by Mike Gayle
‘Good,’ she says firmly. ‘I’ve made you a fried breakfast – it’s plated up and in the microwave – your father and I are just nipping up the high street to get some bits to take with us. When we come back we’ll go, so be ready.’
As my mother leaves the kitchen virtually strutting like an on-his-game Muhammad Ali victoriously exiting a boxing ring following a knockout, I abandon my cereal and move over to the microwave. How little time has it taken her to move on from her softly, softly approach and start kicking me up the backside? Three days. To be fair, I’m sure that if I had a thirty-nine-year-old son who had invited himself to stay indefinitely and looked like he was about to make sleeping late and eating me out of house and home part of his daily pattern, I too would have taken off the kid gloves pretty sharpish.
Relieved to finally be left alone I stare vacantly at the microwave watching my food rotate. It’s a moment of pure bliss. I have no thoughts at all. My mind is completely empty.
Then my phone rings.
I check the screen. It’s Gershwin. I cross my fingers and hope he’s calling to let me know he’s changed his mind about his birthday. Right now I could do with a party, or indeed any excuse for a good time.
‘All right, mate?’
‘Not so bad.’
‘How’s Bristol?’
‘Wet. How’s Brum?’
‘Cold.’
There’s a long silence; even without him being physically present I can feel his tension. I guess he’s not calling about his birthday. Gershwin’s never been one to just check in without a reason and so I draw the only conclusion that makes sense: he’s dying of cancer. That’s why he seemed so quiet, left the pub early, and isn’t bothered about his fortieth. He’s only got a week left to live and he wants me to promise that I’ll keep an eye out for his kid.
‘Listen mate, about last night. I just wanted to say sorry again about, you know, Ginny.’
He’s called to talk about Ginny? This makes no sense at all. Why’s he bringing her up when he knows that all I want to do is forget about her? ‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for, mate. It’s not like I want to shoot the messenger.’
‘Yeah, well . . . cheers. Anyway listen, I could do with having a proper chat with you about something. Not right now, but soon.’
‘Not a problem,’ I reply. ‘When are you thinking?’
‘I’ll give you a shout, OK?’
‘And that’s it? That’s all you wanted to talk about?’
‘Why? What else is there?’
I breathe a sigh of relief. He’s not dying, he’s just being weird. ‘I was hoping you’d changed your mind about your birthday.’
‘Nah, mate, my mind’s made up on that one. Anyway, I’d better go. But listen, let’s talk soon.’
Determined to eat my breakfast before it goes cold I grab the ketchup from the fridge and a slice of white bread from the bread bin but as I reach for the margarine my phone rings again. Assuming it’s Gershwin I place the phone to my ear without checking. Only when I hear my estranged wife’s voice do I realise my mistake.
‘Lauren, how are you?’ I splutter, as I begin churning over potential reasons for her call. Had the house sold? Was she missing me? Was she about to sue me for alimony?
‘Work’s busy but nothing unusual there. How are you coping at your parents’?’
‘As well as can be expected.’
‘You’re doing great,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure I could do much more than a weekend at mine, so you’re doing well to have managed this far.’ A braver man would have chosen this moment to point out that technically I’m only here because of her but I say nothing. ‘It’s about the house,’ she continues, ‘I’ve just received the last of the estate agents’ valuations and the news isn’t good. They’ve all valued it at quite a lot less than we’d hoped and to top it all there are at least half a dozen comparable properties up for sale within throwing distance of ours. On the plus side, they’re all pretty sure they can get a sale but I think we’re talking months rather than weeks.’
‘So I’m stuck here indefinitely?’
‘Well, let’s not panic. We need to get the ball rolling. I’ve made the decision to put the house on with Millward and Lewis. I’ve got the contract here so I’ll sign it now and have it to you by first post. If you sign it and send it back straight away with a bit of luck we could be taking viewings by the end of the week.’
I feel my blood start to boil as I imagine an endless queue of monied young professional Londoners traipsing through my home, commenting about the ‘finish’ of my bloody kitchen and how they’re going to knock all the downstairs rooms together to make one huge ‘entertaining space’.
‘So, you’ll get the contract back to me asap?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh, and they also need us to fill out the fixtures and fittings list. I’ve ticked what I think should stay and if you’re in agreement just sign your name at the bottom.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘All the usual suspects: curtains, carpets, light fittings and the like.’
‘What about the shed?’ The question had come out of nowhere but the more I thought about it the more I could see that it was never that far away.
‘I’ve ticked that it’s staying. That was right, wasn’t it? Sheds aren’t really the sorts of things people take with them.’
I picture my beloved shed and all of the things I never got to do inside it.
‘Whatever.’ It’s like my licence to be a fully fledged adult has been revoked. ‘I mean, what use has a guy like me got for a shed?’
Days left to turning forty: 163
11
It’s hard not to be impressed by my sister’s huge glass-fronted barn conversion. Surrounded on all sides by open countryside, it couldn’t have been more different from the house we grew up in and my heart swells with pride at how well my kid sister has done for herself.
