Father of the Man (9 page)

“Yes.
And
traveller’s cheques.
And
credit cards.”

“Oh, Oscar, I don’t believe this! Don’t say you kept them all together?”

“Listen. Can I just speak to Mum?”

“No, you can’t just speak to Mum. Does this mean you’ve been left without a thing?”

“Yes.”

A pause. A voice cried out in Ephraim: “For God’s sake…only connect! Only connect!” Maybe he hadn’t ever let the bathwater run over, or the bottom burn out of a saucepan, but he too in his time had been known to be casual about certain articles of clothing…although never about money. Perhaps in their different ways they were both adventurers, daredevils, possessing all the plusses and minuses that being such things entailed. “Only connect!” cried out this voice.

“Some students I’ve fallen in with,” said Oscar, “have managed to lend me a bit.”

“What about Rick? And, thank God, at least the living is cheap.”

“Don’t be stupid! It’s not the living that matters. I haven’t got any way of getting home.”

Don’t be stupid!
Ephraim bit his lip and dug his fingernails into the palm of his free hand. Why did this have to be happening now? Only a few weeks back, during his manic period, he could have coped brilliantly with such a crisis, might even have welcomed it, seen it as a test, as something that would inevitably—and forever—reestablish their closeness. (When had that closeness slipped away? Why had it? How?) “Pop,” Oscar would have said, in years to come, “do you remember the scrape I got myself into in India? And how calmly and effectively you rescued me! Never one word of recrimination! Did anybody ever have a dad like you?” But already it was too late, it was blemished, his exasperation manifest, irretrievable.
No, you can’t just speak to Mum
.

“And didn’t you receive my last letter? Rick and I split up six weeks ago.”

Ephraim remembered it now: information tossed off in a single sentence and driven from his mind by one that closely followed it, involving love and prayers and the particular way in which these and all his thoughts had been apportioned…“Have you still got your passport?” he asked. Yet that was merely something to say, to cover the fact he’d failed to pay due regard to a casual remark—
ostensibly
casual—masking a matter of concern. (But why the fuck hadn’t Jean made more of it?)

“Yes, Dad, I’ve still got my passport. I’ve never kept my passport in my wallet. Do passports even fit in wallets? One day let’s carry out a survey.”

But then this air of strained tolerance abruptly turned into something else. There was a sudden break in Oscar’s voice that quivered audibly along five thousand miles of telephone line. “Don’t you understand?
I haven’t got any way of getting home
! I don’t know what to do.” In the space of only a few seconds, Ephraim saw the little boy who used to grip his hand so tightly whenever they had to pass a large dog or a bearded old man; who at the age of four—standing, straining, with both arms fully stretched—had stopped a tall and badly balanced cupboard from falling on a baby cousin; and who more than anything had nearly always borne him extremely good company. He saw the two of them moving like quarries along an empty moonlit street, arms linked, glances swinging from side to side—“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”; he saw them, with Roger, skipping down a hilly path winding amongst trees, himself in the centre and holding his sons’ hands: “We’re busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do…” He saw them playing
Little House on the Prairie
. (“Paw, I surely appreciate how you can spit tobacco juice further than any other man in Kansas; I feel plum tuckered out with only thinking how much you and Maw jus’ love me and with hoping she’ll be waiting for us with some of those li’l old corncakes covered in molasses; shucks, I sometimes figure I must be the luckiest critter that ever was born, because the good Lord’s been so kind in giving me a maw and paw like you…” He could carry on in this way for hours.) It was like what happens to somebody drowning, supposedly. Ephraim saw the youth who had provided a bottle of champagne for each of his parents’ last four wedding anniversaries; who once—eight years ago?—when he, Ephraim, hadn’t known where to find the money to renew their television licence, had simply disappeared and paid for it himself, out of the fund he’d been amassing from his paper round to buy a music centre. (And how completely out of character for
Oscar
ever to have saved!) He remembered how bereft the boy had been at the death of Rick’s father. Those drowning seconds had made him feel ashamed.

“Well, look, Oz, somehow we’ll get the cash. How much do you think you’re going to need?”

