Lessons for a Sunday Father
Page 9
“But I haven’t got a hopeless marriage. I love Gail to bits …”
“Yeah.” She looks me straight in the eye. “You probably do, but you’re at the mercy of your dick. You all are.”
I shrug in what I hope is an endearing, oh-well-that’s-us-lads sort of way and give her my best smouldering-but-sensitive look.
“You needn’t worry, I’m not the sort to tell tales. I may have knickers with loose elastic but I’m not a bitch.”
“I never thought you were. ‘s just …”
“Ye-e-e-s?”
“About the other day …”
“Other week, more like.”
“I was a bit nervous …”
“So that’s it!” She laughs, shaking slightly, perched on her stool. Her skirt comes open a little way and I notice she doesn’t tug it back together again. I nudge a bit closer, spreading out my fingers on the worktop. “Scott. You’re hilarious, you really are. Are you worried about your reputation? Good grief, you were fine. Still …” She eases herself down off the high stool.
“So then …” I stroke along her arm with one finger.
“Lord, we’ll be here all day at this rate.” She takes my hand and tows me towards the stairs. “Come upstairs if you’re coming—I’ve got to go out at three.”
Well, by now I’ve left my brain behind completely, it’s outside lurking in the driveway wondering what’s occurring, saying tut-tut through the letterbox and hoping I’ll come back to pick it up at some point. But I’m in no rush because I reckon I’m about to have a very good time without it. A very good time. If it was here, it’d only be in the way, muttering and criticizing—"What if …? Do you think this is wise? What if Gail …? You got away with it once, but—” Thank you, Brain, your services are not required at this time. Don’t call us, we’ll call you …
I bend to undo the button of her skirt, tugging at the cloth with my teeth, feeling her hand on my head, pulling me close. Her hairs curl round the sides of her silky knickers. I kneel down and knee-walk her towards the bed as I pull at her pants with my mouth. She pulls me onto the bed, feeling for the buckle of my belt, my zip, her hand hot on my skin, easing me out, holding me—pulling down my trousers, rucked around my knees—no time to take them off now—kissing—her hand driving me crazy—"Hang on, where’s the…?"— fumbling in her bedside cupboard, one hand still encircling me—rips open the packet with her teeth—rolls it on smoothly, bending over me to kiss the tip—lying back now—her thighs spread—hand guiding—I hover on the brink, teasing her—her gasp as I push in—her flesh warm around me—legs holding me—good—God, I’ve missed this feeling—being surrounded—being held—so good—building now—getting faster—should I slow down?—is she …?—mentally recite the names and phone numbers of our main suppliers—Tuff Glass 013— no need now, no need—her hips are ramming into mine—small urgent grunts—now high and breathy—our mouths open—too hot to kiss—gasping for air, for breath—shuddering—collapsing, her mouth wet on my shoulder, her hair across her face in sweaty strands.
I roll off her and we lie there for a few minutes, catching our breath. Then she levers herself upright.
“Better. A lot better. Have a gold star.” She smiles and nods, as if to herself. “God, I really needed that.” She pads towards the bathroom, calling back over her shoulder. “Do you want first shower or shall I?”
“You. Do you need me to come in and hold your … soap?”
“No thanks. I prefer to wash alone. Won’t be long.”
Then I had a shower, she gave me a kiss in the hall, said we’d best leave it for a while, and I left. When I turned to wave from the car, the front door was closed and she was gone. Then I went home—smelling of a different soap, it turned out, as Inspector Gail informed me later, that and the inside-out underpants, that’s what gave me away—not knowing that my entire life was about to be tugged away from right under my feet.
All done in barely more than half an hour. I’d been married to Gail fifteen years. It took just half an hour to wipe out fifteen years of marriage. Half an hour. Jeez.
