Father of the Man Read online

  In fact, Abby and Oscar were confident; nowadays she had few fears for either of them. In the latter’s own words he was ‘a bouncer-back upon the tennis court of life’. The same was true of Abby. And the game they played was one which they’d both most likely win; plus, there was almost sure to be good money in it. Yet regarding Roger she felt less certain. Far less so. For one thing, he was too sensitive. His siblings were sensitive as well—she couldn’t have loved them so dearly if they weren’t—but they hadn’t the same vulnerability (Oscar called it softness), they wore a protective covering which their brother seemed to lack. Roger carried Abby’s and Oscar’s qualities to extremes. He was completely reliable, more so than they, perhaps more considerate too, more attached to concepts of justice and integrity—this time Oscar called it stuffy, yet did so with unmistakable affection—indeed, Roger was everything that from some viewpoints was the most admirable; but it wasn’t necessarily the world’s viewpoint, and these days, for Jean, it was sometimes the world’s viewpoint which mattered most. Roger was a plodder. A plodder could be held up in school as an example, but a plodder wasn’t dashing, didn’t gamble, and didn’t, not usually, end up rich. Not poor either, maybe, but not rich-rich, let’s-go-for-a-first-class-meal sort of rich, let’s drive to London for the weekend, let’s fly off to the Bahamas or the Caribbean. Plodders didn’t get the fun out of life that life should have on offer.

  Nor unfailingly, of course, did non-plodders. Look at herself. Look at Ephraim.

  No, don’t. Don’t look at either of them; the spectacle would prove too disheartening for the observer, too shaming for the observed. Yet once—the pair of them—oh, such high hopes as they had had, such plans, such conversations: midnight conversations; lights-out and holding-hands-in-bed conversations, one o’clock, two o’clock, three. Not invariably sinful hopes, either, requiring the bended knee to Mammon—what about that smallholding in the Dordogne they had so frequently discussed?—she thought they could have made a go of that. A secondhand camper or estate car?…now they didn’t have any sort of car and, anyway, Ephraim still couldn’t drive, neither of them could, nor had they taken lessons. (Both Abby and Oscar, however, had passed on their first attempts.) Theirs was the only family she knew that didn’t have a car. She had to drag the shopping back from Tesco’s in a bus. She’d used to catch a taxi home but in recent weeks even a taxi—although the journey cost well under two pounds, they didn’t live that far from the Victoria Centre—even this was out of the question. (And if she ever went to Sainsbury’s, which actually she preferred, there was a far longer walk to the bus stop.) Oh, damn it. Damn it all. She wanted so much better for her children.

  Suddenly she stood up. “Darling, how about a cup of tea before you go? I’ll put the kettle on.” It was comfortable, sitting here before the gas fire with Roger; she didn’t want the moment to end too quickly.

  As she ran the tap she allowed herself a bleak, unwitnessed smile. She herself at one time could have been described as a bouncer-back upon the tennis court of life…before twenty-six years of marriage had worn out the soles on her Reeboks. Had broken the strings on her racket. Had, into the bargain, made her overweight.

  Too bad that she, like Oscar, hadn’t taken after her father, that she’d inherited the waistline problems and relative lack of inches on her mother’s side of the family.

  But she’d also inherited the prettiness of her mother, and on good days, in a good light, the prettiness, much of it, remained. Chestnut hair was now reinvigorated from a sachet but on the increasingly rare occasions when she could afford to have it cut or when, as Ephraim’s Great-Aunt Julia had been wont to say, it looked as if it were her birthday, she could still draw a glance or two in the street…unless, that is, she was with Abby, who seemed to have inherited the best from everyone, the willowy figure, the regular features, the smile, the sex appeal, the auburn hair—the only thing she had obviously missed out on was Ephraim’s blue eyes. Well, Jean didn’t begrudge her one iota of that admiration. Just so long, dear God, as she always made the most of what opportunities it might present and didn’t get entangled with weak men. If a man was weak, it probably didn’t compensate if basically he were lovable. And most certainly it didn’t as you grew older, had less energy, fewer illusions, a greater need of protection.

  She remembered whilst waiting for the kettle that she hadn’t yet looked today at the paperback which Oscar had given her on her last birthday, along with the chocolates and the wine and the flowers, and which she kept propped against the microwave. “Listen to this, darling,” she called. Then she came to stand in the archway between the two rooms—there wasn’t a door—holding the book at some distance from her eyes. “It’s exactly twenty-one years since Jackie Kennedy married Onassis. There was a marriage settlement. If she left him in the first five years she’d get twelve million pounds; pounds, not dollars; and if he left her he’d pay six million for every year the marriage had survived. What do you think of that?”

  “Not very much. What do you?”

  “No, not very much, either.” Even as she said it she recognized that maybe she wasn’t being consistent. But naturally there was a difference between avarice and ambition; between fighting for alimony that was astronomical and fighting for your rightful place among the stars. “Oh, listen. This was the birth date in 1780 of a man called Thomas Horne. Apparently he spent a whole seventeen years counting every word and letter in the Bible. Concluded there were three-quarters of a million words—well, give or take—and three-and-a-half million letters.”

