Father of the Man (28 page)

Conquer his neuroses. Wage war, do battle. And win.

And even if he didn’t…then smile cheerfully in defeat. In its own way, perhaps the truest kind of victory.

So—whatever happened—how could he possibly lose?

Every new day was going to mean something.

Hey, look me over. Lend me a ear. Fresh out of clover. Mortgaged up to here.

But don’t pass the hat, folks. Don’t pass the cup. The only way when you’re down and out—the only way is up.

He went back into the bedroom and extracted his clothes in stealth: not just the ones for wearing but for packing too. In quickness and in stealth. (That pleased him.) He planned to be decisive from now on. No shilly-shallying; no weakness; no old-maidishness. He opened and closed drawers, took some things, left others, allowed himself no second thoughts. Jean stirred a little—he stood like in musical statues—but he reckoned that her inner clock had at least another hour to run; maybe two; even on the day her son was coming home. He decided that he had enough time to take Polly for a final walk.

(But he must be careful, even mentally, not to use the word
final
. That made it sound as if he were slamming doors with such vigour they would have to stick. Yet need this be so? And, anyway, what he must concentrate on now was the opening of new doors, not the closing of old.)

Polly seemed surprised at being let out so early—surprised, perhaps, it was with him and not with Roger she should have her first encounter of the day. Surprised but not unhappy.

He took her, as usual, round the reservoir. The lamps were still lit; the sun wouldn’t rise for about another hour. He threw her red rubber ring and there was apparently enough light for her to distinguish it each time and come running jubilantly back, dropping it before him with an air of pride. This
couldn’t
be the last walk he would ever take her on, the last game he would ever play with her. As he watched her twist and leap and go bounding off, he did so with a fresh determination to live only for the passing moment, to try to hold onto it, string it together with all the other passing moments: a chain of too often unappreciated worth that would wind its way through the rest of his life to such magical effect that if, say, he had only one year of existence left to him, he would live more deeply in just that one year than other men might live in fifty. For instance right now: the expression in Polly’s eyes, the swish of her tail, the poised gracefulness of her whole waiting, compact, keyed-up being; the way the ring went sailing through the air, the supple swing of his own body, the feeling of agility and faultless timing and of unleashed strength. There was so much to get out of every single moment; and the days would be jam-packed with single moments! It was purely a matter of practice. He knew that he could do it.

Life begins at fifty-two! On Saturday the twenty-eighth of October at…he peered at Liz’s watch, dear Liz’s watch, he was very glad he hadn’t pawned it…No, life had actually begun about an hour ago, say at six o’clock, on Saturday the twenty-eighth of October. This marvellous, unique and wholly unrepeatable day. This once-in-all-creation day…Life had begun at—

But on second thoughts you couldn’t say at six o’clock. He hadn’t told himself it was beginning at six o’clock and it was necessary to have been aware of it—right then—at the exact and vital moment; not merely, however happily, in retrospect. There was enough of it…time. He needn’t regret again the wastage of the past.

Very well, then. It didn’t matter. Life began at six-fifty-one and…fifteen seconds. Now!

No, he must wait for six-fifty-two. Six-fifty-two precisely. That made it even better. Neater, more appropriate. Add six full years to his present fifty-two. At fifty-eight he would still be a young man. Even at sixty-four he would still be a long way from old: full of bounce and bonhomie and physical attraction. He would deal, indeed, in packages of six. It seemed like a further wonderful and wholly heaven-sent omen.

So…six-fifty-two.

Now!

And as one of the first important actions of his new life he decided he would leave a note for Roger. “My dear old Rodge…,” he would begin.

He would like to think of something which was matey, wise, inspirational. Memorable. Non-tacky.

“Just a line to say how much I love you and to let you know you’ve always been one of the best things in my life. Sorry for failures and crossness and mistakes. Good luck with your studies. I hope you’ll swiftly find a new job that will be well-paid and bring you lots of satisfaction. But have a short holiday first. Always live for the moment. I shall. Dad.”

