The Best a Man Can Get

by John O'Farrell

  The parting lift doors revealed the skinny frame of an old man in some loose-fitting grubby pyjamas. He looked so close to death that I half expected the Grim Reaper to leap into the lift ahead of me, apologizing for being so late. His shaking body was held upright with the aid of a Zimmer frame, and his blotchy skin was stretched taut around his mouth and cheekbones.

  ‘Well, are you coming or going?’ he said to me.

  In a few years’ time my father would look like this, lonely and close to death. One stupid affair in his thirties and then he spent the rest of his life looking for the love he had once had with my mother.

  ‘Well, are you coming or going?’ he repeated, adding, ‘Because I haven’t got all day,’ despite the fact that he clearly did have.

  ‘Sorry!’ I said and I turned around and left him there.

  I walked up to the closed green curtains around Catherine’s bed.

  ‘Yes, he has,’ I said to her as I stepped through the gap. She looked up, surprised to see me, her eyes still red.

  ‘What?’ she said, looking puzzled.

  ‘You said that this little boy hasn’t got a father. But he has. I can be his father.’

  She raised her eyebrows at me, which I took as an invitation to continue.

  ‘This is Millie and Alfie’s brother, so why can’t I be his dad? This is the child of the woman I love. I wasn’t there for my own two, so I’ll be there for this one. I promise, Catherine. I’ll be there for the hard bits as well as the easy stuff. I know how a child feels when it’s abandoned by its father. Let me be this little boy’s dad; let me show you I can be a proper dad to Alfie and Millie.’

  A hospital auxiliary pulled back the curtain to offer a tray of food.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him, ‘could you just give us a minute,’ and I drew the curtain back across again. ‘Catherine, I’ll be there when you’re bored and fed up and you just want someone to moan at, someone who’s going to offer you sympathy instead of always suggesting solutions. I’ll be there when you’re worried about him, and even if I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, I’ll sit and listen until we’ve talked it through. I’ll be there just to play endless games with him, pretending that I really enjoy jiggling little plastic Power Ranger figures about on the carpet. And I’ll be there when we’re not doing anything at all, just passing the hours together, because I didn’t understand before that that’s what it’s all about – just spending time with your family is the end in itself, and you have to timetable in some wasting time together. Now that I understand what I’m supposed to do, I know that I can do it.’

  Catherine didn’t say anything, she just looked at me.

  ‘Have you finished now?’ said the hospital auxiliary from the other side of the curtain.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, taking the tray from him.

  ‘It’s meat curry.’

  ‘Meat curry. How lovely. Her favourite sort.’

  Catherine’s expression didn’t change. I stood there waiting for some sort of clue as to what she was thinking. ‘It’s not what I want,’ she said finally. My insides suddenly felt completely empty.

  ‘But, Catherine, you have to give us another chance.’

  ‘No. Meat curry is not what I want. Can you see if they’ve got a salad or something?’

  ‘In a minute. Can we just sort this out first. Are you going to bring this boy up on your own or are we going to do it together?’

  ‘You can forgive me? Just like that?’ she said, slowly.

  ‘Well, I was hoping I might be able to do a deal. Is there any little thing that I’ve done in the past couple of years that you might want to forgive me for, perhaps even just partially?’

  It was the first time I’d seen her smile since we had parted. It was only a bleary half smile, but its return was like the sudden faint bleep on a cardiogram; there was life where I’d thought there had been none.

  ‘But you’ll always know that this child isn’t yours.’

  ‘So what? You’re right, I was never there. But Klaus won’t be there for this one and why should you be left alone again?’

  I was thinking so clearly now, speaking with a missionary zeal. I knew it was the only way forward. Catherine had to see that it was right.

  ‘You’re really prepared to bring up someone else’s child as your own?’

  ‘He will never know he’s half German. Now what do you think of the name Karl-Heinz Adams? It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?’

  And she smiled again, properly this time.

