Men from the Boys (17 page)

‘What does “err” mean?’ I asked.

She didn’t look at me. There was a pause. ‘It means error, Harry,’ she said, making my name sound like a euphemism for ‘big fat stupid fucking idiot’.

She switched off her torch and turned round, still not looking at me. She ran her hand through her hair and sighed.

‘I’ll get someone in the morning,’ I said. ‘Dig out Yellow Pages. Go on Google. Get it sorted.’

She brushed past me, and I thought of my father. If he was alive, I would have been on the phone to him already, and he would be happily digging out his toolbox.

My dad was what they call ‘good around the house’. I was what they call ‘crap around the house’.

I followed Gina into the kitchen. I craved cheese on toast, but I knew this probably wasn’t the perfect moment to feed my face.

‘Can’t we get someone now?’ she said. She took a yellow beanie hat out of the pocket of her winter coat and pulled it over her ears. It sort of spoiled the
Doctor Zhivago
effect. ‘I’m worried about the girls,’ she said. ‘They’ve had to go to bed with their socks on.’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, and she nodded, somewhat unimpressed.

‘I know it’s late,’ she said. ‘But I don’t care how much I have to pay.’

‘Fine.’

Our eyes met for just a second before she looked away. I felt a shiver of resentment. Or perhaps it was just the cold. But it wasn’t my fault that my dad was good with his hands and I was crap with my hands. It wasn’t my fault that I had given my father’s toolbox to Oxfam.

But I had seen the look in Cyd’s eyes and it stabbed me with shame. It said, Could you please remind me one more time? What’s the point of you, Harry? What exactly are you
for?

There were footsteps on the stairs. Peggy was lugging a suitcase down. I took it from her and carried it down. Cyd was waiting for her. She went to her mother’s arms and the pair of them embraced.

‘Is it the right thing to do?’ Peggy said. ‘I don’t want to get in the way.’

Cyd nodded. ‘Stay with your dad. Whatever feels right. Be strong for him. Show him you love him. And stay positive. He’s got great doctors. Liberty’s a good nurse.’ She squeezed her daughter. ‘And he’s got you.’

There was a car horn outside. A taxi had arrived. Peggy looked at me. She tried to smile but did not quite make it. I gave her a hug.

‘Nothing bad ever happened to me before, Harry,’ she said. ‘I thought bad things had happened to me – but not really. This is the first time. My dad getting sick. It makes the world look sort of different. As though nothing is certain. Do you know what I mean?’

I nodded. I knew exactly what she meant. And I knew that moment finds us all.

But Cyd just stared at us, her face empty of all emotion, as if I was just pretending to know.

When I got back from the bookmaker’s the next day a white van was parked outside our house. PLUMB CRAZY, it said on the side, with a mobile phone number that I had located just after midnight.

The front door was open and Joni came out with a battered Barbie in each hand. She grinned at me and walked round to the side of the house, where the giant cardboard box that had once contained the fridge stood by the recycling bins.

A small army of dolls was lined up inside the box.

I went into the house, immediately hearing the boiler and feeling the heat. Cyd was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She was digging out a credit card for the plumber.

‘Here, let me get it,’ I said. ‘Cash all right?’

He was one of those shrewd old Cockneys that remind me of my uncles. Left school at fourteen but had a PhD in life.

‘Even better,’ he said. ‘Saves on the paperwork.’

Cyd watched me pull a wad of fifty-pound notes out of my pocket. Joni came into the house and raced up the stairs. I peeled off a few of the notes, including a generous tip. The plumber left, telling us that we would be cosy and warm for the rest of the winter. When he had gone, I offered Cyd a fistful of fifty-pound notes. She folded her arms and looked at me.

‘It’s not just about money, Harry,’ she said.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘I can’t win with you, can I?’

Joni came back down with a stuffed monkey and one of the Bratz dressed in ski wear. I held my tongue. Not in front of the children. I hated to argue in front of the children. Joni babbled happily to her toys. Then she looked at Cyd. ‘Can I do dress-up? Is that all right? If I do dress-up?’

‘That’s fine,’ Cyd said. ‘Doing dress-up is fine.’ When she had gone, Cyd said to me, ‘Where did you get it, anyway?’

I was still holding the money. ‘Do you want it or not?’

‘Keep your money,’ she said. ‘I can make my own money.’ She smiled at my giant wad of red notes. ‘You probably won it on some stupid horse…’ She looked at my face and began to laugh. ‘My God, you really did, didn’t you?’

‘Chinese Rocks,’ I said. ‘Twenty-five to one. I put everything I had left on it. So I’m not completely useless after all, am I?’

‘Is that your idea of a productive life, Harry? Betting on horses in the middle of the day with a bunch of men who smell of pubs and kebab shops?’