“I want to come home. Enough to fly me home.”

Fifteen thousand, four hundred and ninety rupees. Divide that by thirty-five. Nearly four hundred and fifty pounds. Dear God.

“Anyhow, don’t worry. Truly. We’ll manage something.”

But only two weeks ago he’d tried in vain to raise some money for the mortgage…no,
re
mortgage, this time they daren’t get too much in arrears, he was frightened by the thought of repossession. He had realized, of course, that the bank wouldn’t help but he’d been disappointed by the few friends and relatives—some of Jean’s, too, though none of this was known to her—whom he’d then determined to approach. Yet today it would be different: no longer a matter of just the mortgage but now of a twenty-two-year-old boy practically destitute in a strange place literally thousands of miles from home. (But thank God for those students; thank God, thank God for those students.)

“Phone back tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I’ve arranged.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “There’s none of your friends I could try to borrow from?” After all, the lad had been to Oxford.

“No!” All the vehemence voiced in one syllable suggested that Oscar, who subscribed to
The Gentlemen’s Quarterly
and had his street cred to consider, would rather have starved in foreign lands than be exposed to such embarrassment.

“All right. It was only an idea.”

“May I speak to Mum now?”

“Yes, I’ll go to call her. And keep your pecker up. Remember Meursault.”

This was a longstanding joke between them: Oscar had often compared himself to Camus’ hero in regard to the fact that nothing fazed him; he was cool to the nth degree. (In an early letter from India, for instance: “You may have noticed a certain vagueness in our plans. In Budapest, unfortunately, we weren’t able to buy any sort of practical guide to Asia, so we’ve been catapulted onto this continent without much sound idea of whys or whats or hows or wherefores. Walk the tightrope, Pop! Live on the edge! Meursault would quake with approval.”)

About to shout for Jean, Ephraim changed his mind. He returned to the telephone. “No, Oz, speak to her tomorrow—not now. She’d only be thrown into a panic. You wouldn’t want that.”

“Okay. Do what you can, then. Thanks. Well done, Dad. And when you do reveal all, just give her my love. Tell her I’m fine.”

His son’s spirit might be reviving but still, Ephraim thought churlishly—and was aware of being churlish—it was Jean who received the love and ‘Dad’ was not changed back to ‘Pop’. “Right…well, I’ll give her your love but you’d better give
me
your credit card numbers,” he answered drily.

Oscar told him where to find them—also the numbers of his traveller’s cheques (what organization!)—and reiterated his gratitude. But when Ephraim replaced the receiver he realized that although the greater part of him felt thankful, after all, that the phone had rung just when it did, the other part felt thoroughly hard-done-by. As well as thoroughly worried.

The trouble was, the more hurt you showed you were, the less affection you received.

It was a vicious circle.

Yet what was the good of recognizing this, if you knew you couldn’t break free?

He picked up the towel and finished drying Polly. She, too, seemed a little worried. But he stood stroking her after he’d done, and then she tentatively wagged her tail.

Walking down Woodborough Road in the fine rain, this long and boring road that was dreary even when the sun shone, he first worried about Oz and how on earth he was going to raise the money for him. But then a van passed advertizing Delia’s Gourmet Meals Delivered To Your Door and he was unexpectedly distracted. Delia was the name Jean had chosen for the heroine of a series of bedtime stories about fifteen years earlier. Jean and Ephraim had taken turns telling their stories but Ephraim always read his out of books; and on the nights when Delia’s adventures were related he had sat on one of the children’s beds listening just as eagerly as they did. “Jeannie, you really ought to write these stories down. Remember what we always said!” It was what they had said for the first time that evening they went to see
Pickwick
at the Saville Theatre, in 1964, the evening he had asked her to marry him. (He hadn’t realized when he booked the tickets that she didn’t care that much for musicals. But he thought she had enjoyed this one.) He remembered her telling him over supper, after they’d been talking for a bit about Dickens, that one of the things she had always wanted was to be a writer. But until then, it seemed, she’d received little but discouragement…all the way down from the nuns who had never praised you for anything, perhaps on the grounds that praise would make you prideful; from them to her stepmother, who, unpermitted, had read the opening pages of an exercise book which Jean had thought safely hidden in a drawer; on to a boyfriend who had considered novels were a waste of time, politics and sociology were all that mattered; finally to the girls in the office where she’d first worked, to whom she’d made the mistake of reading out a love poem she had stayed up half the night composing. She had laughed as she told him. It was her own fault; she should have known they’d only tease her, make facetious comments. But the net result was that she’d lost her confidence, become inhibited, far too critical of anything she did write.

