Father of the Man

by Stephen Benatar

  A few minutes later Roger stood on his own, outside the main entrance, looking about him. Shortly afterwards the Revenue Protection official followed him out.

  “Which way’s the town centre?” Roger inquired.

  “You should have asked that policeman while you had him there. I’m a stranger in this place the same as you are. Had to be on that train specially. Just for you.” There was no particular animosity in the man’s tone. But there was no particular concern, either.

  “How did you know I’d be on that one?”

  “We’re not daft. We can put two and two together. It’s a mistake to underrate us.”

  “Then perhaps you could tell me what I do now: stranded in Leicester with less than fifty pence in my pocket. I can’t go back; I can’t go forward. What do I do?”

  “Thumb a lift.” With that, he turned abruptly and went into a staff office which adjoined the station.

  As soon as he’d gone, Roger doubled back through the main entrance.

  He went into the buffet on Platform 3. He would have liked a cup of coffee but the state of his finances meant it must be tea.

  He sipped this slowly, sitting in a corner, his back to the window and also to the door. There was an announcement on the loudspeaker. It startled him at first—its volume and its unexpectedness—but it was simply to the effect that the next train into Platform 3 would be for London St Pancras.

  Up till now he’d felt less nervous than rebellious. As the train drew in, however, his nervousness came back.

  Numbers of people got off; numbers got on. Standing inside the doorway of the buffet Roger watched them. He waited until the last possible moment. He heard the guard blow his whistle. Then he made a dash across the platform—in his haste colliding with an elderly man in a bowler who glared after him in annoyance. But the train was already moving; he couldn’t do more than call out his apology. At first he was unable to open the door which he had made for; yet somebody helped him from inside; and a minute later he was seated. The train wasn’t due to make another stop until it reached St Pancras.

  He was now a criminal offender—and felt cross with himself for not having inquired about the actual, practical differences. This omission struck him as being stupid. The trouble was, he thought, that at moments when the adrenalin ceased to run he was simply so very tired.

  The conductor came along the compartment asking for tickets from Leicester.

  Roger didn’t look up from the book in which he was again writing—or pretending to write—and the conductor passed on without a pause.

  At St Pancras once more Roger simply walked away.

  But it was after ten when he arrived at work.

  Mr Cavendish was as little pleased as he had been the day before.

  “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you. I’ve offered you the way out. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Have I got to give up my day off, just to make sure that the other two won’t find themselves short-handed? And you may or may not be interested to know this but heavy showers are forecast for the weekend.”

  Roger looked at him; came to a decision.

  “I can promise you I shan’t be late tomorrow.”

  “How can you promise that?”

  “Well, does it matter? If I say—”

  “I see at any rate you’ve taken note of my little homily on arrogance. That’s something. So what if not only the entire police force of this country but MI5 and SMERSH are all on your trail by crack of dawn—what then—I can still take my day off and rest secure in your promise?”

  Roger smiled.

  “Yes. God willing. As long as I get paid today and I’m alive tomorrow I guarantee that I’ll be here on time. Even ahead of time.”

  “Do you feel that you deserve to get paid today?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “And it’s all very well to say God willing. But if he’s not it’s no skin off his nose. He can still have his breakfast brought to him in bed, pick out a long-overdue new sofa in John Lewis’s, drive to Chalfont and Latimer for lunch with his in-laws and pop in to see Felicity’s Aunt Lizzie on the way back. I mean, whether he happens to be willing or not, as regards the likes of you and me. And if he doesn’t happen to be so—well, we poor suckers, we’re absolutely stuck with it. Aren’t we, Rose?”

  “You can say that again, Mr Cavendish!”

  “You know…for once…I actually find myself in total agreement with Rose.”

