Lessons for a Sunday Father

by Claire Calman

  He’s dancing round the kitchen in his pants, making tea and singing. He should hush up. Rosie might hear. Actually, he looks kind of funny, he keeps opening the drawers then knocking them shut with his bum. I’d like a go.

  But he’s not supposed to be here. When he walked out on us, it was a bit crap at the beginning, OK? It was hard. Look, he’d been around my whole life then suddenly I wake up one morning and he’s gone. Then Mum starts giving us all this “Your dad and I need some time apart” stuff. Don’t know why she was covering up for him when he was the one who walked out. He could have told us first. He could have come and said what was going on. I’d have listened. I’m not too young. But he didn’t even try. He just went, then left it to Mum to make something up.

  But now—now we’ve got sort of used to it, him not being here. And we’re doing just fine without him. We don’t need him any more. Only now he reckons he can just come strolling back in like he only went out for some milk and it took him a bit longer than he expected.

  No way, José. Sorry, but no dice. I’m not just going to sit back while those two arse about going backwards and forwards, and him moving in and out whenever they feel like it. If Mum wants to make a complete prat of herself, that’s her lookout. That’s parents for you. And Rosie will be jumping up and down with excite-ment—"Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!” ‘Scuse me while I take a puke.

  I’m going to count up my savings, see how much I’ve got now, how far I can go. Then maybe I’ll go round Steve’s, see if he’s up for going away. Joanne wouldn’t come. I know what she’d say—"Talk to your mum about it.” It’s all right for her, she’s got normal parents, not loony tunes like mine. Or I could talk to Jason. He’s had all this parents being crap and driving him up the wall. He might know what to do.

  Gail

  Scott thinks that the fact that we—well, that we ended up in bed together, means that everything is OK between us again. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. I can’t believe I was so stupid. What on earth did I think I was up to? I can’t blame Scott, much though I’d like to, because we all know that he has no self-control. I admit that it was actually very nice. Nicer than normal—I mean than what used to be normal, for us. I haven’t been so turned on for ages. But it was a mistake. A huge mistake. I’d had too much to drink, certainly that was partly to blame. And I was feeling … what? Sort of frisky, I suppose. Yes, frisky and flirty and—old. Oh God, please don’t tell me I did it because I was grateful that someone could still find me attractive at forty? That is just too pathetic for words. No, I don’t think it was just that. Maybe I wanted to try and salvage—what? I don’t know. Just something, something good from what we had, what we once had. This morning was awful, Scott was strutting about like a randy cockerel; I only managed to get rid of him by saying I didn’t want the kids to get a shock and that my parents had said they’d pop round and I wasn’t sure when they’d get here. I promised to phone him later. He tried to kiss me on the doorstep, but I just gave him a quick peck and told him to get a move on.

  I’m too embarrassed to call Mari or Lynn, specially after letting them both go on about how they were sure I’d done the right thing in separating from Scott. Mari’s never been a huge fan of his, but then she is a bit of a snob, though Lynn used to like Scott but she’s become something of a men-basher the last couple of years. Scott used to say it was because she was in need of a good shagging, but that’s the kind of thing you’d expect Scott to come out with and I told him it was a dreadful, sexist, awful thing to say and he shouldn’t say things like that. It was true though.

  So I call Cassie and confess all to her.

  “I thought you two were looking a bit flirty-smiley at the party. It’s nice to know you’re not without your old-slapper moments like the rest of us.”

  “Well, technically, we are still married of course.”

  “Oh, lighten up. It’s good for you to let your halo slip a bit once in a while.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? You make me sound like such a prig.”

  “I’m only joking. Anyway, tell all. Was it good? Was it worth it? Is the old magic still there? Has he lost his touch?”

  “Nosy! Actually, it was good, better than I remembered. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been going without.” “True. Nothing like ravenous hunger to make you appreciate a crust of stale bread.”

  “Oi! Do you mind? I said he was good.”

  “A-ha! You leapt to his defence. So, you’ve still got feelings for him then?”

  Well, of course I’ve still got some feelings. Mostly, they’re irritation and frustration. I can’t imagine ever feeling completely neutral about Scott. I’m not sure you ever can once you’ve been married to someone.

