Chapter 24
Ben looked around at his family, who were sitting at the dark, mahogany dining table, which had been extended specially for the day.
Although he hadn’t grown up in this house, there was so much that was familiar from his childhood – not just the table, but the photos on the sideboard, the green floral curtains that Penny had told him, somehow, were fashionable again; even the cream plates rimmed in gold, which were part of a set that his parents had received as a wedding present.
Ben found it comforting, or claustrophobic, depending on his mood, and today he was edging towards the latter, each item provoking memories of old arguments and tensions: the chipped gravy jug was certainly not sparking joy, as he remembered the trouble he’d been in for knocking it off the work surface.
He supposed, in retrospect, throwing a roast potato at his sister wasn’t the best idea, but at the time she’d deserved it. Shame she’d ducked at the last minute.
He shook himself and made an effort to break out of his gloomy mood. He focused on Evie, giggling away, and Penny sharing a joke with his mum, Antony happily helping himself to another slice of roast beef. He glanced at his dad, who was staring contentedly enough into the middle distance.
Ben’s train had arrived a bit later than expected, due to inevitable Sunday engineering works.
Antony had collected him from the station, and he’d enjoyed the journey to his parents’ house, leaving behind the city and heading down the country lanes, listening as his brother-in-law told him about his new garden project – an outdoor cold-water bath.
Ben, who’d been caught enough times in a jet of cold water from a hose, did not share Antony’s beliefs in the benefits of freezing water, and silently predicted that this was yet another fad, and that the bath would soon be joining the Peloton, which he knew Penny was currently trying to sell on eBay, despite her husband’s protests that he’d be back in the saddle any day now.
Ben’s mother had greeted him enthusiastically when they’d arrived, and Evie had jumped up to be carried as soon as he’d stepped through the door. Penny put the kettle on, chatting away, but his dad, as usual, had barely looked up from his chair by the fire where he was reading the newspaper.
Ben now realised that this was when he’d felt his mood dip.
Why had he even asked for his dad’s help to make the house for Fred? He could have spent a nice afternoon with his mum and sister, but now he’d be stuck in the garage for hours with his monosyllabic father.
‘Right, has everyone finished?’ his mum asked, pushing back her chair and standing up.
Ben and Penny helped clear the table, carrying the dirty plates through to the kitchen where Mary efficiently began scraping leftover food into the compost bin and stacking the plates by the sink. The good china wasn’t allowed in the dishwasher.
‘I’ve made a crumble and the custard’s on the hob. Ben, take those bowls, and, Penny, can you pour the custard into that jug?’
Seeing Penny sneaking a spoonful of the pudding, Mary flapped the tea towel she was holding at her daughter. ‘Don’t do that. I’ve told you a hundred times not to steal the topping.’
‘Ben made me do it.’
‘I did not!’ Ben answered indignantly. ‘Why do always blame me?’
Penny rolled her eyes. ‘Because you’re the one who attacked me with potatoes and broke Mum’s jug.’
‘That was fifteen years ago. And what’s that got to do with you eating the crumble?’
Mary, practised at breaking up their bickering, interrupted. ‘Stop it, both of you.’ She pointed the wooden spoon she was holding at each of her children in turn. ‘Bowls. Custard. Go!’
Orders issued, Mary pulled on her oven gloves and, picking up the crumble, headed to the dining room.
Perhaps, Ben wondered, if he started a fight with his sister, he’d be sent to his room like a naughty schoolboy – then he wouldn’t have to spend the afternoon in a cold garage with his father.
‘Not like that. Here, give it to me.’ Ian took the two pieces of wood that Ben was holding and began pulling them apart. ‘Hand me that chisel.’
Ben sheepishly passed it over.
‘Sorry, I forgot which bit was meant to go where and stuck it back to front.’
‘Hmm, yes, well you did a good job of getting it wrong,’ his father muttered distractedly, inserting the edge of the sharpened blade between what was meant to be the base and an upright of the cat house.
‘Hammer,’ demanded his dad, staring at the wood. Ben dutifully passed the nearest one. ‘No, the claw one.’
Ben reached into the tool box to grab the right hammer, the action taking him back to other fraught times he’d been his dad’s apprentice.
After the crumble had been polished off and dishes tidied away, Penny had suggested that they all go for a walk.
Ian hadn’t mentioned anything about starting the DIY project, so Ben had stood up to go with them, but Mary, who’d declared she was going to have a quiet ten minutes listening to the radio, had despatched Ben and his dad, somewhat awkwardly, to the shed.
It hadn’t started well.
When Ben had unfurled his drawings, Ian had spent ten minutes picking apart the measurements, tutting loudly. But as the afternoon progressed, Ben had to admit his dad had been right – he’d been too ambitious – and the two of them had settled into something of a companionable rhythm.
The frame had taken shape, the correct nails used and Ben had been surprised that he was actually quite enjoying spending time with his dad.
The smell of the planed wood, the glue in the green squeezy bottle, the noise of the saw, had transported him back to his childhood, and in a good way this time.
He’d also felt his dad relax too, the familiar environment where he felt in control seeming to reduce the distance and tension between them.
‘Who does this cat belong to anyway?’ Ian asked, finally pulling the wood apart and then refixing it the correct way around.
‘I don’t know, to be honest,’ Ben said. ‘Must be a neighbour. He just started popping round. He’s a funny little thing. Very demanding, but good company.’
‘You’d better be careful. People get upset if you start feeding their cat. Do you remember that moggy near our old house?’
Ben laughed at the memory. ‘Yes, the one that had ‘DO NOT FEED ME’ written on his collar!’