* * *
After the big row with Gail, when she’d said all those things, I thought, “Well, bollocks to you then—if you’re going to treat me like shit and make like I’m the most evillest sinner on the whole planet, then why should I beat myself up about it as well and stay at Jeff’s"—Mr Happy’s Amazingly Cheerful Abode isn’t exactly where you want to hang out if you’re already feeling down, you know? So I drove round to Angela’s. There’s no answer when I ring the bell and I’m just hopping from foot to foot on the doorstep when she appears on the side path hefting her rubbish bin.
“Hiya!” Trying to sound breezy, casual, you know. “Let me take that. Where do you want it?” I give a little knowing smile at that last bit.
“Just passing, were you?” No hello, no squelchy kiss. This isn’t going to be a pushover, I could tell.
“Yeah, sort of. Sorry I’ve not been in touch.”
“I’d prefer it if you’d phone first, Scott. I might have had someone here.” I try to peer in through the front room window.
“Sorry. Have you?”
“No, but that’s not the point.”
“Don’t you like surprises? Come on—where’s your sense of spontaneity? No-one does anything on impulse any more—no wonder the country’s stuck in a rut.”
“So that’s Scott’s solution to all global political and economic problems, is it? Be spontaneous?”
That’s the way she talks. It’s kind of hard to tell when she’s joking. Also, I wasn’t so sure about the being spontaneous thing. Well, look at the trouble it had got me in so far.
“No danger of being offered a coffee, is there?”
She nods me in to the house.
“Sure. Can’t stand out here freezing on the front path. Besides, the neighbours might see you.”
She’s just kidding, right? Anyone’d think she was embarrassed to be seen with me.
We go in the back way, through the superbly glazed door—lovely bit of workmanship that, I pat it admiringly as I go in—and I perch on one of the stools at the breakfast bar.
“You OK?” she asks over her shoulder as she fills the kettle.
“Been better.”
“Oh?”
I’m not sure whether to play it down, just say I’ve had a bit of a barney with Gail or whether to go for the full, woe-is-me, sackcloth-and-ashes bit. Play the poor-little-me card. What would you have done? Problem is with these things, you only get one shot, so if you’re wrong you’re stuffed really, aren’t you? She shoves the sugar bowl along the counter at me, like a barman in a Western sliding that ol’ whisky bottle down to the mysterious stranger at the far end. I spoon in the sugar in a mysterious stranger kind of way, stir it in and sit there looking down into the whirlpool in my mug, not knowing what to say.
“It’s nothing to do with me, is it, Scott?”
I take a sip of my coffee to give me a moment more to think then immediately wish I hadn’t because it’s burnt my sodding lip and I jerk back as if I’ve been—well, burnt.
“Probably best give it a minute to cool, eh?” Angela smiles at me.
“Cheers. I think I know how to handle a cup of coffee now I’m a grown-up chappie of forty.” Well, apparently not actually, given I’d just gone and scarred myself for life.
She shrugs and wrinkles her nose at me.
“Sorry. I was trying to show concern. Come on, what’s up?”
“It’s Gail. She found out about me and you—”
“Found out what exactly? Did you tell her that it really didn’t mean anything?”
This was really making me feel so much better. Proper tonic, talking to Angela.
“Cheers, Angela. Course I tried to tell her that, but she wasn’t listening. One minute she was having a go at me, and the next I’m stood on the wrong side of my front door with no jacket, no keys, no nothing. And saying, ‘I really think we need to discuss this properl
y, darling’ just didn’t seem to be cutting it, you know?”
“Shit. I’m sorry. Really. But I guess you can’t be all that surprised. I mean, what did you expect she’d do— rap you across the knuckles and say try not to do it again?”
I shrug. Of course, at the time, you don’t think about what to expect because you’re not planning on being caught. If you knew you were going to be found out, you probably wouldn’t do it in the first place, right? Still, I don’t know why Angela was acting so superior. She wasn’t exactly Miss Goody Two-Shoes in all this either.
“Thing is, it looks like she won’t let me come back.”
