Mr. Commitment (22 page)

“Ikea. A new addition to the plan.”

She paused. “You want me to ask, don’t you? Well, I’m not going to, because I don’t want to know how that mind of yours works. Some things should remain a mystery.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“I’ll see you round at mine at six-thirty sharp.” She paused again. “Duffy?” she said, a hint of warmth entering into her voice. “I really do hope that everything works out for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope so too. Because to tell you the truth, I really don’t know what else I can do.” It was my turn to feel uncomfortable. “Julie?”

“What now?” she said with mock impatience. “Do you want me to drive you to Marks and Spencer as well?”

“Not this week,” I returned quickly. “I just wanted to ask: what made you change your mind?”

“I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but
you
did—
you
changed my mind. I thought about everything you’ve said and done recently, and I don’t know why, but I really do believe that you love Mel and that you want to make her happy. All I’ve ever wanted is for her to be happy, and if that’s what you do, then I’m all for it.”

“Cheers.” I sensed an awkward moment coming over the horizon. “I’d better go, but I’ll see you tomorrow at half six.”

“For what it’s worth,” she said hesitantly, “I just want you to know that what I said Sunday was wrong. Well, at least I’ve changed my mind. For better or worse I’m back believing in good old-fashioned love.”

Finally, everything was coming together. There was just one more thing that I had to do. I picked up the phone and made a call.

Monkeys

H
ere’s how my first-ever conversation with my dad went:

Me: Hello, is that George?

Him: Yes.

Me: It’s Ben Duffy here.

Him: [
Pause
] Hello. [
Hideously long pause
] How are you?

Me: I got your letter a while ago. Do you still want to meet up?

Him: Yes, of course.

Me: How about tomorrow?

Him: Sounds good to me.

Me: Where shall we meet?

Him: Wherever you like.

Me: [
Painfully long pause
] I dunno.

Him: [
Excruciatingly long pause
] I don’t know either.

Me: [
Quite obviously seizing on the first thing that enters my head
] London Zoo!

Him: The zoo? Aren’t you a bit old for that?

Me: [
Brusquely
] Okay, you choose.

Him: No . . . London Zoo sounds fine. Eleven o’clock suit you?

Me: Fine. [
Pause
] Okay, then, ’bye.

Him: ’Bye.

The zoo. The sodding zoo! I couldn’t believe that I’d just arranged to meet the man who was half responsible for my conception, in a zoo. It had just flashed in my head like a beacon. Later I wondered if deep in my subconscious what I’d wanted more than anything while growing up was to be taken to the zoo by my dad. Well, here I was some two decades later and finally my dream was coming true.

I had made the decision to call him as I’d sat in the hospital waiting room with Mum and she’d told me how she’d contacted him for my sake. I didn’t like the thought of her feeling responsible for something that had nothing to do with her. I already knew that I wasn’t my dad. I already knew that unlike him I could do the commitment thing. But I felt that for Mum’s sake, for my sake and for the sake of everyone whose dad just waltzed off and left them when they were kids, I had to do this one thing. And anyway, the parallels between my own life and that of Luke Skywalker in
Return of the Jedi
were so uncanny that I couldn’t resist. Was I, like Luke, going to discover that my dad was someone powerful like Darth Vader, or was he just going to be some old rent-a-dad, with regulation paunch, bald patch and extended nasal hair? When I was a kid I used to tell people that my dad was in the SAS and that was why he was never around. But then Mike Bailey got a book out from the local library on the SAS that said that they weren’t even allowed to tell close family members they were in the crack army battalion, which pretty much blew my cover.

The next day I got up early and put on the suit that I’d worn to Meena’s wedding. It was a bit crumpled but I wore it anyway. While I didn’t really give a toss one way or another what my dad thought of me, I couldn’t help but feel a little insecure. Something in me didn’t want him to be disappointed when he saw me. I even put on a tie. The funny thing was, as I approached the entrance to the zoo dead-on eleven o’clock I spotted him a mile off because he was wearing a suit and tie too. So there we were. Two grown men in suits and ties going to the zoo.

