Futh and his father

Futh and his father are bound by a relationship that shifts from an earlier absence of physical violence to unpredictable blows, sustained ridicule, and a Christmas assault witnessed by Gloria. The change follows Futh’s mother leaving: his father is already drunk by breakfast, and Futh’s sense of safety becomes a matter of watching, waiting, and trying not to get in his way. Their few acts of shared activity, including a trip to Germany, do not undo that vigilance; in adulthood, the father continues to belittle Futh’s abilities and work.

Childhood and the rupture

Before Futh’s mother left, his father had never hit him. Afterward, when he did, the blows came without warning—or without any warning Futh could recognize in time. The narration compares the shock to a bird striking a window: first the sudden, sickening impact, then the need to look at what has fallen and wonder how badly it is hurt. The comparison gives the violence a child’s helpless immediacy. Futh does not describe a predictable rule he can learn to avoid; he faces an event that arrives abruptly and leaves him to assess the damage.

The morning after his mother’s departure establishes the changed household. She is gone by breakfast, and Futh’s father is already drunk. Futh responds by trying not to get under his father’s feet. Sometimes he sits on top of his climbing frame until night hides the ground below him, while the bright square of the kitchen window remains visible. The garden offers a place to stay outside, but not a way to stop watching the house.

That window becomes part of Futh’s practical system for judging when to enter. He watches his father move around the kitchen, sniff food taken from the fridge, search cupboards, open a tin, and light the hob. From these movements, Futh decides when supper is ready. If he waits too long, the food goes cold; if his father is alone at the bare table, Futh may wait for him to leave before going inside and putting himself to bed. The child’s attention is directed less toward conversation than toward signs: whether the food is ready, whether his father is present, and whether it is safe to cross the threshold.

A trip that contains both care and secrecy

Futh and his father make a daytime ferry crossing to Europe and travel on to a hotel in Germany. His father takes him to the cinema, buys him popcorn, sweets in a mug from the duty-free shop, and more packets of peanuts than Futh can comfortably eat. Futh feels sick in the car from the ferry to the hotel. These concrete gestures complicate a relationship otherwise marked by drinking and fear: the trip includes treats and shared time, but it does not establish the kind of security that would allow Futh to speak freely.

At bedtime, Futh asks for a night light. His father leaves the bathroom light on with the door ajar, then tells him to go to sleep. Futh stays awake, turned toward the narrow crack of light, and watches his father change his shirt, comb his hair, and brush his teeth in the mirror. When his father leaves the room, Futh closes his eyes and tries to breathe as if asleep. On later nights, he sees the bedroom door open in the early hours and his father return with a different woman. In the morning, his father is in the other bed, dozing with his mouth open and the odour of alcohol on his breath. He asks the time and says that Futh slept well; Futh does not tell him what he saw. The journey therefore brings them into close physical proximity, but the child’s knowledge remains private and unspoken.

Adult ridicule and the apple memory

The father’s contempt continues after Futh grows up. He makes fun of Futh for being unable to hold his drink, although the two are alike in that respect. He ridicules Futh for not learning to drive until his thirties and for still hitchhiking in his forties. Passing his driving test does not end the criticism: his father reproaches him for not knowing about cars, running out of petrol, and paying other men to change a headlight bulb. Each new accomplishment becomes another opening for mockery rather than a point of recognition.

He also derides Futh’s work making paper smell like apples, asking what the point is when real apples can be bought and eaten. Futh tries to explain that millions of tiny perfume bottles will still hold their scent twenty years later, but his father insists on the practical value of actual apples. The exchange sets the father’s blunt material measure against Futh’s work with scent and preservation.

That disagreement touches an intimate memory. Futh’s first memory is of playing under the kitchen table while his mother prepared stewed apples: she peeled and cored them, chopped them into a pan, hummed with the radio, and filled the kitchen with the smell of fresh apple. After marrying Angela, Futh asks her to make apple crumble. When he finds her cooking apples the next day, he tells her how their smell returns him to his mother; Angela’s jaw tightens, and although the crumble turns out well, she never makes it again. The father’s ridicule of the apple scent thus sits beside a memory of maternal warmth and a later moment when sharing that memory fails to create closeness. The contrast helps show how little room the family gives Futh’s way of attaching meaning to ordinary things.

Christmas violence and the relationship’s pattern

At Christmas, Futh is at the table with his father and Gloria. After Gloria remarks that some women do not appreciate what they have, Futh, tending the still-raging fire, quietly reflects that some people do not know what belongs to them. His father approaches from behind without Futh hearing him, pulls him up by the collar, turns him around, and hits him. The poker drops at Futh’s feet, its red-hot tip singeing the carpet. Futh picks it up, returns it to its place, follows his father back to the table, and sits down.

The response is strikingly contained: after being struck, Futh restores the poker and resumes his seat. The others pull Christmas crackers, put on paper hats, and listen to the Christmas service on the radio. Later, a rug is moved in front of the hearth to cover the scorch mark. Gloria turns up its corner, examines the blackened carpet, and pokes at it with her bare toe, remarking that no one would know. The covered mark offers a material echo of the violence: the room is put back in order, but the burn remains underneath. Across the relationship, Futh’s learned watchfulness, his silence about what he sees, and his return to the table after being hit all register the same estrangement—one managed through accommodation rather than repair.