In all this time he spent walking the land with Cryck, they were not seen by anyone. He believed that his Aoxin blood made him invisible too. But there were occasions when, crossing an open field, he thought he saw a farmer stand up at the wheel of a tractor with a hand screening his eyes, as though spotting him, a trespasser. There was a dusky evening when he reached a country lane and encountered a police car parked on kerb; and he was certain that a constable spun round to get a look at him, but no one followed. From what he could recall of Cryck’s illustrated maps, they covered a great distance—they crossed five county lines on foot, setting up new camps near each compartment they exposed. He came to feel more Aoxin than human. He was never bored or tired of learning, never frightened, never melancholy. His heart and mind seemed bigger, fuller. These days with Cryck were the best of his life.
Karen and my father came back to the room long after midnight. They must’ve thought, because I had the headphones on and lay unmoving in the bed, that I’d be oblivious to the sweep of corridor lights across the floor, the flurry of their shadows on the carpet, their stage whispers to each other, ‘Shshhh, keep it down, you’ll wake him.’
‘Sorry!’
But I heard and saw it all.
I watched their drunken shuffle to the bathroom with my lids half closed. I heard Karen’s meagre protestations to ‘Wait, wait, wait, hang on, he’ll see us, stop,’ while my father’s hands worked loose the dainty zip along the hipline of her skirt and, with a single downward tug, reduced it to a dumb suede hoop around her feet.
The angle of the hallway mirror gave a view of them. It was something I was not supposed to see but felt impelled to watch, to understand. She tried to shut the door behind them with a trailing hand, but it bounced in the latch and hung ajar. At first, their bodies moved inside the tiny bathroom like two lobsters in a tank. They held each other caringly. They kissed. But then the groping became heated, forceful. He pushed his thumb into her mouth and she bit down on it and grinned. I watched him kneel and press his nose into the mound between her legs, hitch off her knickers, haul her upwards by the thighs to sit her on the basin as though setting down a barrow, and then unbelt himself, lower his jeans, bring out the mystifying private flesh my mother wrote whole paragraphs about, a distended thing that I could barely reconcile with the colour diagrams in Biology or my own equipment.
He tried to mute her gasps of pleasure by covering her mouth, but nothing could be done about the thump of Karen’s shoulders on the thin partition every time my father thrust at her. His forearm came towards her throat. His thumb pressed beneath her jaw. ‘Oi, don’t,’ I heard her tell him. ‘Don’t. That’s too much. Stop.’ And she slapped his arm away. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. His breathing sounded pained.
Afterwards, they stayed there, clinched and statuesque. They panted and they sniggered. I saw Karen hop down from the basin, scavenge for her knickers on the lino, out of puff. ‘How often have you, I mean, I don’t—I don’t even know what to say—I haven’t ever—I mean, it’s never been like that—with anyone,’ she said, while my father put himself away and rinsed his hands and face under the squealing taps. ‘Can I sleep here?’ she asked him. ‘It’s late and I’m—well, you know.’
‘Stay if you want,’ he said, ‘but you’ll need to be gone before he wakes up—it’ll only confuse him. He’s angry with me as it is.’
‘I’ll walk to the cab rank, then.’
‘Up to you.’
‘Yeah . . . Yeah, that’s probably best. I don’t want him to think bad of me.’
‘All right. Whatever you reckon.’
Karen found her skirt and said, ‘Is there a number I can ring you at? It’d be good to see you again some time.’ He reminded her that she was meant to have a boyfriend. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, ‘but, if there’s a number?’ and, on the bedside table next to me, he wrote it down for her. I couldn’t make out the digits, though I doubt they were correct.
‘What about your walkman?’ he asked. ‘I could try to slip it off him.’ But she told him I could keep it—something to remember her by—and he didn’t even thank her. She collected her guitar and left.