“Hello,” I said, giving him a short and very awkward wave. “Are you George?”

“Ben,” he replied, offering me his hand. “Good to meet you.”

I thought about correcting the “Ben” thing but left it. He squeezed my hand very firmly in a handshake that seemed to last forever. He was shorter than I expected. Both Vernie and I were quite tall, and as my mum wasn’t, I’d always assumed that we’d got it from my dad. It felt odd discovering that we’d inherited our height from one of our less immediate ancestors. He had a full head of gray hair (so I couldn’t blame my receding hairline on him either) and a kind of long, drawn-out face that along with his thick eyebrows and mustache gave him the appearance of an aging TV private detective. The only thing we had in common was our eyes. Almond shaped, and dark brown. “Shall we go in?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

He paid for the two of us at the kiosk near the entrance and we pushed through the turnstile into the zoo. As it was a damp Thursday in October and school half terms had not yet started, the zoo wasn’t exactly crawling with activity. There were a few preschool kids with their mums dotted about the place, and that was it. Leading the way, George decided that we ought to go and visit the lions first. Which is exactly what we did.

It was the strangest thing, because we didn’t talk about the missing years, his life or mine; instead animals dominated the conversation. Never have two people who so obviously know bugger all about the animal kingdom found so much to say about it. We read plaque after plaque, informed each other of nature documentaries we had seen in the past and dredged up all manner of ridiculous animal facts (“No, I didn’t know that whales give birth to live young. But did you know that the kangaroo has a forked penis?”). After the lions, we visited the reptile house, the penguins in the pool, watched the llamas, the elephants, in fact everything there was to see.

We spent a particularly long time in the ape house, for my benefit. I was running out of stuff to say and the orangutans were so entertaining that we used them as a talking point for at least half an hour. The zookeepers had given the orangutans clothes to play with. One particular orangutan, who had to have the saddest, most mournful face in the primate world, was sitting on the ground next to a tree, with a lady’s long raincoat over his head. His body was huddled up and his long hairy arms were wrapped around his back as if he were giving himself a hug. We watched him for ages as he began doing forward and backward rolls for no reason at all. If Mel had been here she would’ve wanted to cry.

After three hours of wandering around, we decided to take a break for lunch. Queuing up in the restaurant, George told me that he’d treat me to lunch, which struck me as very funny—I’d worked out on my way to the zoo that at the very least he probably owed me a few thousand pounds in backdated birthday presents alone. He chose a ham baguette wrapped in cellophane and I had a plate of French fries with three sachets of tomato sauce.

“Do you want a coffee?” he asked as we reached the drinks dispensers.

“I don’t really do hot drinks,” I told him.

“Me neither,” he said, pulling a face. “I hate things that are too hot to sip.”

As the sun had come out briefly, we sat at the tables outside the zoo’s restaurant to eat, even though the plastic chairs were damp. As we chewed in silence, I could see how difficult this was for him, but it was hard for me too. There was this massive thing between us—a conversation that we both knew we had to have, but that neither of us particularly wanted to begin.

I was just about to offer up another animal fact (“Did you know that bulls see in black and white?”) when George suddenly put down his half-eaten baguette. “I was just wondering what made you change your mind?”

This is it. This is The Talk.

“About seeing you?” I asked, playing for time. He nodded. I thought deeply about his question and avoided eye contact while I spoke. “I’ve just sorted out my life in a way I never thought possible. I’ve spent a long time avoiding stuff that I used to be scared of, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this: nothing is ever as scary as you think it will be.”

George laughed, a kind of big baritone laugh that made me envious, given that my voice was nowhere near as deep. “I think it was Mark Twain who said, ‘I am an old man and have known many fears. Most of which have never happened.’ ”

“I think I prefer my version,” I said. “It has a sort of awkward charm about it.”

“I prefer yours too,” he replied.

There was a big silence. “I used to hate you. In fact I spent most of my life hating you. You made my life difficult for no good reason as far as I can see.”

