Father of the Man

by Stephen Benatar

  She smiled. “There’s no wording in that one, I’m afraid. Is that all right?”

  “Fine. By the time I’ve got everyone to write their names in it…” It was a pound and twenty pence. While waiting for his change he said, “You’ve a nice selection.”

  “Yes. Maybe a bit overpriced. I suppose I shouldn’t say that.”

  Happily, his blush had been sidetracked. “You obviously aren’t the owner. I hope for his sake—or for hers—that things have been a little busier than they are right now.”

  “Not much. But I’m told it will take time before people get to know we’re here. It was only yesterday we opened.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I should have realized. You see, I work in the umbrella shop on the corner.”

  “Is that right? Well, you must have had a busy morning. I mean, after all that rain.”

  “So-so. It wasn’t anything like enough. I think it packed up around eleven.”

  Otherwise, of course, Henry wouldn’t have been banished to the basement; there’d have been little chance to refer to either birthdays or toilet rolls. Not to mention small potatoes. Nor would Mr Cavendish have chosen this particular time to have the baskets by the door replenished.

  (So at least they must have been selling something—too bad it hadn’t been sufficient to save him from losing his job.)

  “And for ages now it’s generally been very quiet. We had a fairly dry summer.”

  He wished he could think of something more interesting. Oscar wouldn’t have stood there and spoken of the weather. She was a pretty girl—well, not exactly pretty but she had a nice face and he enjoyed its expressiveness. Her blonde hair was wavy and well-cut and reminded him of hair you saw in the commercials; he bet it would bounce as she walked. He bet too that if you were able to get close enough it would smell pleasantly of shampoo.

  “It must be fun to work there,” she said. “It looks so Dickensian. I’ve often meant to come in but—well, I don’t know—it also looks a little…”

  “Intimidating? As if you can’t just walk around but will immediately be pounced on by some toffee-nosed salesman?”

  She nodded.

  He held up the birthday card, now inside its paper bag. “This chap might pounce on you!” No, that wasn’t fair. Besides, Henry was too ponderous to pounce. “But all you’d say is—please back off, my good man! Please take a running jump!” Ah, that was better; a little better. (She also had nice teeth, he noticed.)

  “But wouldn’t the shop fall down if a customer said that?”

  “Not if she did so politely.”

  “I can see I’ll have to practice. ‘My good man, please back off, please take a running jump!’ Was that all right?”

  “Absolutely. You don’t need to practice. To the manner born.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a slight pause.

  Roger said: “It’s one of the oldest shops in London. We’ve been there since 1867. Before that it was a dairy. On the floor there are still some of its blue tiles.”

  “Gracious.”

  “But they’ve had to be covered up, for reasons of safety.”

  “Shame.”

  “I used to say to people: imagine what it would have been like in those days. Nothing but green fields connecting the villages of Marylebone and Holborn. Customers enjoyed that—especially the Americans. Then someone pointed out, quite kindly, that all of this was nonsense. Far from being green fields—and, anyway, what other colour could they have been?—it was actually one big notorious slum.”

  She laughed.

  “Poetic licence. I hope you said it should have been like that.”

  He shook his head. “I felt a charlie. I stuttered and was tongue-tied.”

  “You should have said: I’m sorry but we don’t serve killjoys. And, besides, those fields could just as easily have been brown—after they’d been ploughed—or white, when they were covered in snow. That fellow sounds despicable.”

  “No, he wasn’t; like I say…”

  He realized he was treating her remark too seriously. Another pause. But this time not an awkward one.

  “So now all I can talk about is Lord Curzon and Mr Gladstone and Bonar Law. But I still cheat occasionally. I throw in Henry Irving, although really there’s nothing to suggest he was ever a customer.”

  “Why do you choose him, then?”

  “Because I heard that on his deathbed he said it was a pity to be leaving life just when he was beginning to understand it. And I liked that enough to—”

  The door opened and a man and woman came in. The man wanted to have a box of chocolates made up for the glamorous redhead clinging to his arm, who, despite the fact he looked about thirty years older than her, was gazing at him as if he were her hero. He wore a camelhair overcoat hanging from his shoulders.

  Roger didn’t want to leave the shop…certainly not with merely a wave and no proper goodbye. (“But that’s the way to do it, Rodge. Don’t let ’em see you care. Remember, mon brave: we walk in the footsteps of the master. Le grand Meursault.”) For something to do he walked back to look at the greetings cards. He saw one he hadn’t noticed earlier: the picture of a tabby cat sitting on a kitchen worktop and surrounded by mushrooms and onions and leaks. The kitchen was as romanticized as the daisy-and poppy-strewn field but the cat itself, with its puzzled, this-must-be-Christmas expression, looked wholly believable. In its mouth was a filched mackerel. Plainly a mackerel. Which made this card as appropriate to his mother as the other had been to Henry. Even more so. Roger well remembered the day when—in her own words—she had “had to chase a mackerel round the kitchen.” Round the kitchen, through the dining-room and up the stairs. She had finally landed it, lying on her stomach and following a determined tug-of-war, amongst the fluff and rolled-up posters under Oscar’s bed, and had eaten it herself at supper. “I don’t mind. It’s had a good wash and it was only in the chops of my poor, wicked, disappointed boy—yes, you, my little precious,” in answer to the frenzied scratchings on the outside of the door, “although you undoubtedly weren’t such a little precious at the time. Never mind, baby. If you’re good, Mummy will leave you a little bit on the side of her plate and then maybe you’ll forgive her.” It was abundantly evident that Brindley had forgiven her. He still used to follow her everywhere, curl up beside the bath when she was in it, rush to the front door as she returned from work, lie languorously against her pillows as soon as Ephraim was out of bed and had freed both him and Polly from their nightly imprisonment in the dining-room. A more companionable cat it would have been hard to imagine. Hard? No, impossible.

