by Tony Parsons
“No thanks,” she said. “I think I’ll keep a few teeth for dinner. How you doing?”
“I’m okay,” I said, leaning forward and kissing her on the mouth. She didn’t make much of an attempt to kiss me back. “I thought you were at work.”
“I got a call to come and pick up Peggy,” she said. “Bianca couldn’t make it. Sorry about that.”
I stared at her for a moment, unable to work out how these two worlds were connected.
“You know Peggy?” I said.
She shook her head. I didn’t get it, did I?
“She’s my daughter, Harry.”
We were standing outside the front door of my house. She looked at me with those wide-set brown eyes. Waiting.
“Peggy’s your daughter?”
“I was going to tell you,” she said. “Honest.” She gave a little laugh that said she knew it wasn’t all that funny. “I was just waiting for the right time. That’s all.”
“The right time? Why didn’t you tell me straight away? Why wasn’t that the right time?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Explain now.”
“Okay,” she said, pulling the front door so that it was almost closed. So the kids couldn’t hear us. Our kids. “Because I don’t want my daughter to meet strange men who might be out of my life very soon.”
“You don’t want her to meet strange men? What are you going on about, Cyd? I’m not a strange man. She spends more time in this house than she does anywhere. Peggy knows me already.”
“She knows you as Pat’s dad. She doesn’t know you as my—well. What are you, Harry? I guess you’re my boyfriend, aren’t you? She doesn’t know you as my boyfriend. And I don’t want her to meet a boyfriend until I’ve been seeing him for a while. Okay?”
This didn’t make any kind of sense to me. A blob of ice cream dropped onto my hand.
“But she had dinner here almost every night last week!” I said. “She sees more of me than she does of that feckless bastard you married!”
“You don’t know him.”
I loved that.
“Oh—good guy, is he?”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I don’t want her to grow up believing that every man is going to disappear the way her father disappeared. I don’t want her finding strange men in my bed—and you are strange. In that way, you are, Harry. I don’t want a strange man there when she wakes up. I don’t want her thinking that it doesn’t mean anything. And I don’t want her getting attached to someone who might not be around that long.”
She was trying to be calm, but her voice was choking up a bit now and I felt like putting my arms around her. Which would have been very messy, as I was still holding three melting 99s.
“Because I don’t want her getting more hurt than she has been already,” she said. “I don’t want her to give her little heart to someone and then he casually breaks it. Okay, Harry? Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
She blinked hard, tightening her mouth. I cleaned the ice cream from my hands. Then we went inside and I realized that nothing is extraordinary to a child.
Maybe when you are a kid life is still so full of wonder that there can be no real surprises because almost everything is a surprise. Or perhaps children just adapt faster than adults. Either way, Peggy and Pat didn’t faint with shock when Cyd walked into the house.
“Mommy,” Peggy said, and I thought—of course. Now I knew where I had seen those eyes before.
Cyd sat down on the floor and listened to her daughter explaining the domestic setup on the Millennium Falcon. She took the headphones from my son and listened to a song he liked. Then, after we had all finished our ice creams, she told Peggy that it was time to go home.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“If you want to,” she said. “I know this must be a bit of a shock.”
“You crazy or what?” I said. “Of course I want to.”
“You’re sure?” she said.
“I’m sure,” I said, touching her arm. “This doesn’t change anything.”
It changed everything.
twenty-five
“Did you make love to the makeup girl?” I asked Eamon.
He looked at me in his dressing room mirror, and I caught a flash of something passing across his face. Fear maybe. Or anger. Then it was gone.
“What’s that?” he said.
“You heard me the first time.”
The show was taking off. Ratings were good, and the offers of lager commercials were starting to come in. But to me he was still a scared kid from Kilcarney with wax in his ears.
“Yes or no, Eamon? Did you make love to the makeup girl?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because she’s crying. We can’t even get her to put some makeup on the guests because she’s sobbing all over her powder puff. It’s gone all soggy.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“I know she left the studio with you last week.”
He twisted on his little swivel chair, turning to face me with his head framed by the mirror’s border of bare electric lights. He didn’t look so scared anymore, despite a shining trickle of sweat snaking through the thick layer of powder on his forehead.
“You’re asking me if I made love to the makeup girl?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I don’t care about your morals, Eamon. You can bugger the lighting director during the commercial break if you want to. I don’t care what you do when we’re off air. Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with the running of the show. And a weepy makeup girl who can’t do her job interferes with the running of the show.”
“You’ve been a big help to me, Harry,” he said quietly. Sometimes his voice was so low that you had to concentrate just to hear what he was saying. It gave him a certain power. “From the moment we met, everything you’ve said to me has made sense. Remember—you’re only ever talking to one person, you said. If you have a good time then they will have a good time. This stuff might not mean much to you but it’s helped me to get through it. It’s helped me to make it work. I couldn’t have done it without you and I’m grateful. That’s why I’m not angry that you’re asking me this question, a question that—perhaps you’ll agree?—would be a bit rude coming from my mother or my priest.”
