by Tim Lott
It suddenly dawns on me that Poppy’s screams are fainter. I’m stuck in a system of pipes separate from the snakepit she is lodged in, and it’s leading me away from her. I change tack, go down instead of up. I can see a small bridge, covered with rope netting, that I will have to crawl through to get to Poppy’s part of the apparatus.
The bridge is filled with small boys. I take a deep breath and try to get through, increasingly panicky. The boys are outraged.
Fuck off, fatty.
What the fuck are you doing, you old cunt?
These children, I swear, are the same age as Poppy. At this moment I decide that all the bad things Lizzy Grist has ever said about the male sex are true; that testosterone is cultural hemlock. The last boy to speak eyes me intently with a focused malice. I decide he needs to be put in his place by the deployment of a grown-up’s superior sense of irony.
You fuck off, you little prick.
The kid looks momentarily taken aback.
I’m telling my dad.
I’m scared.
Yeh, you will be.
I push him away roughly and jostle through to the other side of the bridge. Now I can make out Poppy in a distant section of the pipe, her little arm dangling through the netting. I can see her face wet with tears; I can see her eyes full of panic.
Darling, I’m coming.
She looks around, but cannot see me. She screams, more loudly than ever, Daddy!
I push forward through the tunnels. My breathing is heavy, my eyes are watering. Suddenly, at a turn in the pipes, I see another adult, a young man with gelled hair, a blue polo-shirt, and one of those little badges. He registers my presence wanly.
Adults aren’t allowed on the play frame unless they are employees of Teddy’s Big Adventure, he says sternly.
Fuck Teddy, I say. Fuck Teddy’s Big Nightmare. And fuck you. My daughter is up there and she’s stuck and you’d better help me get up there if you don’t want one of those little plastic balls stuck up your arse.
This seems to penetrate the indeterminate padding that passes for brains in this postcode, and he leads me up three last tunnels to Poppy, who throws her arms round my neck and holds on to me so tightly I swear it will leave marks.
Are you all right, poppet?
She says nothing, but clings tighter than ever. Slowly, Teddy’s Little Helper leads us back to the ground. Outside the rain continues to pound down, but I don’t care any more.
Come on, darling. We’re going. I’ll take you to McDonald’s.
Immediately Poppy brightens up. The prospect of sugar, fat and a shit little plastic toy galvanizes her. I grab my belongings and her shoes and socks. Even the rain and an appointment with Mayor McCheese looks appetizing after twenty minutes with Teddy. Just as I’m heading for the door, I hear a voice behind me.
That’s him, Dad.
Right. Oi!
I beg your pardon?
I turn to be confronted with the Schopenhauer of the school run, the man with the buzz-cut who was chatting so elegantly with his wife at the table next to me.
You tell my Daryl to fuck off?
He said it to me first.
He squares up. He’s even bigger than he looked when he was seated. I expect him to land a devastating blow to my ear or chin, humiliating me and traumatizing Poppy, but in fact he does something worse: he looks me up and down and he says, in low, measured tones, You should grow up, mate.
Then he turns, takes his son by the hand and walks back to his table where his wife, or partner, is looking daggers at me. Then I’m out in the rain with Poppy, and I’m soaked.
Only seven more hours to go. The fat man is right, I should grow up.
But I can’t. I can’t be a man in a world full of children. I can’t be the only one.
The local McDonald’s is not what you’d call a flagship branch. It has that lifeless, end-of-the-line, all-hope-is-gone atmosphere. The customers look like they eat there every day. However, they’re giving out free plastic representations of some Disney character this week, so Poppy is happy.
I order one Happy Meal with Chicken McNuggets, and a McStrawberry McMilkshake, with McFries, and a glass of McWater. I need to evacuate my McBowels, but I can’t leave Poppy by her McSelf, so I’ll have to see it out for now. I order the least offensive thing I can discover on the menu -a small fries and a bottle of water. At least it’s cheap. I reach in my jacket pocket for my Filofax-wallet.