As we pull up on the gravel drive the front door opens and out stream my sister and her family to greet us. Once we’re out of the car Dad starts fussing around my nephews while Mum makes a beeline for my brother-in-law, plucking baby Evie out of his arms and leaving me alone with Yvonne.
She hugs me tightly. ‘It’s good to see you, Matt.’
‘You too,’ I reply. ‘This is some place you’ve got here. It’s practically a castle.’
‘I still can’t believe how lucky we are. The garden’s so huge that Oli’s just bought himself one of those sit-on mowers. Whenever he’s on it he’s got a huge grin fixed to his face like a big kid. Dad’s a fan too.’
‘I think they’re fans of everything you do at the moment. They haven’t stopped talking about the kids or your house.’
She laughs and studies my face as though analysing me. ‘You sound a bit jealous. Afraid your place as number one child is being usurped?’
‘Me? Never. They’ll always love me more than you, Ed and Tony because I was their first! You guys were just an afterthought.’
Yvonne raises a mischievous eyebrow. ‘So is that why they’re always talking about moving out here?’
‘They’re just saying that,’ I scoff. ‘They wouldn’t dream of moving in a million years. Remember when we tried to book them a cruise for their wedding anniversary and they turned us down because ‘there’s no place like home’? That’s Mum and Dad all over. A bomb couldn’t get them out of that house.’
Yvonne laughs and shakes her head and for a moment she’s the spitting image of the photo of Mum as a young woman that hangs in the front room. ‘I hate it when you’re right.’
‘I know,’ I reply, ‘but you’ll get used to it one day.’
I look over at my nephews, who are eyeing me carefully while playing with my dad. This is their warm-up game. They do it every time they see me even though we all know that in ten minutes’ time we’ll be racing around the house and battling each other with light sabres.
They’re much bigger than I remember and their feat
ures have changed too. Fat faces getting thinner, thin faces getting broader and more elements of our side of the family coming out. How is it possible that human beings can change so much in such a short space of time? How is it possible for them to have changed so much and me not to have changed at all?
‘Mum says you’ve been in the wars,’ says Yvonne, looping her arm through mine as we walk towards the house.
‘Just a bit.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that things didn’t work out for you and Lauren. I had no idea you were having problems.’
‘Neither did I until it was too late. I’ll live though. Down but not out and all that.’
‘And the word on the street is that you’ve given up your job as well? You’re not having some kind of breakdown, are you?’
‘There’s no such thing. Didn’t they teach you anything at shrink school?’
As well as being the smartest in our family Yvonne is also a trained child psychologist. She slaps my arm playfully. ‘They taught me enough to recognise when someone’s being evasive.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I’m not having a breakdown, or a mid-life crisis or any of that malarky. I’ve just run out of steam, that’s all. With a bit of TLC I’ll be back up and running before you know it.’
Once we’re inside the boys warm to me in no time. I start by catching up on their news and getting them to tell me stuff about what they’ve learned at pre-school and then once they start to lose interest in talking I move on to some gentle chasing around the living room with me being a monster determined to eat them before finally they hand me a light sabre and we move on to all-out war. It’s fun doing the uncle thing. I feel like I finally have a role I can play well. The downside is that seeing the boys makes me feel a little out of sorts because I know I would have made a terrific father.
Like most couples Lauren and I had talked in a general fashion about starting a family. We’d talked about the ratio of boys to girls that we’d want (one of each) and what names we’d choose (Connie and Samuel) and speculated about our own parenting skills (we were sure we’d be great). But we never set ourselves a deadline and maybe that made sense. With Lauren being seven years younger than me there was plenty of time for us to be casual about our imaginary family’s future.
Nevertheless, forty seemed like the perfect age to become a dad. Yes, there was the perennial argument about starting early so that you’d still be able to run about and play football with your kids but I’d already missed that boat and anyway, there’s more to life than football. At forty, I reasoned, I would’ve seen enough of life to be fully committed to the fatherhood thing; I’d be in a better position to push for a more strategic role at work that wouldn’t involve so much travelling; and above all I’d feel mentally equipped to take on the job of a lifetime because that’s how seriously I took the idea of being a dad. I wasn’t going to do it lightly. My dad had been the best dad ever and with him as a role model I was going to give it my all.
Life would’ve been so different if everything had gone to plan. Maybe Lauren would be pregnant and looking forward to the autumn birth of our first child. How weird would that have been, to have a gorgeous little boy or girl? And how different would my life have ended up? Everyone says how hard it is saying goodbye to the child-free life but no one ever mentions how tough it is to say goodbye to the things you never had.
Looking around Yvonne and Oliver’s house filled with photos of their life together hung on every wall of their home; listening to them tell stories of family holidays they had taken and hearing their plans for the future; watching the kids crawling in and out of their laps, asking for and on occasions demanding their attention and seeing the looks of love and frustration in their eyes as they gave in to their constant requests was like seeing family life incarnate. The sum total of two lives combined in order to make something new. Even my parents, who aren’t exactly the greatest social observers, felt it; I could see it in their eyes. There was a joy there, a real sense of pleasure at seeing my sister’s family in action in the present, while simultaneously recalling those cherished moments from their own family life. Over lunch I lost count of how many times something my nieces or nephews said or did reminded my parents of a story from our shared past back in the days when they themselves were parents of young children. And I could see that whenever they looked at me their eyes were filled not with disappointment – my parents’ appetite for grandkids had been more than sated by my siblings’ kids – but rather sadness that I was missing out on something that they felt should have been mine by rights.
