Father of the Man

by Stephen Benatar

  The rest of the news on the front page was about an escalation in the pay dispute of the London Ambulance Service—police vans converted into makeshift ambulances had been called out for the first time—and about Christian Lacroix looking East for inspiration in his ready-to-wear collection shown yesterday in Paris.

  But this evening it was growing especially difficult for Roger to concentrate and it didn’t require smart-suited businessmen angling to jump the queue to produce agitation in him. In fact, tonight, such a distraction was vaguely welcome. Even the report on page two of a peaceful protest on board an early morning InterCity train into King’s Cross, staged by passengers ‘from as far afield as Grantham and Peterborough’, didn’t fully occupy him. (These passengers had warned that fare rises directed at long-distance commuters would force people to sell their homes or leave their jobs. BR’s response was blunt: “We did not encourage them to move to the North.”)

  He folded the newspaper, moved around restlessly within a small circumference, took out a Yorkie. But having broken a piece off he decided he didn’t want it. What he did want was a pee. Yet he’d had one just before he left the shop and the weather wasn’t cold, his bladder wasn’t weak. It was nonsense. He would be glad to have this whole sorry affair out of the way. He would be glad to be at home, sitting in front of a hot dinner. He would be gladder still to be burrowing under the bedclothes in his cosy sloping-ceilinged room right at the top of the house. Yes. This at the moment represented the true peak of his ambitions. He’d always known he was a high-flyer.

  He loved that room. In it he was surrounded by all the most treasured acquisitions of his youth and childhood—amongst them, even, some battered old cuddlies who sat together in a corner, gazing soppily, and a yet older pine chest with many metal reinforcements, like a tuck box out of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, that bore his neatly arranged collection of vintage and veteran cars. Chests or boxes of any sort, particularly those which locked, had a perennial fascination for him, and there were several to point to as evidence of this. Also picked up from junk shops were such miscellanea as coins, a ship in a bottle, some tobacco and biscuit tins, stone ginger-beer receptacles and a splendid globe with tiny but colourful illustrations of things like kangaroos, the Taj Mahal, Mount Everest, Red Indians, the Empire State Building—it dated from the time when that had still been the tallest edifice in America—and a variety of bright postcards from all around the world that almost mosaically decorated an entire wall. On another wall, behind his bed, there hung a movie poster his dad had given him: It’s a Wonderful Life: showing James Stewart lifting up Donna Reed and exchanging a look of adoration. They also had that film on video and at least once a year he and his dad watched it together, side by side on the sofa, each with a tumbler of whisky nearby and a plate of snacks which they’d ritualistically taken time and thought over preparing…they did one for his mum, too, but on this night she usually drank her whisky and ate her snacks while sitting up in bed reading a book. He liked that poster: it reminded him of certain priorities and aspirations, although he wouldn’t have confessed this to anyone he didn’t fully trust, including his brother and sister, both of whom would probably have ribbed him every time they saw it.

  It had once been Abby’s room and she admitted it was something she still missed: its shape, its character, its atmosphere. Its window…not quite a dormer but flush with the sloping roof, and opening so wide you could stick your head out and obtain a panoramic view of distant hills, as well as gardens, trees and houses. It was the nicest room he’d ever had; perhaps the best thing about their having come to Nottingham. He had screwed a porcelain nameplate on the door—with fittingly twee bluebells in one corner and primroses diagonally across from these—and every night, in a way (and this he wouldn’t have confessed even to somebody he thoroughly trusted; he was aware how wimpish it sounded, practically abnormal, in a man who wasn’t yet twenty-five), every night he actually looked forward to going to bed, because of the peaceful and inviting nature of this room. The half-hour that he kept his lamp on after settling back against the pillows, which were themselves against the wall—for his mattress lay directly on the floor—was quite possibly his favourite time of day. What on earth would he be like when he was old?

