Tim Dowling: a tribute to my father-in-law, droll master of mischief

The Guardian

26-07-2025

When my wife and I got engaged 33 years ago, she immediately rang her mother. 'We're getting married, Jesus Christ,' she said down the phone. Then she laughed for a bit, then she hung up.
'She says you have to go and see my father to request my hand in marriage,' my future wife said.
'What?' I said. 'Are you kidding?'
'Apparently not,' she said. Her parents had been divorced since she was nine, but they were on good terms.
'Fine,' I said, even though I'd already basically changed my mind about the whole business. I had to put off calling my own mother, in case my future father-in-law said no.
We drove up the road to my girlfriend's father's house, where he lived with his second wife. They had only just got married themselves, or maybe they hadn't yet. It was that same summer, in any case.
We drank tea in the garden and made small talk for long enough that I began to hope the time for requesting hands had safely passed. Then my wife turned to her father and said, 'Why don't you show him your extension?'
My wife's father and I went upstairs to examine his half-finished loft conversion. If I recall correctly, the last leg of the journey was by ladder. He showed me where his spare bedroom and office and second bathroom would eventually go. And then a terrible silence fell, into which I cleared my throat awkwardly. I imagined there was a form of words for this sort of thing, but I didn't know what it was.
'So, I guess the reason I've come here today,' I said, 'is really to ask your permission to marry your daughter.' A considerable pause followed.
'I see,' he said finally, raising an eyebrow. 'And how do you plan to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed?' I didn't expect questions.
'Well,' I said. 'I sort of figured she might eventually get used to worse.'
He gave me a long and grave look, so grave that I cast my own eyes downward. That's when I noticed there was no floor; we were standing on joists, and I was looking down into the room below us. I thought: it would be the work of a moment for him to push me through.
My father-in-law died a few weeks ago, at the age of 95. My wife was with him in hospital, and when she rang to tell me the news, I did not immediately think of this 33-year-old episode – the episode of the requesting of the hand. But it came to mind soon after I put the phone down.
At the time I did not know my future father-in-law very well. I did not think of him as a man who was fond of mischief, or even capable of it. I had every reason to believe he was serious when he asked me that question, and that he strongly disapproved of my answer. It did not occur to me that he might just be messing with me, that he might have been tipped off about my intentions by his ex-wife. Or that he might have already put a celebratory bottle of champagne in the refrigerator in preparation. But he had.
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Also, I realise only now, my wife must have been in on it.
'Did I know?' she says when I ask her. 'I don't think so. Wait, yes, I did.'
My father-in-law could also be a man of surprising and unprompted generosity, once volunteering to have our dog for the whole of Christmas and New Year, while we went away. When my wife rang him on Christmas Day – with justifiable apprehension – to see how things were working out, he insisted the dog had been no trouble.
'Has he taken the right dog?' I said.
Only later did we find out that just before lunch she'd pulled the Christmas ham off the table and run out the door with it. He had the right dog after all.
The day after my father-in-law died I found myself back in his attic extension, with my wife and his wife and my three sons, going through old papers and photographs and stuff, the accumulation of a long life. I had been up in this room so few times over three decades that it was astonishing to see 30 years of wear on the walls and window frames.
I reflected on how a true sense of mischief requires one to cultivate a certain reputation for sternness, so as not to give the game away. Of course people who know you will eventually catch on. You can't fool them for ever.
I looked down at my feet, and I thought: somewhere under there, under the carpet, under the floorboards, are the very joists we stood on.