Man and Wife

by Tony Parsons

  My father hated talking about his past – the poverty in the East End, the service with the Royal Naval Commandos, the death and destruction of the war, the nineteen-year-old friends who never came home. But Glenn didn’t feel the same way about his past – playing the Scene as the Trolley Boys with Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry in the audience, getting a big hit as the Trollies with ‘Roundhouse Lady’, moving out to the country with Maximum Troll to record double concept albums. Glenn could hardly shut up about it.

  And I saw for the first time that Glenn was as much a grandfather to Pat as my own dad.

  It was certainly an alternative version of manhood that Gina’s dad offered. Instead of the soldier, father and husband that my father had been, Glenn was musician, free man and artist.

  If you can call a former member of Maximum Troll an artist.

  We were late leaving Glenn’s place.

  The pair of them had been so wrapped up in talking about music – or rather Glenn talked about music while Pat stared in wonder, sometimes saying, ‘You were on Top Pops, Granddad?’ – that by the time we got to the car, we were in the middle of the rush hour.

  The car crawled south on the Finchley Road. In the end we decided to park, sit out the traffic for a while and get something to eat. We had an important date later that evening – Peggy’s school play was tonight – but we had plenty of time.

  At least that’s the way it seemed.

  There was a little Japanese place in Camden Town. Thanks to his mother, Pat was an expert on Japanese food, adept with chopsticks and capable of putting away sashimi and tempura the way most seven-year-olds polish off a Big Mac. It was only when we went inside that we discovered we were in a tepenyaki restaurant. This place wasn’t about food so much as theatre.

  All the seating was at big tables arranged around large metal grills with a space for a chef to do his stuff. These cooks strutted the restaurant like culinary gunslingers, bandy-legged as if they had just done ten days in the saddle, big white hats perched on the back of their heads, and huge knives in low-slung holsters hanging by the side of their aprons.

  These chefs didn’t just cook for you, they put on a show. All over the restaurant they were dealing prawns and slivers of meat or vegetables on to the sizzling grills, slicing them up, mixing them with rice, then flamboyantly throwing jars of spices and herbs in the air and catching them behind their back. And all of it executed in a lightning blur of speed, just like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, but done with an extremely large chopper.

  But it took ages to even get started. We had to wait for our table to fill up with other customers before the show could begin. I looked at my watch, calculating how late we could leave this place and still make it to Peggy’s play. Finally, when our table was fully occupied, a young Filipino chef greeted us, melodramatically whipped out his knife and started tossing foodstuffs into the air. He must have been new because he kept dropping things – a wayward prawn nearly took out the eye of a German tourist – but Pat smiled encouragement. The time ebbed away, and Pat kept ordering more food to be thrown, sliced and sizzled.

  ‘We really should make a move, Pat,’ I said, knowing that I didn’t have the heart to stop his fun.

  The young tepenyaki chef threw a jar of cinnamon into the air and came really, really close to catching it. I half-heartedly joined in the sympathetic applause.

  ‘I’m very hungry,’ Pat said, his eyes sparkling with wonder.

  What was it with my family and the theatre?

  Pat was green around the gills by the time we reached the school.

  ‘I told you not to have that third helping of squid,’ I said.

  The play had already begun. All around the assembly hall, proud parents were filming a multicultural celebration of diversity called The Egg. What did it have to do with Easter? As little as possible.

  Children representing the religions of the world were in a stable where a papier-mâché dove of peace had just been born. On the tiny stage, there was a little boy in a white sheet and a black beret, possibly representing a Shinto priest, a little girl in an orange beach towel with a pink swimming cap on her head, denoting baldness, who was definitely meant to be a Buddhist monk, and a child of indeterminate sex with a cotton-wool beard and sandals meant to represent either Islam or Judaism or both.

  And then there was Peggy, her arms and legs sticking out of an old Pocahontas duvet, with a Habitat scarf around her head, probably representing the Virgin Mary.

