Kiss My Name (21 page)

SIMON – April 2002

              It was a Spring Sunday morning and Will and I were on a windy Formby beach. Since Christmas, I had been promising him that once the weather improved, we would take his new kite over to the beach. I had woken with a banging headache but opened the curtains to a cold, clear day, so wasn’t surprised to hear Will pleading for a trip to the beach as soon as I ventured downstairs. I had managed to delay this inevitable trip for three months, so felt it was time for the kite’s virgin flight. Three hours later, we had managed to get as far as Formby beach, but could we get the bloody thing to fly? Could we heck!

             
I had always been hopeless at anything to do with DIY. In our house, if shelves needed putting up, electrics needed re-wiring or tiles needed grouting, Nicky would be the one who would give it a go. Even when Nicky had been heavily pregnant with Chloe, the year before, she was assembling cots and drilling holes in the nursery walls. Anything practical I was hopeless at. I hadn’t thought these inadequacies would extend to kite flying, but my optimism was misplaced. The failure of our kite to fly in any of its thirty or so attempts was annoying in itself, but the fact that every other parent and child on the beach were joyfully flying their kites, as if it was as easy as walking, only added to the misery.

             
The kite flying fiasco was not lifting my sombre mood. I had been hoping that the fresh air would have lifted my spirits, as I was dealing with the hangover from hell. Over the years, I had come to realise that my opportunities for sexual contact were enhanced by Nicky’s alcohol consumption, so when she suggested we open a second bottle of Sauvignon Blanc whilst watching ‘A Beautiful Mind’, I did nothing to dissuade here. Nicky isn’t the best at maintaining her sobriety once a glass or two of wine hit her pallet, so I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise for me to discover her sleeping soundly shortly after the film finished and two minutes after announcing she was ‘just nipping for a quick wee’. Feeling sorry for myself at missing a sexual opportunity, I stupidly decided to polish off the second bottle myself and now on Formby beach with a kite that wouldn’t fly, eyelids that felt they had been sandpapered and a head that felt like it was balancing a cannonball on it, I was feeling sorry for myself once again. Some kids, in similar circumstances, would stomp their feet and cry, but even at a mere nine years old, Will was a gentleman.

“Don’t worry Dad, if the kite isn’t working, I don’t mind. Would you like to go home and have a coffee?”

It would have been easy just to say ‘yes’, but I didn’t want Will to think I was a quitter.

“Not yet, Will. We need to have a few more tries. This time, if you can run as fast as you can along the beach, when I shout ‘now’, let go and I’m sure this little kite is going to fly like a bird!”

“Dad, you’ve been saying that all day!”

“And this time, Will, I’m going to be right!”

Sixty seconds later, Will was running full pelt along the wide, windy, open sands with a large diamond shaped kite in his left hand. I was trying my damnedest to keep up, but was never the fittest or quickest, so was dropping increasingly further behind.

Whilst he was just in earshot I yelled, “Let it go now, Will, let it go!”

Will let it go and the wind took the kite upwards and for a few seconds I watched in awe, as the kite did patterns in the sky as I tried to catch up. I’m not sure whether there was uneven ground beneath my feet or whether it was just the result of running over a hundred metres for the first time since my school days, but all of a sudden my knees buckled and I collapsed as if a sniper had targeted me from one of the nearby sand dunes.

             
When you fall unceremoniously, you hope you can clamber back on to your feet quickly, dust yourself off and hope no-one noticed. That wasn’t what happened. Formby beach welcomes the Irish sea to its sandy shores every day when the tide rushes in, but when it retreats, it leaves lonely pools of salty water behind. My body decided to keep one such pool company, belly flopping into its cold, crab filled waters. Not wanting the humiliation of drowning in two inches of water, I swiftly flipped over onto my back, just as Will’s kite decided it longed for terra firma and swooped downwards like a pelican that had spotted a school of fish in shallow waters. I didn’t have much time to brace myself. It struck me full on, below my left eye. I knew I was about to pass out and just as I drifted away to another state of consciousness, I remember a sense of panic about leaving my nine year old son stranded alone on a beach.

             
I’m not sure how long I was out for, Will says it felt like hours, but it was probably no more than a few minutes. When I came around, it felt like a scene from ‘The Champ’, Will was on top of my chest, sobbing his little heart out, smeared in my blood. Not really knowing where I was, seeing Will covered in blood, both scared and confused me.

“Oh my God, Will, what have you done to yourself?”

“Dad, it’s not my blood.”

“Whose is it?”

“Yours.”

“Are you OK mate?” said a Liverpudlian male voice.

I looked beyond Will and there were twenty or so faces gathered in a circle around me, as I still lay on my back on the floor. The kite attack started to come back to me.