  ‘You have to understand, Michael, that if we were to make another go of it, things could never be like they were. I would never totally trust you like I did before – something has gone for ever.’

  I nodded, nervous as to which way the coin was about to fall.

  ‘You have been selfish and immature and dishonest and blind and callous and self-indulgent.’

  I tried to pick out an adjective that I felt was being unfairly applied to me, but failed. How was it that she had so many words at her disposal? Why did we always have to argue with words? That way she was always going to win. If we could have argued using musical notes, chords and melody lines I might have stood a better chance.

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘but if you are prepared to forgive me, then maybe we have something to build upon. Can you promise me that from here on, can you promise that you will always be honest, that you will never again let yourself disappear into some stupid solipsistic fantasy.’

  I paused. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  Her face fell. It was the wrong answer. ‘Well, if you can’t be sure, then I don’t see how we can have any future together.’

  ‘No, no,’ I stammered. ‘I just don’t know what “solipsistic” means. I was going to pretend and just say yes, but I’m trying to make myself be honest.’

  ‘It means that you have to realize that you are not the only person in the entire bloody universe.’

  ‘Well, I do realize that, yes. I just didn’t want to promise not to be solipsistic when it sounded like some sort of eating disorder.’

  ‘You have to realize that from the moment you have children they become more important to you than yourself.’

  ‘They are, Catherine, I promise. All three of them. But you, you’re more important still. I love you; I never understood that as clearly as when I’d lost you, and the fact that you ended up in bed with Klaus only confirms to me how abandoned I must have made you feel. Let’s start again. Please, Catherine, take me back.’

  She paused. ‘On approval only.’ And then she put out her arms to me and I hugged her long and hard, as if I had just been rescued from drowning.

  ‘Thank you for forgiving me,’ she said as she held me to her. ‘I needed to know that you would. If you’re really prepared to commit to bringing up Klaus’s son as your own then you’ve got to be worth giving a second chance.’ She held me close to her, clutching the back of my head tightly as I winced in silent agony, not wanting to mention the tender bruise where I’d crashed into the gas-and-air cylinders after she’d punched me to the ground. But everything was all right. We were together again. We were a family.

  ‘And I forgive you, even if you still have one major flaw that I will never quite get used to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said anxiously, pulling myself away from her.

  She looked me in the eye. ‘Michael, if you actually believe all that bollocks about me sleeping with Klaus and then having his baby, then you really are an even bigger sucker than I always thought you were.’

  And a huge burst of canned laughter came from the TV room.

  chapter twelve

  the best a man can get

  ‘I now declare you husband and wife,’ said the keen young vicar and the congregation burst into spontaneous applause. Older women in bizarre hats exchanged approving smiles and even the vicar joined in the cheers to show that the church didn’t have to be all stuffy and serious. I clapped as well as any man could conside
ring I was carrying a nine-month-old baby. The noise excited him and he gave enthusiastic random kicks of his legs and waved his arms about in giggly approval. Catherine held up Alfie to watch as the bride and groom kissed slightly more passionately than would generally be considered appropriate. The vicar had added, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ not, ‘You may now put your tongue down the bride’s throat and squeeze her right tit.’

  The invitation to the wedding had been something of a shock; a message on my mobile phone from someone I hadn’t seen for months. Jim was marrying Kate. The man I had lived with was marrying the girl I had so nearly slept with. Perhaps I should have explained this to the ushers in the church when they’d asked, ‘Bride or groom?’ and let them decide. Once I had got used to the idea of this union I was delighted for them both. They were a perfect match: she earned a fortune and worked very hard and he spent a fortune and didn’t work at all. There is something so hopelessly romantic about white weddings that you cannot help but think that the couple will be blissfully happy for ever. Even when Henry VIII got married for the sixth time, the congregation must have all thought, Aaah, true love at last, and he’s definitely promised not to chop her head off this time. But as I watched Jim and Kate come down the aisle, I couldn’t help but think about how little idea they had of the problems that lay ahead.

