Rich and Mad

by William Nicholson

  “I don’t think there is any right anymore.” Her mother tried to smile, wiping her eyes. “People just do what they want.”

  “Then you should do what you want too. It’s time you had your turn.”

  “I just want not to be so tired all the time.” She squeezed Maddy’s hands and looked at her and finally managed a smile. “I don’t want him to leave.”

  “He won’t leave. I’ll tell him he can’t.”

  “The thing is, darling, he says he’s happier with her than he is with me.”

  She said it so humbly, and was so hurt by it, that Maddy had no more reassurances to offer. This is betrayal, she thought. This is desertion. This is the crime for which they shoot soldiers in wars.

  “I’ll talk to him,” she said.

  He was no longer out on the forecourt. He was in the shop’s big back room, which had been the function room in its days as a roadside inn. He was there among the wedding chests going through the stock, checking price tags against a list, just as if nothing had changed.

  “Dad?”

  He looked round.

  “Ah. Maddy.”

  The shop was still open for business, but it was late. There were no customers browsing in the cavernous space. Maddy passed between chests and wardrobes to the back aisle where her father stood. He waited for her, pretending to study his list.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” said Maddy.

  “Well, I—” He held up his clipboard.

  Maddy swiped at the clipboard, knocking it out of his hand.

  “I’m not stupid, Dad.”

  She swiped again, wanting to hit him, to hurt him. Her flailing hand brushed his arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she said again.

  “Not now, Maddy. Please.”

  “Yes, now.”

  She struck again, hitting him on the chest. She wanted to beat him down, but there was no force behind her blows. She used both hands, beating at him. He did nothing to resist.

  “Go on. Say it. You don’t care. You don’t give a fuck about us.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Say it. Say you’re happier with her than with us. Say you don’t want us. Say you never loved us. Say it.”

  “No, Maddy. No, no.”

  “You can’t have it all, Dad. You can’t have everyone love you. So go back to fucking China and leave us alone. If you don’t want us, we don’t want you.”

  “I do love you. I do want you.”

  He said the right words, but he spoke them without energy, feebly, as if he knew he had already lost the battle. Maddy wanted him to fight back and he wouldn’t. He let her hit him, accepting the punishment, passive, almost cowed.

  Inside she was crying out to him: You’re my father, you’re stronger than me, you’re the one who keeps me safe, you’re the man who’ll always love me. How can you turn out to be so weak?

  “Why did you say such horrible things to Mum?”

  “Jenny shouldn’t have talked to you. It’s all too soon. We’re sorting things out. It’ll all work out in the end. Maddy, darling, I promise.”

  “I don’t want your promise. What happened to your promise to Mum? You made her a promise. What about that?”

  “We’ll sort it out somehow. We will.”

  A group of customers came into the room, a young couple with a baby, an older woman. The husband carried the baby in a sling at his chest. Maddy and her father fell silent, inhibited by the presence of strangers.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

  His eyes were pleading with her for a soft word in parting, but Maddy was unforgiving in her anger.

  “Why should you be the only one who gets what he wants?”

  She retreated to her room and locked the door.

  Alone at last she curled up on the bed with Bunby in her arms and cried and cried. She was crying for her childhood. She was crying for a lost world where people loved each other. She was crying for her handsome carefree father who had always come home from his trips with something special for her in his bag. His presents were all lined up on her window sill, her treasures: the tiny jade elephant, the inlaid mother-of-pearl pillbox, the peacock feather, the drop of ruby glass as big as an egg. All her most precious jewels lay in the beaded jewel case he had given her, where she had hidden her pills. Even so, as she sobbed and told herself it had all been a lie, she couldn’t believe it. He was too deep in her, the Dad who loved her. Maybe there was now another Dad who didn’t love her anymore. But the old Dad, the real Dad, hadn’t changed. She wouldn’t let him change. She was his little girl. Of course he loved her. He always had and he always would.

  And I love you, Dad. Even though you’re useless and a cheat and a liar. I just do love you because I can’t help it. I can’t do without you. So you can go if you want but you won’t have left me. You’ll just be somewhere else for a while. And I know you’ll walk back in the door one day and swing me up in your arms and say, “How’s my little Madkin?” And I’ll say, “Have you got me a present?” And you’ll look grave and shake your head and say, “A present? I must have forgotten.” But you won’t have forgotten because you never do, and you’ll open your bag at last and say, “I wonder what this can be”, because you always bring me a present. And I won’t even care what it is, I’ll just love it because it’s your present, and all your presents are little pieces of your love for me. I’ve still got them, Dad. You can’t take them back. I’ve got your love. It’s on my windowsill.

  When she could cry no more Maddy went to the bathroom and washed her face. She could hear her parents talking downstairs but she didn’t feel ready yet. She went back to her room and thought maybe she would call Cath but then she didn’t. If she talked to Cath on the phone she’d have to tell her about the crisis, it would all come out whether she wanted it to or not, and it felt too soon. To tell Cath would be to make it real. Maddy didn’t want it to be real.

