by Tony Parsons
Cyd was once crazy about this guy, and behind her back he had jumped on the bones of every Asian woman who would let him from Houston to Hoxton. My true love had done everything to make it work with this creep. She had followed him to London when it was clear that America was indifferent to his existence, she had supported him when he fell off his motorbike and mangled his stupid leg, and she even gave him a second chance after she had met me. And of course she had given birth to his child, and then raised her alone. I should have hated Jim Mason. But I found that I just couldn’t quite manage hate. Only the dull ache of jealousy.
The real reason he made my flesh crawl wasn’t because he had treated Cyd so badly. It was because he had won her heart without even trying, and shattered it so casually. But I couldn’t loathe him, this man who was my wife’s other husband.
He was always so nice to me.
‘Cyd out working? A woman’s work is never started, right? Only kidding, mate, only kidding. Give her my best. My little princess ready?’
‘Daddy!’
Peggy threw aside her Lucy Doll Ballerina and charged her dad. Jim scooped her up and placed a loud kiss on the top of her dark hair as she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, hugging him with theatrical abandon. They saw each other so sporadically, this dad and daughter, that their reunions were always emotional affairs, resembling a prisoner of the Vietcong being reunited with his family. But I was never quite sure if the emotion was forced or not. Prolonged separation can sometimes make a parent and child act with the self-consciousness of strangers.
I saw them to the door. Their routine was always the same. A ride on Jim’s motorbike to KFC or Pizza Express. At Peggy’s age, I don’t know if it was even legal. Jim wasn’t the kind to care. Once Cyd had protested that Peggy was a bit too young for motorbikes, and Jim had stormed out, leaving his daughter in bitter tears. He didn’t see her for three months. After that, the joy rides were never questioned.
Jim’s visits traditionally involved the purchase of a large, inappropriate, stupendously useless toy. Stuffed bears that were bigger than Peggy herself were a favourite.
When Peggy had gone I realised with a jolt of alarm that she had forgotten her child-sized helmet. Cyd had laid down strict rules for motorbike riding.
Always wear a helmet.
Hold on tight to Daddy.
No riding in the rain.
No long journeys.
No motorways.
I dashed out to the street but the bike – a huge brute of a Norton – was already roaring away, Peggy clinging on to her dad’s leather-clad back, the hair on her bare head flying.
I chased down the middle of the street, shouting their names, the kid’s helmet in my hands. But they didn’t hear me. It was a long straight road and I watched Jim’s taillights receding, cursing him for being so thoughtless.
And then at the last moment they turned back.
I stood in the street as the bike barrelled towards me, my heart filling my chest with that boiling feeling you get when your child has been placed in unnecessary danger. The Norton skidded to a halt in front of me, Jim and Peggy grinning, their faces flushed with excitement. I jammed the helmet down on her head.
‘You fucking idiot, Jim.’
He shook his handsome head in disbelief.
‘What did you call me?’
‘You heard. And what did your mum tell you, Peggy? What’s the most important rule about the bike? What’s rule number one?’
Neither of them was smiling now, and the way they were looking at me from under their helmets made their faces seem almost identical. I always thought that Peggy resembled Cyd. But I saw now that she was just as much Jim’s child.
‘Come on. What did Mummy say, Peggy? What did Mummy tell you again and again? What must you always remember?’
‘Hold on tight to Daddy,’ my stepdaughter said.
It’s so difficult for the step-parent to strike a balance between caring too much and caring too little.
The horror step-parents – the ones who end up in court, or in newspapers, or in jail – don’t think about it. They don’t care. The child of their partner is a pain, a chore, and a living reminder of a dead relationship. But what about the rest of us? The ones who are desperate to do the right thing?
There’s nothing special about us. We are not better human beings because we have taken on the parenting of a kid who is not our biological child. You get into these things without thinking about them, or if you think about it at all, you imagine that it will work itself out somehow. Love and the blended family will find a way. That’s what you think.
But the blended family has all the problems of the old family, and problems that are all its own. You can’t give your stepchild nothing but kindness and approval, because no parent can ever do that. And yet you do not have the right to reproach a stepchild the way a real parent does.
I had never raised a hand to Pat.
But I couldn’t even raise my voice to Peggy.
Step-parents – the ones who are trying their best – want to be liked. Parents – real parents – don’t need to be liked.
Because they know they are loved.
It is a love that is given unconditionally and without reservation. A parent has to do very bad things to squander the love of their child. A step-parent just doesn’t get that kind of love.
And, increasingly, I believed that there was nothing you could do to earn it.
I was either too soft – desperate to be liked, starving for a few scraps of Peggy’s approval – or I tried to pass myself off as the real thing. Passing, that was the step-parent’s major crime. Pretending to be something I wasn’t, and could never be.
I knew, in my calmer moments, that it was not easy for Richard. I knew that the things he wanted for my son – museums, Harry Potter, tofu, even the new life in another country – were not meant as punishments. I didn’t hate Richard because of those things. I hated him because he had taken my son away from me. Who did he think he was? He wasn’t Pat’s father.
