Man and Boy (14 page)

When the chain-smoking babysitter realized that we weren’t going to steal her away forever, Peggy was finally allowed to come home with Pat for a couple of hours.

“Look what I’ve got,” she told me, producing a little man made of molded plastic. He was looking very pleased with himself inside white satin trousers, a spangly silver waistcoat, and what looked like a purple tuxedo.

“Disco Ken,” she said. “Barbie’s friend. Going to the disco.”

It was strange watching them play together. Pat wanted to blow up the Death Star. Peggy wanted to hang drapes in the Millennium Falcon.

Excited to the point of hysteria at having his friend in his very own living room—although noticeably unimpressed by Disco Ken—Pat bounced off the furniture, waving his light saber above his head and shouting, “I’ll never join you on the Dark Side!”

Peggy considered him with her solemn dark eyes and then began moving little
Star Wars
figures around the Millennium Falcon—heavily Scotch-taped on one side after crash landing into a radiator—as though they were having tea and buttered scones at the Ritz.

Nature or nurture? I knew that Pat had never been encouraged to play violent games—in fact his never-ending blood baths often drove me up the wall.

Not quite five years old, he was actually a gentle, loving little boy who was too sweet for the rough and tumble of the playground. There had been some bullying because he didn’t have a mother waiting for him at the school gates, and neither of us had yet worked out a way to deal with it. Peggy was completely different. At five and a half, she was a strong, confident little girl whom nothing seemed to faze or frighten. I never saw any fear in those serious brown eyes.

Pat wasn’t built for hunting and gathering and Peggy wasn’t made for making jam and jumpers. Yet give them a box of
Star Wars
toys, and suddenly they were responding to their gender stereotypes. Peggy just wasn’t interested in games of death and destruction. And that’s all that Pat was interested in.

It didn’t stop them from enjoying each other’s company. Pat hung onto the back of the sofa, grinning with love and admiration as Peggy shoved little figures of Princess Leia and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker around gray plastic spaceships that had clocked up a lot of miles in hyperspace.

“Where’s your mom?” Peggy asked him.

“She’s far away,” Pat said. “Where’s your mom?”

“She’s at work. Bianca picks me up from school, but she’s not allowed to smoke in the flat. It makes her grumpy.”

There didn’t seem to be a man anywhere near Peggy’s life, but that was hardly worth commenting on these days. I wondered who he was—probably some jerk who fucked off the moment he was asked to buy some diapers.

The doorbell rang. It was one of those young men who are out of work, but not yet out of hope. I admire that spirit, and I always try to support them by buying some chamois leather or rubbish sacks. But this one didn’t have the usual bag full of household goods.

“Really sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I’m Eamon. Eamon Fish.”

At first it didn’t register. Living in the city you get so used to complete strangers knocking on your door that it comes as a shock when someone who has actually touched your life rings the bell.

But of course—this was Eamon Fish, the young comedian who would probably be doing beer commercials and sleeping with weather girls by this time next year. Or next month. Or next week. The same Eamon Fish whose show I was asked to produce and turned down because of fish finger cooking duties.

I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t know why he was here. I was expecting some down-at-heel young man who was going to sell me chamois leather. And here was some down-at-heel young man who would soon be getting drunk at the Met Bar.

“What can I do for you?” I said.

“What’s that?” he said, frowning and cocking his head toward me.

“What do you want?”

“Can we talk? It would mean a lot to me.”

I let him in. We went into the living room where Peggy and Pat were sitting surrounded by an avalanche of toys. Pat still had his light saber in his hand.

“Wow,” Eamon said. “A light saber! Traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights! Can I have a look?”

A slow smile spreading across his face, Pat stood up and handed the young stranger his light saber.

“Good fellow you are,” Eamon said.

He swept the light saber back and forth, making a buzzing sound that made Pat’s smile grow even wider.

