Daddy Dearest

by Paul Southern

  ‘So?’

  ‘So…’ he said, drawing out the ‘o’ like a real thespian.

  This was his turn, as well, I suppose. I didn’t begrudge him a share of the limelight. I understood it perfectly. In the black quarry of your soul, the dark machinery whirrs, drilling for its own selfish seams. Even the hand on my arm was artificial. It made him feel good, too.

  ‘So someone else was down there.’

  I looked at him and wondered what was going through his mind. I’ve always had a problem doing that. I’m always projecting out the bad parts of me and thinking the worst of people. Or maybe I’m just being realistic. I give people far more intelligence and sensitivity than they merit, and often the other way round. People I know who have appeared dumb have often surprised me. They have said things that made me think there was more going on in there than the general squelch and marrow of their banality. Sure, they have soon relapsed into their natural state, their intellectual philistinism, but for a second there has been a connection.

  I had such a feeling with the officer. He was urbane and young, but not stupid young as some are; he acknowledged my age and was respectful, which was more than I expected. I imagined he was already earmarked for promotion, had ambitions far beyond the beat. I imagined him sparring with the Oxbridge types in court - what travesty it is to see the rank and file exposed on the bench, confused and bewildered by the cut and thrust of champagne drinking hoorah Henrys. I have been a juror in my time, too, and fought for justice, only to be shouted down, and I know the pain of justice not done, so when he spoke, I listened.

  ‘The first thing I want to tell you is try not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do all we can to find your little girl. Often, missing children are found in the first few hours. We have officers going from flat to flat, looking at the CCTV here and in the surrounding area. The city centre is covered. If she managed to get out, she’ll be found. You can help us by staying calm and telling us anything else you think may be important. The smallest detail can be vital. Do you understand?’

  I nodded.

  He picked his hat up, brushed his coat down and made for the door. Then he turned as if one of those details had just occurred to him.

  ‘You said you were married?’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘Have you told your wife?’

  I paused. ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘It might be an idea to.’

  The door closed behind him.

  My wife?

  I looked at the WPC and the look of bemusement had given way to one of pity. I could live with that. Just.

  6

  Consider the case. I took my daughter with me on Friday night, the way I always do, watched her get her pink Barbie coat on in the porch that used to be mine, saw her wave at me and mouth the word Daddy really loud, so that even through the double-glazed windows it echoed down the street, and waited in front of the glass. There was a little, pink mark on her cheek when she emerged, a lipstick memory of her mother. I used to get those but I’m not sure I like thinking about them any more; I’ve moved on. Only on is not quite the right word; away is more accurate. It’s hard to do the on bit when you have such strong physical ties. My daughter is an umbilical cord between us, a cord we thought we’d severed with the divorce papers. I don’t resent it; neither does my wife; but we both wish it wasn’t there.

  Actually, I do resent it; I wish I could start all over with somebody else. I wish my wife wasn’t around so that I could get on with my life. The Friday nights waiting in the rain - do all women insist their ex-husbands stand outside so that the neighbours can see? - are a ritual humiliation. People I’ve known for years cross the road when I come near, refuse to take my outstretched hand, ignore my pleasantries, have taken my wife’s side - they have heard no other - and whisper behind my back. It is revenge for what has happened, a weekly tar and feathering.

  When I take my daughter on the Friday, there is a kind of unwritten understanding that she’ll be back on the Sunday, sometime between four and six, although this varies depending on whether we’ve been to the cinema, or whether the trains are running on time, or whether my wife’s in. Whatever the vagaries of this, it’s true to say that my daughter always returns, the same way it’s true that she always arrives when I pick her up. To my wife’s credit, and you will understand how difficult it is for me to say that, my daughter has always been there. My wife has never shirked her responsibility or hidden my daughter from me; she knows my daughter loves me, as I know my daughter loves her. It’s what makes it so difficult. If my daughter was not coming to see me, I’d want to know about it; if something happened while my wife was looking after her, during her watch, I’d want to know about it. I’d want to know everything. If she has a bruise on her leg, or a mark on her arm, I’ll ring my wife up and say how did it happen? It’s not that I don’t trust her - trust was never the issue (at least, not for me) - but I don’t like the man / men she’s with. Maybe I don’t like them because I’m jealous, maybe because I’m just projecting out my badness again; it’s hard to say. But I don’t like them with my daughter. I want my daughter to be with me all the time. My life is better when I have her.

  You can imagine my dilemma, then, as I stood there with the WPC. What would I say to her? This wasn’t part of the unwritten understanding. I looked at the WPC and my heart gave way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m too distraught to speak to her. Could you?’

  I suppose she felt she was obliged to; she was too young and naïve to object. I gave her my mobile phone and she took it and sat down on the sofa. I stared at her while she spoke and tried to work out what my wife was saying from the pauses and the reaction on her face, whether she was angry or cross or just upset. It must have been hard on the WPC, and I felt a coward for asking her, though enough of one not to want to do anything about it. It was then I realised that the conversation had ended and she was handing the phone back to me.

