The Best a Man Can Get

by John O'Farrell

  ‘Well, of course you haven’t. I’m not homeless.’

  ‘Oh sorry, your majesty,’ and he gave an exaggerated grovelling drunken bow from his position on the bench beside me. ‘So where do you live then?’

  ‘Er, well, I don’t actually live anywhere just at the moment,’ I mumbled. ‘But as it happens, until very recently I had two homes,’ I added, in the hope that this would improve my claim to be a paid-up member of mainstream society.

  ‘So you used to have two homes and now you’ve got none.’ He took a final glug from his can and dropped it on the ground. ‘That sounds about fair to me.’

  He was right, there was a symmetry in the way things had turned out: the man who had tried to have it all had ended up with nothing. But I resented the way he was trying to bring me down to his level. I wasn’t a tramp! OK, I had nowhere to live and I had no money and I’d spent last night on a bench, but however smashed I got on Special Brew I could never have just dropped the empty can on the ground like that.

  ‘I’ve got a wife and two children, you know, and a third one on the way,’ I told him, proudly.

  He looked me up and down. He looked at my creased, stubbly face, my sticking-up hair, my crumpled dirty clothes and my pathetic bundle of belongings crammed into a tatty holdall.

  ‘What a lucky girl. I mean, you look like a hell of a catch for any woman.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we had a big bust up, but I’m going to ring her. I’m going to ring her now from that call box over there.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘And I’m going to make it up with her because I am not some down-and-out.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘Because I’m not some homeless beggar.’

  ‘Sure. Go and phone your wife.’

  ‘I would, only . . . Can you spare some change, please?’

  With twenty pence scrounged from the Welsh tramp I rang Catherine’s parents’ number and braced myself for their icy disapproval. But my heart leaped as Millie took it upon herself to answer the phone.

  ‘Hello, Millie, it’s Daddy. How are you?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Have you had your breakfast?’

  There was silence from the other end of the phone, which I realized meant she was nodding.

  ‘Have you been being good children for Gran and Grandad?’

  More silence; she might be nodding, she might be shaking her head, it was hard to tell. I had to stop asking questions that didn’t require her to speak.

  ‘Do you like my hat?’ she asked me.

  ‘It’s a lovely hat. Is it Granny’s?’

  ‘No!’ she said as if I was completely stupid. ‘Granny’s not a pirate!’

  The call box was eating up my units and, lovely as it was to talk to Millie, a discussion about whether or not Granny was a pirate was not going very far towards rebuilding my life. ‘Is Mummy there, darling?’

  Silence.

  ‘Millie, I can’t see you nodding or shaking your head from here. Can you put Mummy on the phone?’

  I heard Catherine’s voice talking to Millie, telling her to hand over the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, it’s me. Look, we have to talk, because I know you must hate me and everything, and I can understand that from where you are I can’t look like the most wonderful bloke in the world, but I’m not the worst, you know. And the thing is that I love you, and Jesus, men have slept with other women and their wives have forgiven them, but I’ve never done that. Christ, even when I masturbate I always try and think of you.’

  ‘It’s not Catherine, Michael. It’s Sheila,’ said the frosty voice of her mother. ‘Please do not use the Lord’s name in that way.’

  ‘Oh, er, sorry, Sheila. God, you sound just like her on the phone.’

  ‘Please do not take God’s name in vain.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Fuck, sorry. Can I speak to Catherine, please?’

  ‘No you can’t.’

  ‘What? No you won’t let me, or no she’s not there?’

  ‘No she’s not here.’

  Sheila was not going out of her way to be more helpful than she needed.

  ‘Er, do you know where she is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, could you tell me where she is, please.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should.’

  ‘Look for Chr— for crikey’s sake, Sheila. She is still my wife. She’s nine months pregnant with our third child. I think I have a right to know where she is.’

  Sheila paused. And then she told me where Catherine was. And then I shouted something and ran out of the telephone box, leaving the receiver swinging back and forth, and the person waiting to use the phone box after me picked it up to hear Sheila saying, ‘Please do not use the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in that way.’