  Roger’s immediate thought was to buy the card for his mother. His next was to do with having it framed. The one which followed, however, caused him to hesitate. Tears could still come into his mother’s eyes even when she saw the Whiskas adverts on TV. Brindley had caught the feline variation of AIDs and had had to be put down. Ten months ago. Which, quite obviously, had entailed a not-very-jolly Christmas. Roger and his father had taken the cat to the vet’s the morning after Boxing Day—swollen and perhaps sporadically in pain, the now sedated animal had been kept alive just long enough to have his turkey dinner. When they’d got back to the house they’d found Abby with her arms around her mother, both of them crying. He and his dad had joined in. Oscar had been staying with friends but otherwise he too would certainly have sobbed. Roger’s eyes watered now, remembering, although in retrospect that spectacle of the four of them—even the five, Polly had also been patently upset—could well have appeared faintly ludicrous.

  He had practically forgotten the young woman. Now she came out from behind the counter and began to tidy some of the postcards on a revolving stand beside him. “What are the odds?” she smiled. “Secretary and married boss?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Her tone changed. Her concern was audible. “Are you all right?”

  “What? Oh, yes. Fine; I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Grinningly apologetic, he
brushed at the corner of one eye with the knuckle of his index finger.

  “I was just remembering something. In fact…maybe you could help me?”

  “If I can…?”

  “My mother had a young cat, the spit-and-image of this one. Well, I mean he was actually the family cat but…The thing is, Brindley once stole a mackerel, too.”

  He explained about the animal’s demise—yet even while he did so it occurred to him she had nice legs. Indeed, she had a good figure altogether: slim but curvaceous. The top of her head reached roughly to his shoulder.

  She considered for some five or six seconds.

  “You know, I once had a cat that was run over,” she said, slowly. “I used to cry for her a lot. And I’ve never wanted another. But I’m very glad now I have some snapshots—even if at first I had to hide them in a drawer.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Five years ago last August. So you can see I wasn’t still a child. I was nearly seventeen.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, too. I mean, not only about Scarry, but about your mother’s Brindley.”

  “Scarry?”

  “Short for Scaramouche. I was reading Rafael Sabatini when she was given to me.”

  “I like Sabatini,” said Roger. “I’ve read Captain Blood.” That wasn’t true but at least he’d seen the film, and enjoyed it.

  “No, that’s one I’ve never read,” she answered. “But I did see the film.” Perhaps they’d watched it on the same afternoon. “And after that—for months—I had a crush on Errol Flynn. He was so handsome and so dashing. Well, perhaps it wasn’t months but it felt as though it were. I told myself that I could never love another.”

  It was strange in a way, he thought: I’ve known you for only minutes and yet that, too, could feel like months.

  “I don’t know why I never read the book,” she said. “It would have seemed the natural thing to do.”

  “Anyhow,” he replied, after a moment, “I think your advice seems good. Yes. Thank you. I’ll have this one as well.”

  “That makes it sound as if I’ve been a clever saleswoman. I only wish I didn’t have to charge.”

  He hotly disclaimed.

  “But what I can do,” she added, as they went back to the counter, “is offer you a chocolate. They’re fantastically expensive but I’ve been told to eat as many as I like—on the principle, I think, that if I make a big enough pig of myself…Here,” she said, “this one’s got a continental filling and is definitely one of my favourites.” She picked it up in a pair of silver tongs and held it out to him. “And this one…,” she began, when he had taken it. But he only raised his hand and laughed.

  “No, no! Thank you. Just this.” He bit the chocolate in half and pronounced it delicious—and in all likelihood it was. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Jenny. Jenny Maddox.”

  “Mine’s Roger. Roger Mild.” He was half-prompted to shake hands but, instead, only passed across the money for the second card.

  When he left the shop he felt great. In the end, ironically, all he did was give a wave, because an old man had come in, inquiring for Camerer Cuss—“Jewellers, you know, antique clocks and watches; up until the First World War all the apprentices slept in hammocks!” But now he didn’t care in the least about the offhandedness of his farewell. He ate the rest of the chocolate, still without really tasting it, and then broke into a run—ran down Shaftesbury Avenue—for no other reason than that he wanted to. And if there’d been any tree branches for him to leap up and touch he thought he would have leapt up and touched them…and furthermore looked graceful doing it. He believed that for once he was moving like an athlete instead of merely lolloping; and even if this were pure illusion—which probably it was—he didn’t give a toss. He’d had a brainwave just prior to the arrival of the old man and had realized he should act on it before his courage went. It was like receiving inspirations at two or three in the morning. A few hours later—well, it wasn’t exactly that you mistrusted them—it was simply that by then sobriety had come back and sobriety was generally synonymous with loss of nerve.

