‘It’s a tragedy.’
‘It certainly is.’
‘I’m not sure how she’ll get over it.’
‘She has more chance than him.’
‘Don’t you think she feels bad enough?’
‘A bit late, wouldn’t you say?’
‘People do make mistakes.’
‘Yes, they do.’
‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
‘Why?’
‘My best friend’s just lost her husband and you’re blaming the whole thing on me?’
‘I’m blaming the whole thing on her. She should have thought about things a bit more.’
‘She was unhappy.’
‘I’m unhappy.’
‘Are you having an affair?’
‘No. Are you?’
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘It’s the kind of question a man asks himself when he sees the picture of a guy in a newspaper who has just killed himself and wonders if he’ll be next.’
‘That’s a revolting thing to say.’
‘It’s a revolting thing to do.’
‘Then don’t do it.’
‘I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about her.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to tell me.’
‘What? That I’m sorry?’
‘No. I want you to tell me if you’re having an affair.’
She looked at me in that way all women do when they’re on the ropes: affronted. How dare I even think of asking such a question. I must have a sick mind. Was I trying to hide something?
‘What do you think?’
Yes, I thought. You’re trying to hide (a) that you’ve thought about it, (b) that you’ve already done it, or (c) that you’re doing it right now.
‘No.’
What was I meant to say? Can you imagine the fireworks after that display? The fact she was or wasn’t having an affair was irrelevant. It was the way she dealt with it. I call it odious but self-righteous is perhaps nearer the mark. The standards she set herself were higher; the standards all women set themselves are higher – they put them there. It differentiates them from men. We’re losers and cheats. We’re expected to fall the small distance from the gutter into the drain. They have the whole expanse of heaven to fall from.
She gave a command performance that day and I’ve never forgotten.
My ex-wife has made me a pariah. She has got the house and money and her friends and I have nothing. Nothing except my daughter; and even that, I fear, won’t last long. I can feel my daughter going cold turkey with me already. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy her visits - how can she not with me as a dad? - it’s just she misses her mum and her friends more. I can understand that. Girls gravitate towards their mothers the older they get; daddy’s girl becomes mummy’s best friend. But my little girl is five. I should have many more years left. I want to be her everything before I am her nothing. I rely on her more than anything in the world.
There’s something else that’s pulling her away. My ex-wife is poisoning her. It’s not the obvious way, when children act as emissaries of hate, delivering Armalite insults through the no-man’s land of their parents’ war-torn separation; it’s more insidious. We are talking my ex-wife here. She denounces me by subtraction. If you do this, your father will take it away from you; if you do that, he’ll take you away. I have become the bogeyman. My ex-wife knows I’m a stickler for rules, and milks it to death. When my daughter asks why she has to do something, the answer is always: ‘Because your father says so.’ It gets her off the hook. I don’t blame her for this - I wish I could use her in the same way - but I resent it, and what it’s doing to my daughter. She is starting to see me less as a fun thing, and more of a chore. All the boring bits like homework and reading, and the granite insistence on table manners and cleanliness, which I imagine in ideal relationships - if they exist - are shared, are left to me. The less I see of her, the more I see she is not brushing her teeth every night, or reading a page of her book, the more I feel the burden. You worry twice as much when you’re separated. You worry about the life they have with you, and the life they have without you. My ex-wife exploits that. She knows what I’m like.
Then there’s her boyfriend. She says he’s not, but he is. He has that look about him: I’m shagging your ex-wife. Well, good luck, mate. I met him outside the house last year. He had a big, blue car and a bigger handshake. He did it deliberately, I know; squeezed the life out of me. He was sizing me up, wondering what the hell she ever saw in me. I was wondering the same thing. There’s something compelling about finding out who your ex is dating. Will they go for the same type, or the complete opposite?
‘I won’t go for a loser again.’
