Men from the Boys (12 page)

That Pat’s life would be forever shaped by our failure, stamped on his heart for the rest of his life, as indelible as a teardrop tattoo.

I began to fear the postman’s step.

It turned my guts to clay. That heavy-footed shuffle down our garden path, the metallic clack of the letterbox, and then there they were, my problem now, the red bills in brown envelopes, sitting among the restaurant menus and junk mail, as conspicuous as a rash. Symptoms of a sudden outbreak of poverty.

But worst of all was the white envelope containing a letter from the mortgage company. And the language – so stilted, so tired, the mechanical response of a database that had seen losers like me many times before.

If you are encountering difficulties in paying your mortgage…

Cyd came down the stairs, watching me, and I quickly folded the letter.

‘Harry,’ she said. ‘We need to talk about money.’

I laughed and took her in my arms. ‘No, we don’t,’ I said. ‘Because something will turn up. Something always turns up.’

She slipped her arms around my waist. She laid her head on my shoulder. But she wasn’t smiling.

‘It’s not the way it was before,’ she said. ‘I can feel it in the City. Something is coming. You can’t just walk into a job. A man your age…’

Oh, that was low. I let her go. Now neither of us was smiling.

The phone in my pocket began to vibrate and I took it out. Usually any call on my mobile caused a frisson of
irritation – good item for
A Clip Round the Ear,
I thought, momentarily forgetting that our little show was history – but now I flipped it open with gratitude, because it meant I did not have to think about money.

UNKNOWN CALLER, my phone told me, and it wasn’t kidding.

‘You don’t know me,’ said a cool, middle-class male voice. ‘But my name is Peter Groves. I am the, uh, boyfriend of Gina.’

Cyd was watching me. I headed down the hall.

‘Hello?’ I said.

It creeped me out. All of it. The fact that this guy could just pick up the phone and call me in my home. The fact that he could refer to himself as Gina’s boyfriend without any apparent shame or embarrassment. The fact that he must have met my son by now. The boyfriend had probably spent the night with the girlfriend – with the son asleep in the room next door. What did the boyfriend and the girlfriend call that? A sleepover? A playdate?

‘My name – ’

‘Yeah, I got that bit,’ I said, heading out to the garden. I dipped my head under the eaves of the Wendy House. I wanted to keep this conversation out of my home. ‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘What do I want?’ He seemed taken aback. ‘Well, if it is possible, I would like to meet you. To talk. To discuss where we are and how we may resolve any issues.’

This was another language to me. One I didn’t speak. I felt the blood rising. My mouth was dry. I realised that this calm, reasonable man filled me with a murderous rage.

‘I don’t want to meet,’ I said, and it came out a bit more sulky than I would have liked. Cyd was at the kitchen door, watching me with concern. Her arms were folded across her chest. That gesture always tugged at my heart a bit, to tell you the truth. It was as if she was trying to protect herself.

I could hear him sighing. I loved that. The sound of him sighing in my earhole.

‘I think it would be beneficial for Gina,’ he said – the voice of reason. ‘And for her son, too.’

Her son. Not Pat. Not your son. Everything this guy said annoyed the hell out of me. But I knew that I would meet him. I knew I had to.

‘Okay,’ I said, and I thought of a dozen cafés that I knew around my old place of work. Just north of Oxford Street, the great civilised sweep of Marylebone from Portland Place to Baker Street. The area was full of them, and I suddenly missed being in gainful employment more than ever. I named a café on Marylebone High Street and a day and a time.

‘It’s all fine apart from the time,’ he said. ‘Could we make – ?’

‘No, we couldn’t,’ I said. I looked at Joni’s Wendy House. The door had swung open in the night and some dead leaves had blown inside. I began kicking them out. ‘You called me, remember?’ I told the guy, the Peter guy. ‘Can you do it or not?’

A beat of silence.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will see you there.’

‘And come unarmed and alone,’ I said. ‘Or your girlfriend will never see you again.’ More silence. ‘Just kidding,’ I said, and I hung up on the creep.

Then I went back inside the house, where my wife was waiting for me with the mail.

Pat was standing at the bus stop on the Tottenham Court Road.

There were other kids there, but none of them were wearing the uniform of Ramsay Mac. It was quite a hike he had to do every morning.

