Father of the Man (13 page)

When he got to the office it was nearly half-past-ten—but still not as late as he’d thought, he was glad he’d kept his watch. Barney was on the telephone. The question of whether or not they were again on speaking terms, therefore, remained to some degree in abeyance, although Barney was observant and certainly hadn’t looked up or given any kind of wave. All the rest greeted him in normal fashion: “Hi, Eff!”, “How you doing, matey?”, “Morning, lad.”

As he settled at his desk he listened to the conversation of his boss.

“I swear to you she’s only known the guy for four months. And she always wanted a big wedding: marquee—orchestra—all the trimmings…No, she really meant it; why would she try to bullshit
me
?…Well, having lived with her for five-and-a-half years I’d say that, yes, I knew her
fairly
well…And now to have done it in a registry office! Poor kid! Can’t help feeling sorry for her. Bet she’ll be regretting it by Crimbo—probably before! Still. I suppose there’ll always be some things you have to find out for yourself; no one can teach you. But I never dreamed she’d come to this. Poor deluded kid.”

Barney picked up a second phone that stood beside the first. Apparently it was some woman from the Technical Department, at Head Office. “Sorry, darling. I’m on the other line. Phone me back in two.” Ephraim picked up his own receiver and rang his brother Nathan, who was likewise at his Head Office in London.

Nathan and Angie had been on holiday at the culmination of the mortgage crisis. (Which wasn’t to say that it was over, or anything like over, but Ephraim had felt too dispirited to ring them yesterday.
Hi! How was Turkey? Look, I need to borrow several hundred quid
.)

“Hello, Nathe. Only me…wanting to find out if you and Angie had a good time.”

But hadn’t he just warned himself about that?

“Then I wish you could have wanted to find out while I was at home and not at work,” replied his brother. For some reason, if he hadn’t been the one to initiate the call, Nathan was seldom at his best on the telephone; not with his family. It didn’t necessarily mean this was a bad moment.

“Oh, you know me!” said Ephraim. “Why run up my own bill when I can run up the company’s?”

“Besides, didn’t you get our postcard?” (Christ Almighty! Letter or card—who else was going to ask him that today?) “Must have told you then that we were having a good time. May even have said: wish you were here! Lying through our teeth, of course.” The gruffness was alleviated by a glimmer of enjoyment at his own wit. “Mind you, I suppose we might have had a giggle. How’s the girl?”

Invariably—on the telephone—the ‘girl’ was Jean. “Do you happen to mean my wife?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Is there any other I should know of?”

“Jean’s fine. She’s fine.”
Like flowers are at their cheapest in the run-up to Mother’s Day
. “Angie?”

“That one’s
my
wife. How is she?—well, I don’t know; never bother to ask.” Ephraim thought that in fact he might have picked a reasonably good moment. He imagined Nathan sitting there in his smart lawyer’s office, considerably larger than himself, in height as well as girth, nearly six years older and looking a good deal more, at home a blazer-and-tie-and-flannels man, never a jumper and jeans, at the very least a crisply pressed shirt and silk cravat. Hair always short, brilliantined, well-brushed. Margaret Thatcher’s staunchest supporter (these days, possibly, a hint of self-parody whilst claiming this). The pair of them—Nathan and he—had practically nothing in common other than memories of boarding school in North Wales, the High Street flat, shared apprehensions when taken to meet their father’s future wife, things like that. Nathan had often been good to him: given him extra pocket money when he’d first started earning, treated him to the cinema, come to spend weekends at Cannock and Wolverhampton when Ephraim was doing his National Service in the RAF (only six months: a wangled medical discharge—wangled but real: he’d always had depressions, albeit more typically referred to as sulks). Later memories included the giggling fit they’d caught from one another at the altar—
Ephraim’s
wedding, although it could have happened just as easily at Nathan’s—with Jean eventually succumbing too; and a whole lot closer to the present-day, merely the previous year indeed, the pleasant weekend they’d spent together at Portmeirion, wifeless, in order to attend the annual reunion of Old Boys (but Matron had only recently managed to trace them—well, to trace Nathan). And hadn’t everyone become so rich, such pillars of society! But still it had been fun, and might have been nearly as much so for himself as for Nathan, except for his discovery that the boy he had regarded for nearly half a century as being his best friend at the time, even, in a way, his best friend ever—the possibility of his presence there and of all that this might lead to having been the clinching factor in his decision to attend—that this boy had neither the smallest recollection of
him
nor any of the lovingly remembered escapades which Ephraim had more and more halfheartedly described, adventures shared by just the two of them…until in the end Ephraim had been forced to smile and turn away: “I’ll simply have to strike you, then, off the list of my best friends!” Some list! They had avoided each other for the rest of the evening and Ephraim wondered now if unacceptable disappointment was what he’d been afraid of when he kept postponing his attempts—or, at best, made excited efforts lacking in persistence—to track down this symbol of the perfect friendship. But it was always as well to know where you stood; you couldn’t go through life clinging to sentimental illusion (and he was
glad
John Leyton now sported a paunch and a florid network of capillaries). And during the course of the dinner he’d had at least one worthwhile memory restored to him: how Nathan had taken him—probably at the request of Miss Kean—into his own bed in the Senior Dormitory on the night their mother had gone back to London, gone back to the Ministry of Food and to her poorly heated room in Mrs Hilling’s house in Abbey Road, following a brief half-term visit (during which they’d been to
The Demi-Paradise
in Porthmadog; possibly the first film he had ever seen), and he hadn’t been able to stop crying, hadn’t even wanted to be shown the apple she had left him or read the book which she had slipped, last thing, beneath his pillow. Therefore, despite their differences, his and Nathan’s, differences of attitude and character and circumstance, there was still a lot to bind them…well, at least on Ephraim’s side there was; he hoped that Nathan felt the same—but then of course Nathan had always been the giver, him the taker. So how could you be sure?

Still, think about the past. Forget the brusqueness of the present.

“All right, let’s suppose Angie is also fine,” said Ephraim. “In that case, the only one who isn’t quite so good at the moment is Oscar.”

“Why? What’s the matter with him? Pregnant or something?”

Ephraim told him.

“And to be truthful that’s really why I phoned. You’re my last hope.”

“Who else have you tried?”

“Everyone. Half the population of Nottingham. Even the ones who are already out to sue. Like the bank, for example.” What a liar he was! (Anyway, in regard to the first part of that statement.) And how could lying possibly equate—he remembered that inscription he had copied out—with the best feelings of the heart? While he’d been writing those words, he had paused and thought he must do everything he could to be able to lay claim to them himself. One day.

But that was before he’d grown depressed again.

Yet lying worked. Nathan laughed. Miraculously—he laughed.

“How would you pay us back then?”

“I wouldn’t. Oscar would.”

“Where’s
he
going to get the money?”

“He’ll get a job as soon as he returns. And a well-paid one: at any rate an Oxbridge degree still counts for something. Even now.” He wasn’t quite certain that it did (anyhow, not Oscar’s disappointing two-two) but then neither of Nathan’s children had been to
any
university, let alone to Oxford. So there had to be a little that he, Ephraim, had managed to get right; perhaps he couldn’t on
every
count be called a loser; even if he had to give some of the credit—most of the credit—all of the credit?—to the ‘girl’.

But at least he’d had the good sense, or the discrimination, or the sheer luck, to choose the right girl.

Or had been guided towards doing so. He very much hoped that this had been the case.

“And will he pay the interest?” As so often with Nathan—even after more than fifty years—Ephraim wasn’t wholly sure if he was joking.

“Yes. Naturally. Of course. He would expect to.”

“Well, I’ll have to ask Angie. She’s the moneylender.” Like Ephraim—like indeed practically everybody else in the family—Nathan had married ‘out’. Their own mother was just about the only one who hadn’t; and look what had become of that! Angie was a theatre sister. “Everything
I
earn,” added Nathan, “goes on insurances and things.”

Ephraim didn’t believe this. He knew that a rough translation would have been:
You’ve sprung this on me and I’ll have to think
.

“Listen. He’s no more than a boy—he’s just a boy, Nathan.”

But he wasn’t really worried any more: he knew that even if it were truly a matter of conferring with Angie she would immediately be a lot more sympathetic than Nathan; or at least than Nathan sounded. (Bless you…you mothers of the world.)

“Okay. You can spare the sob stuff. Where do you want me to send the money—supposing we can rake it up? To your place?”

“No. No. I’ll find out details. Ring you back.”

“Haven’t you a fax machine at that crummy dive of yours?”

“Yes, certainly we have.” A touch of proprietorial pride in that: classy sort of office in which to be allowed to set up your own business; pay your own National Insurance contribution. (Not that he actually had, of course.)

“Talking of which. Have you made any money at it yet?”

“Spasmodically. In fact I did quite well my first month.”

“How much?”

“About eight hundred.”

Nathan laughed.

“Well, if you think
that’s
funny, you’d simply double up at what I made last month.”

“Try me.”

“Nothing at all.” Ephraim’s financial adventurings had always been something of a joking matter between Nathan and himself. “What’s more, I bet you thought I was exaggerating when I said the bank was going to sue.”

“Weren’t you?”

“And the building society probably about to foreclose?”

Nathan had evidently thought he
was
exaggerating but that Ephraim’s version bore a close enough resemblance to the truth to be practically believable. It was this combination of sailing close to the wind and displaying chronic insouciance that seemed to appeal to Nathan. His laughter was starting to recur with every answer that his brother gave.

“And this month?”

“Looks like being the same.”

Or perhaps Nathan realized there was no real exaggeration and was merely being more honest than most: people might not always laugh, or even want to laugh, at the cockups of others, but there was no doubt that the uprooted tree in your neighbour’s garden made you feel better about the snapped hollyhocks in yours. Nathan was at least receiving some reward for services rendered—for services about to be rendered. He actually admitted as much, without dissemblance.

“I must say that talking to you can sometimes brighten up even the bloody sort of morning
I’m
having. And it sounds as though your son is all set to follow in your footsteps…so if for any reason you yourself weren’t here, there’d always be somebody to maintain the family tradition and provide us with reminders of what might have been. If Angie were at home I’d be tempted to ring her right now to pass on the entertainment. Just the same, you can fax me rather than disturb my work a second time. What does Thingummy—you know—that girl of yours—what does Jean have to say about all this?”

Ephraim had listened with mixed feelings to this relatively long speech. He didn’t object in the slightest to his brother’s family choosing to see
him
as a buffoon but he didn’t want them casting Oscar in the same role. He didn’t want Oscar at fifty-two to find himself in any situation analogous to his own. And yet, simultaneously, perhaps he did—deep down—but this was not the kind of thing that you could ever confess to; not if you were the natural sort of father who, on one level, wished wholeheartedly for his children’s success in as many spheres as possible that were compatible with decency.

Also, he didn’t understand this affectation of never being able to remember Jean’s name. Nathan like Jean. So did Angie. (So did absolutely everyone, heaven help him.)

(And heaven be praised for it, as well.)

Still. At the moment, of course, he couldn’t afford to take issue.

“What does Jean have to say about it? Well, she doesn’t know yet about Oscar but if I were to tell you
fully
about the rest of it you’d soon feel sorry you had asked. Basically she says we keep on repeating the same mistakes, not just ourselves but everyone—that subconsciously I must have chosen to live as I do—and so what the fuck do I intend to do about it? I paraphrase.”

“Okay, I’m beginning to feel sorry already; and I think I’ve got a client.” Nathan supplied him with his fax number. “And if I don’t get back to you today you’ll know that we did in fact manage to come up with the five hundred. Under extreme pressure. Not to mention blackmail. And we’d better be getting a bloody good Christmas present this year…” He said a quick goodbye and rang off.

After this Ephraim phoned the Indian High Commission and the Bank of India and the Foreign Office. He was starting to see there were advantages to having fallen out with Barney: despite the latter’s impassioned threat—“We
shall
talk!”—obviously the time for parley hadn’t yet arrived, however overdue, not even in regard to this protracted series of Ephraim’s plainly personal and (as must with every justification be suspected) long-distance phone calls. Ephraim should have asked Oscar for his number in Calcutta while he was about it.