Hiding Behind the Furniture
by Rob Turfkruyer

It would have been a 35mm film camera with a flash, the type you pressed a button and waited for the high pitched ring and perhaps a light to come on to know it was ready, you remember vividly the ratcheting sound of the film being wound on after each photo, it was mostly likely some type of family occasion in the only home that we lived in growing up. You recall Mum holding the camera, you would maybe be six or seven, most probably dressed up in an outfit that Mum thought was cute or smart, you remember the camera being pointed towards you and the sudden and extreme overwhelm and embarrassment — you crouched down and squeezed down the side of the sofa quickly, perhaps staying in the tight space between the arm of the sofa and the living room bar, or perhaps crawling round the back in a race before the click and flash of the camera — you hated it so much, the stress ran through your whole body like a shockwave, you perhaps recall Mum quickly winding the film on, resetting the camera and trying to catch you off-guard, you hated it more than anything, it was crippling anxiety.

You remember the red Chesterfield style leather sofa well, it sat in the centre of the big living room, it will age and wear out, you remember small patches which had torn on the arms revealing the webbing and yellow foam underneath, and picking at these out of curiosity or boredom, later in its life it will wear an avocado coloured throw that Mum will buy to try and dress it up, later you will understand the financial stresses and strains, for now it serves as a wall, and sometimes a den which you build with your younger twin brothers by carefully stacking the red cushions in ways so you can climb inside and entertain yourselves.

The living room was big, the average three bed house was once very different, the house had sprawled in different directions over time as the family had grown, you were one of five siblings, the extensions were made before you were born and when you were very little — for you it had been the same as long as you can remember. At one end of the living room two large wooden cabinets which stretched the whole length of the wall, the glass fronted cupboards at the top contained various things over the years, collectable model cars, a Newton’s cradle which you occasionally played around with, a strange metal seesaw where the top half balanced on a point, you could set it off rocking and the little men with weighted feet would gently rock back and forth. The mahogany coloured cabinet filled with memories across the years, at the heart of it an overflowing cupboard with a “pull down” door, full to the brim with paper packets of captured memories, perhaps adorning the Kodak brand, or some other photo developer brand, the paper packets seemingly filled with normal happy moments, perhaps they were relatively at this age, when you are much older and the Internet becomes a thing you will one day stumble across the memory of your dreams as a child, those horrific dreams where you are trying to run though the upstairs hallway and your feet are stuck solid to the ground, and morbid curiosity will lead you to Google this and learn these dreams are associated with depression and you will question whether these moments in time were as the snapshots etched on film suggest.

Stuffed down the left hand side in the small gap were a few things like leftover Christmas wrapping paper, and the blue typewriter which Mum had gifted you, sometimes you would get it out and type out some things for entertainment together with James and Harry. Along the wall at the same end of the living room was the piano, bought originally for your oldest sister, you would play around on it at times, you will have a few lessons when you’re younger but drop the pursuit after not too long, it was mostly out of tune and often had piles of things stacked on top of it, when you’re a little older, perhaps 11, the pool table you inherit from Grandad will live behind the piano and against the wall, the table he had custom built at some expense — he loved snooker and you always remember it being on TV when you visited Nanna and Grandad at their bungalow, and you remember the pool table being in their living room and being set up sometimes when you visited and were just about tall enough to play. You will remember Dad joking about Grandad watching snooker on a black and white TV and trying to make out the right coloured balls.

Nanna and Grandad, they were like second parents to you, you were their first Grandson, shortly followed by James and Harry who were identical twins, but your relationship perhaps seemed different. Later in life I am going to learn a lot more about this, spending time helping Nanna out around her house when she’s old and more frail, when you stay at her bungalow some weekends, across the road from the supermarket in town where you worked part-time. You’re going to learn through stories about Mum’s brother George who was born with Down syndrome, and how in that era it was viewed as somehow being the fault of the parents in some way, and how against the will or judgement of Nanna, Grandad signed off on experimental treatments where he lived out his year of life in hospital — Nanna will tell you how she visited on her own practically every day. At 15, you’re not sure how to process this, you perhaps ask brief questions about Grandad to yourself, but find it hard to alter your perception of him based on your experience, something that you grapple with for others in your life.

Two doors down from the family home, there was an elderly lady who lived on her own. Sometimes you visit and she gives you some sweets from the cabinet in her living room. Grandad did the odd handyman jobs for people here and there, and because she was on her own he would help out, later you learn that she was prone to seizures of some kind, but didn’t want to leave her home. Grandad was helping out by repainting the upstairs window frames, he brought his tall wooden ladder, strapped to the top of the square red Škoda he drove, so he could help her out. You remember Mum picking the three of you up from primary school and driving in to the cul-de-sac where you lived, I don’t know if we were picked up early, or whether Mum knew, you remember it so clearly driving past the old lady’s house as you came onto the road, the blue flashing lights of the ambulance coming through the car windows, and bouncing off the windows of the surrounding houses, you didn’t yet know what was happening — Grandad had fallen from the ladder, smashing his head on the concrete tiles and died, later in life you think he had tried to rush down the ladder thinking that the old lady had collapsed and needed help — you’re not sure how this was known, perhaps a story to give some comfort.

You remember you, James and Harry sitting on the living room sofa and Mum telling you, you cried so much that you felt sick, the utter shock, to you at least it felt like you had lost a parent, Grandad taught you to ride a bike, he spent time teaching you things, he made a tiny snooker table for you when you were about four or five which slotted over the coffee table and made you a tiny cue, you remember seeing photos in the cabinet of you and your cousin Alex wearing waistcoats and bow ties, like the snooker players of the time, playing on the table with the hand made cues.

