The Boy Who Fell to Earth (11 page)

I attempted to strike a chord of schoolteacher camaraderie. ‘Oh well. We all lose things. Especially we teachers. After all, we’re the ones who lost the square root of the hypotenuse. Otherwise, why are we always telling the kids to find it?’

Stonehenge refused to be mollified. ‘We know there’s an intelligence there. Which is what makes me think your son is just indolent. And an attention-seeker.’ His searing stare bored into me like a drill. ‘He put Mrs Crimpton’s shoes in the class bin today.’

Merlin’s smile had seeped away. His hands were fluttering in his lap like a trapped butterfly. Despite the overheated stuffiness of the room, he sat hunched into himself as if cold.

Screw teacherly comradeship. ‘He was probably just trying to get her attention, as he tends to sit in the back of the class all day, ignored. One thing is clear’ – I could hear my voice spiralling up into a peeved shriek – ‘if my son stays in your school much longer, the only good mark he’ll get will be in Copying Off the Exam of the Asian Kid Seated in Front of Him.’

In truth, I was more furious with myself than with the headmaster. Not getting Merlin into a special needs school meant that I’d officially forfeited my shot at Mother of the Year.

The headmaster gave me another scalding look. ‘Perhaps if Merlin had more constructive support from home …’

I pictured my nightly homework battles with my son. If only we could harness the steam that came out of his ears as he sweated over the incomprehensible comprehension we could power the whole of London. ‘It’s not that we don’t try. But Merlin’s got special needs.’

‘Yes … he
needs
to be in school more often! … ADD! Dyslexia! Asperger’s! Why do you parents insist on making excuses for your children? Your son’s not special. He’s just lazy and underachieving. Or, as we called it when I was a child,
naughty
.’

Merlin’s face crumpled like a paper bag. I wanted to swat the headmaster like a fly, but controlled myself. The last thing I needed was for my son to be suspended. If I took any more time off work I was pretty sure my own headmaster would suspend me too, possibly on a permanent basis. Being struck off by the General Teaching Council is not exactly a good career move for a single mother. And so I took a deep breath and smiled; the most genial parent in his educational parish. Trying not to look at the dandruff silting his shoulders, I promised to try harder and departed as fast as possible.

Walking down the corridor, Merlin turned his face up to me, a mask of despair. ‘Did my father leave because I’m lazy, indolent and underachieving?’

‘Darling, no, of course not!’

‘Why did my dad leave? Male seahorses give birth. But male polar bears eat their cubs. As do the Hanuman langur male monkeys in India. Male lions also perpetrate infanticide. As do male mice. Is my father a polar bear-monkey-lion-mouse type?’ he asked in a tremulous voice, on the brink of tears. ‘Or a seahorse?’

I didn’t need David Attenborough to tell me that it was time to nab a new dad to take his mind off the old one. It was
no
coincidence that later that night I found myself paying up to join the internet dating site Phoebe had recommended. My eighty quid for two months promised me five contacts. The experience was not unlike going to an estate agent’s office and asking for a decent, three-bedroom brick bungalow in a quiet neighbourhood but being endlessly shown dingy bedsits in need of a makeover, next to noisy abattoirs. Every day I would request a six-foot-tall non-smoker in gainful employment. And be offered a five-foot-four, unemployed nicotine addict. After a while, I started to wonder exactly why I was being matched with men who were drug-dependent, on social security and/or looking for a dominatrix. A panic-stricken thought hit me – maybe this was the calibre of man a single mother on the wrong side of thirty could expect to attract?

Eventually, after I’d weeded out the cross-dressers, necrophiliacs, and blokes who possessed swastika pyjamas, secret love bunkers and the exact knowledge of how and when the world was going to end, I would correspond by email. Do you have children? What are your favourite things to read, do, see? What do you do for a living? If he didn’t list his occupation on his tax return as ‘Crazed Loner’, I would then decide whether it was worth the excruciating embarrassment of an encounter.

