; a
protector; not only for my father, but for my mother as well. If you live with something long
enough, it becomes the only reality. It never occurred to me to question it. Never considered
the reasons why or even the effect it had on me. I had not known anything different. My
father had changed my life. My fear of what he might do to my mother had stopped me
moving on, kept me near them, watching him and watching out for her. He had taken my
freedom, but I didn't, couldn't, resent him for this. And I knew I would do it all again.
It was only when this red-haired, black-robed, statuesque doctor looked over her
pince-nez straight at me in her sun-filled consulting room on that brilliant September
afternoon in 1995 and said the words ‘brain damage’ that I made the connection.
‘And it will get worse.’
21st CENTURY REMEDY FOR AN AGE-OLD PROBLEM
‘I don’t do fury,’ I told one of the mums. She had been telling me about how she used hers to
effect with her son.
‘Don’t or can’t?’ she enquired.
‘Never have,’ was my response.
Can’t might have been more honest, but it needed some thought. At that point, fury was a
passion that I had not indulged myself in and an indulgence it would be. The loss of control
that is implicit in the emotion is something I was quite unused to. ‘Rather cross’ I could do
and had done, but being out of control of myself was unthinkable. Careful, guarded, wary
was what I had been right from the moment of my father’s brain damage. I knew that I had to
be careful, had to watch my step.
With this approach, starting a business at 21 when most people are young and carefree was
not a problem. I was already going on 40. I would take the Lady Macbeth approach and try to
see the future in the instant before doing anything. If I were to do X, then the result would be
Y, or Z, or any combination of these, or something different. By the time I had worked out
potential ramifications, any passion would have evaporated. With the children, I would
reflect on possible consequences to my actions so that my reaction would be studied and
measured, not because I thought such a response preferable, but because I could not respond
in any other way.
When the time came for my sons to exchange punches, I was only too aware that any of that
from me would destroy my argument that civilised people didn’t hit. As I saw it, a blow from
me would have ended the immediate incident and stored up destroyed credibility for the
future. Besides, a man telling a child what he could do with a punch – and the words ‘middle
of next week’ were used – was, I thought, a powerful lesson in self-control and that, just
because you can do it, doesn’t mean that you should do it. Nevertheless, I sometimes felt my
fist twitch. The self-control was becoming difficult.
Ian reacted to stimuli with immediacy, without consideration as to his actions and often
physically.
‘You hit my daddy!’ Lars would scream, hurling himself into me, burying his tears in my
chest while Ian took out his frustration in punches to whatever parts of my body remained
accessible.
‘Let this teach you,’ I would say when the heat of the moment had passed and I showed
them the redness, ‘that although I could hit out and, yes, it would stop you, I didn’t because
hitting is wrong and I won’t do exactly what I tell you not to do, no matter how much I’m
provoked.’
The conclusion was invariably a tearful ‘sorry, Daddy’ and, on my part, a relieved
thankfulness that I had not succumbed to fury – wherever that may have led. I suspect that the
brothers saw it as weakness. For me, it was a strength and yet another side to being a parent
whereby one cannot do as one wishes and has to put oneself last.
At the same time as I was considering the notion of fury, passion and powerful emotion, I
could see that I was also providing a rationale for why I had chosen to be in this single parent
situation. I just had not felt sufficiently passionate about anyone to wish to marry them. Or
maybe I had felt cautious about letting myself go. It was too easy to trace it all back to my
father’s brain damage and I certainly had no wish to perceive myself as a victim. I had and
gave unconditional love and that was enough. Or so I thought. I was beginning to discover
that sweet reason was one thing. Real life was another.
Ian had been late finishing brushing his teeth and I had read the first two sentences of that
bedtime’s story. My second son, like a domestic cat gone feral, was spitting venom and
toothpaste in my direction, shrieking in rage, ‘You’re old and I hate you!’
‘OK, Ian, yes I am and I’m sure you do, but you’ll get over it.’
The response was a punch in the stomach. I keeled over. Breath regained, I said in a calm
voice, ‘Now get over your tantrum, Ian, and sit on the step outside the door.’
A succession of blows followed. I raised my hand and immediately lowered it. Occupying
the moral high ground was not going to be easy, but that’s where I thought I always needed to
be. Even at eight, he was still small enough to lift along the corridor, but he was certainly not
minded to sit on the step. I knew what I would try. A twenty first century solution came to
my mind as a way of dealing with this age-old problem. I would film him. I went to get my
camera. Ian grabbed my leg, punching where it would hurt and felling me once more.
‘Look, Ian, everyone sees you as a cute little boy, but your brothers and I know that you
can be really nasty. I think it’s about time everyone knew what you were really like.’ Was
this good parenting? What long-term repercussions might there be? I imagined that he saw
me as weak. Is that what his brothers thought, too? Lars was shocked and crying at this
sudden deterioration of the bedroom into a screaming war zone. Piers had put his head under
the duvet right at the start of hostilities. They shouldn’t be seeing this. They needed to know
that I could see Ian off on my own terms. Up again, I shook Ian off my leg and opened the
sideboard door where my camera lay. On the glass top stood a china cat and mouse that had
been Ian’s favourites. He picked up the cat and made as if to hurl it against the wall. Taking
advantage of his temporary distraction, I grabbed the camera, pulled it from its case and
pushed the button.
Ian smiled at the lens.
‘Now tell the camera what you’ve been doing.’
Ian smiled warmly and whispered, ‘No.’
Lars seized his chance. ‘Well, I’ll tell the camera. He’s been horrible and hit Daddy.’
I turned the camera off. Ian rushed at Lars and floored him. The camera case went flying
into my face. I switched on. Peace descended in an instant. So did silence. As long as the
camera was on, the only words from Ian were, ‘Don’t believe him. This is Loser Films
Incorporated.’
His brothers in bed, Ian came with me to watch my regular chores of emptying the
dishwasher and folding the laundry, everything done while clutching the camera.
‘If you’re not proud of what you do, don’t do it.’
‘Sorreeeee.’
A tearful Ian clutched my hand and went to bed, leaving me to assess what had happened.
Children can explode. Maybe I should be grateful for having two who did not. I had no
qualifications for dealing with anger management for that is what I assumed it was. Or were
there causes deeper than having been thwarted that underlay his outburst? I decided years
before that I would not over-analyse the actions of a child. Children are childish – and
volatile and unpredictable and want immediate gratification.
‘When are you going to delete the films?’
‘When there’s no longer any need to keep them.’
‘Who’re you going to show them to?’
‘No one at the moment, so that’s as good as having them deleted, isn’t it?’
Ian was not convinced. Nor was I. When I was a boy, a parent would have lashed out
before anything developed and the child would have been stilled by a mixture of fear and
respect. I was left unsure whether my son felt either for me. The outpouring of grief at the
end told me there was love, plenty of it, probably tinged with guilt. Nevertheless, I was sure
that he had seen my physical inaction as inability rather than disinclination.
FIRST STEPS TO FATHERHOOD
In the evening of my mother’s funeral and with my father in respite care for a few days, a
friend was staying with me. What had been in the back of my mind for years was pushing
itself to the front. It was not just a vague feeling of being unfulfilled, It was the certainty that
I wanted my own family and that time was running out. In a moment of clarity, I knew what
I would do.
‘I wonder’, I mused aloud, ‘if there are any surrogate mothers on the web.’
‘One way to find out,’ said my friend, another Ian who was standing behind me as I tapped
at my keyboard.
I placed the magic word into Lycos. There they were smiling out at me from cyberspace.
They looked lovely. None was in this country. Most had addresses in Texas or further west. I
wondered how they went about surrogating. What was surrogacy about? How did you get
started? Who were the professionals in this field?
The only agency the search engine I was using came up with was in Los Angeles. The site
was attractively presented and clearly written. Its title was a clever one—’Growing
Generations’. I saw the terms ‘surrogacy’ and ‘gestational surrogacy’. They meant nothing to
me, so I read on. The artificial insemination could be either with the surrogate’s own egg or
with one bought from an egg donor, although why any woman would want to give birth in
this way or donate eggs, I could not imagine. I would soon become very informed about both
aspects.
I gathered ‘Growing Generations’ was run by gay people, but it seemed to exist for all single
people as well as gay singles and couples.
‘Make a date for an appointment,’ Ian suggested. He had seen the smidgen of optimism
through the sorrow that the day had brought. ‘I’ll come, too. We’ll have a trip to California.
You’ve got nothing to lose.’ I e-mailed for literature and phoned for an appointment. It all
seemed so easy. I felt I was getting somewhere without being quite sure where.
The Growing Generations receptionist was coolly efficient over the phone. The date
arranged was Friday 12 November 1999.
Ian decided to come along. If nothing else resulted, we would have a pleasant enough long
weekend break in California. I employed a carer to look after my father at home for a few
days. On the Thursday before, we flew to Los Angeles.
I did not know it at the time, but in a process during which there were several dates when
conception in one way or another occurred, Friday 12 November 1999 was to be the first of
them.
I reached California full of trepidation about the enormity of what I was about to undertake.
The clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine of Los Angeles airport made me feel that I was
watching myself in a movie.
It was the awfulness of the Avis rental car that unsettled me first. There it sat with slanted
headlights and deep ribbed panels along its flanks, lurid in metallic jade. The smell of vomitmixed-with-apple-blossom that characterises American plastic exuded from its interior. All
the directions were to go east or west. Where was the sun setting? Grid-like and logical the
American road system may be. Well-signed it is not. There were some hills in the distance, so
I guessed the Beverley Hills Hilton lay among them. I headed for them through the evening
rush hour traffic, past Hispanic areas and run-down ghettos. At least the Pontiac did not
sound as though it was about to break down in one of these very grim and destitute-looking
neighbourhoods.
By the time we reached the hotel, I had worked myself up into a panic. ‘It’s all
horrendous,’ I said. The huge, gothic limos, the garish buildings, the noise, the truncated
staccato speech patterns, the busyness, the vulgarity of it got to me. ‘I can’t do it.’
Ian brought me back to reality. ‘You haven’t done anything yet’. He went out to explore
the hotel. Rather than listen to the nasal inflections of the arguing couple in the next room, I
busied myself calling reception and requesting a change of room. It was handled with the
mechanical efficiency that I had become used to. By 8 o’clock, I was ready for bed. I woke at
2 and watched ‘The Wonder Years’ until dawn, waited for the breakfast room to open at 6.30
and prepared for the day ahead.
BROTHERLY LOVE
Ian’s brothers were a constant source of disappointment for him.
‘You used to admire Lars.’
‘He’s dirty. He doesn’t brush his teeth for two minutes and I saw him wash his hands
without using soap.’
A few days later, we were preparing to go to ‘Camp’ during the half-term holiday. Lars
and Piers put small toys in their pockets.
‘You can’t take them!’ Ian shrieked suddenly, his face reddening and his fists clenching.
‘Daddy, they can’t take them. They’ll lose them and I’ll worry all day that they’ll lose them
and then we’ll have to spend a lot of time looking for them. They can’t take them!’
‘So you’ll rush up to them and hit them and I’ll pull you off and you’ll hit me? All for
what? A couple of toys? So what if they lose them? They’re their toys, not yours. Does it
really matter?’
Although his brothers defused the situation by not taking their toys, the peace was shortlived. That evening, Piers took a large tub of building bricks out of the cupboard and started
to open them on the floor. A nuclear missile with accurate trajectory, Ian launched himself
across the room and slammed the half-open lid onto his hand. Piers squealed in pain and burst
into tears. Lars leapt to his defence.
‘Whad’ya do that for? We building a set for our film.’
Ian’s fist shot out, catching Lars on the side of the head. ‘You’ll make a mess. I’ll have to
clear it up!’
I scooped Lars into my arms. Piers fled. There was a sudden crack and sting across my
back, then the side of my face. Ian had pulled the belt out of his trousers. He lunged for Lars.
For the first time ever, the red mist rose and I pinned Ian to the bed, hands spread, arms
flailing. Contact was made.
‘Don’t you ever think that I’ll stand by and do nothing, Ian.’ I was trembling at the
enormity of it. Ian was ashen-faced and in tears. Lars screamed into my arms. In the space of
just a few minutes, a calm domestic scene had been transformed into a battlefield, but the
lines had been re-drawn. Ian had seen my peacemaking as inaction; sweet reason as
weakness. How would this be seen?
‘Sorreeeee, Daddy.’
‘Are you going to hit Daddy again?’
Ian shook his head. Tears sprinked out at either side.
‘Can you film ‘Beowulf and Grendel’, Daddy? It’s by www.paperproductions.co.uk, it is.’
In a few seconds, it was, for his brothers, as though nothing had happened. The events of a
day were mine of a week. In their compressed time-scale one experience followed another
without pause for reflection and it was that flow that was propelling me.
‘Tell the camera who they are, Lars.’
‘They’re Grendel and Beowulf.’ Lars pointed to small pieces of torn paper with humanoid
outlines drawn on them in pencil, one bearing a ‘G’ on its front, the other a ‘B’. Smaller
pieces had been torn to represent Hrothgar’s thanes. ‘This,’ his finger moved to a small strip
‘is the table and this’, he folded a sheet of A4, ‘is Heorot, the mead hall. Bowulf is going to
tear Grendel’s arm off. I can’t do it now because... well, it has to be done later when you’re
filming.’
Lars stood up in his maroon striped pyjamas and faced the camera. ‘This is Grendel and
Beowulf by Lars’s www.paperproductions.co.uk and this,’ he beckoned Piers to appear from
behind a chair, ‘is my assistant, Piers.’ Piers showed the camera a small banner with
‘www.paperproductions.co.uk’ in joined-up handwriting. ‘Here is the story...’
Ian watched out of the camera’s range, stroking one of the cats. Later, when I had given
them their hugs and kisses in bed, I looked for the domain name on Easyspace, found it was
available, bought it and created the bones of a web site for them. I transferred Lars’s film
from my camera onto a CD and deleted the footage of Ian. I put the cats’ baskets in the
kitchen and went to bed.
The crises came and went. Nevertheless that they happened at all was disturbing and I
thought I should seek professional advice. The boys’ school provided a counselor. I booked
myself in to see her.
‘It’s OK to be angry.’
The words, simple in themselves, were a revelation.
‘I would never have hit my parents. It was just unthinkable. And I’ve never sat down and had
a chat with any parent whose child has hit them. People don’t talk about this. It’s like
admitting domestic violence. I assumed he had crossed a boundary that could never be
uncrossed.’
‘But this is the sign of a free child. A child who is able to express himself.’
‘I never was. I knew that I had to look over my shoulder. I could never let go.’
‘But what Ian has to do is express his anger acceptably.’
‘He’s told me he wants a cushion.’
‘There you are. He knows exactly what he needs.’
‘A free child’ or ‘a child who can be out-of-control’? Was I looking at a potential wifebeater? There was an underlying cause of all of this that I needed to identify before I could
make real progress. There is a contorted logic behind most children’s actions and I needed to
rationalize what might cause on so regular a basis, such over-reactions.
THE TRUTH COMES OUT
It was Ian himself who told me what the real problem was.
‘I love you, Daddy. I’m sorry for hitting you. I don’t want you to die. It’s all my fault. I’m
sorry for my assessment grades. I wish I’d been the fourth embryo. The one that died.’
‘Look, Ian, Daddy has no plans to die any time soon and whatever’s wrong with him – and
it may be that nothing’s wrong – is not your fault, but it makes Daddy sad when you’re
unhappy.’ It had become second nature to refer to myself in the third person. I was speaking
as Daddy with all the responsibilities that job entailed rather than as a human being with a
first name.
Daddy was reasonable, self-effacing, even-handed and judicious. Indeed, Daddy-mode had
been switched-on for so long, following on from the carer-mode that had lasted even longer,
that Daddy had quite forgotten who he really was. I briefly toyed with the idea that I was,
maybe, not so different from my challenging middle son. ‘I just want you to be happy.’ I
could not issue the standard exhortation that I wanted him only to try his best as what his
assessment card revealed possibly was his best. For an 8 year-old’s progress to be minutely
quantified as to effort and achievement in 13 subjects was not what I could remember from
my schooldays and, while it felt good to see high grades and class positions, they mattered
surprisingly little to me. I was ambitious for them only insofar as they felt content to be
themselves. If this coincided with academic success, so much the better, but it was not a
sufficient end in itself.
The happiness that comes from fulfilment is the best feeling and that is all I wanted for my
sons. I remembered how I strove for success to please an implacable parent and, in the distant
days before children, assumed that I would expect this from any offspring I might have. The
reality of parenthood had changed my expectations out of recognition. Measurable standards
were what the school system dealt in, though. A wise lady had told my boys and me ‘It’s
charm that will get you everywhere. You can be as thick as two short planks, but no one will
notice if you’re charming.’ But charm, like honesty, decency and love could not be weighed
in the balance. If you didn’t know your six times table by the time you were 8, this was a
failing. Ian had just reached his four times and was found wanting. No matter that he would
‘get there’ eventually; he had not got there yet and his other character qualities did not
compensate for this fundamental failing. This he knew and accepted and it hurt. Here was a
bright 8 year-old who knew what the world regarded as success and, if he did not achieve
this, he had failed.
‘I’m no good. I can’t do anything.’
‘Just enjoy school, Ian. That’s all you need to do. Enjoy it and it will all come to you.’
‘Mr P. was teaching us adverbs this morning. He said ‘the boy ran down the street’ and
asked us to say how. I put my hand up and said ‘fearlessly.’ Mr P. told me to stand on my
chair. He played some special music and put a crown on my head and told me I’d become the
first king for the day. When he said this, one of the girls said ‘booo!’. So he got a song called
‘Funeral Music’, took B’s long metal ruler and chopped her head off.’
‘Mr D. took us for football and said to Ian ‘You’re so hopeless I’m going to get someone
else to take your place – a first year girl.’ Everyone laughed and Ian went red.’
‘Yes, Daddy, and then he said to him that his granny could play better than Piers and she’s
been dead for ten years.’
‘And, Dad, then he said that we should practise power kicking. He put the ball down and
said ‘If I wanted to kick Piers’s head off, I wouldn’t do it like this ‘cos I wouldn’t shift it off
his body. I’d do it like this. And he put his foot a special way and said, ‘that’s Piers’s head in
the trees and Lars and Ian are shouting for joy.’ And then we scored and he went ‘toot toot’
with his whistle.’
‘Oh, Daddy, we had science with Mr G. today. He asked how long it took for the earth to
go round the sun and only B. put his hand up and gave the answer. He asked five more
questions and only B. put his hand up, so Mr G. said ‘OK, B. you’re the teacher now – and he
went out.’
Such freedom of expression at school that I could never have dreamed off in the ‘50s and
‘60s was all around them. Perhaps this casualness of conversation, this blurring of the lines
of traditional authority lay behind the outbursts. Maybe I should play the teacher and use
these incidents as teaching material.
They came quite out-of-the-blue from time to time and all I had to do was seize the initiative.
Typical is one that came when the children were 12. It was all my fault.
A LESSON LEARNED
Lars had an appointment with the orthodontist in the centre of Reading. It was a 20 mile
drive. I decided to combine it with a visit to the DVLA in Theale. Piers wanted to play
‘Minecraft’, so Lars and Ian came with me. I visited the DVLA first, handed in my forms
and dealt with minor ructions between the two boys. It was when we had driven through the
traffic and arrived at the orthodonist’s that I reached down to grab the plastic bag in which I
had placed my wallet and Lars’s papers that I realised I had left it behind at the DVLA.
‘The trouble is I can’t phone them. You just get through to a central number and wait ages.
I’ll have to hope for the best and go back.’ I had to be decisive. All my credit cards, cash,
cameras and goodness knows what else was in that bag. I kicked myself for my stupidity.
‘Right, Lars. You go inside, check in and tell the receptionist what’s happened. See Dr K
and wait for me to come back. Ian, do you want to stay with Lars?’
‘No, Daddy, I’ll come with you.’
‘Well, that’s kind, Ian. You’ll keep Daddy company.’
But it was to berate Daddy that Ian had come.
‘Why are driving so slowly? Why do you keep stopping?’
‘See the traffic? See the red lights? If I drove fast and ignored the lights, we’d have an
accident, wouldn’t we and that wouldn’t get us there any quicker, would it? We’d have to
stop, get the breakdown people in and all that would take time. No, I have to drive very
carefully to make sure we get there as soon as possible.’
‘You’re stupid. Why did you lose all your money. You’ll never be able to afford for me to
go to school. I’ll go to a bad school and all my education will be messed up and I’ll never get
a good job and all because you forgot your bag. Waaaah!’
‘Yes, of course, I shouldn’t’ve left it, but look it’s only money and cards and a few things. I
can cancel the cards and replace the things. Sure it’s a nuisance and of course I wish I hadn’t
left the bag behind, but it’s done and I have to sort things out. Which I shall do. First of all I
have to see if the bag is still there.’
A very long 20 minute drive later, we arrived back at the DVLA. I scanned the room for the
bag. No bag. I went to one of the counter clerks.
‘Just one moment.’ He disappeared to reappear with the bag a few moments later. ‘Someone
handed it in.’ I thanked him profusely.
‘Restores my faith in human nature,’ I said. Everything was intact.
‘Now, Ian, I was lucky. Yes, you’re right I shouldn’t have been so thoughtless. There’s no
excuse. Not even the distraction you and Lars created by squabbling. But, look, here it is
and even if it weren’t here, I’d have had plenty of work to do cancelling the cards, reporting
the loss to the police and whatever else followed on from this act of forgetfulness, but no one
has died. That’s what’s important. No one has died. And what did all your shouting
achieve, Ian? What practical good did it do? How did your over-reaction help the situation?’
Ian shifted from foot to foot.
‘There you are. Point made. If something happens, you do what you can to rectify the thing
that has happened. Everything else is irrelevant. It’s called being pragmatic. If you can
change a thing, by doing another thing, do it. If you can’t change it, don’t bother about it.
Shouting and getting cross do nothing to help. Lesson learned?’
Ian’s head nodded. ‘Sorreeee…’
GROWING GENERATIONS TAKE AGAINST ME
‘We do not validate parking’ said the instructions on the Growing Generations fax telling
me where they were. It was a foreign language. I drove east—or was it west?—until I failed
to find Wilshire Boulevard as the first intersection. Had no one noticed the missing ‘t’, I
thought as I three-point turned against the traffic?
Wilshire turned into La Cienega, which turned into something else and back into Wilshire.
Fortunately I had allowed two hours for the few minutes’ drive and arrived at San Vicente
with an hour to spare.
I found that ‘we do not validate parking’ did not mean that it did not exist. It was just that I
had to pay for it. As everywhere in Los Angeles, underground car parks support each
building. To kill time, we walked the immaculate pavements, the only pedestrians, expecting
a soaking from the hidden sprinkler systems keeping each verdant lawn from succumbing to
the unrelenting sun.
At the appointed hour, we entered the Growing Generations building. It was starkly
modern and meant business. I realised that GG was a gay-run operation. Ian and I had
wondered if we would be taken for a couple. We idly speculated that it might make life easier
if we were taken as one. Neither of us is into that sort of deception, though, and while we did
not state that we were not linked—the question did not arise—we did not announce our status
on arrival. I thought that in California anything goes. How wrong I was.
We were greeted by Teo Martinez, a tall, bronzed young man with a gentle handshake,
and ushered into a room dripping with photos of happy parents and babies in various
combinations. Single men, single women, single babies, two babies, two men, two women.
We got the picture. The two founders of Growing Generations, Will Halm and Gail Taylor,
entered.
They were charming, informative, announced their gay and lesbian status and talked
through their programme. I had no idea why a woman would wish to become a surrogate and
I am not sure that their explanation made me much wiser. That would come later. They
described their surrogates as ‘mavericks’, leading lives that were unconventional with
relationships that could be complicated, but all of whom, it seemed, loved babies.
What was necessary, it was stressed, was to build up a relationship with the surrogate. To
meet and meet again, to discuss every aspect of the pregnancy before and during it. To come
over to renew the relationship, to deliver fresh sperm, to maintain the interest, to support the
woman at every stage. It sounded like hard work and the element of angst was never far
away. My suggestion of frozen sperm was met with a reasoned comparison of the virtues of
fresh versus frozen rather along the lines of peas. Fresh was determined to be far better. I
could never taste the difference.
There was then the question of the egg. The surrogacy could be the insemination of a
surrogate or it could be gestational with the surrogate being implanted with a fertilised egg
that came from another woman, an egg donor. After the description of the average surrogate
who had been presented as leading a life of near-lawlessness on the wrong side of the tracks,
I had quite decided I did not want to take a dive into that gene pool. A college graduate egg
donor was infinitely preferable. It was also quite mechanical and it did not appear that I
would also have to strike up a transatlantic relationship with her.
Then it was my turn. I was asked how many children I wanted. ‘Oh, the more the merrier’,
I ventured. I had thought the light-heartedness had been evident in my tone of voice. Not in
California, it seemed.
More angst followed on the perils of a multiple birth for the surrogate. OK, I would be
thrilled with one. What sort of business did I run, what could I offer a child? They were
building up a picture of me as someone they either would or would not welcome on their
programme. All was going well.
‘In eighteen months or two years, you’ll be a parent,’ said Will Halm. ‘You’ll make an
excellent father.’
I thought the deal was done.
‘But how do you think your clients will view all this?’ Will Halm was saying
‘They trust me with their children. It will have no effect.’
‘But what about when you come out? We don’t have people staying in the closet.’
‘Coming out as what? What closet? I realised you were a gay organisation, but I
didn’t think you dealt only with gays. Won’t you deal with someone who isn’t gay?’
‘Our surrogates only do it for gay people. That’s what motivates them.’
‘But you’ve said that I would make an excellent parent. If your surrogates trust your
judgement, surely one will accept your word that I’m suitable.’ I was desperate. I could see it
all slipping away.
‘We have two Englishmen whose surrogate is about to give birth to twins. We have
secured the right that both men be named on the birth certificate as parents. That’s a major
achievement. You can see it on our video.’
What I had thought was an organisation that enabled children to be born was more
complicated than this. It appeared to be almost a by-product of the real aim, which was to
present gay families as being as normal as heterosexual families; to give them exactly the
same rights. By a curious irony, I was the one now being discriminated against. This was
California and if I was feeling discriminated against, I was sure there must be some law
against it, but quite how I was being discriminated against by an organisation that was
fighting a discrimation that did not discriminate against me was too much for my European
mind to disentangle. I knew that was that so far as Growing Generations was concerned.
Their drumbeat was not a tune I cared to march to.
The mood in the room changed. The silence was awkward. It was clear I was about to be
out on my ear.
‘We could recommend you elsewhere.’
‘But I’m here for just another couple of days and tomorrow’s Saturday.’
I imagined that another agency would take me down the same tortuous track. I gave
them my mobile number and we left. I really thought I had blown all my chances.
HANGING OUT THE FLAGS, SHOUTING HALLELUJAH AND DANCING IN THE
STREETS
The thing about triplets is that each has his own agenda and, if this dominates, chaos is
just around the corner. When you are a single parent, bathtime has to be a batch production
job just like most daily events. They had to know that one thing followed another, no matter
how many extraneous complications they might inject, no matter what complications, I was
sure, they hoped would challenge their parent. It was consistency and the certainty of the
outcome that maintained order. At its most basic, life was a constant battle against pooh.
'I want a pooh.'
'I'll have a pooh tomorrow. I'm only going to have a wee wee today.'
There was a pregnant pause that needed to be filled with a third statement of dramatic
intensity.
'I'm having a pooh AND a wee wee.'
Ian looked around for the effect his announcement would have on his two brothers. So
far Piers and Lars looked unimpressed. He waited to let the idea capture their imaginations
and then continued.
'Together.'
'Come on, Ian, you're done. Up you get.'
He was the last to get into the bath. His two brothers were busily dressing. We needed
to be quick. Under the new regime at nursery school, if they arrived after half past eight,
there would be no breakfast. We had got into the habit of speed-dressing, even at weekends.
Ian carried on squeezing water from his plastic fish.
'Up you get, Ian.' I reached for the blue plastic tooth mug on the basin. My small son
was upright in a flash. He knew that the mug could very quickly be filled with cold water.
'Good boy, Ian. Glad you see it Daddy's way.'
It had only needed to be done once for the lesson to be learned. 'Trousers up and hands
washed, Lars.'
'Trousers down and on the lavatory, Piers.'
'Now dry between your toes and then blow your nose, Ian.'
There is simply no time for a rational discussion on the joy of obedience and the merits
of being on time.
'I did it, Daddy! Not Piers. Not Lars.'
Ian had blown his nose. It had been a productive activity. He dropped the tissue into the
lavatory. His eyes met mine for approbation.
'Well done, Ian. You're the only one who can do that.'
His brothers had not yet mastered blowing through the nostrils. They kept their mouths
open and smeared mucus across their cheeks. In his elation, his small legs goosestepped to
the wardrobe. He carefully pulled the mirrored door open avoiding its springback, tiptoed
and ran exploratory fingers along the coloured fabrics hanging there.
'I'll have the red one. No, I won't, I'll have the 'ellow one. I'll have the red one.'
Ian grasped the hem of the teeshirt and tugged it from the hanger. Behind him Lars was
quietly getting on with putting on the Tigger top Daddy had laid out for him. Piers was
singing on the lavatory:
'I like a nice cup of tea in the morning.
Just to start the day, you see,
And at half-past eleven
My idea of heaven
Is a nice cup of tea'
Ian turned round to see his brother already opening the drawer for his shoes.
'Naah, I'm first!'
On went the red top. His hand grabbed at the nearest pile of fabric. Legs flailing, he
thrust his toes into the leg of the pair of trousers that had emerged from the debris.
'Naah! 'Smee! Me!'
Tears streamed down cheeks made pinker by the white rage of his face.
'Try starting at the waist, Ian, and while you're about it, how about putting on your
underpants?' The vee neck of his aeroplane red top was pointing down his back. 'And your
top's on back to front.'
Clenched fists clutched at the top, pulling to rotate it without taking it off, his body
contorted in its hopeless quest.
'I'm first.' Lars stood up matter-of-factly and admired himself in the mirror.
'Except that your shoes are on the wrong feet.'
'No they're not. Yes they are, Daddy.'
Realising he still had a chance to win, Ian made another attempt to get the vee and the
aeroplane facing front by extricating his arms and twisting the neck so that it reverted to its
original position.
'Where's my pants? No pants. Don't need pants. Naah!'
Caught up in the frenzy of his wild ululation, tears streaming, bare bottom in air, Ian
scrabbled for his trousers while Lars casually pressed the velcro at the outside edge of each
shoe, stood up and pushed the small friction-drive car Ian had been playing with across the
carpet.
'Ready, Daddy. I'm first again.'
'Well done. Lars, you can sit in the front.'
'Naah! 'Smy car! I'm first!' Ian clambered to his feet. His sheepish glance in the fulllength mirrored doors of the wardrobe now almost covered with their art work revealed bare
feet, cheeks hanging out of pants hanging out of trousers gripping knees and a chubby arm
poking through the rearward-facing vee neck of a red top. ''Smeee!'
'No 'snot. 'Sme, silly sausage. Ian's a silly sausage, isn't he, Daddy? We don't say
stupid.'
'Well tried, Ian,' I tickled his bare foot, 'but Lars has all his clothes on.'
'Have you had your breakfast, Daddy?' Piers looked concerned.
'Yes, I got up early to feed the cats.'
Piers looked at the early morning greyness outside. 'But you can't have breakfast when
it's dark. You can only have breakfast when it's good-morning-time.'
'So what can you have when it's dark?'
'Milk and biscuits. Lift me off the labratary.' Piers's pyjama bottoms streamed inside out
in front of him making movement impossible.
'I like a nice cup of tea with my dinner
And a nice cup of tea with my tea
And when it's time for bed,
There's arot to be said
For a nice cup of tea.'
There can't be many children who can bring to mind the popular songs of their great
great grandparents' generation. I had remembered it from my father, born before the Great
War, as he had, no doubt, from his.
'Here you are, Piers. Two sheets. What are they for?'
'One for cleaning.' He paused to recollect what he had been told so often. 'And one for
polishing.'
He sat, contemplating the two pieces while the olfactory evidence of his achievement
intensified.
'Come on Piers. Stop pratting about. Get on with it. If you went any slower...'
'You'd go backwards.' Lars had heard it all before.
'Finished, Daddy. Will you check me?'
'Well hang out the flags!'
'And shout hallehojaar.' Piers had heard this before, too.
'What going to happen, Piers?'
'There'll be dancing in the streets.'
'Never mind, Ian. You can be first after me tomorrow,' said Lars.
'Don't worry, Ian. You know, you're first second.' Piers added.
'And you're last, Piers. Come on.'
'Nearly ready, Daddy. Sorr-ee...'
'Hooray, Piers.' I looked out of the window pointedly. 'I can see Auntie Vivienne just
coming out with something in her hand. It may be a flag and - what's this? - are they starting
to jig about?'
Ian squeezed the tiniest dab of toothpaste on his yellow brush. 'More is vulgar,' he
repeated my sentiments of the previous day. He set to work.
'Come on, Ian. More vigour. Kill all those bacteria. I think I can hear them now.
They're laughing at you. They're saying 'He's just tickling us' while they slide up and down
your teeth. Both sides, the bacteria think they can escape by going where you haven't
brushed.'
A beard of green foam showed that he had tried his best. 'They're all killed, Daddy.'
'Can sorry people sit in the front, Daddy?' Piers's limpid blue eyes were almost
irresistible. 'Sorry people are good and can sit in the front, can't they? It's only naughty
people who can't.'
How to deal with the competitive instinct was something I had hardly considered before
having children. Now it dominated all interactions and had to be addressed. I had started by
downplaying it, but quickly realised that it needed to be channelled and could be manipulated
to advantage. 'Look, X, Y's already done this. Show how well you can do it.' Sitting in front
was what motivated them at the start and end of the day. Whoever was first dressed had the
honour. Whoever sat there could ask for whatever music he wanted; could talk to something
other than the back of Daddy's head; could imagine for just the five minutes that it took to
drive from home to nursery school that he was the only one in the car; could briefly be an
only child.
I'm in the front.' Ian gave his most angelic smile as I lifted him into the back seat. 'This
is the front.'
'It's wherever you want it to be, Ian.'
'Lars is in the back.'
'If that's what you want to think. That's fine.'
'Can we have the 'Birdy Song', please?' said Lars. That was, in fact, not the The Tweets'
pop hit of the '80s, but Vaughan Williams' 'Lark Ascending'. I had made fluttering hand
movements up and down to give them the idea of a bird rising and falling.
'Sorry, I've only got the Japanese song in the player right now.' This was 'Sukiyaki' by
Kyu Sakamoto, an unlikely hit that I remembered well when it was new in 1963 and I was 16.
'Wahee! Wahey!' Lars was thrilled. He had heard it many times and sang along to it in
Japanese, almost word perfect, without having a clue what any of the words meant. My sons
were revelling in the glorious innocence of their childhood, exploring language, relationships,
just being little boys. How I hoped it would last for them - as my own childhood had not.
FAMILY LIFE
To make his point, my father’s fist banged on the table. The words were a blur, but the
actions spoke for themselves. I was sitting at the dining table on that Saturday lunchtime on
that winter’s day in 1957 when I was ten. I had no idea what it was, but it must have been
something I had done.
I had finished my rice pudding, or maybe I hadn’t and that was the problem. My
father had not.
He had been working himself into a rage during the whole meal because my mother
was not, as he put it, backing him up. I wanted to leave the table. Asking to do so never
occurred to me as it was accepted that my mother, father and I would finish a meal together.
My mother carried on eating. It was her way of coping. She rode it. She didn’t, of
course, but she kept her composure. The outburst terrified her as much as it did me.
‘Calm down, John.’ ‘John’ had been the only part of his name she had caught when
they had been introduced at a cricket club in the 1930s. She had never reconciled herself to
his real name being ‘Herbert’.
Down and down the fist pounded. I watched transfixed. Everything around us was
normal. The room, the furniture, the view through the French windows into the garden that
was my father’s joy. Past the skeletal fruit trees, up to the trellis that separated the grassed
area from the vegetables.
Yet there in front of this familiarity was my father enraged as I had never seen him
before. In one hand the spoon; the other hand continued its downward path. Bang, bang,
bang—splodge. His fist caught the side of the bowl, sending it towards his chest down into
his lap and the contents into his face which, now florid, was striated with white. At a distance
of several decades, recollection of the sight should be amusing, yet it makes me shudder.
Confused, I fled and remained hovering at the top of the stairs, weeping while my
father ranted at my mother below. She held him back from following me.
Something was my fault. I had caused this. I was in the wrong. I must be. Parents
didn’t do anything wrong—at least they never had before. I retreated to my bedroom and my
Enid Blyton books. Hours later my mother came up and comforted me. My father had calmed
down and the incident was never referred to. I resolved to be careful not to cross him in
future.
The psychogeriatrist leaned back in her swivel chair, still looking directly at me.
‘There will come a time when you will need to consider your options.’
Options? Were there any?
It was the first time I realised I may have already considered these. At the time when
my contemporaries were moving out, I was building a house large enough to accommodate
us all. My parents had had me late in life. My childhood had been full of friends, but I rarely
if ever invited them home. I assumed there would be an awkward atmosphere, so avoided
precipitating it. I went to see other people, visited them in their homes, did not take the
chance of inviting them to mine.
A shame, in retrospect. My mother was a fine cook and would, under different
circumstances, have loved to entertain.
That we did not was never an issue. It was a reality; simply a fact.
FIRST STEPS IN EDUCATION
There had to be something better than this two-mile drive to nursery school every
morning that had become the routine for the best part of two years. I decided to try out the
walk to the closest infant school. Ten minutes. Twenty with the boys. I phoned for an
appointment.
'It wasn't only the five-mile drive that made me reconsider. I just feel that they need to
make their friends locally as well as having some input into getting to school. I don't think
it's good for them to be fetched and carried all the time.'
The headmistress looked me straight in the eye.
'You're a brave man but, yes, it's the right choice. I chose to teach in the state sector
although I was educated privately. You may have the odd wobble, so come and see us.'
I had walked to the school to check if it were do-able. I had found a muddy shortcut. It
was the first time I could remember walking from my house to anywhere. I liked the feeling.
I had exchanged good mornings with two other pedestrians I had never seen before. The
children were in blue uniforms, purposefully engaged in various activities. Writings,
drawings, paintings covered the corridor walls. This was good. It was local. I had been
shown everything, including the lavatories. I was sure I was making the right choice. I
signed the papers. Four years ago, the local infants' school had not entered my head. On the
day they were born, their names had gone down for an up-market prep school several miles
away. All my preconceptions were changing. This was just one of them. In a year,
commuting would be consigned to our history and like many children in Britain today, we
would walk to school.
In the meantime, the daily drive remained a reality and a further source of competition.
Rather than the squabbles round the nearside passenger door handle, I had decided the
first one to reach the car at the end of nursery school would sit in the front.
'Right. Off you go. First one to the car has the front seat.'
Six legs trotted off with Ian slightly in the lead. Round the corner of the building they
went, sending an oncoming parent into the bushes. Piers stopped suddenly, winded by a
small elbow. Ian was learning fast. I would have to change this first-to-the-post system.
'The wind's in my haircut, Daddy.'
Lars ran a hand through his short, wiry red hair, dropping the paper he had been holding.
'My star's gone.'
A gold star had been stuck on his daily report sheet. He had been bored and decided to
tidy up the 'home corner'.
'It's on my day sheet.'
I retrieved the paper from a puddle.
'I've got a star, too, Daddy.'
'Well done, Piers. Let's see what it's for.'
I held the damp paper under the security beam in the nursery car park. It gave light to
the security camera that recorded their charges at every moment from arrival to departure.
'For sitting nicely' was inscribed under the sticker.
'You'll have to do better than that to get a gold star from Daddy, Piers.'
In the meantime, Ian had made a beeline for the car in our customary parking place.
'Wrong car, Ian!'
'I found it a-a-all on my own.'
'Well done, Lars. Now, boys, you'll be in big boy beds tonight. The cots have gone. No
more Grobags. It'll be beds with duvets from now on.'
At home that evening I had to start with one of them, so I offered Piers the top bunk as
he was the oldest, albeit by minutes.
'No Daddy, I want this one.'
He planted his bottom firmly on the bottom bunk. Lars had put his Pooh Bear on the
single bed and was already trying the springs.
'OK, Ian, it's yours. Up you go.'
Mindful of his fall from the ladder to the tree house some weeks before, Ian put a foot
gingerly on the bottom rung.
'Put your hands here, on the rail, and pull yourself up.'
This one was angled and easier. He found himself at the top in no time.
'I can touch the ceiling.'
Satisfied that the choices had been made without a ruckus, I turned to the wardrobe to get
their pyjamas. There was a thud.
'Aaah!' He was ashen-faced and winded. In my arms, he composed himself. 'Not going
up there again.'
Quite how he had done it, I shall never know, but Ian had stepped off the raised side by
the pillow, landing on a soft rug I had put there just in case. Lars bounded up the ladder.
'I'm the king of the castle.'
And there he remained. Each one had, in the end, got the bed he wanted. If only all
choices could be that simple. Within a day, Piers had personalised his part of the bunk's leg.
''It's my Christmas.'
His stuffed snake had been wound round it as a decoration. Inside the snake, he had
tucked several trophies: the fanned paper from the previous day's nursery activity, a plastic
hammer, a snowman and the adjustable spanner he liked to comb his hair with. Failing to
find a similar upright on his single bed and not to be outdone, Ian immediately piled koala on
top of flamingo on top of Bob the Builder on top of Pilchard the cat.
'That's MY Christmas.'
He stood back to admire the pyramid of clutter on his duvet.
'And I'll make one for you, Daddy.'
'Thank you, Ian.'
'Yes. When you're dead.'
DEALING WITH DEATH
Like toys and bodily functions, death had become a topic touched on casually and
frequently. It was not that, for them, a visit to their grandparents was to a cemetery in
Chieveley, nor that one of the cats, Claudius, who had broken his leg when he slipped off
Lars's chair in the kitchen and had spent months with it in an external pin, had succumbed to
his eighteen years. They had recently visited a former teaching colleague and friend of mine
at the seaside. They had walked along the shore holding his hand. They had watched the
waves roll in, picked up pebbles, pocketed shells and pulled seaweed from their sandals.
They had stroked his dog and had the cuddles that he used to give to his six year-old daughter
before his marriage and his life fell apart.
'Is that the sea?' they had asked, for weeks afterwards, waving hands vaguely in the
direction of the horizon. 'When can we see Nick and Gemma again?'
That was the hard part. Just after our visit, Nick had checked into a small hotel in
Weymouth, torn up a bedsheet and hanged himself from the door.
'I'm sorry, boys, we won't be able to see him again. He's died.'
'Why did he die, Daddy? Did he break his leg like Claudius?'
No, darlings, I'm afraid he broke his heart.'
How to explain that the healthy fifty year-old that they had come to know just a few days
before had decided to die?
'Won't we see him any more?'
'Afraid not. When people die, you don't see them again.' I resisted muddying the waters
with speculations of immortality or excursions into religiosity. The next question was totally
expected and, for me, the way to phrase the answer was simple.
'Will you die, Daddy?'
'Yes, Daddy will. Everyone does, but it won't be for a very long time.
'And we won't see you again?'
'No, but you'll always remember me, I hope.'
'Can we have your bed when you die?'
I bequeathed this to them, glad that they could extract something positive.
'Can I cook for you, Daddy?' Ian asked.
'That's a kind thought, darling. Of course you can.'
I had spoken too soon. He hadn't finished his question.
'When you're dead?'
'What are you writing, Daddy?' Piers had seen me scribbling in the notebook I always
kept at hand.
'What you come out with is so funny that I need to write it down when it happens. It's
for the book. When you're older you'll be able to read it.'
The stream of discourse with my sons had the evanescent quality of dreams. Unless I
wrote it down at once, I would either forget it or impose on it my own logic. As it was, the
logic was there. It was just not immediately obvious.
Piers's forehead wrinkled. It often did that. If there was an assumption going around, he
would want to question it. He pointed his finger and fixed me with his blue eyes.
'But when I can read, I'll be you.'
'Why.'
'Because you'll be dead and I'll be you.'
'And who will be you, Piers?'
'Don't be silly, Daddy. Ian will.'
'So you will be Daddy and Ian will be you. Do we all change into each other when we
die?'
Ian did not seem impressed.
'I won't.'
Momentarily distracted, he returned to dissecting his Jaffa Cake.
'The plate's not right. The animals have to be the right way up.' Piers liked everything to
be just so. The design on his Winnie-the-Pooh plate was asymmetrical.
'How about at this angle, Piers?'
'No that's wrong. They must be straight.'
'What about this Daddy plate? It's all white. How should this be on the table?'
Piers turned it all the way round and frowned, unable to reach a conclusion.
'Lars broke a plate and Daddy put it in the bin.'