  But he had telephoned Melanie Phillips, for all the good that had done him. Anyway, he felt pleased he hadn’t chickened out.

  He was still running when he reached Charing Cross Road. He dashed to the other side of it, untypically defiant of the traffic, and ran into Foyle’s, dodging exuberantly amongst its customers—exuberantly, also apologetically. First to the fiction hardback department and then the paperback.

  Yet neither of the harassed assistants had even heard of Captain Blood or Rafael Sabatini, although the second, apparently under the impression Roger was after a book about Japanese wartime atrocities, offered him something called The Camp on Blood Island.

  At Waterstone’s, though, a computer having been consulted, he learned there was nothing of Sabatini’s still in print.

  All the same, he checked stubbornly along the shelves. The little miracle he’d hoped might happen—he was a firm believer in a personal God, possessed a half-belief in guardian angels; and, incidentally, wasn’t it about time for his father to suggest another viewing of their film?—well, that small miracle didn’t take place. Oh, but come on. I know you can do it.

  Back across the road—in Books Etc—he carried out the same search. This time, he found a dusty Pan edition of The Sea Hawk, with some of its pages creased. That sent him, darting in between the traffic again, to Collet’s: the possibility of old stock. He then pursued a zigzag course as far as Cambridge Circus. Here it suddenly occurred to him he was a fool: the places to look would obviously be the ones specializing in secondhand stock. When you were giving a present to a person you’d only just met you automatically thought in terms of something new but in this case an unashamedly secondhand copy would almost certainly have more character—and suppose he were to find a 1930’s edition? That would be all right. Eh, God?

  Eventually he came to a green-painted bookshop, seemingly nameless, which occupied a corner site near Leicester Square. Inside, it had a pleasantly musty atmosphere, narrow aisles, stepladders, well-spoken people who smiled and said “Excuse me,” a man in charge who sounded both erudite and interested. When Roger found the shelf which represented the start of the S section, Captain Blood was the first book he saw on it.

  Not a 1930’s edition. The blue binding looked quite cheap; there wasn’t a dust jacket at all, let alone the one he’d been imagining: boldly, even gaudily, suggestive of piracy in the Caribbean—California-style—and of gay swashbuckling gallantry. This was a copy published in 1973, by Hutchinson. But it was only one-pound-fifty: cheaper and in much better condition than the paperback he’d just seen: and it was, essentially, the book that he’d been looking for. At least he remembered to offer up his thanks. He rushed back to the shop where Jenny Maddox worked.

  The moment before going in he paused to wipe his face and blow his nose. He hoped she’d be dealing with a customer, so he’d be able to leave the paper bag on the counter and not have to furnish any explanation.

  But she wasn’t—again there was no one else in the shop—and he had to place it directly in her hand: “Only something quite dopy! ” She looked from him to the bag in smiling mystification and he’d already got back to the door by the time she’d taken out the book.

  She stared at the title on its spine.

  “I…” She opened it up; flicked aimlessly through its pages. “I don’t know what to say. I really don’t know what to say.”

  “I just happened to see it. Seemed like providence. Divine guidance!”

  He trusted she’d realize this was humorous. Or at least—he quickly amended that—so far as she herself need be concerned. Once more, he had to wipe his forehead, was still having trouble with his breathing.

  “Must go. They’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.”

  And indeed as he entered his place of work, which was also at the moment devoid of anyone other th
an staff, he saw Henry, who’d been sitting sideways on one of the cane-seated chairs and staring intently out of the window, above the various kinds of seatsticks, instantly swivel back towards the door and purse his lips and shake his head and tap his wristwatch and look expressively towards the gallery.

  “Is something the matter, Henry?” Alan Cavendish remained seated and could not be seen behind his wooden barrier. “Or are you perhaps rehearsing for the birthday dance you’re going to have to entertain us with tomorrow? I imagine you’ve been told about it: a tradition of the firm which dates back to our beloved founder. There’s no way we can break with it.”

  Henry took this in good part. “Ah, that’s a fine joke,” he laughed. “I must say, that’s a very fine joke!” He chortled at it for maybe half a minute—he would return to it several times during the course of the afternoon—and then, without leaving his chair, allowed his feet to execute a fleeting form of soft-shoe shuffle.

  And to accompany himself he hummed—but at least he didn’t sing—the first few bars of ‘Young at Heart.’

  Roger was about to go downstairs, to put his bag containing the two cards, together with his lunch and study materials, into the cupboard where he always left his coat and umbrella if he’d brought them, when he heard himself addressed.

  “Oh, good afternoon, Mr Mild! How very nice of you to join us! We thought you might be attending the dentist’s—or else the funeral of some favourite grandmother—and simply forgotten to mention it.”