  I sighed.

  “No, Cassie. Not those kind of feelings. Really I haven’t. It’s all over. I don’t know what I was up to, sleeping with him. I didn’t mean to, it was just a crazy mistake. But I think Scott’s got it into his head that we’re heading for a second honeymoon. I keep expecting him to turn up any second with all his belongings in tow.”

  “Oh, Gail. What are you going to do?”

  “Er, hello? What do you think I’m ringing you for? Best friend—that’s your job. Start doling out the sensible advice.”

  “Okey-doke. Right, you ready?”

  “Pen poised. Fire away.”

  “Do it quickly and do it now.”

  “What? Is that it? Do what?”

  “Tell him, you fool. If you really are 100 per cent sure you don’t want to give it another go, then you mustn’t string him along. Get on with it and deliver the good news before he starts packing.”

  “Maybe I could send him a note?”

  “No. Do it in person. I’ll come and take the kids out if you want. I’m free all afternoon. Then I can call in later to see how it went.”

  “To check up on me, you mean.”

  “As you like. Hop to it, girlie.”

  Oh, please don’t make me do this. Please can someone else do it. I don’t feel well. I need to go and lie down. OK, I’m calm. I’m taking deep breaths and I’m very, very calm. I will call Scott and say I need to see him and have a talk. My voice will be calm and civil but not too warm. I will say I’ve made a mistake, that I’m very sorry if I’ve misled him and that certainly wasn’t my intention. I’ll say thank you, thank you for having me like I tell Rosie to say after she’s stayed at a friend’s house. No, I won’t say that. I’ll say I had a nice time, thank you, but that it hasn’t changed anything. It’ll be fine. It won’t be as bad as it is in my head, it’s never as bad as you imagine, like going to the dentist’s. Oh God, I wish I could make it yesterday and I wouldn’t touch a drop of wine, I wouldn’t even have asked him to the party. Or I wish it was tomorrow and I’d already told him. Maybe he’ll be fine with it. He’s probably regretting it, too. Regretting it and wondering how to tell me. This is going to be fine.

  Scott

  “Scott,” Gail says, calling me on my mobile. “Sorry to disturb you, but I think we need to have a chat. A talk, I mean.”

  She is being very polite. Serious and polite. This is not a good sign.

  She doesn’t say: “Darling! Last night was wonderful!” She doesn’t say: “It’s made me realize just how much I’ve missed you.” She doesn’t say: “Move back in tonight. I’ve cleared half the wardrobe for you.”

  She says she wants to see me for a talk. But, I have to say, so far talking doesn’t seem to have done me a whole lot of good, you know? Every time I open my mouth I only end up making things worse. So when Gail says she wants to talk, you’ll understand if I don’t immediately start leaping up and down for joy. No. What I do, weirdly, is I remain calm, which is a bit of a novelty in itself. Actually, I really do feel calm and I can’t understand it, it’s not like me to be so calm.

  “Yes,” I say to Gail. “A talk. Good idea. Shall I pop round tonight?”

  “It’s probably better when the kids aren’t around. Cassie’s ta
king them swimming this afternoon. How about twoish? Half-two?”

  I’m still at work but we only do a half-day on Saturdays, so I’ll be clear by then and it’s quiet as the grave today in any case. Harry is out the back checking we’ve got all the pieces he needs for someone’s conservatory he’s starting on Monday. Lee and Martin aren’t in and Gary is supposed to be tidying up the workroom, but doing it like he does everything, like he’s on the moon and moving v-e-r-y s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y. I take Harry out a mug of tea and a packet of bourbons.

  “Cheers, Scotty mate.” He ducks his head to blow on his tea. “What you got planned for tomorrow then? How’s my little angel?” Harry’s dead fond of Rosie. And Nat. Always asks after them. He and Maureen think of them as their grandkids really, not surprising as their own are umpteen thousand miles away.

  “She’s a star. A little star. She’s helping me get the flat sorted. You know what she’s like. She should be running the country by the time she’s twenty.”