“Did you make love to the makeup girl, Eamon?”
“No, Harry. I did not make love to the makeup girl.”
“Is that the truth?”
“That’s the truth. I did not make love to the makeup girl.”
“Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“I fucked the makeup girl.”
“There’s a difference, is there?”
“A big difference. It wasn’t the start of a meaningful relationship, Harry. It was the culmination of something quite meaningless—that’s what I liked about it. And Carmen—that’s the makeup girl’s name, Harry, she’s called Carmen—might be a bit upset right now that there’s not going to be a repeat performance, but I strongly suspect that’s what she liked about it too. The very fact that it was a bit raw, a bit rough, and for one night only. Sometimes a woman wants you to make love to her. Sometimes she just wants to get fucked. They are just the same as us, Harry. That’s the big secret. They’re just the same.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me before now? My life would have been so much simpler.”
“I’m getting a lot of offers at the moment, Harry, And not all of them are beer commercials. Carmen’s a lovely girl. I’ll treat her with respect. I’ll be friendly to her. But she wanted exactly what I wanted and she got it. She can’t expect anything more from me. And when she gets a grip of herself, she’ll understand that.”
“You’re not the first young guy who got laid because his ugly mug is on television once a week, Eamon. Just don’t bring you
r personal dramas into this studio, okay?”
“Okay, Harry,” he said mildly. “I’m sorry that this has been a disruptive influence, I really am. And I understand that you’re my executive producer and telling me this stuff is why you’re here. But I’m a man, okay?”
“Yeah? Really? You sound more like some old blues song. I’m a man. Spelt m-a-n. Christ, you’re so fucking tough. You’ll be advertising aftershave next.”
“I’m a man, Harry. And the reason I’m here is to plant my seed in as many places as I possibly can. That’s why we’re here. That’s what men do.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s what boys do.”
But later I watched him leave the studio with the show’s cutest researcher and I thought—why not?
Why shouldn’t he plant his seed in as many places as possible? What would he be saving it for? And what was so great about the solitary little flower pot that I was cultivating?
***
Suddenly there were all these rules.
I could stay at Cyd’s small, top-floor flat, but I had to be gone by the time Peggy got up. Cyd was happy to have me there when Peggy went to bed, and happy about me sleeping with her on the old brass bed under a framed poster of Gone with the Wind. But I had to be out of there before morning came.
Actually, there were not lots of rules. There was just that one rule. But it felt like a lot of rules.
“Maybe later it will be different,” Cyd said. “If we decide—you know—we want to take it further. If we want to make a proper commitment.”
But as soon as I stopped looking into her wide-set brown eyes and she had turned out the light, I didn’t feel like making a proper commitment. To tell you the truth, what I really felt like was something a bit less complicated.
I wanted to be able to sleep in my girl’s arms without being woken up and told it was time to go home. I wanted the kind of relationship where you didn’t have to remember the rules. Most of all, I wanted things to be the way they were before everything got all smashed.
***
I was still dreaming when I felt Cyd’s mouth on mine.
“Baby,” she whispered. “Sorry. But it’s time.”
It was still dark outside, but I could hear pigeons hopping around on the roof directly above our heads, a sure sign that it was time to put on my pants and piss off before the sun came up.
“Got it all worked out, haven’t you?” I sighed, rolling away from her and getting out of bed.
“I wish you could stay, Harry. I really do.”
“So how long is it since you split up with Peggy’s dad? Three years? More? And how many men have you introduced her to?”
“You’re the first,” she said quietly, and I wondered if that was true.
“I just don’t understand what harm it does if she sees me eating a bowl of cornflakes. Jesus—the kid sees me all week long.”
“We’ve been through all this,” Cyd said in the darkness. “It’s confusing for her if you’re here in the morning. Please try to understand. She’s five—you’re not.”
“She likes me. And I like her. We’ve always got on fine.”
“That’s all the more reason for going now. I don’t want you to be an uncle to Peggy, okay? I want you to be more than that or less than that. But you’re not going to be an uncle. She deserves better. So do you.”
“Fine,” I said. “Absolutely fine.”
“You should love me for being like this,” she said, more angry than hurt. “You should understand that I’m just trying to protect her and do what’s best for her. You’ve got a kid yourself. You know what it’s like. If anyone should understand, then you should understand.”
She was right.
I should have loved her.
***
For the first time in my life I could sort of understand why men of my age go out with younger women.
I never really got it before. Women in their thirties, their bodies are still springy and you can talk to them. They are still young, but they have seen something of life—probably quite a few of the same views that you have seen.
Why would any man trade that kind of equal partnership for someone with a pierced navel whose idea of a hot date is some awful nightclub and half a tab of something pretending to be Ecstasy?
If you can go out with someone who has read the same books as you, who has watched the same TV shows as you, who has loved the same music as you, then why would you want someone whose idea of a soul singer is the guy in Jamiroquai?
