Untitled

by Tim Dowling

  ‘Who’s playing?’ she says.

  ‘Liverpool Man U,’ I say, a little too quickly.

  After doing the required chopping, I return to the match.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I say.

  ‘Liverpool are on fire!’ the boy says. Right, I think: don’t ask any more questions; just look at the screen. It’s clear that someone has scored while I was away. The crowd is cheering every pass Liverpool make. A comment occurs to me. One Liverpool player passes to another. The crowd goes wild. I clear my throat.

  ‘It’s certainly easy to tell which stadium this is being played at,’ I say.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ the middle one says. Anfield, I think. It’s called Anfield. A silence follows.

  ‘I mean, you can tell because of the crowd,’ I say. ‘At this point they’re effectively cheering continued possession.’ I am pleased with this. I steal a glance at the middle one. His face is a blank.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ he says. ‘You can tell from the cheering, and the chants, and the shape of the stadium, and the fact Liverpool’s name comes first, and the fact that United aren’t playing in red.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I say, feeling my face heat up. I think about excusing myself to go and chop more stuff, but it’s too early to surrender. A lame shot from Sturridge is easily blocked; it’s quite clear to me he should have passed.

  ‘Useless,’ I say. In the ripening silence that follows, I realize he must have scored the goal I missed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One of the first aspects of fatherhood to strike me as a distinct advantage was being in possession of a ready-made companion. If there was a baby in the car with me, I realized, then technically I wasn’t talking to myself. If I ever fancied company for a particular outing, I could simply commandeer a child as a sort of tiny personal assistant. Unlike dogs, children are allowed in supermarkets and on the beach. Unlike my wife, my children are not in a position to refuse.

  Occasionally – not often – I harbour a desire to go see a play. The date I might choose to attend would be based on nothing more than the earliest availability of two decent and adjacent seats, but I also know it’s as good a predictor as any of a random day in the future when my wife will be ill. I’m not saying she does this on purpose. She has issues with the theatre that probably affect her immune system.

  By the time the date on my latest pair of tickets rolls around, my wife has already been in bed for two days. Under my domestic stewardship, the house has come to look as if it’s been turned over by burglars. After struggling downstairs to give us all a hoarse bollocking, my wife slumps in a chair and looks at me.

  ‘It’s the theatre tonight, isn’t it?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t think I can go,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not going alone,’ I say.

  ‘Take him,’ she says, pointing at the oldest one, who is watching TV.

  ‘I will,’ I say, defiantly.

  ‘Take me where?’ says the oldest.

  ‘You can’t be angry with me for being ill,’ she says, coughing.

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ I say. ‘Can’t I just be angry?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says the oldest. ‘Take me where?’

  As we drive to the National Theatre, I try to explain the premise of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art to the boy in a way that won’t reveal the extent to which it probably isn’t going to be his cup of tea.

  ‘It’s about an imagined meeting between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten,’ I say. ‘One’s a poet and one’s a composer.’

  ‘But they never actually met,’ he says.

  ‘They did, but not this time,’ I say. ‘And it’s a play within a play. And they’re both gay. That’s all I know about … Oh Christ. This is the wrong way. We’re going over the bridge!’

  ‘What’s the point of writing about a meeting that didn’t happen?’

  ‘We’re on the wrong side of the fucking river! Why did I drive?’

  I have promised the boy all kinds of pre-curtain food, but by the time we get to the theatre it’s too late. As the play starts, I soon stop worrying about whether or not he’s enjoying it, because I’m distracted by the woman next to me. She’s a head-swiveller, automatically turning in an admonishing fashion in the direction of any noise from the audience. She’s like a weather vane for rustling paper and whispering, and she seems to be capable of rotating her head through 360 degrees. Her vigilance is far more distracting than any actual noise, I think.

  Midway through the first half, my son starts gently riffling the pages of his programme. The woman next to me immediately turns towards the source of the noise. I want to stay his hand, but not while she’s looking – I don’t want to give her the satisfaction. When she looks away, it’s because he’s stopped. When he does it again, she looks again.

