As a brash and slightly arrogant new mother in my twenties I rather thought I knew all that there was necessary to know about being a parent and I imagined I was matchless in that capacity, a superlative mother. It's just possible I might have considered that notion with more care had I not been sharing the top two floors of a damp should-have-been-condemned late Victorian house near Paddington station with my very best friend, Stella - also an exceptional mother. We had rather got into the habit of supporting any idea the other expressed.
This all happened during a time when society in general still rather looked down on mothers who were unmarried, whether or not they considered themselves superlative so possibly our shared shell of over confidence could be forgiven. Supportively, the terminology around young women in our position had recently changed from Unmarried Mothers to Families Without Fathers and naturally enough we were behind the new lexicon one hundred and ten per cent. We counted as a Family whether we had husbands or whether we didn't. We were totally in accord with the idea that if children had outstanding mothers they did not actually need fathers!
In my case this might well have had something to do with the fact that I had had an ambivalent relationship with my own father, thrust into my life as he was at the conclusion of WW2, a stranger, an imposter trespassing into the comfortable relationship between me and my mother. I would never have described her as superlative or exceptional in any way because I was always in conflict with her. To me she seemed to spend most of her time preventing me from doing the things I most wanted to do. However, as time passed I began to see her strengths, though reluctantly.
I did not remain a single parent. Out of the blue as far as my friends were concerned, I suddenly decided to get married when my son was four years old a situation that I felt sure he would find difficult to process. Because I had no doubts whatsoever as to my parental impressiveness it came as a shock when he greeted the idea of taking on a virtual stranger as a father with delight. Without doubt this had something to do with the fact that his biological father had made it totally clear that he wanted nothing to do with the responsibility of parenting in any way whatsoever and although his attitude was fine as far as I was concerned, I failed completely to see just how much a pre-schooler could be affected by the rejection.
Decades later when his stepfather died after a debilitating illness it became all too apparent how much the father-son relationship had meant to Patrick, a fact that the substitute parent was never completely aware of. Patrick had always been a somewhat difficult child, full of ideas and energy and never quite able to conform to the rules and norms others accepted with ease. And for whatever reason it was a photo of the first child of the marriage that was kept in his father's wallet, the son of his own flesh and blood - who sadly when he lay dying completely ignored him. I then felt for Germaine Greer querying in Daddy We Hardly Knew You - was I in your wallet at least Papa? Did I perhaps ride with you in your wallet?
The significance of never knowing a father, or losing a father before the idea of loss is completely understood becomes ever more apparent to all now heart wrenching situations are laid out before us via tv screens. Those suddenly told as adults that the man they always knew as their father actually is not can become bereft, those who have grown up without any father figure whatsoever equally so. My London flat-mate's adult daughter approached me a few years ago, convinced that I knew who her father was and urgently requiring that I tell her. I was unable to tell her anything because she was born during that period when we felt mothers reigned supreme. We had been a merged and glorious fatherless family, we had no need of patriarchal influences.
It was not as if males had always formed an integral part of a child's upbringing. After all, analysis of the origins of the traditional nuclear family becomes blurred with investigation. History tells us that Genghis Khan was the ultimate absent father, spawning dozens of children destined to never know him and of course we know nothing of the way his progeny viewed him, but naturally enough he wasn't alone. Throughout the ages fathers have abandoned their sons and daughters with an extraordinary lack of regard, ensuring that society should continue to value only those children born within the sacrament of marriage or at least some similar socially acceptable arrangement. Those infants abandoned are comfortably left to the responsibility of their mothers aided by the various alleviating corners of the culture within which they were born, for decades seen as largely unimportant.
Most illegitimate children remain quietly unobtrusive whilst just a few rise to significance - Leonardo da Vinci, Oprah Winfrey, Fidel Castro, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Jobs, TE Lawrence to name just a handful. We don't know a great deal about their attitude to their biological fathers although Marilyn is said to have spent years trying to fill the void left in her life and not altogether succeeding. Steve Jobs, given up for adoption as an infant professed no interest but did form a relationship with a half sister he came across later in his life.
Possibly we should learn not to make too much of being seen as inconsequential, it's said that Lord Salisbury paid little attention to his legitimate children, less I am certain to the illegitimate. Once whilst standing behind the throne during a court ceremony he noticed a young man smiling at him in a very friendly fashion. He enquired who he was of a nearby courtier to discover it was his eldest son!
So it's abundantly clear that some fathers whether they abandon their offspring or not, can be rather disappointing but on the other hand, some children are said to be equally below par. Searching through historical accounts Edward I was apparently a first rate king. He was the son of Henry III and the father of Edward II and each were as unlike him as it was possible to be, causing disappointment across several generations. Richard Cromwell, the son of the more immediately recognisable Oliver, was no more like his father than Hamlet was like Hercules, no doubt causing Oliver to despair. In France the son of Charles V was described as imbecilic. In Greek history Paralus and Xantippus, the sons of Pericles were reputed to be little better than the lacklustre Cromwell son - a sad disappointment. These accounts rather put modern day father-son examples into perspective and possibly King Charles III might find such reports helpful when contemplating the problems Harry has thrown up to test him with in his old age.
But of course feuds and reconciliations have long formed a part of human relationships and you need to look no further than the family Bible (Luke 16: 11-32) for a compelling account of a father's over the top delirium of joy to have a wayward son returned to him. However, I'm always left wondering what transpired when the fatted calf was totally consumed and the revelry ended. What happened next? Did the prodigal son return to his reckless, profligate ways or did he become more like his stay at home and possibly rather overlooked and taken for granted brother? If so, given similar circumstances could Harry become more like William? It seems doubtful.
However many of us know too well that there are certain situations where the transgressions are so immense and the violations so unfathomable that appeasement becomes impossible. Invariably the prime reprobate is the child who has been given a great deal, more than their siblings perhaps, the one for whom many sacrifices were made because their individual needs seemed great. Then the pain of a separation that is inevitable ripples into perpetuity and becomes the only solution for the transgressions. Shakespeare can be somehow heartening, noting in King Lear, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
Love them or hate them our relationships with our fathers should we be privileged enough to have known them safe within our childhoods and youth, are supremely important both for good and for bad. I was never able to get on well with my own father no matter how diligently he worked at the problem and his death when I was eleven years old I am ashamed to say was something of a relief. My brother, then four years old, found that final separation savage and life altering. When he died himself decades later his grief remained unresolved.
Quentin Crisp and his father, perhaps not surprisingly, did not get on well at all and at one stage the elder advised his son that he looked like a male whore. Years later Quentin admits that he was moderately cheered by this comment. In fact it was then he decided that on the very next occasion he went up to London he would try very hard not to come back.
When he was a small boy living at 31 West Hill, Highgate John Betjeman loved his father dearly and writes in Summoned by Bells: My dear, deaf father, how I loved him then before the years of our estrangement came!
Now I fretfully consider how much my own children loved that most Decidedly deaf father. I know that his stepson loved him with an unusual intensity simply for filling that important void, that place where a Father is supposed to fit. He required little of him because that Father simply needed to be there in a prime space to be referred to proudly as - My Father. And my daughter cherished and valued him as only a daughter does, travelling across the globe to be close in those last months when he was fighting sickness, writing down her appreciation and emotions for him as he grew ever more ill.
And now I believe that the much loved boy in his wallet also contemplated a time when he had loved his dear, deaf father. That there was a moment when like Dylan Thomas he might have urged him not to go gentle into that good night, to rage relentlessly against the dying of the light.
