Them & Me

First there is the father, the first man, once powerful and enormous in significance.  Though he may have diminished in size, both literally and metaphorically, his mind seems larger and more dazzling to me than ever, as though in the fullness of time it might explode. He is now a creature, fascinating, flawed, at times disagreeable, at times precious and delightful; fragile, unpredictable, but ever present.

We are in Ioannina. We have made arrangements, so we arrive at the lake at dawn and the fisherman ferries us silently to the island through the mist. As we set our feet on land, my father begins to talk through his wonder and excitement, I remain silent in mine. It would be good to listen, of course, he knows so much, but that never changes and sometimes I just need silence.

He has now understood this – forty years on.

He is the father – long-lasting and ever-changing.

He is one of the mirrors in which I see myself change. 

*

Then there is Frank. The family friend, the great aunt’s companion, the unlikely friend I treasured. 

We are sitting on the roof of the old house. It is summer, evening; the air is cool, the tiles still emanating heat. We are laughing because we keep having to move our bums around because we’re getting too hot, but we like the quiet up here, the distance, and don’t want to leave. 

“If you were younger and I was older, if it was another time, would you have fallen in love with me?” I ask him. “Oh yes, definitely’, he says emphatically and I love him, so very much, for being brave enough to say, so simply, what I want to hear. 

He has been telling me how he was a soldier during the war. He was posted in London, on the roof of Harrods, and watched bombs drop around him in the distance at night and tried to remember games he had played as a child far away in Australia to block out the fear. He likes to make me laugh, so he chooses his stories carefully and tells them dramatically, tensing jaws, baring teeth, trying not to smile when I break into laughter. Our favourite is the one where he is about six, or seven years old, one or two years younger than I am now. He is running around on his mother’s lawn, naked, covered in war paint made with body cream and talcum powder, wearing necklaces and rings, shrieking like an animal, warding off invisible enemies. His nanny finally catches up with him when his foot gets tangled up in a really long string of pearls and takes him to his mother, who calmly asks him to get changed for dinner; they are expecting guests and it would be better if he were wearing clothes. 

I tell him I couldn’t have done that with my mum.

No, he says, but you get to sit on a hot roof with an old man talking and laughing for hours; and don’t have to get changed for dinner.

He is Frank. He understands my need for madness. He sees aspects of himself in me and it gives him a sense of belonging. When I see myself in him it gives me a sense of endless possibility. He has added a dimension to my world. 

He is the second man; the one who, not being the father, is spared the scrutiny and remains unchanged, despite the countless changes. 

He is the window through which I see the world in colour. 

*

And finally there is the ‘he’ who can only be ‘you’: the last man. 

The one I stopped for.

It’s night. The room is dark and quiet. I feel he is awake and nudge him gently. ‘Are you awake?’ I whisper. ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Will you make me coffee when you make your tea?’

“I think it’s too early’, I say, and, checking the time, reply ‘it’s 3.20.’

We laugh quietly and I take his hand in mine, as we roll over and drift off to sleep again.

Sometimes I think he entered my world because he defies description. When I try to capture him in words, I end up wishing I could draw him instead, trace him on a cave wall in ochre and charcoal. I would draw not the outline of his body, but the contours of all that he is made of. An undulating line for his swells and lows in ochre; parallel sweeps of charcoal for his mind, all lists, ideas and plans.  Helicoid shapes for his sadnesses and joys, horizontal and vertical lines of varying length for all his beginnings, arrivals and unfinished journeys. 

I  would dip my thumb in the coloured powder and press it firmly against the damp, ancient wall, marking the many ways in which his love has allowed me to become stronger, kinder, freer. 

Finally, to one side,  I would draw a whale for what he means to me: a gentle, unstoppable beast, large with love, alive with song and travel, impenetrable, almost indestructible.

He is the safety I thought I would never need.

He is the arrival of my departure. 

He is the change that is permanent.