Ten Stories About Smoking (24 page)

‘I remember once you bought me an ice cream,’ I said. ‘As a surprise.’

‘Ah yes, I do remember that,’ he said, as though it was important. ‘Beautiful day. Sweating like a wog on a rape charge, I was. Bought you all an ice cream. Your mum was right
surprised, I can tell you. I’d remembered that she liked those ice creams with the bubble gum in the bottom, you see. She thought it was romantic.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, another time. When we were on Alton Way.’

It must have been a year or so before he left. Mum had taken Elsie into town to buy something she needed. Dad and I were alone and watching the television. Outside an ice-cream van sounded its
three-blind-mice tune and I went to the window and watched it slowly make its way down the road. It wasn’t too hot a day, but it was hot enough. Dad picked up the paper and said he was going
for a dump. I turned away from the window and watched the television. When I heard the door open, I looked round thinking it might be Mum and Elsie, but it was him clutching a 99 Flake with
strawberry sauce in each hand. ‘He asked if I wanted a ninety-nine,’ he said. ‘And I said I wanted a bloody hundred.’

I retold the story and he looked on with growing confusion.

‘If you say so, son. Can’t say I remember though.’ He sucked in some more smoke. ‘And, anyway, I don’t even like strawberry sauce.’

He laughed and beckoned me to pass the flask. I hoped he wasn’t going to get pissed. How would that look, my dying father drunk, stinking of fags and booze, trying to goose the nurses
during the early morning rounds? He took a long pull and passed back the flask. I looked at the floor and at the wheels of the chair. There was mud in the tread and the red paint was chipped.

‘I miss fishing,’ he said eventually.

Ray looks at the chunky wedding ring and thinks of the kids. He has variably been a good father, a bad father, an absent father, and a recovering father. Being a father is a lot
of people to be; and he’s glad that at the final reckoning both his daughter and his son realize that he is more the good father, the recovering father than anything else. Like being a
smoker, being a father becomes him, and he feels that truly as he takes another drag on the Chesterfield. Like the smoking, there would be no writing without the kids; their scratched knees, their
bathing routines and their bedtimes. They are adults now, but that means nothing when your father dies. Everyone’s a child then.

He places the cigarette on the edge of the table and moves inside again, twisting the cord of the telephone under the doors. He has never made a phone call from a hotel room before, the cost so
prohibitive he’s never even considered it. Usually he would use one of the booths in the lobby, but there is money on the dresser and this is a call he doesn’t mind paying for.

Ray punches in the digits, pausing on the middle one and remembering with sudden clarity that it is a number 8. There is a brief pause before the call is connected. It rings twice and a female
voice answers.

‘Hi, Diane, it’s Ray,’ he says.

‘Oh, hi, Ray,’ Diane says, smiling. ‘How was it all? You both have yourselves a good time?’

‘It was great, Diane. We got hitched at one of those little chapels and then we had steaks and went gambling. Tess is up about six hundred bucks.’

‘And you’re feeling okay?’ Diane ties the telephone cord around her little finger.

‘Never better, Diane.’ He picks up the cigarette and takes another hit.

‘Still smoking though. I can hear it.’

‘It’s my last one ever. Promise. It’s a Chesterfield.’

‘And how is it?’ she says. She quit two years before and often feels like starting again when she’s around Ray.

‘Like heaven,’ he says and laughs. ‘Is he in? Can you put him on? I want to speak with him.’

‘Sure, Ray, I’ll go get him.’ She puts her hands over the receiver. ‘Honey!’ she shouts. ‘Quickly, it’s your dad on the phone.’

A woman was approaching, striding stiff-legged and purposefully up the asphalt pathway. She had a duffel coat on over her uniform and her displeasure was obvious from the way
she pumped her arms. It was Diane.

‘Looks like we’ve been rumbled,’ I said. ‘Diane’s here. Throw the cigarette away.’

‘I will do no such thing,’ Dad said. ‘Fuck her, I’m smoking a fag.’

He smiled revealing his teeth and the gap by his left molar. They say beards grow when you die, toenails too. Dad was always doing things of his own accord.

‘Please,’ I said, but it was too late.

‘Mr Peters. Are you smoking a cigarette?’ Diane said.

‘No, it’s a hamster,’ he said.

She rolled her eyes at me and looked down at Dad.

‘And you’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’

‘Only deep from the well of life, my glorious Florence Nightingale.’

‘It is against hospital policy for patients—’

‘Oh do shut up, woman. Let me finish this wee fag and then I’ll be in. Scout’s honour.’

She looked at me in exasperation and I shrugged. She motioned towards me and I followed her a little way off.

‘You let him smoke any more and it could kill him right now,’ Diane said. ‘I’m serious. He’s got a chance. It’s slim, but there’s a chance,
okay?’