  17

  Usually he listened to Radio 4 when he first got up because he felt that everyone should try to keep abreast of world events, say little prayers, spend a minute or two of concentrated thought on those who were suffering, attempt to picture their conditions, attempt to walk a few steps while wearing their shoes…Though what this ever did for anyone other than possibly himself—“Hey, look at me, at heart a decent, caring sort of chap!”—he wasn’t sure. He had come to feel very ambivalent about the power of prayer: after all, the suffering just went on and on and on; if it wasn’t man, then it was nature; and yet the child in him still appealed to the Lord who had got rid of his warts and had appeared to help him in countless small ways, large ones as well, all through his life…”How can people live without God?” he had often asked…and yet, now, he wasn’t sure; or if he was, if deep down inside him he still was, he felt arrogant and shifty and self-centred. What right had he to believe in a God who granted prayer?…And in any other sort of God he simply wasn’t interested.

  But this week he didn’t listen to Radio 4. Already feeling depressed, he’d rather listen to the disc jockeys on Radio 2 and be reminded to walk on the sunny side of the street and to look for the silver lining whenever clouds appear in the blue. (Though Radio 2, it was often said, drew its audience mainly from the over-fifties—which was another good reason, of course, for not listening to it on any regular basis.) For this week he had a real need to be told about silver linings. About people who love people. And where you see clouds upon the hills you soon will see crowds of daffodils. Yeah! Hallelujah! Amen!

  He even danced a little as he put the kettle on—bare feet moving bouncily across cool quarry tiles; Polly sitting in the archway, head cocked, trying so studiously to get to grips with such a code. (This one, in fact, was about only the Deadwood Stage; but whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away was in itself a life-enhancing message.)

  Yet if Ephraim wanted to be told merely about jolly things he didn’t want to be told, immediately after Doris Day, about Renée and Jim. Apparently the disc jockey was reading out the whole of Renée’s letter: “…and please tell him to take care of himself because I don’t know what I’d do without him, and thank him for all the kindness and consideration and sheer fun and all the endless cups of tea he’s brought me over the past twenty-six years…As a matter of fact, if you play this record between a quarter-past- and half-past-seven, we’ll probably be sitting up in bed drinking yet another as we listen! Anyway, please give him all my love.”

  The disc jockey said: “I will, Renée, I will, and I’ll also mention your two lovely daughters, Fiona and Geraldine—hi, girls!—but it seems to me you’re in a better position to give it to him yourself! Go on! Don’t be shy! Anyhow, here’s the song you’ve asked for—are you listening, Jim, and have a very happy birthday, you wonderful fellow—this song that just about sums it all up: ‘There’ll never be another you.’”

  Ephraim swiftly crossed from the kitchen to the back room and turned off the radio. All that sentimental hogwash was bad enough—a wife with verbal diarrhoea and a disc jockey only too happy to lap it up and regurgitate it undigested; but to have it all commemorated by a record which Jean had once, about ten years ago, bought for him…well, that was more than flesh and blood could stand. Breathing hard—and aware of the band of heat which had again risen through his body like in the training room at Columbia—Ephraim riffled through their stack of 45s. When he found the disc in question he snapped it across. He did the same thing to another one she’d bought him: ‘Nobody d
oes it better.’ Both records went into the pedal bin…where he knew that, later on, she’d be bound to see them. So much for hypocrisy. So much for sentimental hogwash.

  He briefly visualized this very fat couple right now drinking their cups of tea in bed. He imagined them as pudgy and white and beady-eyed; perhaps a little smelly; it fairly made the stomach heave to think about their present smirks—the soft words, the smug caresses.

  Sick.

  But in a way, he realized, this was quite a turn-up for the book. Even a healthy one. Realistic. Usually when he thought of other couples making love, or being about to make love, he tended to romanticize. They were always young—or at least, if middle-aged, still wholly in their prime—and they always got it right, time after time after time; all other men were perfect lovers and their partners, as well as knowing every art of giving pleasure themselves, inevitably writhed and scratched and bit, and moaned in ecstasy. Where all these perfectly formed people were—perfectly formed for love—he seldom ever wondered…although, had he been asked, he wouldn’t have said he saw them often on the street.

