Paterfamilias

I keep finding you in me, Pa!
A mannerism or opinion
an attitude, resistance or preference.
It tastes and feels familiar:
DNA-speke
- a bias inside my skin and psyche.

In some ways you were a stickler
for protocols - of your choice.
In others you were discursive, open.
Sometimes a loner, of few words;
a monogamous man
a listener, watcher and thinker
with aversion to any display.
You would have hated to survive
into this media age of sharing;
everyone in everyone else’s pocket.

An old sepia photograph of toddler you
on a formidable granny-lap
commemorates four generation:
two bedecked in military kit
- you still in smocking, one day to be a 12th Lancer;
Your father, a Gallipoli Casualty;

his father, with great curling mustache, a cavalry colonel
and his, in turn, of colonial legacy, whether Boar War or India (I forget) 
and the compelling family eye.

As an only child,
when it came to your turn,
babies were not your thing.
But when we grew relatively conversant
you were up for masterminding
military manoeuvres with tin soldiers
and trains all round the sitting room;
It must have been you
who taught me chess
and would discuss esoteric matters
with me, leaning over the farm gate.
You took us to the cinema
for cowboy and Indian fun;
and round the French cathedrals
and chateau
- the poor man’s Grand Tour -
to educate and edify
your toothy flock of convent girls.
It was to your distaste that we only learned Latin there
and never Greek!

Proper conversation was required
at meals;
Medical terms were seen as
trade jargon, taboo;
you know was a heinous expression
to which you always replied
“No, I don’t”
accompanied by one of those looks.

To me, you seemed almost unshockable.
When I was expelled from school
got bottom or top marks in reports
nothing was said.
When I galloped a thoroughbred
into the ground, at 4 am,
trespassing too,
nothing was said.
When I married improperly
all I got was “Oh”.
Only when confronted after many years
did you remark that I
“ was always liable to do strange things”.
Though to this day I have no clue
where that began,
apart from an elder sisters memory
of my reducing you to say
”that child will be the death of me”
as, at all of a bumptious 4 years old
I discovered the interesting effects
of scraping wooden chairs
back and forth on flagstones.
Was that it, Pa?

When you got older
a less alarming and austere side of you
emerged.
Teddy-bearish,
the glint turned almost to twinkle
with a love of maps that I reciprocate.
Glam women clustered round you
on the rare occasions you socialised.
I remember finding you
with a screwdriver
ham-fistedly trying to dismantle
that offensive seat belt in the Volvo.
Having to drive at speed limits alone
was enough of an affront!
You were a liability in your latter years,
preferring a middle of the road 25mph
exasperating all other road users,
or zapping along at a lethal 70.

Pa.
you also wrote beautifully
in a neat, almost printed script.
always legible, to the point.
In your youth and POW escape memoirs
there were precise observations, Including succinct verse
without excess, or kerfuffle.
Civie-dom, with its bowler-hatted commuting regime was not for you;
those big earthy hands of yours
were for the land,
for farm accounting, not stockbroking.
You could draw a straight line freehand.
You were ever a steady, modest man.

My own writings - my dharma, my gift
takes many years to reduce and refine
from a repetitive, adjectival profusion
to your simplicity, clarity and exactitude.
An enduring example and lesson
I took from you for child rearing
was that you never repeated yourself.
You said it once. You meant it. Done.
If one hadn’t listened
that was one’s own problem.
Whatever you gave or did
was without strings attached -
no agendas or apparent expectations.
Could that be why, early
I pushed the buttons
to get a hopeful limit:
something to object to, to show you cared?
Not understanding that your kind of care
was when, after lunch, you’d bundle us in a horse box with bikes or ponies
and drop us off many miles away
so we couldn’t cheat, cut corners:
your old school motto
of “keep them active” in practise.
For indeed, the long rein you provided
(Alongside the unstated and immovable rule re timeliness)
surely enabled wildness and daring
to spread their wings,
albeit within the paradoxical Victorian code
of discipline, respect and courtesy.