Gone. Of course it’s gone. I left it on the table for a few seconds while I went to look for my terrified daughter. Why shouldn’t I be punished? Clearly I deserve it. Still, it was only ninety pounds, plus all my credit cards, my favourite photo of Poppy and me, lost the negative ages ago, plus my video card, all the notes for my new ad campaign and my address book, which I’ve never got round to copying. Of course it’s gone.
Daddy. I’m hungry. Can I have extra chips? What toy is it? I want the monkey one. Can I have the monkey one?
Just a minute, poppet. Excuse me. Yes. You. Look, I’m sorry. I seem to have lost my wallet. Would you mind if I came back later with the money? I just need to – I’ll have to go back home. I’ve got some change in the kitchen drawer.
The man behind the counter looks at me blankly.
Look, I just need – my daughter is starving – if we could just – you’ve got four stars, haven’t you? On your little plastic Hamburger University badge. That gives you the authority. You’re a premier, A1 beef-patty flipper. You’re management, you’re practically the CEO. Please help me here. Please.
Nothing. I want to leap over the counter and thrust his head into the deep-fat fryer – McHead, Moron McHead, going cheap! – but instead I just feel myself collapsing, utterly defeated.
Daddy. Why are we going, Daddy? I’m hungry! I’m HUNGRY! LET GO OF MY HAND!
I’m sorry, poppet. Daddy hasn’t got any money. We have to go back to the flat and get something to eat there.
I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO YOUR HORRIBLE FLAT. I WANT A HAPPY MEAL. I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU. IT’S NOT FAIR!
She throws herself on to the floor and refuses to budge.
Now then, darling. Try to understand. It’s not really Daddy’s fault. We can have a happy meal hack at the flat. I’ll tell you jokes.
I HATE YOU. I’M NEVER COMING TO YOUR HOUSE AGAIN. I WANT MUMMY. I WANT MUMMY. I WANT MUMMY.
Now, you know that Daddy loves you very much, but Daddy’s just lost all his money for the week, but all right, when we get back, I’m sure Daddy can find enough so we can go to another McDonald’s and I’ll buy you some sweeties and then –
I DON’T CARE! I HATE YOU!
Yeh, well, I hate you too.
There. I said it. Because, right at that moment, I’m sick of people hating me – my wife, my daughter, the kid in the tunnel, the kid in the tunnel’s dad – I’m sick of having lost my wallet, I’m sick of trying, I’m sick of being reasonable.
Now I look down at my six-year-old daughter, and see her anger and rage collapse into grief and surprise at what her father has just said to her.
Now she’s taken her first tiny step towards learning that towering lesson: that there’s no God. And if there is one, it isn’t Daddy.
I pick up her now unprotesting frame from the floor, and she bursts into tears, and I apologize, God, how I apologize, but what has been said cannot be unsaid, and how can I explain that you can hate someone and love them completely at the same time? How could she understand?
For one thing she’s never been married.
We’re back at the flat, and Poppy’s calmed down somewhat. I’ve placated her with the promise of a visit to her grandparents, my mum and dad, out in Yiewsley. They have space, and old Iris is quite keen on her grandchild, as grandmothers often are. I ring my dad while Poppy is eating what was left of a chocolate Angel Delight that I’d had at the back of the fridge for three days.
Dad.
Hello.
It’s Danny.
Hello, son.
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How are you, Dad?
OK, son. Just pottering around in the garden.
Good. Listen. I was just wondering if you and Mum would mind me coming over with Poppy for a few hours. You know, it’s pissing down with rain, and there’s nothing to do and, frankly, I’m going insane.
Well. It’s a bit tricky, actually, son. I’ve got to get my weeding done, and you know how it is.
I know how it is, Dad. Children to you are forces of disruption you can do without. Men of your generation didn’t have relationships with their children, they had contracts. I pay for everything/brought you into the world/ work night and day to put food on the table, so you just shut up and do as you’re told.
Dad.
Yes, son.
It’s pissing down with rain. How can you be pottering around in the garden?
