In
The House Of My Father
When
my daughter was in reception, she would recite the number of our house, the name
of the road we lived on, the postcode. Then she’d smile proudly and say
‘That’s where I live, that’s my country.’ When he was young, maybe the
artist imagined his father’s house to be some kind of independent republic
too. But now it rests in the palm of his hand, a tiny, fragile thing. Cracked
and torn, the sides splitting asunder, the roof held in place by a couple of
pins. Like a memory shrinking year by year, in danger of disappearing
altogether.
My father’s house in Wales wasn’t his real home – that was back in Ireland. Not a week went by without him complaining bitterly that Newport was an awful place, that he was going back to the auld country in a year or two. It felt like a judgement on us all. If you liked living here so much, then there must be something wrong with you. And so I wrote off Ireland, that place he seemed to love more than his family. Grew to loathe the annual pilgrimage, the dreaded hadj – the hours of boredom on the desperately slow, packed to bursting boat train, followed by the hideous bouts of seasickness as we were tossed about on the Irish Sea. Yet every year, when we came through the customs shed at Rosslare Harbour, white faced, wobbly legged, flecked with vomit, my relatives would be there waiting to greet us with a loud cry of ‘Welcome home!’ I couldn’t understand this - how could a place you only visited a couple of weeks every year be your home?
But when I went back to Ireland as an adult, and was able to discover my own version of it, I fell hopelessly in love. With the wild and beautiful countryside, the music, the atmosphere and the talk. I decided I would live there. I drew up a plan. I told all my friends about it. I didn’t go.
My father retired years ago. He still lives in Wales. He has shrunk too. The enormous strength and energy and rage that burned in him when I was young long gone. Now he is old, stooped, white haired. When I hug him before getting into the car and driving back to Leeds he feels frail and weak in my arms;a small, fragile thing.
I
have lived in England all my adult life, yet I still don’t consider it my real
home. My daughter will grow up here in Leeds. This is her country, this is where
she lives. When she finds me listening to the Pogues, Planxty or Altan, the
volume turned right up, that look in my eyes, she fixes me with a grave stare
and says ‘I don’t like Irish music.’ And I understand for a moment how my
father must have felt. And I laugh.