'Yes, he did. Where is it now, do you think?'
'In a dustcart.'
'Yes, that's right, but what happens to the rubbish that's put in a dustcart?'
'Well,' Piers creased his brow, considering the possibilities. Mind made up and with all
the certainty of his four years he fixed me with a stare. 'The dustman takes it home and puts it
in his dustbin. Then the dustcart comes and takes it away.'
'Where to?'
'To the other dustman's home, of course.'
Buoyed by his success in elucidating to me the refuse collection system, Piers felt
confident enough to raise an issue that had evidently been troubling him for some while.
'What was my name before I was 'Piers', Daddy?' As was becoming the norm for him,
Piers's brow was furrowed.
'It's always been 'Piers' ever since you were born, darling.'
'No, but it wasn't. When I was a baby it was something else?'
'Really, it's never been other than 'Piers'.'
No, it was something different.' Piers was insistent.
He was right. In the very early photos from the hospital in San Diego, he was ‘Baby A’.
'You're Ian.'
Lars looked me full in the face. For almost four years I had relinquished my name.
Become used to being 'Daddy'. I remembered answering the phone with my name when they
were under three. They were incredulous.
'But Ian's here!' Lars motioned to his brother who had disengaged himself from his
porridge at the mention of his name. 'He's here!' He flapped his hand to attract my attention
and remind me that I was Daddy, not Ian. This time, he was giving me a knowing look.
'Who told you that, Lars?'
He mentioned the name of one of the staff at nursery school.
'But I'm not 'Aidan' as well. I have a different middle name from Ian's. It's the same
name as one of your friends.'
'No, it's not.'
Middle names were clearly linked to first names in his scheme of things.
'Well, it is, Lars, and Piers's middle name is his grandfather's middle name. What is it,
Piers?'
'It's 'Thomas', Daddy?'
'And why is this, Piers?'
As I said it, I sensed what his answer would be. Memories of a cold January morning on
a railway line came back to me.
'Because we went on Thomas the Tank Engine', Daddy.'
Fortified by his rectitude, he could not resist reverting to his former theme. 'And...
And... when I'm big' - his eyes skittered as he hunted for the perfect conclusion to his
sentence - 'you'll be small.'
Piers leant back in his high chair, basking in the certitude of this assertion. I did not
disabuse him. It might well be so.
Had I enjoyed the cut and thrust of metaphysical speculation when I was four? Or was it
that exploring the interplay of ideas between three boys of the same age was too tempting for
me not to exploit. All I had to do was pop an idea into one of their heads and who knew what
it would provoke. One thing I was sure of. Life as a triplet was far more complex than that
of an only child. I knew that only too well. But was it more than this? Was life in the early
first half of the twenty-first century so very different from that of the early second half of the
twentieth? If so, it had crept up without my conscious mind realising the enormity of the
change. I felt the same, but there I was, father to three children conceived in a test tube and
born via surrogacy. That was pretty cutting edge. Having lived with the fact for some years,
it all seemed so normal. Or had I come so far from it that I had forgotten what normality
was?
The evening the bunk bed arrived, I had gone outside to call Cresta the cat in. No cat. I
had taken her for grooming that morning. And forgotten to pick her up.
COPING STATEGIES
Imperceptibly, my father had turned into a ticking bomb. His easygoing bonhomie no
was longer evident; worrying about his job took over.
Over the years, edginess slipped into paranoia; criticism into rages. Initially verbal,
his aggression became physical, directed as much towards himself as to my mother and me.
The raised hand and clenched fist were held up to my mother. Occasionally both made
contact with me.
Harming himself became a familiar theme, sometimes accompanied by dire warnings
about what he would do to us.
Push became shove, which then became karate chop to the back of the neck in his
later years if I let him get behind me in a temper. He would storm upstairs to his study, the
words ‘dead by morning’ ringing in my ears—an empty threat, but devastating nevertheless. I
remained awake until I heard him go to bed. I always locked my door, just in case.
He became obsessed with money that he claimed I owed him, demanding written
undertakings that it would be paid. He would create a scenario in which he had been
defrauded. At length he wove the skeins into a conspiracy.
By the time we had analysed it all and removed the threats he perceived to his
financial independence, he had forgotten the beginning of the chain of thought and the
process started again.
On one occasion, he had polyps removed in hospital under general anaesthetic. When
he came round, he was convivial, chatty. He told me about the other people in the ward. He
was happy to introduce them, although he did not know their names. They were ‘good chaps’.
He beamed, delighted to have made friends.
He was alone in a single room.
Transferred to the local cottage hospital for convalescence, he was not the ideal
patient. Convinced that he was being held against his will, he demanded to be released. ‘It
took two nurses and a hospital visitor to bring him down,’ the ward sister told me over the
telephone. He had made a bolt for freedom through a fire exit door while the staff had been
occupied with a death a few beds along.
In the background I could hear his voice. ‘You’ve got no right to keep me. I’ll sue.
Get my son.’ Avoiding the edge of his hand to the back of my neck as I fastened his seat belt
and telling him I was, in fact, his son and not the kidnapper he supposed me to be, I caught a
glimpse of a face I recognised entering the hospital through the main door.
‘They told me he had discharged himself and come home.’
One of his erstwhile golfing friends had come to visit him and had followed my car to
the house.
‘They seemed a bit “off” with me.’
I had just got my father settled in the sitting room. Convinced the friend had come to
receive financial advice, my father took him through the basics of stocks and shares. The
golfing friend never returned. There’s nothing like dementia to keep visitors away.
He had always been a competitive motorist and the possibilities posed by his powerful
BMW sitting in the garage were not lost on us. He once disappeared for hours and returned
minus a door mirror. His account of how someone else’s dreadful driving had caused its loss
changed each time he told it. He would sit behind the wheel pushing switches.
‘There’s something wrong’, he would say. ‘Only the headlights work.’ We had hidden
his car keys, claiming they were lost. When he located his spare, I loosened the battery
connections and he assumed the battery was flat. Then we hid the garage door control unit.
My father had become a problem of major proportions.
For years my mother and I had had no idea what to do. The police would regard such
events as ‘domestic’ and not for their attention. Whatever happened in the home was a family
matter, to be dealt with by the family. In this case, it was lived with. To disclose it would
reveal a shameful inability to cope. It became accommodated into our lives. We managed as
long as we could, pretending that we could accommodate his increasingly aberrant behaviour.
‘We can’t go on like this.’ My mother was sitting on the sofa regaining her breath. My
father had stormed out of the house in a whirlwind of temper, knocking her flying. I picked
her up and half carried her to the sitting room. I propped her up on her side with cushions.
‘And it’s not fair on you either, Ian. You should get more from life than him. You
shouldn’t have to put up with him.’
‘But isn’t there anything left? Now that you know why he’s like this, don’t you love
him at all?’
She shook her head.
‘No, there’s nothing there. Not now. He shouldn’t be here.’
‘But he’s not himself. He’s ill.’
‘And he’s making us ill. He needs to be somewhere else.’
She it was who had told me what my father had been like before the accident. She it
was who had found the old photos of us as a family. There I was being a toddler; being on a
boat, being cuddled by my father, kicking a ball. Fragments of memory came back to me of
his enormous love, times when he would throw me into the air in joy; when we would walk
hand in hand; when he would read to me. That he had lashed out at me, I knew. I knew, too,
that I had blotted out the memories so successfully that I could deny this even to myself. I can
hardly bring them to mind even now. She had told me what a devoted father he had been. I
knew that he had been intelligent, articulate and sensitive even after the accident during my
formative years. This was the father I wanted to remember; wanted still to have.
Yet it was she who wanted him out. By every empirical standard, she was absolutely
right, of course. But I loved him. She did not. That had died. She no longer recognised the
man she had loved, the man she had married. How she missed those days. By the 1990s the
demons he had fought were taking him over.
I phoned around. Several homes baulked at the idea of taking him. Eventually I found
one with a unit for the Elderly Mentally Infirm that was willing to take him on. I made
arrangements, hating myself for doing this.
‘It’s just for a while so that you’ll get better.’ I was in the car driving him west to a
place that seemed caring, understanding, able to cope. He looked straight ahead, sullen,
resigned, tight-mouthed.
‘Grrr.’ He raised his left arm as though to cuff me. I ducked. The car twitched. It had
just been a warning.
‘It’s for the best.’ My mother had been watching Wimbledon on TV when I returned.
She chatted brightly. A weight had been lifted. Always the pragmatic one, she had seen the
problem and accepted that it had been removed. Not me. I remembered my father’s words to
me when I left.
‘I know what you’re doing. I won’t forget this.’
My heart went out to him. I drove straight back to see how he was. He was where I
had left him, in a room with a stable door. The top part was open. The bottom was locked. He
had not stirred from his chair. He had been given some food. Stains from it were round his
mouth and down his lapels. He had wet himself. I talked to him, but he would not respond.
He looked me hard in the eye. I was the one who had put him there and there was only hatred
for me.
Some time later, I brought him home. Verbally aggressive though he remained, he did
not touch my mother again.
Protecting her from him and protecting him from himself became my life. Unable to
accept that it was the right thing to do, I had taken him out of the EMI unit. I took charge of
both my parents. During the illness that preceded her death, I had to put my father back in a
home. In six weeks he lost the ability to speak. Expensively provided for, he sat glumly in his
single room. His only contact was with an elderly female resident who thought he was her
husband and clutched his hand murmuring with cultivated vowels, ‘Headley, Headley’.
I dreaded the visits, knowing that each time a little more of his personality had died.
His body, too, was wasting into emaciation. I discovered that small amounts of food had been
put in front of him and removed when he did not eat. A change of Home slowed the decline,
but even so this was another waiting room for death. I would not have wished it for myself.
I popped in to visit him there early one evening to find him lying on his bedroom
carpet in a pool of urine mixed with blood from a cut on his hand. He was making small
movements, trying to get up. I looked down the corridor for help. No one there.
I lifted him up, changed him out of his soaked pyjamas, sponged him down, dressed
him, combed his hair, put his teeth in and sat him in a chair. The staff told me he had been put
to bed at six o’clock as they were short-staffed. So that he would not fall out, he had been
moved to the floor. As I knew he always fell out of the same side of the bed at home, I had it
shifted so that side was against the wall. It was something I had told the staff when he came
in, but nothing had been done.
I wondered how long he would have laid there if I had not happened to visit him.
Whatever restrictions this might place on my mobility, I knew that putting him in a Home in
future would have to be an absolutely last resort. And I knew that I would have to visit
frequently if I did.
To understand all is to forgive all.
Those few words from the psychogeriatrist in 1995 had lifted the veil. He was a
victim. What had happened to him was a tragedy. I knew that my love for him had been
tested to breaking. I saw him as damaged, but indomitable.
My father was my responsibility. After my mother’s death he was my only family. I
wanted him near me. I wanted to look after him.
I brought him home. I thought I would need help. The employment of a resident
carer—a frosty lady who confided to her friends in a letter she left inadvertently on my
computer that she had ‘reached the bottom of the heap’—was a terminated after a few weeks.
Two of the four others on the short list that resulted from my small ad in The Lady
proved to have criminal convictions. A woman from an agency on a one week contract stayed
half an hour—’He won’t do as I say.’
The state is not sympathetic to the elderly mentally infirm. In West Berkshire at the end
of the twentieth century there was no Day Care for someone like him. He was allowed to
attend the Day Hospital locally on one day a week. This was seen as treatment not as care.
When they decided they could do nothing for him, he was ‘discharged’—cured.
Apart from me, there was no one to look after him, except at the weekends when St
John’s arranged a few hours respite, ‘caring for carers’ as they put it. It was removed when
some of the ladies complained that he was too difficult for them. On weekdays, I employed a
series of helpers.
They all fell away. My father could sense disengagement in an instant and reacted
with stroppiness and the occasional punch, telling the unwanted visitor to leave. Whatever
pains a carer may take to stimulate, entertain and show fellow feeling, there is little
appreciation. For most, the job is one of containment only; there is not much satisfaction.
When the Human Rights Act was incorporated into English Law, I quantified my few
hours a week of free time in a letter to the local Council. For whatever reason, day care was
offered on three days a week. For the first time since long before the diagnosis I had the
space to think about where my life was likely to go.
I was on my own. There was no one else. My role had been thoroughly reversed.
The child had become the parent and I would have to be the main carer. This would be my
life. The only person I would have I my life would be someone who could no longer see me
as his son and for whom I was alternately his brother, mother, wife, prison guard. What to
do? Something or nothing?
Knowing why I was in this situation was the trigger. I wanted to try to find out who I
had been and who I would have been had circumstances been different. I felt I needed to go
back to go forward; to feel what I had been like in 1955 before it all changed; to be a child
again. I had to take myself to pieces to see who I was and what I really wanted. The closest I
came—and it was an odd experience—was to find copies of some of the books I had read
when I was eight. I managed to track down some examples of storybooks for children
published in the early ’50s.
They had the same dustjackets, the same pictures and even smelled the same as the
books I recalled from that time. I became lost in the magic of Enid Blyton’s ‘Faraway Tree’.
Silky, Moonface and Saucepan Man became real again. I was submerged in the memories
and atmosphere that had helped shape me almost half a century before. I recalled myself as a
happy only child with a vivid imagination.
I progressed to the Hardy novels of my teenage years and became lost in them again,
their powerful passions mirroring the loves of my life; their characters puppets on strings
pulled by destiny.
I saw the same person with life somehow ‘on hold’, not free. The relationships that
should have happened had not happened. I wished they had.
The answer came before finding a reason. It was clear—or at least it let me know what I
wanted. I wanted to have my own family.
Children, business, life—all they were all interconnected—inextricably so. My work
as a teacher had always been with children.
On a general level, I had fought for their rights. In a personal context, I became very
aware of children’s development and shared their joy and that of their parents when they
achieved individual and academic success. Through my business, I had changed people’s
lives, that was certain. But these were other people’s children. Not mine. That was what I
wanted. I wanted to see my own child develop.
I looked at dating agencies. The chance of meeting someone would be a fine thing. To
develop a relationship would take years and I was still a carer. My father could not be left
alone for a minute. I would have to find someone much younger than me who could have
children, unless I accepted the idea of an existing family. I had been with other people’s
children all my life in one way or another. I wanted my own.
Besides, marriage for the sake of having a child was doomed. I knew what I had to
do; saw what was to be done. I would have a family of my own. As there was no one else in
my life , I would have to go it alone. Time was not on my side, so I had better get on with it.
BIRTHDAY PARTIES AND OTHER CHALLENGES
There are plenty of toys in the world. Most of them live in my sons’ nursery. They are
surrounded by possessions. Although ‘no toys, please’ was the request for their third
birthday, almost all the 70 plus guests brought three of them. As Ian’s Dutch Godmother said,
‘It isn’t a birthday without presents.’ Yet it was the presents that caused the problems then...
‘My giggles. I want my giggles!’
Blue eyes welled and tears trickled down cheeks now puffed and puce. The crescendo of
Piers’s agitation silenced the party. Frankenstein-like, syringe in one hand, chain-saw in the
other, stethoscope around the shoulders, hard hat perched jauntily over one eye, Ian injected
and then pruned Lars’s arm. Crumpled packaging trampled underfoot, the doctor's set and
the builder's set had became one.
‘Where’s my GIGGLES?’
Intent on his goal, Piers hitched his dungarees higher, pushed the gift wrapping aside and
strode forward with all the speed his three year-old legs could muster.
‘My giggles,’ he sobbed. ‘He’s got my giggles.’
Ian turned, jaw dropped, knowing he was the quarry. Piers’s fingers flailed at his
brother’s eyes, grasping the yellow goggles strapped across them. With a pull, the elastic
slipped and the prize fell into the clutching hand.
‘MY giggles,’ Piers informed us. ‘Not Ian’s.’
One of the adults came over to me to elucidate. ‘My fault. I told him he looked like
Biggles.’
Tears instantly evaporated, face clear and beaming, hardly able to see through the
smeared lenses of his goggles, Piers continued playing happily amid the detritus through
which Lars and Ian, making dee-dah noises, manoeuvred crushed boxes. Cardboard, paper,
sticky tape, sophisticated electronic engineering, it was all the same to them. A toy was a
toy.
Out came the cakes. One white; one chocolate; one red.
‘Blow. Blow. Come on - blow!’
Lips pursed lightly with a slight exhalation upwards.
‘No, not up your nose. Blow the candles out!.’
As this was only the third time birthday cake candles had needed to be blown out and
they could not remember the first and second, puzzlement spread across their faces.
Godparents to the rescue, the nine small flames were extinguished into spirals of dark smoke.
The boys looked for where the gleam of brilliance had gone.
‘Cut the cakes!’
Before they could wonder any longer, they were whisked to the kitchen . Each right
hand ensconced in an adult’s, their tiny fingers touched the knives as the shiny coloured
coverings fragmented into slivers of icing sugar revealing soft pillows of sponge and oozings
of jam beneath. Fingers wriggled from adult hands to touch the sticky softness, to press it
into shapes, to direct it via cheek and chin to the mouth, to gorge on the sweetness of it all.
‘Right everyone. Professor Pringelli’s putting ‘Punch and Judy’ on in the sitting room.’
Such was the boys’ third birthday.
One of the first birthday parties they were invited was given by the parents of a child in
their group at nursery school. In the almost half century since I had been to a children's
party, the social event that it had once been had changed as much as the society that held it.
The boys had been invited to friends' celebrations. We had been ushered into 'Fantasy World'
where presents were deposited into the 'Preasants Here' area before the invitees ran amok up
and down padded scaffolding and in and out of enclosures hurling multicoloured plastic balls
skywards. Blaring pop music provided an overlay to the tots' squeals of delight as they raced
up, down, in and out, oblivious to each others' presence. Parents looked on proudly through
metal bars as their charges were invited to take their positions in a boarded-off pit where they
sat on wipe-clean plastic chairs at a wipe-clean plastic table and prodded with plastic cutlery
at boxed fast food to be followed by a plastic tube which, pushed from below, exposed a core
of coloured, frozen slush. The birthday cake was briefly introduced to the tired strains of a
song that was, for me, the only part of the proceedings that brought to mind the notion of
birthday celebration and promptly whisked away to be cut by unseen hands into small
segments, wrapped in a themed serviette and popped into a small plastic bag marked 'LOOT'
with a paperback book, a small piece of coloured plastic that may have been intended to
resemble a cartoon character and a chocolate from the sponsor of the paperback. The area
was then sluiced ready for the next party.
Those in charge of the celebrations related to the participants as intimately as the
disembodied voice on the phone, stripped of anything resembling emotion, telling the caller
that the number has not been recognized. It was an Instant Birthday. An hour and a half after
we had entered, we were out. The birthday girl, fragments of batter clinging to her frock,
looked at me with limpid blue eyes as the boys struggled into their coats unaware that it had
been a celebration; not knowing who it had been for. For them it had been an outing. For
me, it had been an all packaged-up commodification of birthday. It was all that was brittle in
modern life. I would try to do it the old-fashioned way when their birthday time came and
classmates were to be invited.
It was easier than I thought. Nursery school held an 'auction of promise' at which parents
submitted sealed bids for the staff to do a variety of chores, from babysitting to lawn mowing.
On the list was 'to organise a children's party.' Off went my bid. It won.
'Blancmange, please.'
'The pink stuff?'
'Why not? Oh yes, and jelly and paste sandwiches.' I was enjoying it hugely. So were
the nursery staff.
'We can do a 'Pin The Tail On The Donkey' and 'Statues.'
'And 'Pass The Parcel' - and 'Musical Chairs', or does it have to be 'Musical Cushions'
these days to avoid litigation? And none of those party bags at the end. They never had them
when I was young. Must be an American import, like the word 'hopefully' that I won't use.
Every child will get a prize including those who don't win anything.'
It was all just as I remembered it except that I was not allowed to have their friends'
addresses for 'security reasons' so had to deliver to the nursery the enveloped invitations
unaddressed, but this was the only concession made to accommodate the new, more impatient
age in which my sons were growing up.
'Black's the new white, you know.' The lady at the cake shop showed me a trendy
sculpted matt rectangle topped by a bride and groom.
'For a wake, perhaps, but let's have a traditional white one this time.'
'Should it be themed?'
As they had such different favourites and as these interchanged daily, I decided on all of
them. Percy the Park-Keeper (a cordial chap who slept with animals) clutching a hedgehog
in gloved hands, rubbed shoulders with Bob the Builder, Kipper the dog and Winnie-thePooh.
'And lots of marzipan - and a sprinkling of nuts.'
'Oh, I wouldn't do that, you know, what with all these allergies.'
Yet another concession to modernity.
'And that'll be £55.'
Preparations for their fifty birthday started badly. They had just begun at a state infants’
school:
‘That would be assault.’
I dropped little Lars’s hand.
‘But he’s not yet five. He can’t put it on himself.’
I pocketed the tube of Boots Cold Sore Cream. His teacher smiled at me. She was sweet
and all three boys spoke of her warmly the previous day – their first day at school. Her name
had been the first to be mentioned when the list of those they should invite to their fifth
birthday party had been discussed round the breakfast table. I had asked was if she could put
a dab of cream on Lars’s cold sore in the middle of the day. It was not yet visible, but he had
the forewarning tingling sensation well-known to sufferers that one is on the way.
‘If we apply something like that, it would be assault. He has to apply it himself. Yes, it’s
silly, but that’s the way it is.’
‘OK. I’ll come in at lunchtime. Oh, and he’s having a touch of melancholia because Piers
is going to the doctor and he wonders if he’ll come back. I’ve told him he will, but once he
gets something into his head. Well, you know.’ My voice trailed away.
‘What I’m saying is that he’d love a cuddle. Are you still able to cuddle?’ Seeing the
nodded assent, I added. ‘Well, we’ll take advantage of that while it’s still allowed. Oh, and
we’re coming up for a birthday party. I think there are some new friends they’d like to invite.
Do you think you could have a chat with them while the boys and girls are around them and
let me have a list? I can print out some more invites.’
It seemed like a logical request, albeit demanding of a minute or two’s time, so the
momentary flicker of panic came as a surprise. My mind raced. How had I transgressed this
time?
‘We can write down the first names, but not the surnames – of course.’
I paused, awaiting some elucidation. Perhaps the word ‘security’ might be murmured, or even
‘confidentiality’. The sentence ended with ‘of course’, so I should know the reason
instinctively. My boys might find out their classmates’ surnames and tell me. Unless they
wore paper bags over their heads, they might recognise each other in the street. What on earth
was the risk in letting me have surnames to distinguish one Emily from another? Maybe I
should be getting used to this new society in which we are ruled by fear – sometimes of
litigation, but generally simply fear itself. What a far cry from my own infant school days in
the ‘50s when parents’ names and address would have been scribbled down for me. What
have we gained compared to the trust we have lost?
Their fifth birthday party was a lesson for me in how it should be done and, like all lessons, I
should have expected that I would make mistakes, not follow instructions accurately enough
and be told off. It was the latter that happened first.
I had brought the boys in early. ‘H’ was decorating the room. One of guests had already
arrived. He came up to me.
‘Here’s a little something we bought for them.’
My mouth opened to express thanks. It closed immediately.
‘Is it for him?’ H’s voice was admonitory – its sudden intrusion into a quiet interchange
between two adults intimidating, threatening, menacing. Setting up a children’s birthday
party must engender a degree of stress, but no one else had arrived yet. The offered present
was withdrawn. My outstretched hand dropped down. Both of us felt suddenly guilty.
‘It’s for the boys.’
‘Well, give it to one of them.’ The crestfallen present giver deposited the parcel into a
small hand that turned into six hands, all struggling to rip open the wrapping paper. I
retrieved the remains of the gift and put it up high out of the children’s reach.
‘Oh, no! We want the present!’
‘Later, boys. We’ll open all the presents at home.’
Lesson learned, but I wondered if the telling-off had been worth the candle. It was only the
first of the afternoon.
H had kindly agreed to host, plan and staff the party. She was the Manager of the
children’s Nursery School and agreed to rent the premises to me for that afternoon.
‘What would you like?’
‘Something traditional. Games and party hats. And without the party bags at the end that I
certainly don’t remember from my own parties in the ‘50s.’ I rather thought she might
remember those parties of blind-man’s buff and pass the parcel, fairy cakes, blancmange and
doilies, too, and that I could safely leave the arrangements to her.
‘Leave it to me.’
I agreed without demur. She was the Manager.
‘And how many cakes and what type? Just bring the boys along and they can say what
they want.’ Or rather the immediate thought that is going through their heads at that particular
moment, I said to myself. Nevertheless, involving the children in the planning was another
rational proposal, so I happily agreed to this, too. The bustle of everyday life with three
simultaneous and different agendas does tend to chip away at the memory, however. Having
agreed to bring them up the following week, I promptly forgot and remembered only a few
days before the event.
H’s banter was not characterised by subtlety. ‘Thought you’d died. Too late now.’ But she
elicited what their current thinking was. Whether they linked what appeared on the day with
their expressed preference, I have no idea, but H was satisfied that she had achieved a childcentred choice. While I was there, I took the boys to see the staff they had been so fond of
before they had left to go to the ‘big school’ that infant school was at that time. The names on
the drawers were different; the photos on the coathooks had changed. Nothing was as it had
been. They, too, had moved on and they knew it. A month is a long time in a five year-old’s
life.
‘Hello, boys. My how grown-up you look in your school uniforms!’
Each boy squirmed.
‘Come on. Say hello. You’ve been dying to come back and see everyone.’
That was quite true. They had been excited at the prospect of returning. The reality was
clearly something else. They clung to my legs and peered sideways at the open arms
presented to them rather than have the cuddles from the Nursery staff that they had welcomed
and been so used to just four short weeks before. It was the end of yet another era. Nursery
was now a venue for their birthday party, nothing more.
‘Who’s making all the noise?’ The party guests were frozen into statues at the pause in the
music. The look was accusatory. Several parents involuntarily clapped their hands to their
mouths. There was instant silence from them, too. It was my fault. ‘Tell the parents to leave
their children and come back at five’ had been my instructions. ‘We’ve got staff. We know
what we’re doing. Parents just complicate things and some of the little ones will run to them
rather than join in.’ She was right again. One of mine had done exactly that and was giving an
impression of being a limpet.
‘Daddy, I don’t want to play. There’s too much noise. I just want to be with you.’
‘That’s part of the fun. Look, Ian, everyone’s come to see you.’
‘But there’s too much people.’
‘Come outside for a couple of minutes for a breath of air. It’s much when it’s quantity and
many when it’s number, by the way.’ Years of EFL teaching had left their mark.
Ian let the difference between countable and uncountable nouns pass. ‘But I’m tired.’
‘Come on anyway.’
‘It’s too cold.’
‘OK. Let’s go back and see what your brothers are doing. There may be prizes to be won.’
‘It’s too hot.’
It was just as forecast. Should I leave my own party and go shopping? What to do for the
best? These dilemmas were quite new. A mother whose son had been a friend of my three
came up to apologise for not having been in touch since the last party.
‘I’m getting married in the summer.’
‘That’s nice. Someone you know?’
I was saved by the arrival of three cakes in the shapes of a car, a lorry and a doggie.
Candles blown out, the guests drifted away. ‘No toys, please’ had been the request on the
invitations. Over a hundred books and games were piled into plastic bags. Bedtime stories for
the next few years were assured.
‘It’s Little One’s birthday today. He’s five, too.’ Back at home, Piers held up his knitted
blue glove puppet. ‘You’re my Daddy and I’m Little One’s Daddy. I have to look after him
because he can’t do anything for himself. He goes to Bear School when we go to school.’
‘Does he learn anything?’
‘Well, I don’t know, but he doesn’t get any bigger.’
‘If your hand gets bigger, he’ll stretch.’
‘But he can’t move on his own, except jump.’
Piers threw the toy in the air.
‘He’s like the Velveteen Rabbit I was reading to you, isn’t he? He hasn’t got any legs.’
Piers looked doubtful as he put the puppet on his hand again and wriggled his fingers in
the stumpy arms.
‘He hasn’t got any hind legs.’ I was duly corrected.
Piers was backing towards the lavatory. Unlike his brothers, he would avoid using public
facilities, often waiting for hours until he could use his own. Maybe his not wanting to weewee standing up had something to do with this.
‘That’s what I meant. I should have been more specific.’ I glanced at his steady backwards
progress to the open lavatory. His brothers had just been there. The seat was up. The child’s
plastic insert had been taken off and lay on the floor. ‘Oh, come on, Piers. Do it like a boy,
for a change.’
‘No. Don’t want to.’ His hands flapped as they did when he felt he might be thwarted. His
smile was beatific. ‘I’m going to wee-wee. I’m going to wee-wee sitting down.’
‘But you just make life difficult for yourself...’ My mouth remained open. Maybe I could
have intervened just a moment sooner. Did I secretly want him to experience for himself the
perils of not doing things the boy’s way? It was to be the highlight of a very long day. Feeling
the backs of his knees touch the porcelain, Piers bent himself at the waist, sat back – and
disappeared into the pan. Smugness gone, a small finger wagged from the depths.
‘And you can stop laughing, Daddy.’
MAKING A DONATION
On the assumption that I would fit their profile as a gay would-be father, already
arranged to follow my appointment with Growing Generations was a visit to Reproductive
Technology Laboratories ten miles away to leave a semen sample. I was on autopilot as I left
their offices having failed to qualify as gay. I followed the signs to Santa Monica. As we
drove along the Boulevard with the ‘t’ missing, the Pontiac smelling even more of vomit, I
said to Ian, ‘What’s the point? If there’s no surrogate, there’s no reason to go to this place.’
We were supposed to head west to Sepulaveda. When that failed to appear, we
realised we had been heading east. I phoned to apologise for being late. The US service
culture switched into action. No problem. ‘What the hell. There’s nothing else to do’. We
drove on and swept into the underground garage beneath RTL’s building. Both of us went to
their office. We were invited to go into their special room. ‘Oh, Ian wants to do some
shopping, thanks. It’s just me.’ In I went.
As we had come from Growing Generations, the room had been specially prepared.
On the TV was a fuzzy videotaped image of two well-endowed young men wearing nothing
but chains vigorously trying to remove them from each other. I looked away and studied the
dark blue sofa and carpet. They were perfectly clean. No tell-tale stains. I dropped my clothes
onto them and stood in this perfectly normal reception room in an utterly bizarre situation
thousands of miles from home and a world away from everything I was used to. ‘Abstinence
for at least three days’ had been the instructions from RTL. It took me no time to deliver the
goods and I left the two young men, now unchained, to explore their chafe marks. I presented
my pot to the charming lady at the counter and watched her label it. Would I ever see the
contents again?
‘Well that’s a waste of time’, I said to Ian. I hummed ‘I left my heart in San
Francisco’ and changed the words to ‘sperm in Santa Monica’. We drove along the sea front
and then back to Beverley Hills. It was 8 pm. Time for bed. I threw up all night. It had all
been too much.
To kill time while hoping my mobile would ring with some alternative agency, we
spent the next day at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Ian was more optimistic than I was.
My phone had remained silent. ‘One day we’ll come back here with my daughter and your
child’. I did not believe it.
Back home in Britain, I e-mailed Will Halm asking him to re-consider. No chance. He
told me he had mentioned me to a woman called Vivian Leslie and that I would hear from
her. I waited for a week, then I did.
SURROGATE AND EGG DONOR
I liked Vivian from the start. It was not just that she might offer me what I wanted. It was
her whole approach to the concept that was such a refreshing change. Gone was the angst.
‘What about a surrogate?’
‘I’ll fax you a profile.’
‘What about a donor?’
‘I’ll e-mail you some pictures and fax you their profiles, too.’
‘But don’t I have to come and give fresh supplies?’
‘Fresh, frozen, it’s all the same. But it would be good for you and the surrogate to
meet. Why don’t you invite us?’
Oh, yes, I liked Vivian more and more. Her agency was Surrogate Family Program,
now Fertile Ground as she could not register her former trading name. The faxes came
grinding in. The surrogate was the easy part. One had stood out in Vivian’s mind. Tina’s
profile came in on 7 January 2000.
Q: Would you be a traditional surrogate using the artificial insemination procedure?
A: No.
Q: Would you be a gestational surrogate using the IVF procedure?
A: Yes.
Q: Would you be a surrogate for a gay couple?
A: No.
Q: Would you be a surrogate for a single dad?
A: Yes.
Q: If I could change one thing in my life it would be:
A: That my children knew my mom, their grandma. And for my mom to be able to see
the beautiful babies that I brought into the world.
Q: The person that I admire most is:
A: ‘My mom. She taught me so much and gave me so much love and strength to grow
on. I will never admire anyone more than I admire her.’
Q: What goals have you set for yourself?
A: ‘I have so many goals that I hope to accomplish for my children and myself. My
most recent goal is to provide a loving environment for my children to grow up in. I
guess this has been my main goal since my children were born.
Q: How are you teaching your children the value of money?
A: Because of the fact that I am a single parent of two boys, unfortunately my kids are
very aware of money value. They understand that you must earn money. It
definitely doesn’t just come to you. So by my being honest with them about bills
and income, they are learning to value the money we have.
Great. The clincher was the question ‘I have always wanted to...’ and she answered
‘...travel around to different places like the Hawaiian Islands or go on an airplane. That
probably sounds funny, but I have never been on one.’
I determined that Tina would, indeed, get to go on a plane and that she was about to
visit Isles, although rather more north of Hawaii than she had imagined. We had some
preparation to do first, though.
Vivian needed the answers to various questions as to why I wanted to be a parent, a
brief financial statement and a photo. I needed to find a donor. Almost as an afterthought, I
felt I should also discover what the English legal situation was with regard to surrogate
babies.
Finding a donor was easy. Vivian e-mailed me a selection of delights. Most were
brown-eyed and dark. One, ‘ED (Egg Donor) #211,’ was gorgeous. She stood out as a real
English rose. Vivian described her as ‘Very beautiful, has modelled, has very petite figure.
Men can’t take their eyes off her and women want to be her. Very modest, doesn’t seem to
know just how lovely she is. Very brainy too, has Masters degree in Civil Engineering.’
She was certainly the one. Her detailed profile was faxed to me and showed that she
was from a healthy family as well as being bright. I knew all about her, even to the medical
history of her grandparents, but had no idea of her name. I decided to call her ‘Edie’ after her
number. ‘Edie 211’ was in demand and I had to wait my turn.
THE LEGAL SIDE
If you really want something, you do everything necessary to get it - has been my
thinking for as long as I can remember. I had the vague feeling that I really should find out
what the English legal situation was with regard to the surrogate fatherhood that seemed to
me to be simply an alternative way of creating a family, not that anything would have
stopped me. Nevertheless, it was just as well that I waited until I was well underway and even
more determined to go ahead, or I might never have started, so arcane were the rules
governing what I saw as giving nature a helping hand.
My own solicitor could not begin to help me. What I was asking about was not
precedented in English Law. The case of the ‘gay dads’ that Growing Generations had told
me about had just made the headlines in the UK. I noticed a caption in one of the papers
which read ‘One egg, two babies—but how many parents?’ Curious to know the answer, I
made contact with the writer, a solicitor. We met. The ‘fun’ began.
While he could not advise me on any contractual arrangements in America, he was
able to tell me what I needed to do to make sure that I was legally the father. English law in
2000 predated DNA testing, so the mother is the person who gives birth—even if she is not
the biological mother. The father is the mother’s husband if she is married, even if he is not
the biological father. In this case, he would be the father even though he was locked up in
prison. I saw all this as a nonsense.
It defies the logic that DNA testing would provide, but it was within this imperfect
framework that I had to arrange my life. Had I been a woman, the babies would have right of
residence and would be British. Because I am a man, they would have neither of these
advantages. Tina was married. Her husband had decamped two years before she and I made
contact, abandoning her and her two sons, Matthew and Ryan. Before anything happened, she
would need to be unmarried, so Tina had to get a divorce.
This was no sacrifice for Tina. Her husband had become a ‘dead-end dad’, as she
called him. The problem was how to contact this vanished man. The instant divorce that I had
assumed was the norm in the US turned out to be a myth in our case. It took some time for
the various papers to be signed and for the legal wheels to turn. Absolutely nothing could
happen until that moment. At least it gave Vivian, Tina and me the time to meet.
In her e-mail to me, Vivian looked forward to getting ‘aquatinted’. I thought it was an
American pun. She told me later it was just bad spelling.
Tina had expressed her desire to fly, so I bought tickets for her to come over with
Vivian. It was odd meeting them at Gatwick. There is no established etiquette for greeting the
future mother of one’s surrogate children, but fortunately we established a good
understanding from the start.
Tina had one major concern. ‘As a nurse, I see death on a daily basis. What happens if
you die?’ she asked. She was eminently sensible and realistic. I knew this was no maverick. I
was dealing with an intelligent woman whose head was firmly attached to her shoulders. I
explained the role of a Foundation I had created as a charitable body to provide education to
talented students not otherwise able to afford what organisations such a mine could provide
and that I planned that one of its functions would be to oversee my offspring in the event of
my early death.
I had many questions for her. The main one, of course, was to find out why she
wanted to be a surrogate. I was still concerned about the headstrong, unconventional, sailingclose-to-the-wind impression I had been left with by Growing Generations. Tina was frank
and direct. She had followed her instinct in wishing to work in a hospital, but she had seen
marriage as a way to leave home, married early and unwisely and her life had been
sidetracked. Here was a chance to become someone special, to do something out of the
ordinary and thus to rise above the norm. She also liked being pregnant. There is little if any
financial incentive for US surrogates. In a similar way to the UK system, the surrogate is
reimbursed for expenses. These are basically the loss of her earnings. She would be paid
what she would have earned in her regular job.
Good. Everything seemed straightforward with her.
‘But would you do this with your own egg?’
‘No, I couldn’t give away my own child.’
‘How about having more than one child? What would you think about this’.
Here we were on less certain ground. In principle, Tina had no problem with having
twins.
Vivian described how the egg donor would be stimulated with drugs to produce many
eggs. These would be fertilised and a number would be implanted into the surrogate. If more
than the desired number took, the excess could be reduced.
‘Reduction’. An innocent term. The baby, Vivian told us would ‘have a demise’—a
gentle concept that hid a stark reality. ‘Basically’, she said, raising a fork to her lips at lunch
in a fashionable Marlborough restaurant, ‘the one nearest the needle gets it through the heart.’
Having a demise was clearly more drastic than having a slight chill. Abortion is
killing no matter how euphemistically it is dressed up.
Neither Tina nor I were comfortable with the idea of killing babies. We thought twins
would be nice, but we would be happy with what we got. Abortion was ruled out. Vivian and
Tina introduced me to The Fairy Shop in Marlborough in case I had a daughter. I took them
to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Vivian was striking in her pink
jump suit. I provided a contrast in my sober jacket. We were all three quite different in our
backgrounds, but about babies we saw eye-to-eye. There was no doubt that we wanted to go
ahead.
‘Have I passed the test?’
‘Oh, yes. It isn’t like that at all’.
But I am sure it was.
PRESENTS
'Too many presents.'
Ian casually dropped a crumpled gift tag into the pile of fragmented cardboard boxes and
ripped wrapping paper and sighed. I had long ago despaired of matching the gift to the giver.
Most of the packages had been put in another room unopened. Just a few from the
Godparents had been placed in the hall for opening on the day. We had already spent the best
part of an hour with Lars' godmother opening the remote control cars she had brought and
installing batteries into tiny compartments. Each part of each one, cunningly packaged for
maximum visual impact, was secured with twine and card.
'Here's an object lesson for you, boys, about how these manufacturers are ruining our
environment.'
'There's too many presents.' Ian's tears were not far away.
Their birthday had happened. Here was the aftermath. The presents had come back to
the house in the boots of two cars. I remembered the lessons learned from their previous
birthday. Then, it had been just one package torn asunder after another. The only way for
them to value what their friends had been so kind as to buy them was to take our time, put
most of them in another room and spend the next few days opening them three at a time.
This way they would relish a succession of gifts rather than be swamped with generosity in
one go. It was almost a month before the last present was opened.
'What are our presents today, Daddy?'
Present-opening had become routine. By that time, the birthday was a memory and
whether these gifts were from nursery friends, Godparents or Father Christmas was a matter
for debate. Odd cards kept appearing from the depths of the toy boxes.
'That's my birthday.' The card became the event. 'That's my Christmas.' They were
interchangeable. Both had cards and presents. The only difference was that the birthday had
'Professor Pringelli's Politically Correct Punch and Judy' and the other had 'Father Christmas
and his goats'.
'Not goats, Piers. Father Christmas has reindeer.'
'No, Daddy. He has goats. Three goats. And I don't like them.'
Much thought later, it all became clear. Mickey Mouse was the culprit. They had been
given Mickey's Christmas video. Piers had run from the room muttering something about
goats. I put the video back in and rewound to where it had been the previous week. Sure
enough, Donald Duck dressed as Ebeneezer Scrooge had become Father Christmas in his
mind. And there was the American soundtrack telling how this bedevilled Christmas
character was being tormented by the three goats - the most terrifying being the goat of
Christmas Yet To Come.
Confronted again by these goat-like presences, aware of only one Christmas persona and
unable to grasp the sibilant in his terror, Piers put his hands in front of him, blanking them
from sight. Lars swivelled his head from the screen and watched the terror mitigated by
mirror image through the wardrobe doors. Ian moved sideways to look through the edge of
the screen at an invisible picture. In their reactions to this, as in every other way, their
differences were showing.
Inundated with gifts though they were, there was no desperation to open them. They
knew that behind the study door was a treasure trove of brightly-wrapped parcels that would
come their way. In the fullness of time, they would receive them. They were possessions.
They already had plenty of these, added to at various times of the year. More would come.
Things were things, to be coveted only when in the hands of a brother. Like Leo the lion
(who only wanted to love) in their favourite bedtime story, they 'never once asked for a
thing.' The advertisers had not yet got to work on these mini potential consumers. Would
they be immune to their blandishments and reject materialism? Time would tell. I had never
taken them shopping and they had never watched commercial TV. It made life easier for me
and I cannot imagine it deprived them of any meaningful experience.
*
'We want grapes, please,' said Lars. 'You let us have some five minutes ago when we
were a baby.'
'You can have the bad ones,' Ian said, looking critically at the grapes in his bowl and
picking out those that had lost their bloom. 'Bad ones are NICE.' He passed several to Piers
who dropped them on the floor when he thought Daddy's attention was elsewhere. 'They've
got coughs in them', Piers said by way of explanation.
'Lollies make your ears grow big,' said Lars, apropos nothing at all. 'You're fat.' He was
poking a finger into Ian's stomach.
'Ian's nicely plump. The big bad wolf would like to eat him up.'
'Can you phone the big bad wolf then, please, Daddy?' said Lars. When that possibility
was denied, he looked mournful. Lars had a capacity for melancholy. 'It's my last day.' His
words carried with them a finality that sat awkwardly on the lips of a healthy four-and-a-half
year-old. 'It's my last day'.
'Where did that come from, Lars?'
'Nursery'. He made his lower lip quiver. 'It's my last day.'
The penny dropped. 'One of the staff is leaving?'
'Yes. They all are.'
It felt like that. The Manager who had been there since they started had disappeared
overnight. Children left at a moment's notice. Staff prepared their charges for the change,
but the last day was clearly a frequent event. One or two remained constant, but when the
time came for them to leave, I realised that of those who were there when they had started
two years before, only one person had remained. Their brothers and their Daddy were the
constant people in their lives.
'It makes me feel seasick.'
'Maybe just a bit sad, darling. But change is part of life. People come and go.' To
amuse myself, I added, 'Talking of Michaelangelo.'
Not picking up on the literary reference, Piers turned to me. 'Is seasick like homesick?'
'What do you think homesick is then, Piers?'
'It's when you feel sick and you don't know which way home is and you get lost.'
Well, it's really something else altogether, but I wouldn't worry about that for now, if I
were you.'
Piers raised both hands palms forward and shook them like a Black and White Minstrels
chorus line. He shook his head. Something had happened that he profoundly disagreed with.
He liked everything to be just so. His expression changed to one of smugness. I had seen it
before. He knew he was about to score a point.
'You can't say that.'
'Can't say what?'
'You can't say 'I were'. It's 'I was'.'
'Come off it, Piers, you're going to have to get up early in the morning to catch Daddy
out on a point of grammar. It's 'I were' in this case.' I thought I would rub it in. 'You use the
subjunctive after 'if'.' He did not look crestfallen. '...and verbs of wishing and hoping.'
Not to be completely outdone, he turned at once to Ian. Gently and in a lilt, as if to a
baby, he said, 'Now, Ian, watch my mouth. Say 'snowman'.'
Ian had been telling me that Lars had been gnawing while he was leaping. 'I think it's
'snoring while he was sleeping', Ian. All that leaping sounds rather energetic for a Sunday
morning. You're going to have to work on your sibilants. Try 'snowman'.
'No man'.