Pause.
Actually, it’s quite clear here. I can see some rainclouds in the distance, but they haven’t –
You’re four miles away. Can you put Mum on the phone?
Dad knows he’s scuppered if Iris comes on the phone. Dad took Thoroughfare Number One in the relationship maze a long time ago, the route signposted Complete Obedience. It’s the eventual strategy of choice for about ninety per cent of males, as far as I can make out. It’s got a lot going for it, as long as you can swallow your pride, dignity and independence of thought for the rest of your life.
Well, she’s just making a cup of tea.
I can wait.
Oh. Right.
Dad. Put. Her. On.
I can almost hear the sigh of resignation. Thirty seconds later, it’s Iris’s brackish tones I hear throbbing through the telephone wires from downtown Yiewsley.
Hello, Danny.
Hi, Mum. Listen, I’ve got Poppy today, and what with it pouring down with rain and everything and me stuck in this bedsit I thought you wouldn’t mind if we came and paid a visit.
Mind? Of course we wouldn’t mind. We’d be delighted to see our granddaughter.
Of course you would. Any thoughts about the prospect of seeing your son? Would that bring you any pleasure at all?
Good. About half an hour, maybe?
Lovely. I’ll sort some lunch out.
God, that sounds wonderful.
I’ll only be able to do something simple. A roast. All the trimmings.
Mum. I love you.
Long pause.
See you in a little while, then, Danny.
‘Bye, Mum.
*
Children have interior weather so turbulent that to track Poppy’s emotional states reminds me of those time-lapse films of clouds unfolding, gathering, precipitating, dissecting. Now all the squalls have passed and Poppy has forgotten that I hated her for a millisecond two hours ago, she’s forgotten that the car smells, she’s forgotten that she hates me and that the world is mutable and irremediably unfair. We’re singing songs in the car and having a wonderful time. She’s teaching me some Britney Spears and I’m doing ‘Anarchy In The UK’ for her, which makes her helpless with laughter every time I do another verse. Poor old Johnny Rotten: if he’d known that his hymn to disorder was going to end up as a nursery rhyme, he’d have given up even sooner than he did.
We’re heading back down Western Avenue towards my parents. I stop off at Teddy’s Big Crap Hole on the way and, to my amazement, my Filofax has been handed in, ninety pounds intact. Perhaps people aren’t so bad after all. I’m just full of bitterness, prejudice and anger, and if I could clear those out of my system, the world would be full of rainbows and light, like Poppy sees it most of the time – except when she can’t get a fucking Happy Meal, of course.
Poppy’s trying to sing ‘Anarchy In The UK’, only it’s coming out too angelic. I make up a story to tell her, and she listens, and she helps me to make it up. It’s a good story, and we’re both having fun and we love each other, Daddy and daughter. Maybe it’s the only man–woman relationship that can ever work.
Then we arrive at my parents’ house, and Iris and Derek are out front. Dad is nodding – not for any particular reason, he just likes to nod – and Mum’s hands are fluttering. They do that. They flutter in the air, little wizened butterflies, under thick canvas gardening gloves. I remember them flapping around me when she tried to comfort me after I had grazed my knee, or been bullied, or felt sick, and how she never quite got the hang of it. How, in a way, she always wore gloves.
The gardening gloves come off for Poppy. She drops them on the path as Poppy runs towards her, and she catches her granddaughter in her arms. In a show of surprising strength for a woman in her early seventies, she throws her into the air. Dad stands at a distance, watching, grinning – but not, I would say, spontaneously. Grinning because he feels that is what is required of him.
Iris lets Poppy go, and Poppy turns to Granddad. Hello, Granddad.
How’s my little girl?
You’ve got a bogey.
What?
There’s a bogey on your nose.