Realization dawns. Angela clunks her mug down hard on the counter.
“Oh no. No. I’m sorry, Scott, but you’re not thinking for even a second that you might stay here?”
“Just for a couple of nights. I’ll kip on the settee if you like. Just until Gail sees reason—”
“Scott, if you want to patch things up with your wife, do you really think staying with me is the best way to go about it? Use your head instead of your dangly bits for once, for God’s sake. If she doesn’t think we’re having an affair now, she certainly will if you roll up here with a suitcase.”
I start telling her about how I’d had to sleep at work, and hadn’t managed to sleep a wink; I kind of made it sound as if I was still there, curled up under my desk in a sleeping bag.
“What about family? Friends?”
I peer down into the dregs of my coffee. Angela reaches over and gives me a playful shove.
“Oh, Scott—you’re actually pouting. Surely you’ve got good mates who’d put you up?”
I think about Jeff and spending yet another night in that house with its dim light bulbs and its sadness, its stale, endlessly re-breathed air and stench of fag smoke. Jeff sleeps with his fags by the bed so he can light up first thing in the morning. And, instead of an ashtray, he’s got this great big bowl, like a fruit bowl it is, with—literally—hundreds of fag butts in it, like he’s saving them up to give to charity or something.
“S’pose so. Still, I do think you could stand by me a bit. I mean, I don’t remember any reluctance on your part to get into my pants. You’re my partner in crime really.”
She folds her arms across her chest which I figure isn’t such a good sign. I saw some documentary about body language once and they said it was a defensive posture, but I don’t know. All I’ve noticed is that when women get cross the first thing they do is cover their tits up.
“Scott. Now let’s just get one thing absolutely clear, OK? Yes, I had sex with you, but no, I am not your ‘partner in crime’ as you so winningly put it. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve never even met your wife. She’s not a friend of mine. I haven’t betrayed her trust or broken any marital vows or anything. Your marriage is your responsibility and—frankly—your mess. I won’t be roped in. Don’t tell me for one second you thought I was in love with you or that you imagined I’d put my whole life on hold and was waiting in the wings for you to run off with me to the Bahamas.”
She looks at me in a sort of weary way, like she’s told me some long, elaborate joke and I haven’t got it. I unstick myself from the stool and puff out my cheeks. Bugger. Still, I’m not going to beg.
She comes towards me then and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Best of luck, Scott. I hope you can sort things out with your wife. Perhaps she’ll come round when she realizes it was just a fling, eh?”
“Yeah.” I button up my jacket again. “You’re probably right.”
I trudge back to the car feeling like a heap of shit, frankly. Another night at Jeff’s. Oh goody.
A spanking clean silver Merc pulls up just then and the electric window slides down on the driver’s side, smooth as silk. Rich git.
“Excuse me,” says this woman with one of those posh, would-you-mind-not-breathing-the-same-air-as-me voices. Classy looking, but she’s not going to see forty-five again, that’s for sure. “Is that your car?”
“Might be. What’s it to you?”
I know, I know. Not a good start, but with the day I’ve had minding my p’s and q’s isn’t exactly top of the agenda. Her mouth pinches together and her nostrils flinch as if I’ve farted in her jurisdiction.
“Well, if it is your car, perhaps you could move it? It’s blocking our drive, you see? Visitors and—” she pauses, giving my jacket the once over “—delivery persons etcetera are supposed to park over there.”
“Oh, fuck off. I’m just going, can’t you see? This is me, here, getting into my car and driving away from your stupid so-called exclusive sodding estate, all right? So don’t worry—any second now me and my cheap jacket and my common voice and my crap car will cease to sully your fucking poncy driveway to your overpriced, rip-off executive home and you’ll be able to drive right up to your authentic Tudor double garage—”
By this point, she’s started to say, “Well, really—” but I’m on a roll by then. She probably figures I must be some kind of nutter and her protective window glides back up again.