  “And …?” He pauses, takes a slurp of his tea, not looking at me. “Any change?”

  I shake my head.

  “Nah. Still out of favour.” I squat down and tap the edge of one of the panes as if checking it. “I miss him, y’know. Can’t help it.”

  Harry’s hand on my shoulder.

  “I know,” he says. “You just hang on in there.”

  “Hi!” Gail tucks her hair behind her ears, which makes her suddenly look very young. She looks like she could be Rosie’s big sister. “You better come in.”

  I lean towards her and she turns her face slightly, with an awkward smile, so I kiss her cheek.

  I sit at the kitchen table while she flutters around, making a pot of coffee and digging around in the depths of the dishwasher for clean mugs and generally making heavy weather of it.

  “Biscuit?”

  I have the distinct feeling she’s putting off saying whatever it is she’s prepared herself to say. And I can’t say I’m in all that big a hurry myself. I eat my biscuit slowly, looking down at it between bites with interest as if it’s some rare and ancient Roman coin I’ve just unearthed rather than a chocolate chip ‘n’ hazelnut cookie.

  “Well,” says Gail.

  “Well,” I say.

  She laughs.

  “Last night …” She tucks her hands under her legs so she’s sitting on them, like a little girl.

  “It was lovely,” I say, smiling at her. “Really great.”

  She flushes and starts fiddling with the chain round her neck.

  “Yes, it was certainly very nice, wasn’t it?” She sounds as if she’s describing an afternoon tea, with cakes and scones. “Um. Yes. Well …”

  I know what she’s going to say, of course. How clueless do you think I am? If I haven’t learned anything these last few months, then there really would be no hope for me. I may not be Mr Sensitive, but I’m not a complete dipstick either. I’m just letting her stew a bit, that’s all. I don’t want to make it too easy for her.

  “Hmm?” I reach for another biscuit.

  She gets up then and crosses over to the coffee maker and makes a show of fiddling with it.

  “This doesn’t seem to be very easy.” She keeps her back to me. Her head bends forward as if she’s peering into the top of the coffee thing, then suddenly I see her shoulders shaking and I realize she’s crying. She’s not making a single sound, but she is definitely crying.

  I get up then and go and stand behind her. Lay a hand on her shoulder.

  “No-o-o-o—” Her voice wails and her words come out in tight gasps, “You—don’t—understand—it’s—not—I—can’t—I—don’t—you—”

  I put my arms round her softly and feel her lean against me. I’ve wanted to hold her for so long and now I am but it’s not the way I thought it would be. It’s not the way I thought it would be, but it’s the way it is. She’s sobbing now, her body shuddering against me as she tries to speak, to choke the words out.

  “It’s all right,” I say, holding her like a child, the way I used to with Nat when he had a bad dream. “Sssh now, ssh. I know. It’s all right. I know. I know.”

  And I do.

  It’s too late for me and Gail. It’s been too late for a long time. I think Gail knew—maybe even before she shut the door on me that night. It just took me a long time to see it. Just because we had sex, I kidded myself that it meant everything was all right with us again, that we could just wipe the slate clean and things would go back to the way they were before. But, if I’m honest, I know that it could never have been as simple as that. I liked the idea of “us,” you know? Of belonging—to a family, to a couple. I liked being part of something that wasn’t just me by myself. But I don’t even know that there was much of an “us” any more. The best thing we had going for us was the kids—and we’ve still got them, so maybe we haven’t done too badly after all. I’m not sure why Gail slept with me again—maybe she’d simply had a bit too much to drink, I’ve given up flattering myself and trying to believe she couldn’t resist me; maybe she just wanted a cuddle and then got carried away; maybe she didn’t feel so hot about turning forty and wanted to feel young and gorgeous and sexy. Can’t blame her for that, God knows. Maybe, like me, she wanted to make things all right—even for only one night, to pretend we were young again with no kids, no pressures, no responsibilities, and life was easy.

