Father of the Man (30 page)

He forgot about her when he reached St Pancras. For the time being. Something awful happened. (Although even that, in retrospect, had its bright side: it reminded him of his grandmother; of how—so she had once told him—she’d been walking along Bond Street with a gentleman whom she hadn’t known very well, when suddenly her bloomer elastic had snapped and her knickers had been down around her ankles, underneath her long skirt. With considerable sangfroid—she had wanted him, Ephraim, to appreciate this—she had just stepped out of them and continued on her way…”although it hurt me to leave my bloomers decorating Bond Street, because they were such extremely pretty ones; Bond Street wasn’t up to them!”) Whether the concourse at St Pancras was up to his cock ring, Ephraim didn’t pause to consider: on the very tightest notch and it had
still
managed to work its way loose. He couldn’t bend to retrieve it: everyone, he was convinced, had immediately identified what it was, and whence it came; and he felt mortified. He half-expected someone to chase after him to ask if it were his; and he didn’t feel entirely safe until he was well away from the station and on the other side of Euston Road. (But then he started to wonder whether he shouldn’t perhaps go back for it; after all, it had been the symbol of a new life; he didn’t like to leave the symbol of a new life lying on the concourse at St Pancras. He wondered how many feet had trampled over it by now.) It was only about fifteen minutes later that he realized a whole cavalcade of magical moments, never to be repeated in the course of his own or anybody else’s lifetime, had just passed him by totally unsavoured and without any shred of thankfulness being expressed for them; and it was difficult after that to get back into exactly the right mood for fully enjoying the ones which followed. Yet the mood would return, he assured himself—with determination—the mood would return. But the cock ring wouldn’t. And it was simply that he’d had the damned thing for less than twenty hours and it had cost him, therefore, more than a pound for every hour. He couldn’t quite believe it. It had cost him
twenty
pounds!

Cost Jean twenty pounds. For the first time it came to him that the bank would expect his wife to honour his debts. After all, it was a joint account, as much her responsibility as his. He didn’t understand how he could have failed to consider this.

And in that case…so much for his little spending spree over the next few days. Obviously. How could he have been so daft?

Oh, hell.

Oh hell, oh hell, oh
hell
.

But Roger might be able to lend him some? Of course! That was a thought.

He then deliberated whether to call in at the umbrella shop. It wasn’t far from here. But he finally decided against it. Firstly, he didn’t like the idea of borrowing money from his children, especially if he wasn’t sure how soon he’d be able to repay; and secondly, if the shop were busy and private conversation either difficult or impossible, their parting would, at best, be brisk and unsatisfactory…and who knew how long before they’d next see one another? (Yes, what
awful
timing: Roger’s last day! Ephraim was already missing the presence of his son in London: simply the comfort of knowing that—in an emergency—somebody he loved would be close by.) No…much better for the note he’d written at the house, however disappointingly expressed, to take care of his farewells.

Therefore, instead of going to the shop, he went for a cup of coffee.

In a cheerfully bright and bustling cafeteria—full of tourists at even this time on an autumn morning—there remained a vacant table near the window. He felt he needed signs and this seemed a particularly good one: it would be fun to sip his coffee leisurely and to watch the world go by. If the place had been empty this was the very table he’d have chosen. It appeared to have been waiting for him.

He swiftly picked his way across and placed his holdall on one of its two chairs. Then, at the counter, he pushed along his plastic tray in a line of some half-dozen. He hadn’t yet eaten, so he selected an iced bun and a small fruit tart with cream: Jean would scarcely begrudge him that little bit of self-pampering, his last splurge, before he went off to find, first, a Job Centre—were the Job Centres open on a Saturday?—and, after that, a pawnbroker. (As soon as he received his initial wage he would buy back whichever figurine he decided to part with; he would also send home a postal order for as much as he could spare.) The woman at the cash register wouldn’t accept a cheque, however, not even with his banker’s card; not even though he was wearing his suit and raincoat—the things which would have been the bulkiest to pack—and looking at his most respectable. She said they simply couldn’t start to make exceptions…silly cow. He had just enough money, then, for the coffee; he was forced to forgo both bun and strawberry tart. When he finally got back to his table he found that his holdall had disappeared. Been stolen. His jeans and sneakers; all his changes of clothing; all his toilet articles. He couldn’t take it in.

