Lessons for a Sunday Father

by Claire Calman

  “Nat …” I started, without yet knowing what I would say, what I could say. The scrape of his chair on the floor. He shoved back from the table and got to his feet still holding his piece of toast.

  “Gotta go.” His eyes met mine for a second, then he looked away. I nodded and turned to the table, not bothering to say, “At least clear your plate, Nathan.” What was the point? A bomb had just been detonated beneath our children’s feet—now wasn’t the moment to start nagging them about tidying up.

  “You got practice tonight?” I knew he didn’t, but I needed to say something, just to keep him near me for even another few seconds. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? I can’t explain it.

  “Nah. Might go round Steve’s.”

  “Do you want some food saved?”

  He wrinkled his nose in that endearing way he has and shrugged.

  “Well.” I picked up the plates. “Whatever.” I’m starting to speak the way Nat does. Scott does it too.

  “Mn.” He did one of his noncommittal grunts then loped away, doing his peculiar walk, his shoulders ranging from side to side like a cheetah stalking through the undergrowth. I suppose he imagines it’s manly. Aah—so sweet.

  I heard him pick up his bag in the hall and heft it onto his shoulder. He likes to get the bus in now, though with the traffic the way it is he’d probably be faster walking as it’s not far. But Nat’s like Scott—why walk when you don’t have to? It doesn’t make sense in Nat’s case though because of all his swimming practice. He is so fit. But he takes the bus. You make sense of it, if you can; it’s a mystery to me. Rosie’s still at junior school, of course, and although it’s no distance either, I drop her off on my way in to work. The roads are a devil and what with all these child abductions you read about practically every other day in the papers, I can’t relax for a moment unless I know where she is.

  “Bye then! Have a good day!” I called out to Nat as I heard him open the front door. There was a pause, then he came back into the kitchen and walked past me over to the worktop. He picked out an apple from the fruit bowl and gave me a funny half-smile then, as he passed me again, he stopped mid-lope and gave me an awkward kiss on the cheek.

  He did his silly Clint Eastwood face, like he’s chewing tobacco, then he pushed up the brim of an imaginary hat.

  “Take it easy now, y’hear?”

  Well, it made me feel quite tearful. Nat’s never been big on kissing, not since he was a tot anyway and in the last year he’s made it more than plain he doesn’t want to be kissed goodbye in the mornings and certainly not ever if his friends are around. He pulls away and wipes his cheek as if I’m a leper. Charming, isn’t it? They’re all like that at this age though. One minute, he’s your own darling little boy, clambering up onto your lap for cuddles and wanting to be tucked in at night and have a story; the next they’re walking several paces ahead of you in the street because they’re embarrassed by your crumbly uncool presence and your clothes and your hair and the way you talk and they won’t let you in their room at all, never mind to come in and kiss them night-night.

  So, while on any other day I’d have been overjoyed to have Nat kiss me without having to be asked or it being my birthday, this morning it only made me feel worse. For one moment at least, Nat must have felt sorry for me and I hated Scott for that, hated him for what he’d done to our children, what he’d done to us. I could feel myself welling up but I told myself to cut it out, cut it out right now. You’ve no time for tears, I told myself. Pull yourself together! Stay calm, take a few deep breaths. I’m fine. I have to be fine.

  Dear God, I can’t do this. If I could only go back, if I could just rewind the tape and go back to last night, maybe I wouldn’t have said anything. I could have kept my suspicions to myself and life would have carried on as normal. Only now we’ve released this enormous boulder and it’s started rolling downhill, getting faster and faster and more and more out of control and we don’t know where it will end up. And now it’s too late to stop it or ever bring it back. It’s already too late.

