Remains To Be Seen

Content note: contains medical unpleasantness.

My father's toe died before he did. Unfortunately, it remained attached to him.

Most people would regard this as a development requiring medical attention. My father regarded it as something that could apparently be left to develop.

Then it began to rot.

The house already had a smell. TCP, boiled vegetables and dog, with the occasional nod to Mr Sheen if you attended on a Thursday.

But then the toe arrived.

On opening the front door, we were met immediately by a wall of smelly toe. It wasn't something you gradually became aware of once inside. The bouquet was already waiting at the door. It was a smell that could herald the coming of Lucifer.

As we proceeded, the other notes mingled. And frankly, that's what we tried to focus on.

My parents, meanwhile, appeared to have extended their existing deafness to other senses. They had become completely nose-deaf. This was difficult to understand because Dad didn't wear socks. He also habitually sat with his feet up on the coffee table and, for additional comfort, placed a cushion beneath them. The increasingly gangrenous toe therefore wasn't being contained by footwear, tucked discreetly under a blanket or otherwise encouraged to keep itself to itself. It was barefoot, elevated and comfortably cushioned in the middle of the sitting room.

Dad was offended by our reaction to the toe. He seemed to regard the dry-heaving as unnecessarily theatrical. The fact that part of his body was decomposing in the sitting room was apparently less objectionable than his family making a fuss about the smell.

We did point out that perhaps a toe which had died, changed colour, started rotting and developed sufficient olfactory reach to greet visitors at the front door might usefully be shown to a doctor. Dad disagreed. Time passed. The toe became more rotten and considerably smellier. Still no doctor.

I don't know what the eventual tipping point was. Perhaps it became inconvenient. Perhaps even Dad finally accepted that the relationship between himself and the toe had run its course. Perhaps he simply looked down one morning and thought, Well, that's fucked.

What I do know is that he dealt with it. With bolt croppers.

My father cut off his own necrotic toe with a pair of bolt croppers.

There are sentences you expect to write about a parent. My father taught me to drive a tractor. My father used to make an excellent curry. My father introduced me to the art of making corn dollies. My father cut off his own necrotic toe with a pair of bolt croppers is not generally among them.

I don't remember what happened to the toe afterwards. This is perhaps surprising, given that you might expect the disposal of a self-amputated body part to form a fairly durable family memory, but apparently we had reached the point at which the disappearance of the toe represented an improvement and nobody was inclined to ask too many questions.

I live in the house now. I have renovated it back to brick, but the house has never entirely stopped smelling of my parents. Every now and then, usually when it has been shut up, I catch it. Not the full arrangement, but enough of something familiar to make the association.

Until yesterday I had never considered whether Smelly Toe might also have left a note of its own.

Because I have just remembered the plumbing.

The property has a septic tank. It has been the focus of conveyancing for several months now. Only this week I was asked to provide a plan of the drainage system. At no point during this artistic procedure did I once consider there had been a severed toe requiring disposal.

I don't know what Dad did with it. But if he flushed it down the toilet, which seems entirely plausible for a man whose preferred surgical instrument was a pair of bolt croppers, then the toe went into the septic tank. Possibly it is still there.

My father's toe may have spent all these years quietly decomposing beneath the garden while solicitors go back and forth debating whether the septic tank complies with current regulations.

This has improved the conveyancing enormously.

For months I have regarded the septic tank as nothing more than another administrative burden. Now it has become a potential family mausoleum.

Somewhere in the correspondence is a perfectly respectable plan, prepared by me, showing the approximate position of the drains and the tank. What it does not say is: possible human remains.

I can only imagine the addition to the standard TA6 Property Information Form:

Item 4.2: To the best of your knowledge, does the septic tank contain any unexploded ordnance, trade effluent, or paternal digits?

I suspect that long after the house has sold, our unsuspecting buyers will return from a trip away and catch the faintest whiff of something they can't identify.

Or they'll be forced to dredge the septic tank and find the remains of the toe.

***

Author's note: I feel obliged to point out that, improbable as it sounds, the events described above actually happened.