‘Hey,’ I said, reaching across to open the passenger door. He slid inside, the rucksack between his long, coltish legs. He got those from his mother. He half-smiled and dipped his head. I stuck the car in gear and laughed.

‘I was just passing,’ I said.

‘Just passing?’ he said. He looked as though he hadn’t
combed his hair. I felt like hugging him, but instead I just pointed the car north and turned on the radio.

‘Yeah, I had a breakfast meeting. It went very well. Marty and I have a lot of projects we’re excited about. These people – the people we saw for breakfast – they seemed pretty interested.’

He touched the wrist where a watch should have gone.

‘It must have been a very early breakfast,’ he said, seeing right through me.

I glanced at him. ‘What’s this?’ I said. ‘The Lateral Thinking Club in action? It was coffee more than breakfast, smart arse. Aren’t you happy to have your old dad drive you to school?’

‘Sure,’ he said, and he smiled, leaning back with a sigh. It was a drag catching that bus every day. He was way outside the catchment area.

The traffic was very light. I was driving against the big commute to the city. And still early. We passed the Abbey Road Studio in St John’s Wood and there were no tourists walking across the zebra crossing, pretending to be John, Paul, George and Ringo. That’s how early it was.

‘So how’s it going?’ I said, one of those meaningless parental questions that usually provoke a non-committal grunt. But Pat’s slow, shy smile began spreading across his beautiful face. And he was still beautiful. Even now, with a lone spot on his forehead and a few white whiskers on his upper lip. He was still my beautiful boy.

‘I made the team,’ he said. ‘The Ramsay Mac football team.’

I began pounding my steering wheel with joy. I whooped. I slapped his thigh. He shouted out in protest, but he was laughing too.

‘I knew you would,’ I said. ‘I knew you could.’

And then he was off – telling me how the usual first team goalkeeper tore a cruciate ligament on a skiing trip, and that had given Pat the chance that he had been waiting for. And I nodded enthusiastically, asking him the odd question – the date of the next fixture, if he was all right for boots and gloves, all that stuff – but mostly just letting
him talk. And that lasted all the way to the gates of Ramsay Mac.

‘Thanks for the ride,’ he said, and I got out of the car with him. We stood facing each other and the blue blazers swirled around us. I knew I was not allowed to embrace him. I wasn’t that stupid. But I loved him so much.

‘I’m proud of you, kiddo,’ I said. ‘You made it in the end.’

He shrugged, the hair tumbling over his eyes. But he pushed it back with a grin. ‘Just one game,’ he said. ‘There’s someone else the coach is looking at.’

A couple of big lads brushed by. One of them caught Pat with his shoulder and knocked him sideways. My boy was tall but a strong wind could blow him away.

‘Hey,’ said the big lad, and I saw it was William Fly. He had a six o’clock shadow at eight thirty in the morning. ‘Watch where you’re going, Sick Note,’ he said.

Sick Note? Is that what they called him? Because he had been sick? They gave him that name? I stared at William Fly, but I knew I was not allowed to say anything. The other lad – it was Spud Face – was chuckling away as though Fly was a comic genius. And I saw now that they were not both big lads. Only William Fly. Spud Face was the kind of little weasel who becomes big by association.

And I sized up this William Fly. Despite his freakish bulk, and the bluebeard stain on his chops, he was nothing special. There was one just like him in every school in the country. And hanging around every strip of shops, and in every playground, and in every park. They all had their William Fly.

We watched them go. Maybe ten seconds had passed. But it felt like the world had changed. Pat brushed at his blazer and did not look at me. And my rage knew no bounds. I was even angry with him.

‘Stand up for yourself,’ I said. ‘Can’t you do that?’

He shook his head. ‘Stand up for myself?’ he said, and he laughed, but the sound of the laughter was different now.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When they call you names. When they bang into you. Just stand up to them.’

Pat picked up his rucksack and swung it on his back. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he said. ‘Beat them up?’

I took a step closer to him. I didn’t want to make a scene. Kids were looking at us. But this mattered to me. I found that this mattered to me more than anything.

‘Just stand up for yourself,’ I said.

‘But I’m not a tough guy,’ my son said, and the bell began to ring. ‘That’s Granddad. That’s Clint Eastwood. It might even be you. But it’s not me, and it never will be.’

