Men from the Boys (15 page)

‘Dad,’ a woman’s voice said, and we looked up to see Tracey and Ian bustling down the corridor. Then they had to press against the wall to let a man with a trolley-load of blood samples pass by, his little bottles rattling away, but they never stopped smiling at their father.

‘Sorry we’re late,’ Tracey said. ‘The traffic.’

‘Hanger Lane was a nightmare,’ Ian said. ‘Chock-a-block, it is.’

Ken grunted, and turned back to the
Racing Post.

‘You haven’t missed much,’ he said.

I went to get tea for the four of us. When I came back, they were still waiting to see the doctor. Tracey was banging on about some homeopathic quackery she had just read about, while Ken rolled his eyes and stared at a point somewhere over her shoulder. Ian smiled nervously, trying to soothe the troubled waters that raged between them.

‘It’s really hot,’ I said, passing the white plastic cups around. ‘Give it five minutes.’

But Tracey was still talking about this miracle cure for cancer. She took a big gulp of molten tea and then jumped up as if she was choking.

‘Told you to wait a minute,’ I said.

She turned on me. ‘And – sorry – remind me,’ she said, ‘why exactly are you here?’

‘Tracey,’ said her brother, not the first time, I’ll warrant.

I cradled my boiling hot cup. ‘I drove your dad here,’ I said quietly.

‘That’s not it,’ Ken said with a chuckle. He folded his
Racing Post
and looked at me. ‘He’s looking for his dad. Aren’t you?’

I said nothing. I held my book and my tea. It was still too hot to drink. But I brought it to my lips anyway, just for something to do.

‘He’s looking for his dad but he’s not going to find him here,’ Ken said. An emphatic little gesture with his head.

‘He’s gone, your dad,’ he told me. ‘There’s just me and my tumour.’ He looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Here – sounds like a song.’ He began to sing, to the tune of ‘Me and My Shadow’.
‘Me…and my tumour…strolling down the avenue.’

Tracey covered her face. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Please. Don’t.’

Ken smiled. ‘You can say what you like when they’re digging your grave.’ He raised his hands in exasperation. ‘Oh, here we go,’ he said. ‘Here come the waterworks. Here comes Niagara Falls.’

Ian had begun to cry. More of a weeping and a wailing.
Great wet tears coursing down his big round face. I swallowed hard. I looked away. But then I had to look at Ken.

‘Your dad’s gone,’ he told me. ‘Get it?’

‘Got it,’ I managed, and I necked my tea in one go as the nurse stuck her head around the door and said, ‘Mr Grimwood?’

He stood up, straightened his tie and tugged at the hem of his blazer. ‘Here, miss,’ he said. I watched the Grimwoods troop off to the doctor’s office. Ken turned and beckoned me to join them.

‘But what does he need to come in for?’ Tracey demanded. ‘He’s not family.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Ken chuckled. ‘Let him have a bit of fun.’

Tracey shook her head, and bit her lip. Her brother patted her arm and we all went in where the doctor showed us X-rays of the old man’s lungs, black with primary tumours and foggy with the fluids that clogged his chest.

The doctor was very nice. He pushed a box of Kleenex across his empty table for Tracey and Ian when they really started to sob. And he told us that only twenty per cent of lung cancer cases are ever suitable for surgery, and explained very patiently why chemotherapy and radiotherapy were inappropriate for an elderly man at this late stage of the disease. So he told us that there was hope. But not today, and not in this room, and not for this old man.

‘You have perhaps nine months,’ the doctor said, and Ian and Tracey were leaning out of their chairs, hugging each other.

I gripped my book with both hands.

But Ken Grimwood sat there dry-eyed.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Can I go home now?’

That was the day that I really saw the hardness in him. Not the hardness that I had always admired – the hardness that gave him and all the men like him the courage to stand up to poverty and war and cancer and death – but the other hardness, the kind that kept his children at a distance, and his wife a little in fear, no matter how much she was in love.

As though something inside him was forever frozen, and
could never melt, and could never be reached. Perhaps they were the same thing, the good hardness and the other kind, and perhaps they had always been the same thing.

