The Best a Man Can Get

by John O'Farrell

  She sat on the floor in front of the telly for another hour or so and I rubbed the base of her back, which had been aching for some weeks. Alfie woke, and though it was too early for his feed I brought him downstairs and gave him his bottle anyway. At every suck Alfie looked surprised, as if he really hadn’t been expecting warm milk of all things to follow the previous gulp of warm milk. He started to go to sleep, and I tapped the base of his feet and he started to suck again more fervently; Catherine smiled and said that I had finally learned the knack, and the baby inside her kicked again.

  Millie must have woken and seen that her brother’s cot was empty and decided she was missing out because she suddenly appeared at the door claiming she had sore hair. Against our better judgement we let her stay with us in the lounge, and the four of us cuddled up on the sofa and watched the opening sequence of The Lion King again and when Rafiki held up the newborn baby lion to all the animals and they rejoiced and bowed and cheered, I had to stop myself bursting into tears by turning it into a manic laugh and giving Millie such a tight hug that she said, ‘Ow!’

  I put the kids back to bed and wound up the mobile which played a tinny version of Brahms’ ‘Lullaby’, the official theme song of every nursery in the land, chosen for its universal popularity, its gentle melody, but mainly for the fact that its copyright expired two centuries ago. I stroked Millie’s head as she went to sleep. These were the moments that I had come home for. I thought about all those men at our antenatal classes, so full of enthusiasm and good intentions. How many of them would allow themselves to become alienated from their families? Would seek comfort in the respect they found at work to make up for the lack of status they suddenly felt at home? We had come halfway out of the dark ages and men were now present at the birth of their children, but how many of those men would be there for the lives of their children? Now that I was resolved to changing my ways I suddenly felt like a militant family man, like one of those fervent anti-smokers who had recently been on sixty a day. Why was it so many men really cared about how good they were at their jobs or how good they were at sport, but gave less consideration to being better fathers than they did to improving their batting averages?

  Millie’s eyes eventually closed and the mobile stuttered to an exhausted halt. I knew that it would be hard for me to adjust to spending more time at home, but the alternative just wasn’t viable. I had to learn that it wasn’t possible to be in the company of my children and have a different agenda to them. I couldn’t look after a toddler and a baby and try to restring my acoustic guitar as well. Sitting down, making yourself a sandwich, going to the toilet – these are all luxuries that you have to forgo. You just have to write off the time and throw yourself into whatever they are doing. You have to head into it. You can’t take small children swimming and not go in yourself, and that analogy applies to your entire life once children come along. The water might be cold, and you might not feel like it, but you just have to jump in.

  ‘They’re asleep,’ I said as I came back into the lounge. Catherine said nothing and I realized that she was asleep, too. I’d felt more relaxed with her this evening now that I was no longer mentally vetting every sentence, worrying about what it might reveal. There were just the practicalities of sorting out the flat to be tied up and then my duplicitous days would be behind me. I hadn’t told her that I would suddenly be arriving home with a van load of equipment to squeeze into our already cramped home, because if I had she would have successfully dissuaded me. Anyway, a lot of it could go in the loft. The various demo tapes of all my songs could gather dust next to the box of my childhood paintings; they were just more souvenirs acquired on another stage of my journey to adulthood. I would tell Catherine that I was fed up with being away from her and the kids so much and had spontaneously decided to give up my studio and work at home. Which felt quite strange because it was almost true.

  Two mornings later I nervously drove a large rented van through the busy London streets and, after a deftly executed twenty-seven point turn, I parked it outside the flat. I would leave the stereo till last so that I could listen to music as I worked. I selected King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man followed by Verdi’s Force of Destiny. I hummed along as I folded all my clothes into boxes. It was funny how the ripped jeans and bomber jackets of my bachelor wardrobe contrasted with the cardigans and slippers I wore at home. One thing that I would never have anticipated was how completely differently I had been viewed by the outside world in my two roles. When I was pushing a double buggy along the pavement old ladies would smile at me and I would smile pleasantly back, but when I walked down the street on my own, I’d forget that I was no longer parading my passport to social acceptability and would absent-mindedly grin at some passing lady, who would avert her eyes as if to say, Don’t you dare even look at me, you rapist.

  There was a huge pile of music papers on top of my wardrobe. I looked back through over twenty years’ worth of carefully preserved old editions of the New Musical Express and then dumped them into bin liners. I flicked through a few of the interviews with my boyhood heroes – snarling punks spouting nihilistic notions of no future and anarchy, postures I’d once adopted myself. I’d better drop all these newspapers off at the recycling depot, I thought.

  I was a dad now and I had kids; they brought enough clutter without me bringing all this worthless history into the home. Although I had attempted to beam myself back to my twenties, I knew now there was no way I could really go back. A few weeks earlier we’d been playing football on the common when a stunning nanny had strolled past with a toddler in her charge. All the men stopped playing and stood staring in her direction.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Jim.

  ‘I think it’s a he,’ I’d said, noticing the little boy’s Baby Gap jeans.