  My own marriage had been slowly nursed back to health over the previous nine months. We had a little boy that we named Henry – for some reason all our children had names that made them sound like orphans from a Victorian costume drama. He had blue eyes and his hair was blond. Neither Catherine nor I were the slightest bit blond, but following her scam in the maternity ward I decided it probably wouldn’t be appropriate to challenge her further about the baby’s parentage. Events on the day of his birth were now a rather surreal blur. Elation that this really was my son after all was mixed with a suppressed short-term fury that Catherine could have put me through such an emotional mangle. There was even a secret tiny part of me that was briefly disappointed – that she hadn’t been as duplicitous as me, that it wasn’t a score draw and I was cast back as the only villain. For years I had watched her trick people and defuse seemingly desperate situations with outrageously bold lies, but nothing had prepared me for the test she set me on the day Henry was born. I asked her what she would have done if I’d not come back and forgiven her and committed to be the father of what I thought was Klaus’s baby. She said she would have contacted Millie and Alfie’s real father and got back together with him. I laughed long and hard and completely unconvincingly.

  Now Henry had grown into a happy little baby who laughed for no apparent reason and who woke us up at night with the most abject tears of sorrow which turned quickly into giggles once he had been picked up by the mother and father that he loved so completely. Babies experience their emotions at full volume, with an extreme intensity that doesn’t return until they are grown up and have babies of their own. He behaved perfectly throughout the wedding service, indeed some of the noises he made during the singing of ‘To Be a Pilgrim’ were more in tune than the efforts of the groom’s relations standing in front of us. At the wedding reception he fell asleep in the luminous blue nylon backpack that failed to blend in with my rented morning suit. He dribbled on my back, and to all the women at the wedding I became instantly attractive and appealing, and all the other men felt underdressed because they didn’t have a baby slobbering on their collars.

  We had agreed on the name Henry pretty quickly. It had been my suggestion, and when I told Catherine my reasons she was delighted with the choice. I rang my father and he picked up the phone and said, ‘Henry Adams speaking.’ I told him that I was calling from the hospital because Catherine and I were back together and she had just had a little boy that I wanted to name after him. He paused for a moment.

  ‘Ooh, that’s a good idea because I’ve got some old Henry Adams name tags somewhere I could let you have for him.’

  I wanted to scream, Dad, I’ve just told you that I have named my son after you. Don’t worry about the bloody name tags just yet.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Catherine and I actually stayed with my dad for a few weeks until we managed to rent somewhere of our own. She cleared out his larder for him, and claimed that when she shouted, ‘The war is over!’ several packets of powdered egg emerged from where they had been hiding behind the tinned prunes since 1945. Though we were grateful to my dad, in the end we were desperate to move into a place of our own, where the heating wasn’t always too hot and the telly wasn’t always too loud and where the children weren’t encouraged to go out and play on the A347. I’d never have a mortgage again, but many things about our lives would be very different from now on; we both had a lot of adjusting to do. We finally rented a four-bedroom house in Archway, and I set up a studio in a poky room at the top of the house. On our first night there, we looked at the kids all asleep in their new beds and then I said to her, ‘Three children is enough kids for me, Catherine. I know you always wanted four, but I think we should stop at three.’

  There was a pause and then she just said, ‘OK.’

  Then we went downstairs and I made up the bottle for the night feed, and I realized that as I was measuring out the babymilk powder without levelling it off with a knife Catherine was just sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through a magazine. Now, at last, she felt she could leave me to just get on with it. We’d had one argument after she’d been irritated that I was doing something wrong and I had said to her audaciously, ‘You can’t have it all, Catherine. You can’t have a man who does his share at home and yet have everything done the way you want.’