'Not 'no man'. It's 'sssnowman'.'
'SSSnot no man.'
'Dadee-y-y...' Intonation falling, then rising, then falling again, the last syllable made
into three, Piers was demanding attention. 'Ian kicked me.'
'I'm not surprised, Piers. You can't patronise Ian like that. Telling him to watch your
mouth, indeed. Whatever next? And don't whinge. Now, Ian, don't let Piers upset you. He's
only a child.'
'Not a human,' added Lars.
STORIES
My sons sat at the kitchen table tucking into their evening milk and biscuits. 'What did
you do at nursery today?'
'Nothing.'
'And what did you have for lunch?'
'Nothing.'
'And to drink?'
'Nothing.'
Did you have a story?'
'No.'
'Or singing?'
'No.'
Their eyes twinkled, as did mine. They knew that I knew.
'We sat on the carpet ALL day - and did NOTHING.' Lars loved the pretence.
'That's nice, darlings. You must have had a lovely time. Now if you're ready for bed by
twenty past, you can watch one of the German videos.'
We had recently been to lunch with one of their nursery friends whose mother is
German. She has pressed such delights as 'Bob der Baumeister' and 'Max und Moritz' into
our hands. Way above the boys' heads though it was, seeing well known-characters in
unfamiliar situations appealed to their sense of the bizarre.
'Where's twenty past?'
'When the big hand reaches the 4, it's twenty past. There, you see, it's right up at the 12
now.'
A short while later, I realised that Ian had not moved. His eyes were fixed on the clock.
'It's not moving.'
'Well, not that you can notice, but it is moving - just very slowly. Come and brush your
teeth and you'll see.'
When he returned, he could see that the big hand had moved inexorably closer to the 4.
He assumed it had moved because he had not been looking. He stared at it for a while,
reassured that it was no longer in motion. He collected his pyjamas from the wardrobe, put
his washing into the laundry basket and looked again at the clock.
'Naaah! It's moved again!' He continued to stare at it, convinced that it moved secretly
and only when his back was turned. He slipped his pyjama top over his head and tugged the
bottoms on.
'Naaah, Daddy! It's done it again. We'll never see the video. Naaah!' Tears were
welling in his eyes. 'Naughty clock!' He smacked the air.
He had no idea that time passed in a predictable way. For him, the clock had a mind of
its own. Was there a proverb like the watched kettle about a watched clock? I left him to his
own devices, gave his brothers' teeth a final brush, and let one of them push the cassette into
the slot. A few minutes later, when they had seen Max and Moritz feed their neighbour's
chickens poison attached to ropes; watched them flap about in their death throes and hang
themselves on a branch by the nooses; when they had seen the old woman pluck her chickens
and roast them on her fire while tears streamed down her eyes; when they had seen Max and
Moritz lower a device down the chimney and steal each roasting bird; when they had seen the
old woman pursue her guiltless dog through the house with a broom, smashing most of her
meagre possessions to fragments in the chase, they accepted that some countries have a rather
different sense of humour from our own and made not a peep of protest when I slid the
cassette out.
'I think that's enough. German humour's different from ours.'
Piers who, even at that tender age, had a developed sense of right and wrong, was
flapping his hands, a sure sign that an idea was brewing and that he wanted to reserve a space
of silence to externalise it before it dissipated.
'They weren't fair, Max and Moritz. They were horrible.'
'Quite right, Piers, but I'm afraid you'll come against lots of things like this in life. The
moment you think life's fair, you're sunk.'
Keen to score a point over his brothers, he continued. 'They don't let them sit together at
lunch. Lars and Ian. They don't at nursery. They make rude noises when they eat. They
have to go away and think about it.'
'I thought that might be the case, but you shouldn't tell tales.'
'I'm not telling stories. It's true.'
'That's as may be and I'm not saying you're telling stories. I'm saying you're telling tales.
And even as I'm telling you this, I can see that a story is a tale and that you must be
thoroughly confused, so let's just say don't tittle-tattle on your brothers, even when what you
say is true.'
'And Ian's hidden your glasses.'
'Ok, that you can tell Daddy about. It's a complicated old world, Piers, especially for
someone with your moral rectitude.'
THE PROCEDURE BEGINS
I met a QC in Chambers to find out more about surrogacy in England. The laws on
surrogacy had not been tested in English courts. It is not that it is illegal; it is just that
agreements on the subject are contractually unenforceable. The surrogate mother would have
every right to keep the baby. British law on egg donation is that such provisions cannot be
bought, so it would be a question of making private arrangements for a woman to be
artificially inseminated and for her to produce my baby with her own egg—no one else’s. If
she were already married, I would not be the father.
The only option was to take advantage of the freer climate in California. Nevertheless,
I would receive no help from the courts in this country so far as the Californian contract was
concerned; whatever papers were signed in California would have no meaning in the UK.
Tina would sign away her parental rights, but such a waiver would be irrelevant here.
In theory, Tina could claim the baby as hers. It would not matter that she was not the
biological mother. She could even claim child support from me. All she had to do was arrive
in the UK. Tina had to know her legal rights in this country and I told her them. She assured
me that there would be no problem. She already had all the family she wanted. It would be
my baby.
Rather than bring the baby in from America with a US passport and have to go
through the process of applying for residence, I needed to find out if Tina would be willing to
deliver the baby over here. I told her I would arrange for her sons to go to school. I took her
to see a prestigious local prep school. She fell in love with the house, its sunken formal
gardens and its grounds sweeping along to Watership Down. She thought it would be a great
opportunity for her boys. I was sure of it, too, having set up several international educational
programmes. Everything was going swimmingly.
It was clear that Tina would be an ideal surrogate. Almost as an afterthought, Vivian
suggested, just in case the birth happened to be in the US, that I should take out a US-health
insurance policy with an American company that also enabled one to cover one’s dependents
at birth. I took her advice and arranged cover before anything was started. It was very cheap.
A single Englishman living in England was statistically unlikely to acquire unhealthy
American dependants.
The IVF clinic Vivian worked with was The Smotrich Center for Reproductive
Enhancement in La Jolla, California. Before anything could happen, I had to have a blood test
to ensure that I was not harbouring any nasty diseases.
The trouble was that, to have a blood test, I had to have a referral from my doctor. To
get a referral, I would have to disclose why I wanted a blood test. I was not sure that a doctor
could refer me for a blood test in order to proceed to what may, for all I knew, have been an
illegal act. I certainly did not want to make any authority in this country aware that I was
embarking on a surrogate pregnancy programme. It was a dilemma.
How about becoming a blood donor, Vivian suggested? They would surely test my
blood first and I could use this to show Dr Smotrich I was clear. A few enquiries revealed
that there was a blood donation session in Hungerford the following day. Imbued with a
feeling that although my aims were selfish, I was also doing also something good, I drove
there, filled in the forms and waited hours to deliver my armful.
‘We can let you have a certificate saying you are a blood donor’ was the response to
my request for some sort of statement as to what the blood had been screened for. That was
not what I had in mind. In fact, when I ran through the list of diseases, I found that several
were not in the test.
I then asked a hospital in Windsor if they would accept a referral from a doctor in the
US for a blood test for insurance cover. No problem. All he had to do was to fax his request. I
asked Dr Smotrich to do this and he faxed me back a copy. ‘Please draw the following tests
for Ian Mucklejohn’ it read. A list of various hepatitis and HIV-related tests followed. The
last line read ‘semen analysis with morphology’. What a giveaway! I contacted the Smotrich
Centre. They agreed that they would analyse my frozen sample and would re-fax the hospital
with a list that excluded the semen analysis in the hope it would be seen as an error. Back
came the revised fax. It was identical to the previous one except that the words ‘semen
analysis with morphology’ had been scratched out and the words ‘please disregard semen
analysis’ were inserted.
I expected a phone call from the hospital at any moment to enquire about the exact
purpose of the tests. But instead, the only one who contacted me was Dr Smotrich who wrote
‘I received the blood work today. I will be meeting with Tina on June 12th to start her on the
first set of medications and with your donor on June 19th to start her on Meds. I anticipate the
actual procedure to be the first week in July. Take care.’
I was clear to proceed.
BIFURCATION
Tina’s absent husband was in another state when Tina filed her petition, which was fine.
But he was also in jail. What sort of criminal was Mr P? I was, albeit at one remove, dealing
with criminality.
In the event, it was both a disappointment and relief. He had turned himself in for
unpaid fines.
Divorce is a big step for a family. While the idea might not have bothered Mr P, what
might her children say about it? The answer came post haste. Vivian e-mailed me in May
2000:
Tina was worried about what her sons might think. She sat them down and spoke with
them. Their reaction was very interesting. They thought that it was a good thing
because it was the first good or smart thing Dad had done in a long time. I think Tina is
doing a fine job with these boys on her own. Definitely better than if their Dad had
stayed in the picture.
Although Tina was no maverick, it was clear her husband was. I would be much happier
when he was no longer an issue. It took what seemed like ages. The following month, Vivian
again e-mailed me. The date of freedom for Tina was set for May 15, 2000. Once joined in
holy matrimony, they were now in an odd piece of US legalese to be ‘bifurcated’, assured
Vivian.
Tina says hello and wants you to know she has been diligent in trying to get these
papers done. She is in awe at the box of medicines that have arrived at her house. She
called asking how much goes where and how often. There are a lot of big needles that
will be used daily for 3 months. She’s OK now, just taken aback a little. Ta ta for now.
There I was interfering in these people’s lives. Lives that were very different from my
own. Criminality, jail, bifurcation. What sort of maelstrom was I being sucked into? On and
on the saga went. The papers were lost by the court. Then they were found. The summer was
approaching. People were going on holiday. It felt as though nothing would ever happen.
Then on 6 July 2000 the message came from Vivian’s office, ‘Vivian asked me to pass on
some information to you. Tina’s divorce papers went through and everything is done. A
transfer is scheduled for next Thursday.’ After weeks of inactivity, events were moving
rapidly.
The relief was huge. I could feel my baby becoming more of a reality.
Vivian wrote a few days later: ‘Edie did well. 11 is a great number. We’ll have plenty
for this x-fer and some to spare. Tina’s uterine lining is nice and thick. We have a room
booked for her at the Hilton on Mission Bay for Thursday and Friday night with a late
checkout time on Saturday. She is taking off work until Monday. So far everything is looking
very good and going as it should. On the 19th or 20th Tina will have the blood test that will
indicate if you are expecting, have a bun in the oven, in a family way, etc.’
Everything was starting to happen.
IMPLANTATION
Edie had delivered 19 eggs. Of these, 11 were fertilised. Eight continued to divide into
embryos. I felt I had almost a football team and that maybe I should mourn the three that had
failed to make it. In the meantime, my summer season had begun. More than 300 children
were descending on me. I was now commuting from school to school with my office in my
car. Sitting in one of the schools, I checked my e-mails on my laptop. In came a message
from ‘babiesplus’ with an attachment ‘embies.jpg’.
Another click. Four circular specks with fuzzy edges. My latent family. A frisson.
This was real. Life went on. Children needed to be taught. The Course Tutor had failed to
show. The teaching team needed to be re-jigged. I clicked the attachment shut, closed my
laptop, put it in the car and drove off.
This was becoming my normality in the summer of 2000. The following Thursday
found me at one of my schools where my 80 plus students for the summer were arriving from
Heathrow Airport. I was in the office, bathed in dappled light through the leaded windows,
overlooking the sunken gardens, taking in their passports, tickets and pocket money with all
calls diverted to my mobile phone. A French girl was sitting in front of me when it rang. It
was Dr Smotrich on the line.
‘I have Tina on the speaker phone so she can hear what you’re saying and you can
talk to her. I am just about to implant four of the fertilised eggs in her.’
‘Oh, good’.
(To the French girl ‘May I have your passport and any French francs you would like
us to keep safely until you go home?’)
‘How are you feeling, Tina?’
‘Just great.’
‘Let’s hope something happens.’
I felt useless. What do you say when you are making babies at one remove half way
round the world in the presence of a foreign teenager you have never met before and who
fortunately has no idea what a life-changing event is happening?
‘Well, this is quite a moment.’
The girl smiled, thanked me and left. Coming to England was quite an event for her,
but she did not and does not to this day know quite how dramatic that moment was.
I just had to wait until the 20th to see if anything had worked. It had. Dr Smotrich told
me the test he did ascertained degrees of pregnancy. Tina was very pregnant. I could not
imagine the difference between ‘pregnant’ and ‘very pregnant’. I was soon to find out. I
would also find out why Dr Smotrich had implanted four embryos. The beautiful Edie (who I
later discovered was called Melissa) had proved popular with Vivian’s clients. She had
produced lots of eggs. Many had become fertilised, but what I had not been told was that no
pregnancy had resulted. The man before me in the queue had had four implanted. No babies
had resulted. The man after me had experienced the same. For me, it was beginner’s luck.
When Dr Smotrich phoned me, he told me I should sit down.
‘It’s three.’
‘How does Tina feel about this?’
‘She’s shocked.’
‘Surprised?’
‘No. In shock.’
In implanting four with the hope of creating one, three had resulted. As to my own
feelings, I was just delighted that there had been a result. The idea of three had not sunk in.
In a way I was relieved that it had not been four as then we might have had to think of
removing one to save the others. Reduction had been a philosophical concept. It would have
turned into a real and ugly consideration of whether to kill a child.
Few were in on the secret at that stage, but one friend I told said ‘You can’t have
three. That’s too many to manage.’ ‘OK. Which one do I kill?’ That’s what it came down to
and it stopped any further discussion.
Never throughout her pregnancy had Tina raised with me the idea of reduction or
expressed any regret at having gone ahead with so many. It was only when I thought we were
in danger of losing them all that I had moments of doubt. Was it because we had been too
selfish or squeamish in seeking to protect ourselves from the need to make a horrible decision
that we were taking risks with these babies’ lives?
Tina grew large at some speed. Within a few weeks she had to give up work. Because
her maternity leave would be so long, her employment as a nurse was terminated. Her only
income came from our arrangement. Technically, she was reimbursed for her expenses, but it
ensured that she was not worse off than she had been.
I imagined that she would come over just after Christmas. I researched the hospitals
that could cope with triplet delivery and put Dr Smotrich in touch with the nearest one. He
seemed happy enough.
All was not well, however. Not well at all.
I had assumed everyone was delighted and wanted it to stay that way. At such a
distance, I did not spot what was going wrong. The shift from joy to apprehension was
fundamental and would threaten the entire plan.
It was Vivian who alerted me to Tina’s unhappiness. Towards the end of September,
she wrote, ‘There are a lot issues coming up for Tina that we need to iron out. First keep in
mind the tremendous amount of hormones she deals with. You’ve heard of how pregnant
women are so emotional. It’s true. Pregnant women can cry at the drop of a hat. Since Tina
has three babies she has three times the hormones. She has been in quite a state since the
pregnancy started. She didn’t plan on being put on bed rest at all and then she is put on it
almost immediately. If she doesn’t return to work in 30 weeks her employer will not keep her
job for her when she returns. She can reapply and they would hire her again but only if a
position is available.’
Real problems, I felt helpless about what to do. Vivian went on:
‘Then Dr. B. tells her that he is concerned about the medical attention she will receive
in England. If she goes into labor or it’s time for her c-section and there aren’t enough beds at
the hospital, where will she go and what will happen? Is she going to a NHS hospital or
private? One of the most common problems for multiple pregnancies is that they
haemorrhage because their uterus is so stretched. In which case she would require a blood
transfusion. She wants to know if the blood in England is tested for diseases like it is here.’
Did Tina really think England was a third world country? There were practical
concerns, too.
‘When she comes to England will she and the boys be in a flat? She likes your home,
but she is concerned about the boys being too disturbing to you and your father. Also she is
allergic to the cats and allergies are always worse during a pregnancy. When we were there
before she had to use her inhaler quite a bit.’
That was something I felt I could reassure her about. She would be accommodated
wherever she wished.
At least Vivian struck a positive tone at the end, ‘Before I go I have to tell you this. I
asked if she was regretting becoming a surrogate mom. She said “No, not at all. It’s all worth
it and I think Ian will be very happy.” She’s great!’
That was true, but once again I felt that everything was going wrong. There was
something else that lay behind all these fears. I had to find out what. Taking the bull by the
horns, I called Tina.
‘I think we can iron out all the practicalities, but what’s the worry that underlies all
this?’
‘I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid for my sons. I’m afraid of them and me being far from
everyone we know. If my uterus ruptures, I have to be treated immediately, or I’ll die.’
That was clear enough. It was a dreadful feeling. There I was seeing joy and delivery;
there she was looking into the blackest chasm imaginable. I sensed desperation. She told me
she would happily bring the babies over herself.
How could I square this circle? My first thought was a selfish one—to present to her
the problems that would arise from the babies being born in the US. They would have to be
granted entry here. They would be American. They would not have residence. If they were
born here, they would de facto have residence and I might find it easier to get British
nationality for them.
When I thought it through, my attitude was wrong. My first concern had to be and to
be seen to be for the welfare of the mother and babies. That could not be compromised for the
sake of making immigration easier. My way forward was clear. I wrote to Tina to tell her that
we would do whatever she felt happiest with. The worries disappeared; the blood pressure
steadied.
‘Tina called me after you sent your letter,’ Vivian emailed. ‘She felt so much better.
She had been worried that she was going to upset or disappoint you. I was very happy to hear
her relief. She is really doing very well considering the circumstances.’
It was clear that the babies would be born in San Diego. They would be little American
citizens and I faced going through hoops to get them in and keep them here.
NURSERY
'Daddy said I can blow my nose and twirl my spaghetti on a fork.' Ian was proud of his
accomplishments. Neither of his brothers could manage either at that time. He was so
thrilled that he imagined he could achieve them simultaneously. While Lars was telling the
Manager at nursery school in his recently-acquired Berkshire accent that a monkey's tail was
'prehensoil', Ian was receiving speech therapy, so he loved being one up. The competition
between the boys was ubiquitous. They each had clearly defined areas of expertise which
they never failed to remind each other of. If two of these areas were juxtaposed, so much the
better.
The three were quite happy to compare bodily functions.
'I'm doing a long wee wee.'
'I do mine standing up like a big boy.'
'I don't ever need to do a wee wee.'
I had also brought them up to use the correct biological words for parts of their bodies.
'What's that, Daddy?'
'It's your scrotum.'
'What's it for?'
'It'll come in handy later, darling, so you can store your seeds in it for when you want to
make babies.'
'It's under my WILLY, Daddy. My WILLY.' Unable to shock with the correct
anatomical word, they sought to achieve the same effect with the euphemism. And they
succeeded. They also found that they were able to do exactly the same in reverse at nursery.
I absolutely couldn't win.
'They keep saying 'penis'.'
'I'm sorry. They're not actually saying anything wrong. Oh, I suppose it's out of context.
Sorry. What do you want me to do about it?'
In the absence of any ideas, I made mention of bodily parts out of context a going-up-tothe-nursery offence.
'No, I'm sorry, I know what you mean by saying the word 'woollie' when it's nothing to
do with something you wear. You're just trying to be clever and, no, you can't tell your
brothers that you shouldn't have farted.'
'But you tell us that we shouldn't fart, Daddy.'
'What Daddy tells you is correct. You shouldn't... Well, you just shouldn't. All you're
doing is offering a gratuitous reflection. In any case, Daddy doesn't give explanations. He
only gives instructions. So don't chop logic with me, please.'
'Nursery says it's rude to say 'fart'.' Anything to say the word.
I am sure they were right, but it's used to good effect in Chaucer and is a direct enough
word addressing a straightforward action. Until nursery mentioned it, they were unaware that
the word was as vulgar as the action it describes. Maybe nursery was just a little too
linguistically strict for me.
'Look at this Daddy.' Piers held something brown and plastic under my nose as I came to
collect him from there at the end of the day. 'What is it?'
'Looks like dog poo.' His teacher looked askance.
'No, that's just what I'm teaching them not to say. I'm not happy with your saying this.'
She took the imitation meatballs to the kitchen area. 'And can you bring their jumpers in
tomorrow? They were cold today.'
'But it's late summer, 20 degrees. They're boys and they're British. They shouldn't be
cold.'
The teacher shrugged. They wore their woolly jumpers zipped up tight to nursery the
next day. Daddy was in shirtsleeves. At the end of a day there was a message. 'Lars and Ian
were unco-operative. This needs to be addressed,'
'And Piers has just been rude to me,' said the assistant remaining on duty.
It did, indeed, need to be addressed. All children are truculent sometimes. To have all
three of mine truculent together was a novelty. It was with three of them clinging to my legs,
howling, that I left nursery that afternoon.
When they came home, there would be a treat of some sort waiting for them to have with
their milk. 'What's the treat today?' they would ask in unison. At first, I tried to make it
something they had asked for the day before. Such is the fickleness of an under-five's
penchant for anything edible that it took me some while to realise that what they wanted one
minute was simply that - what they wanted at that minute. 'Can we have gingerbread men,
please Daddy? They're our favourite.' Out I went next day and found some. 'Now what was
it you said you'd really like?' 'Marinaded artichokes' came Ian's instant answer. On this day
it was to be small custard tarts.
'As you've been naughty, you won't have the treat that Daddy was planning for you. It's
straight up to the nursery. No milk and no treat.'
'No Daddy, I won't be rude again. I promise.' The tears were springing from Ian's face
like from a cartoon character's.
'I want a treat. I want one. I want one.' Lars was inconsolable.
'If I have to go up to the nursery, I'll knock you over.' Piers aimed a kick at my shin.
By the end of the car journey, the howling had subsided. They went upstairs. Two of
them had a video programme. Piers did not. They had no custard tarts. I had four for dinner.
The normal disciplinary method by this time was reward. Chocolate was the favourite.
Ian was going through a phase of waking me at half past two in the morning, every morning.
'Dadee-ee. I've lost my toy.'
'Dadee-ee. It's too dark.'
'Dadee-ee. I didn't know where you were.'
'Dadee-ee. I'm tired.'
The one that tugged at the heartstrings, even at that time in the morning, was 'I cried - but
you didn't come.'
Eventually, I resorted to bribery.
'If you don't wake Daddy up in the night, you'll have a chocolate.'
It worked. Every morning, they would choose one from a box, their small fingers
twitching, hovering above the decorated delights, suddenly pouncing on whichever they
thought would be the tastiest.
'The one you touch is the one you choose.'
Later, I tried the same tactic with nocturnal continence. As they slept so very well, I
thought I would make life easier for myself by just letting them get on with sleeping. I put
them into nappies when they went to bed. In the morning, I would dangle them critically and
tell them whether it felt like one wee-wee, two wee-wees or more - or, on a rare occasion,
none. I crackled the cellophane on the Dairy Box.
'If your nappy's completely light, if there are no wee-wees, you get a chocolate.'
'I'll never get a chocolate,' Lars sighed one morning. He decided to make an all out effort
to get one. That evening, a few minutes after kissing them goodnight, I found his dry nappy
outside the door and him on the lavatory.
'But you said we were to go to lavatory, have a wee-wee and go back to bed without our
nappies.'
'You're right, but I had expected you to go to sleep first. Off you go to bed.'
'I've got a dry nappy,' he announced proudly, a few days later. Sure enough a dry nappy
was outside the door.
'Well done, Lars.'
'But my bed's terribly wet...'
THREE GIRLS
Throughout the pregnancy I felt detached and quite out of control, although Tina, Vivian
and the medics did their best to keep me informed. The ultrasound photos from San Diego
showed that I had fathered three small specks with appendages. These might have been a
head, a hand, a foot.
Even the video they took of the babies on 9 November 2000 showed to my untutored
eye, humanoid shapes swimming into and out of focus. How each baby could be repeatedly
identified as ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’, I had no idea.
How any guess could be made as to their gender, I could not imagine. Tina was
confident. ‘It’s two girls and an unknown.’ she told me in November. The doctor had looked.
He was more circumspect when I spoke to him. ‘We’ll see if we can find a boy in there
somewhere’. Tina was certain, though, that he had told her he had definitely seen two girls.
Vivian thought she had seen something male on the video. I was lost in admiration at
her perception. I peered at the videoed pointer and saw nothing that resembled anything.
Without anything else to occupy my thoughts, I was keen to know what was in store for me.
‘We tried the pendulum test which is what I use to determine babies’ sex,’ she wrote.
‘I haven’t been wrong yet in predicting a baby’s unknown sex. You might think this is fiddle
faddle but it has not let me down yet. I’m betting on girl, girl, boy. You’ll have to select so
many names!’
So from November to February, I became adjusted to the idea of two girls and an
unknown. To avoid any disappointment, I focussed only on what I knew. There were two
girls. There might be three. I wondered if I would be disappointed at not having a son. I
pushed any such thoughts away, although I knew that I secretly hoped that the unknown
would be a boy. Over the weeks, I convinced myself that it was likely to be three girls.
Every time I thought of going through all this again on the off-chance that another
pregnancy might result in a boy, I told myself this was a nonsense and that I really should
rationalise what it is that makes most men want a son in their family. I must be thankful for
the babies, no matter what their gender.
Nevertheless, I told Dr B. that a boy with two girls would be the icing on the cake.
Vivian asked me to give a selection of names. I thought through all the possible permutations
and e-mailed a list covering two girls and boy with which names were for the girl born first;
three girls with the names for the first and second born; two boys and a girl and for three
boys. All eventualities were covered. I agonised over the two girls and a boy permutation.
Tina loved my choices. The easy ones were for three boys. I knew they would not have to be
used.
Focussing on theoretical names took my mind off the real issue. The end of 2000 was a
fraught time. In December and again at the beginning of January, Tina had some strong
contractions. They were controlled with medication. Things were going wrong.
As each hour ticked by, the babies’ chance of survival increased. Every day the
percentage chance rose. If they had been delivered in 2000, there was no more than a 50%
chance. I was waiting for disaster to strike, relieved when the twentieth century ended and the
twenty first began.
Tina was admitted into hospital for the duration as a precaution. As January slipped
into February, the babies increased in weight and each day in the womb was a bonus. Their
lungs were becoming stronger and Tina was invariably optimistic. When I received a
photograph showing how big she had become, I could not believe a person could stretch so
much. She was huge and refused to let her head be in the shot. Still, never in any of my
conversations with her was there a single word of regret.
There was not so much as a word that maybe we should have reduced. I was not so
sure. I had sailed into a high-risk pregnancy on a tide of humanitarian anti-abortion ideals.
By early February, Tina was unable to breathe lying down. The babies were
compressing her lungs. She had to sleep sitting up. Even that made her breathless. The only
emotion I was now feeling was one of guilt. All this was for me, yet I was carrying on with
life as normal. None of this had impinged on my freedom to do so. This brave woman was in
pain, separated from her home and family, unable to sleep properly, distended. There was
only an acceptance of the situation. How would a ‘maverick’ surrogate have coped? How
could I have been so fortunate?
By the afternoon of 8 February, time was running out. In a message headed ‘ready to
explode’, Vivian wrote ‘Tina can’t take it anymore. For a while she was breathing fine, but
now the babies have grown so much that there is no more room for her lungs. At this point
she can’t even lie down. Dr. B is away until Monday. I believe once he returns he will let
Tina have a c-section. So in all likelihood you will officially be a Daddy next week.’
I phoned Tina. She was panting. ‘Can’t the doctor come in specially for you? You
can’t go on like this until Monday.’
She calmly assured me she was sure he would and that, even if he did not, there were
others who could perform emergency surgery. When I woke up on the morning of 9
February, I found that Vivian had mailed me in the early hours. Her message read ‘Delivering
tonight! Going to the hospital now. Tina having contractions that won’t quit... call you right
after.’
At 9.15 I was in the kitchen with my father preparing his breakfast. He had wandered
away from his chair, following me, when I answered the phone.
‘Hi, Ian.’
This was it.
‘You have...’ and Vivian read out the list of boys’ names that I had concocted so
quickly with, for each one, the weight. Nowhere were there any of the girls’ names I had
carefully selected. Had I misheard?
‘But that’s three boys. No. Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve looked.’
‘But where are the girls?’
‘Yes, everyone got it all wrong.’
‘You’d better bin that pendulum.’
‘Yes, I shall.’
‘Wow.’ I clung to my father. ‘Give my thanks to Tina.’
‘OK’.
‘Oh, when were they born? Our today was your yesterday. Were they born on the 9th,
today, or yesterday, the 8th, your time?’
‘22.00 or so on the 8th.’
There was nothing more to say. My father was in his own world. There was no one
with whom to share this joy spontaneously. I rescued yesterday’s paper from the recycling
bin as a memento. The names did not ring true. I recalled the e-mail I had sent some weeks
before and changed them: Piers, after ‘Piers the Plowman’, Ian after me (on the basis that the
oldest is the oldest and the youngest is the youngest, while the one in the middle is just the
one in the middle.) In my mailbox was a message from a former student, Lars, a Norwegian
with whom I had kept in touch for years, telling me his wife was expecting. Serendipity
again. I needed a third, short European name. Lars - the Scandinavian for Lawrence. The list
was complete. Middle names were easier. Thomas for Piers. That was my father’s second
name. Aidan for Ian. I just liked it. And ‘the great I AM’ appealed as initials. Conrad for Lars
to continue the nordic theme.
Three boys. No girls. I had the icing, but not cake I had expected. This was reality. I
had to accept the concept of three sons and what this entailed. Two concerns had vanished.
No hanging around outside ladies’ loos and no visits to the Fairy Shop in Marlborough.
‘Aren’t you disappointed?’ said my father’s social worker. ‘I know you wanted to
give one of them your mother’s name.’
‘I don’t even think of disappointment,’ I replied. ‘I just accept.’
And I realised I meant it.
CHAPTER
I phoned Tina every day following the birth.
‘How are they?’
‘Wonderful’ was the invariable reply, the dreamy intonation expressing her
contentment at the sight of the babies as well as pleasure in their progress.
I selfishly hoped the dreaded bonding was not starting. I wished I could hear a cry, a
gurgle, something approximating real contact. A week and a half after the birth, it appeared I
was not the only one who was noticing the lack of contact I had with the babies.
‘The doctor wants to speak with you’, Tina told me. ‘He thinks you should come over
and see how the babies are looked after so you know what to do. “Premies” aren’t like normal
babies, he says’.
Quite how different they were, I had no idea. Concerned, I contacted Vivian. I
wondered why the doctor was so worried that he wanted me to fly out there so he could tell
me how to look after the babies. A few things came to mind. Did he think that because I
hadn’t appeared I must be uncaring and therefore unfit to have the babies released to me?
Was there something wrong with them that I didn’t know about and that he hadn’t told Tina?
Or was it the famous US fear of litigation—a fear so strong that he thought I would sue if
some problem developed with them that could be put down to the hospital not having given
me hands on training?
My huge worry was that under English Law the babies had no right of entry. None at
all. US visitors are granted the privilege of entry which can, of course, be refused. A recent
scandal about an internet adoption had made immigration officers more suspicious of babies
coming in from the US. I wanted to try to sort out the legal side and, now that I had got my
father into good physical condition, reduce the nursing home days to a minimum. I did not
want him to return to his emaciated state, nor could I bear to think of him lying bleeding and
urine-soaked in a home with me thousands of miles away, unable to act. I needed to make my
visit brief.
I was getting quite twitchy that my status as a carer here would lead to my being
assumed to be uncaring there. A year later on a breakfast TV programme, a prominent prolife campaigner would accuse me of just that. ‘Mail-order babies,’ she called them. How that
stung.
I wondered if I would really have to persuade the hospital to release them to my care.
I asked Vivian to find out what the doctor’s fears were so that I might try to allay them.
Vivian had her own ideas. ‘I haven’t spoken with the doctor so I can’t say for certain
what the concern is. I’ll bet it is the litigious aspect. We live in a very litigious state. It is the
paediatrician’s responsibility to be sure the babies can be cared for. However, anything you
need to know he can tell you in the short time you are here. But of course I agree with you
that you’ll have no problem. It may be that old double standard again, you’re a male and you
aren’t even allowed to select a cot. Tina and I have no doubts whatsoever in your abilities.
Here is an angle. Tina is presently caring for the babies and being given all kinds of
information. She can even take the preemie class offered at the hospital if she chooses. Since
she is travelling back with you she can teach you anything you can’t figure out and the doctor
needn’t worry. In the meantime I’ll try to find out the doctor’s true concern.’
Would the worst happen? Would it be the hospital I would have to fight to get the
babies? Again my head was buzzing with all the worst case scenarios I could imagine.
Vivian was able to set my mind at rest. ‘You have nothing to worry about. The doctor
just wants to be sure you can manage. I think the only problem now is that he has no sense of
who you are. As soon as you can talk with him I think he will feel reassured that everything is
going to be all right. Nobody thinks that you do not care. Tina has told the doctor your
predicament with your father, how you would like to be here but just can’t yet. Also how she
is completely confident in your caring ability. There is also nothing wrong with the boys. All
he could say about them being discharged was “it will probably be a couple of weeks and
they will probably not be discharged at exactly the same time.” I know you are aching to see
them and hold them but try to relax. We’ll keep sending pictures and updates.’
That I wasn’t to be allowed to select a cot was another instance of this assumption that
males cannot care. I had phoned a local shop’s baby department and asked for their advice
about cribs versus cots and cots versus cot beds. I was being confused by choice. The woman
at the other end of the phone asked me to bring my wife in. When I said I would come in, she
said she would give me brochures to take home for her. I had lived with the idea of being
mother and father for so long that I had forgotten that they were two people.
It was when I thought about a nanny that I realised I was out of my depth. At the time,
the world-famous Norland Training College was just down the road. I phoned to ask if I
could come in and talk to them.
‘No need, we can do it over the phone.’
‘Actually, I would rather speak to someone face-to-face. I’m only ten minutes away.’
‘We can do everything over the phone.’
Clearly here was a business that had more customers than it needed. I revealed all
over the phone to a disembodied voice who said she would put me on their news sheet and
suggested I should not have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, and that I should contact
Newbury Nannies.
Newbury Nannies seemed more interested, not to say fascinated. Nevertheless, I was
left with the impression that looking after a baby was an arcane practice to which only the
professionals held the key. The ladies at my father’s day care centre were more down-toearth. ‘You keep them clean, fed and provide some entertainment.’ I felt much better.
Norland sent a nanny for interview. She was fully aware of my position. Norland had
published it all. She came with a representative from Norland ostensibly to give her a lift
from the station, but I am sure it was to check me out. We seemed to hit it off. The lady from
Norland was supportive. That was the last I heard.
Newbury Nannies were more discreet. They asked if they could give my details to a
maternity nurse. The interview was friendly enough, but she returned for a second visit. ‘Why
do you lock the doors upstairs?’ she wanted to know. I had thought it was self-evident that
with an elderly dementing person in the house, any room could be used as a loo and all
contained hazards of some sort. I knew it would not be popular, but I had to say it. ‘I’m sure
you know about caring for babies, but I think you will learn something about caring for the
elderly if you come here.’ I was told that my father’s room would have to become the nursery
and that he would have to go elsewhere. I had already come to that conclusion, but I knew
that, however gently it may be done, I was going to be bossed. We parted on good terms. She
told the agency she would take the job, then thought the better of it and changed her mind. I
was on my own again, but felt strangely relieved.
When it became clear that I would not have either of the two interviewees living in
my house, my thoughts turned to using an agency for non-resident night cover and involving
people I knew for the other times. Meanwhile, I phoned the hospital every day to check on
progress.
Tina was in there on a daily basis helping with the feeds. I spoke to the doctor who
had wanted me to come over. His concern was that I should know about basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation. We talked about how the babies were and there seemed to be no
problems with them. During the first two weeks they took a couple of their three-hourly feeds
from the bottle, but they did not always take everything in. Nevertheless in week two they
achieved and exceeded their birth weights.
It was in week two that I heard Piers cry. It was the most direct contact I had with my
children. I wanted to hold him. I told Tina ‘If I come out for just a couple of days as the
specialist wants, I just don’t see how I could fly back here without them.’ Tina’s reply- ’I
know. That’s how I would feel if they were my children’—was unconsciously reassuring in a
double sense. As I thought, she did not see them as her own children. When we had touched
on this before they were born, she had said ‘I feel more like I’m baby-sitting than pregnant.’
It was at this time that I received the photographs in a ‘brag book’—so called because
parents can pull it out and brag about their children. The three of them looked very much the
same. At week two, Tina could tell them apart only because Piers and Lars had feeding tubes
on different sides and Ian was smaller. ‘His eyes are closer together’, Tina said, ‘but I think
when his head gets to the same size as the others’, he’ll look like them.’ So shocked had I
been that they were all boys and so concerned with their well-being that this was the first
time I had thought of how they might look. I might in time have to adjust to three very similar
looking sons. Their improvement continued through week three.
Piers was progressing more rapidly and was taking all his feeds via the bottle. Ian was
not far behind. Lars was some way behind them. My arrival day would depend on him. Just
as soon as he got the message about sucking and learned how to suck and breathe
simultaneously, he would start to make the same progress as his brothers. In the meantime, I
knew that the costs were mounting.
FINANCES
Hospital costs had not featured prominently in my thinking at the outset. The baby—as I
had been thinking in terms of just one—would be born in the UK. Part of the contract with
Tina involved covering her uninsured, ‘deductible’ and ‘co-pay’ medical costs - whatever all
that meant. As soon as it became clear that the babies would not be born in the UK, I looked
at the insurance cover I had taken out, just in case, with more than a little interest. It was
impenetrable. US insurance-speak is incomprehensible to the untutored. Anyway, I knew I
was covered.
I assumed that Tina was covered for her own medical expenses. I had heard of how
astronomical US hospital expenses were and thought all Americans had insurance cover. I
was sure we had talked about this and that she had told me she had it. I could hardly ask Tina
about this now as she might feel under pressure.
As soon as she was admitted to hospital, they became interested in Tina’s
arrangements. Understandably, as she was busy contracting, she did not want to go into the
details. I asked Vivian, out of curiosity, what the cost for the first week was. ‘20,000’ was the
brief e-mailed answer. I assumed dollars and held my breath. Paula, my US lawyer,
confirmed that Tina’s insurers had twice refused to pay on the grounds that the pregnancy
was via surrogacy. She thought they might reconsider given the impetus of possible legal
action. As surrogacy had not been specifically excluded from Tina’s policy, I thought it was
reasonable to assume that it was included, or at least that it was worth a legal challenge.
In the event, the hospital fees were proving to be the least of my problems. Left with
debts by her now former husband, Tina had decided to time the bankruptcy she had been
planning for just after the time she delivered. If the insurers would not pay up, she would
simply include the bills from the hospital with all the other bills. Her impending bankruptcy
was something I had not been made aware of.
Vivian thought Tina’s medical costs would top $100,000 by the time she was out. I
had to resist the thought that the sooner she gave birth, the better. At least the boys were
covered by insurance.
Paula told me Tina was being a ‘real trooper’ and asked if I would cover the cost of
looking after Tina’s sons while she was in hospital. In fact, Tina and I had already spoken
about her sons and I had agreed that, of course I was willing to pay for them to be looked
after.
The moment the babies were born I set about getting them covered under my US
insurance policy. I had become so used to doing everything by e-mail that I sent one to the
insurers. The response was that I should tell my employer. I had a quiet word with myself and
sent back the message that I was contacting them in my capacity as my employer.
Clearly this was something my correspondent had not been programmed to
comprehend. I heard no more. Although Vivian, who was rapidly becoming my fount of all
wisdom, assured me that American businesses only responded if there was a problem, I was
not so sanguine.
My fears proved to be grounded. Tina told me the insurers had told the hospital that
they had not got the babies on their books. As it was now 20 days after the delivery, I could
see myself having to foot the bill for this period before the babies were covered. My fingers
danced over the keyboard in faxing the insurers and sending copies of my e-mails to them. I
also phoned their help number. I was told to contact the broker who had arranged cover in the
first place. My call to him was met by an answering machine. So as not to lose more time, I
faxed to tell them this and ask what more I could do to ensure cover. Their faxed response
was reassuring. The babies were covered from ‘2.8’. I just hoped this was their birthday on 8
February and not 2 August.
The broker sent me an e-form to complete and fax back. I still did not understand the
insurance details, though. With hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, I felt I should.
Despite being ostensibly written in English, a letter from the hospital about insurance was
incomprehensible. My broker nonetheless gave me some hope that costs would be within
bounds. He ended, ‘Good luck!’ I felt I needed it.
Although I had managed to convince myself for the first month that the babies were,
in a way, still to be born even though they were outside the womb, by the fifth week this
rationale was less credible. I longing to see them, touch them, hold them.
I seriously considered flying out to take them back one at a time. The logistics were
insurmountable. For every one I brought back, there was one I had to leave behind to get
another. The only practical solution was to wait until Lars was released, had been
photographed and had his passport. I would have to continue to be pragmatic and push my
parental urges to one side.
My daily calls to the hospital continued until the first week in March. Ian and Piers were
likely to be discharged soon as they were feeding themselves. Lars was more laid back and
let the tube do some of the work. The specialist was cagey about estimating when they would
be ready for travelling. But I needed a date, a goal, and knew it would be me who fixed it.
I had to balance between rushing to see them and hold them and letting the hospital
have time enough to consider them fit to travel. A quick visit to the internet showed that
flights to San Diego were filling three weeks beforehand. Arbitrarily, I decided to travel on
my birthday. This would be the day that I would see my children and it would become a sort
of alternative birthday for all of us. I allowed a few days after that in case the last one had not
been discharged and booked the return flight for the babies, Tina, Tina’s two sons, Vivian
and me, for 27 March. I had checked with BA earlier about how they deal with very young
babies. Each baby had to be attached to an adult for take-off and landing. Three babies: three
adults.
Tina thought it would be a ‘closure’ for her sons to come over and see the babies in
their new home. They had never flown or been out of the country. As a newcomer to jetsetting, she was ill-at-ease at the thought of travelling without Vivian, who was to be the
‘logical’ third adult. Vivian was willing to come and her husband was happy to take over the
business for the duration. Eight tickets. I confirmed the bookings. The date was now fixed. 23
March. My fingers would remain crossed.
The problems continued. The very next day, the specialist told me Piers would not be
released. He had apnea. This meant that his heart rate dropped when he was feeding and,
more significantly, when he was sleeping.
His monitoring needed to be continued. Both he and Lars had low blood pressure. The
doctor opined that a blood transfusion might be needed. He was cautious and unhurried. The
flight dates did not seem like such a good idea now. Although he told me that all this was to
be expected with premature babies, I had little else to do but fret.
The District Nurse in Newbury confirmed that babies generally had very low blood
pressure and that apnea mattresses were available. Was it that the doctor was concerned about
air pressure in flight? Whether it was because of any real danger or just the fear of litigation
in case the side of caution was not erred upon, I could only speculate. Two days later Piers
was out. The hospital was running out of bed space. The caution had disappeared. Patients
had to be processed.
After another day, Lars was out, too. They were on monitors and Tina knew what she
was doing, but these little boys would have to take their chance away from the hospital’s
cocoon. This was a business very much like any other.
PLAYING AND POOING
'Now you take your fork like this. And then you put it in your mouth like this.'
It was a warm summer's afternoon. The children were having lunch on the lawn at a
small wooden table with built-in benches at each side. Ian had been idly poking his Bob the
Builder knife and fork through the central hole where the parasol goes. Small crumbs of
corned beef were dropping through. The cat, Cresta, was sitting underneath, her nose almost
touching the tantalising cutlery, the source of these unexpected morsels.
Having finished his own salad, Lars had stood up and leaned across the table, spearing
fragments of Ian's rocket leaf and carrot.
'Look, I'm showing you. This is what you do. ' He stretched a little more towards his
brother's firmly closed mouth. 'Oh!'
Ian carried on carving the table. Piers glanced at the object that had just fallen from
Lars's shorts, wrinkled his nose and then giggled, delighted that his brother's attempt to usurp
his own accustomed role as teacher had come to such an unexpected conclusion.
'Oh. It's pooh.'
It was said without surprise, embarrassment or disgust. It had just happened as bodily
functions happen at the age of two and a half. One moment you would be playing and then
pooh would be there. Maybe there was the slightest hint of disappointment.
'Daddy. The pooh's come.'
Daddy made it go.
'I don't like it.' Piers observed in the same way the freshly pureed apple topping the
yoghurt that was for pudding as he had Lars's turd a few minutes before.
'Just try it to please Daddy.'
'I tried it yesterday when I was a baby.'
'I wanted bespetti, not a nic-nic.'
'Sorry, Ian, no spaghetti today. Just a picnic.'
'Can I have some, Daddy?' Lars was keen to know if his faux pas disqualified him from
pudding. He glanced at the three potties lined up behind the table, their colours the same as
their mugs. 'Cuddle?' His lower lip protruded, the corners of his mouth turned down and his
eyes averted, he held his arms straight out in front of him. His pressed his face and chest into
mine. 'Sorry, Daddy. It just came out.'
'I know it did, darling. Never mind.'
