In a World gone Mad: 30 April 2020

Thursday 30 April 2020

Arthur

This is a few words in the lifetime of an incredible, but incredibly selfish man.

He was born in 1933 and grew up in the shadow of the Bow bells in London. He did his National Service, served an apprenticeship as a joiner, rented a workshop, started his own business and married Joan.

They had four children, Max, Kevin, Dawn and Archie. Dawn and Archie followed ten years after the first two and a few years apart.  Arthur worked hard; his business flourished. He bought a house in Epping in a desirable, middle-class neighbourhood. Max and Kevin say they had a charmed childhood. Dawn is dead and what happened had happened by the time Archie was nine.

During their ten to twenty years Max and Keith had what can be described as a brilliant life.  Arthur is outdoorsy, they rock climbed and sailed, every holiday was a camping adventure. Arthur took on the role of scout leader for the town and immersed himself in the scouting life.

I love the fact that the group of boys have stayed together as lifetime friends, they all have a soft spot for Arthur and keep in touch. Last year, Max and I attended the wedding of one of the lad’s daughters in France. They hired a farmhouse with staff, and it was an expensive and lavish affair.

During the eldest two lad’s eighteen to thirty years—the thing had happened.

Arthur turned his home into a party house. His scouts were grown, there were a lot of girls in the neighbourhood and the lads used Arthur’s house as a knocking shop and shagged them all. They were middle class boys, some with private education, so it was never much in the way of criminal apart from the social drugs and naked bodies. The Charles Street parties were a legend of their times.  Arthur liked being around young boys.  I can’t shout this loud enough, there was nothing inappropriate in this, Max’s posh friends wouldn’t be around now if there was—well nothing untoward except having people taking drugs and shagging  in his bedrooms while his teenage daughter with mental incapacity and school age son had to find somewhere to be while it happened and their beds were occupied. Arthur just liked the company of the lads. He was a Peter Pan and wanted to be one with them. It’s a Barnet family gene, Max thinks he’s twenty, so of course anything in a mini skirt from the age of eighteen fancies him.  

The thing is in two parts.

Thing one—pre, party central.

When Arthur and Joan married, they loved to dance—jitterbug was their thing and they went out every weekend to the local dancehall. The children came along and that stopped.  Joan kept house and looked after her children and Arthur left her to it.  His life was the scouts, his climbing, sailing, sports and outdoorsy things. He was away every weekend—always with the eldest two boys and Joan was neglected.

She had an affair. As bored women do, there’s nothing unusual in that.

She fell in love with Ivor, who she is still married to forty years later, and their marriage has been twice as long as her marriage to Arthur. She has a beautiful home in Barrow, and until the last month, they have been happy.

Thing two is where things get screwy.  Joan wanted to leave and take her children. Arthur forbade it. She could go, but the children stayed with him. 

Arthur has never recovered from the loss of his wife.

Max is a hundred percent convinced that, when she left him, Arthur had a mental breakdown and has never come out of it.  In layman’s terms, he’s always been nuts.

As the lone father of four children, one of them disabled, he didn’t cope well. He didn’t see the needs of his children and life was all about him and his wants—not even needs, just his wants.

Alfie, his youngest son, has no compunction in telling you how much he hates his father for those few years. Arthur had a teenage daughter with specific hygiene requirements and a nine-year-old son. Often, there was no heating and they went years without hot water because Arthur hadn’t paid the bills. He washed in the kitchen sink in cold water—it’s what real men do so he saw no need to contact the water supplier. The house turned into a teenager’s drink, sex and drugs haven. Max was away by this time; he had a flat in Chelsea and served an apprenticeship working in a place that made and restored church organs. From there, he worked in a large, music store in London and as a musician—and from there, in his late twenties, he went to teaching college. He came home at weekends for the parties, though they happened every night of the week.

Kevin moved out and married his first wife, leaving Dawn and Alfie to fend for themselves. The authorities were never involved, which seems incredible, and they struggled through until Alfie was sixteen.

Part two of the second thing is where the story becomes incredible.

One day Arthur packed a rucksack, he never went anywhere without his passport because he never knew when something was going to happen, and he often travelled to Europe in his boat.  

He went for a bicycle ride and disappeared from the face of the earth.

Arthur appeared as if it was two hours after leaving—but it was eleven years later, and he’d travelled around the world—literally.

He found a few days’ work here and there where he could and on one bicycle. He came face to face with an armed, Arab mugger who raised a rifle to his face and demanded his wallet. He went to Everest’s basecamp, and beyond. He cycled and walked part of The Great Wall of China, he drank tea at the Taj Mahal, and rode camels at the pyramids. He watched the Northern Lights display in Iceland and saw Orangutans in both Borneo and Sumatra. In India, he was knocked off his bike when a lorry’s wing mirror swiped him. He had a serious head injury—another indicator that may have some impact on the crazy—he was in a coma for weeks. He swears that there was a policeman behind him who pushed him into the path of the lorry and is convinced that it was a deliberate assault on him and a conspiracy to harvest his organs for sale to the Arabs.  He’ll tell you that he only has one kidney, his organs are all intact, though he does only have one eye. Every third Barnet seems to be monocular.

One day, a man opened the door in Charles street with a key.  Arthur had let the house to pay for his passage from Europe to the Americas rendering his children homeless. Alfie was sixteen and moved into his first flat and Dawn went to live with Max who was living with his daughter and divorcing his absent wife.

A few years later, tragedy struck again. Dawn had a seizure in the bath and drowned, Max came home from work and found her.

They traced Arthur through the solicitor who dealt with his affairs and the house rental. The solicitor said he was in Australia and Max paid for his flight home for his daughter’s funeral.  He stayed one night and said he had to leave because he’d left his bicycle with a group of backpackers that he’d met three days before. He would be lost without his bike.

After the funeral, he told Max how disappointed he was in him.

‘I brought you up soft, boy, a man never sheds a tear. I’m ashamed of you.’

Arthur was fidgety at the funeral and kept telling people how he had to get back in case somebody stole his bike. He snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and it was another nine years before anybody saw him.

He did seven continents on one bicycle, making roadside repairs and buying replacement parts in stops along the way. Eleven and a half years after he left, he and his trusted bike got off a ferry in Wales, where Kevin still lived with his wife—Arthur assumed that he’s still be there, of course he wouldn’t have moved, that would be too inconvenient and Arthur’s the only Barnet who could leave town. He cycled overnight to Kevin’s house and knocked on the door.

‘Is there a cup of tea for me here, boy.’