. . . on fathers and daughters
LAST SUMMER MY good friend and colleague Peter Murtagh wrote a book with his daughter Natasha while on the Camino pilgrim trail in Spain, an extract from which appeared in these pages not so long ago. It's called Buen Camino! A Father-Daughter Journey from Croagh Patrick to Santiago de Compostela. A special book about a special bond. As one fellow pilgrim confided to Natasha: "If I was to walk 800km with my father, I would end up killing him. You are a very lucky girl."
I missed the book launch. Then it took me weeks longer than it should have to get around to reading the book. As redress, I should mention that Buen Camino!would make an excellent Father's Day present. I know because finally I read it, in one go, laughing sometimes and then crying. The letter Peter wrote to Natasha along that dusty mountain trail made me weep into my pillow with longing. His words of love and encouragement to his daughter were like whispers from an unknowable place, reminders of something that over the past 32 years I've become expert at forgetting. I miss my Daddy.
I miss what I remember of him. His beautiful smile. That technicolour afternoon sat in a café on O’Connell Street on dole day, a giant knicker-bocker-glory teetering between us. His hand gripping mine as we walked past Ryan’s in Sandymount. The way he strode out in front of cars as though the street belonged only to him. The way he filled the armchair in the sitting room, shouting at his horse on the television. Go on ye daisy. Him, the day he came back from hospital with a brown paper bag of fizzle sticks and a beard and me not recognising that it was Daddy. And then that image of him lying distant and pale in the coffin. I miss his beautiful smile.
I miss those aspects of him I never experienced, the stuff I learned from my mother. The way his singing voice could make you forget to breathe. The twinkling charm. The story about him being a disaster of a taxi driver because if a passenger was heading to what sounded like a good party, he’d abandon the car to join in.
Fifty years ago this month he was sent to prison in England for stealing milk off a doorstep, among assorted misdemeanours. Obviously, his wife wasn’t best pleased about this turn of events so he wrote to her, wooing her again from behind bars. I miss that I can never laugh with him about these letters and tell him what a chancer he was.
Bedford Prison
Inmate number 2888
June 28th, 1961
My Dearest Ann
The first thing that I would like to tell is that I love you with all my heart and everything that is part of me Ann, darling. I don’t think that I ever called you Darling before because I just could not say something I did not mean. When I say a beautiful thing like that to you it is because you are a darling and the most beautiful girl and wife in this whole world and I love you more than anything material or otherwise that is in it, my precious thing. You are the most delightful, most fabulous, most fantastic creature that was born of this earth and how I got you I just, don’t, know . . .
July 1st, 1961
My Darling Ann
I have just finished breakfast and I did not like it very much. I only ate half of it. After yesterday’s meal you sent me you could not compare it. It was very nice yesterday to see you and you are looking more beautiful than ever. I really mean that Ann you are getting better looking more and more as time goes by . . . You see, Ann, I have been thinking a lot about you in the last week and also of the things that I have done on you, well! When I get out I am going to make up for it, honest I am Ann . . .
I miss not having had a father since the age of eight. I miss not knowing how having a father would have shaped me. It’s probably why I enjoy other people’s fathers so much. My favourite part of Fintan O’Toole’s recent RTÉ documentary about theatre was him and his dad on the bus, just chatting. I felt a pang. I met a 94-year-old man in Strabane recently with five daughters who, since their mother died, each take turns to make his dinner. The daily details, every pork chop, every steak, every apple crumble and custard, are written down in five different hands in a pile of hardback A4 diaries spanning nearly two decades. He showed them to me, smiling, this culinary record of daughterly love.
After reading Buen Camino! I plucked up the courage to trace with shaky finger a bit of the outline of that father-shaped hole in my life. It hurts. But not as much as the pretending to forget.
In other news . . .
Lindsay Benner’s seductive juggling and Jardu’s Indian snake charming are two of the acts I’m looking forward to at the World Street Performance Championship in Merrion Square, Dublin today. And it’s all free.