  ‘What did she say?’

  She nodded at the phone. ‘She wants to speak to you.’

  My heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I pressed the phone close and the sound was like cockles on the beach, the distant roar of the sea, but through it her voice came, and it was so plaintiff and musical and sad, that it pierced the dark clouds in me. Shamefully, I began to cry.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I didn’t expect her to be so reasonable. I expected her to go wild, ask me how this could have happened, call me every name she could think of, cry out how I could have been so stupid as to let our little girl out of my sight; scream at me.

  I sobbed. Tears are easier than words. It’s why kids use them so much. They hide behind them. They think they’ll excuse them. I let my daughter know this from an early age; I didn’t want her getting any fancy ideas. I always used to say, ‘It’s no use crying. Crying won’t help’, and she used to wail louder, fighting against the injustice of it all. Surely I couldn’t have seen through them? I had, of course.

  ‘No,’ I said, hoping my wife couldn’t see through mine.

  I wish I’d stop relapsing into addressing her as my wife; it’s been over for years. When people ask questions, and they always do, I’m forced to talk about her and that does my head in. Even if I use the words ex-wife or ex, they still have that lingering air of attachment. I wish there was a new word I could use, one that that didn’t have so many connotations, or such stigma. It must be pretty obvious when people see me with my little girl at weekends that someone is missing: why can’t we just leave it at that? Why do I have to bring her up? Why can’t I stop thinking about her?

  She said she was coming over, which was worrying. I don’t like her to see my place. It’s not that I’m untidy - quite the opposite, in fact; I’m meticulous. But it brings it all back. I don’t want her knowing what I’m like and what I’m doing. I think she feels the same; hence, the waiting outside in the rain. Of course, I know exactly what it’s like in her house; it used to be mine. I know every
nook and cranny, have tried every door and slept in every bed. That must be galling for her. When she goes to sleep at night, maybe my ghost walks round with her; when she tries to obliterate all memory of me, as she did, throwing away every single photograph, and smashing every ornament and picture I bought, would there still be something left? Would she find the messages I left for her under the wallpaper in ten, twenty years’ time? Or a birthday or Valentine’s Day card buried deep in a drawer she’d thought she’d emptied? I used to think she wouldn’t bother - when I knew her, she was too practical; was not a hoarder like me, or sentimental - but now I’m not so sure. I’m not sure about much these days; everything has become unclear.

  Where is my little girl?

  As soon as I switched the phone off, the fear returned. For a second, I was thinking about something else and that made me feel guilty. I wondered if they’d found her, if even now a little girl was being walked into a lift and led back to her daddy. Nothing prepares you for that kind of thing, like nothing prepares you for death. You can expect it and even anticipate it, but you can’t experience it. Death is easier, though. You only get one act. When you lose someone like I did, that act is repeated night after night, endlessly. Every night is a death, and every morning a false hope.

  The WPC got up and offered to make some coffee. I told her where everything was and watched her busy herself round the kitchen. She looked quite at home there and I knew she was feeling better for having something to do. Her heels hit the tiles with loud clacks and the spoon rattled against the sides of the cups. She was a dab hand with the milk and sugar, too. I took one from her and sat next to her on the sofa. In different circumstances, who knows? I’ve never been confident with women. I’ve known them and seen them, have tasted lipstick in my mouth and smelt their pubic hair, but it has not added to my confidence. It has raised my levels of competence and that has only been a good thing; having a woman say, as has happened to me a few times, when I was unseasoned and unready for the world, and sometimes even in my prime, that it was okay and not to worry, is right up there with acne in something to worry about. It seemed a cruel joke, not to say irony - and some might say a cosmic one - that the moment of my greatest want, when girls’ bodies orbited me with such regularity, was when galaxies of acne began forming on my face. I mapped star charts of loneliness in my youth, traced latitudes of longing that seemed to have no end, waiting for love’s shooting star.

  ‘Do you think they’ll find her?’

  She looked at me over her coffee and reached for her handbook of comforting replies. I don’t know what I was expecting from her; it wasn’t the kind of question that had an answer. There’s only so much you can say. To say too much would have been unprofessional; to say too little, heartless.

  ‘I’m sure they will.’

  I warmed to her, then; she’d done her best. Silence roared into the vacuum the question left behind. I am not much for small talk but it has its place. It certainly did then. It would have stopped me thinking. You see, I was thinking of telling her everything. She had such a trusting, bland face that I felt compelled by it. I don’t know why I hadn’t before. Maybe I was just scared. The more we sat together, the greater was the urge. It was on the tip of my tongue right up to the moment my wife walked in. If not for her, all this would have been so different, but then, without her, so would my life.

