Your Father Sends His Love (27 page)

LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM

The man bends down and asks: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?' After the pause, after the raising of the eyes, I deliver the line Mother has taught me. ‘When I grow up, Mr Hughes, I want to be a proctologist.' Mother laughs. Mother shakes her head. Mother puts on her finest Jewish accent: ‘My son, the proctologist!'

The best jokes exist in the present tense: man walks into a bar; your momma; knock-knock. This is something Mother says when we talk about comedy. I am nine years old the first time I tell the proctologist joke. It is a success and Mr Hughes takes us home in his big car. The following night I am allowed to sit up with Mother and watch the videotape of my father. He performs the brown-suit routine and we laugh like it's the first time. The best jokes, she reminds me, exist in the present tense. ‘You can depend on a joke,' she says. ‘A joke is always happening.'

There are faded colour photographs of Mother in her youth, drink and cigarette in hand, laughing with men who were once well-known. Mother has high, arching
eyebrows, a bowed mouth, long painted nails; she is dressed impeccably, stylishly. You cannot ignore her glamour.

She knew the hotel bars where the pier entertainers drank and would approach them if she'd enjoyed their act. She slept with some; provided others with material. This she tells me.

‘One of mine,' she tells me once, twice; again, again, ‘was on the
Royal Variety Show
. Old Roy came out on stage all fat and sweaty in that dinner jacket that never fitted, and he says' – Mother adopts a broad northern accent – ‘ “My wife said we should experiment more in the bedroom. After two weeks, I'd discovered a cure for cancer and now she's left me. Some women are never satisfied.” '

The following Saturday, Mr Hughes picks Mother up in his big car. Mother has asked our neighbour Serena Jenkins to babysit. I am obviously, shyly in love with Serena Jenkins. I will never smell hairspray without thinking of her; will never hear Whitney Houston without seeing her shift from left to right in her tight denims.

The sofa is old and surprising with springs; it is made for two. I sit next to Serena and put my feet up on the coffee table in a way I am not allowed. The flat is tidy for once. There are vacuum-cleaner skids in the nap of
the thin brown carpet, polish smears on the windowsill, a new air-freshener beside the television.

‘Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?' I ask Serena after I've poured her a glass of Coke.

‘What's that, little man?' she says.

‘When I grow up, Serena, I want to be a proctologist.'

She sips her Coke and puts it down on the coffee table.

‘That's nice,' she says and looks down at her homework. In her textbook there is a picture of Gandhi; in her exercise book her rounded, bubbly handwriting. I assume she hasn't heard what I said.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘That's what I'm going to be: a proctologist.'

She closes the textbook on her index finger and turns towards me. She hasn't laughed twice. Everyone always laughs.

‘What's a proctologist?' she says.

Mr Hughes invites us to live with him. He has a big house with a garden, four bedrooms, a garage. Also a big television and two bathrooms. I am thirteen and it's the best thing that could have ever happened to us. Even Mother says that. But we make heavy work of leaving the flat. The move takes over two months, always an excuse found
to stay another day, another week. There is no pressure from Mr Hughes, he reminds us of that, but he seems confused as to why we spend so many nights a week back at the flat, huddled by the gas heater watching videos.

‘I'm going to miss this place like cystitis,' Mother says. ‘Like thrush.'

‘Like a boil on my cock,' I say.

‘Like a bitten tit,' she says.

A month, two months of this, and we are living with Mr Hughes.

‘How do you like your new bedroom?' Mother asks as I come down the stairs, my skin still pink from the power shower.

‘It's so much better than the bedroom I had last week,' I say. ‘There's a double bed for a start.'

‘A double bed? Which side do you sleep on?'

‘Whichever one's dry,' I say.

Mr Hughes watches us laugh, and eventually he joins in; though his thick face and reedy moustache suggest tension, perplexity even. He is roasting a chicken and the house is clean and warm and homely; as though he has been waiting much longer than three years for us to arrive. He has prepared roast potatoes and homemade stuffing balls; for afters a gooseberry crumble with real custard. He pours us glasses of champagne as a welcome to our new home.

‘Mr Hughes?' I say. ‘Do we get champagne before every meal?'

‘Only special dinners,' he says, smiling. ‘And call me John.'

‘Well, Mr Hughes, every dinner's special to me,' I say. ‘You never know where the next meal's coming from with her' – I thumb towards Mother – ‘I've lived my life in fear of being sold into the white slave trade.'

‘It can still be arranged,' Mother says and we both laugh, and a little later Mr Hughes joins in, again with the tension, again the perplexity. That look becomes the poor man's constant, niggling expression. I never call him John. After a few months he stops even mentioning it.

When I turn sixteen, Mr Hughes tries to talk to me (the man has always tried; he is very trying). He feels this is the kind of conversation a man should have with a boy looking down the barrel of adult life. I know this because I heard him say so to Mother. I am in my bedroom; a Woody Allen stand-up record is playing on the turntable he bought for me.