He just couldn’t take it in. He dashed round looking on other empty chairs, under other empty tables, although in fact there weren’t many. He ran outside; plunged frantically this way, frantically that. Back into the cafeteria. A couple of the customers advised him to go to the police—not that they thought, when questioned, it would do him the least bit of good. Most of the others couldn’t speak much English. They did little more than shrug commiseratingly, signify a useless wish to help. (The story of the world.) The woman at the till seemed barely interested: the manager wasn’t around right now but, even when he was, there’d be no chance of any compensation—she pointed to a notice about the company, regretfully, not holding itself liable for either theft or loss, just as five minutes ago she had pointed to a notice about the company, regretfully, being unable to accept credit cards or cheques. Nobody, apparently, had seen the culprit. Possibly as much as another five minutes had elapsed before it struck Ephraim that he had also lost Harlequinade and “Maureen”.

In a daze he wandered down Southampton Row; he hadn’t drunk his coffee, not taken even a solitary sip. He looked at the hand luggage of everyone he saw, head turning almost rhythmically from one side of the road to the other. He peered down all the alleyways and side streets; sometimes branched off along them, entered the network of narrow tributaries, circled confusedly, but always, not even consciously, headed back towards the point he’d started from: he returned to the cafeteria on three occasions, each one separated by at least an hour, practically believing that this time he would find his holdall sitting there—maybe on the chair where he had left it—returned by someone who had either taken it by mistake or else been worked on by his conscience. By God and his conscience. Perhaps the old woman who moved slowly from one table to another with her blank staring eyes and her dampened dishcloth had somnambulistically, and for the sake of tidiness, stowed it away somewhere behind the scenes; and now at long last it had miraculously come to light. “Oh, please, Lord! Yes! Please, Lord!”

The woman on the till frowned more impatiently every time he reappeared.

“There’s nothing we can do. I keep telling you, I’m sorry but we just can’t help. It’s no good your coming back.”

However, he did go back, one last time, although no longer practically believing. (“Remember, winners never quit, matey—while quitters never win!”) He also went, finally, to the nearest police station. The holdall had not been handed in. He was obliged to give his Nottingham address.

The day was passing. It was now nearly four. He had no further option. He would have to go to see Roger.

Not hurrying—not having the will nor the strength to hurry—he reached New Oxford Street at half-past-four. He had forgotten that on Saturdays the shop closed early. The shutters were across the doors…and would now have been so for roughly thirty minutes.

What was he to do?

He felt sick. He needed something to eat. That had to be the first thing.

Feeling sick, he remembered how, in the early days of their marriage, Jean had held his head while he was vomiting out of a train window.

He remembered how, on Snowdon, she had given him her moral support and gentle guidance when, petrified of heights, he had needed to go down on his hands and knees in front of their embarrassed children and numbers of obstructed—though wholly sympathetic—holidaymakers to negotiate a ridge which had had a sheer drop on either side of it.

He remembered these things involuntarily; and with the treacherous prick of tears behind his eyes.

But he couldn’t return. There was too much weight of the more recent past that militated against that. He was not—he was
not
—going to return home.

There was nothing for him at home.

He would have to make a go of it on his own.

So there in the street, hesitating, on the broad corner outside the umbrella shop, he took off his wristwatch and gazed at it speculatively. It was the last thing of any value that he had—but, with the figurines now gone, his mother’s figurines (Jean had been fond of those, as well), what did this matter? He had to have food; and he had to have a roof over his head.

As always, however, when looking at the watch, he thought fleetingly about Liz—and the incredible way that Neville had taken care of her. “Old boy, I have achieved
nothing
! For a gifted man…I have achieved
nothing
!” Well, yes, reflected Ephraim, we can all identify with that. (And for some reason he could identify with it today still more fully than earlier in the week—although earlier in the week he would hardly have believed this possible.) Yet in your own case, Nev, it simply isn’t true. I admit that in later life you never appreciated Joan and it was rotten luck you weren’t able to come up with the right comedy idea, when that was requested. But in looking after Liz you took both your failure and frustration and laughed at them and turned them into triumph. You redeemed all the waste and all the mismanagement. You
did
achieve.