'Can we go up to the playhouse?' Lars pointed to the hut on stilts by the trees. 'But we
need Piers to open the door.'
'Can you go to the playhouse, Piers?'
'No.' For once he had power over his brothers. 'Hiccups people don't go up to
playhouses.'
'But you haven't got hiccups. You know you're the only one strong enough to open the
door. If you don't, Daddy will have to go up.'
'You might fall down. All right then. It's going to be a farm today. Can we take horsey
up?'
Through the trapdoor in the floor of the castle that was connected to the playhouse by a
walkway, using the rope ladder that was suspended from it, the three of them laboriously, but
collaboratively, pulled a white plastic horse on wheels.
'It's a barn now,' Piers pulled open the playhouse door using two hands. The plastic
furniture had been dismantled and formed an ersatz manger in the corner. Somehow they had
squeezed the horse through the narrow door. 'Can we put grass in here?'
'No, Piers, we want the pirate boat.' Ian was pulling at the steel-framed green-mesh
cradle that hung from the walkway. Piers shot down the slide and jumped up and down by
the boat.
'Lift me. Lift me.'
Now that they were no longer babies, it was a squeeze.
'Daddy, he's pushing me.'
'Daddy, he's kicking me.'
'Daddy, he won't let me sit down.'
The boat left the harbour.
'It's a lovely clear day. We're gently bobbing on a calm sea. Oh no. Is that a grey cloud
I can see?'
'There's a storm coming! Storm! Storm!' This is what they had been waiting for. Up
went the boat until it touched the underside of the playhouse. 'Higher! More waves!' They
shrieked as their world turned on its side and threatened to deposit them in the sea. Like the
clapper in a bell, they and the boat described arc upon arc. The hawsers grated in protest, but
held firm. 'More! More!' The sides crashed into the wooden structure sending shudders
through the framework. 'Cloud's gone. Blue sky again. Boat's coming into harbour.' Three
tear-streaked faces looked in horror. 'No, there's another one just come into view.' Now the
boat went side to side, twisting against the hooks. Just as well they're boys, I thought. But
no, I would probably have played the same had they been girls. I hadn't had so much fun for
ages. Down they climbed.
'Daddy.'
'Yes, Piers?'
'Lars's tongue's come off.'
I swung round to see him holding his plush green snake in one hand and red cloth forked
tongue in the other.
'And Daddy.'
Yes, Ian?'
'My wee's turned into a pooh.'
COLLECTION
The day before I left, my solicitor had arranged a three-cornered telephone meeting with
an immigration specialist. They painted a bleak picture. Coming back with Tina was not a
good idea, he thought.
It was at this point that she and the babies could be refused entry and deported. I was
to try to distance myself from her and her sons and go through the EU channel carrying,
somehow, the three babies and a pile of supporting evidence. If I were waved through, I had
to declare that I wanted permanent settlement for the children. I had to be upfront and state
the full circumstances.
Both legal specialists advised me to delay my trip and apply for a visa from the
British Consulate in Los Angeles. However, having paid for eight transatlantic tickets,
arranged a brief stay for my father in a nursing home and organised a sitter for the house and
cats for the duration, I was unwilling to change my plans and apply for a visa that might be
stalled by red tape. When bureaucracy has got in the way, I have generally sought to avoid it.
I also wanted at last to have the babies in my care. Tina had done a brilliant job, but it was
time for both of us to pick up the threads of our lives and move on. I would take a chance
with Immigration at Gatwick.
I was told what papers I would need. I would have to prove my paternity. I phoned Dr
Smotrich and asked for a statement of this. ‘Ian Mucklejohn is the father.’ It needed to be
clearer. I phoned again and a clearer statement of my role in the fertilisation came over the
fax machine. ‘Ian Mucklejohn’s sperm was used to fertilise the enbryos.’
I had to prove that I had suitable females to care for the babies. Newbury Nannies
organised a day nanny in addition to the maternity nurse already arranged and faxed
confirmation. I had to prove that I could afford to bring up three children. I had to ask my
accountant to supply the latest company accounts and tax returns. I had to arrange for my
house to be valued and for the valuation to be faxed to me in America so I could present it at
Immigration. I had to bring my latest bank statements. All this during the afternoon before
my flight. All this because I was a man coming in with my own, provably my own, children.
It was demeaning and illogical.
***
The QC’s opinion faxed to me that afternoon raised the issue that the local authority
might judge whether I was suitable to have my own children live with me.
He referred pointedly to the Kilshaw case that had been making headlines a few years
earlier and that had ended disastrously. In that case a couple from Wales had adopted twins
from Missouri after outbidding by $6000 the US couple that had originally taken the girls in
for $5900. After saying to the US family she wanted to see her babies one more time, the
mother handed them over to the Kilshaws, who adopted them in Arkansas, where adoption
rules are relaxed. When their genetic father and the earlier family claimed custody, a British
judge decided that the twins should be returned to Missouri to have a court decide who
should raise them.
Although a case totally different from my own, it had focussed attention on the
difference between American attitudes and our own tightly regulated system and portrayed
the former’s contractual arrangements as being casual to the point of laxity wherein anything
might go wrong and quite possibly would. I would have to live with the suspicion the
Kilshaw case had caused. ‘If public authorities do become involved… Mr Mucklejohn would
be ill-advised to have his case tainted by any perceived illegality or deception in bringing the
children in to the UK,’ was the QC's view.
While I was taking advantage of the liberal Californian approach to surrogacy as
opposed to the (for me, at least) impossible English system, I could see no connection
whatever between the Kilshaws’ adoption and my own case. The boys were without a
shadow of a doubt my children.
The QC thought there might be a problem authorising medical care for my own
children. Without a residence order or other clarification of the legal position, as an
unmarried father, I would not have parental responsibility, though he added ‘the point is
unlikely to be taken in an emergency and I am told that Mr Mucklejohn’s’ GP is aware of the
situation and sympathetically supportive.’
I would deal with this if the occasion arose. As I had never had trouble authorising
medical care for my students, I was quite confident about my ability to deal with such
eventuality for my own children.
Most significantly (and ominously), the QC added, ‘I have no doubt that when (rather
than if) social services turn their attention to the novel situation raised by this case, their
initial appraisal will be critical and searching. To avert unwanted state interference, Mr
Mucklejohn needs to make careful and appropriate arrangements to provide a reliable and
high standard of care both himself and with qualified assistance. Agency Norland nannies
are, in my view, not quite enough especially as they are to be engaged at night. I suggest that
further consideration needs to be given to the structure of the new family. I suspect that
committed and available family help from a sister or cousin with family experience who lives
locally will make a strong positive impression, if they are available.’
Sister? Cousin living locally? There weren’t any. Effectively, according to his opinion
of the law, the local authority could quite easily take my children away from me.
I thought of the many children already on the ‘authority’s’ lists; neglected children
who roamed the streets late at night, children at risk, and could not imagine that anyone in
authority, anyone with any sense, would follow this line of thought. Nevertheless, I would
have to ensure that I would not be seen as the main carer in order not to fall foul of the law.
In case the local authority would want to consider taking care proceedings, the QC
(who used the word ‘when’) added that ‘the appropriate response will probably be a crossapplication for a residence order. A possible resolution may be a residence order coupled
with a supervision order in favour of the local authority for a limited period.’
So I would be put on probation. My own children would be taken in the care of this
amorphous ‘local authority’, who might license them back to me.
I had an early warning about the media, too: ‘This is potentially an extremely
attractive story for tabloids and broadsheets…. The press can be expected to run it from a
questioning and even hostile angle… I am certain that Mr Mucklejohn would be ill-advised to
take any initiative whatsoever to use the press to support any application to the Home Office.’
It had never even occurred to me to do so. I had no desire for my private arrangements
to be spread across the pages of newspapers. Compared to the earlier case, I did not see mine
as much of a story really. But in a few months I would see how the press could add some
embroidery to make it one. Tiny children, the elderly, the truth—all of these and anything
else could be sacrificed on the altar of tabloid circulation.
A quick e-mailed query from the immigration specialist about the chance of an
immediate visa were I to arrive in Los Angeles and request one had elicited a dispiriting
response.
‘I spoke to the Consul... As it stands the children have no right of abode in the UK.
Nationality for these children is derived from the birth mother and [they are] not entitled to
British Nationality. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further
information. Please contact this office.’
My boys had no right to live in the UK. No right to be British. I was on my own. Legal
thunder clouds were gathering as I began my journey. I had known for months that I had few
rights to the children. It now seemed that my children could simply be taken away at any
moment by the authorities as they mulled things over.
And there was more. From the day the babies were born, I knew that there was
something else that could go so terribly wrong that I could not even contemplate the
ramifications. Although Tina had signed away her rights to them, this document, legally
binding in the US, had no validity whatsoever in English law. She was the mother. She had
all the rights. If there were a change of heart, everything would have to be argued out in
America and there the babies would remain. I had absolutely no reason to believe that this
would happen and it flew in the face of all the evidence, but it was a worst-case scenario that
had preyed on my mind and against which I had guarded myself. Until the babies were in my
home, in my care, I could not give way to my feelings for them; could not yet bring myself to
consider them mine.
FIRST MEETING
It was in Tina’s home with her family around that, on 23 March 2001, I first saw my
sons. Two cots and a pram took over most of Tina’s living room. The rest was occupied by a
sybaritic couch that snaked round the room and provided the family’s life-support centre with
hinged flaps concealing the TV controls. The TV remained on constantly. It dominated life
there. All conversation was to its background. Its huge screen demanded to be acknowledged
with a glance every few seconds. My arrival, my holding my boys for the first time, the first
photographs I took of my sons, every aspect of family life was with the TV on. In this
household the TV was aural wallpaper. The apartment was small and cheek-by-jowl with
others sharing communal paths and a small grassy area. It was a warm March evening. All
the windows were open with the blare of a different TV station emanating from each. I had
not met Tina on her home territory before and in that moment I could see how we were from
different worlds. I hope that they would not collide before I had my boys safely home. ‘Turn
it off!’ my inner voice was screaming. ‘Just turn the thing off!’
Three little people were being held by three other people I hardly knew. I took one of
them in my arms and looked from one to the other. They appeared the same. They were—
babies. I could see a few differences when they were pointed out, but if their order were
changed, I had to look for Lars’s bald spot where the feed tube had rubbed away his hair, had
to compare Ian’s eyes with his brothers’. The one remaining was Piers by default. I felt I had
created three little people, but after such a time at such a distance, they did not seem to be
mine. Under Tina’s roof, they were Tina’s. Her sons told me what to do. Her rules applied. I
was the outsider who had come to take them away. I felt curiously detached. I recollected the
pot in Santa Monica.
‘Yup! Haven’t they grown?’ said Vivian. The tension broken, we laughed.
I cuddled each small bundle and held the bottle at his lips. There was a small suction
from each, their only reaction to me; their only reaction to anything. They were tiny, fragile
and utterly vulnerable not least to the vagaries of the legal system I was about to challenge.
'I think I love you,' I said to each and kissed his forehead. I wasn't sure if I should - yet.
They were warm, soft and infinitely adorable. How, though, could I adore them when all the
advice I had was that they were in imminent danger of being taken away from me. For the
time being, I pushed these dark thoughts to one side and let the babies sink into my arms. I
fed, burped, changed, cuddled, looked into their little faces to see who they might look like,
felt their hands close around my finger.
I was presented with a birthday cake. What a kind thought. I had forgotten what the day
was.
I stayed at a nearby hotel, collapsing into bed at 19.00 and up at 01.00 each morning
of my stay. By the time Vivian’s husband, Claude, came to collect me to bring me to Tina’s, I
had already watched three movies and was ready for lunch. I sat with the babies and changed
them, fed them and burped them. It was all so different. Unlike my father, they wanted to be
nurtured, touched, cuddled. I observed Tina’s sons’ pet snake in its glass case make small
writhing movements. I empathised. In spite of the bright sunshine, I felt depressed. I was jetlagged in a foreign land in an environment that felt and sounded alien and I just wanted to get
them safely home.
A telephone conference with my solicitor in London at 5 in the morning while I was
in the San Diego hotel provided me with last-minute instructions. I was to organise my papers
into sections, each in a plastic wallet. I was to keep copies. I was to be prepared to defend my
right to my own children in front of an Immigration Officer at Gatwick Airport. It was an
encounter I was not relishing.
There was another complication. All the passports had arrived, bar one. Lars’s
passport was missing. Vivian phoned the passport agency at 6.30 on the morning before the
return flight. There had been an error and Lars’s passport would be sent. Not wishing to take
a chance, we asked to collect it and were told it would be waiting in the Federal Building in
Los Angeles. Claude drove me. Three hours later I had to concentrate on finding 11,000
Wilshire. Again that boulevard with the missing letter loomed into my life.
At 9.00 we were in front of the massive building, inside which, a few yards away, lay
an envelope for me. I had only to pick it up. ‘Can I speak to someone? I just need to collect
an envelope.’
‘Not without an appointment,’
‘Can I speak to someone to arrange an appointment?’
‘No, you have to phone for one. Here’s the number.’ I went to a payphone outside the
building to phone to get in. It was an automated system. After pressing buttons according to
instructions, I was allocated an appointment the following day, too late to travel. The armed
guard told me to come back for the appointment. Further requests to speak to someone led to
my being given a card with a phone number on it for enquiries. I tried the number from a call
box. ‘You can’t call enquiries from a pay phone’, the guard informed me when I told him of
my lack of success. Vivian volunteered help from her office phone, but the promised return
calls to my mobile did not materialise.
Corralled round the building without protection from the wind or sun wound a queue
of jaded would-be travellers. All had tales to tell of delays and expense. I found myself
trembling with rage, impotent in the face of a blind bureaucracy that looked likely to frustrate
all my plans. I joined the queue. Four and a half hours later, seemingly on a whim, the guard
let in a few without asking for an appointment number. I tagged along. A notice board inside
the hall invited comments and suggestions on the service provided by the Passport Agency to
its Director, Tom Reid. Five hours after arriving, I left clutching the passport. I spent that
night advising Mr Reid by letter on the apology for a service his Agency provided. His
eventual response was to agree to pay Tina $105.
MEETING MELISSA
It’s always good, I thought, to know who the mother of your children is. The children
would eventually ask what their biological mother was like and would be incredulous if I told
them I had passed up the chance to meet her. They would rightly want to know about her.
Her view has always been that it was a transfer of genetic material that would otherwise have
gone to waste and, at the time, I was happy enough to see her role in the same way as that of
a blood or organ donor. One is terribly grateful for the life-saving donation, but one does not
knock on their door and maintain a lasting relationship. What if I really did not like her?
What if she had personality traits that I found offensive? Would I be looking out for these in
the children? Over the years, I have changed my opinion on this. The presence of someone
else’s blood, heart or liver inside one is hardly character-defining. The genes are utterly
fundamental and are who you are. I owed my children this knowledge.
As she was the only one of the two women I had been in touch with, I had developed
the assumption that Tina was the mother, but she absolutely was not and my few days
collecting the boys had underlined for me that this was not a gene pool I had entered, nor
wished to enter. I had to think for my sons and decided that I at least had to try and get in
touch. ‘Edie’ had been ‘open to a meeting’. It had been arranged for the day I had spent
kicking my heels outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles, so I thought I had missed my
opportunity. Luckily she was available on the day we left and I waited for her with Claude
outside a café at a San Diego shopping mall.
What do you say when you meet your children’s mother for the first time? Of all the
odd things I had done, I thought this would be the oddest.
In fact, it was one of the most pleasant. Melissa proved to be delightful in every way.
She told me about her ambitions to remain at the university as a post-graduate, her interest in
languages, her own background, her travel to England and her English grandmother—and
why she was content for her progeny to exist away from her knowledge and influence.
‘My mom left when I was two. My dad brought me up. I have never seen her as my
mom because she never did the job. That’s why I don’t see myself as the parent of these
children. I’m not doing the job.’
It was beautifully logical and, although it interpreted ‘parent’ in its narrowest context,
it was an argument that I could live with at the time. There was no anguish; no area for doubt.
This beautiful, articulate and intelligent woman saw what she had done as purely
transactional. She received payment for her donations - not a large sum, but it helped her
through college.
I could see no aspect of Melissa that I would regret seeing in the boys, although I
wondered what the long-term effect of the knowledge that her own mother had left her after
two years might be - rather more, I supposed, than the never-had-been-there situation my own
children would be in. We posed side by side, looking slightly awkward while Claude took my
camera and clicked the shutter.
There we were. What I thought was likely to be our only meeting was preserved;
frozen in time. I was utterly relieved and delighted that it had taken place. She felt the same,
it seems. In retrospect, the meeting was essential and should have happened before
conception. I could never be in Melissa’s situation, never logicalise my role in the process,
never remove myself from being the parent of my children.
In an e-mail to Vivian she wrote, ‘It was so nice to meet Ian today. I was very
impressed with him and I think he is going to be a great Daddy for those boys. You know, I
had forgotten that you told me they were boys. I was thinking the triplets were all girls! I
want to commend you for making people’s dreams come true. It was moving to see Ian so
enthusiastic. Keep up the good work—it’s the work of an angel!’
Angels have feet of clay, though. I had been immensely lucky. At various stages the
babies could have died or been born handicapped. There could have been a huge case with
the insurers. Tina could have decided to keep the children and lean on me for child support.
The possibilities for disaster were legion. Not so much an angel as a lady who is willing to
take a chance to give people what they think they want, I thought. I could not sleep at night in
such a risky business. Vivian was serene. She was troubled by no such soul-searching.
ARRIVING AT GATWICK
I was delighted to leave San Diego. I heard my pulse as I walked down the narrow
walkway, past passport control, through the perfunctory pre-9/11 security and stepped off
American soil. No one had rushed forward at the last moment brandishing an envelope with a
bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one had barricaded the way, refusing to let these
three little American boys leave.
My calm was studied and practised. I was in a turmoil that lifted only when I stepped
into the 747.
Even being on the BA flight was like coming home, although I hoped the constant
questioning from strangers would not be a foretaste of what was to come.
I discovered that travelling with triplet babies is like carrying a huge sign ‘Ask me
anything you wish, no matter how intrusive, direct or personal’. We had the undivided
attention of the female crew members. They were too professional to ask who the mother was
and how they had been conceived. Not so the female American passengers.
‘How were they delivered?’ ‘Did you have any fertility treatment to conceive them?’
I suppose Tina and I looked an odd couple. She, large and loudly dressed in an allAmerican way. I, slight, jacket and tie, discreet—in preparation for my encounter with the
officials at Immigration. The babies were good travellers. Mindful of the ordeal in store, I
popped a sleeping pill and, with their permission, left it to the ladies to feed and swab across
the Atlantic. Tina’s children were happy enough on their first flight with their electronic push
buttons and video screens.
I asked the BA crew if they could help me with the babies through the EU channel
while the Americans went with the other aliens. In the event, the BA regulations that
prevented them from carrying a baby resulted in us all reaching the EU channel together.
I looked at the waiting passengers. Which were the journalists? Where were the
cameras? Who had a tape recorder secreted in his coat? They just stood waiting in a line like
the bored, tired travellers they were.
I had rehearsed my speech. ‘I should like to apply for settlement for my children,
please.’ The EU clerk pointed like an automaton towards the aliens’ channel. ‘I don’t have
the necessary stamps’, she advised. The seven of us presented ourselves in front of an
Immigration Officer who knew he had drawn the short straw.
The response to my question was ‘Why did you not get a visa for them before
arrival?’ ‘I didn’t have the time. I needed to be back on the 28th as I’m full-time carer for my
father and his placement at a nursing home ends today. I have all the papers here describing
the way the children were conceived, how I can afford to look after them and what I am
worth.’
He glanced towards Vivian and Tina. ‘Is one of them the mother?’
‘The surrogate mother. Yes. She has her children with her. They are all on return
tickets and will be leaving on Monday.’ The officer disappeared. Now was the moment. Tina,
her children and the babies could legitimately be refused entry. If I passed this point it would
all become far more difficult for the authorities. But here was an alien woman with alien
children who did not have to be accorded entry. It could all unravel in the next few minutes
and I would have no redress. This was also the time one of the other passengers could turn
out to be a journalist and splash the story.
My throat tightened. The moment passed. It was all a welcome anticlimax. The
immigration officer returned, asked for the passports and birth certificates to copy and gave
the boys two month visas so I could apply to the Home Office. He wrote the address down
for me. We walked out of the building. It was as simple as that. Or was it?
Bringing Tina and her sons over with Vivian may have been a practical solution and
given them the ‘closure’ she wanted, but I sensed impending doom while they were in my
house. Tina’s role changed suddenly.
From being the main carer for the babies, she became a mere passive onlooker as the
maternity nurse, Vicky, and temporary nanny, Becky, took over. They greeted her briefly and
took the babies into their charge. I made dinner for Tina’s sons mainly in an effort to get
them to sit down. As if I were invisible, they slid across the polished floors, imitated the way
I said ‘tomato sauce’ and made real and imaginary farting noises throughout dinner. Vivian
told me that after an hour of this, Tina was in tears in her bedroom and could hardly wait to
leave.
Whatever the reasoning, the collision I had anticipated between our two worlds was
happening and I desperately wanted to part on good terms. Without any input from me, Tina
made it easy and resolved to book into a B & B the next day to see Stonehenge. They looked
into the nursery to bid farewell to the babies and left in tears. ‘They’ll be fine’ was my
instinctive reaction. ‘So that’s why they cried as soon as they saw me?’ was Tina’s. Vivian
assured me that the family’s tears lasted as far as half-way into the train journey and that the
babies were not spoken of again. It was not difficult to envisage how my original plan of
having Tina and her sons with me during the pregnancy would have fared—the stress would
have been unbearable. Certainly she did me the greatest favour by staying in California. I
shuddered at the thought of what results the tension might have had on the hazardous
gestation.
The babies safely in their nursery, I needed to apply to the Home Office for
‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’. It was a humiliating procedure. On advice, I had to supply a
justification, a statement of my means and the following:
v Statement from Dr Smotrich of La Jolla IVF that the children were conceived with
my sperm
v Statement from my GP that the children were monitored and detailing their current
health
v Statement from West Berkshire Social Services that I am the carer for my father
v Statement from broker of share holdings
v Land Certificate relating to my house
v House valuation
v Company bank statements for last three months
v Personal bank statements for last three months
v Payslips for last three months
v Company accounts 2000
v Company brochures 2000 and 2001
v My passport
v Piers’s passport and birth certificate
v Ians’ passport and birth certificate
v Lars’s passport and birth certificate
v Judgement declaring the existence of parental relationships and awarding custody
v Letter from the Nanny Agency showing care arrangements
There I was with my children in my home. This was what I had dreamed of, hoped for,
anticipated with such relish. I looked at their tiny, sleeping forms. How much easier it was
to change and feed them than it was to do the same for my father. Yet I felt I should stand
back and let Vicky and Becky care for them. They were supposed to be the ones in charge,
the female presence at all times. They were the ones the authorities would ask questions of.
Instead of nurturing, phoning, researching and writing dominated my first week with my
babies. All the many papers were posted on 9 April 2001.
I waited.
***
Nannying became a ritual performed by those who knew what was what and I could only
look on.
They were good. There was no denying that. I looked and learned—about timed
feeds, about sterilising bottles, mixing feeds, how to operate the nappy disposal bin, but I felt
an intruder in the nursery. I had come to believe what the lawyers had been telling me—that
Social Services would expect there to be competent women to feed, change and nurture. If
they did not find them, disaster would strike.
As for me, so far as the authorities were concerned, I would have been an irrelevance
if they had looked in on arrangements. I fetched and carried, assembled baby chairs from kits,
provided a water filter, cleaned the kettle and busied myself with mundane tasks. When I
picked them up, kissed them, cuddled them, held their tiny hands, it was under the watchful
stare of someone who may have felt she was competing with me for their affections. The
babies carried on being babies and I assumed the role of a man who left almost everything to
women who knew best.
CHAPTER
There is an established procedure for most aspects of life. Often in Britain it is prefaced
with ‘have a nice cup of tea.’ Does one tell friends before or after the event that, as a single
man, one is having a baby or two or three? How to explain it? Does it need to be explained?
Without any existing set of behavioural norms, I had to draw up my own. Before the
birth, I decided to tell those who I thought would have been saddened not to have been taken
into my confidence. I had to bear in mind the legal advice not to say anything to anyone and
had to apply the strictest precautions. Some months before, I had decided that I should take
on an employee to free me up for my new role as parent. I tried it out first on him. He
should, I felt, know what changes there would be in my household before he took on the job.
The next step was to formulate a rationale. It should be brief, factual, unlikely to
shock, bore or titillate - to explain events and elicit the desired reaction to them. The analysis
concentrated my mind and reduced to the essentials why I was doing what I was doing in the
way I was doing it.
In the years I had spent toying with the idea, the reasoning had become so convoluted
that I had forgotten where it had started. First I had to reduce the element of angst.
The refreshing difference between Growing Generations and Surrogate Family
Program was the elimination of any angst-inducing angles. The load of baggage should be
lightened. I tried a synopsis:
'When I realised most of my life had been as a carer, I also understood why it had taken
the shape it had and why the normal events in life, such as marriage and family, hadn’t
happened. As it could carry on like this for a while longer, I thought I should do something
about it before I became too old. I could have joined an agency, met people, married and had
a family. All this takes time and chance would be a fine thing. Carers don’t get out very
often. In any case, to marry for the sake of having children is a bad basis for a relationship.
As I was in my early fifties, I would have to marry someone far younger than me. Children
might not happen for a long time, if at all. I would just be getting older. Even if there were
children, it might be that the relationship would break down. I could see a failed marriage,
hurt feelings, bitterness, recrimination, divorce, emotional scarring, loss of custody, house,
business. It could all be such a disaster. Far better to think though logically what I wanted—a
family—and how to achieve it. So I went to an agency, found a surrogate who for various
reasons liked being pregnant and the kudos that surrogacy could bring to an otherwise
ordinary life, found an egg donor who combined attractiveness with an excellent health
record and a master’s degree, located a specialist IVF clinic and created a family.'
What I had lived with for so long sounded so simple, so straightforward, that I imagined
the only reaction would be ‘Oh. Right then.’ And, indeed, with almost everyone close to me,
this is what happened after the jaw-dropping shock had worn off.
There were some surprising reactions, though. One of my ex-employees asked ‘If you
need to give love, aren’t your cats enough?’ A married woman who long ago decided against
children ran from the room. So brief was my analysis and so protracted had been media
coverage of other family creations from the US that the concepts became confused. ‘So you’ll
bring them here when you’ve adopted them, then?’ ‘But will they let you adopt them?’ It
took a while before the realisation that they were biologically mine set in.
Later it all became much easier. Depending on your viewpoint, my sons had either two
mothers or no mother at all. At any rate, none was around for them. I was it. Both. All. The
lot.
‘What’s the official line on their mother?’ One of their classmate’s parents was
nothing if not direct.
‘She’s in America.’
‘Just that?’
‘That’s all there is. She ‘is’ in that she exists and she is ‘in America’. That’s the truth
and that’s exactly what the boys know. In fact, that applies to both their mothers.’
A friend’s husband, Desmond Wilcox, was more than a little interested. A
documentary was mooted. Over lunch he reinterpreted my reasoning. He saw the logic.
‘You’re clever and courageous,’ he told me. ‘I’m sure you have the ability to change the
minds of the vast majority of people in this country towards surrogacy.’
‘But you tackle really interesting subjects, like ‘The Boy David’. That one really
tugged at the heartstrings.’ 'The Boy David' was a moving record about a Peruvian boy who
was eventually adopted by the Scottish surgeon who reconstructed his badly-deformed face.
‘So would this be. Believe me.’ His eyes penetrated my indecision. I attempted to
persist, though.
‘It all seems so boringly logical to me that I can’t see how it could be sufficiently
interesting material for a documentary.’
Having admired Desmond’s work, and knowing that when he said he would film just
what I found acceptable, nothing more, and that I could see him as a sort of honorary
godparent, I could believe him. I knew I had nothing to fear from it. In the end, my
conclusion was right, although my deduction may not have been.
We spoke some time later. ‘It’s been done to death, they tell me. They look at the
gays and that’s that for surrogacy as a documentary topic. I tell them they’re wrong, that this
is a quite different angle, to believe in my intuition, but I just can’t get anyone to produce it.’
In a way it was a relief. I would not have to make a decision that my children could have
regretted. As I believed so strongly in the moral rightness of what I was doing and took the
view that others in my position would find it liberating, I was saddened that, if such a
luminary as Desmond could not find a backer, this story and all that might flow from it would
remain hidden. Within six months, Desmond had died and I had met the real ‘Boy David’ at
his memorial service.
I assumed that the story would never be told. Nevertheless, I had written everything
down contemporaneously right from the my initial abortive meeting with Growing
Generations so that my progeny would be able to read the adventure.
My UK solicitor did not share my willingness to reveal my children’s history. He
advised caution, feeling that whatever one did could be twisted round and turned into
something unrecognisable at the hands of the tabloid press. Publicity was to be avoided—
certainly before the children were in the UK. I asked my friend. She had little doubt that it
was a ‘story’.
‘Come on my programme. Tell your story. You can be in disguise.’
‘Why? I have nothing to be ashamed of. Even so I don’t feel the need to defend what I
have done.’
‘It goes against the grain as a journalist, but I would advise that the best way to deal
with any publicity is to say ‘wait for the book’. I’ve read enough of your letters to know you
can write. So publish the book.’
The computer enabled me to be scatterbrained. Events were put down just as they
happened, often late at night to be knocked into shape later. The early setbacks had been so
depressing that nature’s safety valve was shutting out memories almost as soon as they were
experienced. Down they went onto the hard drive in random order. How could Jane Austen
have had the intellectual discipline to start at the beginning and proceed until she reached the
end all in longhand? My admiration for her knew no bounds.
NANNIES
Nannies all have their peculiarities. I tried to adapt. I realised quickly that if you have
two nannies in a room at the same time they are likely to come to blows, so idiosyncratic are
the ways of their trade. Nanny A would cut the nails, only to be told off by nanny B who bit
them. Nanny A would then get huffy and, behind her back, belittle nanny B’s feeding routine.
The type of bottle, the type of teat, the brand of milk—all were open to discussion. One
nanny would want large, angled bottles, the other was happy with the straight variety that had
come from America. As long as I had only one at a time, the nanny would get on with the job
of nurturing and the babies readily responded to each of them. I tried to make sure each had
her equipment of choice.
When the babies had become adjusted to a feeding routine, the maternity nurse made
way for a regular nanny. She had her own way of working. The boys thrived on it, but I am
not sure I did. I was further relegated to being a bystander.
‘Not like that,’ was the reaction to my bottle-holding. She preferred to communicate
in writing. I would receive my instructions in list form and ticked off what I had obtained.
On the occasions that she spoke, I found I was dealing with a language in which the
words used did not mean what they said. After little Ian had been operated on for a hernia, I
was told, ‘His scrotum’s gone completely black.’ I phoned the surgeon on the spot and made
an appointment to go to see him in Oxford that day. I then took a look to see the tiniest trace
of a small grey bruise less than half the size of my fingernail.
Later, when he lost weight between one health visit and the next, I was told, ‘He isn’t
sucking. If he doesn’t drink, he can’t eat or he’ll get constipated. If he doesn’t eat, he won’t
be able to carry on like this.’ Rather than steel myself against his imminent demise, I paid a
visit to the GP. ‘Put anything he’ll take into him. If he’s constipated, we’ll deal with it when
it happens.’
Having seen ‘Mary Poppins’, I thought I knew about nannies. Not so. ‘Watch Me
Play Daddy’ was written on the case of a surprise video one nanny gave me at Christmas. The
surprise was the absence of a comma in front of the noun. ‘But I’m really a Daddy, not
playing at it,’ I told her.
Retitled in my head as ‘Watch Me Play, Daddy’, I was able to do just that. What was
fascinating was not so much the videoed toddling at playgroup, but the banality of the
background soundtrack of nanny-to-nanny dialogue which by its continuous insistency
seemed the main purpose of the activity. The tots just got on with being tots. I wondered if, a
year or so on, my sons would have personal experience of the same vacuity of conversation.
Nannies have their own inner lives which they fortunately cannot communicate to
their charges. I was soon made aware that some have maternal feelings that are given
sharpened focus in the absence of an actual mother; feelings that transcend logic and in which
the nanny becomes the substitute mother while the actual father is either dismissed as an
inconvenience or resented as an intruder.
One of them, who told me she loved my sons as much as her own children, seemed to
enjoy being with them all the time. In fact, she was lonely and unhappy, setting me up as the
reason for her woes.
Her replacement told me with some relish that her predecessor’s vilification had been
so thorough that I had become a hate figure at one of the play groups she took them to. I also
gathered that neighbours had been given the benefit of this woman’s appraisal of my
character. She had told them how terrible it was that the children had never had a mother and
how dreadful I was to leave things to a nanny. I wondered why she had taken the job in the
first place. I had always been completely frank about the situation and it was not as if she had
suddenly discovered my single status.
It was when she wrote to tell me I did not know how close she had been to handing in
her notice over a request I had made that was so trivial that I had forgotten all about it that I
decided to end the nonsense.
Up to this point, I had just got on with my life. Now I was being judged in my own
home. It was a novel and odd feeling.
But the lawyers had told me a nanny was a prerequisite to getting settlement from the
Home Office, so I persisted in having one. I would just have to remain out of favour with the
Twins’ Club. Fortunately, I managed to find two reliable and uncomplicated nannies—one
for weekdays and one for weekends.
Later, one of the audience in a TV programme told me that the babies would be
distressed at having different people feeding and changing them. I never saw them being
other than contentedly responsive to whoever was busy with them. There was also the fact
that I remained the constant presence in their lives. They smiled and wriggled when they
heard my voice. They knew who I was all right. Piers was the largest and the most
advanced. He was the first to take solids, to make distinguishable sounds, to smile and to
coo. After his early operations and an ongoing glue ear, Ian remained the smallest and leastdeveloped, the last to achieve these goals. It was when I was with them on my own that Piers
took his first steps, not one but several. Once he got going, he did not stop until a plastic toy
felled him.
'Walk,' he announced when he had regained his breath.
'Great. Well done, Piers,' I replied and waited for his brothers to follow suit. It took a
few weeks, but Lars and Ian managed their first tentative steps almost simultaneously. In
fact, it was with me rather than a nanny that all their milestones happened, from their first
words to managing the potty on their own. On the one hand were these three little ones
learning and doing more each day and on the other my poor father losing his faculties one by
one.
How I longed for the time when I could do everything for them on my own. It would
come. But until they were officially mine, I would have to defer to the nannies. At least the
two who became the regulars also knew how to relate to a grown-up.
No one from Social Services visited. The Health Visitor and the GP came from time
to time. All was well and I began to wonder what all the panic had been about. The babies
were looked after and were doing fine. For all the notice the authorities took, I could have
been bringing them up on my own.
Although I had no legal rights, not even the right to authorise an operation, I simply
went ahead as though I had all the rights. So far as the hernia operation was concerned, I dealt
with the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and no one raised any questions. All of them
visited the Children’s Clinic locally. Never was my authority queried. They acquired NHS
numbers and ‘red books’. It was just as if they were UK citizens.
Time went by with nothing from the Home Office. I had to travel overseas for a day
on business. I needed my passport and on 12 September 2001 faxed a request for its return
even though this might mean going to the back of the queue. I could not keep my life on hold.
All through that spring and summer, life was quiet. There were no visits from any
‘authorities’. My summer schools came and went. The children were out and about in their
triplet pushchair. Neighbours and friends visited. The babies were much cuddled and cooed
over by my foreign students at the schools.
Without shouting the details from the rooftops, I made no particular secret of their
background. No one expressed any objections. It no longer entered my head that anyone
could be other than delighted at this happy family or that it might arouse any public interest
whosoever. My application for ‘leave to remain’ was with the Home Office. I thought, or
probably wished to think, that any newsworthiness must have disappeared by now.
How wrong I was.
Just after lunch on Friday 7 September 2001, I had a phone call.
‘This is Social Services. I gather you are trying to adopt three babies.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Foster them, then.’
‘No. I have three of my own.’
‘Well, that’s not for me, then.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked. I thought I heard ‘Suzanne.’ 1471 yielded ‘the caller withheld
their number.’ A call to the local Social Services revealed that no Suzanne or Susan worked
there.
Maybe it was some Social Services central unit. I was beginning to forget about it when,
at exactly the same time the following week, the doorbell rang.
PUBLIC PROPERTY
In the thirteen years since my sons were born, I have been contacted by many parents
and would-be-parents. Several have been would-be dads, one of whom read my books so
carefully that his route was virtually identical to mine with one exception. He has had no
attention from the media. He knew that his secret would be absolutely safe with me and that
I would never put anyone through the same experience that whoever sold my story to the UK
press put me through. There is a difference between what is of interest to the public and what
is in the public interest. I should have claimed invasion of privacy and said not a word, but it
happened so quickly that I could not collect my thoughts.
I answered the doorbell.
‘Hello, I’m Susie Boniface of the Daily Mail. We are doing an article on
surrogacy and issues regarding citizenship. We have heard that you have three children
by surrogacy and would like to interview you.’ Pause. ‘Well, let me put it this way, if we
have the information, you can be sure that the Sunday tabloids will have it, too. If you
talk to us now, you can have copy control. You can tell me to sod off, if you wish.’
‘I would never be so rude,’ I answered, thanked her and took her card.
As soon as I closed the door, the calm façade fell away. ‘Information’, ‘tabloids’—all
this was new to me. So far, the anticipation had been vague; unthreatening. The reality that
my little ones and I were to become a tabloid story was a bombshell. The story was breaking
and I still did not have settlement.
I may have closed the door on this reporter, but something unstoppable and
undoubtedly unpleasant was happening and I was supposed to make a contribution to it. I had
no experience of tabloid newspapers; never read them. I just thought they dealt with
sensation. I didn’t see my family as sensational in any way and could not imagine how we
could be presented as such. I was soon to find out.
I phoned a friend with experience in this field. She said, ‘As your unpaid media
advisor, and any advice is as good as what you pay for it, I can tell you that you could do
worse than the Mail. The trouble if you make it exclusive, though, is that if any of the other
papers want information and they can’t get it from you, they get it elsewhere.’
‘Or make it up,’ I added. ‘OK, I think it’s clear, I’ll get her back and talk to her.’
Susie Boniface took notes in shorthand. I found I was giving just factual answers to
her questions. They were mainly of the ‘when, how and why’ variety.
‘So what input do I have?’
‘I’ll read you back my notes, if you like.’
‘OK, I thought that would be all..’
Her snapper was at a local pub and responded at once to her phone call. I presented an
existing photo of us all rather than have the babies presented for photographing. I was
photographed sitting in the garden and idly lounging on the lawn—a somewhat
unaccustomed pose for me. An hour later, she phoned back and asked the value of my house.
‘What do you want this for?’
‘So our readers can make informed judgements.’
Just before midnight on Sunday 16 September 2001, I had a brief foretaste of what that
meant.
‘Are you the Ian Mucklejohn in the Daily Mail?’
‘You have the advantage. I have no idea what’s in the Daily Mail.’
‘You are and the story about the baby deal.’
‘You’ve just woken me up. Do you know what the time is?’
‘About 11 pm?’
‘It’s almost midnight. You’ll forgive me for saying that I find this unacceptably
intrusive.’
‘Sorry. Can we call you in the morning?’
‘I’m at the optician.’
‘When’s that?’
‘Look, you’ve woken me up, I’m not thinking straight. Just phone me and take your
chance.’
I went straight to the computer. Nothing on the Mail’s web site. What would be in the
story? I was seething, tired, anxious and unable to sleep for hours. The babies remained
blissfully ignorant of the media nonsense that was engulfing their home. They have always
been great sleepers. Of all the concerns I had at that time, my little boys were the least of
them. They just carried on being babies and I was reassured by the continuity of this part of
my life.
I awoke the next morning exhausted and red-eyed. My gate was blocked by a silver
car. Trapped. Must be the press. What on earth do they want? Is this what it’s going to be
like? In fact it was Susie Boniface clutching a copy of that day’s Daily Mail. She offered to
be a minder and, in return for an exclusive arrangement whereby I would talk to no one else,
she would undertake that the Daily Mail would run an article on any subject I wished. She
knew that the care of the elderly was close to my heart. While we were talking, she saw me
getting my father ready for breakfast, feeding him and preparing him for day care.
‘If I agree just to talk to you, the rest of the pack will think there’s something to hide.
They’ll talk to people around me or just make it up. That’s not what I want. I’ve nothing to
hide. I think I should be able to talk to anyone.’
‘You’ll have everyone on your phone.’
‘I’ll take my chance, but thanks anyway.’
She expressed interest in having someone see what I was doing with my father.
‘He’s not an animal in a zoo.’
She talked about care and left when I agreed to her suggestion that a writer should
come and interview me about this subject the following day. How naïve I was to go along
with this, but care for elderly was a subject I would very happily talk about.
‘We’re not out to get you. I have done people over, but only when they deserved it.
You don’t deserve it.’
That was reassuring. I told her my father was away by 10 in the morning and that I
could be available then,
Within an hour or two, I had been approached by TV stations, papers, magazines and
radio stations over the phone and in person. When the last satellite van had left the road;
when the last photographer and TV journalist had removed themselves from my house; when
I thought I could get back to my life, a radio station in Melbourne, Australia called. By ten to
nine that night I was in a radio discussion with them. By nine I had turned off my phone
system. They might want me to do a lunchtime programme in New Zealand. They could
want. I was off to bed.
MEDIA ATTENTION
The media people's questions had all been the same. Some had expressed themselves
more tactfully than others. They ranged from the urbane Stuart Norval’s ‘Why, Ian, did you
work so hard to achieve this?’ to Radio Berkshire’s ‘So you think that if you’ve got the
money you can buy babies?’ Most were in-between. Sally Taylor of ‘South Today’ responded
with a ‘So that’s what you wanted, but what’s best for the children?’ assuming an
incongruity. Difficult to respond with the hearing aid in my ear providing a time lag to her
question and an echo of my previous response, while I had only the camera’s black
rectangular eye to focus on. A news agency in Bristol wrote ‘I would really like to write a
piece on how you recently took the very brave and groundbreaking steps towards purchasing
triplets over the internet.’ It was really quite easy to decline their offer.
In the middle of the mayhem, West Berkshire Council phoned to tell me that, as the
Daily Mail had revealed a ‘large office’ in my home, they would be requesting business tax.
‘Actually, that’s my sitting room. Don’t believe all you read in the newspapers.’
Nevertheless the Council sent in their inspector who, confronted by sofas and a coffee
table, had to agree with me. The alacrity of this department to squeeze money from me was
impressive. Significantly, their colleagues down the corridor in the Social Services
department must have felt comforted by what they read. They didn’t call.
David Rendel, my local MP, did phone. He offered whatever help he could with the
Home Office. He thought it was daft that they hadn’t given a decision before this and thought
a nudge from him might help. I thought I would stick to the rules, wait for the six months to
be up and then take him up on his offer. But by the next day, I had changed my mind. My
own passport had still not arrived and the Home Office was clearly going to sit on it for a
while. I phoned David Rendel and asked him to intervene. His secretary called back to tell me
they needed the request for my passport in writing. I told her it had already been faxed and
posted. She told me I could expect to wait another three months for the file to be dealt with,
but that I should get my passport back shortly. It was nice to have a helping hand among the
chaos.
It was on the morning of Tuesday 18 September that the doorbell rang at a quarter to
ten. I was making breakfast for my father. A tall, white-haired woman in black had arrived.
What presented itself as a sweetly reasonable deus ex Mercedes was a diabolus in disguise.
Her arrival marked the end of my trusting people on sight. Reader beware.
‘I’m Mary.’ she said brightly, offering her hand. I shook it.
‘Mary?’ I assumed a surname would be volunteered.
‘Mary Riddell.’
I thought I might have heard the name before.
‘I’m sorry I’m early.’
‘I’m just getting my father ready for day care. We’re in the kitchen. Come through.’
He finished his yoghourt and milk, I removed his apron, put his shoes on, tied his tie
and put a dimple in it and then helped him on with his jacket. Mary Riddell twittered
approval at what I was doing.
‘I think it’s important he goes out looking as he would have wished to look before all
this.’
Her agreement was immediate; her praise for my work fulsome. I took my father out
to the taxi and then told her I would ‘Just change out of my getting-father-into-the-showerand-getting-wet clothes.’
Mary Riddell was charm personified. She was eager to ask about my father’s
condition. She was sympathetic and sensitive; warm and friendly. I told her what had
happened when I was eight and how the diagnosis six years before had helped me accept full
responsibility for looking after him. When I assumed that the interview had finished, she
asked me, as in passing, questions about my life; my feelings for the babies; relationships I
had had. I asked her about her own children. I chatted quite freely, although I could not see
its relevance to my father. I was surprised when she wanted to photograph the children. I told
her I did not want any newspapers to photograph them, but that she could copy one of my
pictures.
