Lessons for a Sunday Father (16 page)

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“It should only be for a couple of nights,” I assure Maureen as I stand on her front step the next evening, having told Jeff I couldn’t impose on his generous hospitality a moment longer (if I stayed another night there, I’d be tempted to do away with myself—eat the contents of his fridge for a guaranteed death by salmonella). Maureen flutters round me, trying to take off my jacket while I’m still holding my bag plus some chocolates I picked up for her on the way. “I’m sure Gail and I can straighten things out.” My voice sounds confident, the voice of a man barely disturbed by a minor temporary setback. I have resolved to be positive. She can’t really mean it’s all over, can she? She’s just having me on, trying to put the wind up me.

“You stay as long as you like.” Harry claps me on the shoulder and takes my bag.

“It’s nice for us to have a bit of comp’ny.” Maureen toddles off into the kitchen. “Nice cup of tea, Scott?”

I fancy a nice beer actually. Or a nice several beers. Or a double Scotch and soda.

“Tea would be lovely, Maureen. Thank you.” See, I do have manners when I need to. Gail says I’m beyond help, but then everything I do or say is wrong to her, so what can you expect?

The spare room is bright and cheerful enough and the bed feels comfy when I sit on it.

“This was Chris’s room.” Maureen says it with rever- ence, as if he’d died or something, but I resist the urge to bow my head. “You’ve not much with you.” She nods at my bag.

“No.” The back of my car is chock-a-block with my stuff in bags and boxes covered over with that old check blanket, and Harry’s stowed my fishing things in his shed. “There’s a bit more in the car.”

“Fine!” Harry opens the wardrobe doors wide. “Plenty of space in here. Plenty of space!”

I feel like a kid who’s been allowed to go and stay with his favourite aunt. Not that I ever did, ‘cept for one time when Mum was ill with some “trouble in the downstairs department,” as she put it. I don’t know what was wrong with her because everyone stopped speaking any time us kids came in. She had to go into hospital for a few days, though, and because there were three of us—Russ and Sheil and me—and obviously my dad couldn’t take care of a hamster for half an hour, never mind three children, we were palmed off to three different houses. I went and stayed with Jessie, Mum’s younger sister. I don’t know why we never saw her the rest of the time, I think maybe there’d been a bit of a falling-out. Well, for me, it was like being treated like royalty. When I got there with my pyjamas and that in a carrier bag, I didn’t have anything so grand as a suitcase, Aunt Jessie gave me a hug and a kiss then told me to sit by the fire while she made the tea. Then she called me through to the kitchen and I had lamb chops (two!) with crinkle-cut chips and there were peas and tomatoes and mushrooms. And fizzy limeade to drink. It was bright green. Then I had a big deep bath, deep enough to practise holding my breath underwater, and they let me stay up and watch a film on telly with them. Then Aunt Jessie said, “Off to bed with you now, Dennis.” I know, it’s before I decided to call myself Scott. “You pop up and I’ll come and tuck you in in five minutes. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

And she did! She came up and tucked me in! Like in a storybook. She sat on the edge of the bed and told me not to worry about my mum (I wasn’t), and she’d be better soon and I said, “If she doesn’t get better, can I come and live here?”

She laughed and said I was a little angel, but that I wasn’t to upset myself, of course Mum would get better.

Then she bent over and kissed me—right here on my forehead. She tiptoed to the door.

“Shall I leave the landing light on, or do you not mind the dark now you’re a big boy?”

At home, we barely had the lights on at all—"I’m not burning money leaving lights on day and night.”

And then I did something I’ve never done since, something we used to have to do at school, something I’d stopped bothering with once I’d realized it didn’t work.

I prayed.

I prayed that I could live there for ever with Aunt Jessie and Uncle Mikey, I prayed that they’d like me so much that they wouldn’t let Mum and Dad have me back. Worse, I prayed that Mum wouldn’t get better so they’d have to keep me. Then I prayed that, if I couldn’t stay, then would God at least let me die in the night so that the last thing I’d know was the smell of chops coming up the stairs, the murmur of my aunt and uncle talking in the front room, the sheets and blankets tucked so tight around me I could barely move and the spot on my forehead where I’d been kissed good night.