  I could see Cyd in the middle of a row, two empty seats beside her. I grabbed Pat’s hand and we began inching our way towards her. Proud parents with digicams cried out in pain and tutted disapprovingly as we trod on their toes and banged against their knees.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I whispered, as Pat moaned and groaned and clutched his stomach. On stage the play was reaching its climax.

  ‘What-is-this-strange-creature?’ said the Shinto priest.

  ‘Where-has-it-come-from?’ said the Buddhist monk.

  ‘What-does-it-mean-for-the-people-of-the-world?’ said the child with the cotton-wool beard.

  ‘Where the hell have you two been?’ demanded my wife. ‘

  Sssh!’ One of the parents with a camera.

  ‘Sorry. I couldn’t get him away from Glenn.’

  ‘Glenn? That disgusting old punk?’

  ‘And then we got stuck in a tepenyaki restaurant.’

  ‘SSSH!’

  We turned our attention to the stage.

  Cyd hissed at me out of the corner of her mouth. ‘You knew this was Peggy’s special night. You knew it.’

  ‘WILL YOU PLEASE STOP TALKING, PLEASE?’ Some old granny in the row directly behind us.

  Pat opened his mouth, leaned forward and quietly began to retch.

  Everyone on stage was looking at Peggy. The Buddhist monk in the orange beach towel and swimming cap. The Shinto priest in the white sheet and black beret. The bearded elder with cotton-wool facial hair and sandals. All waiting for Peggy to say her line.

  ‘What-does-it-mean-for-the-people-of-the-world?’ repeated the elder.

  ‘You’re so selfish,’ Cyd told me, hardly bothering to keep her voice down. ‘All you care about is your son. Nobody else means a thing to you.’

  ‘WILL YOU PLEASE—’

  Cyd swivelled in her seat. ‘Oh, change the record, Granny.’

  Peggy was staring out into the crowd, as if waiting for a prompt. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Unlike Pat, who chose this moment to vomit elaborately over my lap.

  The voice of a kindly teacher came from the wings.

  ‘This bird means that all persons must live as one and…’

  ‘And-love-one-another,’ mumbled the actors on the stage, gathering around their cardboard dove. Apart from Peggy, who was looking imploringly at her mother. As I cleaned up Pat and myself with a lone Kleenex, Peggy moved towards the edge of the stage, the scarf around her head starting to unravel.

  I called out to her but it was too late. She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the footlights and, to the gasps of the audience, promptly fell off the stage.

  ‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ said Cyd.

  Nobody was seriously hurt.

  Peggy’s fall was broken by a group of first years sitting cross-legged in the front row. Pat immediately felt better after throwing up his tepenyaki squid. Proud, happy parents and grandparents enjoyed tea, biscuits and after-show analysis. But Cyd and I decided that we didn’t need to stick around for the social stuff.

  As soon as Pat had been cleaned up a bit and Peggy’s tears had dried, we apologised once again to the first years, their parents and the teachers and headed for the car park, my wife and I almost dragging our children out of there.

  ‘You just don’t care, do you?’ said Cyd. ‘If it’s nothing to do with you and Pat, you don’t give a damn.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘It was the squid what did it,’ said Pat, like a hopeless drunk blaming it all on a
bad pint.

  ‘Let’s just go home,’ I said, although the thought of another night in my blended home filled me with despair.

  ‘It would have been all right if you had been here,’ Cyd said, her eyes all wet. ‘If only you had cared enough to be here.’

  ‘Harry?’ A little voice at my side.

  ‘Yes, Peggy?’

  I bent down beside her.

  She whispered in my ear.

  ‘I fucking hate you, Harry.’

  An old lady with a camera around her neck smiled at us.

  ‘What a lovely little family,’ she said.

  nineteen

  We lay in the darkness, not touching, waiting for sleep to come, although it was a very long way off.

  ‘You spoil him,’ she said. She didn’t say it in a spiteful way. It was almost gentle, the way she said it. ‘If you didn’t spoil him so much, these things wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘Someone’s got to spoil him. Who else is going to do it? You?’