‘Here,’ I said, forcing the money into her hand. ‘Stop treating me like a lodger who’s behind on his rent.’

She threw it in my face. It fluttered to the floor between us. We stood there, staring at each other. And then, from the street, we heard the sound of the recycling lorry. With the front door open it sounded very close and very loud. You could hear the bottles breaking as they were tipped inside.

‘Joni,’ Cyd said, and then we were both out of the house and into the street.

Men in sleeveless yellow jackets. The green bins empty and scattered across the pavement, the wind whipping one black lid away. And the big cardboard box that had held the fridge already being chewed up inside the steel maw of the lorry, collapsing in on itself, being folded down to nothing.

And Cyd screamed now.
‘Joni!’

She was halfway across the street when we heard the voice.

‘Mama?’

Joni stood in the doorway. She was dressed in her angel costume, which came with white dress, wings and halo. When we had bought it, we had added a star-shaped padded wand with handle and tinsel as an optional extra. It was a bit small for her now, and the handle of her wand was bent. She watched us, uncertain what was going on, or if she had been bad.

Cyd crossed the road quickly. She stopped when she reached me and slapped me just once, as hard as she could, across the side of my face.

‘What’s that for?’ I called to her back.

But I knew what it was for.

In the middle of the morning Marty and I sat in the Jolly Leper.

It was a traditional Soho boozer. Subdued lighting, exhausted sofas and a lone young barman who would not catch your eye even if the gaff was empty because he was going to be the next Robert Pattinson. Weak sunlight crept through windows that were stained by the cigarette smoke of the ages and advertisements for extinct beers. The Jolly Leper was a Soho institution. Francis Bacon had once spent forty-eight hours locked in the lavatory. We used to be in the Jolly Leper all the time. But it felt like it’d been quite a while.

‘The good news is that they like our idea,’ Marty said.

I leaned forward, all excited. ‘What one?
Britain’s Monkeys Got Talent? How Clean is Your Hamster Cage?’

Marty shook his head. He waved at the distant barman, who folded his arms and looked away. ‘The tattoo show. You know –
Whose Tattoo Are You?
The game show where you have to guess who the tattoo belongs to. The one with David Beckham as a guest.’

Ever the optimist. There was a bowl of sugar lumps on the table between us. Marty picked one up and tossed it into his mouth as if it was a peanut. I pinched his adorably chubby face and laughed.

‘They really like it? Channel 4? And we have the green light?’

‘Not Channel 4. Madeleine TV. Know who they are? Cable cowboys who have been doing bonzo business with repeats from the seventies, eighties and nineties.’

‘Madeleine TV?’

‘The idea is that you watch
Magpie
or
The Girlie Show
or
The Avengers
or
The Word
or
The Tube
or
Six Pissed Students in a Flat
and it makes you think of happier days – like Proust taking a bite of his Madeleine biscuit, and his childhood all coming back.’ He reached for another sugar lump. ‘And now they’re ready to start making their own content.’

I leaned back, smiling at him. ‘Proust, eh?’ I looked across at the barman and raised my hand. He glanced up from the latest copy of
Heat,
reluctantly catching my eye.

‘Champagne, I think,’ I said.

‘The bad news is they have their own ideas on production,’ Marty said, getting it all out at once. ‘So maybe not champagne.’

‘Bad news?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know there was any bad news. Who said anything about bad news?’

Marty took a breath. The barman went back to his magazine with an exasperated tut-tut-tut.

‘They don’t want you, Harry,’ Marty said. ‘They want Josh.’

‘Josh? What Josh? Not the Josh from our old show who went to Oxford and ended up fetching coffee in Broadcasting House? Josh with the posh accent who chased up our mini-cabs and was even crap at that? Josh with the five A-Levels and three brain cells?’

‘Yeah, that’s the guy.’

I was on my feet and ready to storm out of the Jolly Leper. But even at that moment I could see that Marty was trying to do the decent thing. Few people in our business ever have the nerve or the decency to reject you to your face. He reached for the sugar bowl, hesitated and pushed it away.

‘What’s Josh got that I haven’t got?’

Marty changed his mind, snatched up a sugar lump.

‘He’s young, Harry,’ Marty said.

‘Cheap, you mean.’

Marty shrugged.

‘Same thing,’ he said, his mouth full of sugar.

I stood outside the Jolly Leper, blinking in the daylight, suddenly disorientated. Soho was strange to me now.

When Marty and I were starting out, when we were first on radio, we were in these streets all the time. Working, eating, drinking. Looking at girls who were not interested. Dreaming of glory. The people who came out of the editing suites and production offices and screening rooms were known to us and we were known to them. Now everyone was ten, fifteen, twenty years younger and I didn’t know a soul. It was more like another planet than another postcode.

And then there was Gina.

