Man at the Helm (11 page)

Our mother’s date with Charlie Bates at Wong’s seemed to have gone well, partly on account of its ‘no chopstick promise’, and was the start of many dates.

There was nothing much to do in the village for a loving couple. Charlie hated the pubs on offer except for the Piglet Inn and he couldn’t go there with a lady. So she and Charlie would drive all the way into town at night in Whisper, his white Saab. To Winalot’s in Lee Circus, where Charlie would play cards, win or lose money, and our mother would sit on high stools looking nice and drinking Bonny Doons. Going out in town meant they were always out late. For a start everything closed later there, and then there was the sex to be had in the car on the way home which, according to the
Facts of Life
film, could take up to thirty minutes, and then the drive home after that.

Meanwhile, alone at home, we’d be making Ritz and Primula sandwiches and watching anxious dramas and horror films and then, too scared to go to bed, we’d wait in the porch, which was where Debbie, our Labrador, slept and we’d crowd around her, Little Jack actually in the wicker basket beside her, the smell of her warm paw-pads comforting him.

My sister would be wondering if our mother and Charlie might settle down soon and not go out so much and if they might get married. And if the village would then think more highly of us (or less badly) with him at the helm, in spite of him being the least popular plumber in the area. And I’d be trying to work him out. Often the image of his mouth would pop into my head, as
if it might hold a clue. The lower teeth, like a row of shutters lightly ajar, and one upper incisor, standing sideways-on to its neighbour, which, to my artist’s eye, was a fully opened door into his mouth. I wondered how his teeth had come to that – I imagined it was due to fighting and being repeatedly punched and the teeth being knocked almost out but firming up again in slightly the wrong place. They seemed to be a warning, those misaligned incisors. But nobody else saw them. They were too busy looking at his blue and red eyes.

Little Jack would eventually fall asleep beside Debbie, and my sister and I would keep each other awake with comments and chitchat, and then we’d hear them arrive home and crowd them at the door saying, ‘Did you have a nice time?’ etc., Debbie’s tail banging on the radiator, and Charlie would say, ‘Fuck off, you lot.’ And we’d scuttle off to bed.

I have to admit Charlie did make our mother happy some of the time. Which doesn’t sound much but it was an improvement on her being unhappy all of the time and it was the whole point of everything. She had a new sense of adventure and we got continental quilts for our beds (not Jack, though, he wasn’t ready) and made a huge mural on the hall wall with pop star heads, Smirnoff bottles and other bright images from the
Observer
magazine.

We even had a few trips to Kenwood, a large open-air swimming pool with an ice-cream shop. It was a favourite thing for all of us and a huge treat. Debbie wasn’t allowed in, though, nor any dog, so maybe that was why in spite of us all loving it we didn’t go very often. Anyway, the pool was marvellous and cold and frighteningly deep. A great expanse of rippling blue edged with hot slabs. Our mother was a terrific swimmer and would always dive straight in, swim like mad, climb out glistening with chlorinated droplets and then flop down on to a towel and
sunbathe as if dead and presumably enjoy being looked at in her bikini pants with her top undone as it always was – to avoid strap marks in her tan.

You might imagine there’d have been opportunities to top up the Man List at the pool (especially with our mother so much on show), but not so. For a start, it was too far from home and any man would have had a long journey to our village for dates. Plus the men always looked undesirable. Being wet making them look spivvish, which was fine in the 1950s but by the 1970s was a bit off-putting. Plus they were almost naked and sat around looking furtive with water dripping off their chest hair and you couldn’t help imagining all sorts of unpleasantness. And anyway, we had Charlie in the frame.

Our mother wasn’t quite so happy on the many evenings Charlie didn’t come over and often reverted to play-writing. And even though he hadn’t been on the list or properly vetted, my sister and I agreed that, though less than ideal, Charlie was better than nothing. For now.

Our father phoned to invite my sister and me to stay a night. Little Jack wasn’t invited as a punishment for having bolted from the car the time before when the chauffeur stopped for petrol.

‘No, thanks,’ I said, speaking for my sister and myself, because in those days visits to divorced fathers’ houses were awkward and to be avoided.