  ‘There was no need to stay so long with his granddad.’

  ‘They haven’t seen each other for ages. I don’t know when they’ll see each other again. They were having a good time.’

  ‘I really wanted the pair of you to be there tonight. For Peggy. And me.’

  ‘You don’t want him around. One lousy week he’s with us. And it’s too much for you.’

  ‘That’s not true. And it’s not fair.’

  ‘Do you know why I got married? Do you have any idea, Cyd? I got married so that my son could have a family. Isn’t that a laugh? Isn’t that the funniest thing in the world? Some family this turned out to be.’

  She didn’t say anything. As though she was thinking it over.

  ‘I thought you got married because you wanted a family, Harry. You. A family for yourself. Not a family for Pat.’

  ‘One rotten week, that’s all. And it’s too much for you.’

  We lay there for a while in silence. We had already said too much. After a bit I thought she was asleep.

  But she wasn’t sleeping at all.

  ‘We used to be crazy about each other. It wasn’t long ago. We were going to give each other so much. Remember all that, Harry? I don’t know what’s happening to us. We used to be happy together.’

  I thought she was going to reach out and touch me. But she didn’t. And I didn’t reach out for her. We just lay there in the darkness, my wife and I, wondering how it ever had come to this.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder why you married me,’ I said.

  It was true. I knew that the sex was good, and we could talk to each other, and that on most days she was a joy to be around. But so what? She could have picked almost anyone. Out of all the guys in the world, why did she choose me?

  ‘I fell in love with you,’ she said.

  ‘But why? That’s the bit I don’t get, Cyd. I mean it. Falling in love doesn’t explain it. If you had looked around a bit, you could have found someone with more money, a bigger dick and a much nicer personality.’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted you.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you’re a good father.’

  In the garden of the old house, there was an air of real excitement.

  We were excited because Pat was flying back to America in the morning, and my mother and I were desperate to make every hour special.

  And we were excited because it was the first really hot day of the year, and I had stretched a long piece of plastic sheeting down the length of the garden, which my mum hosed down until it was as slippery as an ice rink.

  But mostly the excitement was because of our very special guest.

  Bernie Cooper was with us.

  As I heard the pair of them happily jabbering upstairs as they changed into their swimming trunks, I realised that I should have arranged this earlier in the week. Bernie Cooper and Pat should have spent more than one day together. But I was so anxious for Pat to see my mum, and Cyd, and Peggy, and even old Glenn, that I almost forgot to schedule time for the person he wanted to see most of all. So on the night before the last day, I called Bernie’s parents, and got permission to take him out to my mum’s place. We were going to see a movie, have a kickabout in the park, and go for a pizza. But the sun shone as if it was already summer, and the two boys never left my mum’s back garden.

  They spent the long hot afternoon skidding across a water-soaked piece of plastic. Bernie as dark as Pat was fair, fearless where Pat was careful – Bernie sliding on his stomach, hurtling down the strip of plastic and into the rose bushes – and loud where Pat was quiet. So different, and yet somehow perfect together.

  My mother and I watched them for hours, their thin, wet limbs skidding across the garden, my mum occasionally hosing down the sheet of plastic, telling them to be careful when they clattered to the ground while running across the wet grass to do it all over again, smiling to herself as the boys almost exploded with laughter. Bernie Cooper and Pat, seven years old, and a day that they wished could last for the rest of their lives.

  And I knew that my son would make other friends. In Connecticut. In the new neighbourhood. At big school. At college. He was a likeable boy, and he would always make new friends. Maybe never quite as good as this one, maybe never quite as good as Bernie Cooper, but they would still be real friends. No matter how much it hurt, Bernie would have to let him go.

  And so would I.

  My mum came with us to the airport.

  Pat took her hand when we got off the Heathrow Express, the tourists and businessmen swarming all around us, and it was almost as if he was taking care of her, rather than the other way around. When had that changed? When had my mum become old?

