A Lie About My Father (21 page)

The terrible, yet strangely poignant, tradition of families like ours was that the excesses of Sunday lunch be followed, at around seven in the evening, by a light supper of salmon sandwiches or, when money was short, of a cold, glassy-looking meat paste called potted hough. That day, we were having the best: soft white bread spread thick with butter, and filled with tinned salmon that had been strategically mixed with enough vinegar to remove any fish taste altogether. I wasn’t quite straight by the time I was called to this feast, but I went downstairs feeling confident, easy, ready for anything. It didn’t take long for me to realise that something was wrong. Margaret looked worried, and my mother was withdrawn and quiet, setting things out on the table, her thin-lipped mouth even tighter and more wounded than usual. Still, nobody said anything. I wondered if maybe my mother and father had had an argument while I’d been upstairs – about me, perhaps – but I didn’t think any more about it. I ate my salmon sandwiches, helped clear the table, hung around waiting for the mood to lighten, then lingered a while longer trying to get Margaret on her own, so I could ask her what had happened. She wasn’t playing, though, so I went back upstairs. I didn’t emerge till the next morning, after my father had gone on day shift. Nobody said anything out of the ordinary. Whatever had happened, it seemed to have been forgotten. I knew it would have had something to do with me, but I wasn’t that bothered. Détente – that was as much as I was hoping for. Anything for a quiet life: the basic philosophy of the male. The dark cloud lingered, however. It wasn’t there all the time, but it kept coming back, and I knew something would come out, eventually. All I had to do was wait.

Things came to a head in the most unlikely circumstances. After all the risks I had taken and got away with, it was a friend from school – a former friend, really, a boy from whom I had become estranged for no particular reason, other than the usual vagaries of teenage life – who blew my cover. It was about three weeks after the Chicken and Acid Sunday Lunch, on a week night, when my father was at home. My mother had gone to bed early – she often did, climbing the stairs painfully, clutching her Mills & Boon – and my father was watching television. When he had day shift, he often stayed home, stayed sober, got to bed early. It made for a certain tension, but we all had our hiding places for such occasions: my mother taking her book to bed early, me in my room, smoking, or reading subversive literature, Margaret watching the little television set my father had brought home one day as an early Christmas present. My father was a world leader in early presents; things didn’t always fall off the back of a lorry at exactly the moment he needed them.

I dread to think what would have ensued if my father had opened the door when Simon Corston arrived. The one habit of his I most liked was the way he’d stay in his chair when visitors came to the door. If somebody didn’t answer right away, he would come to the bottom of the stairs and call out, ‘Somebody’s at the door. Can you not hear it?’ Then, when my mother or I appeared, he would mutter, ‘What, are ye deef or something?’ as he shambled back through to the front room and his television programme. That night, it was no different – just good luck that I was emerging from my room when the knock came at the door. I hurried downstairs; my mother had one of her headaches, and I didn’t want her disturbed. I imagined it would be a neighbour wanting to borrow something, or looking for a babysitter, or it could have been one of Margaret’s friends, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be for me. My friends knew not to come to my house unannounced. Only by arrangement: that was the deal.

It was Simon. As soon as I saw him, I knew why he was there. He was completely out of his mind. Stoned, was my first thought – and then I saw. ‘What the fuck?’

He gave me an important, blissful look. ‘Acid,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh.’ I had no idea why he’d chosen to come to my house. I hadn’t told him that I was doing acid. I hadn’t even seen him in weeks. I could hear my father fussing around next door, then the sound on the television went low. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

The door to the living room opened. ‘What’s going on?’ my father said. Then he saw Simon. ‘Who’s that?’

‘I’m just going out for a bit,’ I said. It was too late to finesse things. I had to get Simon away before he said or did anything stupid. ‘Come on.’ I virtually pushed him out the front door; then I turned to my father. ‘I’ll not be long,’ I said, grabbing my jacket from the peg in the hall. I hope I didn’t sound as lame to him as I did to myself.

‘Aye, well, keep it down,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s no well.’ Then he disappeared back into the living room, and turned up the volume on the TV.

