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wasteland of rednecks and fools, living in squalor and poverty. Luckily, parts of the towpath were so secluded you could almost believe you were in the country, but only a few miles from the fizz and crackle of the city.
    In the early evening, before going to the pub, his father would practise his instruments, his bass guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, his mandolin, even his old banjo. He said he felt they were looking at him reproachfully, yearning to be played. He devoted time to them all.
    As Dad played cross-legged on the floor, humming to himself and swigging beer, a roll-up fixed between his stained fingers, the hard pads of flesh on his right hand, where he held down the notes, flying across the frets, Gabriel had worked too. He drew his father’s face and hands; he drew the guitars and the faces of his school friends; he experimented with crayons, with pen and ink, and paints: he and his father together, both lost in something.
    It was dark when they arrived now at Dad’s new place. Gabriel had the impression that his father wanted to get there as late as possible. It was a vast collapsing house sliced into dozens of small rooms.
    â€˜Magnificent old building, full of original features,’ said Dad. ‘Worth millions. My room is the penthouse, at the top.’
    Gabriel took a camera from his rucksack. ‘You stand over there, Dad, by that rotting pillar.’
    â€˜Later. Put it away.’
    â€˜Dad –’
    â€˜Put it away, I said. You might notice … there are some strange characters here. You’d learn a lot if you talked to them. It’s a bit like the sixties.’
    â€˜Cool.’
    â€˜Right.’
    His father spoke of the sixties with reverence, in the way othersspoke of ‘the war’: as a time of great deeds and unrepeatable excitement. Somehow, all the windows everywhere were open, and, in a ‘universal moment’, God’s favourite album, Sgt. Pepper , was being played for the first time. Many of Dad’s sentences would begin: ‘One day in the sixties …’ as in ‘One day in the sixties when I was playing Scrabble with Keith Richards – he was a particularly tenacious opponent and fond of the word “risible” …’
    Gabriel thought he might make a film about his father entitled One day in the Sixties . Gabriel suspected that his father had actually been quite young in the ‘sixties’, and that he’d seen less of it than he liked to make out. But fathers didn’t like to be doubted; fathers lacked humour when it came to themselves.
    In the hallway Dad said, ‘Now, deep breath, heads down. There isn’t a lift, I’m pleased to say. This is an opportunity for much-needed exercise.’
    Gabriel kept his head down but couldn’t help noticing that the colourless stair carpet was ripped and stained. When he looked up he saw that on each landing there were toilets and waterlogged showers. Outside the rooms, bearded men in robes, turbans, fezzes and tarbooshes seemed to talk backwards in undiscovered languages.
    Dad followed Gabriel awkwardly, stopping to rest at each bend. He had a limp, or ‘war wound’, which sometimes he told strangers he had acquired in the ‘revolutionary struggle of making the world a better place, with free food and marijuana all round’. In fact his ‘wound’ was of an altogether more ignoble, though – to some – more amusing, origin.
    When at last they got to the top, and Dad had to stop and lean against a damp peeling wall for a breather, which left a white mark on his coat, Gabriel took his father’s key and inserted it into the lock. But the lock was stuck and the door already open. Gabriel reached out and snapped on the overhead light.
    â€˜A cosy little place.’ Dad’s breath seemed to scrape in his throat. ‘It could be pretty fine, eh? What d’you think?’
    Gabriel looked about.
    Dad was