Free The Fowler Family Business by Jonathan Meades Page B

prehistory, a secret known only by deepest South Londoners. Ben willed them to be real. He wanted the jaws to snap, the teeth to rend, the leathery reptile skin to ripple in predatory anticipation.
    ‘It’s here where we watched it from,’ continued Mr Fowler. ‘All the roads up the hill was blocked. Ghouls! If there hadn’t been so many of them they might have saved it but the fire engines couldn’t get through. So we got in old Ridley’s car, it was a Singer he had, and went all the way round, down Sylvan Hill and Hamlet Road and that … Like the
Titanic
it was, like the
Titanic.
Right down here – how far away was we? – half a mile at least, we could hear the metal groaning, terrible sound it made.’
    ‘It was like the monsters coming to life wasn’t it Grandpa?’
    ‘That’s just what it was like.’
    ‘And tell us about the fire lighting up the monsters’ teeth Grandpa.’
    ‘They shone in the light they did. All the colours of the rainbow. And they looked like they was ready to pounce. And the flames they played on the monsters’ skin so they looked like they was moving.’
    Ben squirmed with fairy-tale delight. Mr Fowler jumped, rather daintily, towards him, hands clawing playfully. The little boy ran from his grandfather who hobbled after him: ‘The monsters need feeding, the monsters are hungry, fee fi fo fum.’ Ben hid behind his mother.
    ‘Where is he? Where’s that tasty little morsel?’ Ben squeaked and shuddered as Mr Fowler picked him up and pretended to bite like an ogre, growling, grimacing, crossing his eyes.
    ‘Grandpa’s king of the monsters,’ Ben told Henry. ‘We all used to be like the monsters didn’t we.’
    ‘You must ask Uncle Curly about that,’ replied Mr Fowler. ‘He’s a varsity man. So far as I’m concerned I’m not descended from any reptile – but I expect Curly’ll tell us different.’
    ‘Whahat?’ laughed Curly.
    ‘How many letters is it you got after your name?’ asked Mrs Fowler.
    ‘I’m a civil engineer, I don’t know anything about evolution.’
    ‘Weren’t we like the monsters then?’ Ben asked.
    ‘Maybe,’ shrugged Curly, ‘but so long ago that no one can remember.’
    ‘Want to get down,’ Lennie demanded.
    ‘There.’ Curly stooped. ‘The thing is, Ben, you’re like your dad, and your dad’s like his dad, your grandpa, and your grandpa is like his dad, your great-grandpa. You’re your dad’s descendant – that’s what it’s called.’
    ‘But Daddy’s tall and Grandpa’s short.’
    Mr Fowler stood beside Henry: the six-inch disparity in their height was obvious.
    ‘Yes,’ said Curly, ‘but that’s because of Grandma.’
    ‘She’s short too – aren’t you Grandma.’
    ‘Oh you’re too clever for me Benjy,’ Mrs Fowler admonished him. Clever was not a word of approbation in her lexicon. He was right. She was short.
    ‘I’m not
Benjy.
’ He stomped along the path beside the pond, clasped the low railing and gazed in defiant wonder at the gleaming khaki paint on the crazed surface of the iguanodon’s tail.
    Naomi shook her head. ‘He’s got a real thing about being Ben. It’s a macho thing – he thinks Benjy is wet. And Benny.’
    ‘I remember Henry’s six-guns,’ smiled Mrs Flowler. ‘Every day he came home from school he’d put on his holster.’
    When they walked on round the pond Curly, straggling back, observed how Henry towered above his parents and gently laughed to himself when the phrase
genetic caprice
came to him.

Chapter Six
    Henry Fowler prided himself on his sense of continuity, on his appreciation of the generations’ cycles. He anticipated the first day of Ben’s apprenticeship with prospective longing and with nostalgia for the lad he had been and for the trade itself in those days when every lichened headstone was sun-dappled and stroked by summer breezes. No sooner, he often reflected to Curly, have we ceased to be someone’s child than we become someone’s parent. We take our