“I haven’t held one of these for years,” Eamon said. “But you never forget, do you?” He grinned at Pat. “I come from a little town called Kilcarney. And when I was growing up, I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker felt growing up on Tatooine. You know Tatooine?”

“Luke’s home planet,” Pat said. “With the two suns.”

“What’s that?” Eamon said. “Luke’s home planet, you say? Well, that’s right. And he felt cut off from the rest of the galaxy, didn’t he? Luke felt a long way from the action, stuck out there under the two suns of old Tatooine. And when I was growing up in sleepy old Kilcarney, I also dreamed of escaping and having lots of adventures in faraway places that I could hardly imagine.” He handed Pat his light saber. “And that’s exactly what I did.”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “But what happened between then and now?”

“What’s that you say?”

Was he completely deaf?

“I said—what happened between leaving your home planet and today?” Peggy shouted.

“Well, that’s what I want to talk to your daddy about,” Eamon said.

“He’s not my daddy,” Peggy said. “My daddy’s got a motorbike.”

“The boy’s mine,” I said, indicating Pat. He was still staring at Eamon with profound approval for his light saber technique.

“He’s got it,” Eamon said, smiling with what seemed like real warmth. “Around the chin, I mean. He’s got it. He’s a handsome lad, all right.”

“Come into the kitchen,” I told him. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

“Coffee, you say? Top man.”

While I put the kettle on, he sat at the kitchen table poking his ears with an index finger and muttering to himself.

“Bad day?” I said.

“What’s that?” he said.

I put a cup of coffee down in front of him and put my face very close to his. He had those black Irish good looks and a long-term scruffiness, like a Kennedy who has just spent the summer sleeping in a doorway. And he seemed to be as deaf as a post.

“I said—what’s wrong with your hearing?”

“Ah that,” he said. “Let me explain about the ears thing. There’s a posh place down in the West End where they fit hearing aids. But they also fit ear pieces—for television presenters. So their producers and directors can talk into their lugholes while they’re presenting a program. You might know the place.”

I knew it well. I remembered when Marty had been down there to get fitted for his ear pieces. That’s when we knew we were really leaving radio. That’s when it all started to seem real.

“I just came from there,” Eamon said. “Left in a bit of a hurry, as it happens. What the hearing man does when he is measuring you up, he pours some stuff like warm wax into your ears. Then you have to wait for a while until it sets. And then they know what size ears you have. For your ear pieces, that is.”

“I understand.”

“Except with me, he never got quite that far. He had just poured the hot wax into my ears and we were waiting for it to set when I thought—what the fuck am I doing here?” Eamon shook his head. Flakes of dried wax flew out. “What makes me think that I can present a television show? What makes anyone think that I can present a television show? I’m a comedian. I do stand-up. Some people like it. But so what? Why does that mean I will be able to present a TV show?”

“So you were being fitted for your ear pieces and you got stage fright.”

“Before I got anywhere near a stage,” he said. “I don’t know if you could dignify it with the term stage fright. I suppose a bollock-shriveling panic attack is probably more what it was. Anyway, I ran out of there with the wax still sloshing about in my ears. It seems to have set quite well.”

I gave him a tissue and some cotton buds and watched him scrape the hardened wax out of his ears. They always measure them for two ear pieces, one in either ear, although nobody ever uses more than one. Now I saw that it was just a ploy to stop you running away.

“I really wanted you to produce the show,” he said. “I need—what do they call it?—an enabler. Someone to show me the way. Same as you showed Marty Mann the way when he left his radio show. I was disappointed when they said you weren’t going to do it.”

“It’s nothing to do with you,” I said. “I’m looking after my son. Alone. I can’t go back to work full-time. I need to be around for him.”

“But I notice he’s wearing a uniform. Isn’t the little feller at school now?”

“That’s right.”

“So he’s out of the house for most of the day?”

“Well, yes.”

“So—forgive me asking—what do you do all day, Harry?”

What did I do all day? I got Pat up, got him dressed, and got him off to school. I shopped and cleaned. I was waiting for him at the school gates in the afternoon when he came out. Then I made sandwiches, read to him, and got him ready for bed. What did I do all day?