Every acid head had a duty, in those days, to look after fellow-travellers who might be in need of counsel, companionship, cigarettes or vitamin C. Simon really needed them all, but he was only prepared to admit to wanting the smokes. I took him to my favourite place, an old, twisted oak about a hundred yards from the house, and we climbed up into the branches. I fished some Benson & Hedges, a packet of skins and a pitiful amount of grass out of my jacket. It was all I had. We sat in the tree for a while, talking, looking up at the stars. I can see now that he was a good sort, Simon. I remember, the first time I heard Quicksilver Messenger Service’s
Happy Trails
was round at his house. I hadn’t seen him for a while, mainly because my other friends – Richard, in particular – didn’t trust him. One warm Sunday afternoon during the holidays, when we’d been hanging around the streets, trying to figure out what to do, Simon had come along and hooked up with us – me, Richard, his brother Tom, a guy from the Lincoln Estate whose name I can’t remember. Richard didn’t like that, the way Simon just insinuated himself. We drifted around some more, then we got tired of drifting. ‘Is your dad in?’ Richard asked me.

‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s on backs.’

‘Well, we could go to yours, couldn’t we? Your mum will make us some tea. And we can wipe the mud off our boots.’

‘Tea,’ I said. ‘Good idea.’ I was trying to ignore his other remark, because Simon knew,
everybody
knew, what he meant – and the truth is, I felt sorry for him. Simon’s parents had money, and they didn’t think anybody was good enough for their son, but he was a generous guy, quiet, a little shy, fairly smart. I didn’t want him getting upset – which, of course, was exactly why I hadn’t seen him in so long, why he hadn’t turned up or dropped by. It was my pity, not Richard’s rudeness, that had driven him away. Now, I was glad to help out. Simon had to be back home soon, and he didn’t need his prissy, tight-arsed parents finding out what he’d been up to. Besides, if his parents found out he’d been taking LSD, they would probably blame it on me. They’d always said I was a bad influence. A year before, when I’d been expelled from school, it was Simon I was with on the fateful day, when I was caught drunk and smoking a joint on school premises. I was tossed out right away, Simon was given another chance. If he apologised to the teachers whose classes he’d skipped, he could stay on. His parents had gone down to the school and told the headmaster that their son was easily led, and that it was all my fault. My mother had gone to the school too, but she left it too late. I was expelled, Simon stayed on. In the end, though, we both ended up doing acid.

When I got home, my father was waiting up for me. He was stone-cold sober, very calm, determined to be reasonable. He called me into the living room, and we sat there, the television eerily silent, while he set out his cards. ‘I know what’s going on,’ he said, gazing at me squarely.

‘What’s that, then?’

‘That boy was on something,’ he said. ‘You could see it in his eyes – ’

‘He’d just had too much to drink – ’

‘Don’t lie to me, son,’ my father broke in. He was staying calm, which impressed me. I’d expected him to explode. ‘I’m not buttoned up at the back of the head, you know.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘So what was he on?’ I was wondering how far I could go with this.

‘Well, I suppose,’ my father said, ‘he was on the same thing you were on a couple of Sundays back . . . ’ He waited for my to deny it. I didn’t. ‘Dope,’ he added, darkly. I wondered if he’d been reading the literature they handed out at school for parents with children at risk.

‘Dope?’ I said. ‘What do you mean,
dope
?’

He almost lost control, but caught himself in time. ‘Cannabis,’ he said. ‘It’s not new, you know. People took drugs in my day – ’

I shook my head. ‘Well, you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t cannabis.’

‘What wasn’t?’

‘What Simon was
on
,’ I said. ‘Cannabis resin. Grass. Marijuana. Afghan black. Panama red. Reefer.’ I paused a moment to suggest that the list could go on indefinitely; that, if pressed, I could give him more names for
Cannabis sativa
than there were saints in heaven. ‘That’s what you mean, right?’

He set his mouth. He was doing well. ‘So what was it, then?’ he asked, his voice quiet.

‘LSD.’ Why not? I thought. I was tired of pretences.

‘
L S D
?’ He wasn’t just on the point of being angry any more. ‘
That
boy?’ He was close to letting it show that he was afraid. He studied my face. ‘Well, I hope
you
don’t take that stuff.’

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t care what he knew, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted my mother to find out.