“I’m fine, just a bump,” I put my hand to my face, to where the pain was emanating from, when I withdrew it, a mass of thick, red blood covered my palm.

“I’d just lie there until the ambulance comes,” another female voice suggested, “you took a hell of a whack.”

“Honestly, I’m fine,” I replied. “It’s daft calling an ambulance for a graze Will, do you want to just get off me, please? Just so I can stand back up?”

“”It doesn’t look like a graze to me mate,” another random onlooker piped up, “you aren’t fit to be left alone with your lad, your face is a bit knackered and you’ve been out cold. Just take it easy, stay there until the paramedics get here.”

“How are they going to get an ambulance onto the beach?”

“That’s not your problem mate, let them work that out. Just have a rest for a few minutes. I know what it’s like with kids, you hardly ever get a few minutes to chill out, just lap it up!”

             
An uncomfortable few minutes passed of lying still, on my back, in a shallow pool of sea water and blood, with Will sitting on my chest, trying to be brave but with panic written all over his little face. It was a great relief to see, out the corner of my eye, an ambulance cautiously approaching along the beach. The paramedics were great, they checked me out, patched my face up, put me in a precautionary neck brace and stretchered me into the back of the ambulance, making sure Will and his kamikaze kite were alongside me. As we drove towards the hospital, I was comforted by the fact that our siren wasn’t blaring. It obviously wasn’t a life or death situation.

“Are you going to be OK, Dad?” Will asked, leaning over my face.

“I’m sure I’m going to be absolutely fine, Will.”

Will started to get a little tearful.

“What’s the matter, son?”

“It was my fault. I didn’t steer the kite properly.”

“Don’t be daft, Will. If I hadn’t been such a fat waste of space, I would never have fallen over and then the kite would never have hit me. It serves me right for being so clumsy and so heavy. I’m going to start a new diet, this minute. No more Mars bars for me!”

Will seemed to calm down a little, sensing I wasn’t just trying to put a brave face on things and my injuries really weren’t all that serious, despite all the blood. I saw him pull another face though, which indicated that he identified another problem.

“Dad.”

“Yes, son.”

“How will we get our car back from the car park?”

“Mum and I will get it later.”

“Does the sea not come in that far?”

I had been explaining to Will about the tides and how the water comes right in at certain times of the day.

“No, we are parked the other side of the sand dunes, our car is perfectly safe.”

“Good...what about parking costs? We only paid for two hours.”

“Will, stop stressing, if we get a ticket, I will write the boss of the car park a letter, explaining what happened and I’ll send him some photos of my face. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Dad.”

“What?” I snapped back a little too irritably, none of this was Will’s fault.

“You look like something out of a horror movie!”

“When have you been watching horror movies?”

“Around at Harry Moulton’s!”

Harry was Will’s friend from up the road. He was thirteen, four years older than Will.

“Well, I shall be telling Harry’s Mum and Dad that you are only nine and you should not be watching horror films.”

“I’m an old nine though, Dad. I keep hearing you say that, ‘Will’s an old nine’.”

“You’ll be wanting to drink beer next year too, I suppose?”

“Not next year, Dad. Wine next year, beer the year after!”

We both smiled, one thing was for certain, Will was growing up fast.

SIMON – April 2002

             
Will and I were sat in Casualty at Southport and District General Hospital. We were in a tiny bay along with a friendly, young male nurse who was putting a fresh dressing on the cut just below my left eye.

“That looks really nasty, Mr.Strong. How on earth did you do that? Did this little fella clock you one with a knuckleduster?”

“No, I was on the Pamplona bull run and one of the bulls was about to spear a young, beautiful University student, so I put my head down and charged at it. You think I look bad, you should see the state of the bull!”

“Good of the Spanish authorities to fly you back to Southport!”

“Oh no, it turns out the girl I saved was the daughter of a Russian billionaire, so he arranged for me to be flown back in one of his private jets and then a limousine drove me over from Manchester Airport to here.”

Sometimes if you tell a lie with a straight face, even if the lie is so ridiculous it could not possibly be true, people are unsure whether to believe you or not. The nurse decided to seek the truth from a more reliable source.

“Is that really what happened to your Dad?”

Will decided to play along at first.

“Yes.”

“Honestly, swear on your Dad’s life?”

Children are cajoled into truth by threatening their family with death if they lie.

“No, not really a kite hit him in the face!”

“Ouch. That kite?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Mr.Strong may I suggest you take up a new hobby! Kite flying obviously doesn’t agree with you.”

“I agree. I think Will here will be getting tiddlywinks next Christmas!”

“Good idea or get him a Playstation, then you can play on it too!”

“Even better!”