  I’d like to phone Rich.

  That was an odd thought to have. As soon as she’d had it she knew Rich was exactly the person to talk to about all this mess. He’d be interested and he’d understand but he wouldn’t turn it into some kind of hysterical fuss. But Rich didn’t have a phone.

  How stupid and irritating of him. What use was a friend without a phone? Maddy resolved to tackle him on the subject, and if necessary force him to get a phone. She remembered how she had said to him, “What if someone wants you?” and he had replied, “They come and find me.” Such an arrogant answer. As if people had all the time in the world to go hiking across town just to suit his prehistoric whims.

  For a few brief moments she did actually consider going to find him. But then she imagined knocking on his door and him saying, “Yes, what is it?” Somehow she couldn’t see herself answering, “I’m feeling sorry for myself because my dad turns out to be a bastard.” And even if she did, what could Rich say?

  And yet the thought of Rich gave her comfort. She remembered the way he’d walked into the lamppost, and once again she laughed, just as she had then, and felt a following pang of pity, just as she had then. But Rich no longer seemed to her to be pitiful. “I expect nothing and everything,” he said. She could laugh at him without it being unkind. He allowed it. She thought of that stupid book he got from Mr. Pico that said, “Love is a power that produces love,” and that stupid letter from the pope, and that stupid petition, and singing that stupid lullaby to his old Gran. She found herself smiling.

  It can wait till Monday, she thought. I’ll see him at school.

  Driven downstairs at last by hunger, she found her father alone in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “She went out.”

  “What do you mean, she went out?”

  “I think she may have gone over to see Anne Forder.”

  Anne Forder was their old friend and neighbor. Maddy said no more. She took down the oats and the golden syrup and fetched butter from the fridge without offering to
share with her father. Not that he would have wanted it.

  He was drinking coffee, pressed up against the stove. He’s too thin, she thought. He should eat more.

  “You want some of this stuff?”

  “No, thanks. I’m not all that hungry right now.”

  She banged the dish in the microwave and waited for the releasing ping. She had decided she wasn’t going to say anything more about the crisis. If he had anything to say let him say it.

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Maddy,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  Ping. Out with the bowl. Stir with the spoon.

  “I know I’ve made a mess of everything.”

  She put the bowl down on the table. Sat on one of the rickety chairs. All the pieces of furniture in the house were rejects from the shop.

  “There’s nothing you could say against me that I wouldn’t agree with, really.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dad. If you’re going to do it at least get something out of it. Otherwise what’s the point?”

  “That’s not how it is.”

  “It looks pretty simple to me. You’ve got some other”—she couldn’t bring herself to say woman—“some other life in China that you like better. Fine. Go and live it.”

  “But it’s not simple at all. How can I leave you and Imo and Jen?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “So what’s all this you’ve been telling Mum, then? What’s all this about another woman?”

  Her golden syrup oats were going cold. She’d lost her appetite.

  “Like I say, it’s not simple.”

  “You want everything, and you don’t care about hurting people. Seems pretty simple to me.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  “So. Tell me how I’m wrong.”

  She said it angrily. Why did it have to be forced out of him? Why couldn’t he just say something that made it all be different? Like, I turn into a werewolf when there’s a moon. Like, I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.

  He sat down at the table facing her and put his head in his hands. She didn’t speak. His fuck-up. Let him do the talking.

  “I’ve always had this problem,” he said. “It’s not easy to describe. I’ve not been good at seeing things through. Even when I was a boy. Making those Airfix models, whatever. I never finished them. I got bored or something. That’s what I used to think. But it wasn’t that. If you want to get something done you have to believe you’ll get it done. If deep down you don’t believe that, then after a while it gets hard to carry on. Impossible, in fact.”

  Maddy listened but didn’t understand. This wasn’t the father she had always known.

  “But Dad, you’ve done lots of things.”

  “I’ve managed this and that, maybe. But nothing very much. I’m sorry, Mad, I shouldn’t be bothering you with all this. I just rather want you to understand.”

  “Maybe you haven’t ended up a millionaire. But who needs that? You’ve got a good business. You’ve got a family that loves you.”

  “Jen’s built up the business. I could never have done it. And Jen’s made the family too.”

  “So why do you want to leave?”

  “I don’t want to leave. I want to—to—” He searched her face, looking for sympathy, wanting her to understand without the words having to be said. But Maddy didn’t understand. She made him say it.

  “I want not to hate myself,” he said.

  Not what she was expecting.

  “Hate yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you hate yourself?”

  “Because I don’t really believe—not really—that I’m any good.”

  “Dad!” Tears sprang into her eyes.

  “Nothing so very terrible. But at times it gets too much. Then I just want to be somewhere where no one expects anything of me. Where I can just drop into a chair, have a drink, switch off.”

  “Is that what it’s like with her?”

  He nodded.

  “So it’s somewhere to run away and hide.”