Quite. So there I was face to face with the winner. I wondered if she made love to him the same way, if she did things differently, if he was better or, heaven forbid, worse. You think I wouldn’t care, wouldn’t you? But I did. I wondered if he thought the same about me, and whether he was hung up that I’d been inside my wife - we were married, after all - and I’d visited all the places he was going. Was there something a bit deflating about that? Judging by his handshake, the answer was no. It was masculine and self-assured. But handshakes, like looks, can lie. Who knows what he’d be like when he hit the sack? Maybe he’d be a nervous wreck like I was.
I know he takes them on picnics and to the cinema and family stiff like that. I know he’s quite kind. My daughter tells me that. It’s the only thing that really bothers me. I don’t want him having an avuncular or fatherly relationship with her; I don’t want anyone having that with her; I’m her father. My wife’s lovers make me insecure and I hate that feeling. I want to be in control. When I realise how out of control I am, I feel like I could do anything. Anything.
‘How about she comes to live with me?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’ll miss her.’
‘You’ll see her at the weekends.’
‘That’s five days without her.’
‘You’re lucky it’s not more.’
‘How about alternate weeks?’
‘Do you want her to grow up normal? She needs stability.’
‘So do I.’
‘You had it.’
I remember the way she was in front of the judge. Her solicitor had her wearing a décolleté black dress, which I presumed was an indication of her state of mourning, but was more risqué than any funeral affair I’d ever seen. I wondered if she’d tried it on in front of him. It’s odd; I never used to bother too much about her when we were married; now, we aren’t, I’m bothered a lot. I wonder sometimes if I still love her. It’s a horrible thought. I looked at my solicitor, with his Bart Simpson tie and floppy hair, and knew he’d misjudged the mood. The judge threw us glances à la Pilate before the Jews. His hands were tied. The tears she shed that day would have done justice to the crucifixion. I stood there with Bart and wondered where it had all gone wrong.
My little girl was going to be absent from my life for 261 days a year for the next eleven years. For each of those days, I was ordered to pay my ex-wife maintenance. On top of that, I lost the house. The thorns are still pressing into my skull. She gave another command performance that day and I’m still counting the cost. It’s no wonder things turned out the way they did. Eat my shorts, bitch.
12
I had a lot of things to think about that night. I got so agitated, I got up and turned the light switch on five times. Then I moved the living room rug five times till it lay perfectly parallel to the sofa. My nerves were at me. I kept thinking of the basement and the open door and if I had missed anything. You should never revisit the scene of a crime; if you do, you’re either a ghoul or the culprit. In my case, it was both. I was responsible for the disappearance of my daughter, and there was some morbid part of me that needed to retrace her last steps.
All parents mourn their children; whether it is the premature
grief of miscarriage, or abortion, or the bitter sight of them in their prime, thrown through a windscreen, reduced to bone in some isolated hospital ward. The tears start when they’re born and never go away. My daughter is only five and already I’m looking back. I can smell her in her babygrow right now, looking at me through the bars of her cot, and I can tell you, it’s making me cry. I can hear her crawling up the stairs to the attic, laughing and gurgling and trying to open the door I locked so I wouldn’t be disturbed. I want to be disturbed now. I want her the way she was then so I can enjoy her more. There are what ifs and what might have beens, naturally, but above them all are the dreadful reminders of what was. There is no controlling what happens to your children; once you give them life, they’re on their own. That’s a tough thing to accept.
I left the flat about two in the morning. It was eerily quiet: no music, no voices on the stairwell; just the soft hum of the lights and the tapping of wires in the service shaft risers. I passed the middle-aged tart’s door; she would understand. She knew loss like no one else. I put my ear to her door and stroked the wood like it was her skin. I’d done that before, years ago, in a hospital ward, to my wife’s stomach, listening for signs of life. Dimly, I imagined a child breathing and wondered what to expect. You never know till you’re there. I’d never seen so much blood or felt so much pain. No matter how you dress babies up, they’re a messy business; and birth the messiest of all. My wife looked as though she’d been gangbanged ten times over. Not that there was anything sexual about it; quite the opposite. It was just a sense of her being ravaged and abandoned. Her body was being subjected to an ordeal far worse than having me on top of her.