“I deserve that,” he said. “There’s no good excuse for what I did. You’re right I made your mother’s life a mess and made things hard for you and your sister.” He paused. “You said ‘used to hate.’ Does that mean that you don’t hate me now?”

I swallowed hard. “I think I’ve just come round to the idea that it’s pointless hating you. When I was at school, most of my mates had absentee dads of some description. It was weird. Like a whole generation of men had held some sort of secret ballot and decided universally to bugger off pronto. They were all at it. Like the monkeys.”

“Monkeys?”

“Yeah,” I said and then proceeded to tell him Dan’s dead monkey joke. “You were just doing the dead monkey like everybody else, which is no surprise given that the difference between monkey DNA and human DNA is as little as one percent.” This startling statistic forced me to take a moment of self-reflection:
Where are all these animal facts coming from?
“You weren’t necessarily a bad person,” I continued. “Just weak-willed.” I looked up at George for the first time. He was watching me intently.

“You know I’m sorry, don’t you?” he said. “It’s useless apologizing—it’s only words after all—but I mean it. I’ve missed your growing up and Vernie’s growing up and it’s stuff that I’ll never get back. I tried not to think about you at all when I first left, which was difficult, but I knew your mum would give you everything you needed. Eventually it got easier and easier to forget that you existed. It was almost like you were a dream, or you were somebody else’s life.”

Over the next half an hour we tried to cram in as much as we could about the last twenty-eight years. I told him about Vernie and the baby, my stand-up career so far, and even a bit about me and Mel and the baby (although I didn’t go into too much detail).

In return George told me about his life. He’d remarried and divorced, never had any more kids and had spent his life in shoe sales. Now that he was retired he spent most of his time in the garden of his house in Enfield. He seemed moderately happy with his lot, which annoyed me slightly, so I made up a stack of lies about my mum having won a modest sum on the National Lottery and her having a retired suitor who was forever taking her on exotic holidays to the Caribbean. Although I no longer hated George, there was no way that I didn’t love my mum a billion times more than anything I’d ever feel for him.

“Well, I’m glad she’s happy,” was all he managed to say.

“She is,” I replied. “Very.”

W
e decided to call it a day when it started to rain. As we headed for the exit George talked about how this hadn’t been as scary as he thought it would be and so we should do it again. However, I think he knew as well as I did that we were never really going to. We’d both done the thing that we’d been waiting a lifetime to do, and now we’d crossed it off our lists there wasn’t a lot more to say other than goodbye.

“Goodbye, then.” I offered George my hand.

“It’s been good to see you,” he said, shaking it firmly. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re a fine young man.”

“Cheers,” I replied. I don’t think he expected me to reciprocate his compliment, but if he did he was sadly mistaken. His statement did, however, call for something more substantial than “Cheers,” so I found myself saying, “I’ve got your eyes.”

“I know,” he said, taken aback.

“Mel thinks my eyes are the reason she fell in love with me,” I said quietly. “I’ll let her know that they’re just like yours.”

He smiled gently. “Meet up soon, then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

Every man has a poem in his heart

“
A
re you sure it goes in there?”

I looked at Julie exasperatedly.

“Maybe you’ve got it upside down or something? Have you tried wobbling that funny-looking thing?”

I gritted my teeth and wobbled irately.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?”

Julie,
I thought carefully,
may well have a point.

Up until now everything in the plan had gone like clockwork. As arranged I’d met up with Julie and we’d driven to Ikea. Half an hour and several hot and bothered assistants later and part one of the plan was complete. In my pockets were parts two and three but on the way to Clapham I had a flash of inspiration and a potential fourth part of the plan occurred to me. A quick detour via the freezer section of a nearby Safeway and my job was nearly complete. By eight o’clock we’d arrived at Mel’s flat where Julie’s role in the plan came to the fore—she handed me the spare keys she kept to the flat. I’d told her I’d be in and out in under an hour. That was then.

“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my temples gently whilst surveying the havoc I’d wreaked in Mel’s living room.
It’s going to take ages to tidy this lot away.
“It feels like midnight.”

