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Chapter 4: Being My Father’s Daughter

My relationship with my father was much less complicated than the one I had with my mother. In truth, I didn’t have a strong emotional connection with him. He was the traditional man and father of the house. He was the boss, and you did what you were told. Whereas my elder brother, Daniel, had his challenges and conflicts with Dad, mine were always with Mum. I always felt I had my father’s approval, but never sought it. The approval I sought was my mother’s.

Yet, as I reflect now, I seem to know a lot more about him than I do about my own mum. He had less to do with my life – it was Mum who came to my parents’ evenings and school productions. Dad never came to one and so I learned never to expect it. Therefore, I saw him as being outside of any unmet expectations and emotional conflict and was able to see him more clearly as a result. He was a lot more outgoing and loved to talk about himself!

Dad wasn’t particularly tall and had a slight build and thinning hair from when he was young. He was good looking in his younger days and had a broad forehead, deep brown eyes, a wide smile and a loud laugh that forced you to laugh too.

I remember him now in terms of what he liked and what he was like.

In terms of what he liked, cricket came top of the list. His first love had been football and he played in the reserves for Manchester United. Then he had cartilage problems and that finished his football aspirations, so he turned to cricket. He was a fine batsman and became something of a local hero. His record for the total number of runs scored in a season stood for over 50 years. He got a trial to play cricket for Lancashire County but the railway, where he worked, wouldn’t give him the time off and said that if he went, they would sack him – one of the many frustrations in his life.

However, he played for his local team, Farnworth Cricket Club, every Saturday – much to the chagrin of my mother – and would even come home mid-holiday to play, which caused many a row.

He was the favourite local sportsman and was always being featured on the sports pages.

He kept all the press cuttings in a scrap book. Years after he had stopped playing, I was speaking at an event over 200 miles from Farnworth. Someone who had not expressed a flicker of interest in what I was talking about, approached me afterwards and said, “You don’t know George Bown, do you?”

I said that he was my father.

His face lit up. “Eeh,” he said, “I used to watch him at Farnworth every Sat’day. He were a fine cricketer.”

His memory rekindled such a spark of joy. What a gift my father had to be able to bring such happy memories after all those years. After he had stopped playing, he became chairperson, first of Farnworth Cricket Club, and later, of the Bolton Cricket League. He also became known as a great after dinner speaker.

His other great love was teaching. He had been ‘emergency trained’ after the war and became a maths teacher – he was definitely a numbers guy. It’s hard to teach pupils the value of filling baths with spoons of water and calculating how long it would take (mathematics teaching in the 1950s and 1960s was not very creative, to say the least!). He would tell the story of one of his classes who were supposed to be the dropouts and unteachable. One of his pupils asked Dad if he was going to put a bet on the Grand National and Dad, knowing the pupil spent a lot of his time in the betting shop, asked him for a hot tip. The young lad proceeded to work out all the odds on most of the horses, doing complex calculations depending on how much you bet, whether you wanted a win or a ‘place’ (first, second or third) and how much you might win, depending on the odds. Dad would shake his head as he told this story. “I couldn’t work out all that,” he said. “And they say these lads are thick. It’s because they’re being taught stuff completely irrelevant to their lives.”

He was before his time, my dad.

He was a teacher until he retired, and listening to him talk about his pupils was my inspiration when I started my teaching career.

I learned from him that success was not to be measured in exam results but in whether a pupil, as a result of your teaching, would hear something that day which would mean that they would see things differently from then on. Some of those pupils and their children, whom he also taught, came to his funeral and spoke fondly of him.

He rose to be Head of Department and would have made a great Head Teacher because he had excellent people skills with staff and pupils but, because he didn’t have a degree, was told that any applications from non-graduates would be binned. The man who became Head Teacher at my dad’s school was a graduate but was also so incompetent that Dad couldn’t mention his name without saying the word ‘idiot’ in the same sentence. That frustration never left him and I’m sure contributed to at least one of his four heart attacks. But he bounced back from them all and never saw himself as an invalid.