“Nothing,” I said.

“Don’t you miss it? Work, I mean?”

“Sure I miss it. I used to have quality time with my son—meaning I saw him for five minutes at the start and at the end of each day. Now I have quantity time instead. I didn’t choose that change. That’s just the way it worked out. But that’s why I can’t produce the show for you.”

“But you could be the executive producer, couldn’t you? You could come in a few times a week just to oversee the show? You could tell me what I need to do to stop looking like a complete idiot? You could help me play to my strengths, couldn’t you?”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe.”

I had never even considered the possibility that there was a compromise between working full-time and not working at all. It had never crossed my mind.

“Look, I admire what you’re doing with your boy,” Eamon said. “Believe me, you would go down a storm with the mothers of Kilcarney. But I need you. I’m here for really selfish reasons. I’m shitting colored lights about presenting this show. That’s why I’m dropping bits of hardened wax all over your kitchen floor. And I know you can get me through it without total humiliation. It might even be good.”

I thought about the long mornings and endless afternoons when Pat wasn’t around. And I thought about my most recent meeting with the bank manager, who was impressed by efforts to look after my son and less impressed by my expanding overdraft.

But most of all I thought about how good Eamon had been with Pat—admiring his light saber, talking to him about Luke’s home planet, telling me that he was a special kid.

I know that at that stage of my life—and at all the future stages of my life, come to that—I would like anyone who liked my boy. When you are alone with a child, you want as many people rooting for him as you can get. This young Irish comic with dried wax in his ears seemed to be on our side. And so I found myself on his side too.

I was ready to work with him on a part-time basis because I was bored and broke. But most of all I was ready to work with him because he thought my son was going to make it.

“I need to see your act,” I said. “I need to see what you do on stage so I can think about how it could work on the box. Have you got a sample tape?”

“What?” he said.

Whatever the opposite of inscrutable is, that’s what small children are.

Maybe in ten years’ time Pat would be able to hide his feelings behind some blank adolescent mask and the old man—me—wouldn’t have a clue what he was thinking. But at four going on five, I could tell that the latest phone call from his mother had given him the blues.

“You okay, Pat?”

He nodded listlessly, and I followed him down to the bathroom where he squirted some children’s toothpaste on his Han Solo toothbrush.

“How’s Mommy?”

“She’s all right. She’s got a cold.”

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t about to cry. His eyes were dry and his mouth was still. But he was down.

“You want to watch a video?” I said, watching him polish teeth that still looked brand new.

He spat into the sink and shot me a suspicious look.

“It’s school tomorrow,” he said.

“I know it’s school tomorrow. I don’t mean watch the whole film. Just, say, the start of the first film up until the two ’droids get captured. How about that?”

He finished spitting into the sink and replaced his brush in the rack.

“Want to go to bed,” he said.

So I followed him into his bedroom and tucked him in. He didn’t want a story. But I couldn’t turn out the light knowing that he was depressed.

I knew what he was missing and it wasn’t even what you could call a mother’s love. It was a mother’s indulgence. Someone who would tell him that it didn’t matter if he couldn’t tie his shoes yet. Someone who would tell him that he was still the center of the universe when he had just learned what we all learn on our first day of school—that we are not the center of the universe. I was so desperate for him to make it that I couldn’t be relaxed about him making it. Gina’s indulgence. That’s what he really missed.

“She’ll be back,” I said. “Your mother. You know that she’ll be back for you, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“As soon as she’s done her work,” he said.

“We’re okay, aren’t we?” I asked him. “You and me—we’re doing okay, aren’t we?”

He stared at me, blinking away the fatigue, trying to understand what I was going on about.

“We’re managing without Mommy, aren’t we, Pat? You let me wash your hair now. I make you things you like to eat—bacon sandwiches and stuff. And school’s okay, isn’t it? You like school. We’re all right, aren’t we? You and me?”