‘Well?’ He was close to letting his front slide. Afraid, but angry too. Now, there were only three possible answers:
Yes, No
, and
None of your business
– but they would all have meant the same thing to him at that moment. He had already decided, and he was
right
– only he was also
wrong
, because he didn’t know anything about it, and anyway, who was he to preach to me about self-control? ‘Do you know how dangerous that stuff is?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

That did it. He was angry now. I could see, in fact, that he wanted to hit me. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t hitting me already. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I wanted him to be hitting me. ‘You think you’re so clever,’ he said. ‘But you’re not.’ He shook his head, as if he pitied me. ‘And you’re not going anywhere till you give me a straight answer – ’

I stood up. ‘What if I do?’ I said. ‘It’s no worse than drink.’

He stayed in his seat. The anger had gone, bled away in a matter of seconds, to be replaced by real, almost tangible fear. He didn’t know what to make of this, he didn’t know what to say. Acid was beyond his remit. My father dwelt among men he knew, men he could read. Now, all at once, it was dawning on him that the world that I had begun to inhabit – the world where people bought and sold ‘drugs’ – was a mysterious realm of endlessly shifting and dubious allegiances between wily, doe-eyed hippies who seemed harmless enough until they got you hooked, and innocent, fresh-faced sixth-formers who thought they were signing up for a bit of harmless fun. And he really was afraid. He didn’t know what to do with me. He had never known what to do, he knew that, but this was a problem he needed to go away, and he’d worked out for himself that hitting me wasn’t the way to achieve that goal. At that moment, I felt a sudden access of power, of freedom, and, at the same time, I was almost overwhelmed by a sensation of helpless pity. I didn’t know what to do with him, either. I wanted to tell him that he’d got it all wrong, that I had no intention of becoming one of those scrawny hard-bitten junkies that he saw, or imagined he saw, about the town, zombies and nutters who took to heroin and all those other terrifying drugs he had read about with all the force of the Calvinism in which their souls were steeped. ‘It’s not what you think,’ I said. ‘It’s not addictive.’ I wasn’t sure if I sounded smug or naive. A little of both, I suppose.

He stared at me and in his face I read something I couldn’t name: disbelief? hopelessness? disgust? a father’s ordinary worry? Then he shook his head and stood up. ‘I’m not telling your mother about this,’ he said. ‘Because I know what it would do to her.’ He looked crumpled, weak. ‘I don’t know what more to say to you,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s up to you now.’ He studied my face for a moment, then he turned and went out of the room. I heard him climbing the stairs: a tired man with a five o’clock start the next morning. Now that I am older than he was then, it seems amazing to think that he was just forty-five years old. In retrospect, he seems so worn, so fatigued. At the time, though, what I realised, after he had gone, was that, for the first time in years, we’d had a conversation, an actual
conversation
in the night, when he had been sober. He had been sober, he had tried to get through to me, and I had felt a real, if momentary, desire to explain myself. That last remark, however, said it all:
it’s up to you
. It was what he said whenever he gave up and washed his hands of a problem. That night, he was washing his hands of me and, as the door closed behind him, I hated him for it.

CHAPTER 8

Sheffield, the summer of ’72. I wake in an unfamiliar churchyard, lying in the corner where the people who tend the graves toss dead flowers and wreaths and, even though it’s about six in the morning, it’s already warm and muggy. It’s surprising, but I don’t feel too bad and, if at least I don’t recall much about the days that passed between its beginning and its end, I remember where this particular episode started – this ‘trip to Lourdes’, as my friend Richard used to call my drunken absences – and I know where I am, mostly from the colour of the bus passing on the street, but also because I possess – like a key, or a helpline number scribbled on the back of a beer mat – the half-formed, clouded memory of knocking at a sky-coloured door in the middle of the night, looking for a girl I’d continued to think of as a friend long after she’d decided that, first as a boyfriend, and then as tea-and-sympathy material, I wasn’t worth the trouble. I don’t know this yet, but it’s four days since I left home, and two since I invited myself to the little terraced house that Marianne – my not-quite girlfriend, not-quite friend – shares with two other women, a nurse and a student, both of them, like Marianne herself, older and wiser than me, able to recognise a lost cause when they see one and moved, as Marianne is, by mere pity when they have allowed me into their kitchen and fed me coffee and digestives, on my two or three previous visits. Not this time, though. Either they had all been out, or they were hiding in their beds, waiting for me to stagger off into the night and away, hopefully for ever.