Ian smiled. ‘That cat used to go up and down the street begging for food. His owner got so fed up with people feeding him, he posted a note through everyone’s doors explaining that the cat did, in fact, get fed three times a day at home, and encouraging them not to be fooled.
He worked out that, one day, the cat had eaten twelve different dinners! ’
Ben laughed again.
‘I miss that old house,’ his dad said suddenly.
‘Why? I thought you liked it here?’ Ben felt slightly alarmed. Their conversation never usually strayed to the past.
‘This one is fine, and it makes your mum happy, she wanted a change. But we had some good times in that old house. It was the first one me and your mum bought – it was three thousand pounds.’
Ben made a spluttering noise.
‘It was a lot of money in those days,’ his dad added, ‘but we could just about afford the mortgage when I got promoted. Flat-headed screwdriver.’ His father stretched out a hand, not looking up from what he was doing.
‘Three grand – that’s just two month’s rent for me,’ Ben said grumpily, passing over the tool, slightly thrown by the fact his dad was talking about any of this with him. They never talked about before anymore.
‘They were happy times, easier. You have it harder in lots of ways.’ His father straightened up.
Ben was too startled by this comment to respond, and before he could think what to reply, his dad said, ‘Right, there we go. All done. We’ll leave the clamps on the joints overnight and then tomorrow we can paint it. I’ve got some Ronseal leftover from when we did the fence.’
Ben was shocked. His father had never acknowledged that things might be hard for him or his generation. He’d always felt the opposite in fact – that his dad thought his life was a doddle in comparison, so there was no excuse when he had found it difficult to cope.
Ben opened his mouth to say something, but Ian was already heading out of the garage.
‘See, I’ve always said you were projecting your own feelings on to him, imagining that he thought you were a failure because that’s how you felt.’
Penny wrapped her hands around the mug of hot chocolate she’d just made.
Their parents’ house was an oak-beamed barn conversion with all the rooms on one level and a huge double-height living area.
A corridor stretched from the large sitting room to the snug at the other end of the house, with bedrooms opening onto a pretty courtyard at the back.
Mary had loved the sandblasted wooden beams and, on a more practical level, the fact that it would be better for when they were old and couldn’t manage stairs, which Ben and Penny both thought was a depressing reason to buy a house.
In the background, they could hear clattering from the kitchen as their mum finished drying the last of the dishes – their offer to help had been politely rebuffed – and did a final tidy before she called it a day.
Ian had already gone to bed, and Evie was also finally asleep – there had been a bit of a scene.
She’d been delighted with her new leggings and T-shirt, but when she’d tried them on, they’d turned out to be a bit too small.
Evie had decided she wanted to wear them as pyjamas and had refused to go to bed without them on.
Eventually, after a full-blown tantrum, she’d been convinced to give them back with the promise that Ben would swap them for a new pair.
Antony had headed to the snug to recover from the episode in peace, and Ben and Penny were sitting on the sofas in front of the wood-burner.
‘You know you’ll never hear the end of it if you don’t get her a new set?’ Penny said, frazzled by the battle of wills as much as her husband.
‘It’s okay, I can get in touch with the woman I bought them from. She said it would be fine to exchange them.’ He took a sip of his hot chocolate. ‘It was weird with Dad today.’
In response to his sister’s questioning look, Ben told her about the conversation with their dad, and what he’d told him about their old house. ‘He said he only moved because Mum wanted to.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mary coming into the room, making them both jump guiltily.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, seeing Ben’s face.
‘I’ve always known that’s why he agreed to move.
I thought the change would be good for both of us, though, that the old house had too many memories for him, but really it had too many memories for me.
I couldn’t bear to be there anymore… finding him like that was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. ’
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Penny standing to hug her. ‘I can’t imagine how you coped.’
‘Well, you two were young, and I didn’t want you to know what had happened, and we found him in time, so…’
Mary lowered herself onto the sofa and Penny sat back down next to her.
Ben’s dad had said that he hadn’t attempted to take his own life, but whatever the intent, a combination of whisky and painkillers had nearly had a fatal result.
Fortunately, Mary had arrived home in time and called an ambulance.
It was the big family secret; no one spoke about it, but the shadow of it all had fallen over them for a long time, and Ben and Penny had only recently been told the truth.
In fact, Ben’s breakdown had been what prompted his mum to speak about it.
She’d always said it wasn’t her story to tell, but finally knowing what his dad had been through had made it easier for Ben to understand why his father had withdrawn from them, and he sorely wished he’d known sooner.
‘That job was hard for him, and there wasn’t any support back then; no one had even heard of mental health.
I know it’s hard for you too, Ben, but I’m glad you can talk about it.
’ She patted Ben’s hand. ‘Your dad’s not a talker.
He fixes a problem by doing something practical.
I’ve had to accept that. He can’t always say he loves me, but he’ll show me, and that’s why he agreed to move, to make me happy. And I am. I love it here.’
Penny smiled. ‘You both deserve to be happy, Mum.’ She squeezed Mary’s hand. ‘I don’t remember the old house very well. Just the wallpaper in my room. Evie would have loved it – bright purple flowers, I can still picture them!’
Her mum laughed. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, but you were determined to have it!’ She turned to Ben. ‘I’m glad you’re letting your dad help with your project. He enjoyed it – he didn’t say as much, but I can tell.’
‘I had a good time too, actually. Didn’t love being told off about my dovetail joints, but other than that it was nice to spend time together.’
Ben felt surprised to find it was true, he had enjoyed spending time with his dad.
‘Evie wants to help you paint it tomorrow. She has some suggestions. You might need to manage expectations, she can be quite… opinionated,’ Penny warned him.
‘She takes after her mother,’ said Ben, ducking as Penny threw a cushion at him. Mary, rolling her eyes, decided now was a good time to head off to bed.