  Rosie

  Dad wasn’t there when I came down to breakfast, and he never said goodbye. Normally, if he leaves before we’re down, he whistles like this—peep, peep—I can’t do it, it’s only air when I try, then he shouts up the stairs: “Bye-eee! See ya later!” Mum says it’s bad manners to be shouting all over the house and if you want to speak to someone you should go and find them. My dad has to go to work early because he’s the manager and he knows the code for the burglar alarm. He works in a place that is called First Glass which is meant to be a sort of joke—like First Class, to show it’s the best. What they do is they put windows in for people, like say if someone broke your window with a football, then they would come and give you a new one. Dad knows how to do it, he’s let me watch him, and he used to do it all the time but now he is the manager so he has to sit at his desk a lot or go and see the customers. They do doors and greenhouses and conservatories as well, and Tudor windows which have like teeny eeny-weeny window panes that are diamond shaped or square with lead all round them and they’re all made by hand and it takes sodding ages dad says and no-one likes doing them because they’re a right royal pane in the arse (that’s what dad says—"a pane—that’s p-a-n-e"—that’s a pun), and mum sighs and says will he please not use that language in front of the kids but we don’t mind a bit. And they do pretend Tudor windows too, which are a lot cheaper but they are not pukka dad says. We are doing the Tudors with Miss Collins. Henry the Eighth had six wives but not all at the same time, and when he didn’t like one he said “Off with her head!” and they chopped it off. He divorced two but it took ages and ages because they didn’t have divorce properly back then but he was king so he could keep changing the rules as he went along, like when you play a card game with Nat. Now if you go off your wife you just get a divorce and then you live in two houses, like Kira’s mum and dad. And Jane’s. And Darren’s, and Sheena’s, and … There’s loads in our class. Kira says it’s quite good mostly because her mum and dad feel bad so they get her stuff like new trainers and give her money when she wants. Kira’s got a stepdad who lives in their house and when he has a cup of tea he makes a big slurpy noise like you do when you get right to the very bottom of your milkshake and your mum says stop it now, that’s not nice, but he is OK mostly. Her dad lives on his own but she thinks he has got a girlfriend because he started saying things like, “How would you feel if your old dad got himself a girlfriend, eh?” Uh-duh. So of course he’s already got one. But, to wind him up, Kira said, “Don’t be silly, Daddy. You’re much, much too old to have a girlfriend. It’d be so embarrassing. I’d die.” So now he can’t tell her he has one and Kira still gets him all to herself on Sundays. Well, not all to herself completely because she’s got a little brother, Rory, who’s only seven. Practically a baby. Kira calls him little squit when her mum’s not listening.

  My mum and dad have arguments sometimes but not like Kira’s did. She used to get into her wardrobe and shut the door so she couldn’t hear because they were shouting. Now it is better because they are in two different homes so they have to phone each other up when they want to shout. Kira’s mum hates her dad so much that she tells Kira all horrible things about him and when he toots his car horn outside when he comes to fetch Kira on Sunday, her mum says “Oh, bugger him, why does he lean on the bloody horn?” then Kira runs outside and says, “Daddy, don’t lean on the bloody horn!” and he says, “I’m only leaning on the bloody horn because she won’t let me in the bloody house. And don’t say bloody.”

  But my mum and dad are not like that because for a start they are not so loud. When they have a row afterwards my dad gives my mum a big kiss and puts his arm round her and says he’s sorry so that she’ll start talking to him again. Then he goes and gets a take-away so she doesn’t have to cook and we have it on our laps as a treat and my best take-away is pizza but without all the yucky bits that Nat has on top of his. Then Dad goes all soppy and Nat says it makes hi
m feel sick, all that snogging, but it doesn’t really. He wants to snog Joanne Carter from down the road only he’s too chicken to ask her out.

  Mum was all quiet at breakfast and when I went and got the crisps and an apple to put in my lunchbox, she said, “Good girl, Rosie” like she used to when I was about six years old.

  I wonder what Henry did with the heads after they got cut off. I must ask Miss.

  Scott

  It’s just not possible. Half past eight in the evening and I’m back here at work again. See, the thing is, I was so sure that I’d be able to sort everything out—not that Gail would suddenly sprout a pair of wings and forgive me overnight, no—but that she’d have calmed down a tad and I’d be back indoors again. I mean, how are we supposed to talk about it if she won’t let me in the sodding house? I’m not spending the rest of my life on my knees pleading through the letterbox.