His ability to connect with people was what made him a great speaker. His stories were legendary and we never tired of hearing them. He used to say, “The best storyteller has scant regard for the truth.”

He was known for his storytelling, his wit, his humour and his speeches.

There was much laughter in our house and his telling of his stories always made us laugh. I am often accused of changing a story every time I tell it. Dad taught me the importance of holding the audience and although I heard his stories so many times, I enjoyed them afresh because they would be slightly different each time he told them. I take after him in that respect.

My daughters would say to me, “You change that story every time you tell it.”

I would reply, “Well, I don’t want you to get bored. I have a duty to entertain my audience,” an answer my father would have been proud of. Any performance skills I have, I attribute to my father.

It was probably the war and the camaraderie between the men in the Royal Air Force that gave him the basis for such strong people connections. You were dependent on one another and facing life and death situations when you were up in a plane. Dad was a navigator, tasked to bring people home safely from their bombing missions. He told the story of one poor man who died in my father’s arms in great pain. He told my dad that he couldn’t think of one thing he had done in his life without expecting some reward for it. It affected my father deeply and, after the war, he started to give blood, which he did monthly for over 30 years, gaining an award for his dedication.

In later years, when his speaking engagements finished, he took to rug making and jigsaws. This suited the quieter lifestyle he adopted after his last heart attack. He did each of these activities mathematically. He would sit in his favourite chair in the front room with his slippered feet in front of the fire and design his rugs himself on paper. Then he would send for the wool and sort it into different colours laid out on the arms of his chair. He would have his earphones on, listening to the football scores and be perfectly content. His huge multi-piece jigsaws were on a table at the back of the room. The jigsaw pieces would be laid around the border, colour-coded, of course, with all the edge pieces being placed first. My daughters used to love going in to see Grandpa and seeing if they could fit in any of the pieces for him.

There are many words that come to mind when I think about what my father was like: kind, generous, methodical, religious.

I think his religion drove his kindness. He saw kindness as a duty.

He supported his sister Kathleen, whose husband had run off, leaving her with four children. She drew on the strength of my father in her times of difficulty. The eldest of her children, Tony, was someone who would be termed a joker and indeed, he wanted to be a comedian. He was getting into trouble at school and Dad arranged for him to come to our house every night to do his homework in the kitchen with us. Of course, very little work was done as Tony would try out all his jokes on us. We loved it when we saw him coming. And Dad took under his wing another young boy from his school who needed some love and stability. He was a compulsive liar and we liked nothing more than to get him to tell us stories that he swore were true and we knew weren’t! We stayed in contact with him for years and, on one occasion, my husband and I went to pick him up from prison and brought him to our house as he had nowhere to go and only a carrier bag to his name. I learned about being charitable from my parents.

Dad was very generous. Whenever I was unhappy at college I would hitch a lift home for the weekend (in those days you would always be safe if you wore your college scarf as that’s how all students got around) and know that my dad would drive me back on the Sunday, even though that would be a four-hour round trip for him. And before I went back, I would raid the food cupboard and cram as many tins and packets of biscuits as I could into my bag. Never a word of complaint from Dad. And when my youngest brother, Andrew, took up tennis, Dad would ferry him around to the various tournaments he was playing in. Dad never complained when he was doing something for his children.

When we were all married and strapped for money, we could always borrow from Dad. We called it the ‘Bown Bank’. We could borrow what we wanted and just had to pay back the interest he would have got on the money in the bank. We could pay off the balance whenever we could. He had a little green notebook. I and my two brothers had separate sections and Dad would adjust it every month, working out the interest for that month and reworking it if we paid off any of the balance. He set many precedents for what parents are supposed to do and from which our own children are benefiting! And although I and my two brothers have all turned out to be so different from each other, he made it clear that he was immensely proud of each of us. Our family celebrations were always very happy affairs and Dad loved being at the head of it all.