And he might have felt that my father was not there, but I could sense my old man muttering in the wings. I could almost smell the Old Spice and Old Holborn and the brown ale on his breath. And I could see him – I could see ten thousand nights of him eating his dinner on his lap in front of the TV, and I could remember the one special night when he was stone-faced with fury as I told him that my marriage had died, and then near the end, I remembered the nights when he was pumped full of morphine in a hospital ward, and still fearless, still hard as teak, and still totally incapable of tears, or of ever being touched.

So the old man was wrong.

My father was there all right.

Cyd and I were home alone.

It was one of those rare moments of peace that descend on any busy household. When you suddenly find time on your hands, and stillness in the house, and the children all elsewhere.

A Saturday morning, and suddenly I had nothing to do today. In a terse text message, Pat had cancelled our trip to the NFT for the director’s cut of
A Bridge Too Far.
Peggy was at her salsa class. And Joni had not yet returned from a sleepover at a friend’s house.

I placed two cups of coffee on the little table in our living room. There was a catalogue on the table for serious kitchen appliances – fridges that can hold enough canapés to feed a thousand, that kind of thing.

I settled myself on the sofa with my copy of the
Racing Post.

I felt good. I felt calm. I noted that Marley’s Ghost had been found wanting in its last three starts but had now dropped some weight and was expected to get involved in the 1235 at Limerick.

Interesting, I thought. Very interesting.

Cyd walked into the room towelling her hair. It was still wet from the shower. She was barefoot, half-dressed, her limbs long and coltish in white shorts and black vest. She knelt on the floor in front of the big wall mirror, lifting her bottom in my general direction as she plugged in the hairdryer.

It was a bit like one of those mirrors you see in dance studios. A mirror that dominates a wall, and lets you see everything. And I saw how my wife’s body had changed over the years. She was rounder now, made of more curves. Time did that. A baby did that.

I liked the way she was before and I liked the way she was now. If anything, I liked her more now. Cyd was always lovely, but she was one of those women who grow into their beauty. And she looked great in her white shorts and black vest, her hair all wet and mussed up. I had quite forgotten about Marley’s Ghost getting involved at Limerick.

She caught me watching her and smiled at me in the mirror.

‘What?’ she laughed.

As if she couldn’t tell.

I crossed the room to her, the
Racing Post
still in my hand. She shook her head and turned on the hairdryer. I knelt by her side, feeling a blast of hot air on my face. Her black hair was flying, all wet and glossy. I threw aside my paper and touched her hair with the tips of my fingers.

‘Want me to do that for you?’ I offered, looking at her bare legs. There was a long muscle on the top of her thighs and it really stood out when she knelt down like that.

‘You want to blow-dry my hair?’ she said. ‘Thanks, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.’

I nuzzled the side of her face, her hair damp against my nose and mouth.

Then I slipped into my Barry White voice.

‘You know, baby, no matter how many times I’ve blowdried your hair, it just never seems like it’s enough…’ I shook my head like the great man. ‘It’s just not enough, baby.’

Cyd turned off her hairdryer.

‘What do you really want?’ she said, and she tilted her head as I kissed her mouth. A perfect fit, as always and forever. She stroked my arms as we knelt side by side, our foreheads touching, looking at each other in the mirror.

‘Saturday morning?’ she said. ‘Come on.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Nobody around. We’re an old married couple. We have to take our pleasures where we can.’

Her eyes got that sleepy, knowing look that I loved.

‘You don’t need any of those little blue pills yet, do you?’ she said.

That kind of lavish sexual praise always gets me going.

‘Not if you catch me before noon,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘Then we’ve got sixty minutes.’

I slipped back into Barry White.

‘That’s good, baby, because you know I’m a sixty-minute man.’

‘Promises, promises,’ she said, and laid her hairdryer to one side and put her arms around my neck.

Then we were rolling around on the floor, and every now and again I would stop kissing her to look at us in the mirror. And Cyd would look too. And what we saw in the mirror would make us want to kiss some more.

We were just about to get down to the serious stuff when Cyd said, ‘Ouch.’

Something was sticking in her back.