I felt bad about pushing him like this. But I needed him to tell me that we were doing all right. I needed to know that we were coping.

He gave me a tired David Niven smile.

“Yes, we’re all right, Daddy,” he said, and I kissed him good night, hugging him gratefully.

That’s the worst thing about splitting up, I thought as I turned out his light. It makes children hide their hearts. It teaches them how to move between separate worlds. It turns them all into little diplomats. That’s the biggest tragedy of all. Divorce turns every kid into half a pint of semi-skinned Henry Kissinger.

***

“I come from a little town called Kilcarney,” said Eamon Fish, removing the mike from its stand and gently tapping the transparent hearing device in his left ear. “A quiet little town called Kilcarney where the girls are legendary.”

I was watching him on a monitor, sitting in the front row of the small studio audience that was facing the backsides of five cameramen. Although we were surrounded by all the usual paraphernalia of the television studio—lights burning in the rigging, cables snaking across the floor, the shadows beyond the cameras teeming with people whose jobs ranged from floor manager to working the teleprompter to pouring water, all of them wearing what we called “blacks”—the director was shooting Eamon’s act to make it look more like a stand-up routine than just another late night chat show. There were already too many talk shows that looked like boot sale David Lettermans. But what would really make it different was the host.

“For those of you who have never been to that beautiful part of my country, you should know that Kilcarney has largely been untouched by the modern world. There are, for example, no vibrators in Kilcarney.” The audience tittered. “It’s true. The priests had them all removed. Because Kilcarney girls kept chipping their teeth.”

There was laughter from the audience, laughter that grew slightly nervous as Eamon ambled off the small stage and slowly came closer to us.

“I mean, I’m not saying Kilcarney girls are stupid,” he said. “But why does a Kilcarney girl always wash her hair in her mother’s sink? Because that’s where you wash vegetables.”

The laughter grew louder. None of the studio audience—the usual collection of the bored and the curious on the lam for a couple of hours of free fun—had ever seen this Eamon Fish before. But now they felt he was harmless. Then he turned on them.

“Actually, I’m making all this up,” he said. “It’s all crap. Kilcarney girls have the best exam results in Western Europe. In fact, the average Kilcarney girl has more A Levels than the average Englishman has tattoos. It’s not true that the only difference between a Kilcarney girl and a mosquito is that a mosquito stops sucking if you hit it on the head. It’s not true that Kilcarney girls only get fifteen minutes for lunch because any longer than that and you have to retrain them. It’s not true that what Kilcarney girls and bottled Guinness have in common is that both of them are empty from the neck up. None of it is true.”

Eamon sighed, ran his free hand through his thick mop of black hair, and sat down on the side of the stage.

“What is true is that even in this
Guardian
-reading, muesli-munching, politically correct age, we seem to need someone to hate. Once it was the thick Irishman and the ball-breaking mother-in-law. Now it’s blond girls. Essex girls. Kilcarney girls.”

He shook his sleepy head.

“Now, we all know in our hearts that geographical location and hair color have got bugger all to do with sexual morality or intelligence. So why do we need a group of people we can sneer at? What fundamental need in our pathetic souls does it fulfill? When we laugh about the blond Kilcarney girl from Essex who turns off the light after sex by closing the car door, what’s in it for us?”

It was only the pilot show, but I could already tell that Eamon was going to do it. After removing all the dried wax from his ears, he had crashed through the fear barrier and was learning how to be himself with five cameras watching. Fish was fine. I was more worried about the studio audience.

They had come in expecting to have their funny bones tickled, and discovered that they were expected to defend their prejudices. They felt defensive, cheated, not good. It was a problem that we were always going to have with Eamon’s show. As I saw it, the only way to solve this dilemma was to get them all drunk.

At our first production meeting after the pilot, I told the assistant producer to open a few bottles and cans and serve it to the audience while they were waiting in line to come into the studio. Everybody looked at me as if I was a genius.