Dad takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes it. Men of his generation carry handkerchiefs. It’s one of their cultural tics, like emotional constipation, the capacity for sudden anger, and a counterbalancing self-contained dignity and strength. As is true of everything else, the consequences of being born into a certain generation are a mixture of negative and positive. My father was forged for the world into which he was born – tough, proud, ready to push aside emotions as so much weakness and chaff. He fought in the war, he survived, and his marriage has survived. Good. His children can’t sort out their lives because although they want to be like him, and liked by him, they don’t want to be like him at all and don’t care whether or not he likes them. Another messy set of contradictions in a universe full of them, the ubiquitous and unseen dark matter of life.
Oh, look, Poppy, there’s a bumble-wumble-bee. Look at it buzzy-wuzzing round the garden. Oooh, I’m scared, are you scared? Big nasty bumble-bee, he’s going to bite Granddad. Oooh, buzzy-wuzz, buzzy-wuzz.
Poppy looks at me and I look at her. My dad doesn’t really understand that children are just people. To him they’re children, a different species. A species that requires you to make funny faces and put on silly voices, and generally lark about. He has put on his Poppy-voice now, singsong and an octave higher than his usual voice, and it will barely leave him for the next five hours. I look at him fondly and think, as if it were a fresh thought, My dad is actually very uncomfortable around children.
It’s not his fault. I love my father, and he was a good father by his lights. But he was never there when we were being brought up: he was out working about fourteen hours a day. When he was there, he was incorporated into the family pattern as a source of justice and authority: a benevolent but distant and sometimes angry god. Now, as a grandfather and trapped in a different time, he can no longer play the role he’s been taught, so he caricatures how he thinks modern adults are meant to behave around kids. It’s quite sweet, quite helpless. And it’s bloody irritating.
Oooh, looky, Poppy. Dere’s a pusscat. Nasty old pusscat is chasing the birdies. Nasty old pusscat wants to eat the birdie. Does Poppy like pusscats? Look, now the birdie is –
Granddad. The bogey’s still there.
Iris takes Poppy’s hand and leads her towards the kitchen. She says, in a perfectly ordinary voice, Do you want to help me make some dinner?
Yes, please, Grandma.
Good. You can help me chop the carrots and peel the potatoes.
Thank, you, Grandma.
Eventually we sit down for dinner. Poppy is quiet, well-behaved. She loves her grandparents like she loves everything. How can an adult be so full of love and passion as a child? Poppy cries if one of her toys gets a scratch. She’s genuinely upset, not because it’s a possession but because she loves it. She cries to see an ant crushed, she cries when a butterfly she has been chasing flies away. Her body is so tiny, but her feelings are so huge. Growing up is just about getting smaller feelings, I suppose, unt
il you’re old like my mum and dad and all there is is benign indifference. This is the conclusion of our lives – an unstoppable diminution of scale.
We start on the Sunday roast. It’s delicious – inevitably. One thing my mother can cook is a Sunday roast. She’s made about ten thousand in her lifetime, and now she could make roasts for England. It’s nice, but somehow I feel a bit pathetic. Back with my mum and dad. There’s failure in it. I should be having Sunday lunch with my wife and child, not Mum and Dad. There’s failure in everything at the moment.
Poppy accidentally drops a piece of her potato on the floor, but ignores it and carries on eating. Before I have a chance to say anything, I see my father’s eyes flash. When he speaks he is in his other mode, the mode I remember, the patriarch.
I think you dropped something, young lady.
Poppy keeps on eating, ignoring him. I think she’s too intent on the food even to hear him.
You pick up that food RIGHT NOW.
Dad…
Daddy, Granddad’s being nasty to me.
Never mind that, young lady. You pick up that potato, unless you want a smack.
Daddy, Granddad wants to smack me.
I know that Poppy’s being openly manipulative, I know she should pick up the potato, I know she’s being rude. But she isn’t used to being talked to like this – as ruler to serf, the only way my father knows in a power-broking situation. Also, Poppy’s not Dad’s daughter: she’s mine.
Dad —
Just a minute, young feller m’lad. Now, listen, young lady. I’m going to count to three. If you haven’t picked up that potato, you re going to feel the flat of my hand.