‘Oh, but it would be lovely to see you both,’ he said, sounding genuinely disappointed, ‘especially after last time.’ Meaning the time before Little Jack had bolted, when we had cancelled at the last minute due to me having a rash and them not wanting me to infect the baby.

‘The thing is, I feel awkward with Vivian and the baby,’ I
said, thinking honesty was the best policy and knowing that any other objection would just be solved.

‘I see. Well, why don’t we have lunch in town on Friday instead?’ he said. ‘Then it’ll just be us … I’ll send Bernard to collect you.’

I was pleased in the end that this had cropped up as it occurred to me that spending some time with our father (a proper and intelligent man with manners and nice teeth) without the complications of his new family would give us the opportunity to assess Charlie against him. I suspected it would throw Charlie’s failings into sharp relief and that we’d see him for what he was – i.e., not quite up to the job of man at the helm.

When Friday came I chivvied my sister to get ready, but she said she was busy. And said she wouldn’t go to Fenwick’s dining room even if she wasn’t – it being so utterly snobby and full of old grannies eating slowly with clunking great knives and forks. I begged her to come and I’m ashamed to say I cried at the thought of the journey in the Daimler followed by lunch in Fenwick’s alone with our father and all that cutlery. But she said she wasn’t going and that was that.

It was a prospect so dreadful – the being alone with a parent, apart from everything else – that I revealed my illegal friendship with Melody Longlady (albeit only to our mother, who was good at being understanding about that kind of thing and not telling) and asked if I should invite her along to act as a buffer. Our mother advised me strongly against it, reminding me that an invitation might put Melody in an awkward position and then
she
might need a buffer.

So I asked our mother to insist that my sister came with me. She said my sister had every right to not want to go (because, in all honesty, who would?) but agreed that she might have made her intentions known a bit earlier.

‘Why not take Little Jack with you?’ our mother suggested.

‘He’s banned because of running away – remember?’ I said.

‘Oh, just take him,’ said our mother.

‘But what if he runs away again?’ I said.

‘Hold on to him,’ said our mother.

‘It’s a long journey,’ I moaned.

‘You’ll manage,’ she said.

Soon I had Jack on the dog lead and he was really annoyed and pully, like disobedient dogs sometimes are. I explained calmly and in the style of my teacher, Miss Thorne, ‘This is what happens to little boys who run away from their father’s chauffeur.’

Bernard arrived and wasn’t at all keen to carry Little Jack as a passenger after the last time, but I showed him the restraining device.

‘If he bolts off, he’s on his own,’ said Bernard.

‘He won’t be able to,’ I said, holding up the plaited leather leash.

We got into the back of the car and drove the short distance to Bagshaw Bridge service station. I can explain now why Bernard the chauffeur always liked to fill up there. It was because the manager had fitted a device to the fuel nozzle that made it stop flowing when the tank was full and a little latch so that the nozzle could rest on its own. This freed the attendant up to do other little jobs such as clean the windscreen or check the water, which he did quite happily for free. Bernard knew of no other service station in all of England that did this. Though in the USA – where he had lived for many years as chauffeur to a Congressman – helpful attendants with nozzle devices were the norm. Bernard considered this country of ours to be a backward-looking little dump and the drivers here idiots, happy to put up with insufficient oil checks and smeary windscreens.
That’s why he liked going to Bagshaw Bridge service station and ditto why he liked collecting us for my father (if you didn’t count little kids running off).

Knowing it was Jack’s getaway point last time, I held on quite tight for the duration of the stop and watched for signs. But once we were on the road again, Little Jack fell asleep and lay right down with his head on my leg and it was like having a real dog with me. Soon the collar flopped loosely over Jack’s shirt and I chomped on pear drops to ward off carsickness. Bernard puffed away on his cigarette and switched on the radio.

‘Your dad doesn’t like the radio going when he’s on board,’ said Bernard.

Then the radio started talking about the Apollo missions and he quickly switched it off.

‘Don’t you like space?’ I asked, and he said, ‘No, not really, can’t be doing with it.’

We pootled through suburbia, or, as Bernard called it, the sprawl, and I stared out of the window.