  Roger bit his lip. “He evidently imagined he was doing something useful. Poor fellow. Seventeen years! I wonder if he woke up every morning and felt excitement about the day that lay ahead?”

  The kettle began to boil. Jean returned the bulky volume to its place. “Anyway, thank you, Oscar, for today’s addition to our little store of learning. Bless you, my sweetheart, wherever you may happen to be at this moment and whatever you may happen to be doing.”

  “Amen,” said Roger. Even with a friend, he knew he would never have dared to emulate his brother’s behaviour.

  To be so far from home! To have so little money! To be able to speak only English and a smattering of French!

  He sometimes resented Oscar but he wished he had a portion of his courage.

  Blu-tacked to the fridge was a picture of the Ganges: not surprisingly, Oscar sent more postcards than letters, though not even a great many of those. The Ganges! Well, at any rate, thought Jean, last July she and Ephraim had bought themselves a time-share flat in Spain. They had borrowed heavily but it was worth it. Mi Jardin didn’t appeal to her that much—oh, of course it would be interesting to have a look at it just once—yet the joy of the thing was its incorporated system of exchange which meant that, in theory, they would now have the option of travelling almost anywhere, even to places like the banks of the Ganges, or Japan or Canada or South America. It was like a throwing open of the world’s portals when she had begun to believe them closed to her forever. A time-share apartment meant, in theory (if they could only raise the cash), the almost unheard-of luxury of going on holiday each year, because a good part of it would already have been paid for and Ephraim couldn’t bear to throw away his money—although in fact there was an arrangement whereby you could let the apartment and not lose anything, a kind of escape clause, but she didn’t think Ephraim had absorbed this yet and she certainly saw no need to point it out to him.

  Escape clause…when a time-share in itself symbolized the happiest escape route anybody could imagine? Adventure! A broadening of horizons! Unending source of wondrous anticipation and of wondrous conjecture! Before this, she had often lain awake torturing herself with the thought of all the faraway places she would never get to see; for some nights back in July, however, she had been kept awake by sheer excitement at the prospect of the countless enticing paths which now led off from the prison.

  She poured their cups of tea and brought them through. “Like a rock
cake?” she asked. “I think there should be one left.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Yes, do. If not, your father will only get it. And you’re the one who’s still a growing lad.”

  But again he shook his head. He took a reflective sip.

  “There’s nothing wrong between you and Dad, is there?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, well,” she said. “You know your father. We often have our moments.”

  At first it seemed as if she might clarify these statements. But she went on: “No, no, of course there isn’t. What even made you ask?”

  She rose from her chair and went to add some more milk.

  4

  There were three people ahead of him in the queue at the ticket office. The first was a soldier who was having trouble with his rail warrant; the clerk was needing to explain the same few points over and over again, his patience waning visibly at each repetition. The clerk was a young man with a ponytail and one earring, both of which assorted oddly with his collar, tie, tweed jacket. While Roger waited—there was also a male dwarf in front of him and a fat teenage mother, with a black eye and a baby—he idly looked around the vast booking hall at things which he had never noticed before: particularly at some decorative pillars high up on the walls with, between them, porthole windows encircled by stone wreathes and, beneath them, squares of green and brown marble. None of this was especially interesting but it annoyed Roger that in a year of coming and going he hadn’t once been aware of it. He was also annoyed by the obtuseness of the soldier; by the unchecked mucus running from the baby’s nose; by the minutes ticking past without apparent progress. His annoyance deepened. What was really beginning to get to him was the economy of having only one ticket window open, when the price of the annual fare to London had now risen to roughly three-and-a-half thousand pounds—when, because of this, he was having to give up his job and didn’t know what the heck he was going to do about a new one—when even trying to work out the alternatives had the power to make him speedily loose-bowelled. And in the face of all this they had only one ticket window open. You’d suppose for the prices they charged they might offer you a bit of service.

  No. That was unfair, he thought. After all, it was a Sunday afternoon; such complicated business over a rail warrant was possibly quite rare. Nor was British Rail responsible for his general lack of awareness. Nor for the baby’s mucus. Not even for that wretched sinking feeling which grew daily more weighty in the pit of his stomach.

  Well, not wholly responsible, anyway…he managed a tight grin.

  But for the moment he felt as though it were.

  The dwarf, in red lumberjacket and shiny black sneakers, who could barely reach the round portion in the window through which you were supposed to speak—and, momentarily, Roger felt guilty and ungrateful: how could he ever have supposed his own life to be difficult?—the dwarf was quickly seen to. So was the young mother, who looked strained, desperate, ground down, beaten. And where, he’d wondered, was she going, in what kind of room, amidst what degree of comfort, would she finally find some sort of refuge—and, likewise, what chance of any healthy, innocent childhood could ever exist for her baby? But what might he himself do about it; how could he possibly interfere? Potentially insult her by offering money? For he couldn’t offer her anything else, not even very much of that. He could—and did—say a silent prayer, but the fact he had only belatedly thought of it showed he didn’t basically have a lot of trust in the power of prayer.

  And then, pretty soon getting back to his own problems (of course!), he knew it didn’t really help, at least not for very long, his trying to concentrate on others who were worse off than himself; you merely had to think of Cardboard City or of all those thousands who spent the night in shop doorways, often in temperatures that must be freezing, even inside a sleeping bag…He often imagined how he would feel if he were homeless. By God, it had been bad enough during the time he’d lived in a bedsitting-room, in Hampstead. That had been in the first year after his parents removed to Nottingham. The room had been small but it had been adequate—bed, wardrobe, table, wooden chair—and, no, he had not been cold. But he hadn’t managed to make any friends and he’d hated having to return to London early every Sunday evening; had invariably been close to tears, the complete and utter milksop. He was a Cancer, a crab, just like his mother: a home-lover, not happy when he hadn’t got the things—or, rather, the people; things didn’t matter to him much—the people round him that he loved. He was a little boy. He was twenty-four years old and yet a little boy. When Mrs Whittaker-Payne had asked him on Friday why on earth he commuted he had felt ashamed, as though the truth were immediately self-evident: Because I miss my mummy and daddy.

  At the moment, however, even if he were a little boy he was an angry little boy. He’d spent over fifteen minutes in the queue and not simply had it seemed longer, far longer, but if he didn’t throw off his present bad mood he would probably waste more of his time when he got home. And he had no right to be in a bad mood. So much for trying to enter into the trials of the pair who’d been immediately in front of him! So much for asking God to shower his blessings down on them and to instil in himself a profound and lasting gratitude! (And at once Lord, he had meant, at once! In both cases.) Besides, he had no right to be in a bad mood, not even on other grounds; the delay hadn’t been the clerk’s fault.

  And now, as he walked up to the window, he reminded himself of this.

  “I want to inquire about my season ticket,” he said. “I’m afraid it expired yesterday. Would it be possible, please…I mean, I think it is possible…to extend it by six days? By the six days I lost when you were all on strike this year.”

  The clerk replied: “Those six days will be added to your new season ticket, sir.” He was perfectly polite but he sounded bored; bored yet impatient. It was nearly as though he’d yawned or as though he’d looked over Roger’s shoulder and already said, “Next, please.” Making up for lost time. There were a couple more in line he could have been saying it to.

  “But I don’t want a new season ticket,” said Roger. “I only need those six days.”

  “No season ticket, no extension. But you can put in for a refund.” The young man rubbed the lobe that had no earring.

  To Roger this sounded like a typically bureaucratic way of saying the same thing. “Okay. I’d like to do that, please.”

  “Six pounds a day,” said the clerk.

  “Excuse me? I don’t quite follow. What’s six pounds a day?”

  “The amount of the refund.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I’ve explained myself badly. I’ve got to go to London just another six times, then I’m finished. So in a way, yes, I do need a new season ticket, but only one that’s going to see me through this coming week. Therefore all I need to ask you for—in place of an extension—is a six-day pass, starting from tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” said the clerk. “Ninety pounds fifty, then.” He seemed to be waiting for Roger to hand over that amount of money.

  Roger simulated laughter. “No, don’t forget this is a refund!”

  “Yes. A refund of six pounds a day. Making thirty-six pounds in all. Which means your weekly season will now cost you…” he hesitated “…only fifty-four pounds fifty.”

  “So the fare is roughly thirteen pounds a day,” said Roger, after a rapid calculation, “and you’re offering me back six?”

  “If you want to look at it like that.”

  “Do you think that’s fair?”

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  No, of course it wasn’t, but surely the man could have shown some glimmer of sympathy. They were approximately the same age. Yet, instead, his patience seemed as strained as it must have been when dealing with the soldier. “Sunday bloody Sunday!” he might say, when he was next in a position to unwind. “What an afternoon I’ve had! You wouldn’t believe it!” And for a moment Roger simply stared. Then he turned away, without another word. He didn’t know what more to say and
definitely ‘thank you’ wasn’t going to be an option.

  He sat down limply on one of the wooden benches nearby. He felt numb.

  After about five minutes, however, he went down to the station manager’s office, which was situated between platforms four and five. It was red-bricked, had an entrance on either platform—though one said Private—and small, opaque windows through which a stack of empty cartons could be seen, a clipboard propped against the glass, and a couple of rubber plants. He knocked, then entered without hearing a response. The room was far from spacious. There were white walls; an old bicycle leaning against one of them; polystyrene tiles on the ceiling. In the centre of the place stood a desk that had a litter of paperwork scattered over its glass top. Two middle-aged officials had clearly been chatting companionably: one sitting behind the desk, the other with his bottom perched on a corner of it, tearing with his teeth at a thumb cuticle. They looked at Roger in a friendly and inquiring manner. When he explained that he wanted to speak to the station master, the one with the cuticle rose and said he ought to be getting back to his work anyway. Roger had to move over, to make room for the passage of a fairly striking girth. The official nodded amiably.

  The one who was left wasn’t in uniform. He wore a brown suit. Brown tie. He was a slight man; had a long narrow face and a long narrow nose. Gingery hair surrounded a bald pate which reflected the light—there was an illuminated square, glass-covered, amidst the polystyrene. Still seated, he prompted Roger to disclose his problem.