Dad was known for his counting. He counted everything. In the morning, when he cleaned out the grate, he would turn the ashes lever 17 times. When he shaved, he started with the same cheek each time, rubbing his cheek furiously a set number of times as he planned his lessons for the day. He used to cut Andrew’s chips because Andrew liked his chips crinkle cut and Mum did the chips straight cut, so Dad did Andrew’s. Mum said it was ridiculous that Andrew had to have different chips. And Andrew counted like Dad did. Once, when we were at the table commenting on how Dad spoiled him (Andrew was in his 20s at the time), we commented that Andrew should marry Dad because he’d never find a wife who would treat him as well. And then I added, “I bet you even know how many chips you cut for him!” Andrew and Dad both said ‘46’ in unison (my brother loved chips!).

But Dad’s best numbers story was a war one. Each Friday in the Mess there would be a poker game and it would usually be the same men in the poker school. Lots of men would stand around and watch the games. Dad studied them all for six months – he looked at who got a red spot on their cheek when they had a good hand, who had a slight twitch if they were bluffing, whose foot tapped if they were nervous. After six months, he wrote to Mum and said that he was going to play poker and gamble, just the once. He played and he cleaned up. It wasn’t the money, it was the satisfaction. He was a master card player. Playing bridge or solo with him was a nightmare because he could remember every card that had been played and who had the highest lead in each suit. It was really difficult to beat him. I have inherited his predilection for numbers. Apart from studying maths myself as part of my degree, I count every step whenever I go up or down stairs. It’s not a big deal and it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just something I do without thinking.

His Catholic religion was really important to him. He would say, “This is a helluva hard religion to live in but a helluva good one to die in.” He tells the story of when he was talking to God at an Easter service. He had conversations with God long before Neale Donald Walsch came on the scene with his best seller, Conversations with God. Like Walsch, my father was railing at God because his life wasn’t working for him.

He said to God: “Okay, I’m going to talk to the other fellow then,” nodding to the floor where he was imagining hell to be situated. “I bet he’ll listen to me.”

At that moment the priest came on the altar to start the service, which began, “Repeat after me, I do renounce the devil and all his works.” Dad said he raised his eyes up and said, “Well you heard me then, didn’t you?”

I think his religion was why he and my mum stayed together while we were growing up.

They were never very affectionate towards each other, but people of that generation weren’t given to displays of affection. I’m not really sure how happy either of them was but they both had an attitude of ‘you make your bed and you lie in it’. They were together for over 50 years and in their later years clearly enjoyed their companionship.

         It was when he was much younger that he had an affair with the deputy head teacher, Agnes Redmond, at his school, which I didn’t know for sure until after his death. Maybe it was because he was conflicted about it that his temper outbursts increased.  He subsequently introduced that woman to his best friend in his card school at the cricket club, perhaps the easiest way for him to finish the relationship with her. She was single and the friend was a widower. They went off together and got married, so Dad lost his lover and his best friend at the same time.

Between his football career being cut short, his unfulfilled ambition in cricket to play for his county (or maybe even his country), his unfulfilled ambition in teaching and any frustration with Mum, who definitely wasn’t interested in sex (Dad told me that when I was a teenager – quite inappropriately, I thought, even at the time), it’s perhaps no wonder that he had an anger problem. Unfortunately, that always presented as rage. He wouldn’t just get angry, he would lose control. Once, as he was vigorously polishing his shoes (the statutory number of times for shoe polishing), he suddenly threw the brush across the room and stormed out of the house. Another time, when I was studying for my O Levels (now GCSEs), Mum excused me from doing any kitchen jobs. My father came in, saw the kitchen and went berserk. He shouted at me and reduced me to tears. It transpired he was having a nervous breakdown. Dad took to his bed and Mum sent me upstairs, because he wanted to apologise, which he did through his tears. It was only the second time in my life I had seen him cry and I hated it. I hated his anger too. I already had a problem confronting people who were important to me and seeing my father angry cemented the feeling that I should never show anger because I equated anger with rage. It made me even more averse to any personal conflict. It stopped me expressing anger and I’m sure it stopped me even feeling it. And I passed that on to my daughters, unfortunately – never being comfortable with any expressions of anger and always wanting to just talk it out.