I saw her standing at the end of an aisle in one of those surprising little Soho supermarkets that suddenly appear between the sex shops and the clothes shops and the pizzeria.

She was holding a six-pack of Evian to her face. And she was crying.

I went inside and I said, ‘Hey,’ and I put my arm around her. She leaned into me, and it awakened something that I thought was long, long dead.

‘Hey,’ I said again, and I held her closer, smelling her hair. ‘Hey, hey, hey. What’s wrong?’

She shook her head, pushed her face into my jacket. ‘Ah, everything,’ she said, all full up with sadness.

I looked at her and then pulled her back to me. Her body pressed against me. Under her raincoat she was dressed for the gym. I realised that she was in incredible shape. Not for a woman of her age. For a woman of any age. There wasn’t a twenty-year-old junior researcher in Soho that was a patch on Gina.

‘It’s all messed up, Harry,’ she said, wiping at her face with her hands.

I tore open a packet of kitchen towels and ripped off a strip. A passing security guard glared at me as Gina dabbed her eyes.

‘I’m going to pay for that,’ I told him.

He nodded grimly. ‘I know you are,’ he said.

Gina slipped her arm around my waist, her head lolling sideways. I felt her breath on my neck. She said my name. Something stirred. Something definitely stirred. She looked up at me with sleepy blue eyes.

‘You want to come up to my place?’ she said.

‘Okay.’

I paid for the kitchen towels and the Evian and we got out of there. We walked back to her place on Old Compton Street with our arms around each other. It felt good. I liked comforting her. I tried to remember why we had ever split up and it was beyond me. Something to do with the one thinking that the other one did not love quite enough, or in the same old way? Madness. And suddenly it was like the Soho I had known half a lifetime ago.

We climbed the stairs to her apartment. We said nothing. My mouth was dry with nerves. I did not know what was happening. Yet it was all curiously comforting.

But as soon as we were through the door a small woman with short red hair in a child-sized tracksuit was bouncing around in front of us.

‘Where were you?’ she demanded. ‘I was worried about you.’

Gina shook her head and kicked off her shoes. She always observed the ways of old Japan. I took off my shoes too. The redhead put her hands on her hips and glared at me.

‘I just needed some air,’ Gina said, all exhausted. She drifted into the flat. I followed. There were Tatami mats on the floor. Framed calligraphy on the wall. The scent of jasmine in the air. She had done it up nice. I noticed the redhead was looking at me as if she wanted to rip out my throat.

‘Is this him?’ she said, taking half a threatening step towards me. ‘Is this Peter?’

Gina laughed. ‘God, no. This is Harry. You know? Pat’s father?’

The redhead snorted. ‘I thought it was Peter. I thought
you were giving him another chance.’ She followed Gina into the flat. ‘Giving the kiss of life to something that’s already dead in the water. Knowing you.’

Gina faced her, looking pained. ‘I’d love some tea, Sian.’

The redhead calmed down. Happy to be of service, she bustled off to the kitchen. I could hear her clanking about and wondered if she was going to make one for me. Gina collapsed into her only sofa.

‘Pat didn’t come home last night,’ she said. ‘It’s happening more and more.’

My mouth was dry. What was wrong now?

‘Boys will be boys,’ I said.

‘He’s got a girl now,’ she said. ‘He wanted to bring the little slut round here for the night. I soon put a stop to that.’

‘A girl? What’s her name?’

‘Elizabeth Montgomery,’ Gina said, surprised, and offended when I began to smile. ‘What? Do you know the little bitch?’

I remembered the way that Elizabeth Montgomery had looked at him when he was sent off against UTI. That sleepy, interested look. It felt completely right that they were together at last. He had loved her for so long.

‘Why are you grinning like an idiot, Harry? You don’t actually think this is good news, do you? Our son staying out all night with some Ramsay Mac slapper.’

‘Why are you so nasty about her? She seems like a regular girl to me. Maybe she’s had a bit more attention than is good for her. But that’s because she’s so pretty. Come on. You understand that, don’t you?’

Gina waved me away.

‘She’ll dump him as soon as she finds out what a good, kind-hearted boy he is,’ Gina said. ‘That’s what I object to, Harry, if you want to know the truth. She’s the kind that likes being treated badly by some thick-necked yob with tattoos. And Pat is better than that. Better than her.’

I was appalled.

‘How can you say that? Elizabeth Montgomery might be the best thing that ever happened to him.’

Gina laughed. ‘You don’t know much about young girls, do you, Harry?’

I couldn’t argue with that, so I went out on the tiny balcony and looked down on Old Compton Street. From up here, it seemed unchanged.

I could see Ronnie Scott’s and Patisserie Valerie, the Algerian Coffee Store and a flight of stairs that had been offering French lessons on the first floor for twenty years. I could have been fluent by now.