‘Can you turn that off for a moment?' he says.

‘It's the moose routine,' I say.

He clicks off the record and sits on my bed.

‘We need to talk, Clive,' he says.

‘What about?' I say.

‘Well,' he says. ‘I've always said that I'm not here to
replace your father, but there are some things that are best said man-to-man, so I thought—'

‘Oh, Mr Hughes, I know all about sex,' I say. I have been preparing this for a few days and I'm watching Mr Hughes for a reaction. His eyes are wide: this is good.

‘Yes, Mr Hughes. I know all about sex. You really don't need to worry. I know all about it. I know all about foreplay, fingering, heavy petting, hand-jobs, tit-wanks, cock-sucking, cunny-licking, sixty-nines, straight sex, missionary sex, rough sex, anal sex, gay sex, lesbian sex, roleplaying, threesomes, foursomes, bondage, frotting, felching, rimming, fisting, golden showers and pegging.'

He shakes his head and stands up.

‘Well, it's hard not to,' I say. ‘My room's right next to yours.'

He slams the door on the way out.

‘Ooh, shut that door,' Mother shouts from downstairs.

Not long after our little talk, Mr Hughes comes home with a red setter. He walks the dog whenever he can, no matter what time of day or night. I call it Mr Hughes, though Mr Hughes calls it Ivanhoe. Mother and I both think this is a funny name for a dog. She always calls it Steve.

If we are in the hallway when Mr Hughes is ready to take Ivanhoe out, Mother points at the dog.

‘I say, that dog's got no nose,' she says.

‘How does it smell?' I reply.

Mr Hughes mouths the punchline and slams shut the door.

Mother and I say, ‘Ooh, shut that door.'

The best jokes, she says, get better with repetition.

Mr Hughes checks into a hotel on the night of the first episode of the third series of
Blackadder
. Mother only cries after the credits roll. For the first time in months we watch Dad performing the brown-suit routine. We rewind the tape, watch it back, rewind the tape, watch it back. Again, again, again.

‘I love the way he winks just then,' Mum says replaying a section midway through his five minutes. ‘It's just perfect.'

‘It's great, yes.'

‘When he forgot his lines, when he was too drunk, he used to do that wink. Then he'd say. “I only have to wink at a bird and she gets pregnant.” '

I feed the line. ‘Is that what happened with me?'

‘No,' she says. ‘The rubber split, but the effect was pretty much the same.'

We laugh and later run through some
Round the Horne
and
Goon Show
. ‘You have deaded me,' she says as we go up the stairs. She is wobbling drunk and holds on
to the sleeve of my shirt. ‘You have deaded me,' she says again, but does not laugh.

We call the new flat ‘the corridor' for its narrowness – we both love the Four Yorkshiremen sketch – and I keep it tidy, despite Mother's best efforts. I do homework at the small table and she watches videos. Men come and go, quoting lines from
'Allo 'Allo!
. They do not. This is my joke and Mother doesn't find it funny.

‘The only wasteland I know,' she says after I have explained it, ‘is between the ears of the men who write
'Allo 'Allo!
.'

Men do come and go, though, in the night, in the morning. Mother still looks sharp on her legs, her chest high and supported; her heart-shaped face underneath the elegant yet slightly old-fashioned do. They are always gone when I wake. They are nothing like my father; they are nothing like Mr Hughes. Mother and I joke in the same way, still feed each other lines, but we laugh less than before. Sometimes she sounds like she's just playing along. Even when I say, ‘To cut a long story short,' and she says, ‘Too late,' it doesn't sound like her heart is quite in it.

Mother perches on the edge of the bed. I am sitting at the small desk, writing. For a moment I think she's going to start on like Mr Hughes.

‘It's all right, Mum,' I say. ‘I know all about the birds and the buggery.'

She laughs and something lifts slightly in her brow, then falls.

‘Trouble at mill?' I say.

She starts to cry. Her face make-up darts like military manoeuvres on old maps.

‘It's my fault,' she says. ‘It's all my fault.'

‘What?' I say. ‘What's your fault now?'

‘This . . .' she says. ‘This . . . hiding yourself away. Always at home, always . . . I don't know, making dinner, tidying up. It's never normal. I blame myself, I should—'

‘The only thing I blame you for is the Suez Canal Crisis, you know that.'

I put down my pen and smile but she doesn't even pout. She says nothing. It's like a pause for timing, but she has nothing more to say.

‘Honestly, Mum, I'm fine.'

‘No you're not,' she says. ‘It's not right your being here the whole time. What about friends?'

‘When I was growing up we were so poor, we couldn't afford friends.'

‘I give up,' she says.

She slams the door behind her. Neither of us says anything.

A week later she comes back from a night out. I am watching the video of my father. The brown-suit routine. She sits down next to me, damp from rain and fog.

‘I've fixed it,' she says. ‘You're booked.'