My father stood shirtless at the foot of my bed for some time after, smoking a cigarette and flapping the fumes out the window. A cool draught bothered my neck. I knew that he was staring at me, but I didn’t dare acknowledge him. The pretence of my sleep was sheltering. I counted every inhalation, exhalation, until he settled in the bed across from me, turned off the lamp. And for what seemed like hours, I listened to his agitation of the bedsheets as he struggled with his dreams.
SIDE TWO
His Constancy
We came through silhouettes of overpasses, navigated roundabouts, flashed by pylons and sheer grassy banks, zipped past stuccoed houses, dipped under the legs of bridges, left behind the pasture and the meadowland to join the concrete city. We had the music turned up high, the speakers fizzing Cocteau Twins, a thick echoing noise in which my father hid from me. It took sixteen minutes to arrive in Leeds. I sat on my hands the whole way there. A flat nest of buildings in the distance became a one-way system lined with patchwork architecture: Sixties apartment blocks the colour of wet mud, brick warehouses, viaducts, angular office complexes, sandstone tenements, the mirrored glass of brand new high-rises, the colonnaded splendour of the town hall, the spires of law courts blushed with soot. I expected Leeds to be as sprawling and mysterious as London, but it was smaller, dimmer, less engulfing. The streets were emptier; the clouds hung lower overhead; the sunlight had a drear quality when thrown against the pavements, as though filtered through crepe paper.
I don’t know if my father noticed these things, too, but he was quieter than usual as we crawled through the city centre. He turned the music down until it was a murmur and let me absorb the sights outside the window—it must’ve occurred to him that I was seeing them for the first time. All he said was, ‘No one’s in a hurry to get anywhere round here. Look at them all, just trundling along. Not a care in the world.’ I couldn’t tell if it was praise or condemnation.
In the quiet, the ticking of the indicator irked me, a countdown to something I couldn’t quite interpret. I was so anxious about what lay ahead of us that morning I couldn’t speak, and I kept tasting the half-cooked breakfast sausages we had eaten at the White Oak. We didn’t pass the Metropole, but coming through the main square we skirted by the Queens Hotel, whose entrance was adorned with plush red carpet and gold handrails. ‘See that fancy place,’ he said, as we drove past, ‘next time we do this trip, I promise we’ll stay there. No more dodgy Cumberlands for breakfast. No more stale toast and jam. The royal treatment. That’s what we deserve, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, but my gut twinged at the prospect.
‘Well, anyway.’ He sighed, noting my reluctance. Every gear change was a maddened heave from this point on, until we reached the Kirkstall Road, where he took his scabby hand off the lever. ‘Do us a favour and dig out the paracetamol,’ he said. ‘This thing’s really starting to ache now.’ He was waving at the glovebox. I fumbled around inside it, laid my eyes upon the yellow pack of Anadin. ‘Any left?’ he asked.
‘A few,’ I said.
‘Get us out a couple, would you?’
I did as I was told, handed them over: a pair of white tablets on my palm like milk teeth I’d pulled out. He took both and dry-gulped them. ‘So, then—how’d you feel? You ready to see some compartments, or what?’
‘I suppose.’
‘You don’t sound very excited about it. All you’ve been banging on about is Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, and now we’re here you aren’t even fussed.’
‘I am. It’s just—I don’t know. I’m tired.’
‘Hmm.’ My father thought he understood me well enough to second guess me. ‘Look, I’ll smooth things over with your mum later on, don’t worry. She won’t mind once I’ve explained it all to her. I’ll be the one who gets it in the neck, not you.’
‘It’s not that,�
� I said, though she was fully on my mind.
‘What’s up with you, then? You’ve had a sour face on you all morning. This is meant to be a treat.’
I didn’t have the words to express my disillusionment. I could only feel it in the fibre of my body. Something had expired in the night, vacated me. It didn’t matter if the outcome was the same or better—we could spend the afternoon on set with Maxine Laidlaw in full costume, the director could invite me to guest star in an episode—it wouldn’t change my disaffection with my father. I wanted the journey he had promised. I wanted him, for once, to prove his constancy. But he seemed to spend each new day of his life promoting compensation for the day before.