While she was inside the womb, my daughter and I had quite a thing going. I would talk to her every evening and sometimes, to my ex-wife’s embarrassment, during the day, in waiting rooms or on station platforms, whenever we had a moment. I would put my head on her belly and tell her what was going on in the world. I wanted to keep her up to date.
‘Are you asleep or awake?’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘You can tell?’
‘She’s hasn’t kicked me for a bit.’
I lowered my head.
‘I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘I need to have a word.’
‘You’ll have plenty of time to do that when you’re cleaning nappies.’
I looked up at the clouds, at the high bank of altocumulus, and tried to imagine the distance between us.
‘It’s a beautiful day today, darling. The sky is a deep blue. When you come out, you’ll be able to see if for yourself. There are loads of good things to see out here. There are swings and roundabouts to play on, ice creams to eat, friends to play with. I’m going to take you everywhere. The world’s a bit weird but you’ll get used to it. I’ve just about managed. I’m going to get you prepared early so you don’t waste time. I can’t wait for you to come out.’
My wife went on reading her paper. There was a Chinese girl on the bench opposite who smiled at me. I pointed to my wife’s stomach and she nodded. She understood. I pointed to my stomach and then hers. She smiled back and shook her head. I think I fell for her right about then. Our muted conversation went on for about five minutes before I noticed anything was wrong.
‘You enjoying yourself?’
My wife had her paper down and her helmet on.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Miss Saigon over there.’
‘I was explaining to her what I was doing.’
‘You care to explain it to your wife?’
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. I think she’d given up on me even then. We left without saying anything. I must confess, I was rather desperate to turn round and see if the Chinese girl was looking at me. I wanted to know if I’d made an impact. I thought of casual ways I could do it - drop something or pretend to recognise someone as they passed - but it all seemed rather obvious. I am obvious, I know, but I have learned to be cleverer.
‘If you want to look round, why don’t you?’
You understand why I hate her so much? I swear there was nothing in my manner which would have given me away. She just sensed it.
‘Go on.’
Well, she did say. So I turned. The Chinese girl was engrossed in a book. She hadn’t given me a second thought. I’d love to tell you differently. I’d love to tell you she held a wild orchid in one hand and blew a kiss from the other. But that would have been fiction. I should have left things the way they were and imagined the rest. You should do that from the day you’re born. That way you won’t be disappointed. The only things that haven’t disappointed me are the clouds. That and my little girl.
Our attachment had been growing since the day I found out. I still have the pregnancy stick with the blue cross on it. It has faded now but the impact hasn’t. Some women would have been happy I talked so much to her. They would have seen it as a sign of commitment and care. There are so many guys out there who don’t. My wife saw it as an embarrassment. She didn’t enjoy her pregnancy. She didn’t get all mumsy and stuff like that; she just worried. Given the pain she had to go through, I couldn’t really blame her. I could afford to look at my bloody clouds and get all romantic about it. When my daughter came along, the distance between us only grew. It became a fault line; and, as she was so fond of saying, it was all mine.
I’d been there for about five minutes, listening for her. It was no use. I stopped stroking the door and walked towards the lift. There was something I had to do. I pressed the button and waited. I could hear voices inside: a woman’s and a man’s. You can tell a lot from voices; how people see themselves. These were drunk. When the lift doors opened, you could smell the alcohol off them. The woman was beautiful. She had a red dress on and a red choker round her neck. Her partner wore a suit and had his arm wrapped round her. They looked at me through glazed eyes. I don’t know if they recognised me. I recognised her. It was the six inch stilettos that gave her away. I would have been more forgiving if I’d known who owned them. I kept my eyes on them as the lift descended. I imagined my hands running from her straps up her calves. As if reading my mind, the man put an arm out. It fell on my shoulder.
‘We’re sorry what happened to your little girl. If there’s anything we can do.’
It was so unexpected, and sounded so sincere, the tears welled up.
‘Thank you.’
