I grew up motherless. That is not to say my mother was dead. ‘Conspicuous by her absence’ was the phrase I heard my father use as I listened at keyholes in hope of answers. Theirs was a lengthy marriage. The fact that she chose to take no part in it didn’t detract from his sense that she was his wife. Yes, he had frequent lady friends, perfumed, interchangeable. None replaced her. My mother remained the love of his life - except, that is, for his racing cars, an open stretch of road and, of course, the lure of speed.
I couldn’t help but feel I must have done something terrible to cause her to go, but my father frequently assured, “You were hardly capable of anything more ghastly than crying too loudly. Or too often. No, it was me your mother left.” But he failed to provide an adequate explanation of his crime, claiming to have bought her the best money could buy, even allowing her to pursue her career – against his better judgement. What was I to think?
“Think of the boy!” I shrank into my seat at the sound of my grandfather’s bullish proclamation over the cut glass and cruets. “I can’t understand why you don’t divorce her.”
My father slowly applied a napkin to the corner of his mouth. His response was measured, dry: “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Frankly, I never understood why you had to marry in the first place!” Never one to waste time listening to the other side of an argument, the older man forked food into his mouth as if his was the last word.
“I know you’d have preferred me to throw in the towel with some obedient little debutante, but,” and here my father turned his focus to me, exaggerating the width of his cow-brown eyes. “Your mother was exciting. And very beautiful.”
My grandfather inhaled his Claret, spluttering, “Excitement! That’s not what one looks for in a wife!”
“‘Til death us do part’ was the promise I made and I haven’t managed to kill myself yet -”
“Despite your confounded tomfoolery! Look here, in my day a man would have taken a woman like her -”
My father coughed a loud protest. “Not in front of…”
“Do you dare censor me? One can only hope,” My grandfather’s eyes singled me out, flashing terror into my soul, “young James will learn from your mistakes!”
“Son.”I found my hair being ruffled, my father’s voice assuring, “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s a mistake to marry for love.”
“Oh, come on, what utter rot!” The table shook as my grandfather’s glass crash-landed, the stem snapping under the weight of his forearm, adamant that it was my father, and not he, who was responsible for the wreckage Mrs Strachan fussed over.
Is it possible to miss someone of whom one has no memory? No, I missed the idea of her. Like the Rome I learned of in ancient history lessons, a mother was an idea in the minds of men. Sometimes differing substantially from the reality.
From the age of eight, I boarded. Once I overcame the anxiety of separation, this masked the situation. Increasingly, as I grew older, it was an annoyance that school was interrupted by holidays rather than the other way around. It was then that a mother’s absence became apparent. My father – who, in many ways, remained a boy himself - cut a dashing figure as he picked me up at the end of term in whatever incarnation of a prototype he’d been working on, all leather-coated, moustache and goggles, revved up for the next event on the calendar. Never a moment to lose, we rushed back from the London to Gloucester trial to Brooklands for the Round the Mountain race meeting. While he denied himself pause for thought, I pondered that, perhaps, a woman as exciting as my mother might have enjoyed our escapades.