  You see, when I went into the basement before, there was something I didn’t tell you or the officer. I had seen someone down there. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  7

  After the WPC left, I was revisited by an unwelcome guest in my life. From time to time they have come to me, and always when I least expected it. I remember meeting them as a child and being driven mad with their unreasonable demands; I wondered why I couldn’t get rid of them, and why my parents couldn’t help me get rid of them. Do this, do that, I was prey to their whim, a slave to their grotesque requests. There has been no pattern to their visits; if there was, I would have shut the door and prepared myself. They just turned up.

  I remember once when they caught me in bed with a woman. We hadn’t done anything, yet. We were just lying there, talking, going through the pretence which is really no pretence, just an awkward precursor to another awkward precursor. I didn’t really fancy her and she didn’t really fancy me. I think she was a librarian. She was only in my bed because she was drunk - how else would I have got her there? I could feel her next to me and knew I’d be disappointed when the covers finally came off. What she’d make of me was another matter; there was (and is) nothing remotely sexy about me: I have nothing to show off. So I was waiting for my hand to stop trembling when I looked over and noticed the curtains were not evenly hung; there was a fold of material caught on the sill. Far from ignoring it - I mean, what is a bit of cloth compared to a librarian’s body? - it became a bête noire. She was wittering on about Proust, how many lovers he had, both male and female, and what a joy it was to read something that had struck such a chord with her, adumbrating her own life story in the process; and all I could think about was the curtain. I don’t know Proust, though he sounded interesting, or Gide, or Genet, or any of the other French homosexuals, but I have often stared at their books and thought them the books I ought to have read - though that list is quite extensive and would take me a year or so to get round to; and who has that kind of time? - so I nodded vaguely at the right moments, or what I thought were the right moments, and all the while stared at the crumpled flower in the curtain lining, wishing I could just go over there and straighten it. Eventually, I could take it no more and told her I needed to go to the bathroom. I was conscious of her eyes on my behind, walking with an uneven gait across the room, and disguising the thing I have called my manhood from her eyes. In my absence, maybe she would do the same, adjust her body to its greatest advantage.

  When I returned, she had done exactly that. She had chosen the classic Manet pose, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, to introduce me to her garden of earthlies. I thought of other famous paintings of naked women that would have suited her better. Who did she think she was? Albertine? I smiled at her and flicked the fold in the curtain. I was ready. Only I wasn’t. My other guest had arrived. I sat on the bed with her and waited for the moment to reach its crisis, for my hand to reach her thigh, and all the bits between, when I noticed my clothes on the floor. I have told you I am meticulous. I always keep my clothes neatly at the side of my bed, on an old piano stool my grandmother left me. The red velvet edges are frayed and the clothes were not quite aligned the way I normally had them, so I rolled off the side of the bed and pretended to get something from my trouser pocket. She was watching me, I think, and was a little perplexed, but I made a decent stab of an excuse and told her I was just making sure my pager was turned off - this happened some years ago; I was quite ahead of my time then, and collected all the latest gadgetry - and I didn’t want us to be disturbed. I lifted the trousers carefully, then put them down three times. At that time, I did everything in threes. Today it’s fives, which is a bit of a chore because everything takes longer, but what can you do? I felt quite relieved I’d got away with it and made generous strokes of her legs which put a smile back on her face, although it was a drunken smile and not the prettiest I’ve seen. She gave up on Proust, then - though not the way I had - and let me have her way with her. I was hard, I remember, but couldn’t get my trousers out of my head. Had I really aligned them in the right way? As I kissed her cheeks, I glanced over and found I hadn’t. The trousers were not equidistant from the edges of the stool at all. I closed my eyes but the voice in my head - my visitor’s voice - was strident and insistent. The more I tried to ignore it, the more my performance suffered, until my lips could barely press against her flesh. She sensed things were wrong and opened her eyes - she was building up quite a head of steam, you see; I’m not a good lover, I never have been, but I’ve always been good with my hands.

  ‘Why have you stopped?’

  I paused. ‘
I’m getting my second wind.’

  I hadn’t intended it to be funny.

  ‘You’re a strange boy, aren’t you?’

  I’m not sure she was being altogether unkind or patronising; she just didn’t understand. I smiled at her and asked her to roll over. There was a twinkle in her drunken eye then that reminded me of smutty, seaside picture postcards. It seemed so inappropriate to a woman of her age and position, and yet summed her up better than anything I could think of. Sex is ridiculous when you’re young and beautiful - and how many of us can say we are or were? When you’re older, it’s a farce. Get it over and be done with. She presented her dimpled cheeks and put her head on the pillow and waited. And waited. I seized my chance. I slipped off the edge of the bed and lifted the trousers up, then put them down three times.

  When I turned, she was looking at me, and the twinkle had gone. I think she felt more sad than angry or humiliated. I doubt it quite lived up to her expectations - that is, if she had any in the first place. She put her clothes back on and went. I remember looking out of the window afterwards and being not too unhappy with myself. You see, with all that talk of Proust and the possibility of sex, my other visitor had gone with her.