The lift hit the ground floor. It’s not really where I wanted. I wanted Minus One. I pretended I was going out for a breath of air, to clear my head. They let me off first and followed me to the main entrance. When we got outside, they turned and asked if I was okay; they were going to a late night bar and I was welcome to join them if I wanted. I thanked them for the offer but said I needed to be on my own. In truth, I would like to have gone. I could smell her perfume clearly and I was on the scent. Her stilettos clacked on the concrete and her hips swayed drunkenly as she went. I have seen couples like that before and it has always made me weep. He was tall and good looking - I wish I could say otherwise - and she was beautiful; they were also urbane and sophisticated. I looked up to them, though I was older and had probably seen more of the world, and I wanted to be them. I envied their beauty and their happiness. More than that, I wanted her, though I couldn’t find a way to say it. If it hadn’t been for the fact I’d been in her flat, I’m not sure I could have resisted.
I hadn’t intended to do it, I really hadn’t. It’s just the clacking had become too much. You’d think a man would make more noise - they are heavier and more oafish - but a woman’s weight is concentrated to a point, and sounds like nails being banged into a cross. My suffering was extreme. I felt like going up there and telling her what I thought. I didn’t know what she looked like, then, or if she had a boyfriend, and whether I’d come back all bloodied and bruised as has happened before in my life. The fear of it was enough to keep me in my place.
But the next day I snuck inside her room. Ever since that guy told me about c
ams and cylinders and dead-bolts, I’d become fascinated with locks. I practised on my own front door with two pieces of wire. After all, what would happen if I lost my key? How would I get in? It was thrilling knowing I could get in to any apartment. Hers was the first I tried though there have been others. I felt guilty about it afterwards. I would never pinch anything - I’m not that way inclined - but I was curious.
The view up there was much better; that was the first thing that hit me. Where I got to look at the adjoining building, she got to look over it; the wide open sky was her vantage, and the clouds sweeping across it. It felt like flying. I envied her that, too. I checked out her bedroom. There were paintings by Monet or Manet or Degas on the wall. I hate all that impressionistic stuff and the no-pointillism which came after. There’s something anaemic about it, something altogether too calming. I like my art mad. I don’t even really like the picture of the fox hunter on my wall; if it wasn’t for the crease in his trousers, he wouldn’t be there. I’d rather have a Bosch, or an Ernst, or a Dali, or a Picasso, but even that seems trendy; it feels like boredom to put it up. I don’t want people to know me like that.
I found some shoes on the bedroom floor. I don’t know whether they were the shoes, but that didn’t really matter. I felt like I had discovered something. I picked them up and sniffed them. There was a lingering smell of coconut, or palm oil. I measured them against the span of my hand: six inches, at least. I heard a door bang in the corridor outside and looked round. There weren’t many places to hide. I dived under the bed, ready for the worst. What would she say if she found me? What would I say? I imagined she’d call the police and I’d be sent to jail for breaking and entering. They wouldn’t consider the noise she made on my ceiling. For five minutes I was glued to her floor. But there were no further bangs. I realised I had been reprieved. Before I left, I opened a bedside drawer. I don’t know what made me do it - it was more than curiosity. Inside was a pile of folded camisole knickers - not thongs or hotpants or G-strings or other tasteless confections of material women usually collect. I felt myself warming to her. Every girl these days wears a thong; I don’t know how it became to be seen as sexy; maybe supermodels wear them, or footballers’ wives. To me it looks like they’re wearing a bra strap down there. I know I’m traditional in that sense. I tell myself it’s all about class and having standards. If I saw a piece of string coming out my daughter’s crack, I’d die. It’s not about sex-– I’m not a prude, by any means (I don’t think) - it’s how you go about it. Thong = tart. Camisole = sophisticated woman. Me = ? I knew I had no standards rummaging through her drawers, especially when I sniffed a pair, but I knew she did. She may have been wishy-washy about art, but she had class when it came to her derriere. I didn’t feel so bad about her after that, though the stilettos on the ceiling made me think twice. I kept thinking about her camisoles and my mad art.
Daddy Dearest Page 6