‘Two houses, two garages, two houses, two garages,’ said Bernard. ‘If there’s one thing I hate it’s the sound of a garage door clanging up-and-over. Whatever happened to wooden garage doors that open in the normal way?’

What a strange thing to hate, I thought, and wondered if I’d care about such things at his age, which was roughly forty, I reckoned.

When Bernard dropped us outside Fenwick’s of Leicester on the corner of Belvoir Street, he told us to go straight up to the fourth-floor dining room and say we were to meet Mr Vogel, and he ruffled Jack’s hair and said, ‘Still with us, Fido?’ and Jack let out a loud bark and Bernard jumped out of his skin and called him a little bastard and drove off.

Little Jack wouldn’t let me take the lead and collar off, and
every time I tried he barked. He insisted on moving through Fenwick’s on all fours, sniffing at things as we went. People stared at us and looked worried. I acted normal. In the lift an old woman said, ‘No dogs allowed,’ and Jack barked at her.

My father was there in the dining room already and was all smiles (he even commented on my new dramatic hairstyle) until he looked down and saw Little Jack. He told him to get up. Little Jack gave him a quizzical doggy look and barked. Then my father was furious and tried to wrestle the collar off him. Jack growled and bit my father’s hand and scampered under a table where a couple were having roast of the day. The couple lifted the tablecloth to look at him and he started yapping like a terrier. My father bobbed down and tried to take hold of Jack, but Jack snarled and bit him again. The couple called the waitress and Jack snarled at her too. In the end my father dragged him by the lead and bustled him into the lift and apparently gave him a bloody good slap.

Then Bernard was whisking us home and we’d had no lunch and I told Bernard all about it. Bernard said it was the absolutely funniest thing he’d heard all year. He banged the steering wheel with his palm and said he was going to dine out on it. Him mentioning dining out got us on to the subject of dining out and I asked if we could stop at the Golden Egg for something to eat. Although Bernard had a new respect for Little Jack, he didn’t quite trust him and couldn’t be held responsible. Jack made a few high-pitched barks and I translated that he promised not to run away. In the end Bernard stopped at the Travelin-Man and got us an egg-and-cress roll each and a Kit Kat between us. And Jack stopped being a dog and said thank you in English.

My sister was 100 per cent jealous that she’d missed out on seeing Jack snapping and biting and barking, so we re-enacted the whole thing and she laughed so much she did a bit of wee
and our mother asked us to do it again and she laughed too. It was a great day for Jack. I don’t think he was ever the same again. Knowing you can make an impact on people you want to make an impact on without even speaking or changing your jumper.

Our father telephoned later to discuss Little Jack’s behaviour. I heard our mother say, ‘Well, what do you expect?’ and then, ‘I’ll ask him to telephone you, if he wants to. It’s up to him.’

Then we had a family conflab about Jack phoning our father.

Our mother was very reasonable and supportive of Jack, but she did say she thought Jack should probably phone, bearing in mind he had bitten our father twice, and then we all started laughing again.

Jack did phone. We all stayed quiet so we could hear him on the phone, but we only heard this:

‘I don’t know.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I know.’

‘All right, then.’

‘Bye.’

After all that excitement and fun, my sister asked me how Charlie had compared against our father, and though I hated to put a spoke in the wheel I reported that, compared with our father, Charlie seemed like some kind of lunatic.

‘Double damn,’ said my sister, and I agreed.

Charlie said he couldn’t fully relax in our mother’s sitting room the way it was. It was too austere for his taste. He disliked the bare wood floors and the white walls. It reminded him of a whitewashed barn at the centre of an awful experience in his life. His awful times had usually occurred during the war or just before it.

‘You need something a bit darker on the walls and a bit of soft,’ he said, meaning cushions, I suppose, and curtains.

He went on to describe a marvellously soothing and sumptuously romantic wall colour especially devised and produced to promote relaxation in adult lounges.

‘It’s called Rendezvous,’ he said. ‘It’s meant to capture the street-lit sky as seen through a New York bar window at night.’

Or something along those lines. Our mother seemed to like the sound of it and cocked her head to imagine the scene.