  Yes, what would he be like when he was old? As a matter of fact, only the other evening, during one of his permutations of route from Bloomsbury to St Pancras, he had seen an old lady sitting at her first-floor window above a bakery in Lamb’s Conduit Street, had just happened to glance up and meet her eye—he remembered the geraniums on her sill and the glimpse of something red in the shadows beyond her (could it have been a dressing gown hanging from its hook on the back of her front door?)—and they had smiled at one another, that was all. And it was silly, he knew, but this trifling incident had provided him with such a disproportionate glow of pleasure that as a consequence he had gone that way again tonight…although disappointingly she hadn’t been in evidence and the window had been closed. The point was, however, that he’d reflected last week about the time when he himself would be old, and about the fact that if he were then on his own he might wish for something similar, where he could sit by the window and watch life going on in the street below; have his bed tucked into an alcove, a gas fire that looked as if it burnt real coals, all his cherished bits and pieces close at hand, a wall lined with his favourite books, an affectionate cat to keep him company…it sounded so comfortable, a haven, such a fine and private place in which to spend whatever time remained.

  When he was old…he grinned…just twelve months or so in the future, it sounded like, or possibly right now, or maybe even last year. Or conceivably he’d been born old? On his tombstone they could write: Home at last! Half of him was here from the beginning.

  Well, anyhow, at least he could smile about it. Surely that was something in his favour. Even smile about it tonight, here at St Pancras. So who knew but they might add a mitigating footnote: “He was able to laugh at himself, even if some people, mother included, often considered him a pompous ass.”

  (Yet he didn’t believe his father thought of him like that—although why in fact he should believe this he didn’t know. Simply a feeling. Sometimes he felt he talked more freely to his father, which was odd really, considering how unalike they appeared to be…Oscar always seemed to have more in common with their old man.)

  This meditation on tombstones didn’t strike him as at all macabre. Indeed, he recollected one particular stroll he had taken with his dad and Polly on a Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the month. “Instead of the park, Rodge, let’s wander round the Lace Market! It’ll make a change for Polly; give her a whole new range of smells. Remind her of her scruffy London past and her disreputable salad days!” They’d gone as far as St Mary’s, where Dad had shown him, inside the church, the moving inscription to Lieutenant James Still, RN, and in the graveyard the monument commemorating Alexander Gordon Donaldson. “In years to come,” he’d asked, with his blue eyes sparkling, “what would you choose to have written about you on just such a monument as this?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t worry me.”

  “Then perhaps it should. You see, I’m asking you about your priorities, what you’d like to be remembered for. Apart from being my son.”

  “Apart from being your son? What else is there? Disreputable salad days, maybe.” He didn’t know why he’d said that. Just one of those silly things one did say. He didn’t at all regret having no memories of a misspent youth.

  But at least he’d been given the chance to acquire them. One man who’d grown strangely important to him had scarcely been allowed that. Lieutenant James Still had died in his twenty-second year…‘a victim to the ravages of the Yellow Fever, on board His Majesty’s ship, The Pheasant, while stationed off Sierra Leone, on the 12th of October 1821. That he possessed the best feelings of the heart was manifested in his unwearied watchfulness over those whose aid he was in sickness. That he was endued with the spirit of Enterprise w
as proved by the testimony of those who had witnessed his skill, and admired his gallantry. That he was characterized by suavity of temper and prepossessing manners was apparent from that regard, excited in every breast, which held him forth as an Ornament of Social Life…’ Roger had thought a good deal about this inscription, speculated long—and no doubt inaccurately—on the reality which lay behind it; and because at some point he’d idly mentioned that one day he might go to make a copy, his father had beaten him to it, handed him a typewritten card shortly afterwards and clearly been gratified by the surprise it had occasioned—it was such small things as this Roger hoped he wouldn’t forget when his father was no longer around. In the meantime James Still, however romanticized, had come to be more than an ideal to him. He had come to be a friend. Not only was Roger now a stiff-kneed spectator from a window in Lamb’s Conduit Street, he was also a little boy in short trousers communing with a make-believe companion! Oh, Lord! But the thought of that old lady who, having once given him a warm and kindly smile, would presumably have done the same tonight if she had seen him passing, coupled with the thought of the young man who had died off Sierra Leone a hundred and sixty-eight years ago (“to the very day,” his dad had said, as he’d given him the card, “I’d thought that might appeal to you”), of Lieutenant James Still now standing here beside him at St Pancras, was unreasoningly a spring, as soon as the notion had occurred to him, of flooding reassurance. He felt glad to be related to watchfulness and gallantry and the best feelings of the heart—however tenuous or crazy the connection.

