Will Gatti & Daniel Finn

News

What’s it got in its pocketses

What's it got in its pocketses

I don’t know why I decided to look in my father’s dressing gown pocket. It wasn’t a habit of mine to go through the pockets of other members of the family. Honest! I know I have a thing about the Dodger and Fagin, and the musical, Oliver, is great, especially the song ‘Got to Pick a Pocket or Two’,

and it is true I have written about young thieves who do what they do, because that’s the way their lives have taken them. But I know it’s not a good thing to go picking pockets. Thou shalt not steal. Fair enough. But taking a peek, that’s another thing.

I never tip-toed into my brother’s room or my sister’s. Probably because they were away for such wide acres of time that when they came home for holidays, they were mysterious strangers, as tall as trees and full of glamour. Hm, that doesn’t sound very convincing, not that they weren’t glamorous but that I didn’t go snooping.

Maybe they just had KEEP OUT YOU LITTLE MAGGOT  on the door.

And I kept out.

Mostly, my dad didn’t live at home but at the theatre. He had a monastic row of rooms with dusty grey windows and bare floors which led, by way of a small passage, to his boardroom. The boardroom where he did his work was magically different to his rooms. To me everything about his boardroom seemed huge: a giant  round table where he did his work , a grand piano which he never played (but my sister did), and  massive portraits around the walls of members of the family: grandfather John, with a Havana cigar in one hand, handsomely looking down at me as if he were wondering why I was so small.

My great grandfather and great grand uncle Agostino and Stefano were there too. They, unlike my grandfather, looked a bit shifty in suits that were at least a size too large for them.  Of course, I didn’t think any of that when I was small, they were just the people on the wall, keeping an eye on me so that I didn’t do anything naughty.

Who thinks about being naughty when you’re small? You do stuff and then wham bam there’s the cold snap: ‘Do NOT do that!’ Or worse. I don’t remember worse. I’d like to think I wandered into my Dad’s room to pour ink into his dressing gown pocket because that would have been funny if when he put his hand in his pocket it came out blue and drippy. But I didn’t do that.

I just dipped my hand in his dressing gown pocket and found his pipe, the bowl black and tarry, a twisty pipe cleaner and used matches. If I had hoped for a toy truck or a  threepenny bit or even a sixpence, I wasn’t lucky; just the burnt matches and the dead pipe, smelling of stale smoke.

 

Why should I remember that?