But now I got it. Now I could understand the attraction. Men of my age like younger women because the younger woman has fewer reasons to be bitter.
The younger woman is less likely to have had her heart bashed around by broken homes, divorce lawyers, and the sight of children who are missing a parent. The younger woman doesn’t have all those disappointments that women—and men too, don’t forget the men—in their thirties drag around with them like so much excess luggage. It was cruel but true. The younger woman is far less likely to have had her life fucked up by some man.
Men in their thirties and forties don’t go out with a younger woman for her bouncy body and her pierced tongue. That’s just propaganda.
They go out with her so that they can be the one who fucks up her life.
***
Heidi was a nanny from Munich.
Well, not exactly Munich—more Augsburg. And not exactly a nanny.
A nanny is a professional child-minder who has made a career out of caring for small boys and girls. Heidi was a nineteen-year-old who was away from her parents for the very first time. She was just one economy flight on Lufthansa away from a bedroom full of stuffed toys and having her mom do her washing. She knew as much about childcare as I knew about theoretical physics. Heidi was more of an au pair.
The plan was that Heidi was going to cook, clean, and cover for me with Pat on the days I was working on the show. For this she would receive bed, board, and pocket money while she studied English.
Pat was swaying on the sofa, listening to Sally’s tape, when I took Heidi through to meet him.
“This is Heidi, Pat. She’s going to stay here and help us around the house.”
Pat stared blankly at the big blond German girl, his mouth lolling open, lost in the music.
“A lively and active boy,” Heidi smiled.
Trying to show willing, she asked me what I would like for dinner. I told her that I would grab something in the green room at the station but she should fix something for her and Pat. She shuffled about in the kitchen until she found a big can of tomato soup.
“Is okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said.
Trying to let her get on with it, I sat at the kitchen table jotting down notes on next week’s shooting script.
Pat wandered in to watch her, leaving the music still blasting from the living room, and I sent him back to turn it off. When he came back he started pulling at my sleeve.
“Guess what?” he said.
“Let Daddy work, darling.”
“But guess what Heidi’s doing?”
“And let Heidi do her work too.”
Elaborately sighing, he sat down at the kitchen table and idly fiddled with a couple of his little plastic men.
Heidi was clanking about by the stove but I didn’t look up at her until I heard the bubbles of boiling water. That was strange. Why was she boiling water to heat up a can of tomato soup?
“Heidi?”
“Is soon ready.”
She had placed the unopened can of soup in a saucepan of water and brought it to a boil. She gave me a hesitant smile just before the can exploded, flinging steaming red gruel all over the ceiling, the walls, and us.
Wiping the tomato soup from my eyes, I saw the livid red slime slide down Heidi’s face, her eyes staring thr
ough the oozing muck, mute with shock and wonder. She looked like Sissy Spacek in the prom night scene in Carrie.
Then she burst into tears.
“Guess what?” Pat said, blue eyes blinking in a crimson face mask. “She can’t cook either.”
So Heidi found a nice family in the suburbs.
And I gave Sally a call.
twenty-six
Auntie Ethel was on her knees in her front garden, planting spring bulbs for next year.
Auntie Ethel wasn’t my real auntie, but I had called her Auntie Ethel ever since we had moved next door to her when I was five years old, and the habit had proved hard to break. Auntie Ethel straightened up, squinting over her lawn mower at Cyd and Peggy and Pat and me as we climbed out of Cyd’s old VW Beetle, and for a moment I felt as though I was a little kid again, asking Auntie Ethel if I could have my ball back.
“Harry? Is that you, Harry?”
“Hello, Auntie Ethel,” I said. “What you planting there?”
“Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths. And is that your Pat? I don’t believe it! Hasn’t he grown? Hello, Pat!”
Pat halfheartedly saluted her with his light saber. We had never been able to persuade him to address Auntie Ethel by her proper title, and he clearly wasn’t going to start now. Auntie Ethel turned her attention to Peggy, a cloud of confusion drifting across her familiar old face.
“And this little girl…”
“This one’s mine,” Cyd said. “Hi, Auntie Ethel. I’m Cyd. Harry’s friend. How you doing?”
“Like Sid James?”
“Like Cyd Charisse.”
Auntie Ethel’s eyes twinkled behind her glasses.
“The dancer,” she said. “With Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings. A good pair of legs.” Auntie Ethel sized up Cyd. “Just like you!”
“I like your Auntie Ethel,” Cyd whispered, taking my arm as we came up the drive. Then I felt her grip tighten. “Oh God—that looks like your mother.”
My mom was standing at the door, all smiles, and Pat ran to meet her.
“Happy birthday!” she cried, sweeping him up in her arms. “Five years old! Aren’t you a big boy—ouch!” Still holding him under one arm, she pushed his Jedi weapon away with her free hand. “Blooming light saber,” she laughed, looking down at Peggy. “You must be Peggy. You haven’t got a light saber too, have you?”