  The queue started to move.

  It was only ten-past-six; another twenty minutes till departure. He found a window seat in a non-smoking compartment facing the way they’d be going, placed his raincoat and neatly furled umbrella in the rack above his head, his briefcase and paper on the table in front of him, and hoped to heaven the other three with whom he’d most likely be sharing would prove sympathetic types; preferably, he thought, women. He retrieved his Yorkie bar and this time ate about half—his mother was always speaking about blood-sugar levels, usually his father’s—before deciding he couldn’t manage the rest of it. He turned to the back page of the paper (‘England sack Auckland Commonwealth Games athlete—“I was a silly boy,” he says after visit to a sex club’) and the quick crossword. Two women came and after several seconds’ worth of glancing round, sat down opposite him, and he wondered if their hesitation had been due to the fact they’d been hoping to see people whom they knew or to something quite different. Possibly they didn’t like the look of him? Or possibly it was just that they preferred to face forward. Before the first had fully eased along the seat he said: “If you’d rather not have your backs to the engine, I don’t mind changing.” This offer might have been practically spontaneous but he knew it wasn’t unselfish. He wanted to show the world he was a good guy. How could the heartless authorities single out for persecution Mr Wholesome, Mr Nice? But the ruse failed dismally, certainly as regards the pair it had been practiced on—perhaps other passengers, across the aisle, had heard and been impressed. Both women looked at him more as if he were Mr Here-I-Am-Girls-Must-Be-Your-Lucky-Day. The one still standing shook her platinum-blonde head. “No, you’re quite all right,” she said. The other, whose bottom was by now midway across the seat, didn’t bother even to reply.

  He looked down at the crossword, already felt he was about to blush. Furthermore, none of the first few clues seemed remotely solvable. Suddenly, not only did he want to pee: he wanted to shit.

  Again, though, he put this down to nerves.

  One of the young women, the one by the window, took out an emery board; started to file her scarlet-painted nails. Usually this would have pissed him off, the continual rasping sound, the differences in speed, the pauses, new beginnings—above all, maybe, the idea that this was something which people ought to do in private; if he’d been trying to write an essay the scrapings would have speedily grown strident, he’d have visualized powdery nail settling imperceptibly like flurries of fine dust, and if it chanced that he’d just eaten, his tightened stomach muscles would unfailingly have produced indigestion. Travelling on British Rail had taught him as nothing else had ever done the extent of his neuroses. Previously, he had never dreamed how fidgety the fare-paying public could become; never stopped to consider the potential foot-swinging, finger-tapping, head-scratching, throat-clearing—the list could probably be extended to cover, in an average-sized hand, at least one side of an A4 sheet out of his own writing-pad; and at spot number one on that list, without argument—yes, this would undoubtedly have taken first prize—the nose-picking. The nose-picking. He realized that in most cases this was merely a nervous mannerism, but the number of apparently respectable, professional, middle-class men—for some reason it was nearly always the men—who just couldn’t leave their noses alone and who would as often as not, following their stealthy or thoroughly unconcealed excavations, revolve the ball of their thumb against the tip of their index finger was, to use the Prime Minister’s front-page vocabulary, ‘astounding’, ‘astonishing’, ‘appalling’. Roger sometimes felt as if he were travelling on a sea of snot; in need of fresh air; in need of his bath; in need of a psychiatrist.