A little further on, the traffic thinned and we passed the smoking metal chimney of a factory; all the properties on both sides of the road began to look more corporate, bearing shiny monograms and logos. He gave a salute through the windscreen: ‘There she blows,’ he said, so cheerily it was conspicuous. ‘Yorkshire Television.’
It looked like a suburban hospital. A collection of low brown buildings fronted by an unkempt lawn. Thin, dark windows set into the bricks at even intervals. A satellite dish on the outermost roof the size of an aeroplane wheel.
‘Not very spectacular from here, is it? But wait until we get you through the door. All kinds of magic on the inside.’
‘You’re driving past it,’ I said.
‘Can’t get in from this end. We need to loop around.’
He took us a few hundred yards along the carriageway and turned uphill, towards what seemed to be a council estate. There was a long procession of terraced houses with FOR SALE signs before the studios came into view again. The buildings looked broader from the rear, and more ordinary. In the vast car park, fenced off with steel, a fleet of white lorries was waiting to be loaded. We hung a right at the junction. ‘Hey, look at that,’ he said, spotting something in his periphery. ‘Eleven thirty on the button.’ And just as we were closing on the entrance gates, he braked and pulled up on the double yellow lines. He motioned at the clock. ‘Ye of little faith, Danno. Ye. Of little. Faith.’
I checked the side mirror, hopefully.
QC was striding up to meet us: those bright red shoes were unmistakable, his listing gait unusual. His arms hung crab-like by his torso, hardly moving when he walked. There was a clumping sound behind me as he opened the door. He didn’t so much sit down in the seat as dump his whole weight into it. ‘Are you feeling okay, Fran? You’re actually on time for once,’ he said.
‘Good morning to you too, mate.’
‘Yeah yeah. I’m still not happy about this.’
‘Ah, you know I’d do the same for you. Stop moaning.’
‘If only that were true.’ QC gripped my headrest, leaning in. He offered up his other hand for me to shake. ‘So, your dad says you’re a proper fan.’ His fingernails were oddly pristine, buffed. ‘I’ll have to quiz you a bit later. See how much of a Fexhead you are.’
‘He doesn’t like being called that,’ my father said.
‘What?’
‘I’m saying, don’t call him that.’
‘Oh, well, pardon me for breathing.’ QC slumped back.
‘I don’t mind actually,’ I said.
My father coughed at me. ‘Oh, I see—like that, is it? One rule for him and one for me.’
QC called from the back, ‘Let’s just get this over with, eh? We’re on a schedule here, in case you need reminding.’
We drove another hundred yards or so, up to the entrance gates. There was a set of automated barriers with an intercom. My father stopped the car, wound down his window. He pushed the button on the intercom and waited.
The barrier didn’t lift, but after a moment a man in a white uniform came out of the gatehouse. ‘Good news, it’s Foz—we should be okay here, mate,’ said QC from the back. ‘He doesn’t like me much, but I can handle him.’
‘Just do what you need to.’
‘Don’t forget to smile,’ said QC, patting my shoulder. The joss-stick sweetness of his aftershave was smothering.
The guard came round to the driver’s side and peered in at my father. ‘You got an access card there, pal?’
‘He’s the one you want to ask,’ my father said, thumbing at the back seat.
QC strained to get his wallet from his jeans. He took out a small laminated card and stretched forward to present it.
‘Oh, hey, never saw you there,’ the guard said to him.
‘No problem, Foz. How you getting on today?’
‘Yeah. Can’t complain.’ The guard studied the ID cursorily. ‘Barnaby,’ he said, grinning. ‘What kind of name is that?’
‘Sixties, wasn’t it? Blame my old man,’ QC replied. ‘My sister had it worse.’
‘What’d they call her?’
‘Ophelia.’
‘Yeesh. Poor lamb.’ The guard passed back the card to my father, laughing. ‘These two coming in as guests, are they?’
‘That’s the plan,’ my father said.
The guard gave him a submissive look, but the warmth drained from his eyes. ‘You’ll be on my list then,’ he said.