‘Do you want to see them?’ It seemed the polite thing to offer. She had come all the
way from London.
‘Oh, yes, if I may.’
I took her to the nursery. She approved of the look of the babies. They carried on
crawling over their toys, oblivious to the power a columnist wields.
Off she went to be followed by a writer from another tabloid. I had forgotten about her.
This one seemed particularly interested in the godparents. This was not such a friendly chat
over coffee. The questions were pointed; the questioner insistent. I told her I would not tell
her who they were. The interview was not long, but she wanted to wait for a photographer
and hung around for an hour or so while I got on with things.
This was when I thought that it was right just to tell the truth. I learned quickly that
the truth can be spun so far that it becomes something else entirely. That something else was
about to hit me like a physical blow.
It was an Irish radio programme on Friday 21 September that alerted me to what had
happened. It was my last day of media innocence. A charming female brogue had almost
persuaded me some days before to talk to Gerry Ryan on his phone-in show. She had spent
nearly half an hour telling me how wonderful what I had done was and that her 67-year-old
father had provided her with a 6-week-old sister.
‘No, it’s you women who are the lucky ones,’ I had said.
‘No, no!’ she assured me. ‘You men can father children whenever you want. Look at
Picasso, he was 87.’
‘Oh, yes, and have the press come back on me for creating orphans? No thanks.’
‘But you don’t have a biological timebomb inside you.’
On the Friday, the same voice rang to ask if I would do the following Tuesday—and
added ‘wasn’t it a dreadful article that woman wrote, accusing you of controlling the babies
like a business and even condemning you for getting cots and clothes in Mothercare? To be
sure, where else would you go for them?’ Well, maybe there was no ‘to be sure’, but it
sounded like it.
‘Why do people have to write such things? You were doing something so good.’
I was taken by surprise. I hadn’t seen any article. And then it dawned on me what had
happened. I cancelled arrangements with Irish Radio and drove to the newsagent.
Mary Riddell's article was cleverly written - and venomous. I could hardly recognise
myself. It was like being done over in the playground by a spiteful false friend who is sweet
to your face, but mealy-mouthed when your back is turned. My boys were spread across two
pages with horrible words all around them. ‘Made to order’, ‘Just bought three babies’, ‘How
can he think he’ll make a good father’, ‘Controversy’. This was a totally new experience.
Why would anyone want to do this to us? Nasty it certainly was. Nevertheless, it also had a
ludicrous side. Having adjusted to the shock, I tried to see it for the fictional imaginative
prose it was.
She clearly had a thing about cleanliness. My house was too clean. My tables were
unsmeared. It had escaped her needling eye that my little babies were not even at the
crawling stage, so how could they provide the smearing she thought so integral to a happy
family home?
And ‘he has even been to Mothercare for cots and clothes’ was there, as had faithfully
been relayed by the Irish Radio researcher. It was preceded by ‘He had organised his new life
as clinically as a corporate acquisition’. I laughed. Are fathers off-bounds at Mothercare? Or
was her implication that they should have slept in nappies on the floor for a while—a bit like
middle-management on a survival course perhaps—till I finally got round to finding an
acceptable shop?
The world of the tabloids is rooted in an idyllized golden-age ’50s when life was
simpler, gentler and had a fundamental honesty. Theirs is a world in which all suburbs are
leafy, all drives are gravelled and all families are nuclear. In this view single-parent families
are of course still anathema, rather than a fact of life for a large number of children raised in
this country. Fortunate and, therefore, untypical I may be, but it is with the same depth and
passion that all single parents feel that I love my children.
What for me was more unacceptable than the personal attack from someone who had
no idea who I was, was that my babies were being objectified: their existence just a pretext to
make cheap points. There was no way they could respond to this verbal lashing and I had
unwittingly been placed in a situation where I had not been able to protect them.
It isn’t easy to turn off the media. I received another call from the reporter of the tabloid
who had been so interested in the godparents. The article she wrote was a long time coming.
On 11 November, it appeared over two inside pages. Once again almost every ‘fact’ was
wrong. There was none of the rhetorical questioning of the Mail that had carried a certain
believability with it. This was pure fiction. Here readers were instructed how to react to this
‘tycoon’. The babies were to be christened in their ‘costly gowns’ – which I bought from
ebay for £15 each. The Mail’s Mothercare clothing had been promoted to ‘designer-label
clothes’. A photo-shoot was described at which ‘Ian was reluctant to kiss or cuddle the boys...
and seemed uncertain how to hold them.’ Nonsense! Kissing and cuddling was what I did
best. In fact, no photo-shot had happened and the picture that adorned the article was one of
my own copied from the Mail. Such are the ways of some of the press. It all just added to the
remarkable picture the writer was painting. Readers were invited to contact a ‘Triplet
Hotline’ at the paper with their views. My poised fingers twitched with anticipation at doing
just that. What was the point? I had already been hung out to dry.
David Mellor, former MP and Minister fallen from grace because of a sex scandal,
weighed in as well in his ‘Man of the People’ column, decrying ‘designer babies for spoilt
millionaires’. By that time, my father was unable to do anything for himself. From washing
and shaving him to doing up his buttons to wiping his bottom and changing his incontinence
pad while at the same time helping feed and change the babies, ‘spoilt’ was not an adjective
that sprang to my mind. Nanny ribbed me without mercy and made me do the washing up.
Even tycoons have to do the chores sometimes.
FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES
I had suddenly become a public figure. Yet my fifteen minutes of fame were unwanted.
It was an odd feeling. I had never thought about anonymity before. Took it for granted. Had
never valued it. But I did now. Mary Riddell had presented me for judgement by the British
public. Other newspapers had carried the story almost verbatim over much of the Englishspeaking world. There I was: there were my sons: all of us had become public property. Just a
story. Yet I was the same person and my children were innocent little babies. They, too, were
being presented—for what? Entertainment? Pity? They were more than a diversion. They
were real little people who deserved better. We were private people no longer.
Who could have done this to us? The factual material in the original Mail article could
only have come from America. No one in the UK knew the name of my American lawyer.
Only half a dozen people there knew this and all of these were bound by ethical codes of
confidentiality. Someone in America had made money out of this at our expense. I would
love to know who. My not knowing, sadly, has served to cloud my relationships there.
I thought people might believe what had been written about us. In this, too, I was
wrong. In the middle of the media attention came personal messages from people I had never
met. The British public were great. I received only wonderful letters. A woman e-mailed me
her photo with her toddler by her side. Another sent prayers, followed by a large parcel
containing three hefty storybooks, twelve cassettes and a perfumed purple card.
Messages came from across the world. ‘Kerry’ in Australia wrote to me at ‘Beverley
Hills’, Newbury, England (the press had told its readers this is what the locals call the area I
live in). At least the Post Office knew where it was. She told me: ‘I would have patted you on
the back for having the courage to do what you did. I have four beautiful children and believe
you will have many, many smiles. Thank you for reminding me how lucky I am.
Congratulations on doing something as beautiful and creative as fathering your boys.’
Another came from South Africa: ‘I have just finished reading about you in one of our
local weekly magazines and I feel completely and utterly compelled to tell you how I feel.
Your story is one of remarkable courage and initiative, and I salute you for your decision to
have your sons come into the world in the manner that you did. I feel uplifted and inspired by
your bravery and your initiative.’
The Mail forwarded one: ‘I have spent most of today wondering if I should write this
letter. I am not even sure if it will be sent it on to you. However, I just want to say how
moved I was by your feature in yesterday’s paper. To be honest, I did read the article initially
with some cynicism but just looking at the photo made me realise what a wonderful decision
you made and how genuine you must be, not only in looking after your new sons but your
father, too.’
Another, from Eire, passed on by GMTV ended ‘You made my day.’ That one made
mine.
Maybe after a while I would send them all a note. For the moment, I was smarting
from having been made aware so brutally of the difference between appearance and reality. I
saw ‘journalist’ behind every approach.
I took a rain check on the several lunch invitations that came by e-mail, phone and
letter. A rain-checked caller phoned me again while I was working late at night. My reaction
revealed in every way how I felt.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t deal with anything new and don’t want to meet anyone I don’t
know. I’m trying to get my life back together and feel it’s been intruded on enough.’
‘But I want to be a plus, not a minus.’
All I could see was a complication and a nuisance. I was getting as tetchy as Ms
Riddell's article maintained.
‘I’m sorry, I just need to have some quiet, so I’m going to wish you goodnight.’
I replaced the receiver. It rang again.
‘I just wanted to write.’
‘Well, go ahead.’
‘I haven’t got an address.’
‘It’s in the book.’
A day before I would never have been so abrupt. I knew I was changing and that it
might not be for the better. She wrote a letter with a photograph and a number for me to call;
a number, she said, that only I knew. I feared a stalker. I started closing the blinds at night.
The following week, I had fewer calls. I declined Irish Radio and German and Danish
TV. The only prearranged encounter was with the BBC’s Religious Affairs department. I
thought they would be unlikely to give me a journalistic mugging. Two delightful ladies
came—Christine and Belinda. I was inordinately suspicious.
They wanted to assure me that the series they were making—’Life changing TV’—
was not confrontational, was concerned with the moral and ethical issues that guided people
in choices they made in life and that it was to do with ordinary people in extraordinary
situations. It was a phrase Desmond Wilcox had used.
They also assured me that the material would be handled with sensitivity and that the
object was to get people to tell in their own words about the choices they had made and why
they had made them. The viewing audience would be left to make up their own minds on the
points raised. The only point that seemed to me to be an issue was personality.
‘We would like you as a person to come through, so the audience can gain an
impression of you through your interests.’
‘Such as if I collect stamps?’ That was not what they meant, of course, but through it I
might understand what they were after.
I had never had to justify myself or create an impression before. Carer, organiser,
teacher, postman, bookkeeper, father. I’m not sure I really have much idea where the ‘me’
part of me fits into all this. I was quite serious-minded and had a developed sense of
responsibility; an awareness of right and wrong.
This was exactly, the ladies said, what they wanted. This would give the audience a
sense of who I was as a person. The stamp collection need not be revealed. Here was the real
me, for better or worse. The two ladies left the decision with me.
Before the shock of the previous week, I would have loved to do the programme.
Now, the last thing I wanted was to have a repeat performance. With them, I felt I was among
friends, but that feeling was coming from a couple of complete strangers.
The letters continued to arrive. All were positive. Most wanted to meet me and have
something to do with my family. I suppose ‘you look nice’ and ‘you seem to be a nice, brave,
admirable person’ should be quite flattering. Some appeared innocuous: ‘Your story
impressed me so much. I would be thrilled if you would keep me informed of your progress.’
One was tempting: ‘I would LOVE to be granny to your boys. I want to cuddle them
and nurture them and say to you that I think what you have done is absolutely right. My own
grandmother was a source of unequalled love....’
For once, my response was positive. But I asked people in the media about the granny
and, sure enough, she was a freelance writer. I cancelled. The e-mailed response was rapid.
She had bought presents prior to her visit: ‘I’m thinking to send them to you with love and
the price tags on, then if you see fit you can reimburse me.’
I decided not to respond to anyone. No one seemed to be contacting me for our
benefit. They all wanted a piece of me and my family for one reason or another. How I
appreciated my life as it had been—just my family and me. What a pity the story had been
broken.
Often I would sit in the middle of the babies as they cooed and gurgled with their soft
toys and run my fingers over their faces marvelling at the softness of their skin and
wondering how anyone would want to disrupt their lives. They were so innocent and so
dependent on me. I had to be strong for them.
In the middle of all this, my father’s health took a turn for the worse. His heartbeat
was described by a doctor as ‘unsustainably slow’. It was the word ‘unsustainable’ that I had
to act on. He was in the North Hampshire Hospital the same day. The consultant was
informative. His heart was slowing and would, in a few months, stop.
Generally, they would fit a pacemaker under local anaesthetic. In my father’s case,
this was difficult as he would lash out at the surgeon. A general anaesthetic would kill him,
so it would have to be sedation. Even so, the procedure could go wrong and he might die.
Only if the quality of his life would be improved, would the consultant recommend the
operation.
I deliberated. He had become immobile, needing both arms held to be able to walk.
His speech had become garbled. A slowing down of the flow of blood to the brain could, I
was told, increase confusion and physical disability. Maybe this was a cause of the
deterioration. The consultant and I decided to go ahead.
I took him to the Brompton Hospital in London and the operation was performed on
27 September 2001. When I collected him the next day, I had a different father. This one was
friendly, appreciative and capable of conversation. It was the supply of oxygenated blood to
the brain that had caused the transformation. I hoped the change would last.
In any case, he had survived the procedure. We drove back through the Friday
evening rush hour traffic in golden sunshine. As it was the second anniversary of my
mother’s death, we stopped at Chieveley churchyard to place flowers from the garden on her
grave before taking my father to a home for some days’ convalescence with trained staff on
hand. The driving had been a break from what was becoming a routine.
On my return, the cards from people wanting to meet me and e-mails from the media
were waiting to be opened. I replied to none of them.
But a critic there was—albeit not to my face. Nanny Claire came back from playgroup
one day in November to tell me what had happened. With some glee, she told me ‘We got
someone chucked out!’ ‘What happened?’ ‘A lady came in with her toddler, came up to us
and played with us. She asked me if we were the children from the paper. She told me she
completely disagreed with what this father had done and said she didn’t understand how I
could work for him. I told her that her opinion was her own affair and didn’t count with me.
She then disagreed with everything I was doing, like my giving the boys their juice and
bananas. The lady who runs the playgroup asked if this lady was hassling me. I said I didn’t
want the boys hearing what she was saying, even though they couldn’t understand. So the
lady in charge told the woman it was her prerogative to decide who came and who didn’t
come. She grabbed her child and left without comment to me. She was told never to come
back.’
And then I heard from the Home Office.
GROWING TOYS
'Can we have our buckets and spades and the trowel? We want to do gardening.'
Mindful of the presence of spring bulbs under the soil, I pointed them in the direction of
the barren area under their playhouse. A friend had presented them with garden tools for
their birthday and they were keen to try them out. They put odd twigs and dead leaves into
the ground to watch them sprout.
'And can we have some water for our plants, please, Daddy?'
'Take the watering can. You know where the outside tap is.'
How wonderful that they are all working together so well, I thought. I could see three
buckets, three spades and three little figures busily preparing the ground. I set to work on
lunch. No squabbles. The usual 'Dad-de-eee! Dad-de-eee! X poked me/took my toy/trod on
me' was conspicuous by its absence. Maybe they've realised the value of collaborative play.
Perhaps my admonitions and urgings that they would have more fun working with rather than
against each other are, at last, bearing fruit.
A small figure was lugging the watering can across the lawn. Some minutes later, the
same figure performed the same task. And again. All was quiet. The boys were crouched
over their work, absorbed in making their plants grow.
'Daddy! Come and see what we've planted.' The ground was waterlogged, the soil
banked up. Mud was smeared across their faces. They pointed proudly to a mound from
which a small arm emerged. I recognised the chubby fist of their Bob the Builder. Alongside
him the roof of a car was disappearing Psycho-style into the quagmire. A blackened teddy, a
ball and a box of crayons had not quite disappeared under the ground.
'We wanted to make our toys grow.'
BEING BRITISH
The Home Office wanted confirmation of what I had already told them and proved in
documents I had sent them. ‘Are you British? How did you acquire this nationality? Were
you born or adopted in the UK or were you registered or naturalised as a British Citizen in the
UK or were you born abroad and acquired your nationality by descent by virtue of your
father’s British Citizenship?’
I took this to be ‘How British are you? Are you quite British, British or very British?’ I
hoped that my birth certificate would tell that I was as British as could be, so I copied it and
sent it off. They also wanted to know that my name was entered on the children’s birth
certificates as their father. Odd as the Home Office had the birth certificates in their
possession.
The other burning question was about Tina’s marital status at the time of birth. Had
she been married or separated, I would have had to state the nationality of her husband. As
she had been ‘bifurcated’, I was able to state this. They required evidence. I wrote to her for a
copy of her divorce papers.
The letter finished with ‘given the area with which we are dealing it may take some
time before our enquiries can be completed.’
It still seemed quite simple to me. They are my children; Tina is not related to them;
here they are, here they stay.
Yet the law, I knew, was far more complex. What was unimaginable a few decades
before and certainly at the time many of the laws were formulated, had become a fact around
which it had to bend its head.
The QC I had consulted had pointed out the anomalies in my situation. He stated in
his opinion it ‘would seem to constitute clear discrimination on the grounds of sex’. But when
the 1981 British Nationality Act was passed, it was justified on the basis that ‘it was difficult
to prove paternity’ at the time.
Developments in modern technology and in particular DNA fingerprinting had since
made it a great deal easier to prove such paternity. But until Parliament updated the law, the
only challenge to it was via the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights on
the ‘right to respect for private and family life’ and the ‘prohibition of discrimination’.
This challenge of course was against a ruling that the boys wouldn’t receive
permanent leave to remain in the country, that is to say they would be extradited. The QC
opined that a challenge would only be successful in my case subject to there being ‘a female
relative resident in the household willing to look after the child and capable of doing so.’ My
only female relative was an aunt in her nineties living a hundred miles away, so this was
hardly practicable.
Curiously, for the gay couple, the decision had been made within a couple of months.
They had just breezed in. Their surrogate was, I gathered, married. Their children were
happily settled in this country.
Though undoubtedly my sons’ father, I seemed to be fair game—as I was to discover
on the ‘Esther’ programme.
‘It’s about whether dads can be mums,’ the driver told me on the way to the White
City for the recording.
Sitting next to me on the podium was a British surrogate, pregnant and well-versed in
media-handling. Next to her were two men casually dressed. One had been dropped into lone
fatherhood by bereavement; the other by divorce. They had coped brilliantly with the task
that had been thrust upon them.
Not for them were there any probing questions inviting them to justify their existence.
Some decades back it might have been different. One could only sympathise and admire.
Having just watched the previous, rather upbeat programme being recorded, I thought
I would try a casual approach. One of the audience, an agony aunt, launched the attack.
‘When one has a disabled child, one compensates. You have created disabled children. They
will have no idea of the interplay between men and women.’
She had decided that I would never meet anyone. A pity. I had hoped that I might.
Another followed up with ‘You cannot always have what you want. You have manipulated
events.’ A buttoned-up matron at the front, skirt clutched tight around her lest some
contagion might seep osmotically from me to her, considered I was unworthy to be on the
same podium as the other men and was in it for ‘self-aggrandisement’ as I had admitted to
being on the programme three or four times before. It seemed to make no difference that I
had been on the programme over several years on completely unrelated issues. There was no
stopping her.
Esther phoned me the following day. ‘I think I’m the only one who knows how
sensitive you are. You cover it up so well. That woman in the front was very cruel. I think
she’s ‘pro life’ or something. You could have said, “Do you know how hurtful what you have
said is?”’
‘Actually, I thought at the time, what I wanted to say was that she would feel much
better after a good rogering and that, had I not come on the show out of loyalty to you, I
wouldn’t have had to give people like her the time of day. But I suspect you would have
edited it out anyway.’
‘We have to cut some time, so I’ll see what we should edit out.’
There was my private life and my private persona and, by my very presence, there
was I inviting these people I would never see again to have a poke around in both.
Another woman in the audience had seemed to have taken a leaf out the Jeremy
Paxman charm handbook.
‘You don’t even know that you’ll be allowed to keep them, do you?’
I could think of better ways of spending a Wednesday afternoon.
‘I think these women saw you as a threat,’ Esther told me. ‘There you are proving you
don’t need a woman in your life. You can just get on with things. What you have never made
much of is what you do for your father.’
‘Of course not. I know how he would feel about how he is now. He would hate it and
he would hate everyone to know.’
I knew that she was saying it stopped people knowing what I am really like, but I felt
that the guard was what was holding me together.
CHAPTER
I realised that the next journalistic opportunity for the tabloids to use my children to
increase their circulation would be the christening. This was scheduled for 18 November
2001. I was attending Bible Classes in preparation for it. ‘Now—if you can—and don’t feel
put on the spot—but if you feel you can—and I shall quite understand if you cannot—but if
you feel you wish to share this with us—can you say in just two words what God means to
you?’ I had felt a christening to be appropriate in that it gave the boys something they could
embrace, or indeed, reject later. I had been christened and had done neither. In the presence
of so many of the faithful, those who not only believed , but knew the truth, I felt my lack of
conviction was turning into a rejection. Had my connection with their beatific vision
continued, I might have left the christening experience untouched. I am glad I continued.
‘Oh God (if there is a God) save me (if there is salvation.)’ has been my own
approach to religion, but the presence of godparents, albeit in a secular capacity, has been an
enrichment to the boys' lives.
The invitations had been dispatched. Replies were coming in. There would be more
than 100 guests and nine godparents.
A reporter whose story had not then appeared phoned to ask if she could come. ‘It’s a
pity that the story wasn’t in the paper,’ she said jauntily, expecting me to agree that it was a
shame that my private life had not been blazoned across the nation’s breakfast tables yet
again. Sensing my reaction in my silence, she continued, ‘The christening is coming up and
this means we can approach the story from this angle. We would like to be there to take
photographs and run the story.’
I was on my best behaviour. ‘Thank you for asking, but, no, I shall decline.’ I also
resisted the offer to reconsider my decision.
Unversed as I was then in the ways of the newspaper business, it came as a surprise to
find that the taxi driver who took my father to day care had been offered £500 by the same
reporter to tell her the date of the christening. There might be uninvited guests. £500 for a
date that had already been published in a tabloid and a venue that had been stated in the local
rag.
How much would they offer for a tasty piece of gossip? How much for a fabricated
allegation? A few days later I discovered that the price for this was £15,000. That was what
the taxi driver told me the reporter had offered him for anything vaguely sordid.
The local newspaper phoned wanting to take a photo at the christening, telling me
Church office had told them the BBC would be there. That was news to me. It was news to
the Church office. I declined this offer, too, and apologised in advance to the two couples
whose babies were to be christened at the same service.
The christening was a real event. We had a godparents’ dinner the night before at The
Dew Pond, a beautiful little restaurant near Watership Down. Everyone stayed in a small
guest house in Newbury. Ian and his little daughter, Alice ‘aged 6½’ as she proudly
announced, stayed in my house. After the meal, we sat where we had sat two years before and
reminisced on all that had happened in the meantime.
My father’s taxi driver took the boys and me to the church in his Mercedes. Esther
had just arrived at my house and followed with Nanny Sophie and Ian. The Mercedes drove
onto the paved entrance to St Nicolas’ Church. A flash bulb exploded. Esther helped get the
babies out of the car. Another flash.
A bevy of photographers was waiting outside the church gate. Jonathan Aitken, the
disgraced former government minister who was reading for a degree in Theology at Oxford,
had just finished taking a service there and I wondered if they were for him. No such luck.
One of the godparents told me they had ignored Aitken and only became animated when the
babies arrived. ‘Bet it’s the first time you’ve been upstaged by a baby,’ he had said to Mr
Aitken.
‘Give them what they want and they’ll go away’, Esther said.
She, Sophie and I took a baby each and stood in front of the side door.
‘Face the front!’ shouted the snappers. ‘Turn the babies to us.’
‘Keep smiling’ was Esther’s instruction.
The dark interior of the church was illuminated by a succession of bursts of light. It
was incongruous and I was incredulous, embarrassed to have been the cause of such a
commotion. We walked into the cool, dark quiescence of the building. All eyes turned to us.
I recognized from Bible Class the two other families whose babies were to be baptised
and greeted them and those friends I could pick out in the crowd. We walked to the front pew
and sat, the babies in their silky robes and hats, each with a bib, just in case. The service
began. It was calm and ordered. We sang the hymns, said the prayers and listened while the
names of the parents whose children were to be baptised were called out. Two couples and a
single name—mine. We walked to the back of the church where the font was. I passed each
baby to the vicar. Water was liberally sloshed over each head. Must have been warmed. None
of the babies made a sound. Candles were given; certificates were handed out.
A message was whispered to me: ‘They’re at the side. Best if you get out at the back.’
It was no longer a nice family christening. I was in the role of escapee. I left quickly, helped
put the babies into the back of the car and we drove out. Photographers ran after the car,
flashing through the back window. Those at the gate flashed through the windscreen.
I wondered if there would be press outside the house. Fortunately not. They came
later, requesting comment. A guest passed the message down the drive. No comment.
A reporter came to the door asking for names. He was polite and well-spoken. Before
all this, I would never have dreamed of such an abrupt reaction, but now I said ‘I won’t talk
to you. Please leave.’ Another phoned. I said ‘It’s been a wonderful day and the babies have
been great. Now make something of that.’
Back to my 150+ guests. Yes, it had indeed been wonderful and the babies had been
great. It took us two full days to open all the presents. Such thought had gone into them.
Many had ‘three’ as a theme. My chiropodist had created a silver shape that fitted together
into a pattern of three. Three alarm clocks incorporated within three silver cars reflected my
own interests. Three books that were so huge the babies could crawl over them and create
their own story; one that folded into a play pen with the book round the perimeter. What
wonderful friends I had.
*
That Christmas I received good wishes from the Home Office. These came at the end of
a letter rejecting the boys’ US birth certificates and requesting the medical evidence leading
to their being issued. The ‘evidence’ was, of course, the mother’s say-so. But the Home
Office already had the letter from the IVF clinic. Did they assume the IVF clinic was making
it up?
The official asked for an immediate response. He got one. I promptly faxed him on
New Year’s Eve telling him that he already had the evidence. But I also asked whether a
DNA test would settle the issue once and for all.
Rather than wait the three months that was becoming the norm for a response, I went
ahead and contacted a few agencies. One of them sent out a ‘Private and Confidential’ letter
with ‘Paternity Testing’ clearly visible under the address in the window envelope.
The one I chose, however, was a branch of the Home Office. It would take 4-6 weeks,
but at least there would be proof.
The letter had also said ‘We are considering how the Immigration Rules might apply
to your case as they can allow the admission of children where it can be established that the
surrogate ‘parent’ is also their biological parent.’
I did not see myself as a quote-unquote ‘parent’ or, indeed, a ‘surrogate’ but, if this
was the way to get settlement, I would shell out my £600 and have a pin stuck in my finger.
Our GP, splendidly supportive, agreed to carry out the test and the kit was sent to him.
He came to our house in early January 2002 armed with plastic containers, envelopes and a
wad of forms. Just a jab for me and a swab for each of the boys, I thought. Three hours later,
he had completed the last of the forms and enveloped up the samples. The procedure had
been so surrounded by safeguards that I was surprised the presence of a neutral observer had
not been insisted on.
‘What do I owe you?’
The doctor turned his palms skywards. ‘How do you quantify this? Have it as a
belated christening present.’ It was certainly the most unusual present one could imagine. I
accepted with gratitude this very kind gesture.
Six weeks later, on 27 February 2002, the results came back. They made odd reading
for one unversed in biochemistry.
They explained if, prior to the DNA evidence, there was believed to be an evens
chance of paternity, then the DNA findings would change this to odds of 380,000 to 1 for
Piers, 920,000 to 1 for lan and 43,000 to 1 for Lars. This would result in a probability of
paternity of 99.99% for each of the children.
99.99%—enough, I was sure, to send someone to prison for life. I hoped it would be
enough for the Home Office. The original of the results was in the post by recorded delivery
within an hour of my receiving it.
***
I was glad I had gone ahead and undertaken the DNA test.
Three months after my letter of 31 December asking if this would resolve everything,
I had still received no reply from the Home Office. Clearly they had no interest in resolving
the issue with any speed. For all they cared, I could be kept dangling.
I threw caution aside.
‘Indefinite leave to remain’ was what I had applied for as a first step. I had sent off
the results and was waiting. Nevertheless, ‘leave’ was permission, not a right. I decided use
the 99.99% to apply for Citizenship for the boys. I downloaded the appropriate forms from
the internet.
The Citizenship rules could not have been clearer: ‘If the child is illegitimate, parent
means the mother’. My letter accompanying the application forms and my cheque for
£120.00 contained this paragraph: ‘If this application is to be rejected on the basis that I am
not the parent because I am not the mother of these illegitimate children, please advise by
return so I can pursue a case under Article 14 of Human Rights legislation preventing
discrimination on the grounds of gender.’
Everything was cc-ed to David Rendel MP. His response was refreshingly
unambiguous. ‘I, for one, feel it would be utterly absurd were you to be turned down.’
THREE BRITISH BOYS
The really important developments seemed to happen when I was in the kitchen. While I
was in the middle of preparations for a chicken chasseur on Tuesday 12 March, Nicky
phoned from David Rendel’s office.
‘We’ve been on the phone to the Home Office and they’ve told us that you’ll hear
from them in a few days. They’ve been given indefinite leave to remain.’ Just like that.
After the best part of a year, without preamble, the uncertainty was over.
‘You might have told me to sit down first.’ was my instant reaction. My second was
to let a tear trickle. My third was to put a bottle of champagne in the fridge. Claire and the
babies were out with the triplet buggy, due back any moment. I was dying to share this
moment with them.
'We've got it!' So convinced was I that the essential uncertainty of the babies' continuing
stay in the UK must be uppermost in everyone's mind, that I assumed no need to clarify what
it was we had got. 'Leave to Remain. They can stay!'
I picked them up and whirled them round. They must have wondered what had come
over their Daddy. We clinked glasses. The first battle had been won. They could stay. I had
never doubted it, but now it was Citizenship that I had set my sights on.
I decided I would tell no one else until I had given the Citizenship Branch of the
Home Office the chance to refuse, grant or, at least, acknowledge. I wrote that day to tell
them that the boys had been given indefinite leave to remain and ask again for Citizenship.
Surely, they had no option. If the 99.99% is sufficient proof for settlement, it must be
sufficient for Citizenship. For the first time I felt the ground become solid.
In May, I was in a shop when my mobile rang. It was David Rendel’s secretary telling
me the Home Office had granted Citizenship.
I savoured victory for a few moments. My little ones were now as British as could be.
More cuddles and kisses. Another bottle of Moet went into the fridge and an application for
passports into the postbox. These arrived almost by return.
In my heart of hearts, I had known this must happen, known that common sense
would prevail, known that this was a precedent that needed to be set. No battles; no doubt. I
was now officially a Daddy. These little ones were mine. Really mine. The nagging thought
that bureaucracy could somewhow take them away could be abandoned.
But I remained a carer for my father. That aspect of our lives—almost unremarked on
by the press for its mundanity, but of huge import to my family—continued without
remission. Had I not already written about the time when none of this was certain, I would
never have done so and expunged it from my mind. That part of the past was more painful
that anything before or since. From that point on, writing my book became a passion. I
wanted this to be an uplifting story of hope over bureaucracy.
ACCIDENT
It’s a strange word, ‘carer’. One is caring. I care for my children. That’s good and
positive. But the nominalisation into ‘carer’ is a task, a job, for some a life sentence. It is
unrelenting, often unrewarding and can take your life away. I am not sure when I realised that
is what I had become. It had crept up on me over the years.
For the first two years of their life, my children saw me physically manoeuvre and
sometimes half-carry my father from his bedroom along the landing to the bathroom and steer
him back again. I would change him, wash him, shave him and dress him while Claire got the
boys ready for the day.
Sometimes, they would hear him sing snatches from ‘West Side Story’ and
‘Carousel’; sometimes hear him telling me to ‘bugger off you bastard’ with a raised fist.
Over the years, his dependency had become almost total. A few years back I would
not have dreamed that I would be wiping his bottom. Now I did not give it a second thought.
There was no embarrassment on his part. He had gone far beyond this point. There
was nothing, no matter how intimate, that I was not doing for him. It had simply become my
life. When there was no nanny in the house – and these times became more frequent as I
rfealised that the ‘authorities’ had no interest in me - I would get the boys up, change them,
wash them, dress them and put their toys in with them. I would then go to my father's room
and do exactly the same for him, except that there was no need for toys. He would simply
walk around looking for an escape. I prepared meals for everyone that would be easily
digested. Neither the babies nor my father had many teeth. In between all this, in grabbed
moments, and far into the night, I would run my business. 'My best friend, the Bosch,' I
would say when I put yet another load into the washing machine. Maybe I was being unfair
to my computer.
My father was always clean and tidy. When he went to day care, his reports testified
to how well-presented he was. He had always prided himself on a smart appearance. It was
important for me that he looked the part. From a distance, no one would have known there
was anything wrong. That is how I would like it to be if anything happened to me.
Some days were better than others, but it was an inevitable decline, not a gettingbetter-situation. I had to pluck order from chaos, and it was slowly getting worse.
‘You’re the jam in the sandwich’ one of my friends had remarked at that time. I felt
like jam—pressed between the insistent demands of the very young and the equally
vociferous needs of the very old. There was neither the time nor the energy for any sense of
self.
'When this is all over, you won't figure out how you managed,' the District Nurse told
me. She was right. I imagine large amounts of adrenaline were pumping. Each day had to be
structured so that I could combine my various roles. Each day I had an hour or sometimes
two of respite. A local agency sent sitters for an hour or two each evening. Only the really
dedicated and talented returned. There was none better than Maggie. She would sing music
hall songs from his era as she waltzed him round the hall. She held his hand, stroked his
cheek and relished his wry smile. Of the three or four regulars, she was the one he loved.
Putting him to bed after an evening with her was a dream, such was the calm she brought
him. ‘I’m a dying old man’, he would repeat. ‘Aren’t we all, John?’ she would respond. The
truth was closer than we could have imagined. The day after she said this, in a terrible irony,
she died suddenly aged just 48.
Physically amazingly healthy and robust, I could see my father outlasting us all.
Maggie had been supportive before the boys were born and loved them from the moment she
saw them. I wish she could have seen them grow up. She was tearful when the story was
broken to the newspapers. ‘They’ve spoiled it. They always do, these rags. It was so lovely
before they started in on you.’
When I read to the boys from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, their christening present from
her, about how love makes you real, I show them the post-it note she attached to the front
page—’May you have much love in your lives’—and tell them this is a very special message
from a remarkable lady.
*
On one particularly bright spring morning, in an instant, I was to realise fully the
value of everything I had when I so nearly lost it all. On that day the boys had left early for a
trip out with their Nanny and her friends. I had agreed to this with some reluctance. Nanny
Claire had not long passed her driving test. The day had started like any other. I had breakfast
with the boys and read to them from ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ afterwards.
The planned trip had been presented to me just that morning as a fait accompli. Rather
than spoil everyone’s arrangements, I allowed her to take the boys. ‘We’ll be in convoy, so
it’ll be safe,’ she had told me. She fastened the seats into her white Astra and I waved the
boys goodbye.
My day with my father was beginning. When I had put him to bed that night, I had
turned him to the wall but, as happened most nights, he had slipped backwards onto the
mattress that I had left for a soft-landing. By this time, I was sleeping like a cat, alert to the
slightest sound. I glanced at the green digits on my clock. It generally happened between two
and three. This night the display read 2.22. By using both arms and a leg, I could pivot on the
other knee and swivel him back to bed. I made up a story in a quiet voice to reassure him that
all was well and sat until I heard rhythmic breathing. By half past three, I was back in bed
and knew I would be zonked for the next day. It was becoming the norm. As long as I
followed my regular pattern, though, I knew I would be able to cope.
That day was to be different. I had managed to get my father into the shower when the
telephone rang.
I propped him against the wall so he would not fall and ran to answer it. The voice at
the end of the line was tremulous; there were children’s cries in the background. It was one of
the other nannies.
‘Ian? Look, there’s been an accident.’
I could hear the wail of what the children would thereafter call a ‘dee-dah car’ in the
background.
‘There’s been an accident. She’s turned the car over. The ambulance is on its way.’
The sound of running water reminded me that I had left my father alone. I was to-thepoint.
‘Anyone dead?’
‘No. They’re just screaming.’
‘I’ll call you back.’
Heart pounding, I extricated my father, dried him and sat him on his bed.
‘I’ll be back in a minute to dress you.’
I dialled 1471 and called back.
‘They’re OK. Just a few cuts. They’re being taken to Winchester Hospital.’
I phoned round to see if someone could sit with my father for the time being. That
arranged, heart in mouth, I drove down the A34.
‘I’m so sorry!’ Claire was in floods and the room was filled with the screams of three
15 month-old babies. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She was distraught. There was no point in recrimination.
‘Well, you hardly meant to do it.’
The doctors had removed Piers’ and Ian’s clothes and I could see that there were
bruises from the seat belts. Nothing more serious. Lars was bleeding from the head. Chunks
of glass scrunched onto the floor as each layer of his clothing was removed. The doctor was
concerned about internal injuries as he was so distressed. I took his tiny, writhing, howling
frame in my arms.
He fell silent. In that instant, for the first time I fully understood what it was to be a
parent. Even though I was surrounded by children and adults in tears, blood and glass, the
moment was magical.
Thinking about it afterwards, this was the point at which I gained the confidence of
knowing that these were my children, that they looked to me, that I was their Daddy and the
most important person in their world. And I knew that I loved them more than I had ever
loved anyone.
My eyes met Lars’s and filled. I knew I had to be strong, be organised, cope with all
the responsibilities. Both he and I knew that he was safe.
This was not the time for tears. I handed Lars back to the doctor.
‘Now we can be pretty sure they’re just superficial flesh wounds. Glad you’re here,’
he said.
Back to reality. There were practical issues. I turned to Claire.
‘Did you manage to bring the child seats with you? I can’t get the children out of here
without them’
‘No. The police wouldn’t let me. They said they it would be dangerous to use them
again.’
I knew no shops in Winchester, but assumed that there would be an Argos and that it
would have the brand that we had been using. I phoned them and reserved the only three in
stock. Rather than negotiate the one-way system, I called a taxi, collected the seats and drove
the children home. Later that day, Claire came back with the seats she had removed from
what was left of her car. She told me her rear wheel had caught a grass bank on the main
A343 road between Andover and Newbury at 60 miles an hour. Out-of-control, the car had
skidded across the opposite carriageway. Luckily nothing was coming in that direction. It had
hit the bank and turned over. She handed me the remains of the children’s seats. One had
been broken in half by the impact. The other two were soaked and reeked of petrol. In a
parallel universe, I might be alone right now.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Amid the chaos that three tiny children can create for each other and for their parent,
there are hilarious moments. Most of these are the non sequiturs and incongruities absent
from adult conversation. One of the first was, ‘I’ve got tummy ache in my eye.’
Looking out of the streaked nursery window, unable to go out, I said, ‘It’s pouring
down.’ ‘Yes, it’s raining, too’, said Lars.
When the children became used to being read stories, Lars would grab the ‘brag book’
that Tina had sent me full of photographs of them during their first week of life.
‘Can you read this one?’ he would ask earnestly.
I took the book upstairs.
‘Once upon a time there were three small boys. Their names were Piers, Ian and Lars.
They lived with their Daddy. Although they loved each other very much, they would always
squabble. When Piers picked up a toy, Ian and Lars immediately wanted to play with it, too.’
Many is the story that has emanated out of thin air while holding that book. Later,
after I had told them what it contained, his request changed to: ‘Read “When We Was Born”,
please, Daddy’.
In their first month at nursery school, I wondered what on earth they were doing
including political figures in their songs. ‘Alistair Campbell has one hump’ came from the
back of the car as I drove them home. The next day, not only did he have one hump, but he
also had two. The following day, he had three humps as well. I sang it back to them.
‘Alistair Campbell has one hump. Alistair Campbell has two humps.’
‘No! It’s Alistair Campbell!’
‘That’s what Daddy said!’
It was only when I asked one of the nursery staff, that I was told it was ‘Alice the
Camel’ who had the hump.
When they came home from school, I would say, ‘Drink up your milk and then you’ll
get a chocolate egg.’
‘Don’t want milk.’
‘If you don’t drink it, you’ll get none.’
Ian looked at me, relieved. Here was something he could get without having to drink
milk.
‘I want none! I want none!’
When they returned to nursery school having been away with a tummy bug, I told the
boss lady at nursery school that their stools were now formed.
‘And how are you?’ she enquired solicitously.
‘Formed, too, thanks’ was the automatic reply.
And there are the moments that are only funny in retrospect. When you are only two,
hysterical screaming can be a dropped toy or something of more significance.
‘What’s the matter with Ian?’
‘I think he’s yelling because you’re shutting his finger in the door.’
The young nursery assistant was distraught. One of her colleagues plunged the
throbbing finger into cold water.
‘Never mind, you didn’t mean it.’
After a wakeful night, I told their favourite teacher that Ian has been up much of the
night because his little finger still hurt from being caught in the door
‘Oh, which one is that?’ she asked absently.
‘The one that’s red, swollen and painful. The one he’s waving about.’
While I was thinking about all the various titles a parent has, I realised I had lost
mine. I no longer had my name. Having called myself ‘Daddy’ to the children, I found myself
using this name first to the cats, then to myself and, eventually, occasionally to grown-ups in
general conversation. I taught the boys their second names and they proudly stressed them.
‘I’m Piers Thomas Mucklejohn.’
‘Who are you, Ian?’
‘Ian Aidan Mucklejohn.’
‘And. Lars, who are you?’
‘I’m Lars Conrad Mucklejohn.’
‘And,’ pointing to myself, ‘who’s this?’
The response was instant.
‘Daddy Mucklejohn.’
‘Doesn’t Daddy have another name?’
Again instantly.
‘Mucklejohn.’
I thought I wouldn’t complicate matters. My sons had no idea what my name was. I
would be ‘Daddy Mucklejohn’ for the foreseeable future.
When I had been a fully-functioning parent for a while and had more than a passing idea
what it entailed, I found myself sensitive to perceived snubs.
While no one made any critical comments to my face, a friend told me what her
mother had said when she told her she was going to visit us. ‘Oh, has he still got them then?’
That the statement that had precipitated the question had contained the answer within it made
me wonder why it had been asked—and why it had been asked with such casual indifference.
Had she not been in her nineties, my father’s sister’s comments would have stung,
too. With failing sight, widowed and childless, living on the other side of London, she had
remained in telephone contact with my father. In the later years, she told me it distressed her
too much to hear his voice, so I kept her informed of his well-being and told her about the
children. One call coincided with a piece in the papers.
‘The neighbours told me they’ve seen you in the press again dragging the family
name through the mud. But you never really were one of the family were you? Your mother
saw to that, taking you off to the country.’
That had been a long time brewing.
‘I suppose you won’t want to phone me again.’
‘I’ll keep you posted about my father.’
I took him to see her, but she asked me not to bring him back. After his death, I took
the boys to see her and she phoned me afterwards to say how sweet they were. When she died
in 2004, there were only two relatives—a niece and a nephew—my cousin and me. My
cousin inherited half a million pounds worth of house and contents. I was left a wooden door
stop in the shape of a piece of cheese topped by a mouse that little Ian had enjoyed playing
with. I never collected it.
My father would have been shaken. My mother would have considered her true-toform.
Children pick up quickly on parental quirks and adopt them as their own. With my own
background as an English graduate, it came as second nature to introduce my children to
poetry at an early stage. I went straight into assonance, alliteration and metre. Out came the
more than slightly foxed copy of the 1939 Oxford Book of English Verse that my father had
read to me as a child and from whence came my love of words.
For most children, ‘Q’ is for ‘Queen’, but for the boys, ‘Q’ is for ‘Quinquireme’. My
arm swung gently as if holding an oar as I read ‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.’
They were captivated by the rich, full vowels and sibilants; words that brought on
salivation by their very voluptuousness. My hand made soft round movements to simulate
rippling waves as I continued,
‘Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by
the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and
cinnamon, and, pausing to let the richness of the sounds take effect, gold moidores.’
Their eyes widened. Then the tempo raced with staccato syllables spitting out at
speed. The boys giggled and clapped their hands in surprise and delight at the change. ‘Dirty
British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March
days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin
trays.’ By the end, they were laughing out of control. ‘Read ‘Queen of Nivea’!’ is the
constant refrain at bedtime.
John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’ would pave the way for other linguistic delights. One
reading of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies was enough to consign the large, colourful
book that began ‘A is for Apple’ to the back of the cupboard. For the boys ‘A is for Amy,
who fell down the stairs; B is for Basil, assaulted by bears; C is for Clara, who wasted away;
D is for Desmond, thrown out of a sleigh’.
SCHOOL
In 2001 I wrote in my diary:- ‘Long-held assumptions disappeared as well. On the day
they were born, down went their names on the list of a nice private prep school some miles
away in the countryside. I had not dared tempt providence by doing it earlier.
The application form asked which public school they would be going to. A tiny
warning bell rang. I had no idea what my children would be like, so how could I answer that
question? It was to be a few years before I listened properly to that bell. Did I really want
these three little boys of mine to have friends scattered across the south of England? They
should have friends in the houses near where we live.
