We All Fall Down (15 page)

More often than not, his dad talked about his work. He loved his job. ‘It's the future,' he'd say to Hugh. ‘My advice to you, son – and that's what a dad's supposed to do, isn't it, offer advice? – my advice to you is, get into something to do with technology. Know it's still a long way off, but if you want a job for life, that's the way to go. They're crying out for people.' Hugh never forgot that expression – ‘They're crying out for people.' For him, it conjured up many tearful faces poking out of office windows and shouting, ‘People, people!' It was another inexplicable tale from the world of adults.

It took many years before Hugh reached some kind of understanding of what his father did during the day, where he'd come from when he appeared, as if by magic, around the corner from the main road. First of all, it was a concept, hazy in outline, that his mother fed him: ‘Your dad works in an office, and he's very important.' He'd seen office buildings, had them pointed out to him by his mum, and he gazed in awe at the tall structures and imagined his father up there – always on the top floor – doing something, exactly what he had no idea, but something important. Then he came to understand that this work was something to do with computers, but he didn't know what computers were, although once, probably early on, he could remember believing that they were some kind of person, probably foreign. ‘This is the most exciting machine you could ever imagine, son. What it does is just amazing. Astonishing! The speed with which it processes information! Can you imagine that?' But Hugh couldn't. Over the years, his father threw words at him, tossed casually without explanation, as if his son already grasped at least the rudiments of his business, meaningless sentences about how individual transistors were being replaced by integrated circuits, and punch cards were giving way to magnetic tape and disks as external storage devices. Magnetic core internal memories were in there somewhere, along with metal oxide semiconductor memories, integrated circuits and silicon chips. It was a foreign language his father spoke to him, as if he was sitting next to Hugh in the car speaking German or Russian.

But it all started to make sense, or much more sense when his dad brought home a Commodore 64 with its joysticks and paddles and Koala Pad, and they'd play Manic Miner, Ghostbusters and Le Mans together. He could soon beat his dad at these games. It must have been around that time he saw a television commercial for the Commodore 64, the only one that stayed with him from childhood. It showed an elephant picking up the computer, and ended with the words, ‘And don't forget, it has an enormous 64K memory.' It made him laugh. Today it made him laugh for different reasons.

His dad took him to the cinema when he was young – how young he wasn't sure, but it was before the rocket happened. Every Saturday they walked there together. His mum never went with them, because it was understood to be a thing for the boys. After the cinema they went to a café in the High Street and ate what his dad called high tea. Like sausages, eggs, tomatoes, baked beans and chips. ‘It's not what you'd call healthy, son, but once in a while it's all right. Not all the time though or you'll put on weight – like your mum. Not that she eats this kind of food. She just needs to exercise more.'

Part of the ritual during tea was talking about the film they'd seen. He had to tell his dad what it was about and why he liked it, or even disliked it, although, looking back now, he can't remember seeing any film he didn't enjoy. Hugh supposed that this was intended to be educational, that his dad was trying to get him to think for himself and be able to argue a point of view. The film that stuck in his mind for a long time was
ET
. It made a big impression on him, and possibly stood out in his memory because it was an unusual occasion in that someone else had gone to the cinema with them.

They ran into a woman from his dad's workplace, and he said, ‘Fancy seeing you here.' Hugh remembered that because he thought those words were only meant for him, that they were
his
words, even though he was now eight and only rarely walked up the street to meet his dad from work. He was disappointed. She was different to his mum, younger and harder, all bones and muscles with long hair and a streak of toughness. ‘Jane's a programmer,' his dad said, and Hugh nodded, none the wiser. ‘She's very clever.' And the woman threw back her head and laughed, showing lots of teeth. He always remembered her teeth, those on her top row seeming to be much longer than any he'd ever seen before; a bit like a horse. ‘Don't exaggerate, James.' ‘I'm not.'

‘You are.' She grinned, still showing her mouth full of teeth, and Hugh thought she looked quite pleased with herself.

He was disappointed when his dad asked the woman to have high tea with them afterwards, although he changed his mind when he discovered how much she knew about films. ‘That film will be a classic. It's a modern fairy tale about the magic of childhood. Isn't that right, Hugh?' He mumbled agreement. His dad listened to what she had to say, and didn't contradict her like he did when Hugh spoke about films. ‘It's about friendship, trust and tolerance, Hugh.'

On Sundays he went with his mum and dad to church. His dad insisted they always went together, as a family, just as he always insisted they eat meals together. ‘No child of mine is going to eat alone in front of the TV. That's not what a proper family is about.'

His father wasn't particularly religious; his mother was probably more that way inclined. But it was something he believed was good for Hugh, the teaching of morality, of what was right and wrong. His dad was big on that, doing the right thing, treating people decently, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, or however the Bible puts it. That's what he was always saying, and it was one of Hugh's strongest memories from childhood.

And everything about his father's beliefs became much clearer to him one weekend when they all went for a drive in the countryside. He must have been about eleven. It was like one of those old movies you see on television, in black and white, shot in slow motion, with ghostlike figures moving silently across the screen, but it wasn't a film. It was a time of emptiness and darkness, a Grimms' fairy story brought to life. Shops were closed, villages empty, streets deserted, houses with windows either boarded up or broken. The people resembled creatures from an underworld, almost like zombies, brought to the surface from deep underground, blinking, scowling and muttering into the light. He remembers them as being black, hungry and angry looking, with mournful, staring eyes, as if they'd stepped out of some old photograph from the war years or the Depression. He felt uneasy as they drove past in the Escort, his mum and dad in front, him sitting in the back. It felt as if they'd lost their way and were now driving in a foreign land, and he was seeing things that he wasn't meant to, but which at the same time he felt his father intended him to see. He didn't feel safe. He worried that the car would break down and they would be forced to get out. What then? Would these skeletal creatures paw at their clothing? Would they drop to their knees and beg for food? Or would they – and it scarcely bore thinking about – attack them with a ferocity and anger fuelled by desperation and envy?