The internet dating rule is to arrange to meet for coffee somewhere public so you can leave quickly, in case his opening line is ‘Does this look infected to you?’ or ‘I’m not
just
a scientologist, I also sell genital wart cream.’ I can’t tell you the number of times I excused myself to powder my nose – in another café. I also never met anyone I hadn’t seen a photo of first. But let me tell you, few potential Romeos even remotely resemble their headshots. In real life, I’d seen better
heads
on a pimple. Except for Bob, who proved even more handsome. Bob was far shorter than Octavian but powerfully built, with muscular arms matted with fine dark hair. His throaty chuckle belied his studious appearance and his melancholy face was full of ironic kindness. Our coffee encounter went so well we agreed to a date. Which is how I ended up at a barn dance.

Potential Father for Merlin No. 2. The Dentist

The barn dance was in Wimbledon. Obviously, Wimbledon has everything in common with the Wild West, except for language, sunshine, climate, ambiance and dress code. My bachelor number two, a forty-year-old orthodontist named Bob, was about as Wild West as, say … cucumber sandwiches, cream teas and Coronation chicken. Despite his Stetson and checked shirt, the man looked as if he would be more at home in a bank than a barn.

‘Actually, I’m not much of a cowgirl myself. Although I have been known to mount my high horse occasionally. The only cowboys I know are of the corporate kind – my ex-husband, for example.’

‘I’m so glad you said ex,’ Bob twinkled.

I twinkled back. I may even have twirled a tassel in his direction. ‘I only know two types of dances, though,’ I warned him. ‘One of them is the go-go … and the other isn’t.’

‘With barn dancing, you don’t have to be able to dance. You just hold on to
me
while
I
do,’ he parried.

And so I did – and I liked what I held on to. Every time we passed each other in the do-se-do or the do-se-don’t, or whatever it’s called, we continued our verbal quickstep. ‘Barn dancing is like a game of chess, with sweat,’ I panted as I was passed on down the line.

‘It’s like indigestion – it just
repeats
on you,’ he countered, next time we met.

‘As does the music. I keep thinking it’ll turn into a tune but, um, it doesn’t …’

‘And it doesn’t help that the singer is singing with his mouth, through his nose …’

It had been so long since I’d had fun I’d forgotten how good it felt. By the end of the night, I just wanted to lasso the man, hogtie him to my bumper bar and bring him on home.

But Bob, a widower and devoted dad, wanted our children to meet before we undertook any duvet pursuits. I deferred this encounter so often that Bob eventually just turned up on my doorstep with pizzas, a bottle of wine and his two teenage daughters. With trepidation, I introduced Merlin, begging him with ocular semaphore to behave.

Merlin gangled in the kitchen door, all legs and elbows. I looked at my son, standing there as stiff as an accountant at a garden party, with a smile spackled across his dear face as he tried hard to be normal, and sympathy welled up in me. As Bob introduced his teenage daughters, making small talk about school and exams, I saw Merlin select ‘interested’ and then ‘amused’ from his Rolodex of facial expressions. My son’s luminous eyes fleetingly held mine, seeking reassurance that he was behaving the right way. I beamed encouragement as Merlin laughed at Bob’s minor jokes.

Post pizza-feast, I suggested that Merlin take the girls into the garden to use the trampoline, then fell into Bob’s embrace. I had a feeling Bob would be so good in bed his headboard would need an airbag. My salivary glands had just shifted into ‘drool’ when the girls erupted back into the room.

Bob and I leapt apart as if electrocuted. The girls went into a whispered huddle with their father. I began to sweat. Small
beads
studded my skin like diamonds. Merlin appeared and, trying to be hospitable and normal, manufactured a smile which was poignant in its transparency.

‘Is everything okay?’ I finally asked, knowing full well that things were not. The younger girl was pleading through hiccoughing tears that she wanted to go home.

I was now sweating more than Paris Hilton doing a suduko.

Bob took me to one side. ‘Apparently,’ he said sternly, ‘your son asked my daughters how old they are. When they said thirteen and fifteen he commented that they must be growing breasts and, now that he’s hit puberty, it would be very educational for him to see them.’

How I wished we had eaten something else instead of pizza – say, a Dr Kevorkian’s suicide McNugget. I glanced across the room at Merlin. The multicoloured lozenges of his eyes were summery with laughter, obviously oblivious to the drama. I wanted to be cross with him, but he was wearing his beanie at an absurdly touching angle and I felt the usual fierce onrush of tenderness.

‘Well, I did warn you over coffee that my son was a little eccentric …’

‘Eccentric might be putting it a bit mildly. He then asked them about their’ – Bob lowered his voice with embarrassment – ‘clitorises.’