I visited all the local infant schools. Their grounds did not extend as far as the eye
could see and the classes were certainly larger, but all the uniformed children were
purposefully engaged in one activity or another, the staff had superb control and the head
teachers were clearly committed. I was impressed. This was the local community. This was
what I wanted my sons to be part of, not the cocooned, rarefied environment of a small world
to which I had become accustomed, inhabited by tiny women wearing alice bands, their huge
and intimidating four-wheel drives disgorging Hugos to relate with identical Hugos and, in
the fullness of time, to create their own Hugos.
I wanted them to feel an affinity with their town, not a company, however charitable;
however limited by guarantee.
After so many years connected with private schools in one way or another, I had
overlooked how divisive they could be. I was lucky to have such good state schools locally
and no competing secondary private school to cream off those talented youngsters whose
parents could pay the bill. I decided I would be proud to have my children in the state system
and encourage them to contribute to its excellence.‘
Would it had been possible. Reality and political correctness intervened. Within two
terms I found myself in tears of frustration, not at the teachers or their methods, but at the
inflexible constrictions of a system that went against nature.
GETTING READY
‘Rising fives’ are due to go to school in the UK which is two years before much of
continental Europe. I hoped I would see this as a big step forward for them. I was still in my
honeymoon period with the state education system and looking forward to their making
friends in the community as I had all those decades ago. Just as I found I was becoming my
mother in looking after my children, I assumed I would play the role she had played in
overseeing the school experience from afar and entrusting its mechanics to the experts. I had
reckoned without political correctness.
‘What’s for breakfast?’ Lars was polishing the basin in the bathroom. Today was one of
the days he would do ‘all the work’. Some days he would only do some, because he had ‘too
much to do’.
‘Maybe toast,’ I said, absent-mindedly. ‘No, you won’t be downstairs in time. It could
be cereal this morning.’
‘I’m allergic to toast,’ he mentioned as he passed from nursery to en-suite.
‘Now where did you get this from? I’ve told you that this family doesn’t get ill. We
eat sensibly, use our feet and keep healthy. You’ve seen all your friends take time off school
and most of the staff at nursery have been away sometime or other. But not you and your
brothers. And when was the last time Daddy was ill? Never. You’re very healthy.’ Realising I
had wandered off at a tangent, I readdressed the question. ‘Who’s been talking to you about
allergies? We don’t have them. They’re for other people.’
‘And I’m allergic to cereal – and milk,’ he added. ‘And everything.’
‘Well you’re not. I’ll have to have a word with your teacher about these ideas. I’ll
hear no more about it. Now look, you’ve cleaned the basin before doing your teeth. Get your
toothbrush out and kill all the bacteria. They’re laughing at you. Ha Ha, they’re saying, we
can play on your teeth. We can just slide up and down them. I think I can hear them now.
That’s the way. I can hear them yelling now. Brush with vigour and they’ll all be dead.’
It seemed to work. Drying between the toes was designed to prevent the bacteria
eating the skin there. Shampooing the hair in the shower was a ‘cootie egg-hunt’. The more
graphic the need for the ablution, the more energetic the application.
'Daddy,' Piers was sitting on the stool in the bathroom that my parents had bought from
Heals in the 1930s. He wriggled uncomfortably on its cork seat suspended over an art deco
chrome frame. 'Dad.' He was looking for a form of words and squirmed as his brain chose
and discarded and chose again. 'Da-ad. I think I wee-ed out one of my sons today. It was a
seed that came out in my wee at school. I know it. I saw it. It just came out. I couldn't stop
it.'
He frowned, then brightened.
'How many seeds have I got?'
'Millions, Piers.'
'Oh, no, dad. That means that I can have thousands of children, well hundreds. What am I
going to do with them?'
'It all depends on the number of eggs they fertilise and there are far fewer eggs than there are
seeds.'
'How many seeds did you use to make us, Daddy?'
'Just three out of millions.'
'They must be very small.'
In time, I found I could get all three from sleeping, through showering, toothbrushing,
dressing, room tidying, all breakfasted and walked to school in an hour and a quarter.
This particular day had started early. A distant voice was chanting, 'It's too dark. It's too
dark.'
I opened the bedroom door. A small figure in blue-striped pyjamas, Pilchard the cat
tucked under one arm, head bowed in the knowledge that a wrong was being done, shifted
from foot to foot. 'It's too-ooo dark, daddy.'
'What do you expect at half past three in the morning? Come on, little one, give me your
hand. It's bitterly cold.'
'But why do you turn the light out before it's good morning time? It makes it too dark
and I can't see.'
Toying briefly with the idea of a discussion about the merits of energy saving by turning
lights off, I decided to retain the vestiges of sleep still clinging to me and walked Ian back to
his bed with half-closed eyes.
'Here you are darling and here you stay.'
'But, Daddy, it's still too dark.'
'And it'll remain so. If you have a dry night, there'll be a chocolate for you in the
morning. If you wake Daddy again, there won't. OK?'
'OK, Daddy.'
The following morning three white shirts and three blue tops with gold insignia were
pulled over tousled heads. Three pairs of grey trousers were pulled over bottoms. Having
extricated and rotated one back-to-front white shirt from under a blue top and sorted out a
back-to-front pair of grey trousers, we were ready to leave.
'Now you've finished your cornflakes, put your long-sleeved top on, Ian'.
En route to the top of the head, the clean and folded garment removed the customary
milk moustache.
'But I want to hold your hand properly.'
The hand was already grasped by another. I offered a thumb
'Naaaah. I don't want that. I want your hand.'
'Look, I haven't got another full hand.' My mind flailed. 'Take daddy's leg.'
A grotesque three-legged race of four people lurched down the road as the time ticked by
to the start of the school day.
'My hands are cold. I want my gloves on. No, not like that, I've got too many fingers.'
'I've got bogies. I want a tissue.'
Now gloved, nose-wiped and with legs freed by the promise of a hand after crossing the
road, we moved purposefully towards the heart-stopping part of our morning walk - the main
road. The previous day, Lars and Piers holding my hands and Ian holding Piers's, we had
crossed at my command. A change of mind on Ian's part and he had slipped his hand from
Piers's grasp. I had taken two over. One remained, tiny and frightened, on the other side
with streams of rush-hour traffic between us. Leaving two tiny figures on the other side, I
dashed back, raised a hand and marched a reluctant Ian back to his brothers. This time, a
child in each hand and a thumb on the hood of the third one's coat, I spotted a gap and yelled
'Cross!'
'Waaah. You're holding my coat.' Stopping briefly at a familiar part of the worn white
line with a car bearing down on each side, I used the fabric as a lever to propel the reluctant
walker out of imminent danger. It took the distance of the remaining carriageway for the zip
to come completely open by which time the expected 'You pulled my coat open' received the
response 'Well, do it up again.'
The muddy track that connected the main road with the housing estate in which their
school lay ended in a short span of newly-laid gravel, presumably part of the deal to give a
new house planning permission.
'Bob the Builder's been here, daddy.' The nascent garden resembled a tip. 'And left
some litter behind.'
'Just as long as you don't, darlings.'
We had three road junctions to negotiate in the remaining five minutes before the school
doors were closed. Avoiding the small pile of vomit that we had noticed for the last several
days without rain, we passed a new iced-bun wrapper next to a soft drink can we already
knew from their first day and a red post office rubber band that had recently come to adorn a
patch of what could have been mud, but was more likely something altogether more sinister.
'Looks like pooh, Daddy.'
'If it looks like pooh, it may well be pooh, boys. We won't probe it. Oh, and here's
another pile of cat vomit.'
'Did it have eyes? The cat.' Ian added as an afterthought. Then, remembering that the
presence or absence of eyes were attributes generally in his question about insects - questions
to which he never wanted answers - he grabbed for another query. 'Was it black?'
'Almost certainly, Ian. Now hold Daddy's hand.'
'Where's the first cat sick? I wanna see the first cat sick. Waaaah.' For half a minute,
Lars remained motionless, demanding sight of the small beige pile that had been passed,
unremarked, some minutes before. I put him under my arm.
'Next?'
Their school was in sight. There it was, just on the other side of a main road with two
other roads leading into it, the continuation of the pavement on the other side blocked by
parked cars between the chicanes of which through traffic on the main road threaded.
'As soon as Daddy says 'cross!', you cross,' I yelled above the throb of a passing bus. A
car driven by a parent emerging from one of the side roads kindly beckoned us to go over.
'Cross! Now.' I bellowed as Ian held back. He managed to pick up an interesting dead
leaf before the jerk of his brother's arm almost knocked him off his feet. Past the house with
eight cats, the boys looking low to see if they could see one skulking; past the house with an
almost complete black and lichen 1952 Morris Oxford on the grass in front of it (was it a
conceit or did I remember that very car parked in the same spot when I was a boy?); along to
the school entrance; through the wooden gate, past the mud that might have been grass once
and on to the open door of the boys' classroom, where one of the three ladies who taught
them stood with a welcoming smile. There was not one male teacher. Our fifteen minute
walk had taken twenty this time and I knew that they were among the longest in my life.
On my way back home, one of the boys’ classmates’ parents stopped to chat to me about
the party. As we talked, an articulated lorry was backing into the school drive, hampered by
residents’ cars parked at the entrance. Inches from a lamp post on one side and a brick
gatepost on the other, the rear swayed and shook as it ground to and fro, its exhaust gases
steaming blue in the freezing air. Both of us made unspoken calculations of the distance we
should be from each when it was felled and moved back. The Headmistress ran out, told the
driver there was a tradesman’s entrance and met us on her return. Within minutes we had
agreed on an approach to the local council about pedestrian safety. I thought I was going to
enjoy this one.
It was not to last.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
‘It’s wrong.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s good to have a hug.’
‘Not at school. We’re not to.’
‘Martin came all the way from London to see you and just asked for a hug. You
moved away. He was really quite surprised.’
‘We’re not allowed to touch at school.’
‘Is there a reason?’ I asked the Head.
‘To prevent the spread of infection – and there might be an abused child in the class.’
‘And there might not be. But children are very tactile. It goes against nature to stop
them touching. And as for the abused child, well here’s a chance to have good touching.
There’s every difference between this sort of touching and the other.’
I bit my tongue. The words ‘And if you can’t tell the difference between the two, you
shouldn’t be able to make these damaging decisions’ remained in my head. Sinister
motivations were being attached to perfectly natural actions. Small children were being seen
as causes of fear. What must it do to children to see that adults are afraid of them? I had a
taste of this at the boys’ swimming lessons.
‘Never let them in the water. Just the slightest hint of an allegation from a parent and
I’d be finished.’
The swimming school’s owner was friendly enough, but he was adamant. The few
male instructors stood, dressed, at the side of the pool, giving instructions from there. Only
the female teachers were in the water with the children.
‘Come off it, Larry. That’s quite an insult to men. And to me as a single Dad! I take
this personally. There’s an assumption that men are naturally predatory and can’t be trusted. I
can’t square this with real life. Really, you have no idea what abusers are like. I do. I’ve seen
them. It’s as though they’re from another planet. Their lives are organised around abuse. The
vast majority of people are kind and good with motives that are fine and honourable. It’s
desperately sad that a few monsters have caused all of us to be viewed with suspicion. We
need to live in a society based on trust. We’re sunk without it.’
‘Quite agree. Just can’t take the chance.’
This was a foretaste of what was to come. There was plenty of nonsense around.
‘Ian would love to play a football game. This is something I think he could achieve success
at. He needs to have something he’s good at doing.’
‘No. We don’t do that. We don’t have winners.’
‘I don’t think the World Cup would generate quite as much excitement if there were two
teams working together to get the job done.’
The Head’s mouth betrayed no hint of recognition of the ‘Bob the Builder’ reference.
No winners. No losers. Or, at least, everyone’s a winner and everyone gets a ‘well done’.
No Father’s Day as someone might not have a father. Mothers’ Day, Christmas, anything that
a child might not have or that might be considered part of an exclusive culture had to be
viewed with concern and avoided. I knew that a winter tree and winter wishes would not
become part of my vocabulary.
‘Can you come in, please?’ The voice at the other end of the phone meant business.
What had the boys been up to? ‘With a pair of tweezers.’
‘Tweezers?’
‘Yes. Your own tweezers. Piers has a splinter in his finger.’
‘You want me to get it out?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Is he upset?’
‘No.’
Within a few minutes, I was at the boys’ state infant school. Piers, thumb extended,
was waiting for me with a teacher.
‘I’ve got a splinter, Daddy.’
‘I can see that.’ I wouldn’t need the tweezers. A small piece of plant was sticking up
out of his thumbnail above the skin. ‘It’s quite easy to pull out. Here you are. One small –
you could hardly call it a splinter – bit of vegetation removed.’
I turned to the teacher at his side. ‘Forgive me for stating the obvious, but couldn’t
this be considered First Aid? When I was at school, you used to go to the Head’s office and
see the secretary who kept all manner of medical odds and ends by the typewriter...’
‘It’s a surgically invasive procedure.’
‘A surgically invasive procedure.’ I enunciated each word carefully, analysing the
import of each, trying and failing to connect them with the insignificance of the small fleck of
vegetation I had picked from the skin. I had just performed surgery without realising it.
‘And if I’d been in London?’
‘We’d have phoned the contact person you gave us.’
The boys’ head teacher stopped me in the corridor. ‘I need to have a word.’ We had been
walking round the school. I had just been voted in as a Parent Governor and I was on my
introductory circuit. ‘Be a critical friend’ had been the instruction from the training day I had
been on. I felt I was performing the duty of the adjective, but that my charm was failing to
achieve the noun.
She ushered me into her office. ‘I’ve never felt uncomfortable with any parent in any
school I’ve ever taught at – until I met you.’
That was pretty clear. I had been put in my place. I couldn’t quite see why.
‘Give me a reason.’ I surprised myself with my directness. I was under attack.
‘It’s your attitude.’
‘I haven’t said anything yet. Tell me what I’ve done and I can remedy it.’
Never in my life had I answered back to a teacher. Now I was doing exactly this to
someone who was not only a teacher but also my sons’ Head. Fifty years ago, the word of the
Head was the law. My parents brought me to school and collected me from there. Between
these times, the school was my world and the adults in it were the law. My parents had
absolute confidence in their judgment and, as a child, I was given no reason to question the
school’s authority. It became a part of our lives and we accepted everything about it without
demur. Maybe there was even a touch of gratitude that there were people prepared to educate
me. Teachers taught and children learned. Parents received reports. I had assumed I would
just send the boys to school, attend the odd meeting with teachers and wait for the reports at
the end of term. This institution expected parents to be involved in the learning process in a
critical capacity, yet the authority figures in it knew what they were doing and I would have
thought the last thing they needed were people like me interfering. In this assumption I was
probably right.
‘Oh, it’s been a difficult morning. One of the parents has made an allegation of racial
abuse against one of the pupils. I’m sorry.’
But it could not be unsaid. It had been almost half a century since my last telling-off. I
was out of practice and the prospect of being patronised for another three years did not
appeal.
To the victors, the hugs…
I am unsure what the last straw was. Maybe it was the banning of conkers that had just
made headlines in the local paper. Whatever the reason, I was feeling quite tearful most of the
time and it had nothing to do with education.
‘Just three questions,’ I said to the Head of the prep school across the county border.
‘Can the children play conkers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Competitive sports?’
‘Yes.’
‘And can they embrace each other afterwards either in victory or defeat?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you accept them?’
It was so easy. All I had to do was write out a cheque and all my concerns would
evaporate. I took another look at the statement I had sent to all the parents in preparation for
the election of governors: ‘My three sons started at the Infants’ School this term. It was a
conscious decision to educate them in the state sector rather than privately. High quality
education should be available to all children. They are, after all, our future. This will only be
possible when parents choose to fight for improvements at their local state school, instead of
opting out by writing a cheque to a fee-paying school...
...My boys and I are very happy with the School. I want to make my choice work for
my sons and hope I can help achieve the same for all the children at the Infants’ School.’
The parents had voted for me. And I had let them down. Within weeks, I was
contradicting all my promises and doing exactly what I had said I would stand against. What
a fraud I was.
I put the question whether I should change systems to the boys’ Head. Correct to the
last, she suggested that I would do it and that it would be because of ‘public interest’. There
had been no public interest in my family arrangements and such a thought had never entered
my head, but I removed the boys from the school and resigned as Governor. The Chairman
wrote that he thought it ‘inappropriate’ to ask why.
‘Why are we changing schools, Daddy?’
‘Because Daddy thinks it best.’
‘You don’t like Ms X do you, Daddy?’
‘Let’s put it this way, it’s her school and I’m too used to doing things my way.’
‘Can we keep our friends?’
‘Yes, of course you can. Invite them to play.’
They did. No one came. The old friends disappeared from their lives. I had written the
cheque and crossed to the other side. We had entered the world of prep school education; the
training ground for the British ruling class.
A shiny black Hummer was blocking the drive. Thinking my way clear, I had just turned
right across a main road which had been recently declared the third worst school-run in the
country. I angled our ten year-old Renault Scenic across the entrance to enable the oncoming
traffic to squeeze past. A small girl in a plaid kilt, her golden hair in ringlets, disgorged
herself from the behemoth. She reached inside and extracted a blue bag. Her hand pushed at
the door which almost closed, but not quite. She pushed again. It wobbled slightly. Using
both hands she managed to push it almost shut. She pushed again. When a car door is on its
first click, it needs to be opened and closed harder to achieve the second. It would be a little
while before she learned this fact of life. When she realised it, the monster reared off with a
scrunching of gravel. Other parents were stacked up behind me. The main road had ground to
a standstill.
I extricated the car from the entrance and entered the drive. Rows of Range Rovers
and Volvos had bumped up the kerb onto the grassed verge. I doubted I had enough clearance
to avoid grounding. Unable to park, I pulled up alongside the huts that were the pre-prep.
‘Welcome to your new school boys. Off you go.’
‘You’ve got to come with us, Daddy. You said you would.’
‘OK. I think I can get between these trees. No I can’t. Aha! I’ll try in front of the gate
to the playground. Nope. That’s been taken up. I’ll try going up a kerb.’
In that moment of clarity I knew why four-wheel-drives were the cars of choice.
Their private school dealt in success. ‘There’s old money, new money and snooty
money,’ I had been told by a parent when I arrived. ‘And there’s plenty of it.’ Nevertheless, it
was the children who reminded me of what I had come to regard as normality. As in their
state infant school, they were delightful. Many years before, in a pre-parental incarnation I
had a taste of public school when I was guardian to a boy at Harrow. We sat in an eatery by
the school, looking out onto a pavement thronged with straw-boatered scholars. We had just
been to Speech Day. ‘We’ve been selective and non co-educational for hundreds of years’ the
Head had said to sustained applause ‘and we aren’t about to change now.’ King Hussein of
Jordan had stepped on my foot en route to his helicopter and my young ward had, with the
wisdom of his sixteen years, condemned my suit as ten years out-of-date. He was right.
‘I love Harrow,’ he had said. ‘It’s the word. You can just make it last longer. Harrrooooh.’ It rolled around his mouth like a fat cigar. ‘Not like Eton. That’s just too quick. It’s
over in a flash. Et’n. It’s gone. But Harrr-ooooh. You can make it last as long as you want.’
‘You snob.’ I had said at the time. ‘Just listen to yourself. If I have a child I hope to
God it won’t turn out like you.’
He thought I was joking. I did, too.
My sons were with those who would be assuming the attitudes of those about to leave
the prep and move onto public school. For the school-age me, in the era of post-war austerity,
the people I mixed with knew their place. Sixty years on, at this establishment, there was an
uncanny similarity. These children also knew their place. It was somewhere at the top.
BROTHERS
Not having had brothers to contend with, I found that life was suddenly being dictated by
sibling rivalry writ large. While I knew what it was like to be an only child, I only knew
what it was like to parent children en masse. The similarity of my parenting situation to a
school classroom was clear, complicated hugely by the fact that I loved them. Their emotions
were expressed in raw terms, often at full blast, with the passion of the moment; a moment
that came and went in seconds. Several of the visitors to our home were singletons and I
could see that they were taken aback by the sheer volume of my sons’ voices. ‘If they don’t
shout, they won’t get heard,’ I explained above the din. Modulation of the voice was a skill
not learned even into their teens. I decided I would be a model of equanimity and not let ‘it’
get to me, whatever ‘it’ was. I tried using my own voice quietly in the hope that they would
have to quieten down to hear it. Generally, they thought that anything spoken quietly was
unimportant and only when the voice was raised did it command attention.
For several years, they were always together. In school and outside it, life swas
conducted in triplicate, until a kind and unsuspecting friend invited just Ian for the weekend.
Piers and Lars celebrated on their return from dropping him off with a ‘Goodbye Ian
Party’. Out came all their toys. ‘Ian would never let us do this,’ said Lars garnishing the
chair, piano and floor with Black Beast, Monkey, Sheepie, Bongo Kid, Spidery (the villain of
Toyland), Paddington and lots more. Little One could not come. Piers had misplaced him and
only wanted to search for him at bedtime.
‘Ian’s gone, Ian’s gone.’ Toys were flung into the air and pyjamas were worn until
lunch. For the first time, the boys were separated two:one.
‘These are the events. We’re starting with music and games in aid of Ian, well not in
aid of him, but because he isn’t here and we’ll have a dance-off in the den with big books
folded out and others on top of them to make a house which Ian wouldn’t let us do because
he thinks we’re untidy and he puts our toys away while we’re playing them and then we have
the ‘Get Dressed Timeline’, so we start without clothes on and we say this is what the
caveman wore…’ Or didn’t wear,’ Piers added for accuracy – ‘ and then we put on our pants
and say this is what the Aztecs wore, but then some clever ones decided to invent trousers
and we keep on putting clothes on until we’ve put on all the clothes we need. Then we have
cool cricket which Ian would never, ever, let us do because he complains about the bowling
and says everything’s a no ball and he always wins because he’s good at it. Then we’ll have
being kind to the cool cats in which we stroke them and hug them which Ian wouldn’t let us
do because he thinks Cresta’s his and, if he gets Cresta, then Brumas will run away and
Pandora will follow him. Anyway, if she’s lying down with her claws out she’s a bit scary.
Then we’ll have jumpy javelin in the garden which Ian wouldn’t let us do because we’d have
to put the javelins back really early in case we hit a bird or dig up the garden.’
‘So isn’t he protecting the house and garden?’
‘No. He thinks it’s all his.’
‘He wouldn’t let us do Treasure Hunt because – because, well, because he wouldn’t
let us.’
The celebrations began with a gutsy sing-song. Music from their practices at school
combined with pieces of pop and Vera Lynn to the accompaniment of whose songs they sang
along in the car. ‘There’ll always be an Engerland while there’s a country lane if Engerland
means as much to you as Engerland means to me, food glorious food, roast beef and tomatoes
and I’ve been to the year three thousand, not much has changed but they live under water and
your great-great daughter’s fine, she’s pretty fine, there’ll always be an Engerland and
Engerland shall be free if Engerland means as much to you as Engerland means to me-e-e and
her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace and all we ever get is gru-u-el.’
Timetable in hand and newly-bought-from-eBay-with-pocket-money-£5.99-withpostage digital watch on wrist, Lars took charge of ensuring that the events began and ended
on time. Wickets became javelins, one of the cats took flight at the sudden gestures of
affection, treasure hunt clues appeared over the house and the three-became-two change of
dynamics rolled out over house and garden. The pecking order changed and changed again
and I saw for the first time that Ian was, in fact, my little ally, safeguarding the house and
keeping his brothers from using household objects in imaginative ways.
‘Now it’s the art and book-writing competitions and the end-of the-day poster.’
The boys scurried off with paper and pens and I felt really sorry for the parents of
only children. In the novelty of the moment, the brothers were playmates.
‘We’ve done music and games, dance-off in the den, the ‘Get Dressed Timeline’, cool
cricket, being kind to the cats, jumpy javelin, marble boule toystyle, break, keep fit, treasure
hunt, toy hide and seek, races, snack, break, gym, poster, book-writing, art and finishing
poster. It’s been really good and quiet for once.’
The book-writing took the form of stories about ‘how much I miss Ian’. Lars took a
balanced view. ‘I miss Ian because I am so used to being shouted at and beaten up. But we
can make more games with three players and Ian is very good at making up new games.’
Piers was more condemnatory and put a ‘don’t’ into the title.
‘We’re like twins now.’ Lars’s observation was spot-on. It was an unaccustomed
dynamic. ‘Can we phone Ian?’
FINES
Was it the easygoing liberality of the early 21st century or was it the dynamics of
triplicity creating a near-gang, near-crowd mentality that emboldened its members?
Whatever the cause, my boys were far more open about sex than I ever had been.
‘Why have I got a small penis?’ said one of them tugging at it.
‘Why’s mine so much bigger?’ said another.
‘Does it mean I won’t be able to have children?’
‘Makes no difference,’ was my reply. ‘Now let’s get ready for showers.’
‘What’s a bugger, Dad? Jack said it. He said ‘bugger’. That’s what he said ‘bugger’.’
Piers was determined to get the full value out of this word, the meaning unknown, but
suspected to be juicy.
‘I’ll tell you when you’re older. It’s a way of saying ‘naughty’.’
‘But what does it mean? Bugger.’ Lars chimed in, relishing the sound. ‘Will you tell
us when we’re nine?’
‘Bugger,’ Ian echoed. ‘I know what it is. It’s ‘beggar’. That’s what it is. It’s the same
as ‘beggar’.’
‘No, it’s not, Ian. It’s something very small.’ Piers was thinking through the logic of
the word. ‘It’s small because a bug is small, so it’s a tiny person. And he’s begging.’
‘Something like that, Piers.’
‘Jack said ‘fut’, too, Daddy.’ Ian was keen to wring some discomfiture out of this. ‘He
said ‘fut’ and that’s roood.’
‘It’s not ‘fut’, Ian.’ Lars was suddenly knowledgeable. ‘That’s not what it is. It’s
‘fud’. Oh fud! What would you say if I said ‘Oh fud’?’
‘I’d say it’s time to get up. Into the shower. Hand!’ A cupped palm was extended and
was filled with green Tesco aloe and teatree shampoo. ‘Now smear it on and then fingertips.
Do your cootie egg hunt.’ Piers’ fingers were a blur as shampoo spattered my dressing gown.
‘Let me get out of the line of fire, young man. Don’t let any of them get away.’ With his
brothers, it was, ‘Harder. You’re just tickling them. Get those cootie eggs!’
‘Snot fair, Daddy. You always wake me up when I’m in the middle of sleep.’
‘Sorry, Ian. That’s the way it is with waking up.’
‘Dad, I’m seeing a lady. She’s helping me with my worries. She is. Not my tantrooms.
She’s not there to help with my tantrooms. Just my worries. And you can’t ask me what we
say. It’s confirdentshall.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking, Ian, but I suspect she has no idea what you’re really like.
Do you tell her how angry you can get? Here’s the sponge with shower gel. All over. Back of
the knees, too. Up your bottom. Everywhere clean and shining, please.’
‘Where’s my tie?’
‘Under your foot, Piers.’
‘Where’s my trousers?’
‘You’ve got them on.’
‘Most ladies dye their hair white.’
‘Oh, do they Lars? Why’s this?’
‘It makes them look as if they like English.’
‘So an English teacher should have white hair?’
‘If she’s a lady. The one at school is 70. Even older than you, Daddy.’
‘They call me a mini Mr G.’ said Ian. ‘They say I look like his son. But they call him
‘carrot face’. No, that’s not right. They call him ‘carrot top’. Don’t know why.’
‘It’s because he’s got ginger hair, Ian. Like you.’
‘But not like you, Piers. You look like a friend. Lars looks like your mother, Daddy,
and I look like you.’
‘Piers looks just like his mother’s brother.’
‘Which one, Daddy? Tina or Melissa?’
‘Melissa. She showed me a photo. You’re a dead ringer for him.’
‘Look at my biceps. I call them Tim and Jill.’ Lars said.
Ian had been watching the film ‘Kes’ after a visit to The Hawk Conservancy near
Andover. I assumed he would get more from the scenes of boy and kestrel than from the
social commentary of growing up in 1960s Barnsley. Billy Casper, the deuteragonist after the
kestrel, punches his drunken brother while getting him into bed. ‘Pig (punch), hog (punch),
sow (punch), drunken bastard’ is Billy’s revenge while his brother is comatose with alcohol.
Ian latched onto a bird-of-prey reference.
‘He called him a buzzard, Dad. Billy called his brother a buzzard. He said ‘pig, hog,
sow, drunken buzzard.’ Why did he call him a buzzard, Dad?’
‘Can be a term of abuse, Ian.’
How I wished such innocence might last.
As my boys approached their ninth birthday, a wise woman suggested I bribe them with
pocket money.
‘Half their age in pounds,’ she suggested.
The first time they were in a shop with their own money coincided with a visit one
Sunday to the local Sainsbury for bread to feed the ducks and swans.
‘I want to buy something, Daddy.’ Piers was adamant. ‘Look, there’s Club Penguin
membership. Can I buy it?’
‘But you’re already a member, Piers.’
‘Da-ad. Please will you ask someone for Really Good Toys for an eight year-old
boy?’
‘As opposed to these not-so-good toys for eight year-old boys, Lars? Maybe they have
a special aisle marked ‘Really Good Toys’.
‘‘Course they do, Daddy. Go and ask someone.’
‘You be me, Lars. Let’s go and have a look. Maybe it’s between the aisle of Really
Good Toys for seven year-old boys and Really Good Toys for nine year-old boys.’
‘Is it?’
‘No, Lars. They think all their toys are Really Good.’
So pocket money came into our lives and stayed. It was a potent factor. Any hitting
and it was a pound a punch. Rude words were also a pound, but one or two commanded a
higher rate.
‘You f***ing...’ Piers shrieked as Lars pushed him from behind, sending the toys in
his hand flying.
‘Right, Piers, that’s £10!’
‘That’s not fair. You saw what he did. You saw it. Fine him!’ Piers was florid and
trembling at the injustice.
‘Upstairs by the time I count to three or it’ll be another pound.’
Justice was nothing if not arbitrary. Piers ran upstairs screaming. My audience of two
young faces who had been relishing their brother’s discomfiture assumed serious looks when
my glance turned to them.
‘Yes, I know there’s a lack of logic.’ I was talking more to myself. ‘Which is worse, a
push or half a word? I have absolutely no idea, but while I’m in charge, it’s going to be
Daddy’s rules – and it’s a pound off you, Lars.’
There were times when I missed another grown-up to talk to, get ideas from and,
maybe, receive some support from. In the absence of one, I exercised a benevolent
dictatorship. Nevertheless, it was the boys who ruled.
FACTS
Sex and parenting were intertwined. The one resulted in the other. The boys knew this,
but only vaguely because the duality of parenthood had not impacted on their lives. The
notion of ‘Mummy’ hardly featured. When the word was used, it always related to Melissa.
When they asked after their mummy, which was hardly ever, I would invariably answer
‘Melissa’. Although English Law did not recognise it, she was their mother. I could see her
in each of the boys. When we met, Melissa brought some photo albums. She showed me a
photo of her father, a man some years younger than me, the boys’ maternal grandfather. ‘He’s
a biker,’ she said fondly. The picture was of a man with hair to his waist and tattoos all over
his arms.
‘What does he think about your creations?’
‘I haven’t told him.’
I felt sure that Melissa’s parents would be proud of the grandchildren they didn’t
know they had, but did not press the issue. This was Melissa’s decision. I wondered how I
would feel if I had the knowledge of grandchildren with-held from me.
In 2006, we went to California and met both Tina and Melissa, I had covered the ‘egg
and seed’ aspect some weeks before as I thought I should at least attempt some explanation as
to why they had two mothers. I had started it before boiling the eggs for breakfast.
‘Look boys. What’s this?’
They stated the obvious and waited for the more that they knew would come.
‘Something like this comes from a mummy. When this is washed in seed, it’s
fertilised. Then it’s put into a mummy’s tummy, and after a while a baby comes out.’
They had been unimpressed.
‘Not a chicken?’
A few days later, I expanded on this when I was drying them after their shower.
‘And this is where your seeds come from to fertilise the egg.’
‘Can we fertilise the egg, Daddy?’
‘When you’re older. Not yet awhile.’
‘I don’t think there are seeds in there. It’s two meatballs,’ added Lars.
As the years went by, their comprehension became more sophisticated, if not more
accurate.
‘If I do a wee and see some seeds, I don’t want to flush them away. It’s such a waste.’
Piers was adamant.
‘All those children drowned in the sea,’ Lars added. ‘How do you know you’ve got
seeds?’
‘You make an educated guess,’ I replied.
‘Did you only have three seeds, Daddy, and no eggs?’
Melissa’s role in all this was comprehended vaguely.
‘Why doesn’t Melissa have the same name as us?’
‘Because we aren’t married. She was married to someone else. She donated her eggs.
I hadn’t met her when you were born. Now she’s become unmarried.’
Piers thought about this. ‘When you stop being married, they give you your old name
back, don’t they? Do you have to give your children back?’
‘Piers, you love the idea of someone being in charge, making decisions for you, but
there’s no ‘they’ to give you your name back. You choose.’
‘But doesn’t the government have to allow you?’
‘The government has to decide plenty of things, such as whether or not you were allowed
to stay in this country, but your name’s you own.’
‘When there’s an old mother and she dies and you marry a young mother, is she my
mother-in law?’
‘No, Piers, she’s the mother of your husband or wife, if you marry.’
‘But I thought they made you marry to have children.’
‘No one makes you do anything. You can choose.’
‘But if you have triplets, they have to be the same, don’t they? Anyway, I want to be
an only child.’
This was something they all agreed on.
‘I like going to the doctor, Daddy. That’s when I can have Daddy time all on my
own.’
‘Do you have to leave home when you marry?’ Lars asked. ‘Look! There’s an RV
towing a caravan.’
‘By that time, I expect you’d want to.’
‘No, I always want to live with you,’ Lars replied. ‘Does that mean that if you
married, you’d leave us?’
‘If we had a mum,’ Ian looked serious. ‘She’d have to go. You didn’t marry Melissa?’
‘No. She was already married.’
‘Is she in love? Do they kiss? On the lips?’
‘They used to, but she’s separated now.’ I anticipated the ‘why’. ‘Sometimes people
grow apart.’
‘Do they have to give their children back then?’
‘Oh, that’s all quite complicated. It won’t happen to you.’
‘You won’t have to give us back?’
‘There’s no one to give you back to, is there? Don’t worry.’
‘But if say the mummy marries again, then that’s a new family and the child won’t
feel right in it, so she would have to hand the child back to the daddy, wouldn’t she? Because
you can’t have one weekend in one family and the next weekend in another family, can you?
You wouldn’t know where you are.’
‘Many do, Piers, but I’d’ve thought the most difficult thing is having the two people
you love most in the world not able to stand each other.’
This concept was off their radar. Their experience of grown-ups disagreeing was
almost nonexistent. Piers thought for an example he could relate to and came up with
sleepovers with his former nanny.
‘When we stay with Auntie Clara, she shouts at Uncle Nigel. They seem quite cross.’
‘That’s how some grown-ups are with each other. Daddy can’t very well argue with
himself, can he?’
‘Dad.’ Lars looked intense. ‘If I saw you walking down the street, I’d know there was
something different about you. Not just that you had three sons. It’s because you’re kind and
good and... and... well, you’re my Dad. I love you so much. You’re the best dad a boy like me
could have.’
‘I hear there are some very good dads on Planet Zog, Lars.’
‘Even better than them, Dad.’
RELIGION
When they entered the world of compulsory education, religion entered the boys’ lives
for the first time since their Christening. At their state infant school, the emphasis was to
avoid offending anyone about anything, probably not out of kindness or consideration, but as
part of their risk aversion – the ultimate risk being litigation. Religion as a concept was not
raised. It was different at Pre-Prep.
Although I had decided to have them christened, this was at a time when my parenting
skills were a repeat performance of how I had been parented. In those days, being christened
was simply the next big event for a baby after being born. The Victorians did it as so many
babies died in infancy and christening was a way of helping them to reach heaven if the worst
happened. I did it as part of my push to have them made British citizens and it seemed a
British thing for them to be welcomed into the Church of England. The local vicar embraced
the idea of three small additions to his flock and gave me his full support. Christening =
godparents = aunts and uncles was my logic. My lack of brothers, sisters or wife had
deprived my sons of an extended family so, with a christening, I had the ability to create an
ersatz and quasi-official one out of friends. The sole proviso was that I attend christening
classes. These resulted for me in a damascene conversion as powerful as Paul’s in the
opposite direction. Nevertheless, the boys became officially C of E. Matters of doctrine
cropped up from time to time, an understanding of which was of more significance to them
than to me. Mealtimes became theological discussions.
‘If the Baby Jesus was dead, how did he come back, Daddy?’
‘Well, he wasn’t a baby when he died, but that’s what the Bible says.’
‘But YOU said that when our cat, Claudius, broke his leg and died that he wouldn’t
come back because he was dead. AND you said that our grandparents were dead and that
we’d never see them. But the Baby Jesus went to heaven and came back.’
‘Some people believe this, yes.’
‘If you believe it enough, then it becomes real – like the Velveteen Rabbit. Is that
what you’re saying, Daddy?’
‘Not quite. What I’m saying is that it may be true and some people really believe it is.
It’s to do with God and, because we have very small brains, we can’t understand what He
does.’
The ‘if He exists’ remained in my head, unspoken. It was complicated enough
already.
They tell us, ‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and
he’ll eat for life.’
‘How true Piers.’
‘He’ll need a fishing rod, though. Who’ll give him that?’
‘And I know about Fathers’ Day, Daddy. It’s the day Jesus did everything for his
father.’
Ian looked at what his brother was drinking. ‘May I have some Early Grey tea, too,
please, Daddy?’
Quick to spot the slip, Lars rejoined with, ‘It’s Earl Grey. It’s lovely. It tastes of
nothing.’
Feeling left out, Piers chipped in. ‘Daddy? You know you go red when you’re
embarrassed. Your penis flips up, too.’
‘May I leave the table?’ said Lars.
‘No,’ said Piers. ‘You can’t leave the table unless you’re Ian – who is sitting on it.
You can only leave the chair.’
Ian pushed his empty plate towards Lars.
‘Ian, do they teach you to do that at school?’
‘No, Daddy. I learned it on my own.’
‘At school, they call me Liar Lars. I’m going to tell a lie now.’
‘Are you, Lars?’
‘No. I lied.’
‘But it was a lie,’ said Piers. ‘You said you would tell a lie and you lied.’
‘Do you like your job, Daddy? Looking after us. You have to look after us. Then you
die.’ Ian brushed my cheek with his hand. ‘When I’m old,’ he announced, ‘My skin will fall
off and this will be underneath.’
‘But if you sit somewhere for a very long time, you get black. Like ten days,’ said
Piers.
‘No,’ said Lars. ‘It’s 20 days.’
‘We’ll be ten,’ said Ian. ‘After ten, we’ll be... let’s see... Monday, Tuesday. No.
January, February...’
‘There’s some food on your face, Ian.’ He dropped his cheek to his shoulder and
wiped it across his sweater. A fragment of doughnut lay trapped in the fibres. He put his
mouth to it.
‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ said Lars. ‘When I have my children, I’ll visit your grave.’
CHAPEL
Should be religion be a support for the boys; something they could rely on and be
comforted by, or should it be seen as an interesting topic for disagreement and intellectual
nit-picking, the ultimate absence of logic and science? Should I remove my own
predilections from the debate and simply let them believe or not as they wished, or would
they do this anyway? As a child, I went to Sunday School. My parents thought it appropriate
that I have good, and therefore, right-thinking people as an influence in my life. Christening
classes had alerted me to the moral certainties of the deeply religious and made me question
the very nature of unquestioning acceptance. I found myself looking forward by looking back
at what I now understood I had simply accepted as a child because it was there and no
alternative had been presented to me. I had not wished to disagree because that was
disagreeable and for a sensitive child who wanted to do ‘the right thing’ there was a fine line
between not accepting and not being polite. At every stage, the child who had been me had
not accepted, could see no reason for not accepting and so had assumed he was just wrong,
but remained polite and took on board whatever had come his way because that was what he
felt he had to do.
The grown up me could see the childish me in each of his sons and wanted to enable
them to express their opinions, to let them question the orthodoxy of the times, because that, I
realised, was what it had been. I had been a product of my times. My upbringing and
schooling had not been based on universal truths, but on what was appropriate for people in
that social class at that period in time which was so distant that I could view it as the
historical period it was. Just as the main purpose of photographs of yourself is that they give
you something to laugh at later, I would, had it not been so fundamental to what had defined
me as an adult, have found it similarly risible.
The dismissal of the option of Sunday School was easy. Far better to play at home.
Out, too, went the idea that a nanny was necessarily a good thing. I had preferred to play by
myself. My sons had the bonus of each other to play with and, unlike my parents, I worked
from home so I could give them me. It was with school that I had the greatest dilemma. That
was an inevitable part of their lives and it was towards the known that I was attracted.
Walking to the local infant school where there were kind, nurturing people guided by a
knowledgeable bureaucracy, then onto the junior and senior schools just like their father had
done two generations before was the premise that guided me at the outset. I thought I looked
back at my schooldays with affection, but when I did I knew that that it is how I felt I should
see them.
That I did not see them in this way was not my fault. With few exceptions, the
teachers in my life had been remote, authoritarian and unforgiving. The ideal would be the
truly inspirational teacher who combined knowledge with a passionate feeling for the subject
and a love of imparting erudition. I searched my memory for those I had liked, those who had
taught the subjects that I came to love, but there was no Mr Chips. Even the fragrant,
powdered, silver-haired, grey-suited, pink-chiffon-scarved Miss D, in whose brand new 1958
classroom with slim venetian blinds through which slatted shafts of sunlight picked up
floating flecks of chalkdust I felt I had gained the most, came back to me on mature analysis
as an uptight spinster holding back her frustrations, remaining aloof, remote, unsmiling and
dissatisfied.
It came to me that rarely had I been encouraged to think for myself; been taught how
to think; been given the vocabulary to enable me to do so. Comforting though the certainties
of school were, they were ultimately constraining. History was the memorising of facts;
English was parsing, précising and paraphrasing; Maths was getting the right answers; the
Sciences were copying experiments. By and large, the teachers were a collective Mr
Gradgrind.
My boys had some fantastic and inspirational teachers who ran the range of charisma
from quirky to off-the-wall, whose lessons were unhindered by the national curriculum and
whom I could not imagine in what I saw as an essentially politically correct state sector, That
they questioned – everything – was a far cry from my passive acceptance.
It was only at this point that I came to the realisation that not only was I a product of my
times, but so were my parents and their parents, and that my grandparents, whom I had never
met, were part of the Victorian culture, members of the repressed working class, all of whom
had exerted an extensive influence with the certitude and absolutism of their time. What I had
seen as an ideal childhood was merely a safe one. Safe because it had happened and because
there were no uncertainties. I could not imagine why I had not seen through this as a child;
why it had taken the development of my sons for me to see it for what it was. Through the
wrong end of a telescope, it came into focus. I first went to the theatre when I was 16; my
sons were at children’s productions of Shakespeare’s plays in Stratford when they were 5. In
their experiences and their ability to externalise these, they were way ahead of me. Not only
was it impossible for them to follow the same route as their father through their childhood, it
would have been mind-numbingly dull for them to do so. The nonsense I rail at that is part of
life in the 21st century is just a nuisance. Far more debilitating were the spiritual and
intellectual restrictions of the mid-20th century. The message ‘The meek shall inherit the
earth’ was tacitly suffixed with ‘if it’s all right with you.’
My sons needed to have the freedom to think as they wished. I hoped that a stable
background at home would inculcate the kindness and fellow-feeling that were the true
christian values, no matter how much their animal instincts came between this aspiration and
its realisation. I knew that I could not tell them with any conviction that if they did right they
would go to heaven and that if they did wrong an eternity of torment awaited them.
A second visit to my sons’ school Harvest Festival helped me understand the basis for
their constant questioning and curiosity. It was far removed from the earnestness of my own
school’s religiosity.
‘My wife and I had a look in our kitchen and found a tin,’ said their Head, sweeping
an arm towards the abundance of produce, ‘And the pre-prep grew a carrot.’ He plucked a
stalk with a wispy root from a basket. The congregation relaxed. ‘And our preacher only
arrived in England at two this morning.’
‘I hope I don’t fall asleep during my own sermon. I’m reminded at Harvest Festival of
the Monty Python take on ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’: ‘All things dull and ugly, All
creatures short and squat, All things rude and nasty, The Lord God made the lot’.’
All this would have been heresy in the 1950s, but there it was, part of the
smorgasbord of concepts my sons had to choose from in their schooling.
‘Let us pray.’
Voices murmured in a low drone. Head bowed, the mum next to me took the
opportunity to flick through the pages of her Filofax.
SINS
Every day some new moral dilemma presented itself. Generally it was Piers who
externalised and either wanted the point clarified or, more likely, enjoyed the sort of chat that
he doubted his brothers would be interested in.