She rolled on her side and pulled my scrunched-up
Racing Post
from beneath her.

She frowned. Then grinned.

‘The
Racing Post?’
she said, with genuine marital amusement. She held it between her thumb and index finger, as if about to conduct a forensic examination.

‘Since when did you start reading the
Racing Post?’

I had actually been reading it for quite a while. She just hadn’t noticed.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Every now and then.’

I kissed her neck, her forehead, her ear.

But she was laughing quite hard by now. It’s difficult to stay completely in the mood when someone’s having a good old laugh.

‘Hilarious,’ she said.

Have you noticed that when anyone says, ‘Hilarious,’ it is never, ever even remotely funny? Saying
hilarious
is the kiss
of death to humour. And everything else. I rolled on to my back. Cyd crossed her legs and actually began flicking through the
Racing Post.

After a while I realised she was looking at me.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. She wasn’t smiling now. It wasn’t hilarious now. None of it. ‘You’re not…? I don’t believe it, Harry. You’re not actually…
gambling,
are you?’

I sat up. ‘I never actually thought of it as gambling,’ I said. ‘It’s just – you know. Having a flutter. A bit of a laugh.’

She stood up, smoothing her white shorts. She flopped down on the sofa. She took a sip of coffee, still examining the
Racing Post
as if it revealed some dark secrets about my soul. Then she put down her coffee, too hard. Some of it splashed over the little table. ‘A bit of a laugh?’ she said. And then the same again, but with the volume turned way up. ‘A
bit of a laugh?’

I got up off the floor and lifted my coffee just as she chucked her kitchen appliance catalogue at me. It only brushed my arm but it was like being hit by a telephone directory, or a very large brick. I cursed, and cursed again, most of my coffee sloshing down the front of my jeans and shirt.

‘Jesus Christ, Cyd,’ I said and put down the cup, and went off to clean up. She came after me.

‘Have you seen all the bills in the top drawer?’ she said. ‘All those red-coloured bills, Harry? Those bills from gas, electricity and every other bastard we owe money to?’

I was at the sink tearing off kitchen towel. It was no good. I was going to have to change, shower, start again. ‘I’m going to get a job,’ I said. ‘And until I do, I’m going to get a loan. From the bank. I keep telling you.’

I turned to go but she barred my path. ‘Yes, you keep telling me,’ she said. ‘That’s all you ever do – tell me. Tell me how everything’s under control and everything’s going to be good tomorrow. What is it you bloody English say? Jello tomorrow. That’s what my life with you is like, Harry. It’s all bloody jello tomorrow.’

I pushed past her, glad our kids were not here for this. ‘Jam tomorrow,’ I said. ‘The expression is jam tomorrow.’

‘You’re the expert.’

I went to the bathroom and began taking off my clothes. I thought she had left me alone but after a while she appeared in the doorway, a sheath of papers in her hand. She began throwing them at me one by one.

‘British Gas,’ she said, and for just a second I remembered how much I loved her crazy accent. The way she said ‘British’. It made something inside me ache. But then the moment was gone, gone the moment she threw the bill at me. It fluttered between us. ‘Eastern Electricity…Virgin Media…Vodafone for Joni…’

I stood there in my pants, my hands held up in bewilderment. ‘Vodafone for Joni? Why is a seven-year-old girl receiving a bill from Vodafone?’

‘For her
cell,
stupid,’ Cyd said. And then, switching to a grotesque parody of a London accent, like Dick Van Dyke in
Mary Poppins:
‘For her m
oh-bile fone, mayte, innit?’

She kept reading the names of the bills and throwing them at me. When she began reading out a letter from the Cheltenham and Gloucester about our mortgage, I decided I had had enough. I started putting my coffee-soaked clothes back on.

‘All on me, Harry,’ she said. She was calmer now, but that was somehow worse. ‘This house needs two incomes. This house needs both of us contributing. But it’s all on me. We’re lucky I’m busy right now. We’re lucky Food Glorious Food has more work than it can handle. Otherwise – I don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. And I truly was sorry. ‘I know it’s hard.’ I zipped up my jeans, adjusted my penis. ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Then don’t gamble, Harry,’ she said, pleading now. ‘It’s insane, baby! Can’t you see that? We have no money – we are right at the limit – and you are starring in a remake of
Casino Royale.’

‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘It’s just a few quid, now and then.’ I left the bathroom and walked, just wanting to get
some distance between us. ‘It’s a bit of fun. Some light relief.’ She was right behind me, following me. I turned to look at her. ‘God knows I deserve some.’

She nodded, as if she understood everything. ‘Living with me, you mean?’

‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

‘I do my bit for this family – and plenty more,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever forget it, mister.’

We were on the stairs. Going nowhere. I turned to look at her. We were right by the alcove that contained all my prizes. My BAFTA from the long lost era
of The Marty Mann Show.
My glass earhole from quite recently. A glass pigeon from somewhere that I couldn’t quite recall.

‘And what about me?’ I said. ‘I’ve worked like a dog for years.’

‘What kind of dog would that be, Harry? A Chihuahua? A little Shih Tzu?’

I gestured at my illustrious prizes. ‘They don’t give these away for serving chicken satay,’ I said, because I knew it would hurt her. But I could not stop myself. We had got to that point where we could not stop ourselves from hurting each other. It was all we wanted now.

Cyd looked at my prizes, less than impressed.

‘It’s a glass earhole, Harry,’ she said. ‘It’s just a glass earhole.’ She saw my face turning red. She saw the little vein in my right temple start to throb. And she laughed. She knew she had scored a bull’s-eye. ‘What shall we do, Harry? Shall we try to pay our mortgage with your glass earhole?’

My voice was very quiet. ‘If you don’t like it,’ I said, ‘then why don’t you go back to fucking Jim?’ We stared at each other. ‘Your ex-husband. If you’ve had enough of me, then why don’t you drag the carcass of that marriage around the block one more time?’

‘What?’ she said.

I pushed past her. Going back down the stairs now. Over my shoulder. ‘You heard,’ I said.

She sat on the stairs. I went to the kitchen and ripped off
a rubbish sack. Then I went back to the alcove that displayed my prizes. Cyd was still sitting on the stairs, her face in her hands. I began tossing my prizes into the rubbish sack. The glass earhole went first. Cyd looked up with wet eyes as we heard it explode.

‘What are we doing to each other, Harry?’ she said, and her lovely face was all twisted with what we had become. ‘Oh, please don’t throw away your pigeon.’

‘Too late,’ I said, and the pigeon went in, followed by my BAFTA from the days when we thought that TV would always love us – my beautiful BAFTA! – and it smashed the pigeon and the earhole a bit more. I hung my head and I covered my face too.

Then the doorbell rang.

Cyd and I looked at each other and then slowly descended the stairs. The doorbell was still ringing. I was still holding the rubbish sack, and the broken glass tinkled like jewels. The sound of the shattered prizes made Cyd cry a bit harder. There was a sob the size of a ten-year-old marriage in my throat.

I opened the front door.

There was a smiling Japanese woman holding a newborn baby, and a shy-looking Japanese man behind her, dressed for the golf course. I couldn’t work out what was happening. Then Joni and her friend Asuka jumped out whooping from either side of the door, surprising me, and then standing there jumping up and down and hugging each other and chanting this mantra.

‘Best friend,’ the two girls sang. ‘Best friend, best friend.’

‘Very good playdate,’ said the smiling Japanese lady, and the tiny mop-haired baby in her arms began to mew. Her husband nodded shyly in agreement. Joni brushed past me.

‘Can Asuka have a sleepover with me next weekend?’ she said.

‘Very good girl,’ said the kind, sweet Japanese lady, and her decent, golf-playing husband nodded again.

Then the shy, smiling, decent Japanese family looked at
my wife and me, really looked at us for the first time, and their smiles faded.

They saw it all. The coffee on my unbuttoned shirt. The grief on our faces. The red bills that were scattered across the hall like the betting slips of lost races. And in the rubbish bag I held, they heard all the glittering prizes, reduced to jingling-jangling pieces of trash.

They gathered up their children.

They nodded a polite goodbye, as if we were normal people too.

And then they got out of there.