‘He asked me to. And I—’

‘I know, Lindsay,’ she said. ‘I know. Just make sure it’s his last one, okay?’

We looked over at him in the chair, his low voice humming ‘Smoke On the Water’. Diane squeezed my arm.

‘And you’re okay? Coping?’

‘Coping. Yes.’

‘Good.’

She nodded and headed back to the ward. I sat back down on the bench.

‘If I were you, son,’ he said. ‘I’d try and get in her knickers. Everyone knows nurses are filthy as fuck.’

‘Hey, Dad,’ Lindsay says. He is dressed in pyjamas. It is late morning and the smell of pancakes has made it to the top of the stairs. He sits on the side of the bed
and rubs his eyes. Since they found out he has hardly slept, hardly done anything but think of his father, his father who’s not going to be around for ever. Not even for a few more years.
Diane tells him to be positive, but he can’t find the positives in any of this.

‘Hey, son. How you doing?’

‘Not good, Dad. How about you?’

‘Better, son. Tess has won maybe six hundred bucks gambling. Looks like I’m going to die rich after all.’

Ray takes a drag on his almost finished cigarette.

‘It’s early morning in Reno. It’s beautiful here.’

‘Reno’s a shit hole, Dad.’

‘I know, Lin. I know’ – he blows out smoke – ‘but for the moment it’s the best place on earth. I was thinking that the only thing that’d make it better
was if you were all waiting downstairs in the buffet room. All of you waiting and then me and Tess could come down and have breakfast with you all. Wouldn’t that be something?’

‘I’d like that, Dad. I’d like that a lot,’ Lindsay says.

‘You’re going to come and see me, right?’ There is a long pause. Lindsay’s crying but he won’t let his father know. Ray is crying too.

‘Either next week or week after. Depends on shifts,’ he says. On the bedside dresser there is an old black and white photo of his mum and dad on their wedding day, a picture of his
mother, and another picture of his father. It’s hard to look at him and hear him speak.

‘Make it sooner rather than later,’ Ray says, sucking in some smoke and letting it drift out of his mouth. ‘I don’t want to go without having seen you properly.’
There is a pause.

‘Listen, son, I know I wasn’t always—’

‘Hey, Dad,’ he says, ‘not now. There’s no need for that now.’

‘I love you, son,’ he says and now the tears are coming down his face. He can taste them on his lips. They taste right in his tobacco-heavy mouth. ‘I’ve not said it
enough in my life but I’m proud of you and I love you.’

Ray takes the last draw from his final cigarette, then flicks it away; the last of the smoke coming out from his nose: the last of the smoke from the final cigarette.

‘You too, Dad,’ Lindsay says. ‘You too.’

Sitting on the bench, I watched Diane return through the double doors. We were going out together the following week; up to the William IV and then on perhaps to the Greek
restaurant up on the Lea Bridge Road. That Thursday she was moving from Oncology over to Obs and Gynae, which meant she didn’t feel like she was breaking any rules.

‘You’re going to come and see me, right?’ Dad said. There was a long pause and then I nodded. He looked at the cigarette and blew a beam of smoke over its end.

I thought about Diane, wondering whether she would be less hesitant when Dad was finally dead. I kicked at the ground, wishing I could dislodge thoughts like that as easily.

‘Make it sooner rather than later,’ Dad said, sucking in smoke and letting it drift out of his mouth. ‘I reckon you could get away with wheeling me out here again. I mean, I
feel fine, so what fucking harm is one more smoke going to cause, eh? What do these fucking doctors know, anyway? They can’t even write properly! You should see the sheets, looks like fucking
Urdu or something. Probably is Urdu. Probably the official language of the NHS these days. What do you call a Paki doctor and a Jewish nurse—’

‘Hey, Dad,’ I said. ‘Not now. There’s no need for that now. No need at all.’

‘You know, son,’ he said with a crooked toothed smile. ‘I know you’ve looked after me and all that, but sometimes you can be a right arsehole, you know that? A right pain
in the arse.’

He took the last draw from his final cigarette, then flicked it away; the last of the smoke coming out of his nose: the last of the smoke from what might have been his final cigarette.

‘You too, Dad,’ I said. ‘You too.’

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the support of a number of people in the writing of this collection.

Andrew Kidd, for cutting both fish and foxes; and believing when I didn’t.

Kate Harvey, for making these stories better than I ever could have hoped; Martin Bryant for the copy edit, and everyone at Picador and Pan Macmillan.

For inspiration, help and advice: Kirstie Addis, Lisa Baker, Nicholson Baker, Christine Bolland, Sarah Castleton, Emma Conally, Andrew Gallix, Niven Govinden, Aidan Jackson,
Peter Lavery, Paula McGoverny, David Mitchell, Chris Paling, Gavin Pilgrim, Lee Rourke, Jeremy Trevathan, Tim Thornton, Jeannette Walker.