another flitting anxiously into a friendly neighbourâs, sometimes in tears, and both suffering from what was still called ânervesâ â a condition that goes largely unnoticed in cities as it cannot do in smaller communities.
âI havenât seen Mrs Bennett about? Is she alright?â
Except that after a while people learned not to ask. And while there were support groups for some identifiable disabilities like MS or muscular dystrophy, there were none for depression. As how could there be? Anyone suffering from it would be incapable of attending.
Insofar as I too kept it quiet when she was poorly, I shared in the shame, though it would have been callous to behave otherwise, as even when she was well Mam was always concerned with âwhat folks would sayâ about every department of our lives. But once she was in hospital there could be no deception as Dad would be seen driving off on the dot of one and arriving back at six, day after day after day.
When Mam was ill the first time I used to wish that they both had had the education they always longed for, feeling, snobbishly perhaps, that mental affliction was more appropriate to, sat more suitably on, someone educated or higher up the social scale. Itâs a foolish assumption besides being statistically unfounded, which Iâm sure I knew at the time though I felt it nevertheless. Education might at least have given them more insight into their predicament and diminished some of the self-consciousness they felt and which I felt too, though only in the village; among my own friends I made no secret of it. Still, if nothing else my motherâs depression and the omissions and evasions that attended it made me appreciate more the shame that must have attached to my grandfatherâs drowning and how it was the episode had gone unspoken of for so long.
My father wore a suit every day of his life. He had two, âmy suitâ and âmy other suitâ, âmy suitâ being the one he wore every day, âmy other suitâ hisbest. On the rare occasions when he invested in a new suit the suits moved up a place, âmy other suitâ becoming âmy suitâ, the new suit becoming âmy other suitâ, with the old one just used for painting in or working in the shop. They were three-piece suits, generally navy, and he always wore black shoes and a collar and tie. This makes him seem formal or dressed like an accountant but he didnât give that impression because he never managed to be smart, his waistcoat (âweskitâ as he pronounced it) generally unbuttoned and showing his braces, his sleeves rolled up, and when he was still butchering the suit would smell of meat, with the trousers and particularly the turn-ups greasy from the floor. He never had an overcoat, just a series of fawn or dark green gabardine raincoats, and he always wore a dark green trilby hat.
About clothes Dad must always have been conservative. There are photographs of him as a young man, sitting on the sands in a deck-chair in the 1920s, and he is in his three-piece suit, with dicky-bow and fly-collar and even a bowler hat, his only concession to the holiday spirit bare feet. Retirement, which often sanctions some sartorial indulgence, didnât alter this state of affairs, the regime of suit and other suit maintained as before. Or almost.
After he had learned to drive my parents would sometimes collect me off the train at Lancaster. Meeting them there one day in 1970, I came across the bridge to see my mother waiting at the barrier with a stranger, someone got up in a grey check sports coat, two-tone cardigan, brown trousers and what I suppose would be called loafers. I was deeply shocked. It was Dad in leisurewear, the only relic of the man he had always been his green trilby hat.
âWhat do you think of your Dadâs new get-up?â Mam enquired as we were driving home. Not much was the truth of it but I didnât
âI havenât seen Mrs Bennett about? Is she alright?â
Except that after a while people learned not to ask. And while there were support groups for some identifiable disabilities like MS or muscular dystrophy, there were none for depression. As how could there be? Anyone suffering from it would be incapable of attending.
Insofar as I too kept it quiet when she was poorly, I shared in the shame, though it would have been callous to behave otherwise, as even when she was well Mam was always concerned with âwhat folks would sayâ about every department of our lives. But once she was in hospital there could be no deception as Dad would be seen driving off on the dot of one and arriving back at six, day after day after day.
When Mam was ill the first time I used to wish that they both had had the education they always longed for, feeling, snobbishly perhaps, that mental affliction was more appropriate to, sat more suitably on, someone educated or higher up the social scale. Itâs a foolish assumption besides being statistically unfounded, which Iâm sure I knew at the time though I felt it nevertheless. Education might at least have given them more insight into their predicament and diminished some of the self-consciousness they felt and which I felt too, though only in the village; among my own friends I made no secret of it. Still, if nothing else my motherâs depression and the omissions and evasions that attended it made me appreciate more the shame that must have attached to my grandfatherâs drowning and how it was the episode had gone unspoken of for so long.
My father wore a suit every day of his life. He had two, âmy suitâ and âmy other suitâ, âmy suitâ being the one he wore every day, âmy other suitâ hisbest. On the rare occasions when he invested in a new suit the suits moved up a place, âmy other suitâ becoming âmy suitâ, the new suit becoming âmy other suitâ, with the old one just used for painting in or working in the shop. They were three-piece suits, generally navy, and he always wore black shoes and a collar and tie. This makes him seem formal or dressed like an accountant but he didnât give that impression because he never managed to be smart, his waistcoat (âweskitâ as he pronounced it) generally unbuttoned and showing his braces, his sleeves rolled up, and when he was still butchering the suit would smell of meat, with the trousers and particularly the turn-ups greasy from the floor. He never had an overcoat, just a series of fawn or dark green gabardine raincoats, and he always wore a dark green trilby hat.
About clothes Dad must always have been conservative. There are photographs of him as a young man, sitting on the sands in a deck-chair in the 1920s, and he is in his three-piece suit, with dicky-bow and fly-collar and even a bowler hat, his only concession to the holiday spirit bare feet. Retirement, which often sanctions some sartorial indulgence, didnât alter this state of affairs, the regime of suit and other suit maintained as before. Or almost.
After he had learned to drive my parents would sometimes collect me off the train at Lancaster. Meeting them there one day in 1970, I came across the bridge to see my mother waiting at the barrier with a stranger, someone got up in a grey check sports coat, two-tone cardigan, brown trousers and what I suppose would be called loafers. I was deeply shocked. It was Dad in leisurewear, the only relic of the man he had always been his green trilby hat.
âWhat do you think of your Dadâs new get-up?â Mam enquired as we were driving home. Not much was the truth of it but I didnât
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