I only had one uncle. Jim was my father’s brother and he never forgave my parents for not appointing him my godfather, so we rarely saw him. When we did he would lob a 50p piece in my direction and say, “Here, boy, spend this for me.” I make no claims for my family being normal but, like most children, I had no way of gauging how odd we were. There were levels of aggression that I simply took for granted. Many of the great-aunts seemed to be in a permanent feud. “I haven’t spoken to our so-and-so for seven years,” was a common boast and a proud one, too.
According to my mother, Uncle Jim cracked the filthiest jokes; so filthy, in fact, that she couldn’t understand them, which always left me wondering how she knew they were jokes in the first place. Jim was clever, charming and unpredictable. His attitude to my father, his older brother, was very like that of Scar to Mufasa in The Lion King story. My father was the bigger of the two, a natural athlete with a benign disposition who stopped to talk to everyone and was loved in return. Uncle Jim believed he was cleverer than my father and resented his brother’s social ease.
I should have had another uncle, Uncle Cyril. He was my mother’s older brother but he was killed fighting in the second world war. There was something desperately ironic about Uncle Cyril’s life. He was born in 1919 and christened Cyril Charles Victor because of the allied victory in the first world war and my grandfather being in Germany as part of the allied army of occupation. But the Wehrmacht got its revenge 24 years later at El Alamein.
So nature and the Nazis had left me with only one uncle, and he was generally recognised in the family as “an awkward bugger”. When we met – which was rare – he would grumble that my father hogged the limelight. If my father told him where we’d been on holiday, Uncle Jim would mutter that it was “all right for some”. Among the things he resented were the long holidays my father had as a teacher. He also resented the fact that my father had become a teacher because he, Jim, had thought of it first. So Uncle Jim joined Lloyds Bank instead and hated it. Although there is no rule that there can only be one teacher in any family, Jim seemed to blame my father for his job at the bank. He was a volatile man. From time to time, he would become devoted to a colleague whom he’d describe as his blood brother, but eventually Jim would fall out with him too.
My father laughed off all these jibes, but my mother seethed. She was particularly hurt by Jim’s barely concealed hostility towards me. She had been the unwitting cause. My mother was keen that I have a number of male role models in my life so she invited two other men – my father’s cousin and the husband of her best friend – to be my godfathers. This was done on the assumption that Jim would be inherently interested in me as his only nephew. The idea backfired. Jim didn’t come to my baptism, graduation or wedding. In fact, he turned down just about every family invitation extended his way.
Thankfully, I was unaware of these problems for years. I used to save up my money to buy him and his wife Christmas presents – which were never acknowledged. Jim’s own Christmas presents to us were parsimonious and usually late but my father used to laugh and refer to the bottle of wine and box of chocolates as Uncle Jim’s bumper fun parcel.
I was not much given to introspection. From what I can remember I was a child of rumbustious enthusiasms and terrible nightmares. As far as my ideas about uncles went, I probably assumed all uncles were like Jim. Then Uncle David, Uncle Alan and Uncle Chris came into my life.
These three men were students at Birmingham University in the 1960s. My mother, not allowed to work outside the home because of my father’s rather Taliban views on the subject (not unusual for the time), decided to make some pocket money and spice up our homelife by taking in a lodger. In those days, all adults in the neighbourhood and all friends of your parents were automatically called uncle or aunt so the man who came to stay in our front room was Uncle David. I was about five at the time of his arrival and had just started school. David was quiet and studious and evidently I kicked him whenever I could. I had got used to my father stealing my mother’s attention, but Uncle David was not acceptable. I still feel sorry for him.
A year later came Uncle Alan, who was far less studious and just like the big brother any boy would want. He made Meccano structures with me and went sledging with us, and genuinely was one of the family, so much so that he stayed on an extra year with us. As most of my games at the time involved pretending I was the Lone Ranger and jumping on people, he must have been physically tough as well as patient. Evidently on one occasion when my parents went out and Uncle Alan was babysitting, my parents came back early and found him in the spare bedroom with “Auntie Sue”. I’m not sure we ever saw Auntie Sue again. My parents were not about to embark on the Swinging 60s but Uncle Alan stayed and his parents even came to visit us. He was family. Somehow Uncle Alan got his degree despite spending so much time helping me with Meccano.
I was less enamoured of Uncle Chris but then Uncle Alan was a hard act to follow. Chris studied geology and often went off climbing mountains with ropes. He was tough and I was wary of him but at my birthday party (all the uncles had to come to my birthday parties) I forgot it was Uncle Chris and not Uncle Alan and led a charge of eight-year-olds across the breakfast room, and we managed to floor him. But by then it was too late to stop everyone else, so I jumped on Uncle Chris too and, thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind.
So these years with my substitute uncles passed and eventually my real uncle fell ill and lay in hospital dying. Jim’s wife told my father that he didn’t want any visitors and when we went to the funeral she tried to prevent people coming to the grave.
“Not even his brother?” My father protested to the undertaker and the message was brought back to us that immediate family would be allowed. So Uncle Jim went to his grave still “an awkward bugger”, but I know my father missed Jim and mourned him.
When I began to understand adults I felt very sorry for Uncle Jim. He missed out on so much that life has to offer because he was always falling out with people. He was a man of talent, charm and humour (as I got older I also began to understand his filthy jokes) but I think other people were a great disappointment to him. Even before my baptism I let had him down and he never forgave me.
I also missed out – on having an uncle – but thank goodness other men became my uncles and taught me fun and how to share my mother. As my father used to say, “The good Lord gave us our families, thank God we can choose our friends.”