  I just wasn’t cut out to be a ‘lad’ any more. It was as if I was trying to look cool driving around in a Lotus Elan, but with a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker in the rear window.

  I packed away the gear and gadgets which were piled up on the shelves: an out-of-date palm top (without batteries), a prohibitively stiff Swiss army knife, a charger that was only compatible with a games console I had replaced ages ago – all the boys’ toys and black plastic detritus I’d accumulated over my years as a thirty-something teenager. It only took another hour to pack all my CDs and books, which left the rest of the afternoon to untangle the seven miles of plastic spaghetti that was spewing out of the back of my keyboard, mixing desk and stereo. Eventually I loaded my musical equipment into the Transit. It reminded me of my days playing in all those bands, and how I had thought that all the humping amps and keyboards into vans would one day lead to a number-one hit record. I consoled myself with the thought that when Classic Commercials went platinum I could frame that and put it up above the mantelpiece instead. Or maybe pride of place on the toilet wall would be more appropriate.

  Finally everything was locked up in the back of the van, ready to be driven over the river. I finished cleaning my room and put the bucket of cleaning stuff back under the sink as noisily as possible and returned the Hoover to its place under the cupboard with a bang and a clatter, but none of my flatmates looked up. There was nothing else to do. This was it. This was the point at which I was saying an overdue farewell to my wilting salad days.

  Jim was at the table, failing to work out how to store numbers on his mobile phone, while Paul was almost erupting with frustration, trying to stop himself suggesting that Jim simply read the manual. Simon was slumped in front of the telly watching a non-stop video of goals. Not a video of a great football match, where a goal was a precious and significant thing, but a compilation of lots of different goals, all taken out of context and rendered completely meaningless. It was the sports equivalent of Classic Commercials.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ I said with a self-conscious mock sense of occasion that was the only way to disguise my feeling of a genuine sense of occasion. Although I knew these people were not my soulmates, I thoug
ht they might have made a little more effort when it came to saying goodbye. Men have never been very good at emotional farewells. When Scott’s expedition was struggling back across the Antarctic and Captain Oates resolved to lay down his own life rather than be a burden to his comrades, he pretended he was just slipping out of the tent to go to the toilet. He would have said he was going off to die, but he couldn’t face the embarrassed, indifferent shrug of his friends, mumbling, ‘Yeah, well, see you about then.’

  ‘Yeah, well, see you about, Michael,’ said Jim as I prepared to stride out into the icy snowstorm of fully committed married life.

  ‘Yeah, bye,’ said Simon and Paul.

  I stood there awkwardly for a couple of seconds. When I thought of some of the great times I had had there I felt sad, almost tearful, but the others seemed indifferent and completely unmoved. Of course, they hadn’t had kids yet; their emotions were still in the box.

  ‘Oh, one last thing,’ said Simon.

  ‘Yes?’ I said hopefully.

  ‘Which is the only football club that contains no letters that can be coloured in?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘When you’re colouring in letters – like filling in the “o”s or the “a”s – in the newspaper. Well, which is the only Englishor Scottish football league club whose name contains no letters that you can colour in?’

  ‘Simon, that is the most pointless question I have ever heard,’ and I paused and heard myself say, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  ‘No, it’s stupid, I am not going to waste my time and energy even thinking about it.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘see you about.’ And he went back to watching his video.

  ‘But just for the record, which team is it?’

  ‘I thought you said it didn’t matter?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter; it is a pointless fact. That is so typical of the level of conversation in this household. Hours and hours wasted talking about something of no significance whatsoever. So Simon, pray, do tell us all which team contains only letters that cannot be coloured in?’

  ‘You’ll get it eventually.’

  ‘I just thought, having raised it, you might tell me which it is.’

  Simon looked up with a matter-of-fact smile.

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause. ‘Well, I’d better be off,’ and I hovered in the doorway.

  ‘Yeah. See you,’ they mumbled.

  ‘Ah, I’ve got it,’ I said.

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Can I just confirm that I’m thinking of the same club as you?’

  ‘Sure. What team were you thinking of?’ said Simon, knowing that I didn’t have the faintest idea what the answer was.

  ‘Oh come on, which is it?’

  ‘It’s not important,’ he said without looking up from the television.

  ‘QPR,’ I blurted out, without really thinking about it.

  ‘Not bad. Except that you can colour in the Q, the P and the R.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  I sat down at the kitchen table and started firing out the names of obscure football clubs, only to be told that you could colour in the ‘B’ in Bury and the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ in East Fife. A couple of bottles of lager later Monica came round, and when she heard it was my last night in the flat she made a few calls and the crowd who had been planning to go to a club came to the flat instead with bottles of wine and cans of beer. She spontaneously organized the farewell party that I secretly would have quite liked my flatmates to have surprised me with.

