A Tribute to Mick Arnold
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day
How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp
Abode his hour or two, and went his way
And so we all come to it at the last. My dad, Mick Arnold, who roundly expected, and told anyone who would listen, that he would die at 45, has delivered his last punch line to us all, and especially himself, by living out a full and complete life. I am sure he looks down on us surprised and somewhat alarmed by this service; his own often-stated view was that “A dead’s a dead” and he would have been disappointed by the lack of a Dixieland jazz band to follow the coffin – but he also would have asked that, if we insisted on a tribute, we should remember Mark Twain’s advice: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have – let us economise it…”
You here who knew him, or read his autobiography, know that he lived a series of different lives. He grew up in pre-war Poland, went to school in Egypt while living in Baghdad, arrived in England, speaking little English, to go to boarding school and then several years later, after a spell in the army, achieved a scholarship in English to Cambridge. This began his love affair with words, languages, derivations and dictionaries, which was to last his whole life.
A modest man who spoke little of his accomplishments, he was a sportsman who raced cars, was invited to county rugby trials and swam and dived for England. I remember finding his swimming medals in mum’s button box and asking him what they were. “Oh, some old things from school”, he replied.
At Cambridge he also acquired his first dangerously high performance, extremely modified car, his beloved Hellcat, and met my dangerously high performance mother, starting a romance that was to continue unabated from 1954.
His career at Shell took the family to many obscure corners of the world, where he would learn the language and somehow meld into the culture until within months everyone would swear he was a native, or at least had always lived there. He ended up speaking eight languages, which was sometimes confusing. Who can forget him sitting in a French restaurant in England, ordering in a ringing and confident tone “un apple-pie”?
After working with Japanese, Arab and US companies, he was introduced to the world of American politics, becoming an unofficial advisor to two US presidents and several senior members of Congress, based on his record of accurate predictions of major political events compared to their own confounded and inarticulate experts. Rumor has it that his simple monthly newsletter was used to confound them further.
Finally he returned to England and spent his last twenty years as a quiet member of the Petersfield community, with no-one suspecting the variety and exoticism of his background until his autobiography was reviewed in the local paper. Prepared as a memoir for the family, he was astonished that anyone else should be interested in his account of his experiences.
His ability to assimilate and his wide variety of experience creates a kaleidoscope of images in our memories. Bearded, dressed in khakis with crossed bandoliers and a shotgun over his knees in the African desert. Peering over his reading glasses with his finger on an especially pleasing definition in a large, leather-bound dictionary. With relaxed hands on the steering wheel as he drove his ‘E’ type Jaguar or Porsche RSR Carrera at 130 miles per hour. Effortlessly dominating parents’ trivia quiz night at his grandchildrens’ school. Squatting on his heels among a group of Bedouin in a black tent in the Persian Gulf. Insisting that we try the smoked salmon displayed in the galley of a private jet. Sputtering with rage at the referee’s decisions in the latest rugby match. Making everyone laugh with his speech as Best Man at my wedding. Inhaling deeply over a glass of old Burgundy. Talking nonchalantly about the “nuisance” of the cats, who he secretly adored. Singing sad Spanish ballads of Chilean cart drivers while playing complicated rhythms on his guitar.
My wife Kim’s first experience of him was at a family dinner at which he had taken it as a challenge to make my mum laugh so hard she would have to get down from the table. He had a special talent for supporting his children’s friends, listening carefully and helping them with their hardest choices. I can think of at least six or seven who would regard him as their father as much as their birth fathers. This was because he was always able to relate to the situation and feelings of the young. I especially remember him and mum in my rooms at university about to leave, following a serious conversation about how I would survive my latest jilting by the current love of my life. As they walked out he stopped, came back into the room, and tucked some large denomination banknotes under a book on my mantelpiece. “Actually, I should stay drunk for a week if I were you” he said.
He was charming, funny, absurdly generous, learned, a great raconteur, salesman and a romantic to the core. I never saw him commit a mean or vicious act, no matter how provoked. Deprived of love and praise during his own childhood, he did his best to make his marriage and his family secure and loving. He was responsible and uncomplaining, even when his jobs were unpleasant or his increasingly frail condition made small things painful and hard to accomplish. His final promise to mum was that he would make it to their golden wedding, and complete the second volume of his autobiography for her birthday, and he delivered. And then he died.
All who saw him recently would agree that he died in the way he would have wanted, with a minimum of fuss, quietly, swiftly and alone with my mother, after a day of sparkling conversation with local author friends. The next few months offered disabling and undignified physical complications that would have separated him from mum and given him more pain and distress. We are thankful he was spared these indignities, and trust he is now in a place free of pain, secure in love and wide in horizon. Dad, thank you for all you did to bring joy, love and laughter to so many people and thank you for being you.
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
The sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.