Dad has gone to stay at Harry and Maureen’s. He says it is only going to be for a few days most probably but that’s what he said when he went to his friend Jeff’s and he was there for weeks. I said is it like being on a sleep-over like if I go round Kira’s or she comes to stay and we talk in the dark till her mum or my mum comes in and tells us to shut up and go to sleep. Dad said it wasn’t quite the same because he sleeps in a different room, so he has nobody to talk to when they turn the light off. I wanted to know if him and Mum talked in the dark when he was still at home, but I thought maybe it would make him go all sad again so I never asked. I think mostly grown-ups don’t talk much when they have a sleepover because that means they are doing IT. Nat says grown-ups are always shagging and even when they’re not they’re thinking about it or wanting to do it. He says he thinks about it the whole time, but I bet he doesn’t because he won’t even be fourteen for ages and ages, not till next year, and he’s never done more than have a snog. Anyway, I think he’s lying about them doing it all the time because when you listen to grownups they’re always going on about how tired they are and what wouldn’t they give to have more sleep. Dad says when you’re a kid you spend your whole life wanting to stay up late but then when you’re grown-up and can stay up as late as you like, all you want is to go to bed early. But when I’m a grown-up I will stay up till 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning most nights probably and I won’t get tired at all. And I’ll eat sweets in bed, I’m going to have this great big jar of them, pear drops and cola cubes and Fruitellas and sherbert lemons all mixed up together, right by the bed so I won’t even have to get up and I’ll never brush my teeth.

My dad phones me every other day at the same time and I sit on the stairs to be ready for 7 o’clock. Nat shouts at me to hurry up.

He goes, “What can you have to talk to him about? Any
normal
person would be dead bored of him by now after having to put up with him all day every Sunday.”

“I don’t
have
to. I like Sundays. You’re just jealous because you keep missing everything and we do lots of things, and make up games and quizzes, and we have a completely brilliant time the whole day, much, much better than we would if you were there because you always spoil everything.”

And anyhow, it’s true. When Dad was at home, he was always talking to Nat and if I tried to say anything, Nat used to talk all over the top of me really loudly and Dad wouldn’t listen to me any more. Nat said he didn’t spoil things, that I was a little liar and he was going to get me. So I ran downstairs to Mum in the kitchen and she said, “What are you two tearing about like mad things for?” and Nat went back upstairs again and made a rude sign at me over the banister.

He is very cross with Dad and when I said I was seeing him on Sunday the first time he wouldn’t even speak to me. He did after a bit, but only ‘cause he forgot that he’d said he wasn’t going to speak to me any more. I told Dad that Nat couldn’t be cross with him for long, because even when he promises to hate you for ever and never talk to you ever, ever again, he always forgets after a while and then he is just Nat again and it is all right. And Dad said, yeah, he guessed so, then he patted me on the head as if I was only little, but I never said anything.

It was suppertime, so I knocked on Nat’s door.

“Hey—www-dot-Nathan, it’s mother-dot-com here. Any chance of seeing your adorable little face some time this century? I’m beginning to forget what you look like.”

“Mn.”

“Chicken stir-fry with noodles.”

“Mn.”

“Now, please. While it’s hot.”

It’s so nice, I feel, that now my son is starting to grow up we can really communicate with each other. I’m thinking of buying another computer so at least I can e-mail him. It’s the only language these people understand.

Only the other day I asked Rosie to call Nat down for their tea but when I came out to the hall, she was on the phone. She was phoning him on his mobile—in his bedroom, rather than go upstairs and call him.

“But you said you don’t like us shouting in the house,” she said, when I asked her what on earth she thought she was doing. As if this was a satisfactory explanation.

“And have you lost the use of your little legs?”

“This way is faster.”

“No, it isn’t, Rosie. It’s lazy and it’s a waste of money. Please don’t do it again.”

Eventually, Nat came shambling down the stairs, half folded over the stair-rail for some reason. It would be great if just once he could walk normally. He always seems to be moving in a peculiar way, like some action toy you’d test out to see how many poses you could put it in.

“Ah. You look kind of familiar,” I said, ushering him to the table. “Nat, isn’t it?”

He jerked his head up. Never try to be humorous with your children; it only gives them another reason to regard you with contempt.

“Anyone ever told you you’d make a great comedian? Really, I’m like totally laughing my socks off here.”