The step-parent has a thankless job. The step-parent can’t win. You are either involved with this pint-sized stranger too much or not enough. But there’s one thing that the step-parent should always remember. It is even worse for the child.
Grown-ups can always get a new husband or wife. But the children of divorce can’t get a new father or mother, no more than they can get a new heart, new lungs, new eyes. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, you are trapped with the parents you are born with.
Peggy was lumbered with me, this man in her mother’s bed who was neither fish nor fowl, friend nor father, just a male parent impersonator.
Uncle Dad.
A night that was just like the old days. That was the idea. There was a new print of Annie Hall showing at the Curzon Mayfair. Then we were going for Peking duck in Chinatown. And maybe we would end the evening with a shot of espresso in some small Soho dive before returning home for slow, lazy sex and a good night’s sleep.
Film, duck, coffee, fuck.
Then making spoons, and sharing the same pillow for a good eight hours.
The perfect date.
Our night on the town wasn’t exactly hanging out at the Met Bar with the Gallaghers, but I knew that it would make us happy. It had many times before. But maybe I tried a little too hard to make it like the old days.
The movie was good. And we walked through the narrow streets of Soho hand in hand, laughing about Alvy Singer and his Annie Hall, lost in the film and each other, just like it was in our once upon a time.
It only started to go wrong in Chinatown.
The Shenyang Tiger was crowded. There was an entire Chinese family at the next table – nan, granddad, a few young husbands and wives and their flock of beautiful kids, including a brand-new baby, a fat-faced Buddha with a startling shock of jet-black Elvis hair.
Cyd and I stared at the baby, then smiled at each other.
‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ s
he said. ‘All that hair.’
‘Would you like one? It’s not too late to change your order. I can have the duck and you can have the baby.’
I was only kidding – wasn’t I? – but her smile vanished instantly.
‘Oh, come on. Not the baby thing again, Harry. You never shut up about it, do you?’
‘What are you talking about? It wasn’t the baby thing again. I’m just pulling your leg, darling. You used to have a sense of humour.’
‘And you used to let me have a life.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I know you want me to give up the business. It’s true, isn’t it? You want me pregnant and in the kitchen. I know you do.’
I said nothing. How could I deny that I would prefer her to make dinner for her family rather than half of fashionable London? How could I deny that I wanted a baby, a family, and all the old-fashioned dreams?
I wanted us to be the way we were. But it wasn’t because I wanted to imprison her. It was because I loved her.
The waiter arrived with our Peking duck, and plates of cucumber, spring onion and plum sauce. I waited until he had shredded the duck and gone.
‘I just want you to be happy, Cyd.’
‘Then leave me alone, Harry. Let me run my business. Let me try to do something for myself for just once in my life. Stop trying to make me give it all up to be – I don’t even know what it is you want. Doris Day, is it? Mary Tyler Moore? Your mother? Some fifties housewife who doesn’t go out at night.’
My mother was actually out all the time. Doing the Four-Star Boogie and the Get In Line and the I Like It I Love It and the Walkin’ Wazi. But I let it pass.
‘I don’t mind you going out at night. I’m happy your business is going so well. I just wish that there were more nights like this. When you were spending the night with me.’
But her blood was up now.
‘You really want to be the sole breadwinner, don’t you? The big man. Are you going to spend the rest of your life trying to be your father?’
‘Probably. I can think of worse things to be than my old man.’ I pushed my plate away. Suddenly I didn’t have much of an appetite. ‘And are you going to spend the rest of your life sucking up to creeps?’
‘Luke Moore is not a creep. He’s a brilliant businessman.’
‘Who said anything about Luke bloody Moore? I’m talking about all those drunken City boys who think they can get into your thong because you give them a bit of chicken on a stick.’
A mobile phone began to ring from deep inside her handbag. She fished it out and immediately recognised the number calling. Because it was our number.
‘Sally?’ She was babysitting for us. Cyd didn’t like anyone outside our little family looking after Peggy. ‘Well, how long has she been vomiting?’
Oh great, I thought. Now the kid’s puking all over the babysitter.
‘Everything fine?’ said the waiter.
‘Wonderful, thanks.’ I smiled.
‘And is it solid or liquid?’ Cyd said. ‘Okay, okay. Well, can’t you get her to be sick down the toilet? Right, right. Look, we’ll be home in half an hour, Sally. What? Well, just change her pyjamas and stick the dirty ones in the washing machine. We’re going to jump in a cab. See you.’
‘Something wrong?’
‘Peggy. You know she doesn’t like it when we’re both out at the same time. She gets an upset tummy.’ She beckoned a passing waitress. ‘Can we get the bill, please?’ Then she looked at my stony face. ‘Are you sulking because Peggy is sick?’
‘We should stay. You should eat your lovely duck. There’s nothing wrong with Peggy.’
‘She’s just brought up her Mister Milano pizza. How can you say there’s nothing wrong with her?’
‘This always happens.’ It was true. Every time we had one of our rare nights out, it was as if Peggy was sticking her fingers down her throat. ‘Look, if she was really sick, I’d be as worried as you.’
‘Really? As worried as me? I don’t think so, Harry.’
‘Can’t you see? It’s a kind of blackmail. She only does it to get you to come home. Eat your dinner, Cyd.’
