A and J have been asking about my dad. They never get bored of hearing about his unfinished opus ‘The Last Great Whale’ and other running jokes, which have been carried over to my family more or less intact. ‘I’m going to finish “The Last Great Whale”’, Anna said yesterday.
My husband says it’s already finished. The first and last lines are Haikuesque.
‘Immense, serene, the baleen whale,
Seeks for an echo of its kind.’
Murphy died last October from HD complications. Our old family friend Julian, Murph’s business partner, drove me to his nursing home in Henfield every couple of weeks. On the way down, he told stories about Murph, which I had never heard. He is the custodian of our memories because Murph didn’t ever speak about the past. Julian said Murph was good looking and charismatic when he came across him in Earls Court in the late ‘50s. He described so many seamy pubs full of disreputable characters, some of whom came to tragic ends. It sounds like ‘Hangover Square’ by Patrick Hamilton,
Murph was an Agony Aunt for ‘The People’ Sunday newspaper, was a short-order cook in a snack-bar off Piccadilly Circus, then had a window-cleaning round, which paid the rent, before becoming a journalist. From what I gathered, he was out of synch with the Spirit of the Age and proud of this. He never took drugs or went on demos! And he thought Bob Dylan couldn’t sing. In spite of this, my mother pursued him. They ended up living together in a flat underneath Donovan, and Murph was always complaining about the noise.
When Daniel and I came along, he stepped up to the plate and set about providing for us by any means necessary. I’m never sure when he acquired his BBC voice. Did he lie on his CV to get his first job? I think I remember him telling me this, but I’m not sure. There was no Old Boys network for Murph, he was a self-made man.
Early, Sir
I have been told that he was one of the Founding Fathers of Duty free, and I’m not sure what to make of his leading role in this not quite ethical industry. In the early days, it was like the Wild West, full of chancers, boozers and larger-than-life characters finding lucrative opportunities around the globe. I’m sure it has changed now, like journalism, with everyone coming to work on time without hangovers.
Anything to declare?
I miss him terribly; our numbers are dwindling. The Australian wing of the family visits infrequently. There are very few Ravens left in the UK and we are in danger of extinction. My brother doesn’t have children and probably won’t, although he is a brilliant uncle. My mother wouldn’t let us see our Christian cousins when we were growing up. These days, I am more tolerant than her, but I don’t have a relationship with Zoe or Andrew. At the same time, my husband’s family is multiplying. I’m losing count of all the cousins.
What can I say about Murph? He was an enigma who never gave straight answers to any questions. His real first name was Vivian! That always sounded weird when I heard it and I never called him dad. He was always Murph to me, but we never worked out where the nickname came from. He said something different every time he was asked.
M was a great grandfather and more patient than me with A and J when they were toddlers. He never got bored with boring games. I can picture him and Anna in the garden of our family home in Brighton opening and closing the electric garage door again and again. The teddy bear he bought her is still on her bed, J doesn’t know him very well and I’m so sad about this, but he knows all about him. A has fond memories of holidays in Florida and ‘Murph the Surf’ as he styled himself in his gated community days. We never liked this holiday home, which was on a golf course with an artificial lake to look at, but M didn’t care what we thought, he liked watching the pelicans and waved at the seniors in golf buggies as they went by.
He was a funny, warm and a generous father too. I think he was surprised by how much he enjoyed having us. [He did tell me this] When we were small we spent magical weekends with him in London, magical because different rules applied. We were always getting lost but he had a special whistle and usually retrieved us. I can see him skimming stones across the lake in Kensington Gardens; always a two-er or a three-er.
In my teens I thought Murphy was a capitalist pig, like Mr Clean in The Jam song. This unlikely business-man was forced to defend ‘the system’ in arguments in the sitting room of our family home in Brighton. My mother and I were members of the Militant Tendency. Murph was kind and respectful to all the extremists and striking miners who crossed the threshold. A friend from that era said he was ‘the most likable capitalist that you could ever meet’.
He never minded being ribbed about his small c conservatism by our old friend Richard Headicar, which became a running joke. I wasn’t very nice to Murph when I was a teenager. I still feel really guilty about this, but he was still there when I came back in my twenties. He was often away on business but always returned bearing gifts. I loved the perfume samples and luxury knick-knacks that accumulated on my dressing table.
Murph had a talent for friendship because he was genuinely interested in people and non-judgmental to the point of recklessness. When my mother died in 2001, it was all back to Murphy’s after the pub. Some of them never went home! The basement flat where my grandmother breathed her last was occupied for a time. A rackety pair of drunks conducted an affair there. I could have been more hospitable to them, I’d moved out by then, but I am my mother’s daughter. ‘The drunks’ always scared me.
When he got ill, some of his friends found excuses for not coming to see him. I’m grateful to those who stayed the distance. Hearing about their family dramas, difficulties and successes was a tonic. When I visited, he always asked me how my friends were and he knew everything about all the people in my life, as he always had.
What can I say about Murph’s sense of humour? Mischievous is close but not quite right, and my brother prefers Elliptical. He would set up running jokes that would run for years. He drove my mother mad by saying he was a better poet than Bob Dylan,
It was hard to gauge what Murph’s quality of life was like at the Red Oaks nursing home but he did seem quite contented watching the BBC news channel with the volume turned up, being visited regularly by family and old friends. The scene around his bed was like the pub without the bores.
Like his father, Murphy was tolerant and optimistic. He was never depressed even when he became symptomatic.
I now know why he was so evasive when I was growing up and unwilling to talk about his family. He didn’t want us to grow up in the shadow of Huntington’s disease, as he had. When I got married, he thought long and hard about whether to tell me I was at risk of HD and decided not to. For a man of integrity like Murph, this must have been very difficult. I was angry with him for years, not any more. He carried this secret around with him– what a terrible burden – until he was finally diagnosed.
Late, Sir
The weekend before he died, M wanted to talk but held my gaze instead. As I may have mentioned, HD robs you of your ability to communicate while remaining aware of your predicament and your surroundings. Murph always knew who we were and it was clear he could follow our conversations. Every so often, with enormous effort, he would make a joke. The staff clearly loved him; he was still making friends and his personality was intact. He was himself to his last breath, and I will always be grateful for that. Murph talked as best he could about his remarkable father and his grandchildren’s achievements. He told us how much he loved us and, typically, he was worried about me, which he said was ‘only natural’.
Forgetting myself 