  I ran up Clapham High Street and through Stockwell and past all the tube stops that I used to whizz through when I commuted between marriage and boyhood, but now I didn’t even have a pound to ride on the train and I ran and ran and ran and my body hurt and I felt sick, but I kept on running because I had to get to Catherine. I had to be with her now; I had to be by her side because Catherine had gone into labour. At this moment our third child was being born.

  chapter eleven

  the real thing

  A car tooted and swerved as I ran across the traffic crossing Clapham Road. I had run two miles and felt close to collapsing when I saw the orange beacon of an approaching taxi and maniacally waved my hand.

  ‘Hello.’ I panted, leaning on the side of the cab. ‘Look I’ve got no cash on me, but my wife is in labour at St Thomas’s, and if you could just give me a lift up there I can post you a cheque for twice the fare.’

  ‘Hop in, I’ve got two meself, little monkeys. I’ll get you there double quick and there’s no charge. This one’s on me.’

  That’s what I’d been hoping he might say. I’d seen it in the movies – desperate man with wife in labour meets policeman or cabbie who bends the rules to help him. This taxi driver hadn’t seen the same films as me. ‘Fuck off,’ he snarled, and then drove off, nearly taking my arm with him.

  I resumed my marathon dash across South London, occasionally swapping my holdall from one hand to the other, and then eventually dropping it in a litter bin. By the time I reached the river I could only run in short intermittent bursts, in between long stretches of anxious, brisk walking. You can never really appreciate exactly how far away somewhere is until you’re desperately trying to race there with a severe hangover in time to witness the birth of your child. Stretches of road that in my head were only fifty yards long seemed to go on and on and on, as if I was trudging the wrong way along the moving walkway at Gatwick Airport. The exertion increased my feeling of nausea; I felt dizzy and sick and could feel the sweat running down my back and soaking through my overcoat.

  The Thames stretched out on my left with parliament looming out of the mist on the other side of the river. As I jogged exhaustedly along the embankment path, a stampede of cyclists bore down on me, and for a moment it looked like the only safe option would be to climb up a tree. Finally I arrived at the entrance to St Thomas’s Hospital and, gasping for breath, I approached the reception desk.

  ‘Hello, I’ve come to see Catherine Adams who’s giving birth here at this very moment. Can you tell me what floor she’s on, please?’

  The receptionist did not seem to share my sense of urgency. Still panting, I explained that I was her husband, that I hadn’t come in with her because I hadn’t been with her when she suddenly went into labour, but that I had to get up there right away and obviously they would want me beside her as soon as possible. And then I threw up in the litter bin.

  The hospital receptionist obviously saw people being sick on a fairly regular basis as she was completely unfazed by this. As I rested my head on her desk and moaned, ‘Oh God,’ quietly to myself, she called the labour ward to confirm my version of events.

  ‘Yes, he’s down here at r
eception,’ she said. ‘He’s just been sick in the litter bin and now I think he may be about to pass out.’

  A conversation ensued of which I could only hear one half. ‘I see … yes … yes…’ but from the tone of her voice I could sense there must be some sort of administrative hold-up.

  ‘Well, what is it? Is there a problem?’ I asked impatiently.

  ‘They want to know why you have been sick? Are you ill?’

  ‘No, I’m not ill, I just ran here, that’s all.’

  ‘No, he’s not ill. He does smell of drink, though,’ she added helpfully, and then she gave me a little disappointed shake of the head to suggest that this detail had just failed to swing it in my favour. Finally she informed me that they could not allow me onto the labour ward, that they understood that Catherine and I were separated and that Catherine already had her sister Judith there as her birthing partner. As if childbirth wasn’t painful enough.