‘Why do I have to say I’m sorry for doing wrong things, Daddy? I have to say this in
chapel every Saturday and I just mouth the words. I don’t say them out loud and I don’t say
them because I don’t believe them and I don’t believe them because I haven’t done anything
wrong, so why should I say I have? Saying I have done something wrong when I haven’t is
doing something wrong. I won’t say it.’
‘Is this when they ask you to repent your sins, Piers?’
‘Yes – and repent means saying you’re sorry. I’m not sorry...’
‘OK, Piers, but it depends on what you mean by doing something wrong, doesn’t it?
Let’s look at what you think. I remember the list you gave me for Santa and I know that you
wanted Ian’s head for Christmas. Now, you see, that’s wrong.’
‘But Ian’s horrible.’
‘That may be, but you harboured some awful thoughts about him, told him you hated
him and were generally nasty to him.’
‘He was nasty to me.’
‘But this is about you, no one else, and the wrong you’ve done. Some would say that
your thoughts were wrong and you should be sorry for them. Others would say that it’s only
human to have these thoughts and that no one’s perfect. This repentance thing is saying that if
you aren’t as perfect as God, you have to be sorry about it. Seems like a hard task to me and
not one that I would bother with, but this is part of religion. It’s not my cup of tea, but
religion’s part of school and you have to go through the motions.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it just makes life at school easier if you do. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to be
perfect?’
‘I am.’
‘You see, even that’s wrong. It’s the sin of pride. You’re boasting and you have to be
sorry about it, so go and repent.’
Piers was unimpressed and banged the Staples ‘that was easy’ button.
‘Let’s put it this way. We know that M’s a ghastly bully and we can’t stand him. You
have two buttons. One is marked ‘M explodes’. The other reads ‘M doesn’t explode’. Which
one do you press?’
‘‘Explodes’, of course.’
‘OK. Point made and, I hope, taken. End of lecture. But you did ask.’
‘If I were God, I wouldn’t have invented religion.’
‘Well you aren’t and he did, or didn’t, depending on your faith or lack of it.’
‘You don’t believe, do you?’
Again, I thought back to my primary school days when religious instruction was
‘hands together, eyes closed’. Belief was assumed then. Comparative religion lay in the
distant future. There was God and you believed in Him. He was ‘Very God’, whatever that
was and he was ‘begotten, not created’, whatever that meant. I wasn’t sure how important He
was, though. The hymn we churned out several times a month went: ‘He ONLY is the maker
of all things near and far.’ So that minimised His efforts, although it did go on to say that He
‘paints the evening flower and lights the evening star’ both of which are quite big jobs and
‘the wind and waves obey Him, by Him the birds are fed’ which endowed Him with some
authority, but perhaps that really wasn’t such as big a thing as ‘MUCH more to us His
children He gives our daily bread’ which put Him on the same level as my parents.
All in all, at that age, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about but, as I was an
obedient child and those in authority thought it was worth making an issue of, I was happy to
go along with it all. Even now, I give Him a capital H. It was also reassuring to know that my
race, colour and country were the best and approved of by Him as ‘Over the seas there are
little brown children, fathers and mothers and babies dear, they do not know there’s a Father
in Heaven, no one has told them that Christ is near. Quick let the message go over the water
and tell them that Christ is near.’ As I already had the message, that must be a Good Thing.
Religion was not something I discussed at home, or anywhere. Had I wished to, I am not sure
I would have known how to start as my assumption was that the hymns told you, albeit in an
impenetrable and turgid way, how to think and that’s what everyone thought. My sons’ minds
were less easily satisfied.
‘Not really Piers. I used to, but it was the classes I had to go to before your
Christening that put me right off. I used to think that religion was just a matter of thinking
that one thing was more likely than another thing. And then I met the true believers, those
who didn’t just think. They knew. They knew it was the truth. They didn’t have any more
facts to go on than you or me, but that didn’t bother them. Belief becomes fact. And I think
that’s dangerous. Anyway, you must think what you wish, but that’s why you have to repent
the sins that you don’t think you’ve committed.’
‘So why do you say we have to be nice to you on Mother’s Day?’ Ian chimed in.
‘That’s a religious thing and you don’t believe in it.’
‘Not sure it’s as much religious as it is dreamed up by American greetings card
manufacturers, but it gives you a chance to be especially nice to Daddy.’
Piers was unconvinced. ‘You aren’t a mother.’
‘I’m the closest you’ve got. Don’t I count as both?’
‘No. We’ve got a mother. Well, she’s an ex-mother. Doesn’t she love us?’
‘She doesn’t know you, Piers. If she did, she would. I’m sure of it.’
Lars came over and took my hand, pressing his small body into mine. ‘I love you,
Daddy. When I’m lonely at school, I go to the computer, put your name into Google, click on
‘images’ and there you are. And I am lonely at school. I’m not popular. They say I’m a
goody-goody and that I’m small and that you’re old.’
‘I’m sorry, Lars. I can’t stop being old, but you’ll grow up and be taller. It’s sad that
some of the children taunt you for liking lessons, though. Just carry on enjoying them. That’s
their problem.’
‘But it’s also mine, Daddy.’ From this nine year-old was coming the logical voice of
sweet reason. ‘They push me and pull my clothes. They make fun of my name.’ These were
observations; factual and with a touch of sorrow, but with an underlying realisation that this
is the way the world is and that it cannot be changed. He did not volunteer the names of the
children, nor did I ask. He did not request my intervention. I did not offer it. He and I knew
this was something he would have to live with. Bullying, like the unpleasantness on the
internet, was not something that could be avoided. There had to be coping strategies for both.
‘It’s every day.’
‘Human nature can be really nasty and I’m sorry you’ve had to come across it. Just let
it wash over you without comment, or give them a one-liner. If they say that Daddy’s old, just
say ‘Yeah – and he eats children for breakfast.’ Just don’t let them see that you’re bothered.
Kipling had the right idea. You remember, he’s the one you used to call ‘Rhubarb Kipling’.
‘Let all men count with you, but none too much’ is what he wrote, so don’t let anyone
become too important in your life.’
I stopped. That was me to a tee. I had thoroughly taken on Kipling’s advice.
‘School’s lovely and the teachers are great. Why don’t they like it, Daddy?’
‘Maybe because they’re spoiled and have so much they don’t appreciate anything.’
‘If they’re spoiled, it’s not their fault.’ Piers enjoyed his one-liners. ‘You said so.’ He
waved a finger in my direction. ‘You said it’s other people who spoil children. You,’ his
finger found the end of my nose, ‘You said children can’t spoil themselves.’
‘There comes a point, Piers, at which they take on responsibility for who they have
become and, Piers, I think the same applies to you, Master Choplogic.’
‘But it is logical.’ Piers was on a roll. ‘AND it’s your fault I forgot my pen for
History.’
‘How so?’
‘Miss S told me she told you at the parents’ evening that I sometimes forget my pen.
Yes.’ he added in case I might dispute the point, ‘And you...’ Out came the finger again.
‘You didn’t tell me. Yes. So I forgot to bring it.’
‘The consequence being that, if I had told you, you would have brought it but,
because I didn’t tell you, you decided to forget to bring it? Having given it due consideration,
Piers, I would say that’s rubbish. You...’ My finger came towards his nose. ‘You... are
responsible for yourself.’ Enjoyable though the badinage was, it didn’t get the boys to bed.
‘Enough. Five minutes to bed, boys!’
‘Dad! Dad! Robin Hood was on the telly. What he did was all wrong. He made more
people poor, not less. He made the rich poor. They weren’t poor before, were they?’
‘Four minutes.’
‘If you say it’s four minutes to bedtime, you’re wrong.’ Piers felt confident he was on
safe ground. ‘You’re wrong because it may be four minutes before you say it, but by the time
you’ve said it, it’ll be less.’
‘Then I’ll say bedtime now.’
Piers was on a roll, though.
‘Did we come out of your penis, Dad?’
‘In a way, but that’s not how you were born.’
‘Then where did we come out? Was it the bottom? Is that where babies come out?
The bottom?’
‘No. The vagina.’
‘Uuugh. That’s horrible. Not Tina’s v...’
‘No, you didn’t. You came out of the tummy. It was cut and you came out. One, two,
three.’
‘But how did you get the seeds?’
I chose to reinterpret the question.
‘How did I get the seeds to go into the egg? That’s called fertilisation. Dr Smotrich at
the lab did this. He took three of the seeds and injected them into three eggs.’
‘But there were four, weren’t there?’
‘Yes, I meant four. But one didn’t make it.’
‘But that’s really sad, Daddy. Why didn’t he make it? We could have had another
brother.’
‘Or a sister, indeed. Well, he or she was microscopic and sometimes such tiny
microbes don’t survive.’
‘But how did they get the seeds out of you, Daddy?’
‘Yes, Dad, and what colour were they?’
‘Off-white and we’re going to have to get a move on.’
Would I have asked my parents’ questions like this? No. Was this respect, fear,
embarrassment or did the need for an answer simply not arise? I tried to go back to my nineand-a-half year-old self, but failed. Perhaps I simply accepted it or was it part of my need to
please that I did not want to embarrass them?
Or was it the change from the repressive buttoned-up ‘50s of my childhood to the
liberally tolerant and open 21st century that I had benefited from so much? Already one of
the boys had told me, ‘I saw a woman sucking a man’s penis. It was sooo funny.’ He and his
brothers burst out laughing. They had all seen fellatio on their laptops. In spite of parental
controls, their world contained images that I had not seen until my adulthood. ‘Look at what
my penis can do,’ said one as it waggled up and down in its semi-erect state. Maybe I should
see their openness as a compliment, that they feel they can tell me whatever they wish. I
never felt this with my parents and so did not trespass into areas that I thought might be
contentious.
‘You say we’re test tube babies, Daddy, so did you wee your seeds into a test tube?’
‘You get the seeds out in a different way.’
‘Daddy, what’s a ‘wanker’?’
Maybe Piers already knew how.
‘And a ‘tosser’?
I suspect he did.
HOSTILITY
‘Why does Hector’s mum hate you, Daddy?’
A few terms before, I had said hello to her and she had said, ‘I’ve just been told to my
face that my son isn’t right for this school.’ ‘Oh,’ I had said. ‘How peculiar.’ She had
flounced off. A few weeks later, I complimented her on a goal Hector had scored in our
sons’ football team. ‘Not bad for a boy who shouldn’t be here,’ had been her reply. ‘Hang
on,’ I had said. ‘Do you think I said something about your son?’ ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ And
off she went. They were the last words she ever said to me. From then until our sons left the
school, she neither looked at me nor said a word to me.
‘I have no idea.’
Getting on with people, no matter how difficult they may be, is rather an important skill
and I was keen that my sons should see the easy way I tried to relate to people and emulate
this. Important though it is to see the best in people and never criticize classmates’ parents,
with this mum, I stood no chance.
‘Jean-Paul Sartre says ‘hell is other people’. Maybe for her, I’m that other person, but I
really haven’t a clue. Maybe she’s got an idea in her head that won’t be dislodged. Could it
be that you told Hector I’d said something about him?’
My boys assured me they had said nothing, but I was aware from what they had told me
about their friends’ parents that they rarely let the truth get in the way of a good story.
‘Louis’s dad takes viagra,’ they had announced. ‘And Louis found a sperm cell on his
pillow.’
A few weeks before, I had met Louis’ dad in Tesco. He was pushing a deep trolley. It
was filled with boxes of whisky bottles. Nothing else. ‘Whatever must you think?’ he had
said. ‘Should be a good party,’ I had replied. I never passed on this gem to my sons.
‘Victor’s mum hates you, too,’ they told me, frequently.
Victor had been on the receiving end of some horseplay in the classroom during which
his v-neck pullover had been stretched. His mum had complained to the school. My sons
were among those blamed and given a ‘debit’ each.
‘But they didn’t do anything,’ a friend had said that evening when he came to have
dinner with us. ‘They were just there. They didn’t do anything.’
Sensing an injustice, I told them they should seek a meeting with the teacher who
punished them and put their case. They did. The teacher said she would ask the boy about
their involvement and, when she had done so, the punishments were rescinded. The mother
never spoke to me again.
‘Nowt so queer as folk, boys,’ had been my response. It was, however, the reaction of a
couple closer to home that saddened me.
Belinda-and-Jonathan were a double-act. I had known them for the best part of 35 years
since I used to teach their son. Their friendship with me remained long after their son had left
the school and our only common interest had disappeared. Every year my birthday was
remembered. I provided the car at their son’s wedding and was invited to dinner once or
twice a year. Jonathan helped me secure the mortgage I needed to build my first house. When
I told them my plans for a child, they were unfazed. ‘You told us twenty years ago you might
do something like this. We’re not surprised.’ Their memory was better than mine. It had been
a last resort in the back of my mind not, I had thought, an idea I externalised. In the last few
years they had become devoted to a young Indian girl, the daughter of people who owned a
restaurant they visited and, in the absence of a real grandchild, had become honorary
grandparents to her, having her overnight and taking her on holiday. They were kind and
loving and seemed an obvious choice to take on a special role for the boys. I could not choose
one over the other so they became a caring unit. When I popped the question about a special
involvement with the children, their initial response was that they were too old.
‘Come off it, 70’s the new 50.’
They took little persuading. I offered them a choice of child. There was no hesitation.
Piers it was to be. He was the one who, as it happened, was everso slightly ‘proper’ and
clearly the right choice.
They were dutiful beyond expectations. Every visit was accompanied by thoughtfully
chosen presents – a garden swing, a tricycle, whatever was right for that time. The other boys
received bags of gifts, too. I was sure they enjoyed the choosing and giving as much as the
boys enjoyed the receiving.
‘We were just at the hobby shop and saw this.’ See-through flashing key-fob fish
were handed to each child. ‘We thought they’d like these.’ Six eyes lit up as the toys came
out – a tiny quivering ladybird in a wooden box for Ian (‘We know how much he likes
animals’); an early reader for Lars; a cuddly toy for Piers. Clearly, any time they went
anywhere they had the boys in mind and, if they spotted something appropriate, stored it
away for the next visit.
‘I wonder what Auntie-Belinda-and-Uncle-Jonathan will bring this time.’
‘Now boys, you mustn’t...’
‘Expect anything, so you won’t be disappointed’ they chorused. They had my stock
answer off pat.
‘And you mustn’t expect anything anyway. People come and you enjoy them, not
what they might bring.’
The children loved their visits. It was with them that they had their first outing to a
restaurant. ‘Ugh, Daddy. It’s just yucky.’ Marco Pierre White’s risotto, like many of the less
predictable dishes I tried on them, was pushed to the centre of the table. They took Piers to
their hearts.
‘Will I go to a sleepover with Auntie-Belinda-and-Uncle-Jonathan, Daddy?’
‘Could well be, Piers. When you’re a bit older.’
They had come with presents for the boys’ fifth birthday. Belinda did not know what
to look at. She examined the kitchen furniture. There was no eye contact. ‘It’s not right to
drag them off to America’. It was the first critical comment I had received from them, or
anyone. We were going to meet their mothers as part of a BBC documentary.
‘Not sure that I’m actually ‘dragging’ them anywhere. It sounds as though they’re
screaming and protesting. They’re quite happy about going and seeing their mother. In fact,
were it not for the BBC, I doubt I’d have managed to find their mother. I’ve tried to locate
her myself, but haven’t been able to. Anyway, I haven’t signed the contract yet.’
‘Maybe we’re just not the television generation, but why do you have to let them be
filmed?’ The lips were puckered; the eyes averted; the head shaking side to side and the back
stiff. Belinda pulled her cardigan around her as protective armour against what verbal assaults
I might be about to hurl in her direction.
‘Well, I don’t have to, of course, but the BBC isn’t about to find their mother for our
benefit. They want a documentary out of it. I don’t know where their mother is or how to find
her, so if the BBC is willing to use its resources to do it, I’m happy for them to go ahead. I
think it would be really good for the children to be in contact with her. Anyway, let’s find out
what the boys think. Boys...’ I called them in. ‘What would you say if I told you the
filmmakers were coming this afternoon?’
Their faces lit up. ‘Oh yes, Daddy. They play with us.’ Films of Record who were
making the documentary for the BBC’s ‘One Life’ series employed a young crew. The two
cameramen and young PA had come to know the boys well, generally during a rumbustious
hide-and-seek.
I looked at Belinda. ‘I think that says it all, don’t you?’ The lips tightened. Clearly she
did not.
‘Well we’re going to have to agree to disagree, aren’t we? I don’t think it’s such a big
thing.’
The rest of the day went as usual and we waved goodbye to them. I forgot about the
event.
‘We haven’t heard from Auntie-Belinda-and-Uncle-Jonathan for such a long time.’ Piers
was wearing his puzzled face.
‘Yes, it must be the best part of a year.’ Earlier that year, in March, I had received no
birthday card for the first time since I had known them. ‘Oh dear,’ I told a friend. ‘Belinda’s
cross with me. I hope it’s not one of her feuds.’ When I first came to know her, she had fallen
out with a neighbour, uttering not a word to her in twenty three years until the day she died.
While the source of the disagreement became lost in history, the passion took on its own
momentum. ‘That would really be a pity.’
The spring and summer passed without contact. Although the presence of AuntieBelinda-and-Uncle-Jonathan had disappeared from our lives, their names came up in
conversation as the boys tended to ask who had given them whatever book or toy they were
playing with at the time, and they had been exceptionally generous.
‘Maybe they don’t get out much any more,’ I ventured. ‘They aren’t as young as they
were.’
As Christmas approached, I wondered if the feud – for that’s what it seemed to be –
had spread to their special charge. No card; no present. It had.
Surrounded, as they were, with cards and gifts, the boys did not notice. Nevertheless I
included Belinda-and-Jonathan on our list of those for whom the boys would draw cards and
buy small presents. On Boxing Day we were due to visit a godparent who lived nearby, so we
took the gifts with us to drop them off. The boys were full of Christmas down to their Santa
Claus hats. I tried to prepare them for the reception we might receive.
‘Now, boys, we haven’t been invited and aren’t expected, so it’s almost certain it will
be a very quick visit just to give them your cards and the little pot plants. Some people don’t
like being taken by surprise, so we may not even be invited in.’
I have always told the children, ‘If you can’t say something good about someone,
don’t say anything at all,’ but I wondered if there might be a perverse pleasure in seeing
appropriate toys and not buying them, in denying oneself what must have been a joyful
experience in order to express, even if only to oneself, righteous indignation. I dismissed the
thought. Life’s too short.
The house seemed empty when I rang the doorbell.
‘Not in, boys, we’ll just leave everything in the porch.’ There was a movement behind
the glass. ‘Oh, Belinda.’
The door opened. There was no facial acknowledgement that she knew us.
‘We’re expecting friends.’
Was it my imagination or was there a stress on the last word in that sentence so that
whoever was coming was and we were not?
‘We were on way to Uncle Ian’s and thought we’d just drop off some things the boys
made for you.’
‘You’d better come in.’
Inside the sitting room door, the boys burst into chatter. ‘D’jwanna know what we had
for Christmas?’ Fortunately without a pause, they just launched into a breathless list of their
presents, finishing with – ‘And we had costumes for Batman - and Robert.’
‘And I had Superman.’ Piers swished his cloak, rustling the lights on the Christmas
tree.
They looked into Belinda’s face for a reaction. They looked in vain. The stare was
blank and uninterested. The silence needed to be filled.
‘Well, boys, we must be off.’
‘Yes, you must.’ Jonathan, who had left the sitting room as we entered with the words
‘You can’t do this, Ian’, had walked round to the front door and stood holding it open.
‘Lovely to see you. Bye. Say bye bye, boys.’
‘Bye, bye Auntie-Belinda-and-Uncle-Jonathan. Bye bye.’
‘Now boys, as I said, they don’t like being taken by surprise, but you behaved very
well. Let’s get on the road for Uncle Ian’s.’
Not a word was mentioned about the visit which had lasted all of three minutes. On a
road I knew well, I found had taken a wrong turn. When we eventually arrived at Ian’s, there
were people we had never met. The welcome could not have been warmer.
Two months later, it was the boys’ sixth birthday. There was no card for Piers. He
wrote a note hoping that they would be able to come to their birthday party the next year.
Their birthday coincided with half-term and we were visiting friends overseas so I asked
them to post it. At least it might not end up straight in the bin.
At about this time, Christopher Wool’s print ‘House’ came up at auction. I put in a bid
for it and, until the boys started to read, it hung on the kitchen wall. The boys could make out
most of the words, but such is Mr Wool’s way with graphics, that there was one word that
was unreadable, or almost so.
‘‘If you don’t like it you can get the’... don’t know what this is... something ‘out of
my house.’ What’s the ‘something’, Daddy?’
‘‘Hell’.’
‘But it begins with a ‘fff’.’
‘Can’t imagine what it is, then.’
HOLIDAYS
‘Holidays,’ as Margaret Thatcher may or may not have said, ‘Are a waste of time.’
While these are my sentiments, they are not my sons’. In most of what of I was doing in
their early years, I was being like my parents. That most of what they did for me had become
impossible was down to social attitudes rather than my volition. When the time came for a
family holiday, I thought back to what my parents did – and I did exactly the same. They,
however, let the child in them run free. The child in me approved of their doing this, but the
holiday, I decided, was for the children, not for me.
‘Are we nearly in Sandy Aygo, Daddy?’
Memories of their visit to America some months before were still fresh in their minds.
The last time they had seen the sea was the blue Pacific in San Diego.
‘It’s very sandy there. Is Cornwall still in Engerland?’
The sea appeared as we rounded a corner.
‘It’s the same as the sky.’ As both were grey, this was said with Eeyore-like
resignation.
‘We’ll play ‘I-Spy’,’ said Piers. He flapped his hands like the chorus in ‘The Black
and White Minstrels Show’, a sure sign that he was hatching a clever ploy. The Matchbox
Batman Car (Batmobile was too long a word at this stage) had been confiscated partly as it
was an item of contention and partly as it had been denuded of its rubber tyres which left four
sharp metal wheel rims free to gouge whatever skin or surface it was whooshed along by
small hands. ‘Here are the new rules. Whoever thinks what I’m thinking gets the Batman
Car.’ After a brief pause to let this sink in and in the absence of a response from his brothers,
he continued, ‘I’m thinking of the Batman Car, therefore I get the Batman Car because no
one guessed it.’ Another pause. ‘Don’t I, Daddy?’
‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘g’. I won. I won. It’s the sea.’
‘That’s ‘s’,’ said Lars, perceptively.
‘No, it’s the grey sea.’
A sign marked the entrance. ‘Duporth Holiday Village.’
‘Here we are boys.’
‘I want to go home, Daddy.’
I kept the ‘so do I’ unsaid. ‘Here’s our holiday home for the next week. We’ll find
where our chalet is and then see the sea.’
‘Do we have to?’
‘Yes.’
Momentarily, I had no idea what on earth I was doing there. I had not enjoyed the family
holidays at Duporth. Its mix of compulsory fun and games were of little appeal to this quiet
and bookish boy. I could not logicalise the antipathy so I said nothing. My parents loved it
and, every year from the age of five until I was seventeen, woke me up at three in the
morning to start the drive down the A303 to St Austell in Cornwall. Most of the journey was
in a queue following a caravan along single carriageways. After twelve hours in the back of a
1939 Austin Eight which had a permanent whiff of carbon monoxide, ‘Can we see the sea
yet?’ was more a plea than a question. Duporth was a holiday camp. The absence of ‘wakeywakey’ Tannoy announcements and redcoats marked it out as upmarket, genteel even. In the
days before cheap flights and package holidays in the sun, this is where the doctors, lawyers
and other professionals would take their families for their standard two week holiday. The
accommodation was in chalets. These were basic in the extreme – one-roomed asbestos huts
containing one or more beds, each with a ‘guzunder’ in case of a night time emergency, a jug
and a washbowl on a chest of drawers. That was it. Lavatories were in a separate block, along
with wash handbasins. There were no showers, but a bath could be booked in the Manor
House, a huge, crumbling pile in the grounds, whose bedrooms commanded a premium and
whose billiard room was hung with heavy velvet drapes faded by decades of sun, the merest
touch of which sent myriads of particles into the shafts of sunlight that streamed through its
milky windows.
How enormous were its rooms and how heavy its doors to this very small boy in the
mid 1950s who occasionally absented himself from his parents and their troupe of friends to
savour alone its welcome quiescence and shade, filling his nostrils with odours, albeit of
damp and decay mixed with nicotine, quite different from the briny of the beach and the
disinfectant of the communal facilities. There were knockout competitions like quoits and
cork ‘n ball. The latter involved throwing a tennis ball at a cork in a white circle on a green
wooden square board. For those who were more sedentary, there were afternoon tasks, like
creating a garden on a tea tray. Intelligent adults would busy themselves for hours creating
small landscapes out of earth, stones and heather for prizes like china Duporth thimbles or
cigarette boxes. While my parents signed up for cork ‘n ball, table tennis, or shove ha’penny
and while little girls and their parents created miniature gardens on tea trays with flowers,
paths marked out in tiny sea shells, and mum’s make-up mirror serving as a pond, I wandered
round the site in my own Enid Blytonesque world of smugglers, wreckers and spies.
Scavenger hunts and other children’s activities were entrusted to a petit lady in late
middle age whose short back and sides, lovat jacket and dark tie gave a severe aspect; a tight
corset keeping her spine in place contributing to her upright demeanour and sudden,
unbending movements. Later I discovered that she had been in constant pain. I was never
sure about Auntie Wyn and, indeed, there was no reason for her to warm to this dour child
who, in all the years she worked as social organiser, became animated only once when he
spelled ‘Majorca’ correctly in public and was rewarded with a five bob prize. One year I
noticed her absence and was told she had killed herself.
As I grew up, I was occasionally allowed in the ballroom (‘take your partners, please,
for the valeta’) and could join in the nightly housey housey. To this day, I can remember all
the rhymes for the numbers and can do a mean wolf whistle after ‘legs eleven’. I wondered
what the ‘doctor’s orders’ for a number nine were, but assumed they were something adult
and unmentionable. Meals were at set times at set tables and there was no deviation from the
fixed menu in which ‘Windsor Soup’, a thin brown liquid, frequently featured. Evenings
could be formal with jacket and tie or cravat or special with vice-versa shows and fancy dress
parades.
Within this regimented framework, campers formed real relationships during the one
or two weeks of their stay. Even for me, after the first few days the bonhomie eclipsed the
essential tattiness of the surroundings. There was a walk each day, either spontaneously to the
beach down a steep footpath flanked by high, moss-coated walls the constant damp from
which trickled into gullies, the water discharging at the side of thirty steep concrete steps
which led to the beach, or organised ones along the cliff top to Charlestown and beyond. The
start of a meal was announced by the blast of a steam whistle, pulled by a child as a treat for
being especially good. Grace was sung:
‘Always eat when you are hungry.
Always drink when you are dry.
Close your eyes when you are sleeping.
Don’t stop breathing or you’ll die.’
For anyone arriving after grace had been sung, a penny was to be put in the late box.
In a post-war Britain used to rules and being told what to do, no one thought twice
about an eleven o’clock closedown to the strains of ‘Goodnight campers, I can see you
yawning. Goodnight campers, see you in the morning. You must cheer up, or you’ll soon be
dead, for I’ve heard it said, most folk die in bed, so I’ll say goodnight campers, don’t sleep in
your braces, goodnight campers put your teeth in Jeyses. Drown your sorrow, bring the
empties back tomorrow – goodnight campers, goodnight.’ In this cloud of euphoria, everyone
drifted back to their chalets and went to bed. Photographs of the time show me in a clip-on
bow tie and aertex shirt between my father in a cravat and my mother in a floating summer
dress of her own creation. While my parents mixed easily with their age group, establishing
instant holiday relationships and swapping wartime stories, I was left to my own devices.
Occasionally, I found a friend, related with intensity and was left devastated when we
all went home, never to meet again. Knowing that this would inevitably happen, I mooched
around, missing my dog, my room and my friends at home, counting the days until the end.
When I was 16, I achieved some independence by having my Lambretta brought down by
train and, when I was 17, my father was quite happy to let me take his swish, black MG
Magnette round the coastline. That was the end of the family holidays. For the next 42 years I
had no desire to return to Duporth; hardly gave it a second thought. Then, for no conscious
reason, into my head came the knowledge that I had to take the first holiday with my own
family there; the same place, the same week in August. I toyed with the idea that, just maybe,
I might find people to jog along with in the same way as my parents had all those decades
ago. I typed ‘Duporth St Austell’ into Google and found a planning application to redevelop
the site. Scrolling down the list, I saw that their latest web site was years old and phoned on
the off-chance. They still existed and, yes, they had an entertainments programme for
children. Back in the 1950s, bills were payable by the last Friday of your stay. These days, it
was by credit card in advance. I paid up and wondered what other changes might have
happened in the four decades since I had last set foot there.
Preparing for my first holiday in 42 years bore little resemblance to the preparations my
parents had made. I employed an ‘animal angel’ to live in the house in our absence, partly to
look after the cats, but also for security. A note was put on the business web site that there
would be hiatus in activities. Along with toys, I popped the boys’ three laptops and a
selection of DVDs into the car and we set off mid-morning. Maybe they would enjoy in their
childhood what I so memorably had not in mine. Even though it was a Bank Holiday
Saturday, we arrived before five in the afternoon and hunted for our chalet.
The Google search had hinted that Duporth had seen better days. Compared with 42
years earlier, it had also seen worse. Bayview 2 was to be our home for the next two weeks.
We could park in front of it, unheard of in the 1950s when the few cars that campers had
were consigned to far-flung fields. It was a semi detached, three-roomed wooden hut that was
showing signs of disrepair but had not been built when I had last been at Duporth. Its en-suite
bathroom and loo would have been the height of indulgence in 1964; its kitchen with cooker,
fridge and microwave unheard-of; its TV an unnecessary distraction from the entertainments
programme. Yet there was a shabbiness that announced the place was on its last legs. Repairs
and renewals needed to have happened five years before. Duporth Holiday Camp had died of
a lack of sophistication and been re-invented as Duporth Holiday Village whose clientele was
now drifting away. In post-war Britain, people worked at having fun and, to a large extent,
made their own. Not now. The main adult entertainment was bingo. For the rest of the
evening, the notice-board showed the photos of cabaret artists; a far cry from the shows that
made use only of the campers’ talents. The twenty-first century Duporth visitors were just
passing through. And whatever their professions might be, doctors and solicitors they were
certainly not.
‘That man’s got earrings, Daddy.’
‘That man’s got a ponytail, Daddy.’
The boys were merely observing. They had rarely seen either before and wanted me
to share the experience.
‘What’s that lady got?’
‘Those are tattoos, darling.’
‘Why?’
‘Good question. I suppose some people think they look nice.’
The small nose wrinkled in disapproval. Beauty was not in the eye of this beholder.
‘And I think I needn’t say this, but I can tell you, boys, that if you ever have any of
those done, you’ll be disinherited on the spot.’
We were waiting for the children’s activities to begin. Paul was in charge. He had
been a cabaret singer. The background music in the ‘Dolphin Club’ was him singing. His
voice was like velvet. ‘It gives me accommodation, you see.’ I was the only parent in a room
full of youngsters aged five and upwards. ‘They use this as childcare,’ Paul told me. It was an
observation with no criticism implied. As the customers were involved in a writing activity
which was a stage my three had reached only recently, we moved over to the ball park
carrying a ‘5s and under’ notice located close to the one-armed bandits in the amusement
arcade. The boys squealed with delight at this unexpected facility, dived in and on each other,
hurled balls around and clambered onto the padded sides. The writing activity came to an
end; a massive child with an incipient moustache pulled the netting aside and slid down the
plastic cladding. Piers flapped his hands, greatly exercised at this intrusion into his world. A
few seconds later some other large children arrived and flattened him under their weight.
‘Come here, Savannah.’ The helper was pointing at a nine year-old with makeup,
earrings, high heels and a handbag.
‘Let’s go, boys. Enough’s enough.’ We moved off towards the path that led to the
beach. It was a path I had last trodden 42 years ago. The boys ran ahead down the steep
incline, trailing their fingers along the soaking walls, jumping in and out of the gullies,
shrieking their anticipation of the sea, ‘Hang on, boys, let me capture this on film’ uttered to
the empty air.
‘Crabs!’
Six feet squelched down the concrete steps, past the huge rocky outcrop with tufts of
grass onto the coarse sand and shingle of the beach. My young self, for years a photographic
memory in black and white, skinny against a grey sea, was now standing in my mind’s eye
pink with maroon trunks, slim against crashing breakers, utterly alone and vulnerable. I
blinked away the image and saw instead three confident little boys, each armed with a fishing
net, heading towards the crabs and shrimps in the rock pools. 42 years. Two generations. The
beach – identical. Everything else – changed beyond belief. I have always looked younger
than my years. At that moment, I felt rejuvenated and, through my sons, experienced the
vicarious thrill of boyhood – never so fulfilled.
There was the massive grass-topped boulder at the foot of the steps that had been cut
by prisoners of war three-quarters of a century before. Lars immediately climbed it. ‘This is
my place, Daddy. You’ll always find me here.’ Shale was piled at the foot of the cliffs as
before, but now with danger notices. Until the tide went out, the shore was rock and shingle.
The smooth sand visible by courtesy of the moon twice a day beyond the rock pools.
The beach became the focus of our stay. No one had uttered more than a ‘Hello’ or an
‘Are they triplets?’ to us during our time there. The camaraderie had vanished. The easygoing
acceptance, the desire of the campers of decades before to subsume themselves into a
community, replaced by a hard-edged self-interest, a grim determination to have fun on one’s
own terms.
In the early 1960s, the ballroom and dining area were burned to the ground and
replaced by a curved concrete complex with huge windows designed to resemble the prow of
an ocean liner. The dramatic white linear structure stood out starkly against the Velasquez
blue of the Cornish summer sky. It was new when I last saw it. Now, its windows bricked up,
its rendering coming apart, it was a hulk awaiting the scrapyard. The old manor house had
disappeared, its grounds of exotic semi-tropical trees and banks of hydrangeas now a
wasteland. Maybe Duporth was already doomed when I was there as a child. The mateyness
that my parents’ generation so readily accepted seemed just bizarre to me then and a touching
relic of the past now. The ‘camp’ was no more. It became just a place to stay. The secluded
beach remained the draw. It was where my father taught me to swim, where I ran up and
down in an imaginary world and later where I first savoured the delightful pain of calf love. I
felt a tug at my hand.
Waves were breaking around the rock pools as the sea entered them. The sun was
setting and we were about to leave, hoping the boys would snuggle down and sleep the
journey away. Three buckets held sea creatures and shells.
‘Can we come back, Dad?’ Lars looked earnest, pleading. I could never have
imagined this scenario 42 years ago. Nor could I have imagined my answer.
‘Oh, yes, absolutely.’
We never did. I had seen short visits to Duporth being part of our summers for years
to come. It was not to be. I had chosen to return just in time. 2006 was its last season. After
that summer it was demolished and a housing estate built with just two of the 1920s chalets
preserved to show what it had been. Another chapter in my past had closed and the world
moved on.
YOUTUBE
Whatever parental controls may be employed, there is no escaping the web. It is there
and cannot be uninvented. It is at the same time fabulous and repellant. My boys were
digital natives and I knew that they were being exposed to influences quite unlike any that
had come into my consciousness at their age. They were vastly more informed about
everything. When they were in 2013, I was in 1959. It was 2001 that concerned me. The
newspapers of that time would have ended up as cat litter tray liners the day after they were
read, yet their presence on the web was permanent. If I had wanted to disguise the antipathy
of the tabloids towards what I did, it would have been impossible. I had been upfront from
the start. It was, I thought, the only way to be with children. It just depends on how you
present it. It was just as well I had this philosophy.
‘We’ve seen us.’ Lars was emphatic in front of his teacher. He paused so that the
specialness of his words would sink in. ‘When we were pies.’
His teacher was nonplussed. She mentioned it to me casually at their prep school’s
staff-parent evening which I generally referred to as a staff versus parents match.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘That’s what they looked like when they were embryos. I’ve put a
photo of the three of them when they were embryos on their nursery wall. This must be the
earliest ever family photo. That was Lars’s first reaction: ‘We look like pies.’ The expression
has stuck. He’s right, you know, they do look like pies.’ Thereafter, Lars would often refer to
the past before they were born as ‘When we were pies.’ He says, ‘The war was on when we
were pies, Daddy.’
I doubt if their teacher had ever contemplated the visual similarity between an embryo
and a pie and was possibly taken aback by my jocularity. I had long ago lost all sensitivity to
the mechanics of their creation. The photo of the embryos was one of the marker points in
their creation and I was happy to show it to them. It was one of the first scans sent to me from
the IVF clinic in La Jolla to help me realise that events were moving ahead, and it had an
other-worldly pale blue sheen to it. The four discs could just as easily have been flying
saucers.
In terms of the ‘Ben 10’ and aliens science fiction that Lars was into, such primitive
space machines were so unsophisticated that I doubted if he had ever encountered the term.
‘Pies’ had a boyish straightforwardness to it that appealed to me. I needed to doctor it first,
though, as the photo showed the four embryos that were implanted into Tina. I often
wondered what happened to number four and what that child would have been like. Did it
just die or was it subsumed into the surviving three? These were questions to which I had no
answer and I did not wish to be asked. It would introduce a note of sadness into what I saw as
an essentially happy and fulfilling story. Doing a Stalin and re-writing history with some
early cutting-and-pasting, I took a pair of scissors and trimmed out the bottom-most pie.
Maybe the one I excised was one of the three. Perhaps the deceased one – for I now saw these
pies as mini babies – was among the three on display. It was crude, but expedient and it
worked. I knew that someday I would tell them the truth about the fourth pie, but imagined
that would lie in their teenage years. The truth came out when they were eight
I had not reckoned on the ubiquity of YouTube.
‘You said we’d be with you for the rest of your life. That’s so nice.’ Ian ran up to me.
‘And that we had little fingers and toes.’ The words seemed familiar, although I was sure I
had not used them to him.
‘Where did you hear this, Ian?’
‘On YouTube. You were there.’
Assuming that he was about to see a baby film of himself, Ian had clicked his way to
the site and saw not his former self, but his Daddy talking frankly to a camera.
‘Come. I’ll show you.’ He moved his hand beckoningly towards the small study
where their laptops sat.
Lars was in tears. He ran to me, burying his head in my stomach. I pushed a hand
through his wiry red hair.
‘It’s so.. so..’ He was hunting for the mot juste. ‘Nice.’ He dismissed that choice.
‘Lovely. Loving. We’ll be together for the rest of your life. But I don’t want you to die,
Daddy.’
Piers, too, was in floods. ‘Oh, Daddy, Daddy...’ What had I done? Was this the
moment that the tabloid journalists had foreseen when the children realised the dreadful
truth? Not so. These tears were outpourings of joy.
A picture of me from a couple of years earlier covered the computer screen. A woman
using sign language was in the foreground. They had the hard-of-hearing version of a film I
had made for the Equal Opportunities Commission – ‘Equally Different.’ It had never
occurred to me that my children would find out about their background that way. My words
came back to me. They were simple and they were from the heart. I was saying what I felt. It
was not how I had imagined telling them of their creation, but in three minutes and 34
seconds and complete with sub-titles in Welsh, they had the elements of their story with
images of their birth mother, biological mother, grandfather, and themselves, right from the
day the film was shot when they were six back to being embryos. I couldn’t have put it better
myself – and it was me who was doing all the narration. It was both tender and matter-of-fact.
It set the tone for my reaction to their reaction.
‘Gosh, I’d forgotten all about that. Clever of you to find it. So that’s the story.’
‘But we could have been four. Quads. What happened to the fourth one of us? Did he
die?’
‘Quite possibly, but this one was only a tiny speck and it often happens. I’m just so
happy to have you three.’
I put my arm around all of them.
‘It might have been a girl.’ Ian spoke with a hint of regret, whether because a sister
would have been a preferable addition or because he was at the stage of regarding all girls as
silly, I chose not to explore.
‘No it couldn’t.’ Piers was adamant. ‘Because triplets all have to be the same.’
Later, at bedtime, Lars looked into the large mirrors which were the folding doors of
the nursery wardrobe, contorted his features and started sobbing. ‘I want the other brother,
Daddy.’ Through the bathroom mirror, I could see him, one eye on his reflected performance,
practising wailing. ‘No you don’t, Lars. Two brothers is plenty. It might have been a sister
anyway. Piers isn’t always right.’ Realising that he was getting nowhere with this line, but
keen to continue the melancholia, he reverted to a familiar theme. ‘I always want to be with
you, Daddy.’ Red-eyed, he climbed up the ladder to his top bunk.
‘Lars is crying because of the ways.’ Ian said, darkly.
‘‘The ways’?’
‘It’s because he’s thinking of what’s going to go away. He thinks that everything
that’s good will go away and that he’ll be sad.’
NO ONE’S DEAD
‘They ignore me,’ said one of the mums at the school gate. ‘They live in bubbles.
Airheads the lot of them. Just bleached blondes with cut-off jeans. They won’t have
anything to do with me.’
The parental bullying of other parents was rather more subtle than children bullying
other children, but the similarities were there and children as they neared the end of their prep
school at 13 began to resemble their parents. Children were in charge of other children and,
without much experience of how to be in charge found that they could hurt and humiliate
with impunity. Although the boys were at a ‘telling’ school (‘it’s right to tell tales on bullies’)
with a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy and, in any case, there was no bullying (the inspection report
said so), my sons, in common with all children, found that people had various motives for
being nasty to other people and that sweet-reason went out of the window when dealing with
them. It was a question of dealing with bullying rather than reporting it. When he was quite
young, Ian found that reporting bullying simply made the establishment close ranks so that,
although the culprits were made to write letters of apology, the letters were not allowed to
leave the school, I was not allowed to see them and all I was told was that the incident as
reported had not happened. ‘If it didn’t happen, why did they write letters of apology?’ was a
question I was not able to answer.
‘Do you think I’ll ever forget it?’
‘Yes, of course you will. Do you remember what you thought you’d never forget the last
time you asked me if you’d ever forget it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you are then.’
The small, enquiring, trusting face in front of me was reassured.
‘We’ll have to accept that it happens and look at ways of living with it. The first thing is
that you have to tell me if it occurs and take my word that I won’t make it worse by reporting
it upwards. We’ve seen that the powers-that-be switch into overdrive to downplay whatever
incident it was and make it in some way your fault. Let’s look at why bullies bully. Let’s
look at why you bully your brothers. Oh yes you do. Don’t deny it. I see it every day in one
way or another. Understanding why you do it will help you understand why others do it and
it’ll help you cope with it. You do it because you can do, because it makes you feel in some
way better, because it gives you a buzz to have power over someone else and there is a streak
of nastiness that makes you enjoy seeing other people suffer. And there are some horrible
people on the internet who put others through hell, who pretend to be other people, gain their
confidence, make them do write things and do things on camera and then threated to show
everyone what they’ve done unless they pay them or give them what they want in some other
way. This is a hideous part of human nature that you may come across, but what you have to
do is feel you can tell me what’s happening, that if you’ve done something you’re ashamed of
you can tell me and know that I’ll still love you, no matter what and understand that
everything can be talked through and dealt with. You know what I always say?’
‘No one’s dead.’
‘Absolutely. No one’s dead. Everything can be sorted out. I was reading in the paper
today that some poor boy was so ashamed of what he’d done online that when the bullies
threatened to expose him, he killed himself. And there was his mother saying she wouldn’t
have blamed him, that she understood what her son had done, that it was all part of growing
up, but it was too late, so, please boys, just let’s see ‘the future in the instant’ and tell me
what you’ve done no matter how ashamed of it you may be. And as for the bullies at school,
just understand that they get a kick out of what they’re doing and roll with it. Let them have
their laugh and give it no more thought. We’ll deal with each event as it happens.’
I had to start from the assumption that as we go up the chain, potentially everyone bullies
the person they perceive as being lower down the chain. My sons knew that one of their
favourite teachers had left because he felt he had been excluded from treats at the school, like
being invited to top-flight rugger matches. They saw at an early age how the only male
teacher they had at Nursery had been hounded from his job and into a nervous breakdown by
an anonymous complaint to OFSTED. They also saw how their father had dealt with this by
employing the man privately to babysit, having the house wired for sound and vision and
giving the footage to the police with the result that the investigation was terminated. They
saw that reasonableness could combat the dark forces.
‘They used to be my friends. Now they tell me off.’ The tears were forming at corner of
Lars’ eyes at bedtime.
‘Lars, they do it because they can do it. It makes them feel powerful. You just have to
give them no reason, not the slightest provocation, to do it. And if they do something
absolutely without any reason, tell me and we see a way forward.’
It was the ‘moral high ground’ all over again. Sometimes it was a lonely place to occupy
as Lars knew. I had tried it once before, at their 11th birthday, and got it wrong because I had
not listened to them.