  And all these very suggestive or even very explicit love songs that you heard on the radio nowadays: he had to keep reminding himself that they weren’t necessarily records of experience, so much as records of mere wishful thinking. It wasn’t the way anybody actually found love. It was only the way they believed they ought to.

  Because—let’s face it—if you wanted to spend the night inside your lover’s arms, heartbeat to heartbeat, and wake up, baby, with the world in your embrace; well, didn’t you ever stir during the night, or turn, or get cramps from lying for too long in one position? Didn’t you ever get pins and needles, for God’s sake, from having your arm lain upon even by an angel?

  He switched the radio back on, hoping for an update: “We have just heard that Jim suffered a fatal heart attack and that Renée, unable to wriggle out from under him, not only couldn’t reach her cup of tea but unluckily was suffocated. Our warmest condolences go to Fiona and Geraldine, who very kindly let us know.” Ephraim’s hope, however, was disappointed, so this morning, as he walked to work, he looked for all those perfect people in Woodborough Road and on Huntingdon Street…these days, he was always thinking about sex. Sex, he thought, was unnaturally important to him; which was ironic—well, pathetic—for somebody who wasn’t really much good at it. (Because he didn’t get enough encouragement, he told himself, encouragement or practice.) And that was why, of course, he was always thinking about sex. Oh, the viciousness of circles!

  Indeed, he could scarcely remember when he had last had proper sex. By that he meant sex with someone who was not simply willing to have it, but glad or—ideally—eager. (He had often wished that he could qualify as a Great Lover: a Lothario, Don Juan, Gary Cooper: some fellow who had a reputation both for doing the job well and for having a decent-sized tool, better than decent-sized, to do it with.) But at least if he didn’t have a lover—and even if he didn’t have the talent, or the equipment—there was still one major advantage to be derived from all of this: it left him free to fantasize. The lover, the tool, the talent could all become phenomenal.

  His thoughts were jumbled now. He remembered the night he’d had his first wet dream; or, rather, he remembered the morning after. Luckily he’d been staying with one of his mother’s younger brothers at Hastings, where he and his wife ran a workman’s caff; Lionel had been able to enlighten his ignorance, assuage his apprehensions. He remembered—though was this before or after?—his first full, unrestrained erection, when his little naked willie had suddenly reared up, disconcertingly weighty against the pale thinness of his unformed body; he and the boy he’d been sharing a room with at the time—again, he’d been away from home—had been getting ready for bed, changing into pyjamas, and they’d both giggled with embarrassment at the sight of this protuberance; yet Ephraim had already secretly felt proud…why?…what had it then meant to him? And now—what wouldn’t he have given now: to be back at the time of his first full-blown erection, his first wet dream?

  Once, it had been a cheerful occupation, sex, something to laugh at and treat lightly. Once, he had sometimes used to sing and hum ‘The Galloping Major’ during intercourse, and an occasion he now remembered as being fairly typical was that on which he’d put one bare foot around the bedroom door, in the manner of a great tease, and then entered the room stark naked twirling Jean’s pink umbrella behind one shoulder and pirouetting like a chorus girl. “Unlucky, unlucky,” she had cried, “and totally obscene!” But she had laughed a lot—of course they both had—and if an opened umbrella in the house was regarded as unlucky it had proved so only in the long run; in those days, there had been many an evening which had reached its climax with the frenzied, toe-clenching proclamation: Here comes the galloping major…!

  Where had it all gone wrong?

  There was no single moment he could bring to mind. No reason why it should have.

  But he had hardly developed into the great lover.

  He reached the office.

  The great lover manqué phoned Mrs Barks, at Beeston.

  He explained about his Royal Doulton figurines. Yes, Mrs Barks would certainly be interested. Ephraim inquired about the interest rates on a loan of five hundred pounds. He estimated that he’d be able to pay back such a sum after a period of six months.

  Maybe ‘hoped’ was a slightly more accurate word.

  The monthly interest rate was fifteen percent. Seventy-five pounds. Multiply that by six and it came to four hundred and fifty pounds. To redeem the figurines after just six months he would have to pay back almost twice as much as he had borrowed.