  But tonight neither the nail-scraper nor her companion, who every few minutes was playing with her hair, pushing it back and prodding it and smoothing it, had any power to disturb him. Or perhaps the two of them simply cancelled one another out—irritations were more bearable when they came at you in pairs, or even droves; on occasion you had no option but to smile, life was so ridiculous. Yet at times, too, its absurdity could arouse not wan amusement but deepest self-contempt: the person sitting next to you could search for bogies unremittingly, or cough, or sniff, or swing their hair, hiccup, whatever—then your eye might slip from the crossword, as had happened only last week, to where the stop press informed you of a seven-year-old boy who’d been left paralyzed and almost blind as the result of an operation blunder. Dear God.

  He slowly put away his biro; leant back and closed his eyes; half-listened to a conversation about the women’s respective offices and about a new boss who was proving unreasonably petty on the subject of personal phone calls and the timekeeping of his staff. “Suppose he feels he’s got to thrown his weight around. The plonker.” The woman giving herself a manicure kept moving her legs and knocking against his shins or shoes.

  Ten minutes later a man of roughly his father’s age took the seat beside him, raised the lid of his black attaché case and withdrew a double foolscap page of squared paper, the inside spread covered with figures and columns and coloured underlinings. He was quite possibly an accountant; even looked like Roger’s stereotypical idea of one: a thin-lipped, sharp-angled kind of face, short hair carefully parted and combed flat, with every plastered strand attesting to the individual passage of the comb. He wore pince-nez. Roger had hoped for someone who looked less correct.

  The train began to move.

  Incredibly, despite everything, he must have dozed. When he opened his eyes the women had miniature bottles of gin in front of them and tonic water and plastic beakers containing lumps of ice. The emery board lay on the table. He blinked bemusedly, then lifted his arm until the cuff edged back. They had been travelling for almost half an hour.

  The conductor came into their carriage before the train reached Wellingborough: first stop on this evening journey. He too was a man of about his father’s age, similarly blue-eyed, though not as strikingly so, but somewhat taller and heftier. There was a strawberry mark covering the whole of one cheek—faint, however, and by no means seriously disfiguring. Roger held out his plastic folder.

  Waited.

  “Thank you, sir.” The man’s eyes flickered away from the card; after a moment came back to it. Roger’s reaction was unexpected. He felt a measure of relief.

  “Yes…I know.” Even his voice sounded calm. Now that the encounter was actually underway his heart-rate slowed. “My ticket expired on Saturday.” />
  The official looked at him an instant while he assessed the situation. “Then it’s no good to you, is it?” His tone wasn’t indignant or threatening. It was merely businesslike.

  In a low voice Roger explained why he thought the man’s statement inaccurate. On the whole, because of the number of times he’d rehearsed what he wanted to say, his argument cohered. This defied the fact that the two blondes were openly attentive. Their heads swivelled impartially. Roger’s nextdoor neighbour kept his eyes lowered. Other passengers within earshot also showed undisguised interest or evidence of tact.

  “I see,” said the conductor, finally. “What happened, then, this morning?”

  “The fellow didn’t notice.” Roger had never been to public school but had the mildly uneasy sensation he was being a sneak—just as this morning, in fact, he’d had a similarly uneasy sensation, albeit one swiftly suppressed, that although he wasn’t behaving dishonestly in not holding a valid ticket he was perhaps behaving dishonourably in not drawing the man’s attention to it. He hoped he wouldn’t get him into trouble.

  “Then you were very lucky. But tonight, I’m afraid, I’ll have to charge you the full single fare.” He flipped open a pad which had an elastic band holding the used portion.

  “I haven’t any money.”

  “In that case a cheque will do.”

  “I haven’t got a chequebook.” He added: “I haven’t any credit cards, either.”

  The conductor gave a sigh. “Very well. I’ll tell you what we’ll do.” The blondes looked at him expectantly. “Tonight I’ll make you out a free ticket for Nottingham. I’ll have to take that defunct card off you but I can’t do any fairer than that, now, can I?”

  “Which means I’ll have to get on the train tomorrow without a card?” He didn’t know why he had turned it into a question.

  “No, I warn you. That would be foolish, sir. Extremely foolish.”