I said I was delighted for him that he’d finally decided to come out, and apologized if the atmosphere in the flat had ever been at all homophobic.
‘No. Jim and Simon made the odd joke, but you always corrected them. That’s when I first started to realize.’
‘Just because I’m not homophobic doesn’t mean I am homosexual, you stupid bugger. No offence.’
‘Michael, I love you, and I think you love me, if only you could face up to it.’
‘Forget about me. Go and proposition Simon; he’s got to have sex with some living creature before he’s thirty.’ And I pointed to where Simon was failing to make a girl fall in love with him by describing some of his favourite sites on the Internet, hoping against hope that one thing might lead to another. But Paul would not be deterred. ‘Look, I do know some other gay men; they’ve given me the strength to come out. They can help you, too. I’ve told them all about you.’
This was too much and my patience just snapped.
‘WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO GO ROUND TELLING PEOPLE THAT I’M GAY?’
The whole room fell quiet at this news and all heads turned to me for an explanation. Mouths were agape that my ‘secret’ was out. The man who had delivered the pizzas put his beer down and announced that he had better get back to the shop.
‘That explains everything,’ said Kate loudly.
‘I’m not gay, actually, everyone. I just was, er, saying to Paul here that he shouldn’t tell people I was gay. If, erm, the thought should occur to him.’
No-one looked very convinced.
‘It’s OK, Michael. There’s nothing wrong with being gay,’ said an encouraging voice from the back of the crowd.
‘I know there isn’t.’
‘Good for you, mate,’ shouted someone else.
‘Then it’s a double celebration,’ shouted Monica. ‘He’s going out into the world and coming out of the closet.’ Everyone applauded and some joker cued ‘YMCA’ on the record player, and my lone protestations were drowned out by everyone suddenly singing and dancing along to Village People. They had put the record on especially for me and thought I was really unsporting not to dance, so in the end I did and everyone took that as a final confirmation of my coming out. Space was cleared for me on the dance floor and I was encouraged and applauded as if I’d suddenly had a lifetime of secrecy lifted off my shoulders. I looked across at Paul, standing in the corner mouthing the words of the song but still not liberated enough to dance along to a well-known camp classic. The next time I looked up, I saw Simon looking rather surprised and offended at a proposition that the very drunken Paul was putting to him.
A little later Kate came across to me and said that it had never occurred to her that the ‘other person’ I had been saving myself for was a man. Now she understood why I hadn’t wanted to sleep with her. I think she found this reassuring. I didn’t feel I had the energy to go through my denials again so I just thanked her for being so understanding and smiled. I probably wouldn’t see any of these people again, so if they were determined to believe I was homosexual, then so what?
After a couple of hours of self-imposed sobriety, my smile began to ache as I watched them all disappear over the drunken horizon. I said goodbye to a few people, but everyone had now forgotten the original reason for the party, so I didn’t feel too antisocial for just slipping away. I drove my rented van through the London night and soon I was on Waterloo Bridge, on the old border between my two lives. I looked at the river and the glorious sparkling views of Canary Wharf and the City to the east and parliament and the London Eye to the west. Then I headed up Aldwych, past hunched bodies sleeping in doorways or covered in cardboard. London was just like my life. From a distance it looked great; it’s only when you got close you realized how fucked up it was.
Finally I was outside my family home. It was too late to unload now; the van was alarmed and had a couple of padlocks on the back, so I felt safe enough leaving it all till the morning. My home was dark and still as I slipped quietly into the hallway and silently closed the door behind me. Since the children came along, Catherine had become such a light sleeper that I found myself tiptoeing around downstairs, trying not to breathe too noisily.
There was a video tape placed where I would see it on the kitchen table, which meant that Catherine had remembered to record my favourite programme. Though I preferred people not to know, nothing amused me more than home videos of labradors skateboarding into swimming pools and toddlers getting stuck in the toilet bowl. Our own camcorder was set up on the tripod, so Catherine had obviously been inspired to film our own kids. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and settled down in the lounge with the television on extra-considerate, almost-inaudible low volume to have a really good laugh at some other people’s misfortunes. The first clip featured some fairly obviously contrived set-ups of people pretending not to be looking where they were going as they walked fully clothed into a river, but their efforts got them five hundred quid, which was enough to pay for their new camcorder, so good luck to them. Then there was a sequence of children being embarrassingly honest – a little boy saying to a very overweight children’s entertainer, ‘You’re a big fat pig.’ And then, when he was told off, he pointed to her with a look of gross injustice that this simple truth could be denied and said, ‘But she is . . .’
Then there was a lavish church wedding. The groom was asked if he would take this woman to be his lawful wedded wife and he said that he would. The bride was asked if she would take this man and she was slightly nervous and struggled to get the words out. She’s going to faint, I thought. I can see this one coming a mile off. I was wrong. At that moment, about five rows back, a man in the congregation jumped up wearing a Walkman, and throwing both his arms in the air he shouted, ‘GOAL!’ I laughed so much I thought I would wake up the whole street, never mind just Catherine. I rewound the tape and watched the clip again. It made me laugh almost as much the second time. Fantastic. I loved this programme. The host liked that one as well, but promised the next clip was even funnier. Well, this should be really good, I thought, and I took another big glug of beer. Then the picture went blank and I thought, Oh no, she’s cocked up the recording.
