Let Me Introduce You To The Family

I have always guarded my privacy, especially when I don’t have a book out, so I rarely talk about my family. The barest facts are publicly known; I have been married 4 times – or is it 5? – and I have three children, although my daughter isn’t a proper one as she belonged to my second wife from the man she was married to before me  (who turned out to be a screaming Bertie after he had managed to impregnate his wife once without having the vapours halfway through…)

My ‘daughter’  – NB Cilla, what’s the technical term for a pretend daughter? – is now a nun at a convent somewhere in Norfolk. It’s not a secret location, I just can’t remember where it is. She enlisted after an affair went wrong which I thought a silly reaction, but what do I know about women? Her mother didn’t share the details and, frankly for the sake of my sanity, I didn’t ask. I just phoned my daughter up – now going by the non-de-plume of Sister Harmonica– and told her she was being silly which is really all a father can be expected to do, particularly when I am not even her proper father. So she is in this rural nunnery, doing whatever nuns do – tending lepers, milking goats, scolding whores – and hopefully working her way up the nun ladder. If she isn’t Mother Superior by the time she’s 35 I will want to know why. It’s a shame I didn’t go to school with anyone in the relevant department else I could have word in a  wimpled ear.

Of course, her mother bemoans the lack of grandchildren – which is a blessing as far as I am concerned, wretched things. I found it hard enough to cope with youngsters when I was a younger man and could afford nannies. Nowadays, dealing with my own tantrums and ineffective bladder is quite enough to cope with, thank you very much.

Besides, she was always a… hefty lass, and not much of a catch for the sort of young man we would have wanted in the family. 

My ‘daughter’ and I don’t have much contact. We exchange birthday & Christmas cards, and she sends me Father’s day card which I find rather surprising, mainly because I have usually forgotten about her by the time June comes around. She managed to get a day-release from the convent a couple of years back and we had lunch in town. She looked surprisingly good; she’d lost weight, and the wimple his her hair which was always a bit lank. We had a splendid meal, drank a lot of champagne, she cried, we laughed, drank more champagne, she threw up, then I put her on the train back to Norfolk, despite her clinging to me and saying she didn’t want to go.

I still write to her when I need help with any arcane religious details. If she doesn’t know then she must have a marvellous library to consult, I should think, and it’ll fill up her day, reading up on exorcisms or what not, take her mind off things.

 Hmm, writing all that rather took it out of me. I’ll leave my thoughts on the boys until another day.