  I am not sleeping here again. Or not not sleeping here, to be precise. Sod it, I’m going to have to ring a mate. Right, let’s look at the options. There’s Colin, who’s sort of my best mate, ‘cept there’s the slight drawback of the lovely Yvonne, she of the pursed lips and buttoned-up nightie. I can really see her welcoming me with open arms. There’s Roger, who I’ve known for about a hundred years, but he’s a rep and spends half his life on the road. Then there’s Jeff, who lives on his own. No, it’s not that he’s a sad bastard who can’t get a woman—actually, he is a sad bastard but that’s only ‘cause his wife ran off with his brother, so can you blame him? I mean, how crap is that? And, before she ran off, she’d been shagging the brother in their bed, Jeff’s bed—once she even did it with him when he was staying over on the settee, and Jeff was right upstairs asleep.

  Who else? Well, Harry, of course. Harry from work. That might be a bit weird, because of working together and that. Technically, he’s my boss, you could say, because he owns First Glass, but it’s never been like that, not for as long as I can remember. We’re more like partners, like a family business, father and son type of thing. After school, I had a whole succession of jobs, in a clothes shop flogging suits, worked on building sites—I’ve done bricklaying, painting, tiling, bit of plastering; had a job in a fish and chip shop, behind the bar in a pub, killing chickens in a factory, telesales. Then I met Harry one night at a pool tournament in the pub. I was knocked out in the second round (you’re impressed I got that far, I can tell), and he said hard luck, mate, and we got to talking about what he did and how he’d been a glazier since he was fifteen years old and I said I was good at DIY but I’d never done glazing but I wouldn’t mind learning and he said come round and see him, have a chat, so I did and the next thing I knew I was working there.

  It was Harry who taught me how to cut a piece of glass, how to measure so you’re spot on, how to cut when you’re working on site and there’s no workbench; it was Harry who showed me how to handle a whacking great stock sheet so it doesn’t crack on you; Harry who gave me my own set of cutters in a leather pouch so I wouldn’t lose them. I’d say he’s been like a dad to me, but that’s not true. He hasn’t—or at least not like my own dad, nothing like. Thank God. Harry’s a good old bloke. The best.

  We’ve always gone out for pints, Harry and me, had the odd bite to eat, been racing and that, fishing off the beach or the pier sometimes. I’ve taken the family round his place for Sunday lunch a few times, parties at Christmas and for his birthday, but … Well, that’s not the same as phoning up and saying, “I’ve got nowhere to go, can I come and stay at yours?” is it? Don’t get me wrong—Harry’d give me a bed like a shot. Harry would give you the teeth out his own mouth if he saw you having trouble chewing your steak. But … I dunno. Course, he’d never say anything but I’d kind of feel like I’d let him down somehow, and I don’t think I could handle that. No.

  This morning, after my night of blissful slumber at work, Harry got in just after eight. Well, he takes one look at me and he goes,

  “You look a bit rough, mate. Been here all night?”

  “You know me—can’t keep me away from work.” I laugh, keeping it casual. I told him our boiler had gone on the blink this morning so I’d not had a shave, but I was just popping back home for my razor.

  I drove into town and bought a razor and some socks and pants. Back to work to freshen up, had a shave in the wash-basin. The lads were in by then so I stuck with the broken boiler story. Lee didn’t believe it for a second, of course, suspicious bastard that he is.

  “Scott’s missus has chucked him out! Done a foul and the ref’s given you the red card, eh mate?”

  “Yeah, right, Lee.” I didn’t have the energy.

  Gary said his uncle did heating and could maybe come take a look at my boiler. Lee was earwigging as usual, so I said,

  “Yeah, go on then, give us his number. I’ll probably be able to fix it myself tonight, but just in case.”