  The wedding service ended and we took our three children out of the church and into the sunshine, where I half-heartedly suggested that Millie perhaps shouldn’t clamber all over the gravestones as if it were an adventure playground. Before me stood my former flatmates, who hadn’t known I was a father throughout the time that we’d lived together. They looked at me in amazement, and I felt extraordinarily proud as we approached them. Then I introduced my three kids to the three kids I used to live with. Millie and Alfie both said a cute and polite ‘hello’ and I managed to suppress my astonishment and act as if this was completely normal. Everything about that wedding day seemed perfect. The sun shone, the champagne flowed and none of the other women had the same dress as Catherine. She had been genuinely worried about this, which is an anxiety so completely alien to anything that I could ever begin to understand that I suppose it proves how completely and fundamentally different the two sexes really are. The men were all in morning dress, but I didn’t burst into tears when I saw that every other man was wearing exactly the same outfit as me.

  I introduced my wife to Jim, Paul and Simon. Jim seemed quietly rather impressed that I had kept this little secret to myself. He was charming with Catherine and paid her compliments and made her laugh and, given that he was the groom and therefore already the centre of attention, I was rather concerned at just how much Catherine seemed to be taken by him. Paul was with his boyfriend, who was rather cool towards me, as if I still posed a threat to his new relationship. As for Paul himself, I think he thought that the fact that I had a wife and three children only went to prove the extraordinary lengths to which some repressed gays would go to deny their own sexuality to themselves. But there was something calm about him now; you got the feeling that when the bride cut the wedding cake he was no longer worrying about who was going to wash up the knife. Simon was still single and a virgin. However, in the course of the reception he got chatting to Kate’s divorced mother. She had consumed rather a lot of champagne and had a room booked at the hotel and, well, one thing led to another . . .

  Kate looked beautiful and, as I approached her to introduce her to my wife, I found myself really hoping that they would like each other. But a terrible thing happened: they got on too well. They chatted away for ages and soon Catherine was suggesting dates when they mig
ht be free to come over to dinner, while I was trying to catch her eye with subtle shakes of my head. The problem was that I would always fancy Kate. I didn’t want to grow into one of those fat old men who kisses his wife’s friends goodbye with slightly too much relish at the end of a wine-soaked evening.

  ‘Well, it’s been a wonderful wedding,’ said Catherine. ‘You make a lovely couple.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kate.

  ‘And it’s OK, Michael told me all about swimming-pool night.’

  I had made a decision that it was best to be open and honest about everything. ‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Catherine later. ‘I’m amazed that you don’t think she’s particularly attractive.’

  Well, honest about virtually everything.

  As the reception wore on, I was persuaded to play the beautiful Steinway in the hotel ballroom and I disrespectfully ripped into the polished keyboard and played boogie-woogie piano with careless abandon. The dance floor filled up and Millie and Alfie danced a crazy, excited jitterbug. Each number segued effortlessly into the next and revellers whooped and clapped and cheered, and just when they needed a breather, Millie came and sat on my lap and asked if she could play the tune I had taught her, and the crowd fell still and waited. Then my angelic four-year-old daughter played the opening notes of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ with such perfection, and a natural musician’s ear for the tempo and feeling, that everyone just stared open-mouthed at her talent, and I looked across at Catherine and saw that she was biting her lip, trying to hold back the tears, and she smiled at me with such love and pride that I wanted to float through the ceiling.

  The band came back on and I span Millie round and round and then she clasped her hands round my neck as tightly as she could and I wanted to keep her that age for ever, just dancing with her as she clung on to me, trusting and loving me so completely. We stayed the night in the swanky hotel, all five of us in one room, and in the morning I was woken by the sound of children. They jumped into bed with us and we put on the television and they tucked under the duvet between us as we half dozed, trying not to fall out of either side, and then the Gillette ad came on the telly and I heard the man singing, ‘The best a man can get,’ and I laughed to myself and thought, I’ve got it now, thanks. I told Catherine about the slogan and how I had once made it my own personal maxim. She said that she had never interpreted the phrase in the same way as me. To her it was not ‘the best a man can get’ as in get for himself, grab, acquire, have; it was the best he can be, the best he can grow, the best a man can become.