  ‘OK. That’s fine, I understand,’ I said calmly. ‘I’ll, um, call round later, maybe.’ And then I walked slowly round the corner and jumped in the lift up to the labour ward. I came out on the seventh floor and the next obstacle was a big scuffed metal door with a security buzzer on the side. I hung around for a while, pretending to study the poster that said, ‘How to examine your breasts’, and a passing nurse gave me a very strange look. Eventually the ping of the lift announced the arrival of another expectant father, who emerged clutching a large bundle of pre-packed sandwiches which he had bought in the shop downstairs. Excellent, he was heading for the door to the labour ward.

  ‘Ah, the famous sandwiches,’ I said, thinking it best to befriend him if I was going to try and follow him into the inner sanctum.

  ‘I didn’t know what sort of filling was best for a mother in labour, so I got a selection.’

  ‘Cheese and pickle,’ I announced confidently as I moved to stand behind him at the door.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, looking crestfallen. ‘That’s the only one I didn’t get. I’ll go and change this for cheese and pickle.’

  ‘No, no, egg and cress is even better. In fact, some people think that cheese and pickle increases the chance of a Caesarean.’

  ‘Really? Blimey, thanks for telling me,’ and he buzzed and gave his name to the intercom and he was in and so was I.

  I adopted the resolute air of someone who definitely knew where he was going, despite the fact that I kept having to slow down in the hope of glancing in any doors that just happened to open. The labour ward’s windowless corridor had the atmosphere of a secret prison in some faraway Fascist dictatorship. Screams of agony came from behind various doors as determined-looking men and women marched in and out clutching metallic torture instruments. I saw a door and had a hunch that was the room Catherine would be giving birth in.

  ‘Sorry, wrong room,’ I said to the naked lady climbing into the birthing pool. I put my ear to the next delivery room. I could hear a man’s authoritative voice. ‘No, everyone knows that cheese and pickle increases the chance of having a Caesarean,’ he said. At the end of the corridor was the nurse’s desk, and I decided there was nothing else for it. I walked confidently past in search of some clue and there on the wall was a large white board with the room numbers and mothers’ names scrawled underneath. By Room 8 somebody had scribbled Catherine Addams in blue felt-tip. Adams with two ‘d’s, as if we were the Addams family. As I caught sight of myself in the mirror, that mistake suddenly seemed quite appropriate. Then I reached Room 8.1 tried to flatten down my hair, but I felt it spring straight up again. I knocked gently and walked in.

  ‘Aaarrrrggghhhhhhh!’

  ‘Hello, Catherine.’

  ‘Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!’ she screamed again. I presumed she was having a contraction, unless this was just a natural reaction to seeing me.

  ‘What the fucking hell are you doing here,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s fine because I’m not doing anything in particular at the moment. Aaaaaaaarrrrrggghhh!’

  The only other person in the room was Judith, who had the disappointed look of an understudy who had just seen the lead return in time for curtain-up.

  ‘Shouldn’t there be a midwife or a doctor here or something?’ I said.

  ‘She’s only five centimetres dilated,’ said Judith, looking hurt that she didn’t even count as an ‘or something’. ‘They’ve been popping in and out to see how she’s doing. And I’ve got her sandwiches and everything.’

  ‘She never eats the sandwiches.’

  ‘Oh.’ Judith looked even more disappointed.

  ‘Catherine, listen,’ I said, ‘I’ve worked it out. I know what I was doing wrong.’

  ‘Oh congratulations, Michael!’

  She was sitting up in bed wearing an unflattering hospital gown and she looked almost as hot and dishevelled as me.

  ‘I thought you were always pissed off with me.’

  ‘I am pissed off with you. Completely and utterly disgusted and appalled by you.’

  ‘Yes, obviously you are now,’ I conceded. ‘But before, when you were pissed off with being the mother of small babies, I thought you didn’t love me any more, and I think that’s why I kept running away.’

  ‘Aaaarrgggghhhh!’

  Judith pointedly edged in to give Catherine an annoying weedy dab on the forehead with a flannel that was even wetter than she was.

  ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Essential oils,’ said Judith with a smug nod. ‘They really helped me when I had Barney.’

