What We’re Teaching Our Sons. Owen Booth
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the clean-up effort on TV and the radio and the internet. People are worried that the build-up of gas inside the decomposing whale carcass may cause it to explode. Onlookers have been moved back to a safe distance.
Our sons are gripped by the unfolding drama.
We tell our sons about the long relationship between people and whales – about the whaling industry, and the historical uses of baleen and blubber and ambergris and whalebone. We tell them about the hunting of minke whales and pilot whales and bowhead whales and fin whales and sei whales and humpback whales and grey whales and so on. We tell them the stories of Jonah and the whale, and Moby Dick, and what we can remember of the plot of the film Orca the Killer Whale, and about the whale that got lost and swam up the Thames in 2006.
‘Did you see the whale?’ our sons ask, excitedly.
‘Well no,’ we say, ‘we were out of the country at the time, but –’
‘What happened to the whale?’ our sons ask. ‘Was it rescued?’
We explain to our sons that, despite the best efforts of various organisations to save it, the Thames whale died two days after it was first spotted, from convulsions caused by dehydration and kidney failure. Everyone was very sad, we say. People had taken to calling the whale ‘Diana’. It was one of those moments when the whole nation comes together.
‘Except you, because you were out of the country,’ our sons say.
‘Well that’s true, yes,’ we admit.
On the TV, scientists and whale removal experts and members of the local council are reviewing their options. Dynamite is considered. Or burial. Apparently the smell is becoming unbearable. Luckily it’s winter, so the tourist trade hasn’t been too adversely affected. Nobody knows what caused the whale to wash up here – whether it was illness or a wrong turn or just old age.
‘Maybe he was murdered,’ our sons say. ‘Maybe sharks did it, or other whales. Maybe he had it coming. Maybe he was a bad whale.’
Eventually the experts decide to load the whale onto the back of an eighteen-wheel lorry. It takes two days to lay the temporary metal road across the beach, twelve hours to roll the corpse of the whale onto a cradle, hoist it up onto the trailer, tie it down under yards of tarpaulin and plastic sheeting.
Then, under cover of night, a police escort leads the lorry and its stinking cargo through the dark lanes of East Anglia.
At an undisclosed location, the television reports tell us, tissue samples will be taken and the whale will be cut up and incinerated.
And we will be left to explain to our sons what the whole thing means.
We’re teaching our sons about their grandfathers.
Their silent, phlegmatic grandfathers who have survived wars and fifty-year marriages. Their grandfathers who are spending their retirement building model worlds out of balsa wood, plastic and flock.
We go round to see the grandfathers. We give the secret password. The loft hatch opens and a ladder is lowered. We usher our sons up the ladder, up into the darkness.
The grandfathers have been working up here for the last five years, tunnelling further back into the eaves, back into their own pasts.
At first they managed to maintain their relationships with their wives by coming down for meals and at bedtimes. They still mowed the lawn at weekends. Interacted with neighbours. Read the paper in the evening.
Then they built a system of pulleys that meant they could have their food sent up to them, so they could eat while they worked. The lawn grew wild. Social occasions were missed. Eighteen months ago they started sleeping among the miles of miniature railway track, the half-finished buildings, the replica suspension bridges and goods yards. Waking up to find the trains had been running all night, the endless tiny whirr and clatter rattling through their dreams.
The grandmothers, with their own interesting lives to lead, barely notice their husbands’ absence any more.
Fairy lights run the length of the roof, hanging above the miniature town like stars. Below, a single evening in the lives of the grandfathers is perfectly recreated in OO scale. The trolley buses. Posters outside the old cinema. People leaving work. A dark swell on the surface of the water in the harbour.
The families of the grandfathers, everything they own packed in suitcases, waiting at the station.
And the grandfathers themselves, as boys, searching desperately through the streets for their own silent, unknowable fathers.
We tell our sons not to touch anything, even as they grab for a small model dog and accidentally sideswipe an entire bus queue with their sleeve. The youngest knocks over a crane and causes a minor disaster down at the docks. The older boys attempt to engineer horrific train crashes.
The grandfathers set about them, us, with their belts. Chase us, yelling, from the loft.
‘We forgive you!’ we scream, as the grandfathers pursue us down the street.
We’re teaching our sons about women.
What they mean. Where they come from. Where they’re headed, as individuals and as a gender.
We remind our sons that their mothers are women, that their cousins are women, that their aunts are women, that their grandmothers are women. The mothers of our sons confirm their status. They’re intrigued to know where we’re going with this.
We take our sons to art galleries and museums where they can look at women as they have been depicted for hundreds of years.
In the art galleries the security guards eye us warily, watch to make sure our sons don’t go too near the valuable paintings and sculptures. There is a security guard in every room, sitting in a chair, keeping an eye on the art. The security guards are all different ages and sizes and shapes. At least half of them are women. There are arty young women and middle-aged women with glasses and older women with severe, asymmetrical haircuts.
Our sons stand in front of the works of art, under the watchful eyes of the security guards. In the works of art young women in various states of undress alternately have mostly unwanted sexual experiences or recline on and/or against things. They recline on and/or against sofas and mantelpieces and beds and picnic blankets and tombs and marble steps and piles of furs and ornamental pillars and horses and cattle. Some of the women are giant-sized. They sprawl across entire rooms in the museum. Their naked breasts and hips loom over our sons like thunder clouds.
‘Is that what all women look like with no clothes on?’ our sons ask us, nervously.
‘Some of them,’ we say, nodding, relying on our extensive experience. ‘Not all.’
Our sons gaze up at the giant women, awed. They sneak glances at the women security guards, try to make sense of it all.
‘What do women want?’ our sons ask.
We notice the women security guards looking at us with interest. We consider our words carefully.
‘Maybe the same as the rest of us?’ we say.
The women security guards are still staring at us.
‘Somewhere to live,’ we add. ‘A sense of purpose. Food. Dignity, most likely.’
‘What about adventure?’ our sons ask. ‘What about fast cars? What about romance?’
We look over at the women security guards, hoping for a sign.
We’re not getting out of this one that easily.