  “Yes. You could call it that.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “Can’t run away. Can’t hide. Have to be a man. Face the music. Show some self-respect. Fight the good fight.”

  “Yes.” But she was beginning to understand. It wasn’t what he said so much as the tone of his voice, and his sad smile.

  This is all about despair, she thought. Dad’s despaired.

  “You’ve despaired, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, long ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I remember thinking when I was quite young, when all my friends were pushing and jostling to get to the front of the lunch queue and I was waiting at the back. Someone said, ‘Look at Michael, he’s the only one of you who’s got some manners.’ But I knew it wasn’t manners. I knew there was something broken inside me.”

  “No, Dad. No!” Maddy shook her head, willing it away. “You’re wrong. There’s nothing broken. People are different.”

  “I can’t go on letting you all down, Mad. I can’t go on failing Jen. I can’t go on hating myself.”

  She looked at him, feeling tears rise up to her eyes.

  “Mum loves you. I love you. Imo loves you. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I know it should be. But you see, I have to deserve it.”

  “No. That’s not how love works.” Something clicked into place in her mind. “You don’t get loved as a reward for something. People need to love. They just do it. We just do it.”

  Girls just do it, she added silently. Women just do it. Men are something else. Dad is something else.

  He looked at her wistfully.

  “I’d like that to be true.”

  “I’ll tell you how you deserve it, Dad. You accept it. That’s all you do. So don’t run away. Don’t hide. We have to have someone to love.”

  Is that pathetic? Is that surrendering to men’s selfishness and uselessness?

  He was gazing at her with love. At least it looked like love.

  “You’ve grown up, haven’t you? You’re so beautiful. I’m so proud of you, Maddy.”

  “Oh, Dad. What are we going to do about you?”

  She was crying freely again, helplessly. Because he had said she was beautiful.

  “Jen and me’ll have a talk.”

  He moved his arms as if wanting to touch her across the table.

  “You can bloody well get up,” she said.

  He got up and they hugged, just the same way they’d always hugged, except now she was as tall as him.

  25

  The moreness of things

  Rich didn’t come to school on Monday. Neither did Grace.

  “Maybe they’ve eloped together,” said Cath.

  “Please,” said Maddy. “Enough surprises.”

  The rumor was that Grace had collapsed at a party on Saturday night, but no one knew for sure. There was no rumor about Rich.

  “He’s probably ill too,” said Cath cheerfully.

  “Typical male,” said Maddy. “Never there when you need them.”

  She told Cath about her father and how she had pounded him with her fists. Cath was awestruck.

  “You beat up your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mad, that’s not like you.”

  “I’m not like me, Cath. My life is all going wrong. I cry all the time. I have terrible thoughts. I’m angry all the time.”

  “No more nice girl.”

  “I hate it.”

  “Even so. Might as well use it. I say go and beat up Grace.”

  “She’s not here. And anyway, she’s not the one I should beat up. Joe’s the one who thinks he can have it all his own way.”

  This thought had been growing in Maddy ever since she had learned of her father’s betrayal. It was as if some cord of loyalty had snapped. Why was it always men who got what they wanted? Joe needed some petty distraction because he was cheating
on his girlfriend, so he flirted with Maddy and never even bothered to ask himself what effect it might have. It was all just a game that suited him for a moment. And what was he doing to Gemma? He was going on letting her think that he loved her so that she would kill her baby. How sick was that?

  “Someone should tell Joe it’s not on,” said Maddy.

  “Go Maddy!” cried Cath. “Beat up Joe!”

  “It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose.”

  “These boys think they can do what they like.”

  “And these men.”

  Seeing her mother in tears had hardened Maddy. Her mother was the innocent victim of male selfishness. Somehow by way of her mother’s hurting she had stopped blaming herself for her own humiliating crush on Joe. And with the passing of self-blame the way lay open for anger.

  “I told my dad. I can tell Joe.”

  She knew Joe’s timetable well. That afternoon she was waiting outside the changing rooms as he loped back from the running track. He was in running shorts and a sleeveless shirt, his arms and face and neck shining with sweat.

  “Maddy Fisher!” he cried as he saw her. As always he sounded blithely unaware that she might have any kind of a problem with him.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  He gave her a smile and a wave as he jogged by.

  “Can I have a word?”

  “Sure,” said Joe. “Just let me shower and stuff.”

  “No. Now.”

  He caught the seriousness in her voice. He stopped.

  “Okay. What’s up?”

  “Can we go somewhere a bit more private?”

  They went to the far side of the tennis courts, beyond the line of beech trees. This was where the smokers came to steal a quick cigarette before and after school. At this time, early in the afternoon, they had it to themselves.

  “This isn’t about me, Joe. You really have to believe that. I made a fool of myself, that’s my problem. I can handle it. This is about Gemma.”

  Joe looked baffled.

  “Okay,” he said. “What about Gemma?”

  “You just can’t do this to her. I expect it’s none of my business but”—she drew a deep breath—“if you don’t tell Gemma what’s really going on, then I will.”