Julie looked at her watch and did the sort of comedy double take that usually only ever happens in films. A look. Another look of disbelief and then another look just to check that the first two weren’t part of some sort of hideous hallucination. “It’s one o’clock in the morning,” she said.

“You’re joking?”

“I’m not. I’m deadly serious. Look, Duffy, we’re going to have to go. I’ve got work in the morning. I can’t stay up all night while you make a mess. I’m sorry, but I think we ought to tidy up and leave.”

“We can’t go yet,” I protested. “I haven’t finished doing what I’m doing. Mel’s going to be back tomorrow night. I wanted everything to be perfect . . .” I ran out of steam as the futility of my big plan finally hit me. “This really isn’t going to work, is it?”

“Look, it’s just one part that’s not going to work. The rest will be fine. Let’s just tidy up and make the most of what you’ve done.”

“Will you put in a good word for me? Explain to her what I was trying to do?”

“Of course I will,” said Julie. “The more I think about it, the better this idea of yours gets. It won’t matter that you didn’t get it all done. All that matters is you tried. Mel’s not stupid, she’ll know how hard you’ve worked. It’s the trying that matters. She’ll know how much you love her.”

Julie then did something she’d never done before. Something I never expected her to do in this lifetime or any other—she hugged me. At first, still somewhat shocked, my body went rigid with fear as if I’d come face-to-face with a black widow spider. Slowly, however, I overcame my initial reaction as I recalled the qualities of New Julie—the one who had gone out of her way to help me—and I found myself returning the hug. And there we stood, wrapped in each other’s arms, sharing a moment that up until yesterday had been right at the top of the least-likely-event-to-occur-in-the-next-twenty-four-hours Top 40.

Just as I was wondering what the second least likely event might be, Julie whispered in my ear, “I think someone’s in the room.”

We immediately let go of each other as if we’d just been connected to the national grid, turned and stared wide-eyed at the doorway to the living room. Standing there, holding a small suitcase and wearing a look of sheer bewilderment, was Mel.

“What are you doing here?” asked Julie, trying for all the world not to sound guilty. “You’re not meant to be back until tomorrow evening.”

“What am
I
doing here?” said Mel, switching on the main light. “What are
you
doing here, more like? It’s one o’clock in the morning, I’m knackered and I’ve just walked into my own flat to discover my best friend in an embrace with the father of my child. I don’t think I’m the one who needs to be bloody explaining anything.”

“It’s not how it looks,” I said sheepishly. “Honest, Mel, this is all just a hugely hideous mistake.”

“Of course it’s not how it looks.” Mel sniggered. “Just look at the two of you! Terrified rigid that I’m going to accuse you of having an affair. Do you honestly imagine for one minute I’d think that?” She stepped into the room, and for the first time noticed the sheer havoc I’d wreaked in her living room. “Okay,” she said, hand on hip. “What’s going on? And why have you decided to turn my flat into a bomb site?”

“Mel,” I began, “it’s not Julie’s fault, it’s all mine. I had a plan, something that was supposed to convince you how serious I was about you, but it’s all gone horribly wrong . . .”

“It hasn’t, Duffy,” prompted Julie sternly. “Just do what you’ve got to do.” She walked over to Mel, gave her a hug and said warmly, “Go easy on him. He’s not half as bad as he seems.” Mel looked at Julie in silent amazement. “My work here is done,” continued Julie, “so I think I’m going to leave you two to sort this out by yourselves.” She went out, closing the door softly behind her. Now Mel and I were alone I knew this was it—my big moment.

“I’ve got some things to give you,” I began, as I felt my breathing quicken. My head started to feel slightly fuzzy as the blood rushed to my brain. “The original plan was that you were supposed to come home tomorrow and just find them here in the flat.
I
wasn’t supposed to be here at all. But since I am, I might as well give them to you myself. They’re not gifts exactly—sort of non-gifts to be accurate—but they do all have something in common that I want you to think about.”

“This is all really weird, Duffy, even for you,” said Mel. “The fact that you’ve managed to rope Julie into your schemes worries me greatly.”

“Close your eyes,” I said, “while I give you your first non-gift.” Mel closed her eyes. “Put out your hands.” She did as I requested and I placed my first non-gift in her hand.