  ‘They are not essential oils, though, are they, Judith? They are not at all essential. For thousands of years women have given birth without essential oils. Completely fucking superfluous oils would be a better name.’

  ‘Stop it, Michael,’ said Catherine, still recovering from her last contraction. ‘You lied to me and deserted me and then you think you can just fucking turn up here and everything will be all right again. You’re bored with being on your own, so now you’d like another spell of being a dad until you get bored with that again. Well, you can just fuck right off!’ She was shouting now.

  ‘Erm, would you like me to massage your feet?’ said Judith, looking a little self-conscious.

  ‘No, Judith, I do not want you to massage my feet, thank you very much.’

  ‘Look, Catherine, everything you say is true. But you were the one who wanted kids so soon. I pretended to want them, too, but that was only to keep you happy. Everything I did was because I was trying to make you happy.’

  ‘Oh I see, living it up in your flat was to make me happy, was it. There’s me thinking this was all about you being a selfish wanker and now I see that I was the one who was getting everything my own way. Well, pardon me for being so selfish.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said suddenly. ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘What noise?’ said Catherine, irritated at being halted in full flow.

  I heard it again. An eerie distant moan was coming from somewhere inside the room. It was like there was a drugged old man groaning from inside the cupboard, only his batteries were running out.

  ‘There it is again. It’s awful. What is it?’

  Judith looked hurt. ‘That’s my whale-song tape. It’s to help Catherine relax.’

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaargh!’ went Catherine.

  ‘Well that’s working well, isn’t it? A whale-song tape! Oh my God, what a hippie cliché you are. I bet they’re not even modern whale songs; I bet they’re whale-song classics from the sixties.’

  ‘Gnnnnnnoooooo …’ went the whale.

  ‘Aaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhh!’ went Catherine again. ‘Actually, Judith, could you do me a favour,’ she added, shifting uncomfortably.

  ‘Yes?’ said Judith brightly.

  ‘Could you turn off the stupid bloody whale-song tape. I feel enough like a big fat whale as it is.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘And stop rubbing that stinking oil on my feet before the smell makes me puke up.’<
br />
  Catherine and I then argued back and forth while she had the distinct disadvantage of being well into the first stages of labour. There were one or two occasions when I thought I had her stumped because she didn’t reply, but it always turned out that this was because a huge painful contraction was washing over her. As we shouted at one another I was vaguely aware of Judith flicking through a natural-birth handbook to see if it explained what sort of crystals or herbs might be waved about in this situation. Catherine said I only cared about myself and I said, ‘No, I love you, you stupid fuck wit.’ She called me a self-centred bastard and I said she was a whinging martyr. I had given up trying to grovel because it was getting me nowhere and thought I’d try going on the offensive instead.

  ‘Well you drove me out so you owe me an apology.’

  ‘I owe you an apology?’ she said incredulously.

  ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t know where this was leading, but I ploughed on anyway.

  ‘I owe you an apology? Do you really want to know what I owe you?

  ‘Er, yeah, all right?’

  And that was her cue to punch me with all her might in the middle of my face. I went down like a felled tree, hitting the back of my head on the metal gas-and-air canisters, which were there for pain relief and which really hurt a lot. Then Catherine started crying and whacking me with a plastic bedpan and I rolled into a ball on the ground, and then Catherine started another contraction and Judith pressed the emergency call button.

  For the birth of my first two children I had felt strangely spiritually detached from it all. For the birth of my third I was physically removed by two burly men from hospital security. I helplessly hung around the outside of the hospital for an hour or so while happy visitors to the maternity ward bustled in and out clutching flowers and soft toys. There had been one ray of hope that made me want to stay outside the hospital. Catherine had said ‘I love you’ over and over again as she struck me round the head with the bedpan. I had thought she hated me, which I suppose she might have done as well. But as the security guards grasped the back of my hair, bent me double and frog-marched me out of the hospital with my arm nearly breaking up my back, I felt a euphoric serenity, as if my feet were off the ground, which they were, in fact, when the two gorillas threw me out onto the pavement.