He walked away. I watched him go. I was still standing there when I saw the tears come and the boy making every effort to fight them back. Angry with me and angry with the wicked world. But angry with the tears most of all.

‘And I don’t need a lift in the morning,’ he said. ‘I can get the bus, thank you very much.’

Thank you very much.

It was the thank-you-very-much that killed me.

I spotted him as soon as he came through the door.

He was tall, and looked like he worked out, but the glasses softened the effect. He was dressed for the office, suited and booted under a winter coat, but not wearing a tie. He looked like he probably had one in his pocket.

Peter.

For a few seconds I did nothing, just watched him, tempted to leave without talking to him. But then he was looking at me, sitting by myself at a table in the back, and raising his paper in acknowledgement. He came across and I stood up as we shook hands.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, but then we had to pause as a waitress appeared. He ordered his complicated coffee and then held his hand out to me, as if he was an attentive host. I shook my head and sipped my tea. The waiter went away and Peter laid the palms of his hands on the table. He was ready to call the meeting to order. I grinned stupidly at him, wondering what would happen if I flung my English Breakfast Tea in his face.

‘It has not been easy for Gina,’ he said. ‘Having her son – having Pat – move in. Attempting to establish a relationship.’ He looked at me meaningfully. ‘Not easy.’

I laughed. ‘Gina’s not my problem,’ I said. ‘Not any more. I just care about my boy.’

Peter looked as though he was seeing me for the first time. ‘But you care about Gina? Presumably. You want her to be happy…’

I thought about it. Do we want our old loves to be happy? Do we really?

‘I guess so,’ I said, and then I smiled. ‘But not too happy, of course.’

He wasn’t smiling. This wasn’t going how he had planned. ‘She told me about you,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I bet she did.’

‘She struggled for years to find happiness after your marriage broke up,’ he said. ‘Obviously I only hear her side of events. But as I understand it, you were the one who was unfaithful in that relationship. She was never anything less than a loyal, loving wife.’

He had wiped the smile off my face. Good for you, I thought, and then came the first flash of real anger. Who was this guy anyway?

‘I don’t want to be rude,’ I said.

‘Really?’ he said.

‘But what do you want?’ I said.

‘Just to talk,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘Just to have a quick word, mate.’

I laughed at that. ‘I’m not your mate.’

He shook his head. ‘Why are you so hostile to me? Because I have a relationship with your ex-wife? Because she has introduced me to your son?’

I had an image of him strolling around the kitchen in the morning, all bleary-eyed from Gina’s bed, and my son packing his rucksack for school.

‘I think you’re a prince,’ I said. ‘A fucking prince, all right?’

He leaned forward. I sipped my tea. It was tepid now. I drank
it anyway. But I preferred it when it was so hot that it scalded my throat.

‘I just want you to please try to be a little more understanding,’ he said. ‘Gina has so many issues she is working through.’

‘Issues? What are you? Her shrink?’

‘Do you have something against therapy?’ he snapped. ‘Because I think it would be a very good idea for Gina.’ The waitress brought his complicated coffee. He did not say thank you. He did not even look at her. I hate it when people treat waitresses like that. ‘And Pat, too,’ he added.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my son,’ I said, and he chuckled, and I felt like breaking his neck.

‘Both Gina and Pat have serious abandonment issues,’ he said.

‘Then she shouldn’t have abandoned him, should she? She shouldn’t have wasted so many years trying to find fulfilment – or whatever the crap expression is this week.’ He waited. I went on. A bit more slow and measured now. Harry Silver – the voice of reason. ‘After the marriage came apart – and, yes, I carry the can for that – there was always something more important than our little boy. Japan. Career. The latest guy. Some guy who looked a lot like you.’

I must have raised my voice towards the end there, because people were starting to stare at us.

‘Can we be polite?’ Peter asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Can we? You call me at home and ask me to meet you, and then you sit there talking in your soft, reasonable voice about Gina and Pat as if you know them better than I ever will. Can we be polite, Peter? I don’t think so.’

‘I just want you to understand what Gina is going through,’ he said. ‘I would appreciate it if you could be a bit more understanding. I know how much it upsets her when you argue.’