But she hadn’t. Catherine’s thunderous face suddenly appeared on the screen. ‘You wanker!’ she shouted at the camcorder. ‘You lying, selfish, cowardly, lazy, fucking lying bastard! You want to live away from me and the kids. You want to have your “own space”. Well you’ve got it, shitface. Fuck you!’
I ran upstairs. Our bed was empty. The kids’ room was empty. Her side of the wardrobe was bare; some toys and most of the kids’ clothes had gone, too. There was a barren hotel-room neatness to our bedroom. I stood staring around the space in bewilderment; my mind was in freefall. Then, from nowhere, it suddenly came into my head. Hull City. The answer to Simon’s trivia question was Hull City. And my wife had walked out on me and taken our children with her. My marriage was in ruins. Hull City. Of course.
chapter nine
where do you want to go today
‘And this is the children’s room,’ I said as my father stepped over the unwanted soft toys to look around Millie and Alfie’s abandoned bedroom.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘I like all those clouds painted on the ceiling. Did you do that?’
‘Er, no, that was, erm, Catherine.’
‘Oh.’
If I had ever given any thought to how I would feel when I finally showed Dad around my family home, I suppose I would have imagined the scene with my family still in it.
‘That’s where Millie slept and that’s where Alfie slept.’
‘I see, yes. And who is this on the eiderdown?’
‘On the duvet? Well, that’s Barbie,’ I said incredulously. I’d lived in a home where Barbie was worshipped as an icon more revered than the Virgin Mary in the Vatican; it was disconcerting to find there were still people who’d never heard of her.
‘And, erm, that’s Ken, there.’
‘Is
“Ken” Barbie’s husband?’
‘Well, I don’t think they’re married. Ken’s just her boyfriend. Or he might possibly be her fiancé, I’m not sure.’
An awkward silence hung in the air.
‘Actually they’ve been going out for about thirty years now, so if Ken hasn’t popped the question yet she ought to start getting worried.’ And I gave out a little nervous laugh, but Dad didn’t seem aware that I had made a joke. Maybe the area of marriages and commitment wasn’t the best subject to josh about at the moment. We stood there for a while as Dad made an effort to look interested in the kids’ room.
‘I haven’t touched anything since Catherine walked out on me,’ I said with an air of almost affected self-pity.
Dad thought about this. ‘I thought you said she took the car.’ No-one can focus on the irrelevant detail quite like an elderly parent.
‘OK, since she drove out on me, then.’
‘So where were you when she drove off?’
‘I was loading up all the stuff from my flat to drive back here.’
There was a thoughtful pause. Something was worrying him, but it wasn’t the disaster that had befallen his son’s marriage.
‘So how did she get hold of the car?’
‘What?’
‘How did she get hold of the car if you were loading up your things?’
I sighed an exhausted sigh to try and make him understand that this really wasn’t very important and said through gritted teeth, ‘I wasn’t using the car. I’d rented a van.’
‘I see.’ And then he contemplated this for a second. ‘Because you knew that she was going to need the car to take the kids and all their things to her mother’s?’
‘No, of course I didn’t know or I would have tried to stop her.’
‘So why didn’t you use the car to move your things out of the flat? You can get quite a lot in an Astra, can’t you, especially a hatchback.’
‘Look, it doesn’t matter. There was quite a bit of stuff; it would have needed two journeys.’
He went quiet for a moment and we wandered into the other bedroom. I was slightly embarrassed when I realized how feminine the decor was: the flowery duvet, the frilly edge on the dressing table – it seemed so inappropriate now that I was sleeping there on my own.
‘So is it very expensive, hiring your own van?’
‘What?’
‘Is it expensive, renting a van to move all your things?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes, it cost a million pounds. Dad, it really doesn’t matter about the van.’
‘You’re not still renting it, are you, to get around in now that Catherine’s taken the car?’
‘No, I’m not still renting the bloody van!’
Although I wish I had been and then I could have run him over with it.
My irritation was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t help but blame Dad for my wife’s departure. True to form, Dad had recently left his lady friend for a younger woman. Jocelyn was very bitter; it must be hard being chucked when you’re fifty-nine, especially when it’s because you’re not fifty-four any more. And in her fury she had forwarded my extended confessional letter to Catherine to warn her what these fickle Adams men were like.
Perhaps this was why Dad seemed to avoid discussing what had happened. When I telephoned him to invite him up I asked him if he had read the letter.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ he replied brightly.
‘Well, what did you think?’
He didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘Your handwriting has certainly got a lot better, hasn’t it?’