“What a silly age to live to”,
you commented on your 82nd birthday.
Pa.
It was wonderful!
Wonderful to have you still with us
seasoned, distinctive, resolute
well-loved and cared for.
The dry, terse wit was still there,
but softened and sweet.
Still, the appreciation of a good wine
and cowboy and Indians on the tele!

The saga of:
“I won’t have that thing in the house”
in the Fifties
so we had to scarper to the farm cottage
or bicycle miles to the village
to get a glimpse
of Champion the Wonder Horse;
progressed to “that thing”
wheedling it’s way, firstly
into a Nissan hut in the orchard
among piano, train sets and ping pong
and next, into a back office
with a broken sofa, stored saddlery
and the dusty Eton cups
from your rowing, running days.
Next step, years later
it had crept into the drawing room.
but was placed strategically
behind an armchair
so required some furniture shifting
to actually get to it;
And no way could even the most glorious whodunnit
or informative programme
intrude into dining time-tables.
“The thing” had to know it’s place!

Eventually, full circle
it got to centre stage
and you would pull up a chair
slap in front of it
enjoying goody v baddy adventures
as ever.
But you would have nothing to do
with another thing called a VCR.
That was going too far!
I find similar resistances in my self now
passing the three score years
and ten point!

Flash, random images of you
over the years:
on your daily boundary patrol
whatever the weather,
solitary, with shotgun and dog
checking on stock and fence,
bagging a pheasant or rabbit for the pot.
Sunday lunches,
you breaking up the mandatory Cadburys Chocolate
into equal parts; Fairness your hall-mark.
And sleeves rolled up, washing up.

Church-going, long rambling sermons,
the old padre in his slippers
and you at the altar rail.
Your pride and joy
in sons and heirs at last.
You, gifting me with
some family lithographs:
I can still see you,
bumping the frames along
over the gravel, bits of gilt flying.
There was a philistine element
In your classical orthodoxy
as when you suggested letting cows
into the garden to graze.
On a sunny day you could be found
sitting among the nettles
in a derelict old cattle yard
under a washing line
rather than on a scenic, suitable lawn.
And further on, toddling off
with retinue of devoted dog
- and cat, that thought it was a dog -
to be found snoozing in a tumbledown old barn
by your frantically searching Beloved.

On rare occasion you might be seen
in tails or top hat: elegant for Henley,
the Wall Game, the Hunt or a funeral.
Old photos of a handsome youth
on Mac your handsome horse.
Otherwise, a somewhat reclusive
yeoman farmer sending us
to send off ingratiating salesmen,
dinky in tweeds and shiny estate cars
with “daddy says he’s not here”.
Coming in for lunch with bloodied fists, roughly swabbed:
helping yourself to equine medicines
from the cobwebby shelf
in the cart horse stable.
Actually sitting on top of me,
as you would a steer or foal
to hold me still and prevent me
biting the doctor again
while having a gashed head clipped up.

Even tender moments,
when in latter years you visited me
after major surgery;
clomping in and tripping over all
those dangling tubes and pipes.
Ah Pa! How I love you so.

Yes. Indeed
I carry so much of you in me
and see glimpses of that
down the newer generations:
a sons look and “herumph”
a brothers intransigence
a nephews stance and shape
a grandchild’s infant hands
clasped firmly behind his back
as was your won’t.
It is a continuity.
You are not gone.

Being a scion of generations
of military toffs, with a spattering of clergy,
your fathering was shaped by regular regimes.
To this day I can put the lunch on the table within a minute of the o’clock.
As a child I would ride out alone, without a watch for hours
And never be late.
Later, in Africa, I would fetch the kids from school by the sun. On time.
How you instilled those er virtues
I have no idea.
I never heard a raised voice or words.
It must have been that “eye”!
That look which I still note in a brother and a son,

boring into one’s baby psyche
like Joves.