‘Just our friends. They’re the only ones we want to invite.’
Lars was quite right. It was their 11th birthday party; no one else’s. They should
invite whoever they wanted. Why couldn’t I leave it at that? That was the logical decision,
right for a child of that age, and simple to arrange. A small birthday party. Looking back, I
should have listened to them, but no, I had to know better.
‘What about the moral high ground?’
‘Where’s that, Dad?’
They had no idea.
‘Well, you remember when we went go-karting and happened to see half the boys in
your year group there and then we knew that we’d stumbled on a birthday party you hadn’t
been invited to?’
‘Yes. They were the cool guys.’
‘And you remember that I said that it was small-minded and petty of them not to have
invited you?’
‘Yes, but we didn’t care. We don’t like them. They’re horrible.’
‘And I also said that we would never be small-minded or petty?’
‘Yes. So what?’
In truth, I had admired the boys’ insouciance and the absence of discomfiture of the
parent who had organised the go-karting miles from home and who had never imagined that
any of those not invited would have simply happened upon it by chance. My sons cared not
one jot at being excluded. So why should I care? What right did I have to impose my own
sense of what is morally right on anyone else? But I did. It was wrong and I felt I should take
a stand against it.
‘I’ll write out invitations to all the boys, give them to you and you can decide who to
give them to.’
‘Oh, don’t do that. We don’t want to give them to people we don’t like.’
‘Well, that’s your choice. My take on it is that, just as we thought there was
something wrong in their not inviting you, we shouldn’t also be in the wrong by not inviting
them. Anyway, I guess that those who don’t like you won’t want to come anyway.’
Off went the invitations with a deadline, so that I could get a ‘thank you for coming to
our party’ gift printed, and back came the replies – several after the deadline. A laser party
with guns that showed tracer lines, with smoke and with sound effects, was too exciting a
prospect to miss out on. Almost all the cool guys decided to come.
They all seemed like charming young men to me as I greeted them at the door.
Parents disappeared, promising to return in two hours. The gifts table was piled high.
Everyone went into a briefing room. The lights dimmed. A smoke machine filled the air with
the fog of war, just like the freezing variety outside on that February night. The battles began.
Green and red tracers illuminated the darkness. Pop music drowned the sound of laser
rays. Shadowy, blurred figures stalked each other in the gloom. ‘Kill’, ‘hit’, ‘bring ‘im dahn!’
It was ‘Lord of the Flies’ time. The prep school veneer cracked and vanished. I sat in front of
a hardening mound of crudites and sandwiches, provided for the parents who chose to stay,
with the sole other grown up and watched twenty three pre-teenage boys slug it out emerging
sweaty and fulfilled two hours later.
‘Happy birthday to Pierwwwrriannnars. Happy birthday to you.’
And it was all over. Whoever had been victorious out of the three teams, each
captained by one of my sons, I had no idea. That a great time had been had, I was quite sure.
‘I don’t care about the moral high ground. Whatever it is, it isn’t worth having.’
The atmosphere in the icy blackness of the car on the way home was as cold as the
frozen rain dripping from the leaden sky.
‘They showed no respect. It was my special day and they didn’t bother.’
‘Who didn’t bother?’
‘The cool guys. I told you they wouldn’t appreciate it. You spend all that money on
them and they don’t care. They don’t like us and they don’t respect us. There was point in
inviting them. You’re so kind and they’re so. So...’
Lars broke down in tears of frustration.
‘One them knocked him off a wall he shouldn’t have been climbing.’
‘Maybe that’s coloured your impression.’
‘No, it hasn’t, Daddy. You’ve got all these ideas of how people should be nice to each
other and how we should be nice to them, but it was OUR party, not yours. We didn’t want
them. You did. But you didn’t have to play with them. Not again, please, please. They’re
horrible and disrespectful and don’t appreciate anything. They don’t appreciate you like we
do. We just want our friends. We don’t want the moral high ground. It’s not worth having.’
I had been told. I had just received a practical lesson in how the theoretically morally
right comes unstuck in reality. How I was quite wrong to put my moral philosophy in the way
of my sons’ happiness. In the fullness of time, they may well see that I was right, but who I
am to tell them how the world should be. It is unjust, unfair and has its share of children who
may grow up to be delightful, but who should be allowed to spend their early years in the
company of those who are as unpleasant as they are.
‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to do what I thought was right.’
But that was wrong. There I was putting guilt on them for not enjoying what my
clumsy attempt at social engineering had spoiled for them. The other parents had it right all
along. They just let their sons invite who they want. I should do the same and let social
conscience take a break. No more mass invitations. No more high ground. Sauve qui peut!
‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I really enjoyed the party.’ Lars’s face, puffy and red-eyed, peeped
above the duvet.
‘I know, Lars. I know.’
‘It’s just that I love you so much and they don’t care. And I know what you do to try
to make us happy.’
If my children trust me and feel they can be as open with me as I am with them, all I
have to do is listen, take each incident as it comes and talk through how to deal with it; to see
‘the future in the instant’. In the fullness of time, I hope they will be able to do this
themselves.
SLEEPOVER
Absent from my sons’ lives at this point was any connection with the local
community. They knew no local children. Going down the road, knocking on the door and
asking if X could ‘come and play’ was out-of-the-question. With all its inherent dangers, the
internet loomed large in their lives. Playdays were arranged way in advance. They began and
ended at appointed hours. I tried the spontaneous approach, phoning on spec, that was almost
the equivalent of the knocking on doors of my own growing-up, but this never succeeded. I
also tried the casual approach, telling the parents of our young visitors that they were
welcome to pick them up whenever they wanted. As their nannies expected to operate within
certain hours, this didn’t work either.
One day, Piers asked me if he could arrange a sleepover.
‘I’m friendly with Casper now. Can he have a sleepover at our house? Like
tomorrow?’
‘Absolutely. It’s great that you’re making arrangements yourself.’
Casper’s mum was of a similar view. ‘I’m so pleased he’s decided for himself that he
wants a sleepover,’ she told me. ‘Bit surprised, too. He’s never said he wanted to be away
from us before.’
When the day came, Casper was politeness personified. ‘Yes, my dad thought it was a
good idea, too. You see, I’m going to Eton, so my dad said I’d better grow up and get used to
being away from my parents.’
Generally visitors relaxed as time went by. This one stiffened perceptibly. By nine
o’clock, he was sitting on his bed with his overnight bag still in his hand.
‘What would happen if I feel homesick in the night?’
‘I’d tell you to get on with it.’
He weighed this up and clutched his bag more tightly.
‘You could phone my parents if I felt homesick.’
‘Let’s put it this way, Casper: You think you’re going to be homesick, so you
probably will be homesick. I really don’t want to spend the early hours of the morning
discussing with you strategies for coping with homesickness, then waking your parents up
with the news that you can’t cope with a night away, so shall we just see the future in the
instant and call them now?’
Palpably relieved, the small boy called home and asked to be collected. It was a call
his parents were expecting.
My boys were less understanding. ‘But, Daddy, he can’t get homesick in one night.’
‘Well, as you’ve seen, he can. Homesickness is one of those things, if it happens, it
happens and I’m pretty sure I knew it was happening. Yes, it’s odd that he didn’t feel
comfortable in our home and I know you did your best to entertain him, but there you are.
That’s an end to it. I don’t want you to remind him of this. It’s been a failure for him and he
needs to move on from here. Next time may be easier.’
All of us knew there would never be a next time, that this was a humiliation he would
have to deal with in his own way. He became one the ‘cool guys’ and was never mentioned in
dispatches again. His dad may also have been a ‘cool guy’. Some days later, I had a warm
personal letter inviting me to put business in a certain direction. I called the number given.
‘The letter felt as if it was from someone I know, but I can’t place the name. Do I know you?’
It seemed I suddenly did. I did not do business. Our paths did not cross again. And Casper did
not get to Eton.
FACEBOOK
It was towards the internet that they gravitated for their social contacts.
‘It’s a tiny lie.’
‘But it’s a lie. It’s not true, so it’s a lie.’
‘OK. I won’t lie. You can wait until you’re 13 then. Have it your own way.’
They needed no persuasion to let me age them a few years. Back went their date of
birth from 2001 to 1997. The boys skyped with a passion.
‘But you’ve spent the whole day at school with Eric, why do you want to skype him
all evening?’
‘Because we like it, Daddy.’
And I heard them talking animatedly to girls in the same way as to boys.
‘She spends far too much time on skype. I’ll have to be firmer,’ said one of the
parents whose daughter was on my sons’ Skype contacts lists.
‘Oh, please don’t. It’s the only time my boys will talk to girls. It’s funny that they
ignore them at school, wouldn’t give them the time of day, let alone talk to them, but when
they’re on skype they have actual conversations. Maybe it’s the anonymity, or that they’re on
home territory, or the little boy plus computer bubble that gives them security or privacy or
whatever it is they need to feel they can talk to a girl without having the other boys point their
disapproving fingers. But chat they do and I’d love it to continue.’
‘What would they have said when you were our age, if you’d showed them a laptop?’
they had asked and I had told them that the very earliest computers cost millions and were the
size of a room. Way back, it was television, the electronic baby sitter, that supposedly would
give children square eyes and stifle their creativity. That was never my view. I saw it as a
remarkably creative medium that opened up a world of possibilities, but television was not a
part of life I had come to take for granted as I had not been brought up with it.
‘My family didn’t own a TV set until I was eight.’
‘What did you do?’
My boys imagined that we all looked at the wallpaper in the absence of anything
better to focus on. There was one channel and few programmes for children. They were fuzzy
and black-and-white. Real life was much more interesting and accessible and television was
not an influence on my childhood. Enid Blyton was and it seemed quite normal for me to read
her Five on Kirrin Island Again aloud to my boys when they were very young. I chose the
original 1940s edition which included the line ‘George had never seen a television’ and went
on to describe Anne’s reaction to it – ‘Anne gasped to see a man’s face suddenly appear on
the lighted screen of the set. “I can hear him and see him,” she whispered to Julian.’ They
found it hilarious that these characters had not experienced television and quaint when I told
them I could well remember the occasion when I was invited to a neighbour’s house along
with most of the street to watch the Coronation in 1953.
They were indeed digital natives. The television was a distraction, but the computer
was a passion, an extension of their creative selves. It was when they were on their computers
in the room I used to call the ‘small study’ that they were at their most co-operative. They
had their pecking order based on familiarity with the software or the particular site. Whether
they were creating a film or playing a game, they sought and received help from each other
with a minimum of bickering. They learned and were entertained. I felt vaguely guilty that
the computers were giving them such enriching experiences without my having to do
anything but provide them in the first place, but it was a guilt that I found very easy to
reconcile myself with.
‘Piers!’ I shrieked. ‘I’ve become you and I want to be me again. Change me back.
Now!’
‘I just used your e-mail address to change my Skype password. Use mine and you’ll
be you again. I’m just playing Habbo with Tom.’
‘Tom moved to Qatar, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Piers, what ya doin’?’ came a voice from Piers’ laptop.
‘Hang on. It’s Dad.’
‘Uh,’ said Tom knowingly from the Middle East.
Multi-way conversations continued among their classmates on unattended laptops at
mealtimes as I found when I went to retrieve a mug left in the boys’ study. The language was
unfiltered and not for my ears.
‘Hang on a moment,’ I said the following day when the children were merrily skyping.
‘I recognize that voice. Goodness me, Jacob, I thought you were so proper and now I find
you are just as – how shall I put it? – ‘fruity’ in your language as the rest of them.’ I invited
him to choose a ‘nom de plume’ and told him I would include this as an observation on
modern life in which children don’t have to knock on doors any longer to get right into other
people’s homes and lives.
For their 11th birthday, the iPad entered their lives – or, rather, three iPads as they
didn’t do sharing. Off they went one rainy afternoon to Lars’s bedroom. Chuckling came
through the closed door. The following day came the bills from iTunes.
‘Ian, take a look at these.’
Now was my chance to educate a child into good husbandry, basic financial planning,
or to make this an exercise in how-to-set-a-good-example-and-not-to-get-really-crossalthough-being-furious-would-be-completely-justified. I cultivated a relaxed yet purposeful
tone as I opened a series of emailed bills.
‘All these are from yesterday and they are all about Dragonvale. You see? Now here’s
one for £2.99 and here’s another for £4.99 and another for £1.99. Let’s see what they come to
by rounding them up and taking away the 3p.’
Ian’s face was turning puce.
‘OK, I’ll do it. And then I’ll add on this bill and this one and this one and, goodness
me, it looks as if it’s getting on for £150.’
‘I’ll pay it. Take all my pocket money. Take the tokens I had for my birthday. Take
the Argos coupon. Take the W.H. Smith token. Take them all.’
‘Well, let’s do the calculation.’
Ian was beyond this. He entered denial briefly, not wanting to see the bills, just
needing to know that the steps needed to pay the debt had been taken.
‘I want it over. I don’t want to owe money.’
‘Now if we add up the value of your cash in hand and the value of the tokens and take
it away from the value of these bills, you’ll see that there’s more than £100 left which, at
£5.50 a week is likely to take you several months to pay off.’
‘I’ll do it. Take my money. Just stop.’
‘Now, let’s think about it. You’re all wet and snotty, so let me get you a tissue and
we’ll see if there’s another way to do this.’
By the time I returned, the Dragon game had been deleted.
‘Now you still have a huge bill and nothing to show for it. Really, Ian, panicking’s not
the best way to deal with something serious, is it? It’s like when you get angry, say all kinds
of hurtful things and then get upset with yourself and end up saying sorry to me. You know
what you’re going to do, so don’t go through the whole journey to exactly where you know
you’ll be in a few minutes. How about sending a message to Apple.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you didn’t know what you were doing.’
‘I did. I was getting Dragon food.’
‘Let’s try this.’ I began typing: ‘My young son, Ian...’
‘I’m not young and why do you have to mention my name? You’re horrible.’
‘Bear with me, Ian and you’ll see where I’m going.’ Even Ian, now red-faced and
tear-stained, should be able to get the contrast between my composure and his distress. Even
if I had to foot the bill, I wanted £150 worth of lesson that he would learn from. I continued
typing: ‘My young son, Ian, spent time with his brothers on 16 February and a short time on
17 February playing Dragonvale. He tells me he clicked a few times, but not as many as
appear on the itemised bills. He may, of course, have been carried away with the excitement
of his new iPad. Whatever happened, he was brought down to earth with a bump when I
showed him the itemised bills this morning.
I cannot say what happened, only relate what he tells me. If there is no way out of
these purchases, I shall pay, of course, and he is aware that his pocket money will be
forfeited.
If there is a way of returning what he bought, I know that he will be relieved.’
‘Now it’s been sent, Ian. Let’s see what happens. I’ve told them, very calmly, what
the situation is and left it to them to decide on the way forward. It’s always best to be calm.
Has Daddy been cross?’
A few hours later, the purchases had been rescinded and the prospect of half a year
without pocket money had receded.
‘Now can I get some more dragons on Dragonvale, Daddy?’
‘Give me strength...’
‘Dad, I can’t get an internet connection. I can’t use my iPad.’
‘Look, Piers, it’s been a busy morning, let me get on with cooking.’
‘But you’ve got to get the wifi working.’
‘It is working. My computer’s fine.’
‘Mine isn’t. I can’t download my game. DO something. Phone Apple.’
‘You be me. I’m not a computer helpline. You make it all my fault. It’s not. If you
need to sort something out, go and sort it. That’s part of the fun of having an iPad.’
‘No, it’s not. You got them for us. You have to fix them.’
‘Take that line with me and I’ll confiscate them. Now go and read the manual!’
GAMING
‘We have to be back by seven this evening, Daddy.’ Piers was adamant. ‘I have a
meeting. I could have made it six thirty, but there might be a traffic jam. I could have made it
six forty five, but there might be heavy traffic, so I’ve made it seven. Later and we’d be at
supper.’
He paused to let these instructions sink in.
‘And I need to spend £5 of my pocket money to build a new room. Don’t worry, it’s
not an addiction.’ He took the words out of my mouth. ‘I have to show my people what can
be done. What do you think?’ He seemed to want to involve me. It was rhetorical. ‘One of
them said he wanted a hospital room. I thought this was a good idea. Then he said it was for
the prisoners.’ Piers paused to let me work out for myself why I might agree that this was a
bad idea.
‘Because of why the prisoners might need a hospital room?’
‘Exactly. What was he going to do to the prisoners?’
I couldn’t imagine or, rather, I could and it was not pleasant.
‘No, I have to think of something else.’
‘Who are these people you are in charge of? Do you get to know them?’
‘Oh, yes, they may be British, but some are American. It doesn’t matter. I’m friends
with some of them, but some of them I don’t like.’
Through a virtual game, Piers found himself in a position of responsibility. It meant
that he had to make moral judgments grounded in his own sense of right and wrong. He was
in touch with scores of people. He was well aware that these people might not at all be who
they said they were and this knowledge did not bother him a jot. ‘I don’t give any of my
details. I don’t ask them to. Some of them want to do wrong things so I throw them out.’ He
was perfectly happy with a power that was entirely illusory and over people he would never
meet and who, for him, had no existence away from the screen. In this game, he had
achieved, through earning the approbation of his superiors, an authority that he had criticised
others for abnegating and that he was determined to exercise well. It encouraged him to have
moral discussions with himself and with others and honed his skills of expression. It was a 10
year-old’s equivalent of public speaking and I could see his confidence grow daily.
‘It really isn’t an addiction. I can stop. I just need to spend my pocket money now to
show my people that I have some ideas. I need to present them with something at the
meeting.’
The meeting was, for him, a real event with consequences. He had to prepare for it. So
swept away was he with his grand plans, I could not touch on the inconsequentiality of it all
or that he should maybe learn his Latin vocab. He was developing a sense of leadership that
was carrying over into his life at school.
‘We’ve cleaned the shop out of rubbers,’ he announced proudly. ‘The woman there
can’t imagine why there so much demand for them. She says she’s going to have to limit
them to one each. Maybe she should just buy more.’
He was learning about supply and demand.
‘Why rubbers?’ I asked.
‘Edward and I have created a spy force. Look.’ He pulled a stick of rubber out of his
pocket. Half an inch emerged from its cardboard sleeve and on this section he had drawn a
pair of sunglasses. A wispy piece of paper was stuck on the sleeve. ‘That’s his antenna.’
There were others, each with its own characteristics. ‘These are all spies and we have
adventures with them.’
‘But I thought Edward was one of the cool guys. I didn’t know you were friends with
him.’ The ‘cool guys’, as Lars told me, were those ten year-olds who wanted to be seen as
interested in going out with girls, were good at sport and gave cheek to teachers. The uncool
were nerds and he counted his family among their number.
‘He’s nice. We get on. We’re always talking to each other.’
‘Is this spy force your idea, Piers?’
‘Yes. Lots of people are doing it now.’
My unassuming and unsporty son was achieving a status with an idea involving a few
rubbers and plenty of imagination.
‘I said to him I didn’t know that he was such friends with Piers,’ Edward’s mother
told me in passing while we were collecting our children. ‘Oh yes, he told me, we’ve always
been friends.’
‘Well, Edward’s often mentioned in dispatches nowadays. Didn’t used to be, but now
Piers talks about him with affection.’
Our brief interaction ended with agreement to arrange a playday.
‘That’s OK with you two, is it?’ I asked at dinner that night.
‘Yes, Edward’s a friend,’ they chorused.
‘He likes my books,’ Lars added. ‘And the films on our web site.’
Paperproductions.co.uk was the boys’ own work. It was an Easysite Live format with
which I was unfamiliar and dared not touch for fear I might break it. I need not have worried.
They were happy for this site to be their own creation and, while they were initially keen to
populate it with the greatest amount of content possible, as their skills grew, they looked
more to its quality. When I was their age, I wrote a book. It was called ‘The Foolish Girl’, the
storyline of which is long-forgotten, but the eponymous heroine distinguished herself, when
the criminal had been convicted, by asking the judge if she could go down to the cells and
make faces at him – a request to which the judge readily acquiesced. My book had a limited
circulation. I believe it was part of a library I organised with two or three other children in my
road. The books and films my sons created and posted to the web had a potentially worldwide
audience.
‘We’ve had hundreds of views, Daddy.’
And they had. A few people had left comments. Some were expressed colourfully and
were removed, but most were of the ‘like’ variety. Lars and Piers would go off with each
other or alone and create. The Canon Ixus digitals they had for Christmas were put to good
use and the house and garden became the location for many an oeuvre.
FAMILIES
Christmas carries its particular challenges. One of Piers’ Christmas Present Lists read:
‘Ian’s head and Lars’ head on a plate.’ As time went by, the requests became more modest.
'What do I have to do with it, Dad?'
'Well, it's a hyacinth, Ian. You just look at it.'
The instructions on the wrapping paper anticipated soil and bulb over the floor and had
said 'Keep it up this way.'
''Keep it up'. Hmm. The good work?'
'Not really, Ian.'
'It needs batteries, Dad. Two AAs. You have to open the battery compartment.'
'Where's the battery compartment? It's all in French.'
'Write them down, Dad. You need to know who gave us what for the thank you letters.'
'You write them down, Piers. You'll be writing the letters.'
'Who's this for?
'What does it say?'
'It says 'To Piers'.'
'So it may be for you.'
'Is this a spy camera pen?'
'Take a look at the box. What does it say?'
'Spy Camera Pen.'
'So it might be.'
'What's Bruma doing?'
'Pooing in the kitchen sink'.
'Open mine, Dad.'
'When I've removed what Bruma's done.'
'What's hanging off Cresta's bottom?'
'I'll get the cat comb.'
'Oh, it's a chocolate orange!' It sprang from Piers'' grasp.
'Already segmented.'
Ian swung a twisted balloon round his head.
'Oh, look. I've made something. I don't know what it is.'
'It's a man with a big...'
'Enough, Lars.'
‘Open mine first.’
‘No, I’m opening Piers’.’
‘You love him better.’
‘I don’t think it’s a question of loving better,’ answered Piers after a moment of
reflection. ‘It’s hating less.’
‘What’s ‘The Archers’ about?’
‘If you didn’t talk through it, both of us would know that.’
'I need a plaster, Daddy. I shut it and I wasn't looking.'
'I knew I shouldn't have got you a Swiss Army Knife. At least you can't blame anyone
else.'
'But I'm more careful now.'
'Amazing what you can learn in a few minutes, isn't it, Ian.'
'Look what I've made with this balloon. It's for you, Daddy.'
‘Thanks, Ian. I'll treasure it always.'
'No you won't. I want to make something else.
Ian trotted off.
'It's blood!'
As Christmas is a time for families to get together, for the first few years, the boys’
surrogate mother, Tina, and I exchanged the occasional letter during the year and
photographs and cards at Christmas. When the boys were seven, I was gently chided for not
sending photos often enough. ‘We spent a lot of time together, the boys and me. I love them
very much’ Tina’s Christmas letter read. I promised to do better and sent several envelopes
over the next few months. This Christmas there was nothing from her. I told the children I
assumed she had simply moved on.
‘That’s OK, Dad. She’s an ex-mother anyway,’ said Piers. ‘She never sees us.’
There was no regret in his voice. He was simply stating a fact. The person who had at
one time been the most important factor in their lives was now irrelevant.
It was different with Melissa. She made no demands at all, but kept me posted with
events in her life. She left her husband and formed a relationship with a man called Anthony
who was half Jamaican and half British. The British half of her new family suffered a
bereavement in 2011 when the boys were 10. She told me that she was due to come over with
Anthony for a funeral. ‘Pay us a visit’ I said. She did.
In March 2011, she and Anthony came over for the day. It was a Wednesday in termtime. There were lessons in the morning and sports fixtures in the afternoon.
‘I’ll ask if you can be excused sports so you can see Melissa.’
The boys were unimpressed at this possibility.
‘It’s a home match. We can’t miss it. We’re most of the team.’
They were all in the Cs and were quite right. Had they not played, the match would
not have happened.
‘We’ll see her after school.’
I went to the station on my own. Melissa introduced Anthony with an unvoiced ‘th’. I
presented my apologies as I knew he would be Anthony with a ‘t’. We laughed. There was no
tension. It had been five years since our last meeting, but Melissa was one of those people
with whom a relationship could be picked up again as though it had been yesterday. We
chatted like old friends about how the children were doing and what we were doing with our
lives.
‘It should be strange.’ Anthony said. ‘Our meeting like this with the history you and
she have. But it’s not. It’s...’
‘All perfectly normal.’ I added. And so it seemed. But here was the mother of my
children – our children – and any maternal feelings were completely absent. Was this
normal? Should it be normal? It was, at any rate, practical.
‘Do you want to talk to them about your role in all this? Do you feel like broaching
the concept that you’re their mum?’
So casually as if it were a self-evident truth, Melissa said, ‘I see it as just a transfer of
genetic material. That’s what it was.’
That, indeed, was what it had been. But it was not all it had been. Not for her were
there to be any diversions down the road of parental emotions. Anthony looked on. I
wondered what he thought of the familial situation his new relationship was introducing him
to. Whatever he might have thought, when the children came home we all had a chat about
Jamaica, which we had visited a few years before, and football and what being at a British
prep school was like. He, Melissa and the boys chatted animatedly. Everyone was on
sparkling form. The boys related brilliantly to both of them and they did to the boys. Only
when I pulled out the camcorder did they become self-conscious.
‘This is like being with the TV cameras again,’ said Melissa. Keen though I was to
preserve the moment, I switched off and the normality of the family visit was resumed.
‘I knew I was the ideal person for the job,’ Melissa said when the children were out of
the room.
She was right. She was absolutely perfect. Her relationship with the children was that
of an old friend. She enjoyed their company but, no, they would not stay overnight, thanks.
They needed to get back.
‘Let’s have a cuddle.’
The boys obliged spontaneously and naturally. She was warm and tactile. They shook
hands with Anthony and told him they enjoyed getting to know him. They did. They told me
afterwards how much they liked him. We piled into the Scenic and drove to the station.
And then they were gone.
It had all been so easy and so friendly.
Had I been Melissa, I knew I could never have done it.
AGE
‘How old are you, Daddy?’
‘94.’ The answer came as a knee-jerk. None of their business, so I’ll just give them a
number. Never got an answer from my parents when I was their age. Never had the temerity
to ask. Better to err on the side of caution. Give them something far more than the real thing,
they’ll realise it’s a spoof, get the message that I’m not telling them and it’ll keep them quiet.
When they find out, they’ll be relieved rather than disappointed. It’ll be like Father
Christmas. They know I know, I know they know, they know I know they know. How wrong
I was. They still believed in Father Christmas and believed me. This misinformation would
be challenged daily.
‘You were alive when Queen Victoria was on the throne.’
‘Just missed her.’
‘You’re even older then the Queen. You don’t look older than the Queen. How can
you be so old? ‘
‘Wearing well, boys.’
I kept it up for several years.
‘How old was your dad when he died? You’re almost as old as him. When I see his
photos he bees much older than you.’
‘Be he, indeed. Thanks, Ian, you pay me nice compliments.’
‘Did they have electricity when you were alive, Daddy?’
Piers was playing with his fingers. ‘But your dad died when we were 2 and now we’re
7, so how can you be 96 when he died at 94?’
‘Ah, the mysteries of life, Piers.’
‘Hector’s mum says you’ll get a telegram from the Queen in a few years when you’re
100. What’s a telegram?’
My 95th birthday came round, then my 96th.
‘Dad, they told me at school that you’re not 96, but I told them you told me you were.
They tell me I’m lying.’
Time to come clean. In fact, 60 something or 90 something made little difference. My
boys proudly told anyone who would listen that their dad was 63.
‘Dad, they tell me you’re not 63. They tell me I’m lying. They tell me you’re 43.’
‘Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.’
But it enabled me to play the age card.
‘You don’t have to do a penalty shoot-out with me. It’s a hard job for a 63 year-old. If
you do, I can pick up the ball for you. You don’t have to bend down, old chap.’ Lars put a
comforting hand on my arm.
‘Oh, Daddy,’ Ian sighed, wistfully. ‘Nearly everyone’s 60 these days.’
‘I never knew you were so old!’ the lady in charge of the boys’ swimming school
yelled up into the viewers’ gallery. ‘I read it in ‘Fabulous’.’ I yelled back down to her,
apologising for disappointing her. What could I say?
A mum I met at the hairdresser was talking about her new husband-to-be and the
problems people of ‘our age’ have in confronting prejudice. ‘You must be my age,’ she said.
‘Early 40s.’ When I told her my age, her hand went straight to her mouth. ‘Fuck me,’ she
gasped. ‘You look twenty years younger. My mother’s 65.’ The passing hair stylist gave a
slight shriek. ‘I haven’t got leprosy, you know.’ ‘My girls will be so shocked,’ she said – and
on reflection added ‘It’ll give them hope for when they’re old, too.’
I was delighted when someone of my age came to the boys’ school as an action hero.
‘There’s a Great Man coming to the School on Wednesday, Daddy. He’s a famous
footballer and he’s coming to our assembly in Chapel. It’s on the World Cup and we’re going
to blow things. Voodoozekers.’
‘Who’s the Great Man, Ian?’
‘Don’t know, Daddy. Can’t remember. You’ve got to come to assembly tomorrow
though, and we’ve got to be in at 07.50 to be on time for Him. You’ve got to get us to school
early.’
‘He’s Pilter Shitton,’ came a voice from the back of the car.
‘No. He’s Pitton Shilter,’ came another.
‘He’s a goalkeeper,’ added the first voice, for clarification. ‘He plays for England.
And he’s 47.’
‘My boy told me that Peter Gabriel’s coming,’ one of the parents told me on the day
the Great Man arrived. ‘Got quite worked up with excitement. But he’s not. He’s a goalie
from way back. Must be my age.’
‘Yes. He’s 60, Frannie.’ I looked her in the eye. She was another Older Parent. ‘Gosh,
you’re doing well.’ Her mouth opened – and closed. Although the pitch was straight ahead,
she veered away from me to approach it via the swimming pool.
All around the field, small children ran clutching squares of paper.
‘He’s sent an autograph on the computer, so we don’t have to ask him. And he’s not
giving any until 6.30. But it won’t be the same, Daddy, will it? I mean, if Pilter Shitton is
coming, I’ve got to get his autograph, haven’t I, Daddy?’
Using the squares of paper as aircraft wings, several small girls ran in circles, engine
voices droning in an aerial dog fight on the hot sunny afternoon on a lush playing field in the
English countryside. Having just been trounced in the World Cup, England wasn’t going to
lose to Germany in this conflict. The squares of paper flapped like machine guns. A few
escaped their owners’ clutches and rolled towards a row of four inflatable goals. As the hot
afternoon wore on, the number of children declined to a hard core of my three and three
friends. One of the friends pulled out a stick of gum and inclined it towards me.
‘No. It’s not allowed,’ I answered his unasked question. Recognising that my
headmastorial self was intruding into my parental persona and sensing my sons’ disquiet at
my authoritarian knee-jerk, I added, ‘Is it?’ Maybe he had been offering me a piece rather
than seeking approval. Either way, the gum was returned to the pocket for consumption later.
‘You an embarrassment, Daddy,’ Lars hissed when his friends were out of earshot.
‘It’s what parents do best,’ I replied.
Inflatable goals were being promoted by way of a training session for children from
the locality. No one was being injured by falling crossbars. I looked at one of the friends. His
finger still bore the marks of being squashed in a cupboard door a few weeks before. ‘It was
everywhere, Dad. Blood and bits and flesh,’ Lars has told me at the time. ‘I just screamed and
ran. One of the teachers fell to the floor.’ In fact, the teacher had been running so fast to help
that she collided with a pillar, but the original version had more of an edge to it and was
preserved in my son’s memory. Teachers were going down all over, unable to cope with and
simply adding to the carnage.
‘So his dreams of being a concert pianist are finished?’ I had said to the boy’s mum.
She was not one to consider litigation. Boys had been being boys. In and out of the cupboard,
they had pushed and shoved until the inevitable had happened. In a matter of days, plastic
guards were fitted to all cupboard doors.
I had not previously considered the impact of falling crossbars on the schoolchild
population, but it was yet another danger to assess the risk of.
‘Gosh boys, what a comfort it is to know that you are just that bit safer on the football
field. It’s a wonder your daddy survived the ‘50s and ‘60s without cycle helmets or seat belts
and the law even let me do wind-in-the-hair scootering on my Lambretta. Ah, the good old
days. How dangerous they were. We just never spotted it. For us, it was normal life in which
accidents sometimes happened.’
‘But, Daddy, did you have colours like we have now in the 1950s?’ I thought Lars
assumed that life looked like early colour movies from the 1950s, either garishly unreal or
faded by time. Not quite. ‘Wasn’t everything black and white then?’
‘Not quite, but it was different from today. I think that’s why I don’t like throwing
food away. It was rationed until I was about seven. I remember taking the book to the shop.
We couldn’t eat what we wanted.’
The hours trickled by; the Great Man’s autograph had still not been obtained. He finished
his coaching, presented signed T-shirts to the trainees and then removed himself to a quiet
corner where he gave an interview to a radio programme on his mobile phone. My sons and
their friends waited, mindful of the Jaguar and motorcycle outrider that were poised to whisk
him off to the next appointment. Then he left. He waved aside their fragments of paper. No
time.
‘Come off it,’ I said. Having little knowledge of the beautiful game I was less in awe
than I might have been. ‘These boys have been waiting nearly four hours for your
autograph.’
The Great Man stopped, signed and moved on. The crumpled sheets were shoved into
pockets. The boarders went to dinner. My boys made for the car.
‘Do you know who he was?’
‘Not really, Daddy, but we got his autograph, didn’t we?’
BEING THERE
‘Do you see that butler standing there by the table?’ my friend Emma pointed a finger.
My sons glanced briefly in my direction. I was hovering in the background, making
breakfast. ‘He’s actually your father.’
My sons were only momentarily distracted from munching their way through the warm
croissants I had just extracted from the oven over which they had liberally smeared Nutella.
Emma was nothing if not direct. ‘And it’s all your fault. Get them to help you.’
My mouth hung open. No reply was forthcoming. Lars filled the pause. ‘It’s not ‘New
– tella’, dad, it’s ‘Nut – tella’, and that’s because it’s made from nuts.’
‘Thank you, Lars.’ I was thanking him more for removing the awkward pause rather than
enlightening me on the constituents of chocolate spread. It had been a point to which I had
no answer. Or maybe I did, but could not express it.
Emma was right. I did everything for my sons, only occasionally asking for their help.
‘Piers, can you take the recycling boxes to the top of the drive for me, please?’
‘No’.
Often, this was a disguised ‘yes’. Not this time.
‘I did it last time, Daddy.’
‘Well you know how to do it now, don’t you? Be a good boy and help, Daddy.’
‘Daddy’ was wrong, too. Emma told me I shouldn’t talk about myself in the third
person. It put a distance between the essential me who was a real human being and the
anonymous thing that was ‘Daddy’. So why did I do it? Was it guilt? All along I knew I
was guided and circumscribed by the knowledge that these were little boys who had been
created by me, quite deliberately. They were not the result of a chance act of love. I had
wanted them and I had made them. This was the truth at its crudest as I saw it. They told me
so in terms that ranged from ‘Thank you for making me, Daddy’ to ‘It’s your fault. You
made me.’ I felt I could not expect anything from them in return. This was, of course, not
good for them and I had to convince myself that it would be part of their development to
contribute to family life and do some chores, or at least that it would be bad for them to go
through life expecting to have everything done for them. If they demurred, I just went back
to doing whatever I had asked one of them to do myself. I needed to be more focussed and
see their participation in the daily grind as positively developmental. The trouble was that I
just saw these as jobs that had to be done and took me away from more important parts of
life. For them more important tasks ranged from playing when were younger to multinational
digital conversations when they were older. I articulated it to them.
‘One of these days, you’ll have to these things yourselves. I won’t be around all the time
picking up after you.’
’We’ll let you carry on living here.’
‘That’s kind. I’ll sing for my supper. There’s a delightful prospect; something to look
forward to.’
All they had to say was ‘we didn’t ask to be born’. They never did and I knew that it
was in trying never to hear these words that I was making life harder for myself than it should
have been.
‘Can’t fold a towel, Daddy. Don’t know how to.’
Just when I thought they had mastered the art and the towels were immaculately folded, I
realised they had stopped using them and were drip-drying.
‘I’ve combed my hair.’
The slicked-backed locks were courtesy of the tap in the downstairs loo – far closer than
going upstairs and using a comb.
‘Yes, I’ve put my clothes in the wardrobe.’
Often the wardrobe would be the back of a chair or under the rocking horse.
*
My bedroom vibrated with the shock of a door being pounded with all the force that
twelve year-old fists on a mission could muster.
‘Get out! I wanna do my teeth. You’re wasting my time. Gerrout!’
Drrrrrm went the fists. The face was red, the red mist was rising.
‘Why don’t you just break it down in your temper? Give it a kick and that might just do
it. Never mind about the consequences, just yell and punch. That’s what’ll get a result. The
flush is going, so he’ll be out soon. Wash your hands, Lars.’
‘He blew on me, Dad! He blew on me!’
‘Well, you haven’t blown away. Just get dressed and down for breakfast. I’ll dance
attention to your every whim while you make life hard for me. That’s the way to do it.
Enjoy it while it lasts. My only comfort is that, if you are so blest as to have children, they’ll
do exactly the same to you.’
Ian screamed the high-pitched scream of the frustration that transcends language.
‘And let all the neighbours in on your fun, why don’t you? It’s called a tantrum. Yes I
know that getting into the bathroom is the most important thing in the world – or maybe not.
Get over it and wait.’
*
‘Stop freakin’ blowin’ on me, retard!’ As a reward for taking the recycling boxes to the
top of the drive, Piers was in front. This meant that Ian and Lars were together in the back –
not a good idea – but to do otherwise would have penalised Piers. Lars had opened the door
and entered the car first. Seeing Ian waiting to get in on the same side, he had promptly shut
the door. Ian pulled the cuff of his shirt down so that it enclosed his hand. He would not let
his skin touch the door handle that Lars had just touched. ‘It’s covered in germs, Dad. He
doesn’t use soap to wash his hands. He’s disgusting.’
‘That may well be, Ian. You’re both revolting in your different ways. Now let’s get
cracking for school.’
‘He’s blowin’ on me! He touched me!’ Lars screamed and in my rear-view mirror fists
were flailing, a foot appeared then a thump connecting with Ian and Ian hitting the door. My
reverse view of the battle in the back made it unclear who was doing what to whom.
‘I can’t drive like this!’ You’ll cause an accident.’ I pulled the wheel to one side and the
car lurched slightly. We were moving at the speed limit in heavy commuter traffic. I put my
hand back through the gap between the front seats and made contact with something human.
I pushed it to make my point.
‘Now let’s do some mental arithmetic.’
‘Let’s get him away from me!’
‘What’s 56 and 56?’
‘He’s ruining my life!’
‘Enough. Another word and it’s no pocket money this week. You’re on silence.’
The tension was palpable.
‘116.’
When we reached the school, Lars was all tears. He buried his head in me. ‘Do you still
love me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘No!’.
‘I keep telling you I do, but that I can’t stand what you do sometimes – often. You need
to control yourself. I take you for driving lessons and you know how you have to concentrate
on everything around you. If I’ve got one eye on the drama unfolding on the back seat, I
can’t do this. It’s dangerous and if anything happened you’d remember a moment of
madness for the rest of your life.’
‘Sorree, Daddy.’
The panic, the overreaction, the blood curdling noises, all of which would be truly terrifying
in adult society, are part of the landscape for a child or at least for children relating to each
other. The measured response, the unwillingness to respond to the situation in kind, the sheer
being in control no matter what is this adult’s reaction to what I see as their attempts to push
to breaking point.
‘You’re gay. You’re a Gaylord. That’s just gay.’
‘Lars, stop saying that to your brother. That is just horrible. Where do you get it from?’
‘That’s what we say at school.’
‘Lars just spell homophobic for me, will you?’
Lars dutifully spelled it correctly and volunteered the meaning.
‘What would you say if I told you I was gay?’ Piers asked.
‘Piers, if you were happy, I’d be delighted. It’s what makes you happy that matters.
Whatever else you remember of what I say to you, please remember this: No one can tell you
who you should fall in love with.’
‘Wouldn’t you be disappointed?’
‘No, of course not. Everyone has the right to fall in love with whoever they want to fall in
love with.’
‘Why do the children at school call me ‘gay’?’
‘That’s because they’re ignorant.’
‘Edgar and I are really good friends and they call us ‘gay’ because we hang around with each
other.’
‘Well, what you are is what people call ‘friends’. Whether you’re gay or not time will tell
and it’s up to you, well probably it’s not up to you, because you can’t really help who you fall
in love with. But you have every right to love someone of the same sex or the opposite sex,
or whatever. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. ‘
I found myself talking to one of the teachers I employed along these lines, recounting the
conversation I had with my boys a few days before. We were on a bus going to see ‘Hamlet’
at Stratford with a group of students.
‘My dad refuses to speak to my brother’s partner,’ he told me. ‘My brother’s gay. My dad
doesn’t like it, but at least he talks to him. He won’t have my brother’s partner in the house,
though.’
‘How sad,’ I replied. ‘I hope my boys will never be able to say anything like that about me. I
tell them no one has the right to tell anyone who they should love.’
‘They’re lucky boys,’ he said. He knew he had told me his own situation.
I seemed to be someone not only my own sons can open up to.
‘I’m looking forward to puberty so I can have sperm.’
‘Good to have something to look forward to, Piers.
‘You’re my best friend,’ said Lars. ‘No one at school likes me. You’re my only friend.’
‘That’s true,’ said Ian. ‘He’s always on his own.’
‘Piers doesn’t treat me like a brother. He goes off with Edgar and doesn’t bother about me.
Even when Edgar bullies me, he doesn’t stop him. That’s not what a brother should do.’
Only Piers had a best friend. Edgar was as unconventional and off-beat as he was. That he
used to be Lars’s best friend was a complication. As I had no idea how my boys responded to
people when I was not there, I could only assume that tact was not a trait they were
accustomed to displaying and that limited the field of possible friends. I could have paid
attention to the tales they told about each other, but that was an overload of information and I
knew from experience that their revelations were a mélange of fanciful wishes and hopes
with a dash of fact here and there.
‘I’m always here’ was my answer to all their woes. I could imagine any of them retorting
with ‘Well, one day you won’t be – so what happens then?’ But it never came.
Maybe they had more tact than I credited them with.
But it was a reality. I was certainly mortal and my sons had even less of a clue about real life
than I had. They, on the other hand, while acknowledging their cluelessness, were sure they
had the edge over me – ‘You just play on your computer all day, Daddy’ – which was quite
true, but there was no convincing boys their age that, whereas other daddies went out to an
office all day and worked on their computers, this one did just the same from a room whose
door was always open and which was just another part of their home.
‘Sometimes Daddy’s not here. Well, he’s here, but he’s at work.’ I would tell them.
‘No he’s not. He’s just on his computer.’
So, there is Daddy and there are three boys. My creations. My family. We have come a long
way since they were a thought in my head, but it has worked out and I think they don’t blame
me for their being. I have been frank with them and they are open with me. The openness
has been revelatory and I ask myself if it has gone too far, but then I have only my
relationship with my own parents as a yardstick.
‘What’s ED, Daddy?’
‘No idea.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got erectile disfunction. I had an erection during football today. Why are
you smiling, Daddy?’
‘It’s just so out-of-context,’ was my reply.
I receive a great deal of information which, when processed, I realise I can do nothing with,
but it’s an idea of how they are at the time and an indication of the trust they place in me that
they are able to express themselves with confidence and candour.
Parenting and plumbing have much in common. It’s like stopping a leak in the dark with a
duff torch while wearing mittens. You feel around, try to understand what’s happening, make
a decision, and then after the event spend forever justifying it in the voice of sweet reason
tricked out with a spoonful of authority. I had nothing to go on save my own childhood and a
sense that the best values are those that are rooted in history as having stood the test of time.
In bringing up my sons to the verge of their teenage years, I have looked back at the
influences that shaped me and the result has been a revelation. I was a child of my time and
in many ways it was an ignorant and prejudiced time in which people were hanged and those
whose orientation differed from the norm were criminalised; a time in which my family
would have been hounded from society for daring to be different.
‘What’s a bastard, Daddy?’
‘’A child whose parents aren’t married.’
‘Am I a bastard?
‘I’ve wondered about this one, Ian. As I’m on your birth certificate as your only parent, I
think I’d say that you’re not.’
Would I have dared ask this in 1959? Absolutely not. Would illegitimate status have meant
ostracism? Absolutely.
I try to show my boys they can be who they want to be, question the status quo, be guided by
what is reasonable, what is human and what is rooted in love and fellow-feeling in the hope
they, too, will be able to see through whatever may be nonsensical in their own time to the
fundamentals that make us the people we aspire to be.
©Ian Mucklejohn 2014