  I keep wondering if there was a moment when it disappeared, what we had, like if it slipped out the back door one night at ten to twelve? I guess that’s not the way it goes. I suppose it happened slowly, gradually crumbling away from under us like a dodgy cliff while we were too busy getting through from day to day. It started not that long after Rosie was born; there never seemed to be any time for us any more. We were just parents. Sure, I would have a night out with the lads, or Gail would go out with a girlfriend or one of her sisters once a week, but if it was just us on our own, we’d end up watching the telly or renting a video.

  And it wasn’t even just that. I still remember something my brother-in-law said when he married my sister, Sheila. Doug’s a real laugh, you know, and you’d think he’d make a really joky speech. But he didn’t. He just said all these things about how great Sheila was and how much he loved her and—I’ll never forget it—he said, “Being with her helps me to be the best that I can be. I feel like I’m a better person when I’m with her.” I felt a bit choked up, only I didn’t click why at the time. You see, that’s not how it was with Gail and me—not for me and I reckon not for her either. We didn’t bring out the best in each other and, if you do that for too long, I reckon that after a while you forget that there’s any best left to bring out.

  Looking back now, I feel such a fool for trying to kid myself for so long that it would be OK between us. It’s like a child of six could have seen that Gail didn’t want me back, but I kept ignoring all the incredibly obvious signs, telling myself everything would be back to normal and that I could just slip back into my old life like a pair of well-worn jeans and it’d be a perfect fit. I suppose it was easier. As long as I told myself she’d have me back, I didn’t really have to do anything. I could just drift along, never making any plans, because everything would be fine as soon as I was back home. But it wouldn’t have been. Gail would still have been Gail, and I would still have been me. We’d have been back sharing a bed, a roof—pretending we were fine and telling ourselves it was better for the kids at least. And it’s better to be miserable in company than miserable on your own, right? So what if you’ve been out of love so long, you don’t even have the memory of the memory of what it felt like to be so full of life any more, to feel your heart thumping, the blood humming through your veins? At least that other person, they’re familiar, right? At least there’s someone sitting opposite you at the breakfast table, even if you find yourself re-reading the back of the same cereal box every morning so you won’t have to look into their eyes and know that there’s nothing left to say.

  Nat

  How she c
ould have let it happen? Let him walk out on us a second time? She should never have let him in past the front door, never mind inviting him to the party and going all fluttery-eyed over him and letting him, you know. And now he’s gone off again. At least Rosie didn’t know about it.

  Cassie comes round a lot and she and Mum sit up late drinking wine and eating all the ice-cream in the freezer so there’s none left for us, and Mum’s always on the phone to her or to my Aunty Mari or Aunty Lynn. When I come past, her voice goes quieter and she stops saying anything interesting, then she goes “Mm … mm” or “Hang on a sec” and waits for me to move away.

  She should have given him a whacking great punch. That’s what I would have done. There was this boy in my class once who was being bullied, right? Simon. And when it came out there was this whole big thing at school and we all had to sit round in a circle and say what we felt about it and go through the school’s anti-bullying policy all over again. It was bloody stupid. We’ve got it on posters all over the school in any case and a load of other ones as well about how you’re supposed to behave and about being polite and not chewing gum in class and respecting the school premises and all that and no-one takes a blind bit of notice of any of it. Anyway, they wrote to all the parents and Mum insisted on “having a talk.” I told her no-one bullies me, but she said we should discuss it—especially ‘cause Rosie had that problem one time. But that was ages ago and she’s never had anything since then. Mum said it was important that I understood that if ever anyone tried to bully me, I should come straight to her or Dad and tell my teacher and blah blah blah blah blah. Dad just nodded and said, “Your mother’s right” but later on when we went roller-blading, Dad said, “If anyone ever picks on you, Natty, if there’s a group of them, you suss out who’s the leader then get him on his own and hit him once as hard as you can and you’ll get no more bother.” Mum says there’s never an excuse for violence and you can always resolve things by talking, but she and Dad tried it and now look at the mess we’re all in. Dad says people who tell you there’s never a need to use violence are usually people who’ve never been on the wrong end of it themselves and that if some toerag is trying to punch your lights out, then saying, “I really think we should discuss this in a civilized way” isn’t going to cut much ice. I mean, who cares about being civilized when you’re the one laying in the gutter with your head kicked in?