They sat in the car in silence. Even his dad, for once, said nothing. The day was overcast and grey, slagheaps emerging all around them corpse-like from the mist. A few spots of rain started to fall. His mother, visibly upset, had her hand up to her mouth and kept whispering, ‘Dear God!' He felt they shouldn't be seeing these things, these obscenities, that it would be best if he averted his eyes, but he couldn't.

‘Seen enough, son?' His father had turned round to look at him. He nodded. He couldn't wait to go home. ‘Don't forget what you saw today.' He sounded serious, almost grave. ‘There's going to be a lot more of that kind of thing in the future. The world is splitting into us and them, into the haves and the have nots.' Hugh stared at him, not understanding, but not caring to ask either.

One evening around that time, they were watching the News, and they showed footage of a riot. It was like watching TV when he was very young. There were the white people, who were in towns or offices and always well dressed, and there were the black people who appeared outside pits or in the countryside – not real countryside, because there were no trees or grass or flowers, but on wasteland, sometimes with mean looking houses with no lights glimpsed in the background. The black people frightened him. They were obviously the baddies. They looked evil and they always shouted, never spoke calmly or rationally like the white people. He hoped the white people would win because they looked more like his own family, and they were just … well, nicer.

‘This is terrible,' said his mother, tutting into her teacup. ‘To think it's come to this.'

‘It's an excellent education for the boy. He can see how the government's to blame for all this. What else can the miners do?' his father was saying. ‘A man has to stand up and fight for his job if he wants to keep it nowadays. There's no other way. If you don't fight, they push you to one side like you're an irrelevance.'

He went and sat on his father's lap. ‘I don't know what the answer is, Hughie, but I know that's not the answer. There's more to life than making money. I've said it to you before. That's what this is all about: profits. The Coal Board's putting profits before their workers. And you can see where that leads us.'

He looked up at his dad's intense face, trying hard to understand what was being said to him. ‘That woman – yes, that woman there, Mrs. Thatcher,' stabbing his finger at the flickering screen, forcing him to turn and look, ‘She has a lot to answer for. She goes about it the wrong way, makes it all about confrontation.' But he didn't make what he meant any clearer, nor did he explain who the woman was, at least not on that occasion.

His mother said, ‘But the unions are too strong, James. It's not right they hold the country to ransom like this. Someone has to stand up to them.'

His father shook his head as if his mum couldn't possibly understand such a complicated subject and sighed, ‘It's not that simple, but I'll give you one thing. That Scargill fellow has got out of hand and someone has to do something about him.' His mum nodded, pleased that she'd got the answer to at least part of the puzzle. ‘But throwing thousands of people out of work, taking away their livelihoods and the bread and butter off their tables, that's not the way to go about it. That's all I'm saying.'

His father hugged him. ‘It's important to treat people like you yourself want to be treated, Hughie. It's a fundamental. Doing right by other people, that's basic decency. That's Christianity.'

In his dad's eyes at least, that was the end of the discussion. It was quite clear cut, and he didn't want to spend any more time talking about it. Especially with his wife, who didn't understand about these things, or with his son who was obviously too soft.

* * *

She came downstairs the next morning before he left for work. Her appearance was unexpected. He thought she would have gone out of her way to avoid him as much as possible over the next few days.

‘I called Jodie last night. Tim and I are going to spend Easter with her.'

‘I'm not going to be at the office
all
weekend, you know.'

‘I don't care whether you are or not. Tim and I don't want you to be at the office at all over Easter. It's supposed to be a public holiday. We were both looking forward to going camping, especially your son. But seeing you're now not going to take us, we have to make our own arrangements.'

He was aware of Tim sitting at the table next to him, in his pyjamas, wide-eyed, looking from his mother to his father in turn. ‘I think you're overreacting.'

‘Well, I don't, Hugh. If you're not going to be here for us, it's only reasonable that we spend our holiday elsewhere.'

He hated it when she called him by his Christian name. He knew it was her way of showing her displeasure.

‘We camping, mummy?' A little voice, the words spoken low over the cereal bowl.

‘You'll have to ask your father that, little one.' And she left the room.

He reached out and held his son's hand. ‘I'm sorry, but we're going to have to go camping another day, Timmy.'

‘Why, daddy?'

‘Daddy has to work. But we'll go camping soon, I promise.'

A little later, he left for the office.

7

He persuaded her to let him take them to Neutral Bay in the car. It was the morning of Good Friday. He thought that particularly appropriate, as he now saw himself, without much difficulty, nailed to a cross of some kind. He'd drop them at Jodie's place, go into the office, then pick them up on Easter Monday. And before they left home on the Friday, the Easter Bunny would visit, instead of on the Sunday. Hunting for Easter eggs had been a part of his childhood, and he was determined that Tim experience the thrill, too. And he wanted to be present when that happened.

‘You're being ridiculous. He's far too young to understand the Easter Bunny.'

‘He understands chocolate all right, so the Easter Bunny shouldn't prove too great a leap after that. Anyway, it's important to have rituals in childhood, we've always agreed on that.'

So early on Friday morning, before Tim was up, he hid twenty miniature eggs around the garden, all at about his son's height: in a flower pot, on the garden gnome, on the low wall that ran round one of the flowerbeds, on the seat of the swing, and in a toy boat floating in the paddling pool. Tim quickly picked up the idea of what he was supposed to do and ran squealing back and forth across the garden, followed by his admiring parents and a wildly excited Dante. There were soon chocolate smudges all around Tim's mouth.