  We found the British Airways desk and handed Pat over to a smiling stewardess. She seemed genuinely happy to see him. People were like that with Pat. They were always happy to see him. An easy child to love.

  I crouched by his side at the departure gate and kissed his face, telling him we would see each other again soon. He nodded curtly. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t sad. But he seemed a long way away, as if he was already back in his other life.

  My mum gave him a hug that squeezed the breath out of him. The young woman from British Airways took his hand. It was only then that my son seemed concerned.

  ‘It’s a long way to go,’ he said. ‘It will take me all night to get there.’

  ‘Just rest your eyes,’ said my mum.

  I remembered the day that I took Pat to see his grandfather in the hospital, when it was near the end and the breath wouldn’t come any more and I thought that my father and my son should see each other one last time. The loss of our grandparents, I thought, that’s usually the first time we understand that life is a series of goodbyes.

  And as my son took the hand of the girl from British Airways, I wondered if my mum and Pat would ever see each other again.

  ‘As you know, the station has the highest regard for Eamon Fish,’ Barry Twist told me in the snug of the Merry Leper.

  That sounded like trouble.

  ‘He’s funky. He’s spunky. He’s cutting edge,’ gushed Barry. ‘He’s hot. He’s cool. Research shows that, among ABC males in the eighteen to thirty club, he’s the comedian of choice.’

  ‘You wait until Eamon’s back in Ireland to tell me all this?’

  Eamon was resting. I thought of him on a farm in County Kerry. He had been there for weeks now, where the mountains met the sea, and where there was no chance of Eamon meeting his cocaine dealer.

  The waiter came.

  ‘Glass of champagne. Two, Harry? Two. And some nibbles. Peanuts, rice crackers, crisps.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  Too much salt in those things. Poison for your blood pressure. I had to worry about all that old-man stuff these days. And losing my job. I had to worry about that, too.

  ‘We want to come back,’ I said, switching into producer mode. ‘Eamon Fish is the most important comic of his generation. Keeping him off air is
a crime against broadcasting.’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple,’ said Barry Twist.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, our research shows us also that a majority of AB males between twenty and forty in the south-east quite like the fact that Eamon has been – you know – resting. The advertisers are not quite so keen. The Big Six – beer, cars, soft drinks, sporting equipment, personal grooming and finance – don’t want to be associated with someone who was so recently…exhausted.’

  ‘Speak English, damn you.’

  ‘The Colombian marching powder. The Charlie. The hokey-cokey. It’s changed Eamon’s image, kid. He used to be this loveable Irish rogue with a taste for weather girls. Now he’s not quite so loveable. And not quite so hot.’

  He tossed a paper on the table between us. ‘You seen this thing in the Trumpet? Evelyn Blunt on Eamon Fish. Actually it’s a piece about the death of the new comedy.’

  ‘Evelyn Blunt’s a wanker. A bitter, twisted hack who hates the world because he never quite made it as a – what was it he wanted to be? A novelist? A human being?’

  ‘I quite like Evelyn Blunt. He’s waspish, he’s irreverent, he’s controversial.’

  He foraged around in a bowl of nibbles.

  ‘Any tosspot with a PC can make a minor splash and six figures by being waspish, irreverent and controversial.’

  ‘Six figures? Really? That’s not bad. I mean, his column can’t take him very long, can it?’

  ‘He’s always had it in for Eamon. Jealous twat. What did the fat, oily bastard write this time?’

  Barry Twist wiped the crumbs from his fingers and put on his reading glasses.

  ‘For a generation of comedians whose careers are receding faster than their hairlines—’

  ‘That’s rich. Evelyn Blunt is no oil painting. It’s always the ugliest fuckers who are always going on about someone’s physical appearance.’

  ‘– Eamon Fish was the poster-boy of cutting-edge, stand-up comedy. But now Fish is “resting”. The edge is dull. And the roaring boys of open-mike night just can’t make it stand up the way they did way back in the nineties. Then he starts getting personal. Headline – Waiter, There’s a Fish in a Stew.’