Frank, the most unpretentious fellow you could meet. Polite (he doffed his trilby hat when he met anyone), loyal, pious, conscientious, honest and moral. Everyone who met him was drawn to his kind, open nature and I never heard him raise his voice or lose his temper with anyone. If things became difficult at home, he would accept Elsie’s handling of the situation indisputably and carry out the action she ordained. How could you not love this easy-going chap, this family provider and haven of perpetual equanimity? Certainly, Elsie leaned heavily on his pleasant and sincere soul, and she never had to work again outside the precincts of her comfortable home, from the day they exchanged vows.

Of course, a docile gentleman such as Frank was easy fodder for one such as Elsie, the woman who crossed his path at the local church and who their families zipped together for better or for worse. He was like putty in her hands from the moment he brought her morning tea in bed, until the moment he returned from work in the evening, to make his own dinner and a nightcap for Elsie.

In the fullness of time it became apparent that Elsie was sterile and Frank was more than compliant to the idea of adopting children, to give her a sense of motherhood and make her happy. First came John and three years later when Elsie was 40, I was adopted. Frank was presumably oblivious to the fact that she despised and females, of whatever calibre – how could he know, if she never told him? When she met, and became flirty with the church deacon, at the big Baptist church, Frank was happy to buy a bigger house to accommodate the new tenant, if it made her happy. He was content to help satiate her empty days with the new lodger who was retired and talkative. He could spend all day with her and go on holiday with her too, while Frank stayed at home and went to work.

The problem with being nice is that it inevitably affects other people, like me for example. So, when Frank came home from work and was told to come into the room, where I had been kept all day in penal confinement, to cane me six times, he had no option but to do it. Naturally, he was filled with remorse, but «Mother told me to». Providing funds for John to have a new bike each year, a car at age 18, and upon his engagement at age 21, a bungalow in Tiverton. Frank took it all in his stride, but had no compunction in Elsie giving me school just an annual uniform as a present at Christmas. I was never allowed a bike, and although Frank was filled with empathy for my daily walk to school, of over 4 miles each way, but there was simply nothing he could do. When I was faced with a difficult O-level exam the next day, with ten centuries in Economic History to study, Frank took the stairs two-by-two when he came home at 8pm because I hadn’t done Elsie’s ironing that evening, and she was going mental. He simply didn’t dare go downstairs and tell her that I was swatting and that was more important on this particular day. So, I went to my exams next morning with no breakfast, as a punishment. Frank was awfully sorry about that too, but there was nothing he could do. The final straw came, when the Headmaster of my grammar school pleaded with Frank to let me take A-levels and go to university. However, there was simply no way he could defy Elsie who had made it plain that I had to go straight out to work and repay the costs I had generated during my adoptive life with her. So, I left school, unqualified for anything at all in life, no training or apprenticeship, to start work in the filing department of a local insurance company. And still Frank looked on and remained silent while she seized more than half of my small, weekly pay-packet.

(It’s a sore, ironic truth, that brother John, for all his numerous privileges and opportunities was expelled from his private school at age 16, because he hadn’t even mastered the single goal of reading and writing.)

My lifelong innermost debate has dominated me: How could a man of such basic uprightness convert into such a deluded slave to a woman with less brains and integrity than a Womble. How could his prolific sense of justice and decency allow the pure malicious undermining of basic parenting responsibilities by his own wife?

It has taken me six decades of introspection and self-analysis to try and comprehend his readiness to sacrifice me on the alter of his dysfunctional marriage and «it is still work in progress». More to the point, while others mourn their dearly beloved fathers, for all his congeniality I have to ask myself, was this man a saint or a sinner?

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