After a late lunch, Yvonne suggests that we go for a walk, so all of us apart from my mum, who wants to stay with Evie, put on our coats and head out to the fields behind the house. The boys look like miniature Michelin men in their overstuffed shiny winter jackets and they grab the biggest sticks they can find and begin battling each other so that Oliver and Yvonne constantly have to monitor them to ensure they don’t poke out each other’s eyes. Dad and I are left to our own devices and for the most part we walk in silence and take in the scenery. As we come to a stile my dad stops and looks out across the field.
‘It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?’
‘Stunning,’ I reply. ‘Yvonne and Oliver have done well getting a place like this.’
‘They’ve worked hard enough to make it happen. Yvonne was telling me there are some nights Oliver doesn’t get home until gone ten.’ He stops and points to a huge black bird sitting in a tree in the middle of the field. ‘Is that a rook or a crow?’
‘I’ve got no idea, Dad. Biology was never one of my strong suits.’
He nods but I know he’s not listening. ‘I reckon it’s a rook.’
‘What’s the difference between a rook and a crow anyway? They look pretty similar to me.’
Dad just shrugs. ‘Your mum wants me to check in with you, you know, make sure you’re all right and all that,’ he says.
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
‘She’s worried about you.’
‘I know and there’s no need.’
‘That’s what I said. I told her you’re a grown man and you’ve got to find your own way.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
‘You know your mother. When she’s got a bee in her bonnet she doesn’t listen to any opinion but her own. Can I tell her that you’re OK?’
‘It’d be more fun if you didn’t.’
‘True, but she’s a worrier, your mother. Always has been, always will be. Nothing’s going to change that. So shall I tell her you’ve got a plan?’
‘A plan?’
‘To sort yourself out.’
For the first time in this conversation I realise that he isn’t articulating Mum’s worries, but his own. My mum would never ask if I had a plan when she’d be far happier to give me the benefit of her own. It scares me to think that Dad’s this concerned because my dad doesn’t tend to worry about anything. He pretty much takes everything in his stride. If the man who’d sooner stand and watch than get involved has felt the need to speak to me it can only mean that my life (from the outside at least) is looking a lot worse than I thought.
I look over at the rook or whatever it is. It pecks the ground a few times before taking to the air. ‘Yes, tell her I’ve got a plan. Tell her everything’s in order.’
My dad nods but I can see that he’s not convinced.
For the next few days not a great deal happens. I eat, sleep, catch a cold and watch a lot of needlessly gory US police procedurals with my parents but without Ginny to think about, life has no focus. Just as I’m feeling at my lowest however I get some post forwarded by Lauren, and although most of it is useless junk mail there’s one that brightens my day immensely.
‘You look like you’ve won the lottery,’ says Mum, as she passes me in the hallway. ‘Good news?’
‘Great news. It’s a cheque for five hundred and eighty-six pounds. Apparently I overpaid on my tax last year and this is the amount plus interest.’
My mum peers at the cheque. ‘You should spend it,’ she says, ‘before they tell you it was a mistake and try and take it back off you!’
I hand her the cheque. ‘You take it and we’ll call it rent money.’
‘I’ll do no such thing!’ she says, affronted. ‘I don’t want your money, thank you very much.’ She shoves the cheque back in my hand. ‘If you want to make me happy, burn those tracksuit bottoms you’ve been living in these past few days, go into town, buy yourself some new clothes and smarten yourself up. You’re nearly forty, Matthew, and you need to start dressing like it!’
12
Heading towards the architectural wonder that is Selfridges in the Bullring, admiring its bulging bug-like compound-eye exterior, I marvel once again how much the city I love has changed. All the landmarks I once used to get my bearings have been moved, revamped or bulldozed. The old rundown grade-two listed Moor Street Station has been renovated to look like the location for a cosy BBC Sunday night Agatha Christie adaptation, the Rotunda has been transformed from a tatty office block to a designer apartment building, and the old fruit and veg market down where Don Christie’s record shop used to be is now a huge space-age shopping centre. Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest that people, like cities, are in need of an overhaul from time to time if they are going to keep pace with the modern age? Could a sartorial revamp be the first step in turning me from a tired rundown thirtysomething into a gleaming example of twenty-first-century manliness?
Despite my mother’s input, clothes have in fact been on my mind for some time. Now that I am turning forty there are some items of clothing in my wardrobe that I will no longer be able to pull off. Take for example my T-shirt collection. I have jokey ones (e.g. a drawing of a huge thumb gesturing to the left of me with the words: Who’s this jerk? above it), I have designer ones with fashionable logos on the front that make me feel like a walking advert and I have a few cool ones with abstract images that used to look quite good underneath a suit jacket, not to mention the obligatory band T-shirts from my twenties that I haven’t the heart to throw away.