  ‘It’s great, don’t you think?’ I say brightly in the interval.

  ‘There’s no queue for ice cream,’ the boy says. ‘Give me some money.’

  As the first bell rings, he returns with an ice cream for me and an enormous chocolate bar for himself.

  ‘You can’t eat that in there!’ I say. ‘It’s foil-wrapped!’

  ‘So?’ he says.

  ‘So, the woman next to me is a head-swiveller,’ I say.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘She turns towards all sound. She probably can’t help it, but it’s—’ The second bell goes, and the crowd begins to shuffle towards the doors. ‘Just don’t make any noise.’

  About five minutes into the second half, I hear the first crinkling of foil. I can tell that the boy is trying to time the noise so it coincides with the big laughs, but he is occasionally out of sync, and each time I hear the crinkling, from the corner of my eye I also see the woman’s head swivel his way. This is so unfair on me, I think. I just wanted to see a play. I stare straight ahead, wishing we could all just forget about the foil and concentrate on the graphic discussion of illicit gay sex on stage.

  I was six, I think, when I was first allowed to go to the shops by myself, or rather in the company of my best friend at the time, who was clutching a signed note from his mother that said, ‘It is OK for Bradley to buy cigarettes.’

  My oldest son was also about six when I first let him go to the shops on his own, although he wasn’t really on his own, because I followed him, creeping along the opposite side of the road and ducking behind parked cars. It was another two years before he could be trusted to come back with whatever it was he’d been sent out to get, but from my point of view this was a long-term project: one day I would have my own little army of minions, with three times the errand-running power that Bradley’s mother could command. I would never have to go to the shops again.

  Many years on, I am trying to make lunch from things we already own.

  ‘We could have a simple spaghetti,’ my wife suggests, ‘with tomatoes and garlic.’

  ‘We could,’ I say, consulting the cupboard, ‘if we had any tomatoes, or garlic. Or spaghetti.’

  ‘Send one of them,’ she says, indicating the array of children spread round the room.

  She’s right, I think. That’s what they’re for, after all.

  ‘Here’s some money,’ I say to the oldest. ‘Please go and get the following.’

  ‘It’s raining,’ he says.

  ‘The shop is fifty yards away.’

  ‘You go then,’ he says.

  In recent weeks, the corner shop has been closed for renovations. The next nearest shop is only another fifty yards away, but this means negotiations have become twice as protracted.

  ‘Go and get a tin of dog food,’ I say to the youngest.

  ‘Why me?’ he shrieks, collapsing onto the floor.

  ‘Because I found you first,’ I say. ‘You’ll have to go down to the main road. The close shop is still shut.’

  ‘No way,’ he says. ‘Too far.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I say. ‘When I was your age I walked three times as far just to get
Bradley Lehan’s mother some cigarettes.’

  ‘What the hell?’ he says.

  ‘I’ll go,’ says the middle one.

  ‘Thank you. Here’s the money.’

  ‘I need more than that,’ he says. ‘Dog food is, like, 99p.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ I say.

  ‘It is down there.’

  ‘Is it?’ I say. ‘Well, here then. Get two tins.’

  Later in the afternoon we need milk. Again, the middle one volunteers. ‘How much is a big milk down there?’ I ask.

  ‘About two pounds, I think.’

  Come evening I find him alone downstairs, chewing gum and watching the football scores.

  ‘I’m sorry to do this to you,’ I say. ‘But the dog ate all the cat’s food before you got the dog food, so now we need cat food.’

  ‘One pound fifty,’ he says, holding out a hand without looking up from the television.

  ‘Shocking,’ I say. ‘Where’d you get the gum?’

  ‘I had it,’ he says.

  The next morning when I come in from walking the dog, I notice a small display of price stickers affixed to the wall just inside the front door. Two of them say 61p, the price of a tin of dog food. One says £1.32, another 99p.

