Johhny Deadman talks about a traumatic childhood incident which forever coloured the way he viewed his parents and the world.
As children we naturally all start out believing that our parents are infallible. In fact for every child there must come a moment when they see with shocking clarity that their parents are quite capable of letting you die horribly.
Here's how it happened for me:
We were on holiday in Cornwall or Scarborough and I must have been seven or eight. My father was very keen on getting Off the Beaten Track. However, this was supposedly a beach holiday. One day we went down to a little cove which had a perfectly nice beach, and the sea. But, it also had people, which was more than my father could deal with. So, clutching windbreaks and deckchairs and buckets etc. we trudged around a headland. Well, round the headland, to our enormous surprise... A big, empty beach, with lots of virgin sand and no people. It was definitely Off the Beaten Track. Anyway, we settled down, and I suppose I built sandcastles or flew a kite or something...
And then we realised.
Why it was Off the Beaten Track, I mean.
There was no high water mark.
By which I mean that when the tide came in, it REALLY came in. All the way up to the jagged cliffs that towered above us, with no possible safe exit. The tide was already coming in, and the headland was now surrounded by sea.
This was the moment when I started to have misgivings about my parents.
My father, however, had a brisk, Captain Mainwaring style when confronted by danger or difficulty. He gathered up the seaside impedimenta and waded out into what looked to me like Hawaiian scale surf, shouting the same kind of thing that officers must have shouted on the morning of the Somme, "Follow me!".
Now, for my parents, who were between five and six feet tall, the waves were probably no real problem. They may have slapped them in the stomach or chest, but nothing too terrifying. They slapped me, however, in the head.
Did I tell you I couldn't swim?
Moreover, my parents, being laden down with windbreaks and deckchairs and buckets etc., were unable to help me, and appeared to be ignoring my cries and salty gargles.
That was when it happened.
I stepped into a large hole in the sea bed.
I went under. I can remember a greenish colour and a lot of unpleasantness. It felt like five or ten minutes. It was probably less than a second. But in that split second of salty green-ness, everything changed. I knew that my father could not be relied upon. My mother, who had followed him, was not only fallible, but a dupe. From here on in, it was me versus the angry world.
And why am I writing this? Because three days ago my wife had a little boy, and today he is coming home from the hospital. And, of course, we are responsible for him. And we want him to believe for as long as possible that, yes, we are infallible. And I wish that we were. But we aren't.
And one day he will realise.
I hope he forgives us.
