Keggie Carew - Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory

CONTENTS

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Epub ISBN: 9781473524606
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Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage,
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Chatto & Windus is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright Keggie Carew 2016
Maps copyright Laurence Carew 2016

Keggie Carew has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Chatto & Windus in 2016

Excerpts from Four Quartets T. S. Eliot, 1943. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, 1992. Reprinted by permission of Michael Ondaatje.
Tales from the Special Forces Club Sean Rayment, 2013.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
I will never forget, Claire Sessarego, 2009 Alison Smith-Squire, for Daily Mail
This is Just to Say from Collected Poems Volume 1 William Carlos Williams, 2000. Reprinted by permission of Carcarnet Press Ltd.

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author and her father. In some limited cases the names of people and the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others.

For Patrick, Nicky and Tim, who each have their own versions; this is only mine.

Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for.

Tom Carew was a maverick, a left-handed stutterer, a law unto himself. As a member of an elite SOE unit he was parachuted behind enemy lines to raise guerrilla resistance in France, then Burma, in the Second World War. But his wartime exploits are only the start of it

Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. As Keggie pieces Tom and herself back together again, she celebrates the technicolour life of an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable man.

Keggie Carew has lived in London, West Cork, Barcelona, Texas and New Zealand. Before writing, her career was in contemporary art. She lives near Salisbury.

Tom Carew was born in Dublin in 1919. He served in the Jedburgh unit of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. The Times of India called him Lawrence of Burma and the Mad Irishman. He married three times, and had four children. He died in 2009.

Birds prefer trees with dead branches, said Caravaggio. They have complete vistas from where they perch. They can take off in any direction.

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

It is 1964. I am seven, and barely eye level with the counter of the hardware shop in Fareham High Street. Dad is buying paint. We have been in the shop a while and Im getting bored. He is joking with the shop assistant. He hasnt enough cash to pay for everything so he gets his chequebook out. I smile inwardly, because I have just thought up a trick. On tiptoe I look over the counter as Dad signs the cheque, my eyes following his pen as it glides across the bottom right-hand corner. I squint a little, manage to hold my excitement in, then say, But Daddy, thats not your name.

Dad looks down at me. The shop assistant looks down at me, then straight at Dad. I look up at them. Oh, delicious freeze-frame moment for I have got the world to stop. I stretch it out with my round childs eyes. Power. A tiny taste of it. I have trounced him at his own game, the bluff, the double bluff, which is it? Dad laughs uncomfortably. They are the minutest flickering seconds when he doesnt know what to do, but they are enough. The shop assistant looks back and forth.

You rotter! Dad says in his foghorn voice. You sod!

This is obviously quite new for the shop assistant. Who, even as he takes the cheque and rings the till, is not a hundred per cent sure. We leave the shop. I am prancing with victory because behind the bluster I know Dad is tickled pink. Because I had him on the hop which is normally his mischief. I was not to know it then, but I had taken my first unwitting step into his world. A place where you never quite knew where you were. Where even this ruse of mine about his name turned out to be, in a way, right on the money.

My dad is cutting a hole in a two-litre plastic milk bottle. The hole is opposite the handle so he can pee into it and hold it at the same time. Its his favourite invention. For now. Hes making one for me and wont be persuaded otherwise. He has them all over the house in case he gets caught short. Still very practical, then. Going through his pockets for a penknife I find a note. It says, My name is Tom Carew, but I have forgotten yours. He has been giving this note to everyone.

Im showing Dad a picture of Mum. I often do this when he comes to stay. The photograph of Mum sits on the windowsill in a silver frame next to a photograph of him. A posthumous needle at my stepmother.

What relationship with that woman? Dad asks.

Your wife, I tell him. My mother. Jane.

Really?

Yes.

Incredible!

Yes.

I can see it now. His voice is a little wistful.

Good.

Incredible His voice trails off; he is holding the photograph, Is that my wife?

Yes. She was, I tell him. Your first wife. Actually she was his second but we wont go back that far. Nor do we mention the third.