That’s what I love about television. You recommend opening a few cans of lager and they act as though you just painted the Sistine Chapel.

***

“So it’s a better job than the last one, but they pay you less money,” my father said. “How do they work that out then?”

“Because I don’t work all week,” I told him yet again.

We were in their back garden, supposedly kicking a ball around with Pat, although he had retreated to the far end of the garden with his light saber and dreams of conquering intergalactic evil. So that left me and two pensioners kicking a plastic football around between us in the autumn-tinged sunlight.

It was turning cold, but we were reluctant to go back inside. It was late September. The year was running out. There wouldn’t be too many more Sunday afternoons like this one.

“If it really is a better job, then they should cough up the readies,” said my dad, the international businessman, gently side-footing the ball to his wife. “All these TV companies are loaded.”

“Not the ones that Harry works for,” my mom said, thinking she was being loyal, and trapping the ball under the sole of her carpet slipper.

“I go in for a couple of production meetings and I’m there when we record the show,” I said. “And that’s it. I’m not in the office all day, every day. I don’t give them my life. I just go in twice a week and act like a big shot, bossing everyone around and coming up with brilliant ideas. Then I go home.”

“Home to Pat,” said my mom, knocking the ball to me. “Your grandson.”

“I know who my grandson is,” my old man said irritably.

“Some people executive produce a whole bunch of shows,” I said. “But I’m just going to do this one. I’ve worked it out. It’s going to bring in less than we had before, but it will be enough.”

“This way he gets to pay his bills, but he’s there when Pat comes home from school,” my mom said.

My dad wasn’t convinced.

He wanted me to have everything that life has to offer—the career and the kids, the family and the salary, the happy hearth and the fat paycheck. He wanted me to have it all. But nobody gets away with having it all.

“Pele,” he said, swinging a foot at the plastic football. It shot off his toe and into the rose bushes. “Bugger,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

My mom and I watched him wander down to the end of the garden to retrieve the ball. He took the opportunity to put his arm around Pat and ask him what he was doing. Pat chattered away excitedly, his smooth round face turned up toward his grandfather, and my old man grinned down at him with eternal tenderness.

“Is he all right?” I asked her. “He had a funny turn in the park the other day.”

“Fighting for his breath, was he?” my mom said, not taking her eyes from him. And not surprised.

“Yes,” I said. “Fighting for his breath.”

“I’m trying to get him to go to the doctor,” she said. “Or the quack, as your dad calls him.”

We smiled at each other in the encircling darkness.

“He must be the last person in the world who calls doctors quacks,” I said.

“I’m not going to no quack,” my mom said. It was a pretty good impersonation of all the bad-tempered certainty my father was capable of summoning up. “I don’t want no sawbones messing about with me.”

We laughed out loud, loving his old-fashioned distrust of anyone with any kind of authority, from the lowliest traffic cop to the most revered members of the medical profession, both of us taking comfort from the fact that my father was exactly the same as he always had been, even if we feared that might no longer be true.

He came back from the end of the garden with the ball and his grandson, asking us what was so funny.

“You are,” my mom said, taking his arm, and we all went back inside my father’s house.

I didn’t want it all. All I wanted was one more chance. One more chance to have a unified life, a life without broken bits and jagged edges. One more shot at happiness.

I didn’t care how long it took before Gina came back from Tokyo. I was happy with Pat. And I wasn’t looking for a brilliant career. All I wanted from work was a way to pay the mortgage.

But I wasn’t ready to grow old and cold, hating women and the world because of what had happened to me. I didn’t want to be fat, bald, and forty, boring my teenage son to tears about all the sacrifices I had made for him. I wanted some more life. One more chance to get it right. That’s what I wanted. That didn’t seem like much to ask.

Then the next day, Gina’s dad came round to our place with his daughter Sally, the sulky teenage girl on the sofa, one of the many kids that Glenn had begat and abandoned as he moved on to sexier pastures, and it crossed my mind that what has truly messed up the lousy modern world are all the people who always want one more chance.