  Ephraim said goodbye to Mrs Barks.

  He bit his lip.

  Shortly afterwards Barney came into the office. Ephraim let him settle—after all his buoyant salutations to everybody else and breezy reassurances that he had never felt better in his life: “Oh, fit as a fiddle and ready for love! My God, when aren’t I, though? What a lad, what a lad!”—and then swivelled slowly to address him.

  “Oh, by the way, I called on Mr Harrison last night. I’m going to drop the hamper round this afternoon. He’s out of work right now but as soon as he finds another job he’ll certainly consider taking out insurance…”

  He did his very damnedest to sound nonchalant. It was ridiculous but he’d felt his heartbeat accelerating ever since the moment of Barney’s arrival; had felt his armpits growing moist. (One of his customary neuroses was the imagined inefficiency of his deodorant; and because he imagined it inefficient, during the course of the day it would speedily become so. But that was only one of his customary neuroses. Those others dominant in his life at present had to do with nervous indigestion; with the fear that he was losing his eyesight; that he was losing his hair; would soon need a hip replacement; was acquiring a paunch; was acquiring varicose veins; was acquiring a slack and stringy throat; with the fear that his bottom might be spreading…There were others, though, besides these.)

  Barney stared at him.

  Sean, Jerzy and Lucy also gave him their attention.

  “Would you believe it?” asked Jerzy. But he said it with a laugh. He had got over his disappointment of yesterday; it wouldn’t be alluded to again.

  “Yes. Unfortunately I would.” Barney, on his side, spoke without any trace of amusement. “Just too easily I would.”

  “Fucking unemployed…,” murmured Sean, jovially. “Got to hand it to you, matey. Certainly know how to pick ’em!”

  “Well, it wasn’t your fault, Eff,” said Lucy. “Besides, think how it’s going to make his Christmas! Barney, we’re glad that someone unemployed won our prize fifty-pound hamper. Aren’t we, guys? Aren’t we noble? Aren’t we nice?”

  Barney gave an exclamation of annoyance. “You lot can laugh about it as much as you like. Me, personally, I think it’s pathetic!”

  He chewed the end of his pencil and then took a shred of something off his tongue and viewed it with as much disfavour
as he viewed the rest of the proceedings.

  “Oh, come off it, Barney, it wasn’t Eff’s fault,” said Lucy. “It could have happened to any of us.”

  “Unemployed…,” repeated Sean, chuckling.

  “That’s what we’ll all be soon,” confided Jerzy, with bleak humour, “if things go on like this. Oh—but I forgot: we can’t get the sack, can we? That’s a good thing. I keep forgetting we’re each of us our own boss.” He said to Ephraim: “So don’t worry, lad. You’re not accountable to anyone but yourself. And the Missus!” Jerzy, it seemed, frequently had his own share of problems at home.

  “Fucking unemployed,” said Sean, shaking his head.

  The subject dropped.

  Soon after lunch Barney went out to see a client, so Ephraim reckoned this would be the right time to deliver the hamper: the fewer acerbic comments he had to put up with on departure, the better. The flaps dovetailed neatly into place but the carton was heavy. Lucy wasn’t there. Sean and Jerzy watched him carry it towards the door with expressions of slightly ironic solidarity. Then suddenly, as though he’d been having an inner struggle and wanted to commit himself before the struggle started up again, Jerzy sprang to his feet. He picked up a ring of keys from his desk.

  “Come on, lad, I’ll give you a lift.”

  “No, that’s good of you, but—but I’m okay, I can manage.”

  “West Bridgford isn’t all that far, not when you’ve got transport. But if you’re having to haul that thing on and off buses it’ll be sheer unadulterated bloody murder.”

  Ephraim began to panic. “Honestly, Jerzy, I appreciate it a lot, I really do, especially in view of everything. You’re very kind. But…but I’d rather do it myself, in a way…It’s difficult to put it into words.”

  “Then don’t try. Just shut up. But I can’t stand by and watch you rupture yourself for someone who isn’t even going to give you any business.”