Kid Gloves Read online

  Of course I don’t know if Bamie’s God was of that sort or of another stripe. But whatever his denomination and whatever his attitudes, Bamie had a right to have the evidence I gave on his behalf, however soggy it was forensically. The tenderness of his duty towards Dad had been extraordinary.

  While the general pattern was to treat Dad as if he was less compos mentis than he was (or might be), Bamie behaved as if Dad had full possession of himself, and full knowledge of his own preferences. What this meant in practice was asking Dad from time to time if he wanted to move from his chair in the bedroom to his chair in the sitting-room, or the other way round. I had more or less stopped making these suggestions myself, since Dad tended to say Yes to anything that was put to him, whether out of politeness or a spirit of adventure. Once he had been helped to move between rooms, I was careful to leave a lapse of time before suggesting that he move back, for fear of making the whole little expedition seem pointless, and the whole ritual of consultation futile from the first.

  Bamie never acquired this little bit of strategy, and I have to say that I approved on general principles, however much work he was making for himself. When I returned to the flat late in the evening, he would say that he had enjoyed talking with Dad. Talking with, or talking to? He seemed confident that there had been communication.

  Several times in a shift Bamie would ask Dad if he wanted to go to bed, and if the answer was Yes would change him from sweatpants and jogging top into his pyjamas, even if he found Dad horizontal but open-eyed a few minutes later, ready to give the idea of getting up again his obliging endorsement.

  When Dad wet himself, I changed his pyjama bottoms. Well of course I did! But Bamie would change his pyjama top too. In some strange way, he had the higher notion of Dad’s dignity and what it demanded. I didn’t feel that Dad in mismatched pyjamas amounted to some sort of violation of the order of things. It wasn’t something Dad was bothered by, and I didn’t have another yardstick. That was good enough for me. Bamie’s concern was professional, but it was more than professional. This, though paid (and indeed part-time), was devotion, uncomplicated by the turbulence of family feeling.

  I’m not going for a big finish here, more of a syncopated-coda effect.

  Some acknowledgement was necessary after Dad died, and inviting Bamie to the interment of ashes in Llansannan, though well-intentioned and certainly the right gesture to make, was probably from his point of view as much a test of endurance as the accolade and act of recognition it was meant to be.

  The undertaking to testify in his favour was a better salute to excellence. No-one would choose to be accused of a criminal offence for the pleasure of hearing himself celebrated, but there was a latent appropriateness about my turning up at an address that could stand in for Dad’s workplace, the environment of his daily life for so many years, and giving praise to Bamie for high standards in his own profession. High standards, and even something beyond high standards.

  Come to that, I was testifying almost in the religious sense of the word, not really contributing to the substance of the case but giving vent to low-key middle-class whoops of acclamation and thanksgiving. Bless you, Bamie! Though whether that sort of thing went on at his home church I don’t even know. Still, one way or another, it was probably an unusual thing to take place at Snaresbrook Crown Court, and even if it wasn’t unusual it was a proper settling of accounts between two rather different personalities, very far from brothers, who called the same man Dad.

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  First published 2015

  Copyright © Adam Mars-Jones, 2015

  Cover design: Coralie Bickford-Smith

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-1-846-14876-7