“Yeurgh!” exclaimed Mel. “It’s all soggy.”

“I know. I forgot to put it back in the freezer and put it in the fridge by accident. You can open your eyes now.”

“It’s a bag of broccoli,” she said blankly, looking at me for explanation.

“I know, you left some in my freezer ages ago before we broke up. I threw it away but I’ve bought you some more.”

“Thanks. It’s just what I wanted,” said Mel, pulling a face. “What’s next?”

“You know the procedure.”

She closed her eyes and I handed her the second non-gift. “It’s the remote control for
my
television!” exclaimed Mel. “Er . . . thanks very much! This is like some sort of twisted version of Christmas.”

“This bit’s a little more complicated,” I said, ignoring her asides. “You close your eyes again, but this time I’m going to have to guide you over to the other side of the room.” Holding on to her hand tightly, I navigated her carefully across the room. “You can open your eyes now.”

“Great!” Mel looked around her. “Bits of wood and metal. Now I know for a fact that unless you’ve been dismantling my furniture none of this is mine.”

“Ah you see bits of wood and metal,” I corrected. “But I see
very
important bits of wood and metal. This mess here,” I pointed to a pile of short metal rods, two large door panels, a massive instruction sheet, and a pile of brackets and side panels, “in my hands all amounts to a bunch of bits of wood and metal but in the hands of someone with more common sense than your average house brick they all fit together to make an Ikea wardrobe.”

Mel’s faced changed as she began to get an inkling of what I was doing. She opened her mouth, about to speak, but I put my finger to her lips to silence her.

“Not now. You can speak when I’ve given the last of my non-gifts.” I searched around in my jacket pocket and knelt down in front of her. “This is for you.” I handed her a small gift-wrapped package.

She tore open the wrapping paper revealing the box inside, and opened it hurriedly. She was quiet for some moments and then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and knelt down beside me. “It’s my engagement ring.”

“I know you’re probably wondering what this is all about. You probably think this is just me having a laugh, and in a way it is. I love making you laugh, Mel, I want to be the one who makes you happy all the time, but there’s a serious side to this too. You see, the broccoli
was
yours and I give it back to you. The remote control
is
yours but I used to use it most and so now I give it back to you. The wardrobe
should’ve been
yours on that day we argued in Ikea, so I give it to you now. And finally this ring, in your hand, which represents my heart, is, was, and will always be yours. Even if you turn me down, I can’t ever take it back because it’s yours forever.”

I sat down on the hardwood floor, exhausted. “Charlie once said to me that when it came to winning over the one you love, ‘every man has a poem in his heart.’ Well, this, Mel, was my sonnet. The only thing I regret about tonight,” I said, wiping a tear away from her cheek as she moved herself closer to me, “is that I was defeated by that stupid wardrobe.” With that I closed my eyes like a blindfolded deserter about to be shot and waited for her answer.

There was a brief moment of silence, and then I felt Mel’s arms around me, squeezing me tightly as she whispered the words, “I love you,” into my ear.

“Will you marry me?” I asked tentatively.

“Of course,” said Mel as I opened my eyes. “That’s why I’ve told my bosses today that I couldn’t carry on the job in Scotland and asked for my old job instead. That’s why I came back a day early. I couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t need frozen broccoli, a remote control, a ring or even a wardrobe to know that you love me. I just know.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course,” she said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. “If it’s really what you want.”

“Even though I can’t build flatpack wardrobes?”

“Especially because you can’t build flatpack wardrobes.”

“Even though I still hate shopping in Ikea?”

“Especially because you hate shopping in Ikea.”

“Even though I don’t always understand you, I wind you up with the stupid things I do and occasionally try to shush you when the TV’s on?”

“Don’t push it,” she said as she moved in closer to kiss me. “Quit while you’re ahead, Mr. Duffy.” She kissed me again. “All you need to know is that I love everything about you. I love you exactly the way you are. I don’t want you to be like me and I certainly don’t want to be like you. I want us to be the way we are.”