  The job book looked OK, healthy but not frantic, though it’s always hard to tell because half our customers just turn up or phone wanting you to come fit them a new window yesterday. After all, you don’t always know when you’re going to break a window, right? And I had three appointments in town anyway—to recce and do a couple of quotes.

  Anyway, had my shave and told Harry I was off. I stood in the doorway a minute, fiddling with the business cards pinned up on the noticeboard in the office. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell someone, someone who wouldn’t laugh or take the piss. He looked up from the job book—he wasn’t doing anything with it, of course, just leafing through it, being busy.

  “You all right, eh?” His glasses had slipped down onto the very end of his nose, right on the tip they were. I wanted to step forward and push them back up. Instead, I jangled my keys, my pathetic half-bunch of keys, now minus the ones for my house.

  “Me? Yeah, fine. I’m fine.” I tossed the keys high in the air and caught them left-handed. Not a care in the world.

  Harry looked back down at the job book.

  “See you later then. D’you want something from the van for lunch? Or will you be back by then?”

  The van. The sandwich van. An oasis in our barren, humdrum little lives. The prospect of food and a little flirtation, what more could a man want? But, ah, the stresses the modern-day executive has to contend with: shall I have a chicken baguette? Tuna mayo on brown? A BLT? Cheese salad on a bap? So many decisions. It’s non-stop thrills round here, I can tell you. She, the sandwich girl, lady, thingybob, comes round between half-eleven and twelve. She makes three stops on this estate and we all come pouring out like ants to a honey jar. She’s always got a smile for me and is up for a bit of banter, but she doesn’t dawdle long—a couple of times I’ve had to chase her down the road, so you want to get out there smartish soon as you hear her toot the horn.

  “Dunno, Harry.” I dig out some coins and put them on the edge of his desk. “Better get me a roll just in case. Cheese salad roll, yeah? And a cake. And an apple. That’ll do. Cheers, mate.”

  “Cheers.”

  * * *

  So I drive to the surgery where Gail works as a receptionist. She does four days a week, well, more half-days really. Drops Rosie off at school on her way in.

  I stop outside the glass double doors a minute, watching her. She’s standing with her back to me, looking through a filing cabinet. From the back you’d think she was only about twenty. She’s very slim still and her hair’s sort of light brown and shiny, shoulder-length. My stomach starts churning—no breakfast, or nerves, or both. I wonder how she’ll look when I walk in—angry or icy or maybe her face will soften and she’ll smile and I’ll know it’s going to be all right after all. I hang back, wanting to cling onto that hope, however crazy it might be, for a few more seconds. Then a bloke comes hopping towards the doors on crutches so I open it for him and then there’s nothing but air between me and Gail at the desk and I’ve run out of reasons not to go in.

  There’s two people ahead of me, but I know she’s seen me. The muscles in her face have go
ne tight, like they’ve been strained on wires. She’s smiling at the woman in front of her, but her smile’s too deliberate, too bright and her voice sounds high and unfamiliar.

  “Please take a seat, Mrs Connors. Dr Wojczek is running about fifteen minutes behind.” She turns to the man next, who’s holding out a small piece of paper. “Repeat prescription only, is it? Yes, you can go straight to the dispensary—just along there, OK?”

  A person watching her now would think how polite she was, how helpful, how concerned. Ha!

  “Gail.” I rest my hand on the edge of the counter and fiddle with the leaflets stacked in the rack. “Stressed?” it says at the top of one. Tell me about it. “Sexual problems?” says another. You could say that. “How’s your heart?” stares back at me. Crap, thanks, but cheers for asking.

  “What do you want?” She won’t look at me and her voice is so quiet I can hardly hear her.

  I shrug.

  “To talk of course. Just to talk.” There’s something else I meant to say, something I’m supposed to say. What the hell is it? “And to apologize.” She sits down at the desk and taps at the keyboard, eyes staring straight ahead at the screen.

  “Did you have an appointment?” she asks in her nice, calm receptionist voice, then drops to a whisper, but it’s a whisper with teeth and claws all over it: “What? You say sorry and you think you can come back now, as easy as that?”