All this, however, she had said with such humour that he had loved her for it. It was he who’d felt the bitterness—against unbending nuns and prying stepmothers; earnest radicals and giggling office girls—“a curse on all their tribe!”…he had drunk a toast to that. And this great surge of sympathy, and love, was what had suddenly confirmed him in his purpose to propose. “Sweetheart, you’ll get your confidence back! I promise! You’re interested in everyone, curious about everything, you express yourself so vigorously. You’ll always have plenty of encouragement from
me
. I’d be so very proud.” And he’d had visions—they both had—of Jean’s making up for all those wasted years and of her having her own small study, inviolable to everyone, except on invitation. Preferably it would lead out to a garden or at least be overlooking one.

But despite such visions the years had swiftly passed, bringing children, removals, money worries. No study, no desk, and only a secondhand portable typewriter, whose keys had soon begun to jump. And there were times now, after a quarter of a century of removals and money worries, times when—especially if he were depressed—he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t killed off most of the affection she had once felt for him; and whatever Shakespeare might say about love not being love that alters when it alteration finds…(Had he also written: Hunger looks in the window, love flies out the door. Well, if he hadn’t, that gave someone else a break.) She had recently said—during a row when he had asked her: what do you really
want
from life?—“I’ll tell you what I want! I want a mother. I want a wife. I want a hero out of Georgette Heyer. I want to be
nurtured
!” And he was none of these things; he never would be. He suddenly had such a longing for his own mother, for his childhood, for a time when he had been loved and secure and had never had to worry about how to pay the mortgage or how to cope with failure—well, never at least with any failure that was comparable to the kind he now faced, because Jean couldn’t live even the simple sort of life for which she so despairingly hankered.

Despite the narrowness of the pavement, his own umbrella hadn’t collided with anyone else’s; nor at the bottom of the hill, where at this hour the traffic was always busy, had he caused any kind of accident. He had turned, correctly, into Huntingdon Street.

But here his automatic pilot developed some malfunction: at his subsequent crossing point, a motorist had to brake.

“Jesus Christ! What the fuck—?”

“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.” Ephraim stood alongside the driver’s window. He managed a conciliatory smile.

“Suppose I’d gone into a skid—what then? Suppose the car behind me couldn’t stop?”

Ephraim drew in a bit, allowing those other cars, which fortunately hadn’t been any nearer, to move out round him. For some reason he closed his umbrella, as if wet hair and face might emphasize his penitence. “Yes. I’m sorry.” He couldn’t think what else to say.

“You tired of living, then?” The fellow seemed relentless.

“Possibly.”

It all happened at a great speed. Suddenly the man was out of his car, with one large hand grasping the collar of Ephraim’s raincoat. “Right, so it’s a joke, is it?” He was probably
en route
to a building site. He wore torn jeans and scuffed boots and his grey jumper could now be seen to be cement-smeared.

It was also inevitable he should be about three inches taller than Ephraim. Let alone some twenty years younger.

Ephraim thought: All right, let him take a swing, I don’t care. He had a fleeting image of that cup he’d won all those many years ago—saw it sitting on the mantelpiece in one of their former houses. In London it had got relegated to a cupboard. Here, he believed, it was still in one of the packing boxes.

“No, it isn’t a joke. And I’ve said I’m sorry. And, anyhow, I don’t see why cars should always be given preference over pedestrians.”

As a general maxim this might have been perfectly valid but he realized that in the present context it didn’t quite fit.

“Because they’re fucking well bigger than you are.”