But I needed to know the details of how Jocelyn had found the letter; had she searched through his pockets or opened his drawer or what? I was about to ask him when he said, ‘It’s a shame you didn’t invite me up a few weeks earlier. It would have been nice to see Catherine and the children.’
Yes, what a shame, I thought. What a shame for you that my wife and children have walked out on me. What a shame that is. Poor Dad, poor you.
‘Yes, well, it’s a shame that Jocelyn read that letter I wrote to you or Catherine and the kids would still be here.’
‘Ha. Fair dos!’ he said, as if I had just scored a minor point in a school debating club.
‘So, did she go through your pockets or what?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Jocelyn. How did she get to read my letter?’
There was a pause in which Dad gradually sensed that perhaps he had done something he shouldn’t have done.
‘No, I, um, I showed it to her.’
‘You did what?’ I shrieked.
‘Was that all right?’
‘You showed her an explosive private letter from your son, and then you chucked her?’
He looked perplexed and the withered row of transplanted hair at the top of his head moved slightly as he furrowed his brow.
‘What does “chucked” mean?’ he said.
‘It’s what I am, thanks to you. Chucked, jilted, dumped.’
‘Well, I think that’s a bit unfair. I mean, it was you who was deceiving your wife, not me.’
At this point a whole row of fuses blew inside my head. ‘Well at least I didn’t fuck off with some pharmacist and walk out on my five-year-old kid.’
‘That’s not fair, Michael. It was more complicated than that. . .’
‘I thought I must have done something really terrible to have suddenly been abandoned by you. I thought it was my fault.’
‘Your mother and I were both to blame for the marriage not working.’
‘Oh yeah, it’s Mum’s fault. Of course it is. Blame Mum; it’s not as if she’s in any position to defend herself, is it?’
‘I’m just saying there’s a lot you don’t know about.’
‘Well I do know this, that she’d still be alive if you hadn’t walked out on her because she’d never have moved to Belfast with what’s-his-face, so it’s your fault she was run over.’
‘Come on, Michael; it wasn’t me driving that car, was it?’
‘It might as well have been!’ I yelled, and at the back of my brain a little voice was saying, What are you talking about, Michael? That is clearly nonsense, but I was in no mood to retract what I’d just said.
‘You left me and Mum for a woman who left you, and so you found another woman and then another and then another. And now what have you got to show for it? One fucked-up son and a ridiculous hair transplant that looks like someone sprinkled a row of mustard seeds across your big, shiny bald head!’
I knew I’d pressed the nuclear button. It was all right to accuse him of being a bad father, of ruining my childhood, even of indirectly causing Mum’s death, but no-one ever mentioned the hair transplant. You just knew not to. There was a brief moment of silence while Dad stared impassively into my eyes, and then he got up, picked up his coat, put on his hat and walked out the door.
Twenty minutes later I ate the supermarket pre-prepared shepherd’s pie that had been baking in the oven for the two of us. I divided it in half and ate my portion, and then I ate the rest of it as well. Then I remembered why I had finally invited Dad to come up to London in the first place. I had been planning to show him round the house, give him lunch, explain the situation with the mortgage and then ask him if there was any way he could lend me a rather large amount of money. So that had all gone according to plan, then.
I was shocked by the things I had heard myself say to him, and at the level of bitterness that had been bottled up for so long. Why couldn’t I have had a father like the ones in the adverts? In the Gillette commercial that I’d sung along to a million times, the father and son go fishing together in America somewhere, and dad helps son reel in a salmon; they’re easy and comfortable with each other and he’s had a really good shave and someone sings, ‘The best a man can get.’ That father would never run off with a pharmacist called Janet; they’d never use my dad in the Gillette ad. But then, he did have a beard, I suppose.
Of course m
y dad had never had a father around when he’d been a child, either. Or a mother most of the time, for that matter. On 1 September 1939 he had been put on a train to Wales, and he didn’t see his dad again until the end of the war. I mused that if Dad hadn’t been evacuated, then he would have had a father as a role model, which might have made him stay around to be a role model for me, which would have made me a better father and stopped Catherine walking out. So there it was, everything was Adolf Hitler’s fault. I don’t suppose any of this crossed his mind as he was invading Poland.
That night I just lay on the sofa all evening watching telly, occasionally getting hungry enough to see if the disgusting pizza I’d had delivered was any more palatable when cold. It wasn’t, but I ate it anyway. With the television remote control in my hand I flicked through all the cable movie channels, watching three films at once. Trevor Howard kissed Celia Johnson as she got on the railway carriage and then the entire train crashed into the River Kwai. Then Celia tucked up her children in bed and Jack Nicholson smashed down the door with an axe.
Here I was again, trying to watch several stories and so enjoying none of them. I actually felt a strange empathy with Jack Nicholson in The Shining; living in this house, frozen in time, guarding the place till everyone came back, slowly going madder and madder as I tried and failed to work. I don’t think I was as bad a husband as he was. I never once tried to kill my wife and kids with an axe, for example, but I don’t think Catherine would accept this as a point in my favour.
The Best a Man Can Get Page 19