‘I don’t want my dinner. And you should understand how she feels, Harry. If anyone should understand, it’s you. You know what it’s like to be a single parent.’
‘Is that what you think? That you’re a single parent?’ I shook my head. ‘You’re married, Cyd. You stopped being a single parent on our wedding day.’
‘Then why do I still feel like a single parent? Why do I feel so alone?’
‘It’s not because there’s something wrong with Peggy.’ A waiter placed a bill and a quartered orange in front of us. ‘It’s because there’s something wrong with us.’
Outside the night had soured.
The good-natured, slow-moving crowds of early evening had been replaced by mobs of noisy drunks. The tourists were coming out of Mamma Mia! and Les Misérables, desperately hailing cabs that were already occupied. The streets were full of yobs in from the suburbs and beggars in from faraway towns. A scrappy, half-hearted fight was starting outside a packed pub. You could hear the sound of broken glass and sirens.
Then I saw her.
Kazumi.
She was in the queue outside that church on Shaftesbury Avenue that they had turned into a club almost twenty years ago. Limelight. Gina and I had gone there a couple of times. I didn’t even know that Limelight was still open.
Kazumi was with a bunch of men and women, slightly younger than herself, all locals by the look of them. She was at the centre of the crowd, the boys trying to impress her, the girls wanting to be her friend. She smiled patiently, caught my eye and stared straight through me, not recognising the man from her friend’s past, or just not caring.
Kazumi was going dancing.
I was going home just as she was going out.
It wasn’t a different kind of night out.
It was a different kind of life.
fifteen
Another postcard from America. On the front, under the words Connecticut – the Nutmeg state, New England, a rural wilderness ablaze with the colours of fall. On the back, in joined-up writing, a message from my son.
Dear Daddy. We have a dog. His name is Britney. We love him. Goodbye.
‘Britney’s a funny old name for a dog,’ said my mother. ‘I suppose that was Gina’s idea.’
My mum had once loved Gina. I always said that when they first met, my mum thought Gina was a Home Counties version of Grace Kelly, a perfect combination of blue-eyed beauty, old-fashioned decency and regal bearing. Since our divorce my mum had slowly revised her opinion. Now Gina was less the Princess of Monaco and more the Whore of Babylon.
‘Maybe Britney is a bitch, Mum.’
‘There’s no need for talk like that,’ said my mother.
We were at my dad’s grave. It was the first time I had been here since Christmas Day after picking up my mum to take her to our place for the holiday. Three months ago now. It had been a surprisingly good Christmas – my mum and Cyd amusing each other greatly as they stuffed a giant turkey, Peggy on the phone to Pat for an hour comparing gifts, and the look on Peggy’s face when she opened her surprise present – an Ibiza DJ Brucie Doll, including his own little turntables.
With Pat gone, I was expecting Christmas to be steeped in feelings of sadness and loss, and in fact it was more of a respite from those things. But time was grinding on, and I saw that my dad’s headstone was no longer as white and pristine as it had seemed a few months ago. It was now stained by the winter, tilted by time. Things were wearing out without me even noticing.
‘Is Pat all right?’ my mum said. ‘Does he like his school? Has he made friends? There was trouble here, wasn’t there? You and Gina had to see his teacher, I remember. Is he all right now?’
‘He’s fine, Mum,’ I said, although in truth I had no idea if Pat was a straight-A student or wandering his new classroom at will. It didn’t feel like my son was thou
sands of miles away. It felt like light years.
‘I miss him, you know.’
‘I know you do, Mum. I miss him too.’
‘Will he come back for the holidays?’
‘The summer vacation. He’ll be back for that.’
‘That’s a long time. Summer’s a long way away. What about Easter? Couldn’t he come over for Easter?’
‘I’ll talk about it with Gina, Mum.’
‘I hope he comes back for his Easter holidays.’
‘I’ll try, Mum.’
‘Because you never know what’s going to happen, do you? You never know.’
‘Mum, nothing is going to happen to him,’ I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. ‘Pat’s fine.’
She looked up at me, briskly rubbing her hands together, wiping off the dirt from my father’s grave.
‘I’m not talking about Pat, Harry,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about me.’
And I just stared at her, as I felt the world turn and change.
I had always believed that my dad was the tough one. My mum didn’t drive, she wouldn’t open her front door after dark, and she hated confrontation of every kind. And because she didn’t have a driving licence, because she was polite to rude waiters, because she slept with the light on, I was stupid enough to believe that my mother was a timid woman. Now I was about to learn that my mother had her own well of courage.
‘What happened, Mum?’
She took another breath.
‘Found a lump, Harry. When I was in the shower. In my breast.’
I could feel my heart.
‘Oh God, Mum. Oh Jesus.’
‘It’s small. And very hard. I went to see the doctor. You know how much I hate seeing the doctor. A bit like your dad, really. Now I’ve got to go for tests. Graham’s going to take me in his car.’
This is how it happens, I thought. You lose one parent, and then you lose the other. Selfishly, I thought – I went through all this with Dad, and I don’t know if I can do it again. But I knew I would have to. It was the most natural thing in the world.