Or, in fact, would that be a bit naff? The last thing he wanted was to embarrass the lad. On the other hand, a degree of
temporary
embarrassment might not matter, so long as over the years he should derive pleasure from it—comfort?—a knowledge of his father’s love. Ephraim hoped he’d keep the note in his wallet and perhaps take it out to reread, reread and pause over, possibly once a month…or once every couple of months.

‘Pa’ instead of ‘Dad’?

Cross out the bit about living for the moment? Partly because that was something you had to come to for yourself. But more especially because—and at least he recognized the meanness of this, and recognition of such things was maybe more than half the battle—more especially because…Well, it was his own discovery and for the moment he was still a little jealous of it. Roger had almost thirty years before he reached his father’s age. Ephraim couldn’t give away his secrets until he’d at any rate stolen some kind of march even on his favourite son.

But then, too, he wanted his children to be happy—genuinely wanted this, quite apart from the fact that the happiness of his children, and the happiness they brought into the lives of others, represented the chief vindication of his own existence.

“I really wish I could have measured up to Lieutenant James Still,” he would say, in a PS. To endeavour to show he understood; that there were some things he had always understood; shared aims he had always attempted to live up to, even if he’d known better than to try to put them into words. “I think perhaps you’ll manage it. No, I feel almost sure you will. If anybody can, it’s you.”

When he got home he wrote the letter hastily. (Unfortunately Polly had lost her rubber ring and although they’d spent time looking for it their search was fruitless. She came away only against her will, but she would find it, he told her, as good as promised her, upon some later walk.) He wasn’t very pleased with it. Inside his head it had sounded almost incomparably better; and he would have liked to make a fair copy but that struck him as false. Better the crossings-out and the few words he had added as an afterthought to make the rhythm of it flow. The spontaneity was vital.

He slipped it in an envelope—annoyingly, he could find only a cheap one, because for stationery he had invariably gone to Woolworth’s—and left it on Roger’s pillow.

Then he took the Royal Doulton figurines and wrapped each in a teacloth. Packed them among his shirts and socks and underwear…and, good, this reminded him also to take a towel; two towels; he had remembered, of course, his sponge bag, shaving things, toothbrush…yet still the medium-sized holdall he had so carefully pulled out from under Jean’s side of the bed wasn’t quite full. He liked that, the idea of that. Dick Whittington, with his bandanna. Not weighed down by possessions. Not weighed down by all the clutter of imprisonment. If he could have managed it he, too, would have preferred just a bundle tied to the end of a stick. Turn again, Dick Whittington—thrice Lord Mayor of London! But in fact this not-very-bulky holdall was (for 1989) almost the same thing. The longing for adventure. The joy of the open road. Mr Toad, as well as Dick Whittington. Where the rainbow ends. The streets paved with gold; the essential decency of life along the river bank. St George and the dragon. He remembered all these things from his early boyhood, this mélange of children’s plays and pantomimes…and the integral teas at either Buzzard’s or Gunter’s or a Corner House. With grandmother or great-aunts or mother or cousins: as Dodie Smith had put it, “the family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape.” Mona and Joan and Maggie. My God, how he had loved them, all those people who had introduced him to the wonder and entrancement of both stage and screen. The warmth—security—escape. But obviously he hadn’t known it then: how enduringly he would love them…and how ever more consciously, more wistfully, with time.

Such thoughts as these all helped him leave the house without too drastic a lowering of the spirits; he’d realized, anyway, that it was going to be a wrench—in two years there’d been a lot of happy times here, particularly in retrospect. He didn’t look about him, then, too lingeringly…what was the point? He whistled as he closed the front door; whistled something from
The King and I
. He nodded to the postman three houses down the road but didn’t stop to see what mail he might have brought.

He hadn’t left a note for Jean.

He wondered if she’d feel concern.

Roger would explain. Not until this evening, of course; but a period of uncertainty might be no bad thing for her, Ephraim considered—although on second thoughts what difference would it make? To her? To anything? Probably, she wouldn’t even notice all that much, not on the day that Oscar was returning from his travels. The prodigal son.

He had disappeared before. (Only her husband; not her son.) Once, for a period of about eight hours. He doubted she would worry. More likely, she would simply shrug, resentfully reproach him for the chores he might have done.