It was years before I realised that anger and rage are very different and that anger is, in fact, a healthy emotion.

Maybe his rage contributed to his fourth heart attack. At any rate, Dad became much calmer when he had recovered and considerably changed his lifestyle. He stopped going to his club on a Friday evening and stopped doing speaking engagements or dinners. He said that when he was on the table and they were trying to get his heart going with the defibrillator they tried three times but got no response. In fact, Dad said he felt those charges and they ‘hurt like hell’. He heard someone say, “He’s gone,” then someone else said, “Let’s just try one more time.” That was the try that started his heart again. He tried to find out afterwards who had said that, but no one who was there could remember that being said. My dad considered that he had been given a second chance and he now had time to right any wrongs he had done in his life. He never said what these were and we never asked him, but certainly he and my mother seemed to be closer. Their roles were reversed now. She was the one going out and involved with church groups. Dad was quite happy with his rugs and his jigsaws and never got worked up over things like he had done before. He lived for another 10 years after that last heart attack. Every day was a bonus for him, and for us too.

By the time I was 45 years old with a husband and two children, I was living two and a half hours’ drive from my parents’. My father was taken into hospital with a lung infection. Although he had a history of heart problems this infection had nothing to do with his heart. He had been in hospital for four days and I was in close touch with my brother John who lived nearby. On the evening of the fourth day, I asked John to ask the doctor if it was serious and if I should come. He phoned me back at 10pm when he got home (no mobile phones in those days). The doctor had said that everything was fine, there was no cause for alarm and no need for the family to come.

As I sat on the side of my bed at 11pm, I thought about whether or not I should go. The doctor had said not to and if I did go, how long would I stay? Until he came out of hospital? After that even? It was impossible to tell how quickly he would get better and, at this stage, there seemed to be no question that he would get better.

I asked myself, If you go to bed now and your dad dies tonight, will you be able to live with yourself? I knew that if the answer was, No, I wouldn’t, I would feel guilty forever, then I had no option but to get in the car and drive to him. But, in light of all the evidence and the medical advice, I decided that in the event that my father did die, I could live with myself. That this was the best decision I could make, for tonight at least.

I got the phone call from John at about 2.45am saying I should come straight away. I dressed hurriedly and left, leaving my husband behind with the children. Apparently, John phoned my home again at 3:15am saying there was no point, I was too late. But, of course, there was no way to contact me, so on I drove to the hospital, getting there at about 5:30am. I knew as soon as I arrived at the hospital and they took me into a small room that I was too late. Everyone had already gone home with my mother. I am still so thankful that there were no mobile phones because, if there had been, I may well have driven straight to my mother’s. As it was, I had a precious hour alone with my father to say goodbye. His body was still warm. And his spirit was still there. I could feel his presence in the room. He had waited for me.

And did I feel guilty? No, I didn’t. Why? Because I had made a conscious decision not to go, knowing there was a slight chance that something could happen (where hospitals are concerned, anything might happen). There was no guilt, just immense gratitude for who he was and the life he had lived. I sat in the semi-dark and stroked his arm and told him how much I loved him. Then I went home to my mother.

Photo

Dad at the kitchen table carving the turkey at Christmas.

Questions for Reflection

What qualities do you think you inherited from your father? How was your relationship to your father different from your relationship with your mother? Was it better or worse? Why? In what ways would you have wanted him to be different?

A Blessing While You Reflect

“May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more”

From John O’Donohue: Benedictus