Futh’s mother abandons him

Futh’s mother abandons him by leaving the family for New York, a departure that becomes a defining measure of absence in his life. The memory is not presented as a clean break: it begins with the scent of violets and footsteps descending the stairs, then opens into an empty place at breakfast, an unreachable mother, and a father whose drinking and violence make home less safe. Recalled during Futh’s adult journey across the North Sea, the episode also gives later departures, missed routes, and failed attempts to reach a destination an emotional resonance without making them direct consequences of her choice.

The Departure and Its Immediate Aftermath

The night before she left, Futh woke to find his mother’s round face above him, lit by moonlight through a gap in the curtains. When she left his room, he was alone in the dark with the smell of violets and the sound of her footsteps going downstairs. By breakfast she was gone. The remembered departure is thus registered first through small, intimate sensations: a face in the night, a familiar scent, and footsteps moving away.

The explanation she gave was brief: “I’m going home,” meaning New York, three thousand miles away. Only after she had gone did Futh realize that she had left no address. He searched the kitchen pin board and found only the beginning of a shopping list, written in a nearly flat hand and too indistinct to read. The practical traces of an ordinary household errand were all that remained to him; there was no information that could turn absence into a route back to her.

Futh searched the library for pictures of New York. He found skyscrapers with light rising and setting in their mirrored windows, and the river reflecting the city at night. The images gave him a distant place to imagine, but not a way to contact his mother. The gap between those luminous pictures and the indecipherable shopping list makes the distance concrete: New York is visible to him only as an image, while the person who has gone there cannot be reached.

A Changed Home

His father was already drunk by the morning after the departure. Before she left, he had never hit Futh; afterwards, he struck him without warning, or without any warning Futh could notice in time. The memory compares the suddenness to birds hitting windows: first the sickening impact, then the sight of a still body outside, perhaps dazed but possibly hurt or broken. The simile gives the violence the same abrupt, difficult-to-interpret quality as the loss itself. Futh cannot make the blow predictable by understanding what preceded it.

He tried to stay out of his father’s way. Sometimes he sat on top of his climbing frame until the darkness below made the lawn seem like an ink-black lake or an emptiness into which he might fall. He felt safe outside, yet the bright square of the kitchen window remained visible. From there he watched his father move around the kitchen, taking food from the refrigerator, sniffing it, opening cupboards and lighting the hob. Futh learned to judge when to go in for supper: if he waited too long, the food would go cold; at other times, he waited until his father had gone out before entering and putting himself to bed. The child’s safety depended on watching and timing, not on the assurance of an adult who would protect him.

Memory on the Ferry

The novel recalls the departure while adult Futh is crossing the North Sea. In his bunk, he tries not to think about Angela, who may be going through his belongings and sorting what to keep or throw away. The ferry’s rolling movement, the cold stale air from the ceiling vent, and the sense that home is receding accompany the return of the older wound. His heart feels raw, as it did when his mother left. The scene places his marital separation beside the childhood abandonment without equating them: the immediate circumstances differ, but the present uncertainty brings back the bodily force of the earlier loss.

The crossing also carries Futh toward his first experience of driving on the continent. He moves his watch forward an hour and anticipates going down to the car deck, being waved forward, and driving into another country. That forward movement contrasts with the remembered absence of any address for his mother: he can cross borders and follow roads, but the journey does not restore access to her. His week of walking and hopes of returning refreshed sit uneasily beside the memory of a home from which she vanished.

Later Journeys and the Echo of Disorientation

Futh’s family history gives the departure a further echo. On his father’s side there is German ancestry; his father did not visit Germany until he and Futh went together when Futh was twelve. Futh’s grandfather had left home young, settled in England, and never saw his parents or brother again. Futh dislikes the thought of someone leaving so abruptly and never seeing family again. That inherited history does not make the two departures identical, but it places his mother’s flight within a wider pattern of people who leave home and remain beyond reach.

As an adult, Futh repeatedly finds himself moving without secure command of his route. After stopping for food, he realizes that he has missed a motorway turning and cannot turn around between junctions; he presses on in the wrong direction, accelerating. Later, while walking, he discovers that he is lost in a field. His compass is broken, the sun offers no help, and he can only wonder where along the path he made a mistake before deciding to continue until he finds someone who can direct him. These episodes are not presented as results of his mother’s departure, but their repeated failures of orientation rhyme with the child’s inability to find a way back to her.

That rhyme continues when Futh considers changing his walking itinerary to visit Carl in Utrecht. He imagines taking a bus back to Hellhaus, collecting his car, and reaching Carl’s mother’s house, but the bus he waits for does not arrive. He eventually catches the evening service and returns to Hellhaus, only to find his car’s tyre flat and the spare replaced by the old flat tyre he had removed earlier. He gives up the Utrecht plan and returns to the hotel. Against the childhood memory of a mother who left no address, these adult obstacles make movement feel possible but unreliable: a route can be planned, yet the connection may still fail.

Narrative Significance

The episode’s force comes from the contrast between the ordinary details surrounding departure and the lasting consequences they conceal. A shopping list, a bedroom, a kitchen window, and a supper that might go cold belong to everyday life; after Futh’s mother leaves, each is part of a changed world in which contact is impossible and safety requires vigilance. The sensory memory of violets and footsteps is especially enduring because it precedes the explanations and consequences: Futh remembers the intimate presence of his mother at night alongside the sound of her going away.

By placing this recollection within a ferry crossing, the narrative lets physical travel reopen an earlier separation. Futh can move toward the continent and imagine journeys to other places, but movement does not guarantee arrival or reunion. His mother’s departure therefore functions both as a specific childhood event and as an emotional pattern against which later distance, uncertainty, and failed navigation become newly legible.