arrived in a world trembling on the brink of enormous change. The signs of imminent and dramatic acceleration into an almostunimaginably altered state were there to see, if you looked for them.
In 1928, America issued its first television licences, and radio stations began transmitting pictures along with sound. Meanwhile ordinary US citizens had discovered the stock market and were making paper fortunes.
The month after my father was born, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. By September Alexander Fleming had stumbled upon penicillin. Mass entertainment was revolutionised with the arrival of talkies–even Mickey Mouse muscled in on the act with Steamboat Willie –and at a place called Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian mountains, Adolf Hitler was busy dictating the second volume of Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess. Tectonic plates of social change were straining against each other. Something had to give.
It did. A few months later, Wall Street crashed.
By the time Christopher was four, the Great Depression had the world by the throat and Kiln Farm teetered on the brink of foreclosure. Money was so tight that all luxuries and fripperies–not that these had ever featured particularly prominently–were eliminated. But one small weekly treat for my father survived. Denied sweets or pocket money, he nevertheless received, every Sunday, a small chocolate-covered biscuit wrapped in silver paper. His mother bought it on Saturdays at the village shop and it stood in solitary splendour on the kitchen dresser untilafter lunch the next day, when it was solemnly handed to the little boy.
My father loved these biscuits, but after a while felt that supply was simply not keeping up with demand. He decided that with a little sacrifice, foresight and patience, he could improve matters considerably. He had watched his mother picking fruits from her orchard, and sowing seeds in her vegetable garden. Why not plant a chocolate-biscuit tree?
That Sunday he heroically denied himself his treat and took it to a quiet corner of the orchard. He scraped a small hole and crumbled the biscuit into it. Earth was brushed back over the top, and my father retired to await developments.
Every morning he ran to see if the first shoots were pushing up; each day brought disappointment. By the following Sunday he was torn: should he eat his next biscuit or plant it again? After lunch, he decided to ask his mother for advice.
Dad later told me that the reaction his innocent enquiry provoked was the first great shock of his life. Not his mother’s response–Kitty listened carefully to her son’s dilemma and then dissolved into helpless laughter. But Geoffrey, sitting in an armchair behind his Sunday paper, began to tremble with rage.
He rose and took a cane from a cupboard. Face dark with anger, he accused his son of ‘wicked waste’ and drew him into the parlour for a measured beating. The punishment lasted for at least a minute and my father would say it was at this precise point in his life that any nascent desire to sow crops was comprehensively extinguished.
It was the first time Geoffrey had thrashed his youngest son, and it would not be the last. The beatings continued until thatdelicate moment of balance was reached: the point where a boy realises he has grown powerful enough to consider the merits of striking back.
The dark gods of corporal punishment are complex and mysterious. It is tempting to assume that Geoffrey’s extraordinarily violent response to a tiny infraction had its roots in his own childhood. There must have been a great deal of buried anger in him. He had worked so hard to rationalise everyone’s behaviour and forgive it; and there had to have been a price to pay for that. Certainly my father thought so. Although like many men of his generation Dad shied away from over-analysing anyone’s behaviour–including his own–he knew cause and effect when he saw it.
As he grew older and learned more
In 1928, America issued its first television licences, and radio stations began transmitting pictures along with sound. Meanwhile ordinary US citizens had discovered the stock market and were making paper fortunes.
The month after my father was born, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. By September Alexander Fleming had stumbled upon penicillin. Mass entertainment was revolutionised with the arrival of talkies–even Mickey Mouse muscled in on the act with Steamboat Willie –and at a place called Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian mountains, Adolf Hitler was busy dictating the second volume of Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess. Tectonic plates of social change were straining against each other. Something had to give.
It did. A few months later, Wall Street crashed.
By the time Christopher was four, the Great Depression had the world by the throat and Kiln Farm teetered on the brink of foreclosure. Money was so tight that all luxuries and fripperies–not that these had ever featured particularly prominently–were eliminated. But one small weekly treat for my father survived. Denied sweets or pocket money, he nevertheless received, every Sunday, a small chocolate-covered biscuit wrapped in silver paper. His mother bought it on Saturdays at the village shop and it stood in solitary splendour on the kitchen dresser untilafter lunch the next day, when it was solemnly handed to the little boy.
My father loved these biscuits, but after a while felt that supply was simply not keeping up with demand. He decided that with a little sacrifice, foresight and patience, he could improve matters considerably. He had watched his mother picking fruits from her orchard, and sowing seeds in her vegetable garden. Why not plant a chocolate-biscuit tree?
That Sunday he heroically denied himself his treat and took it to a quiet corner of the orchard. He scraped a small hole and crumbled the biscuit into it. Earth was brushed back over the top, and my father retired to await developments.
Every morning he ran to see if the first shoots were pushing up; each day brought disappointment. By the following Sunday he was torn: should he eat his next biscuit or plant it again? After lunch, he decided to ask his mother for advice.
Dad later told me that the reaction his innocent enquiry provoked was the first great shock of his life. Not his mother’s response–Kitty listened carefully to her son’s dilemma and then dissolved into helpless laughter. But Geoffrey, sitting in an armchair behind his Sunday paper, began to tremble with rage.
He rose and took a cane from a cupboard. Face dark with anger, he accused his son of ‘wicked waste’ and drew him into the parlour for a measured beating. The punishment lasted for at least a minute and my father would say it was at this precise point in his life that any nascent desire to sow crops was comprehensively extinguished.
It was the first time Geoffrey had thrashed his youngest son, and it would not be the last. The beatings continued until thatdelicate moment of balance was reached: the point where a boy realises he has grown powerful enough to consider the merits of striking back.
The dark gods of corporal punishment are complex and mysterious. It is tempting to assume that Geoffrey’s extraordinarily violent response to a tiny infraction had its roots in his own childhood. There must have been a great deal of buried anger in him. He had worked so hard to rationalise everyone’s behaviour and forgive it; and there had to have been a price to pay for that. Certainly my father thought so. Although like many men of his generation Dad shied away from over-analysing anyone’s behaviour–including his own–he knew cause and effect when he saw it.
As he grew older and learned more
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