QC slotted the card back into his wallet. ‘Yeah, I put them on it yesterday.’
‘Well, I should probably check it to be sure. You know how they are in this place.’
‘Tell me about it, mate.’
The guard nodded towards me. ‘What’s the lad’s name?’
I felt QC tapping the back of my seat, so I flashed the guard a smile.
My father blinked. ‘Daniel,’ he said.
‘Daniel what?’
‘Jarrett.’
I flinched.
My father barrelled on: ‘It’s two Rs, two Ts.’
‘And you are?’
‘Philip Jarrett. One L.’
‘All right, I don’t need a spelling lesson.’
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘That’s Grandpa—’
‘Shshh, it’s all right, son. We’ll see your grandpa later.’ He angled his head to the guard. ‘He’s a bit excited.’
The guard hitched up his trousers by the belt. ‘I’ll get my clipboard.’
‘Can’t you just let us through, Foz?’ QC called. ‘You know me. And we need to be on set by noon.’
‘If it were down to me, I’d not get off my chair all day. But I’ve got a boss like everyone else. And he likes his paperwork in order.’
‘Fair enough,’ said my father.
‘All right, do what you need,’ said QC.
The guard ambled away. We watched him head into the gatehouse.
QC huffed. ‘Bellend.’
‘Likes a chat, doesn’t he? Jesus,’ my father said. ‘How long’s he been on the gate?’
‘Since a bit after Sid left. He’s all right to have a smoke with, I suppose, but the stick goes right back up his arse once break time’s over.’
‘Well, anyway—so far so good.’
I felt like I was stapled to my seat. ‘Why did you lie to him?’ I said.
No one answered.
‘Why did you lie?’ I said.
My father kept his eyes on the barrier. ‘I’m not lying. Who’s lying?’
‘You just gave him Grandpa’s name. And you said I was called Jarrett.’
‘Well, you’ll be a Jarrett one day, if your mother gets her way—I’d start getting used to it.’ His nails worked the stubble on his cheek in tiny strokes. ‘And I wasn’t lying, just acting—there’s a difference. It’s like checking into a hotel under a—you know, whatever the word is. A fake name.’ He landed his eyes on me, a resoluteness to his posture. ‘Do you want to get on that set or don’t you?’
‘Yeah, but why can’t we just be ourselves?’
‘It’s complicated, Dan. You’re going to have to trust me.’
‘You always say that, though.’
In the backseat, QC snickered.
‘And, anyway,’ I said, ‘you work here—why can’t you use your own card?’
‘Because.
’
‘Because what, though?’
QC chimed in, amused: ‘Oh, Fran, mate, this is ridiculous. Just tell him what the problem is, for crying out loud. Save yourself the hassle.’
My father toyed with the handbrake button. ‘Thanks for all your help here, Uncle Barnaby. I appreciate it.’
‘I think I’m helping you enough for one day.’ QC sniffed. ‘Actually, this is the last favour you’ll be getting off me for a while, don’t worry. We’re even.’
My father’s eyes were on the gatehouse now. ‘What’s taking him so long in there?’
‘Fucked if I know,’ QC said.
‘Language.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You still haven’t told me why.’ I had to bend forward to get his attention. ‘Dad.’
‘Why what?’
‘The card,’ said QC. ‘For starters.’ He must’ve smirked, because my father glared into the rear-view.
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe. Yeah. Just a bit. Ha ha ha.’
When the explanation came, it wasn’t what I hoped to hear. ‘If you really want to know, my own card doesn’t work right now,’ my father said. ‘That’s why.’
‘How come?’
‘I—it just doesn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, Dan, if I’m under arrest you need to tell me, ’cause all this why not this and why not that is doing my head in.’ He shook away the loose strands of his fringe. ‘Honestly, I didn’t think there’d be an issue. It’s like that time we couldn’t rent a car on holiday. Remember we had to take the bus everywhere ’cause your mum’s licence had expired? Portugal, I think it was.’
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 11