Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father

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This may be a memoir of my father but I didn’t set out to write one, more of an account of a particular time, though necessarily having shreds and slabs of the man scattered across it. I informally moved in with my parents while my mother was dying of lung cancer, something she did with self-effacing briskness in little more than a month. After she was dead, in January 1998, it made sense for me to stay in place to look after the survivor.

My father had been casually described by medical authority as demented, though not officially diagnosed. He was likely to lose his bearings if he had to adjust to a new environment. In fact this was never really something I considered. As an under-employed freelance I had time to spare. Dad had a good pension and his rent for a large flat in Gray’s Inn Square was low, thanks to the oligarchic machinery of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn. As a retired High Court judge, ex-Treasurer and bencher his status in its rankings was high. There was money to pay for a certain amount of care, so that I could continue to be present from Tuesday to Friday at the school gates in Dulwich Village when my daughter Holly, six, finished her proto-academic day.

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