Watering tomato plants with my father

Plus: it’s farewell to The Vampire’s Wife

I’m writing this week’s newsletter from my parents’ house in a small town in Berkshire so fittingly it’s a bit of a different pace. I have come down to look after my 83-year-old father while my mother is in France for a few days. A couple of months ago my lovely, sweet, funny dad was in the hospital, gravely ill. A wound in his foot led to various complications and infections, including most worryingly sepsis, which meant he spent a number of weeks on a ward in the Royal Berkshire in Reading. At one point we were told he would likely not make it. My brothers flew back from Australia, where they live, to say goodbye. They packed suits to wear to the funeral in their luggage.

By the time they had arrived, we were told that there might be an alternative: he could have his leg amputated. So he was then moved to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford and awaited the operation that might save his life, but caused me to worry a lot. He was so frail in hospital, positively gaunt from the infections, and I just didn’t know how he could survive such an ordeal. And if he did survive, what his life might look like after. This was not someone who looked well enough to be rehabilitated or to adapt to a new body; he was simply too weak, he was barely there.  

In the end the doctors decided to do a last minute angioplasty in an attempt to save his leg, a procedure which improves blood supply into an infected area (don’t ask me why this wasn’t given as an option earlier). Miraculously, it worked. Or it is working, I should say, as full recovery is still some way off. But it has bought him time. If death was the opponent in a football game, then a goal was scored by our team in the final minute and extra time commenced, time for which we are grateful. I know so many people who have had loved ones snatched away from them in the blink of an eye that I can’t think of anything more special than getting this extra time. It almost seems unfair to have such a luxury. He returned home about a month ago, where he is working on steadily building up some strength, trying to gain weight, and eliminating the infection. He is still unwell, but he is here, and he is him. 

My father has been ill for quite a while now, long before he wound up in the hospital. It has, quite naturally, changed our relationship. For some time, I have said goodbye to him as if I might not see him again, hugged him farewell as if it’s our last. Again, I know this is a luxury. Throughout this time my father’s and my conversations have inevitably expanded, too. I find myself asking him questions about his life that I had failed to do before: where was the most beautiful place he ever visited? What plays did he appear in when he did amateur theatre in London in his twenties? What’s his favourite piece of music? (For what it’s worth the answers are Donegal in Ireland, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Winter’s Tale, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2). I have known we have been in the third act for some time and I don’t want to leave any questions unanswered.  

We have had a good week, much slower than I’m used to up in London with my husband and our two-year-old, and in many ways it has been a welcome change of pace. Dad sleeps a lot and can nod off at any moment. I jumped at the opportunity for long lie-ins in bed - a luxury for me, a necessity for him. He and I watched the news and Marcus Wareing Simply Provence, and cooked cottage pie and mushroom fettuccine, read the papers and, of course, we talked. I found myself probing him like one of those cheesy TikTok videos that show someone interviewing oldies about their regrets and life lessons, which I usually watch if I come across. His regret? Ever doubting himself that he wasn’t as talented as his peers and that he’d probably have preferred to have gone into law rather than business but he was desperate to leave Northern Ireland, where he grew up, and joining the motor industry in London was his way out. 

A man and his castle

Perhaps the nicest part of this week has been when I’ve helped Dad tend to his garden. A longtime keen gardener, his greenhouse is his castle, his produce his pride and joy. He showed me the courgette plants that are sprouting, the climbing bean seedlings, and the flowering blackberry bush. We trowelled some pots of herbs together: dill, coriander and parsley. We watered his tomato plants, by far his favourite, the precious jewels of his castle. Despite his various aches, stiffness, and slowness in moving, he nurtured the tomatoes with such tenderness. He is worried about the tomatoes. His time away in the hospital means the plants haven’t been so well attended to this year; their survival rests on his care and he is concerned they won’t come through. And so we wait to see if they will bloom. They might yet surprise us. We have a little extra time. 

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I was very sad to hear this week that fashion label The Vampire’s Wife would be closing. Susie Cave (wife of Nick) made the most beautiful dresses and I hate to see another wonderful label succumb to the challenges and rising costs of running an independent brand these days. Her pieces were the perfect mix of sophisticated and edgy, gothic and glamour. 

Face masks and empty chairs: a classic 2020 wedding photo

I bought a white lace gown from The Vampire’s Wife to wear on my wedding day. I got married in August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and there were strict rules that brides could not be accompanied down the aisle. As his only daughter, my father was quite upset about this but we understood. Then about two minutes before the ceremony started, one of the officiants whispered to me, “If you’d like your dad to walk you down the aisle, just go for it”, so I ran and got him from his seat and we had our little stroll down the aisle. Even with the requisite face mask, you can see he is beaming. I will always treasure that moment, that day, and, of course, that dress.