The open road. Not so much a question of pootering about along the byways and between the banks and hedgerows as of making your way into the middle of town and down the pedestrian precinct and through the Broadmarsh Centre. The joy of adventure. That for the moment was the business of writing out another cheque; this time, for British Rail. He had seven more cheques left in the book. He thought he could safely go on using them until midway through the following week. What did they do—the banks—in this sort of case, he wondered. How streamlined and how foolproof would be their blacklist of defaulters? Of cheats and swindlers? (He found he didn’t quite like those words: cheats, swindlers, defaulters. They didn’t fit in with either Dick Whittington or Mr Toad…despite the latter’s short spell of incarceration. Neither did they fit in with St George; nor even with Paul Gaugin and his notorious escape from domesticity; out of the straitjacket of being the breadwinner, into the paradise of the South Pacific and the freedom to pursue his art and discover love and be bathed in Technicolor…albeit only one brief sequence of Technicolor, in a picture called
The Moon and Sixpence
.) Anyway, Ephraim wrote out his cheque. British Rail weren’t always all that lovable, or altruistic. Robin Hood, who was Nottingham’s most famous son, would undoubtedly have had something to say about British Rail.
And
about Barclay’s Bank. He remembered
The Bandit of Sherwood Forest
, starring Cornel Wilde. In 1946 Ephraim had been impressed by a large poster for this film beside a bus stop in the Abbey Road; while it was there, had seen it almost daily on his way to and from West Hampstead. As a boy he had worshipped Cornel Wilde, former Olympic fencing champion, along with Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier; had wanted him for a brother as much as for a father. And indeed—more than the other two—Cornel Wilde was still one of his romantic heroes.

18

It was half-past-eight on the Saturday morning. Roger was dressed, except for his jacket and tie. He’d had his breakfast: a croissant and brioche, separately wrapped in clingfilm, cold and somewhat solid; a miniature pot of lemon marmalade, a misshapen pat of butter; one sachet of instant coffee, another of white sugar; and two containers of long-life milk, each of which he’d partly spilt in pulling off the foil lids. The plate was cardboard, the knife and teaspoon plastic; incredibly, the cup and saucer were of bone china, rose-patterned. He had an electric kettle in his room, which he’d filled at the washbasin.

The room itself was small—self-coloured maroon carpet, skimpy mauve curtains. It was also gloomy, being situated in the basement, and noisy, because it was next door to some showers and a lavatory and till nearly three o’clock there’d been a party of Australians horsing about in the corridor.

All the same, as a room it had been adequate, and Roger even felt a certain fondness for it. It seemed clean enough and the bed—although too narrow and inevitably too short—was definitely well-sprung, with a couple of firm pillows and a sturdy headboard against which he had sat up very comfortably to watch
I Confess
and to drink the beer and eat the crisps which he’d brought in with him…he had felt thoroughly decadent, and sleazy, and liberated.

After the movie he had watched
The Twilight Zone
and then, switching channels,
Crazy Like A Fox
, which wasn’t very good, but just because it provided a first-time experience—of viewing television until three in the morning—had given him the simple-minded illusion of living dangerously. He knew it was simple-minded, and probably no more than the predictable consequence of his four cans of bitter, but now, almost six hours later, the mild euphoria persisted. Far from being tired, or from having even the least touch of hangover, he felt refreshed—and capable of bold feats. (Watch out, all you pompous bureaucrats! You don’t know who you’re tangling with. Superman in a blue suit!) It was as though the short sleep he’d finally managed to get had been shot through with only the happiest of dreams. Today is the start of the rest of your life.
Carpe diem
. Gather ye rosebuds…

The Jolly Roger.

Yesterday evening, when he’d first arrived, he’d been pleased that the young Pakistani sitting behind the reception desk—if you could actually call it a reception desk—in the predominantly gold and claret and orange lobby, enlivened by the picture of a naked green woman astride a rearing green horse at sunset, had instantly flashed him a smile of recognition. “Good evening, sir. You were here many times during the days of the rail strike. It is very nice to see you.”