My Mum and Dad
My mum was beautiful once. I say ‘was’, because she passed away half a year ago, just a fortnight after Dad. Even though they were well over eighty, I still cant shake the feeling they didnt have enough time together. They were, after all, my Dad and my Mum.
Mum truly was a stunner. I could see that myselfeven as her son, but a man all the same. And Dad never let me forget it. My whole life, hed remind me how lucky he was. Even when Mum got cross with me for muddling my grades at school or for some other mischief, Dad would slip quietly into my room, sighing as he sat down beside me, folding his big hands just like I did, wedged between his knees. Hed sigh again, then thered be a long silence between us, heavy with everything unsaid. At last, hed end our wordless council with this:
All right, son, dont be upset with your mum. So she shouted a bit, had a go at you, but lets be honest, neither of us is a walk in the parkand shes our girl, our woman. We need her as much as we need air. Go on, pop over and say youre sorry.
Me? My chest would swell with indignation; Id glare at Dad, ready to spit fire. But he knew me by hearthed hold out a hand, palm forward, as if to squash my outburst, and say in his firm, steady way:
Dont you dare say anything unkind about my wife!
And Id deflate, all bluster gone. Because I loved my dad. God, I loved him. And I loved Mum just as fiercely.
I knew their storyhow they became husband and wife. Dad would share it with me, in whispers, just between us. Mum told it, too, only dont let Dad know.
Mum was a university fresher back then, with plans to marry some chap named Edward. One day, Edward turned up for a date and brought along his mate Peter, who was new to London and had nowhere else to go for the evening. So Edward invited him out on his dateto meet his fiancée, no less.
Edward introduced Peter to my then-future mum. Youve guessed, Peters my father.
The three of them spent the whole evening together: strolled through Hyde Park, clambered onto the roof of the bandstand to watch a roaring comedy at the open-air cinema (so they could dodge the ticket pricemy dads idea, that). Dad was always strong and broad-shouldered, even thenunlike Edward, whom I never met but always pictured as a bit of a weed, not a patch on my dad.
All evening, Edward recited poetry, cracked jokes, and painted pictures of the life he and Mum would have when university finished. Dad, she said, kept quiet, just listening, breathing heavily. When it was time to part ways, Dad took my mums little hand in his big, warm grip and said:
Victoria! You dont want him. Marry me instead.
Mum, startled, could only ask, When?
Dad, dead earnest, replied, Tomorrow.
Andjust to knock the wind out of both Mum and Edwardhe added, Well have a son, and both of us will love him fiercely. And thatll make us love each other even more. Well call him Arthur. Like the old English king.
All right, Mum said at once, and so they married.
Edward even stood at their wedding as Dads best man.
Afterwards, Mum and Dad finished university and set off together for Cumbria, because both their degrees read geological surveyor. There, in the Lake District, they received their first home: a makeshift flat cobbled together from an old storeroom at the village hall, cleared out on the bosss orders for these much-needed young specialists from London.
In due course, Arthur appeared. Thats me. And together, they loved me, fiercely and fully, just as Dad had promised Mum all those years ago.
When the time came to bring Mum and me home from the hospital, Dad convinced the local stables to lend him a knackered old horse, Lady Alexandra, so he could fetch us in style.
As we rolled up to our little converted storeroom (Dads words), we spotted Edward on the doorstep of the hall, clutching a battered, galvanised baby bath hed scored through some convoluted old favour. That tub served not just for my bathsbut as my first makeshift cradle, too. Mum would line it with the big feather pillow she’d been given as her dowry, cover it with a clean sheetand there Id lie, king of my little realm. When it was time for a bath, the pillow went onto the parents bed, and the regal heir had his wash. Dad would fly back from work, desperate not to miss his sons first scrubs. Hed always cradle my head, while Mum would carefully bathe her little prince.
All right, so I never made a kingbut I did wind up a pretty fair geologist, same as them.
Curiously enough, I even married a fellow geologist. I met Alice at work, right after uni. Mum took to Alice straight awayso did Dad. If they came round to ours, or we went to theirs, after dinner and as Mum fussed about pudding, Dad and I would nip out to the balcony for a quick cigarette. There, Dad would sigh contentedly:
Ahh, you know, I reckon I got lucky twice in my lifefirst, when I met your mother, and again, when you married Alice. Take care of her, son. Shes a girl too, just like Mum.
Dad died suddenly, in the quiet of the night. Mum knew instantly, woke before dawn.
After Dad was gone, Mum aged in the blink of an eye. Her memory faded quickly. She even forgot that Dad was gone. Even when we brought her back to live with us, shed sit at the window, waiting, always waiting for Dad to come home from work. And right to her very last day, she kept making her wonderful homemade meat patties, Just the way Peter likes themOne afternoon, as late summer sunlight slanted golden through our living room, she turned to me, eyes bright, clear for a moment. Has he been gone long, Arthur? she asked quietly.
I hesitated, then took her hand, warm and papery. Not long, Mum. I think hell be back soon.
She nodded at the answer she wanted, and for the first time in weeks, her shoulders relaxed. She gazed past me, out the window, a small, contented smile playing on her lips.
After she was gone, it felt as if the house sighed and settled. Alice found me one evening holding that old baby bath that Edward had carried so many years agodented, dusty, but solid still. I imagined my parents, young and brimming with hope, peering down at me inside it, all their love wrapped around a tiny, howling bundle.
I carried the bath out to the garden. The sky was streaked with clouds, wind tugging at the honeysuckle on the fence. I set the tub beneath a lilac bushMums favouriteso the scent would always linger nearby.
It struck me, standing there, that love is like that battered bath: dented, weathered, and, in spite of everything, enduring. It holds fast while years spill past and memories fade. In a flash, I saw Mum and Dad, young again, walking across a Cumbrian field, laughing at something private, arms around each other, sunlight crowning them both.
And though I missed them fiercely, I knew the luck my father spoke oftwice in a lifetime and more. I had lived inside it from my very first breath, and now I would carry it onward, wherever the future called.