“And another thing—” I bellow at her through the glass, as she starts to drive away. “Those would-be Tudor windows in your ponced-up house aren’t even proper leaded lights. They’re mass-produced crap with stick-on glazing bars and if you really had any kind of class you wouldn’t be seen dead with windows like that!”
That told her.
Afterwards, I felt crap, I admit it. Really ashamed. I’m not the sort of bloke who goes around shouting at women just ‘cause they’ve got a smug voice and a posh car. I realized I’d gone a tad overboard and I thought about going back, take her a bottle of wine or some flowers maybe to say sorry. But I reckoned she’d probably call the police or send her husband out after me with a shotgun. When I got back to work, I just sat outside in the car for a while, staring at the wire fence through the windscreen. I couldn’t understand why I’d gone so ballistic. It wasn’t like me. Two more days of this and they’d have to load me up with happy pills, cart me off and chuck away the key. I looked down at my hands then I pinched the flesh on the back of my left hand as hard as I could, till it made my eyes water. I don’t know why. I think it was because I didn’t feel real any more. And worse. It sounds weird, I know, but I didn’t feel like me.
Rosie
Dad’s coming on Sunday to take us out. He phoned last night and asked me what I’d been up to and what I’d done at school, like the way Nana and Grandad do. It was funny talking to him on the phone instead of sitting at the table with him or watching TV together. Normally, when we’re eating our tea or having Sunday lunch, Dad talks a lot and Mum says he shouldn’t talk with his mouth full because it sets a bad example. Dad says, “Yeah, right,” but then he forgets.
I went to go in Nat’s room. I knocked on the door first, he goes mad if you don’t, and he said, “Mn” so I went in and he said, “I never said come in,” so then I had to go out and start again.
I did a somersault on his bed. It was all messy, with the duvet all scrunched up at the foot end and things all over the floor. Nat never makes his bed and Mum says she’s given up telling him, if he wants to live in a pigsty, then let him. She says that but sometimes she goes mad and tells him to tidy up his room, no, not later, right now. Then Nat says she’s throwing a wobbly and she’ll calm down in a minute, but he’s just a copy-cat because that’s what Dad always says. Nat picks up some of the stuff from the floor and throws it in the bottom of his wardrobe or hides it under the bed and he straightens the duvet so it looks not so bad and Mum says, see, that wasn’t so very hard, was it, why couldn’t he keep it like that all the time, why does he have to wait to be nagged same as Dad?
Nat was on his computer. He never turns round to talk to me but he says he can do two things at once, so I said,
“You know Sunday? With Dad coming and everything?”
“Mn.”
“Dad said we could do anything. Whatever we like.”
“Mn.”
“We could go bowling. Like you did on your birthday.”
I wasn’t allowed to go. Mum and me stayed at home and Kira came round for tea and we had trifle as a treat because of not going bowling. Nat said I couldn’t come because I was too young and would spoil things and anyway it was his birthday so it was up to him. Dad took him and his friends, but it was all boys except for his friend Kath and she’s practically like a boy. Nat wanted to ask Joanne Carter too, but he didn’t. Scaredy-cat Nat.
I unpopped all the poppers at the end of Nat’s duvet, then started to repop them all closed again.
“D’you think Dad’ll come back home soon?”
“Nah. Don’t be stupid.”
“Why’s it stupid? Mum said they were just—”
“Don’t you know anything? Grown-ups are always saying things like that, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Nat’s always being mean and trying to make me cry. I used to, when I was little. Nat said I cried the whole time, but that’s not true. I’ve got a trick now. You bite the inside of your cheek and think about something else or you say things in your head over and over. I do the colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. When I think each word, I see the word in my head in big letters like it’s standing in a field and I make it the same colour as it says. Indigo is the hardest, but I think that one as purple. Violet’s like mauve. Mauve’s my best colour. I have it for everything.