I sighed, an all-too-familiar sigh which seems to have become a part of me. I am a woman who sighs. Most worrying. I never used to sigh. It’s probably an age thing, which is even more worrying. I doled out the food—wrestling the noodles into three portions and roughly tipping the chicken and vegetables on top. It felt like I was filling a cattle trough, just providing fodder for hungry mouths, with no thought for pleasure or presentation. But cows probably have better table manners than Nat. Sorry, that was mean of me, he’s not that bad. Actually, he is that bad. You should see how he eats spaghetti. I just make sure I’m not sitting directly opposite him so I don’t have to have a full frontal view. I’ve given up trying to get him to eat normally. Maybe he’ll grow into it in time.

“It’s just I think it’s important for us to sit down and eat together as a family …” There was a pause. I think I could have phrased that better. “It’s good to eat together and talk, swap news and so on, hmm? I s’pose if it was up to you, Nat, no-one would ever have a real live conversation face-to-face; we’d sit in three different rooms and only communicate using a chat room on the Net, hmm?”

No response.

“You like us all eating together, don’t you, Rosie?” Come on, can’t I have someone on my side? Call for back-up, as Nat would say.

Rosie swung her legs and took a sip of her lemon squash.

“It’s OK.”

Massive enthusiasm all round, then.

“We’re not becoming one of those families who eat on trays in front of the TV every night.”

Nat stabbed at a piece of chicken as if he were trying to kill it. I fought a strong urge to rest my head gently on the pillow of noodles in front of me.

“Why ask then?” Nat picked up a single strand of noodle and lowered it from a height into his mouth. “You make out you’re asking us what we think, but it’s just some act so you can pretend you care. If me and Rosie wanted to eat nothing but chips and stay in our rooms the whole time, you wouldn’t let us. You go on and on and on about having family meals, but we’re not a family anyhow, so what difference does it make?”

Then he scraped his chair back from the table and walked out.

Well done, Gail, I thought. You handled that really well. I’d best give him a while to cool off. Still, it’s more than he’s said in days.

“Is this free-range?” Rosie said, poking at the chicken with her fork as if it had some disease.

“Yes,” I lied, crossing my fingers under the table, the way I did when I was little. “Eat up now.”

“'m not really hungry. Besides, I think I’m vegetarian again.”

“Oh,
Rosie.
Well, just try and eat a little bit then, OK?”

“Can’t I have a choc ice instead?”

I give up. I haven’t got the energy for all this. It’s not fair that I have to do everything on my own. I vote for somebody else to be the grown-up for a while so I can lie down in a darkened room. Preferably for about ten years. Maybe when I wake up, Rosie and Nat will be delightful, civilized adults bringing me cups of tea in bed and—who knows?—even putting their own clothes in the washing-machine. True, it’s not that Scott was ever much help either, but at least I could kid myself that there was another adult at the helm. Don’t tell anyone I said this but: Roll on Sunday. Rosie’s out with Scott, Nat goes to Steve’s. I make myself some breakfast and have it on a tray and it’s back to bed for a couple of hours with a good book or the Sunday papers. Bliss. Sheer bliss.

I had a couple of jobs to do within spitting distance from home, and they took less time than I thought, so I figured I might as well pop in. Ever since I had those extra keys cut, they’ve been burning a hole in my pocket. So I parked round the corner, dodged from tree to tree up the road to give the net-twitchers something to worry about, then let myself in.

It was pretty weird, being in my own house yet feeling like a thief. The thought made me tempted to nick something, you know? So I’m looking round the living-room—the TV? Video? I think they
might
just notice that. Whip a couple of CDs instead. OK, so I’ve got nothing to play them on. It’s the principle that counts, right? The gesture, I mean.

Then I pad upstairs, having taken off my shoes so there’s no tell-tale size 10 impressions in the squashy landing carpet. Pleased with myself that I thought of it—I reckon I’m quite good at this. I probably could have been a private detective. You don’t have to go to college or anything for that, do you? Meanwhile, moving back to reality for a sec. Actually, Nat’s feet can’t be far off size 10s—must be all those hormones or whatever they say there is in meat. Number of burgers Nat eats, I can’t understand why there’s supposed to be a crisis for British farmers. They should stick him on the cover of the paper: