Father of the Man (22 page)

“You know how I feel about pestering the ones who didn’t want to be pestered.”

“And you know how
I
feel about you doing your job in the manner you’ve been asked to do it.” Barney paused; looked darkly handsome, Ephraim thought, in a sleek and threatening, Cosa Nostra way. “If there isn’t any phone number—and can you believe it that anyone in these modern times can be without a telephone?”—this was a piece of philosophical inquiry, mystification, not aimed specifically at Ephraim—“you’ll have to send off a letter telling them to get in touch with us by Monday; Monday without fail. (And if we haven’t heard, everybody, we hold a new draw first thing Tuesday morning.) And oh, by the way, in the letter you say nothing about their having won the prize.”

“What, then?”

“You’ll ask them to get in touch with us. Nothing more.”

“Oh, sure, that’s going to fire them up! They’ll think it’s just another sales pitch. We have to tell them why.”

“No. I forbid you to mention it.”

It wasn’t worth arguing about; and for once Ephraim managed to refrain. He turned away with a look of disbelief which he hoped was as cutting as anything he could have said. He would simply have to go to West Bridgford himself. Tonight. Something of a nuisance, but since it was the obvious way of getting the better of Barney, totally justified. If no one was at home he could put a note through the letterbox and hope to heaven that R. Harrison and all the members of R. Harrison’s household, if any, hadn’t gone off on a late-October break. In one way indeed—having no appointments for this evening, because he’d telephoned Kentucky Fried Chicken and heard that Shane wouldn’t now be back until the weekend—Ephraim almost welcomed this as a valid excuse for being away from home. (Another valid excuse would have been two or three extra hours of cold calling; but even Jean’s present form of politeness was—all things considered—preferable to that.)

“And I should like to see your letter before you get Pauline to type it.”

Ephraim didn’t answer. He pretended to be sifting through some papers on his desk.

“Did you hear me?”

Lucy said: “Eff. Barney’s talking to you.”

“Oh?” Ephraim swivelled in his chair. “Great! I didn’t think he was going in for that these days.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry. I simply wasn’t listening, had something more important on my mind. What did he want?”

Barney picked up his phone receiver. Scowled. (
Oh, you sexy brute!
Ephraim felt inclined to say.) Lucy was keen to keep the peace.

“He says he’d like to see your letter before you give it to Pauline,” she told Ephraim, gently.

“Why? Doesn’t he trust me, then?”

Lucy smiled and returned her attention to her work.

A short time afterwards, Barney went into the training room with a client, slapping the fellow on the back and calling out to Pauline a minute later to bring them in two cups of coffee. The others went on with their telephoning; or, in the case of Sean, with his use of a computer to work out which plan or combination of plans would best suit somebody whom he was going to see that afternoon. Ephraim wished more than ever that he and Jean could have been on good terms. Normally, when they were, he rang her at least once a day, whether she was at home or at the shop. She would have sympathized about the draw; told him he was right; boosted his morale. She would have sympathized about the row on Monday—though that wouldn’t have occurred if they had been in harmony, and, even if it had, she might have wished he had been a lot less confrontational. (“Why do you always have to meet these things head-on? Why do you
always
decline to show a little tact?”) But instead he had to keep all of it to himself; and by the time he would be able to tell her—if such a time, he thought dismally, were ever to return—the support she could have given him would no longer seem nearly so important. He felt quite sick with betrayal.

Perhaps he’d have a chance to tell Roger. Roger would certainly be on his side in the matter of the draw, although probably less so with regard to the slanging match: he had learned discretion at his mother’s knee, and imbibed her antipathy to making waves. But, in any case, Roger always arrived home so late and had to be in bed so early; it would be difficult to get him on his own. Ephraim had even wondered about ringing the shop but Mr Cavendish apparently frowned upon his staff receiving any personal call unless it was some sort of an emergency (“Help! Help! This
is
an emergency!”) since they had just the one telephone. And besides, it would make the whole thing seem too important, because—although it scarcely
could
seem too important—it still needed to be brought up casually, as though it were merely apropos of some other topic that you’d even remembered to
mention
it. Oh, damn! And next week Roger would be around all day. My times are certainly in thy hands, O Lord…although, bloody hell, I’m almost beginning to wish they weren’t.

No, no, I’m sorry, I don’t mean that. You know I don’t mean that. But if only you could…

What?

Get me out of this mess. Here at work and there at home. Get me out of the mess I appear to have made out of practically everything. And not only in my own life but—over the past two dozen years; or at least a good proportion of them—in Jean’s as well.
Please
. By one o’clock, O Lord…since, as you know (who better, other than Barney Watson?), a workable goal has to have a time limit. So while we’re on the subject, Lord, let’s make it half-past-twelve, how about that?

But anyway. Failing all this, on Sunday—if not Saturday night—he could retrospectively garner support from Roger. Possibly even from Jean? That was, if he apologized…And he actually reached out for the phone right now; but couldn’t quite bring himself to use it.

Yet by Sunday, of course, Oscar would be home and Ephraim wasn’t sure how much he was looking forward to his son’s return. Oscar would assuredly be partisan, encouraging, full of congratulation; but things didn’t seem to cut very deep—although how on earth could you tell whether they cut deep or not?—his mind would soon be on to something else. And hardly any wonder: he’d have so much to talk about, so many photographs to show, so many people to catch up with. (So many telephone calls to make.) Besides, in comparison with all his own great doings a couple of silly squabbles in a Nottingham insurance office could scarcely be expected to carry any vast amount of impact. Perhaps it would be better not even to speak of them to Oscar.

Perhaps it would be better not even to speak of them to Roger. Roger—enthralled and fascinated by his younger brother’s exploits—might very well make those same comparisons.

Ditto, Jean.

Ephraim felt his eyes grow wet.

Thank you, God.

At the moment he didn’t even know how he was going to face having to listen to the unfolding saga of the traveller’s sundrenched odyssey.

He didn’t know how he was going to put up with Oscar’s exuberant clumping round the house; with tales of his romantic conquests; with heady all-important plans for his future.

That evening, while Roger was having a relatively uneventful journey home (“But what have you done all the other evenings this week?” asked an unfamiliar official; and Roger had answered, “Caught the earlier train—the one to Sheffield which you have to change on”); and while Jean was mixing a cheesecake and thinking up various small ways in which to celebrate Oscar’s return—as well as seeing to the supper and making Roger’s sandwiches and intermittently trying to raise Abby on the telephone…while all this was going on, Ephraim was hunting round West Bridgford for No 5 Stanley Villas, Holloway Road. Not having wanted to draw attention to it at the office, he hadn’t consulted his street guide until he was on the bus; and then the light was so poor and the print so small he hadn’t been able to read even the index—for a long time he had realized that if he wanted to see things clearly he should really do something about it, but, aware that his eyes were probably his best feature, he had always felt fiercely resistant. Now, in the centre of West Bridgford, he went into a video shop to take advantage of its bright strip lighting. Nodding to the frowsy woman slouching on a stool behind the counter he looked along the shelves of movies and grew distracted by finding several he would like to see again:
Someone To Watch Over Me
,
No Way Out
and—a really old one, this—
The Best Years Of Our Lives
; Gran had taken him to see that in 1946 at the Empire Leicester Square. By the end he’d looked along virtually every shelf in the shop: it was warm in here—outside, it wasn’t merely cold, it had begun to spit. Therefore it needed much willpower to turn away from such things as “an unforgettable time in which four adolescents on the brink of manhood learn about friendship, and a lot about growing up” (
Stand By Me
) to the lifeless-sounding street names in his A-Z.

Holloway Road wasn’t amongst them.

He asked the woman if she knew it. “Sorry, dear. I’ve lived round here for thirty years; you’d think I ought to.” He noticed that her bleached hair betrayed in abundance its gingery and grey-streaked roots. “Haven’t you been able to find what you were after?”

“No—just browsing. You’ve got a good selection.” In fact he’d thought of saying:
No…the story of my life!

“I like musicals myself.
My Fair Lady
now…must have seen it more than half a dozen times. My son pulls my leg, though, over that one. Something rotten.”

“Sons do. I like musicals as well.”

“People say I’ve got a look of Ginger Rogers about me.”

“Mmm. Yes.” He stood back; pretended to take seriously this claim. “I think I do see the resemblance.”

She laughed, and in a raucous voice suddenly began to sing—he caught the whiff of alcohol. “‘I’m in heaven; this is heaven; and the cares that hang about me all the week…’”

Still sitting on her stool, she waved her arms and swayed her torso—it was a large one—in undulating accompaniment to a rhythm that was less apparent to him than to her; then much to his relief she stopped.

“I don’t suppose I sound like her!”

“It was nice, though.”

“Another world,” she said. “Another world.”

He didn’t answer; observed a respectful pause while she lingered in it, in that other world, a moment longer; he felt sorry for her—tried to picture what she’d been like thirty years before. She took a cigarette from a packet on the counter. There was an ashtray containing maybe a dozen stubs of varying lengths, heavily lipsticked.

“So…no Holloway Road,” he said at last. “Stanley Villas doesn’t ring a bell?”

“No.” She thought about it; shook her head. “Sorry, dear. You’ll have to go on searching.” He left her freshly undulating, the smoke rising brokenly across her half-closed eyes.

“‘I’m in heaven; this is heaven…’”

He did go on searching—until at last he’d had enough. Fruitless. There was no Holloway Road. There was no Stanley Villas. Why should anyone bothering to enter a free prize draw lie about their address? Did it provide them with an alternative to saying no; a chance to retaliate for having been hassled; a comfortable feeling of being in control? Whatever the reason, it had wasted his evening. Worse than that, it had given Barney an excuse to gloat—whether he’d do so openly or not—and to go on feeling superior.

Jerzy and Lucy and Sean wouldn’t be all that sorry, either.

And then he stopped—suddenly he stopped—whilst walking along a stretch of broad shiny pavement on which the lights of a Chinese takeaway were garishly reflected.

It needn’t have been a waste of time. No. This could turn out to be a golden opportunity. Why hadn’t it occurred to him? What R. Harrison had so loftily scorned would beyond doubt, somewhere else, prove most warmly and sincerely welcome.

16

Back to Beeston the following morning: the same train as yesterday. All right, he would be late again—so what? This was Friday, they were nearly at the end of the week, and Monday would mark the beginning of a two-month period, unexpected bonus, when he’d be able to make a whole new start. Lovely feeling. And today—despite the constant pattering against his window every time he’d woken in the night—the forecast was one of sun and mainly settled conditions.

Not so good for business, maybe, but in every other respect—great.

Even the situation with Jenny wasn’t so bad as he’d supposed. The mere fact of her having a boyfriend didn’t preclude him from seeing her occasionally, popping in for a chat, suggesting lunch…or at the very least a coffee after work. Sleep had banished that hurtful statement he’d imagined; he remembered how easy he had felt with her, again believed that she must like him. A boyfriend—even a fiancé, and he wasn’t quite that, anyway—wasn’t at all the same as a husband.
Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip
; he could see his grandmother again, wagging her finger at him.
All’s fair in love and war, my pet
. A shade more questionable, that one, but still.

This morning, as he slowly ate his breakfast, he granted the Cecils a brief leave of absence and settled down to something different. Yesterday it had occurred to him he should record as much as possible of this week’s eventfulness, while the detail remained fresh. For one thing, over roughly a dozen years he’d been thinking about keeping a journal and this seemed a propitious moment to begin (again). In the past his tidy and conventional mind had always insisted upon January 1
^st
but in the past his tidy and conventional mind had always come unstuck, somewhere around the 6
^th
. And for another thing, rather more practically, he told himself that in case he
should
ever end up in court such an account could prove of value to his solicitor.

But he ought to have bought his exercise book in Woolworth’s, not the British Museum. Its stiff-covered smartness was intimidating; he felt his jottings needed to be worthy of it. (Yet why? He wasn’t his mum. He wasn’t hoping to write something with any pretensions to literature. He chewed one of his buttered scones and stared reflectively from the window. Or was he?) At all events, to destroy the pristine quality of the opening page he wrote, “This lunchtime, take cat-and-mackerel to man who frames cartoons for Mr Cavendish.” Which would also give him a valid excuse to call on Jenny—as soon as Monday, maybe?—because he thought it a good bet she’d be interested in seeing the finished product.