  By nine o’clock there were about forty people in the flat, drinking cheap red wine out of coffee mugs and jumping about to songs I ought to have recognized. And when I talked to people it was nice when they said, ‘Oh, you’re the bloke who’s leaving. Well, cheers for the party.’ In a way that farewell party was a milestone in my life; it was my paternity bar mitzvah. It was an evening dominated by one over-riding thought. Not Am I doing the right thing or Will this make me happy, but unfortunately, Which is the only English or Scottish league football club that contains no letters that can be coloured in? I couldn’t get it out of my mind, I wanted to forget about it but I was ensnared. This was my big night, I was the centre of attention, but it was impossible for me to really enjoy myself because when anyone talked to me I could only pretend to listen while my mind frantically sifted through dozens of lower-division football clubs.

  ‘So whereabouts are you moving to?’

  ‘Fulham,’ I said delightedly.

  ‘Fulham, eh?’

  ‘Oh no, not Fulham.’

  ‘Why not?

  ‘Well, you can colour in the letter “a”, can’t you?’

  I danced self-consciously at nine o’clock, and a little less self-consciously two lagers later. Then it came to me; the trick was to think in capital letters. It was a relief to have got it out of the way. I bounded up to Simon, delighted with myself.

  ‘Exeter City,’ I announced smugly.

  ‘You can colour in the “e”s.’

  ‘Aha, but not if they’re in capitals.’

  ‘True, but if you’re in upper case then you can colour in the letter “R”.’

  I paused and thought about this. ‘OK, Exeter City written in upper case, except for the letter “r”, which you write in lower case; look, I’m going to get this . . .’ and I wandered off, mumbling clubs from the Scottish second division to myself.

  The party wore on and Kate arrived with her new boyfriend, which made me inexplicably jealous. Although I knew I could never have a relationship with her, I think subconsciously I hoped she might keep herself single for evermore, just in case I should ever happen to change my mind. And I didn’t like the way Jim gave her so much attention. If I wasn’t allowed to be unfaithful with her, then no-one else was either. I hardly talked to Simon or Jim all evening. Even then I still hadn’t told any of my flatmates that I was married. I had an elaborate story prepared to explain why I was moving out and where I was going, but none of them even bothered to ask.

  As the evening drew on, Paul spotted me alone in the corner and came over with two bottles of cold beer, one of which he handed to me. ‘So, are you staying tonight?’

  ‘Well, no, the van’s all packed up now. I’d better make this my last beer.’

  ‘So you weren’t planning to stay and help clear up?’

  ‘Paul, I’m sorry, I hadn’t been planning to stay and clear up, but that’s often the way when surprise parties are sprung on you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.’

  I could tell that he’d had quite a lot to drink. He seemed to be gearing himself up for getting something off his chest.

  ‘Michael, I know why you never brought a girl back to the flat.’

  Paul didn’t know about the night with Kate, but I wasn’t about to start boasting about a mythical night of passion when Kate herself was standing only a few yards away.

  ‘Didn’t I?’ I said, pretending to rack my brain for examples.

  ‘Oh, come on. Three years of living here; all those nights you stayed out, but never a single girl brought back here. I know the reason why.’

  I was concerned to find out at this late stage that my secret might have slipped out. I wanted to know more.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘Did someone tell you or did you just guess?’

  ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘I see. Yes, I suppose there’s no escaping the fact that I am just, well, different to you lot.’

  ‘Not that different, Mike. Not to me anyway,’ he said enigmatically.

  ‘You don’t mean you’ve been living a double life as well?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

  He seemed delighted to be able to share this with me.

  ‘Bloody hell! You’re a dark horse, Paul.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t think I can keep it secret much longer.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  ‘I just thought I’d tell you first b
ecause you’d understand. I’m gay, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m gay as well. And I think you feel the same way about me as I do about you.’

  ‘No, no, no, Paul. I’m not gay.’

  ‘Don’t try and get back in the closet now,’ he whispered as the babble of the party carried on all around us. ‘If I can share my secret, then so can you.’

  ‘I’m not gay,’ I repeated.

  ‘You just agreed that you couldn’t keep it a secret much longer.’

  ‘That was about something else.’

  ‘Oh sure. Like what?’

  ‘Well, I’d rather not say, if it’s all the same.’

  ‘Michael, it’s all right to be gay.’

  ‘I agree. It is all right to be gay. I think it’s perfectly all right to be gay.’

  ‘That’s good, you’re getting there.’

  ‘But it just so happens that I’m not.’

  ‘You’re still in denial, Michael.’

  ‘I’m not in denial. I’m just denying I’m gay.’

  ‘I’ll come out if you come out.’

  ‘I can’t come out because I’m not fucking gay, all right?’

  Paul’s confident assertion about my apparent homosexuality had rather eclipsed the bigger picture, which was that he had just told me the biggest secret of his life, namely, not only that he was gay, but that he had a crush on me. It suddenly all made sense – all the times he had hoped I would be there for meals he’d cooked, all the bizarre sulks he had got himself into. He had behaved like a jilted girlfriend. And having convinced himself that the apparent absence of women in my life was for the same reason as his own, having constructed this fantasy that built deeper meaning around my careless compliments on his baked fish or new trousers, he was not going to accept my shattering of his illusions without a fight. How could anyone allow themselves to become so deluded, I wondered. And then I thought about how happy I’d always presumed Catherine was back at home.