  ‘Stealing is bad,’ I say to the middle one later. ‘But I’m more disappointed about the lying.’

  He smiles a little sideways smile to indicate that for him the lying was the best part.

  When we run out of milk again that night, I can’t find any of my children. Finally I am forced to step into my shoes and pull on my coat. As I open the door, the middle one suddenly materializes on the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he says.

  ‘The shop,’ I say. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pound coin and hands it to me.

  ‘Get me a Galaxy,’ he says. ‘Keep the change.’

  A few days after writing about my middle son’s amusing habit of stealing my money, he marches into my office waving a copy of the column over his head.

  ‘This is all lies,’ he says.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t stick any price tags to the wall,’ he says. ‘I hid them under the doormat.’

  ‘I found one stuck to the wall.’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ he says.

  ‘You’re not denying the actual theft, I notice.’

  He decides – then and there, I think – that his days of running errands for me are over.

  The oldest one suggests a group outing: a present-buying mission to the shopping centre the day before his mother’s birthday.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, trying not to sound surprised by the word ‘birthday’. ‘We’ll leave here in forty-five minutes.’

  Forty-five minutes later, all three children are gathered in the hall, ready to go. ‘Are we walking or driving?’ the oldest asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘Driving,’ the youngest says.

  ‘Driving,’ the middle one says.

  Ten minutes later, we’re at the end of our road, in the car, staring at the gridlocked intersection ahead.

  ‘We should have walked,’ the oldest says.

  ‘Let’s turn back,’ the middle one says.

  ‘We can’t,’ I say. ‘There are thirty cars behind us. We’re stuck.’

  Forty minutes later, we’re halfway up a ramp leading to a roundabout. There are cars ahead of us, behind us, above and below us. None of them is moving. ‘You can see the mall from here,’ the oldest says.

  ‘I can still see our house,’ I say. I think about sending one of the children back there, for blankets and soup.

  More than an hour after setting off, we finally find ourselves wandering among the bright lights of a department store, picking up scarves and putting them back. The social anxiety I suffer in large retail environments begins to steal over me. I sweat. I am the worst possible leader of an expedition like this one.

  ‘I have no idea what to get,’ I say. ‘This place is freaking me out.’

  ‘Perfume?’ the youngest says.

  ‘Perfume,’ I say, ‘is a minefield. You don’t want to get stuck talking to a perfume lady. Let’s get out of here.’

  We pass a range of beauty products. ‘Overpriced moisturizer,’ I say. ‘That could work.’

  ‘What is it?’ the youngest says.

  ‘Just pick two. Nothing that says “damage repair” or “age reduction”.’

  The woman at the counter asks if my purchase is a gift. When I say it is, she offers me a third item. I think it’s meant to be complementary, but it’s unclear whether it’s also complimentary. I’m embarrassed about not understanding the rules, and find myself at a loss for words. She names two options, then blinks at me expectantly. I stare back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  She repeats the options, a little impatiently. I feel my face warming.

  ‘You,’ I say, pointing to the middle one. ‘Choose.’

  ‘Whatever you said that wasn’t lavender,’ he says.

  This choice, for some reason, entitles me to another choice. Again, I don’t even understand the question. She tries to simplify things: ‘Face, hands, eyes or hair,’ she says.

  ‘Your turn,’ I say to the youngest. ‘Don’t think.’

  ‘Hair,’ he says. The choices keep coming, but I find there is no decision I cannot delegate.

  ‘Washbag or box?’ she asks.

  ‘Go,’ I say to the middle one.

  ‘Box,’ he says.

  ‘Brown or green?’ she says, indicating two bottles of scent, one of which will be sprayed on the tissue paper surrounding the box.

  ‘Smell both,’ I tell the oldest, ‘and pick.’ He chooses green.

  ‘And finally,’ the woman says, ‘can I get some samples for any of you today?’ I nod to the middle one. He shakes his head.

  ‘We’re good,’ he says.