Bob’s older daughter interrupted, scandalized, ‘He asked me if my clitoris was long or short. Or if all girls have the same size.’

‘And then …’ sobbed the thirteen-year-old ‘… then he asked me if I was a virgin … or not yet? He said it must be awful to lose your virginity and why couldn’t I back it up on some kind of disk.’

‘Why do women get embarrassed when you tell them they have nice breasts? It’s a compliment,’ my son volunteered, perplexed. His face was scrunched into the expression of agonized self-loathing he wore when he knew he’d done something wrong but had no idea what. ‘I know it’s not right to touch a female on the chest but I don’t know why it isn’t. People touch me on the chest and I don’t mind.’

I tried to explain, as quickly and calmly as I could, about intimacy and privacy. Merlin hung on every word as though I were Moses delivering the commandments. Most boys only want to discuss the word ‘period’ if it’s next to ‘Hellenic’ or ‘Jurassic’. But my son wanted every fact and figure in exhausting detail. I’d been chiselling at the coalface of the Sex Talk for a good fifteen excruciating minutes when my mother walked in with a tray of cupcakes she’d baked.

‘Grandma, why does my penis keep making me touch it?’ Merlin non-sequitured.

‘Oh darling!’ my mother guffawed. ‘That’s a question women have been asking since the dawn of time. If we had the answer to that, sweetheart, we would have solved the world’s problems.’

Oh, where were a pair of ejector knickers when I needed them?

As Bob and his distraught daughters made their excuses to leave, Merlin remembered his manners and extended his hand. ‘Bob,’ Merlin began, ‘your daughters are very sexually stimulating. I found it quite physically arousing meeting them … But tell me, does
your
penis make you keep touching it?’

Bob regarded Merlin’s outstretched hand with distaste, shook it limply and then dived outside so fast he practically
left
a huge dentist-shaped hole in the wall. And another boyfriend bit the romantic dust.

It became clear that casual dating with Merlin around was the equivalent of a kamikaze mission. By the following March, I was ready to give a call to the pope to see if he needed any tips on celibacy. I was then given an abrupt and brutal reminder why I’d embarked on this father replacement quest in the first place …

It was a day of icy drizzle. I arrived home from work to find my son sitting on our front steps in the rain, a funereal droop to his shoulders. As I leapt out of the car and ran towards him I saw that his shirt was ripped and face filthy. I knew who the culprits were. The local boys on the council estate wore three-inch shit-kicker shoes and walked with a swagger that suggested not brawn so much as haemorrhoid tribulation, but they terrified my son. And no wonder, as they bullied him so often on the way home from school. This time they’d stolen his wallet where he kept his house key and rubbed dogshit into his face. ‘Merlin, darling! Are you okay?’ I cradled him to me.

He just sat in mute horror, shrinking into himself.

Fury surged through my body. Why did they bully him? What joy could they get out of it? It was like taunting a field-mouse.

‘They called me a retard,’ Merlin whispered, grief-stricken. ‘They said if only my father had settled for a blowjob. What does that mean? Am I a retard, Mum?’ His wide blue eyes filled with tears.

My heart gave one huge thump in my chest. ‘They’re the retards!’ I spat. He burrowed his cold, wet head into my lap, his face twisted up in anguish. I stroked his cheek, wiping off
the
excreta with a tissue. I tenderly traced the outline of his cheek and said soothing words until the desolate weeping subsided.

The mother of a special needs child has to be his legal advocate, fighting his educational corner; full-time scientist, challenging doctors and questioning medications; executive officer, making every decision on his behalf; and, also, full-time bodyguard and bouncer. After Merlin was showered and cosied up with hot chocolate, I marched down to the estate and fronted up to the kids hanging around the rubbish-strewn stairwells. It was like downtown Mogadishu only without the glamour. ‘Have you no shame?’ I demanded in my best headmistress voice. It was as effective as squaring up to Voldemort armed with a butter knife. They laughed in my face before scattering and I wasn’t fast enough to give chase. It was then I found myself longing for a tall, broad-shouldered bloke who could explain to these blockheads that many a nose has been broken by a mouth.

I would just have to do more internet dating – otherwise known as relying on the kindness of passing serial killers. But then I was saved from having to bat an eyelash at yet more random blokes, because very soon after I bumped into Chris – literally.