‘They cut his hair,’ Gina said. ‘At school. Got him in the toilets and cut off all his beautiful hair.’

I was suddenly shaking. ‘Who did?’ I managed, gripping the railings as if I might fall. ‘Cut his hair? When?’

‘You know,’ Gina said. ‘The ones who don’t like him. The rough boys. The first day he went back. After his suspension.’

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t stop the shaking. This had gone on too long. This had to stop.

‘I want him out of that school, Harry,’ Gina was saying. ‘You know he’s talking about dropping out? He’s talking about getting a job? What kind of future will he have if he quits school and gets some crappy little job?’

‘I’ll find him, okay?’ I said. ‘I’ll find him and I’ll bring him back.’ I sat down beside her, and risked putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘I understand why you’re upset,’ I said. ‘But I will find him. And I will find them. And I am going to stop this thing, I promise. They are not going to hurt him any more, I swear to God.’

‘It’s not just Pat,’ she said, and I took my arm away. Not just Pat? Then what?

As if I couldn’t guess.

‘Things haven’t been going too good with that bastard Peter.’ I said nothing. ‘Turns out he was more married than he let on,’ she said. ‘Turns out his wife has not been recycled after all.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘What were the odds of that?’

‘You’re such a cynic, aren’t you, Harry? You old romantics are all so bitter and twisted. Because you’re always being disappointed.’

‘I saw the pair of them,’ I said. ‘Peter and his missus. With their kids.’ A beat. ‘You’re much more beautiful than she is, Gina. I saw the woman. She’s nothing special.’

I expected Gina to deny her beauty. That’s what she always did in her twenties. Like all the beautiful ones, she got sick of people talking about it, as if the way she looked was the most interesting thing about her. But now she just laughed.

‘Yeah, well. The Japanese have a saying – a man gets bored with a beautiful woman after three days but he gets used to a plain woman after three days.’

‘They’re a cruel race.’

‘It probably loses something in the translation. And they are actually the kindest people in the world.’

She looked away. The barrier between us had briefly lifted. But now it had come down again. And I saw that Gina had not wrecked our lives. She had wrecked her own life. And I knew that I could never find it in my heart to hate her.

The redhead – Sian – brought the tea. She had even made a cup for me. Green, Japanese, healthy-looking tea. Luckily I wasn’t expecting Brook Bond PG Tips and a custard cream. I perched on the edge of the sofa, giving Gina some space.

‘I could stay, if you want me to,’ Sian said.

Gina smiled and shook her head. ‘It’s okay.’

The redhead glanced at me quickly and looked away. She began backing towards the door, like a courtier leaving some regal presence. ‘Call me later?’

Gina closed her eyes, nodded, and smiled. There was a click as Sian shut the door quietly behind her.

Gina sipped her tea. ‘She’s been great.’ She looked at me meaningfully over the rim of her green tea. ‘Really supportive.’

I smiled. ‘She’s gay, right? Sian is gay.’

Gina put down her tea. ‘Not much gets past you, does it, Harry?’

I smiled. ‘What are you saying to me, Gina? What are we talking about here?’

She looked at me. Mocking, defiant. Enjoying it.

‘What do you think I’m saying, Harry? What do you think we’re talking about? Have a wild guess.’

I laughed. ‘You’re not a lesbian, Gina,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you’re planning for the next experiment, the next adventure, the next quest for fulfilment, then I wouldn’t bother.’

She mimed confusion. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, standing up. ‘But I’m more of a lesbian than you are, Gina. Trust me, you’re not a lesbian.’ I took a few steps to the door. It wasn’t a very big flat after all. ‘You’re just tired of men,’ I said.

Then I went to find my son.

A mile from the house where I grew up, there is a church on a hill.

And when I saw Pat sitting cross-legged by the grave, an almost-empty bottle of cider in one hand and a cigarette in the other, with Elizabeth Montgomery sitting opposite him, her legs stretched out, watching his face, I knew that I had been wrong all along to believe that my parents were not here.

I saw both my parents after they died, and it was a definite anti-climax. I wanted a big moment – some emotional final farewell – Katherine Jenkins singing ‘Time to Say Goodbye’ in the soundtrack of my mind – and it wasn’t like that at all. I had the same reaction to both of the bodies. My father in the back room of the undertaker’s on the suburban high street. My mum still at home in the bed she had shared with my father, and then slept in alone as his widow. And the feeling was one of anti-climax.

That is not he.

That is not she.

Whatever light had made my father the man that he was, and whatever light had made my mother the woman she was, it had gone out, or gone away. And while I could not say if it had gone to heaven or oblivion, I knew that it was gone. That was not my dad in the undertaker’s back room. That was not my mum in the bedroom where she slept for
forty years. My parents were elsewhere, or they were nowhere at all.