  On the way back to the car park, as I’m subtracting time saved from time squandered, my phone rings.

  ‘Where are you?’ my wife asks.

  ‘Out, but we’re on our way back,’ I say. ‘We’ll be, like, ten minutes.’

  It’s dark when we exit the car park, dark enough to see the unbroken lines of tightly packed tail-lights stretching in every direction.

  In our neighbourhood, when we first moved in, there were more corner shops than corners. There was one up the road and four along the little parade. One was also a post office, and all five were also off-licences, even though there was also an off-licence.

  Eventually one shop closed, as did the off-licence, as well as the second chemist and the greengrocer who once looked at me as if I had two heads because I asked for parsley. I spread my patronage pretty evenly across the remaining four shops. There have been many nights when I have visited them all in search of an ingredient none of them stocked.

  A few months ago it became known that the pub was going to be turned into a Tesco Express. There were petitions against it in all the shops – I signed several – and some anti-Tesco banners were put up, but the project had about it an air of inevitability. The local anger carried an undercurrent of doubt, as if people were thinking – if not exactly shouting – that a Tesco Express might be quite handy. I tried to be fatalistic.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ neighbours would say when I met them in the park.

  ‘The first time you need double cream on a Sunday night,’ I would say, ‘you’ll be in there.’

  A week before the Tesco opening day, I am in the second shop along the parade, buying some peanuts so I will have the correct change to pay the oldest’s bass teacher. The woman in front of me asks for an uncommon brand of cigarette, which is produced instantly.

  ‘That’s why I’ll always come here instead of Tesco,’ she says. We all laugh uncomfortably.

  Two days later I am in the shop up the road, getting a newspaper. The woman ahead of me is a few pence short.

  ‘Let me off this time,’ she sa
ys to the shopkeeper, ‘or else I’ll go to Tesco.’ We all laugh uncomfortably.

  In the other shops, the customers seem jittery, as if they are buying provisions ahead of a gathering storm. When the Tesco opens, they don’t know how they’ll react.

  I don’t think I can ever enter the Tesco, if only because it’s directly across the road from three of the shops. The people who run them would be able to see me coming out, my bags filled with tarragon and brie and coffee ice cream, and I would never again be able to drop by for a can of condensed milk and four AA batteries, and watch EastEnders while standing in the queue. On the Friday the Tesco opens, I stay away from the parade.

  On Sunday morning I find myself up at 6 a.m., ready to drive the youngest one to school so he can meet a coach to watch Chelsea play Manchester City away.

  ‘He needs a drink for his packed lunch,’ my wife says. ‘You’ll have to stop somewhere on the way.’

  ‘Nothing will be open,’ I say. ‘It’s still night.’

  We drive as far as the corner before I pull over, and point.

  ‘The new Tesco is open,’ I say. ‘Look.’

  ‘We could go in there,’ the boy says.

  ‘I was thinking that you could go in there, while I stay here,’ I say. I hand him a fiver. He disappears into the brightly lit pub. The rest of the parade is dark and shuttered; a horrible vision of the future.

  The boy returns with a four-pack of Lucozade.

  ‘What is that?’ I ask.

  ‘Four for £1.67,’ he says. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘What was it like in there?’ I say.

  ‘Pretty much like a supermarket,’ he says. I start the car.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ I say.

  A week later I mentioned my inclination to avoid the new Tesco Express in a newspaper column, accidentally turning a vague intention into some kind of pledge: I had put it in writing. It was never meant to be a serious boycott; I was just pissed off that the pub was no longer a pub, even though I almost never set foot in it when it was. I felt a bit guilty about that, and figured the Tesco Express deserved, at the very least, the same level of neglect. Besides, I thought, I have kids for that sort of thing.

  Another Sunday, some months later: my wife is out all morning, and I’ve been charged with making lunch. I open the fridge, hoping to find sufficient ingredients for a meal, but I end up compiling a substantial list. Afterwards, I find the middle one lying on the sofa watching Sky Sports News.