Later in life, talking to Nanna, and Mum, you’re going to learn that Grandad was an alcoholic, you had no idea about this, how would you? As a child you don’t have any reference for this, but one day, perhaps at Uni, a waft of someone’s breath, perhaps hungover, smelling of stale beer is going to suddenly transport you back through space and time, in an instant to being sat in front of Grandad, close enough that you can smell his breath. You take a moment to reflect on the complex mix of emotions as your older self struggles with the complexity of reinterpreting a significant figure in your life who you loved.

If you squinted, the family home was a picture of success and positiveness, but it was tired, and a backdrop for experiences which were tougher than you want to remember. The living room was perhaps 40ft end-to-end, the opposite end to the piano and cabinet, at the end of the sofa there was a bar built into the room. I think it was built by Dad, there was a cupboard with a frosted glass pane, inside which there were a number of different glasses, and a small collection of spirits. Underneath the bar there was a fridge, and a number of shelves containing glasses. On the bar there was a brass aeroplane ornament, Mum mentioned that they had bought it on some exotic holiday. There was a time before I was born when Dad was a successful salesman, when they could afford to send Lucy and Katie to private school, as I grow up this gradually becomes very different. When you’re older you will learn that Dad had a heart attack before you were born, you very nearly didn’t know him and sometimes you catch yourself wondering what might have been. You will hear it recounted many times that Dad being ill was due to lifestyle. As you get older, perhaps 12, maybe early teens, you will become more aware of the medicine regime, at first it will be pills — you don’t recall the details, and glucose sweets as emergency if blood sugar got too low, there was a monitor in the house and Dad would prick the end of his finger and test it regularly, you hated that thing — once or twice you remember having it done to you, as an adult you’re not going to be able to do this or have blood taken in any way and then wonder if this is connected. Dad’s feet become swollen and sore, he starts wearing trainers, the skin on his shins is easily damaged and he starts wearing football shin pads to try and help, the cries of pain echoing through the house, where he knocked his leg against something, perhaps the coffee table, perhaps followed by screams for someone to help, are well-grooved into your memory, distant enough now to avoid living the pain, but recent enough to resonate through your life. Dad’s circulation was bad, his feet started to look blue and swollen, a community nurse would visit regularly to change dressings on his legs, they wouldn’t heal properly and they would constantly weep through the bandages.

I’m a young teenager, I open the fridge behind the bar and the door rattles with bottles, small with rubber seals on top, containing a musty-white liquid, a large bottle of diet coke was often here for Dad, you’ll wonder when you’re older if this was a reflection of his previous unhealthy lifestyle, on top of the bar next to the brass aeroplane there was a yellow “sharps box” where the needle of the syringes would be snapped off for safe disposal, insulin daily was the current prescription, on top of a cocktail of pills, at some point you remember “Wharferin” and Dad saying something akin to “it’s what they fucking poison rats with,” you would sometimes bring the bottle of insulin over and a new syringe so he could inject himself, having to move around different places to try and avoid as much pain as possible, handing the syringe and bottle back to you to return to the fridge and dispose. I’m not sure when or why, but being admitted to hospital would happen, perhaps once or twice in the year, enough to become familiar with the hospital and watch a new specialist wing being built. One visit to surgically remove a huge ulcer from his belly, his bloated belly, he was tall — just over 6ft, you remember at some stage he was over 18 stone — this operation results in MRSA to add to the domino of complications which will inevitably unravel. You remember a little while after him telling someone a story that he was in the bath and saw the soap floating next to him and grabbed it, then quickly realised that was the white flesh of his open wound and the tremendous searing pain. You remember constant yells of pain dotted through the day and wonder which one this was.

Often it would be just us boys and Dad as Mum would be out working late, you wear the burden of your normality without any understanding of how this moulds your future self. Dad had his armchair, it perhaps changed throughout our life, nobody else would sit in it, it was his spot — the cushion well worn into shape. Being caught sat in it would likely result in being told to “get the fuck up” or “get out of my fucking chair,” not always in a temper, but definitely sometimes, definitely as he got more sick. His chair, like the sofa, at some point wore an avocado throw, its last iteration had a frame bolted to the bottom which plugged into the wall so it could help him stand up. Dad carried a walking stick, you remember a rare trip out where he hired a mobility scooter. He would still drive for a while, but needed help getting in and out if the car — he got angry with people a lot and would shout and swear at them.

They thought about installing a lift in the house, I’m not sure who “they” were, but some authorities who Mum was dealing with, instead Mum and Dad’s bed was moved down to the dining room so he didn’t have to contend with the stairs, you remember helping to bring it down in two halves and helping put it together. Dad will call you in there and say to you “son, I’m not going to be here for very long — look after your Mum and the boys” and you will grapple for words that aren’t there and instead breakdown into tears. A new car will appear from Motability, you will take some excitement from it and not be able to acknowledge the size of the situation which gave rise to it. A wheelchair will appear, red, it will fold down and fit in the boot so one of us can push Dad around — timelines are vague in the fog of memories attempted to forget, this seems to soon progress to oxygen cylinders in the house in last ditch efforts to convert the house to some type of makeshift hospice. Dad can rarely make it to the bathroom, he sits on his chair mostly wearing a hissing oxygen mask, a blanket on his lap to salvage some dignity whilst relieving himself into a container and one of us having to relay it 20ft to the downstairs toilet. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, somehow ordinary life happened in between, you’re not sure how, perhaps this created emotional barriers you will fight to breakdown years into the future.

October 2024
Surrey, UK