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Edric père turns out to be a belittler, a condescender, a scoffer and, worse, a violent alcoholic. At Christmas, the one season in the year that allows for some faint relaxation of the rules, the drinks order weighs in at several hundred cans of beer — and a bottle of Advocaat ‘for the ladies’. He was, essentially, a bully, his son deduces, and the life he led an endless competition, ‘everything a judgment concluded by a condemnation’, the whole performance — and Edric catches the theatrical element in this — sustained by an elemental capriciousness. And so, ordered to abandon his morning paper-round, the teenage Edric is not in the least surprised to be bawled out for not bringing in any money to the house.
Deciding that the best means of defence is to keep quiet and lie low, Edric finds consolation in the almost saintlike behaviour of his mother, and the grammar school scholarship which sweeps him off to a world where, for the first time, he encounters ‘dedicated, approachable, professional men’ who encourage him to make the best use of his talents. All the same, there is a bleak moment when he strolls round to see his best friend (who has failed the exam), is congratulated by the latter’s mother on her doorstep and then briskly informed that he won’t be seeing much of Andrew anymore.
Meanwhile, 1960s Sheffield stretches out beyond the foregrounded characters like a medieval frieze — a landscape of chock-a-block houses, working men’s clubs and cigarette smoke hanging heavy over each domestic interior. It would be odd if a book of this nature didn’t contain some mighty symbolic episode, and it comes at the very beginning, where Edric senior can be found exulting over the purchase —or rather hire-purchase — of a Crown Topper hairpiece to disguise his thinning locks. Vital for his self-esteem, the toupee is also an object of mockery. The last thing he wants, Robert decides, shortly before his escape to Hull University, ‘was for people to look at me the way they had looked at my father’s wig’. Neatly written, psychologically acute and never disguising the hurt that lies at its core, this is a small masterpiece.
Because you read about memoir
Also by D. J. Taylor
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