But those were the thoughts of only half a minute, hardly germane to the present moment in New Oxford Street. And on his way to a supermarket in Drury Lane, which a pleasant young woman in a card shop had directed him to (she had also looked in a classified directory for the whereabouts of nearby pawnbrokers), he stopped in front of a newsagent’s board and glanced to see if there were any rooms to let. There were two—if they were still available; but what sent a chill through him, literally, was that each card stipulated a month’s rent in advance: in both cases, therefore, a figure of almost three hundred pounds. He had forgotten this question of down payments. Maybe he could find somewhere cheaper; but even if he did there was no way he’d be able to leave a deposit.

As a last resort, of course, he could spend the night out in the park—or in a shop doorway—or pedestrian underpass. (At least it would help him forget about his fear of cancer, heart attacks, stomach ulcers, deteriorating eyesight, receding hairline, encroaching impotence, arthritis…et cetera.
Et cetera
.) He had already seen dozens of people settled down for the night in their sleeping bags in shop doorways.

London!

Where the streets were paved with gold!

He hadn’t got a sleeping bag, though.

But he could always look for some out-of-the-way bench. At least he had his good thick gabardine.

And tomorrow was another day.

(Early ’fifties. Ex-convict on the run, wanting only to prove his innocence and receive a second chance. Steve Cochran. Ruth Roman.
Tomorrow is Another Day
.)

He had always liked Steve Cochran. Tough. Attractive. Usually cast as a gangster or as some other kind of heavy.

But he had seen him in a film about a reformed drunkard who returns to his wife and kids in 1920s Arkansas (Ann Sheridan as the understandably weary wife struggling to keep the family farm afloat), firmly resolved to make good and to try to atone for past transgressions.

And the way he had eventually won the respect of both his family and the community was the subject of a charming, unpretentious movie, produced by Cochran himself. It had left you with the intended warm glow. Also, it had had a title which could now, belatedly, turn for Ephraim into a symbol of hope. A slogan to encapsulate victory.

“Come next spring,” he said aloud, testingly. Though nobody was passing.

He went into the supermarket. His luck was clearly changing; he had half-expected, at this time on a Saturday afternoon, in the West End, to find it closed. And suddenly he found that he had energy. If he could beat all this, why then he could beat anything. Beat the devil himself. Because it was true: a person’s character could only properly be forged upon the ashes of his despair. Old Emerson was right.

He felt exhilarated.

The future was going to be okay.

Much better than okay.

“Come next spring,” he repeated.

20

That morning Jean had gone shopping. She hadn’t taken Polly, because she’d forgotten where they kept the lead and couldn’t be bothered to look. In fact she’d almost forgotten Polly herself until she came across her waiting at the front door and looking hopeful and swishing her tail in excitement. Jean thought her own lack of energy and motivation might have been caused by…were a delayed reaction to…there’d been some kind of incident, a bad one, on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday…today was Saturday…well, if it carried on like this she would have to see a doctor,
he’d
know what to do. She must have blocked it out; it had clearly been a shock; maybe he’d prescribe a tonic. But in the meantime there were still a couple of things she needed from Tesco’s to complete the homecoming meal for Oscar. She assumed that Ephraim would be there for it—supposed he had better be catered for, although she really didn’t feel she’d have the patience to put up with him much longer. It was only by the purest chance she had taken clean clothing into Roger’s room; had seen the envelope on his pillow; read the note inside. Well, her husband had walked out on her before: ostensibly forever, but, as it had transpired each time, for actually no more than a morning or an afternoon. (And she recalled the first occasion it had happened—twenty years ago—my God, how worried she had been; how wonderfully relieved to see him back!) Now she assumed he would return by lunchtime: looking sheepish and pretending he had gone out merely for a walk. And being overly animated. (God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!) Oh, damn him. Damn him! He wasn’t a provider—in no way was he a provider. Not of financial security; not of emotional security; not even of good companionship. Nothing! And as for any sort of sex life…! Well, that was laughable. She suddenly remembered the thing he’d had on his penis the previous night; and that made her want to cry out with—made her want to cry out with—