“Right, Mr.Strong, that is you all done. That dressing will just keep the wound clean until you are stitched up. The Doctor will be through to the cubicle shortly.”

“Do you think it’ll need many stitches?”

“Quite a few I’d have thought, it’s a deep cut. You’re just lucky Mr.Strong that it didn’t catch you a couple of inches higher, you’d have been in real trouble then. Anyway, Doctor’ll be here shortly, start saving for that Playstation!”

The nurse winked at Will who smiled back at him. He pulled the curtain closed behind him after he left.

“Dad.”

“Yes, Will.”

“Can I have a Playstation?”

“We’ll see.”

“For my birthday, maybe?”

“If you’re good.”

“OK.... Dad?”

“Yes, Will.”

“Why do we have different surnames?”

Will, I’ve told you this before. It’s because your Mum and I have never been able to afford to get married. It doesn’t mean we love each other any less. It just means
window cleaning doesn’t make you a very rich person. Not financially anyway. Rich in lots of other ways.”

Will wasn’t interested in the other ways we were rich, he wanted the surname question answering to his satisfaction.

“Yeh, but Mum is Nicola Moyes, you are Simon Strong, Chloe is Chloe Strong but I am Will McLaren. Why is my name different?”

“You have a unique name because you are unique.”

“What does ‘unique’ mean?”

“The only one of its kind.”

“Is Chloe not unique then?”

“Of course she is!”

“Then why is she Chloe Strong then? That’s the same as you.”

I sighed. Casualty didn’t seem to be the appropriate place to be having this discussion, nor did I seem to be the appropriate person.

“Will, maybe this is something your Mum needs to explain to you. You’re nearly ten, I think now would be a good time for her to tell you.”

“Why can’t you explain it to me?”

“I might get it wrong and if I do, your Mum might shout at me!”

“Does it have something to do with the birds and the bees?”

“Yes, Will, it does.”

“I know about the birds and the bees.”

“You do?”

“I do. I know everything.”

“When did your Mum tell you about the birds and the bees then? She didn’t tell me that she was telling you.”

“Mum didn’t tell me. Harry Moulton did.”

If you were going to select a thirteen year old child to tell your own child about the birds and the bees, Harry Moulton would not be first pick. He was, what’s known in the trade as a cocky know-all.

“I should have guessed! What did he tell you, Will? Do you know how babies are made?”

“Sort of, I think.”

“OK, hit me with it.”

“By a man and a lady, who love each other, having sex.”

That sounded like a promising start.

“And what’s sex? Kissing?”

“No, Dad, sex is when a man puts his thingie into the lady’s furry line.”

“What’s a furry line?”

Will became a little coy and embarrassed.

“Dad! You know! The furry line is what ladies have here,” he pointed between his legs, “men have a willy but women don’t. They just have a line. Ladies ones go furry.”

“OK.”

“Do you not know this, Dad?”

“I did, but I forget. So how does the baby get made then?”

“Men have tiny, tiny little babies in their thingy and when it goes into the line, there’s water in there and all the little babies jump into the water and start swimming.”

“How do they know how to swim?”

“They just know.”

“Do they not have to wear tiny armbands?”

“No, don’t be silly, they just know how to swim, like dogs do. They probably do doggy paddle.”

“Right. So where do they doggy paddle to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if they just swim in the water, how does that make a big baby?”

“They don’t just swim, they swim to an egg. Ladies keep an egg, like a bird’s egg, inside the line and the first baby that gets to the egg swims into it and then that baby grows bigger in the egg. The egg has a tube in it to feed the baby, so if the Mum eats chocolate, the baby eats chocolate too.”

“And when it’s ready does the baby come out of its Mummy’s tummy?”

“No! Of course not! The baby keeps growing in the egg until it gets too big for the egg and then it hatches and when it hatches, it swims back along the water and out the line.”

“Thanks for reminding me, Will. What happens to all the other little babies, the ones that don’t grow?”

“Hmmm, I’m not sure. Maybe they just stay swimming in the swimming pool.”

“Got yer.”

“So why am I Will McLaren then and you are Simon Strong? Are you not really my Dad?”

I knew one day Will would ask me that question. I had always dreaded it being asked. I had given a lot of thought to how I would answer, but, put on the spot, I just played it safe.

“Will, when we get home, have a little chat with your Mum about everything to do with the birds and the bees. Harry Moulton has done a very good job, but I don’t think he has managed to get everything right and your Mum will be much better than I would at explaining properly. Whatever your Mum tells you though, Will, I will always, always be your Dad, OK?”

“OK. I wouldn’t want another Dad. No other Dad would be as good as you.”

I started to well up a little.

“Thanks, Will. Anyway, I just told you, didn’t I? We may have different surnames, but I am your Dad and always will be.”