Lessons for a Sunday Father (41 page)

I want to call Harry. I want to call him now, this minute. I want to go knocking at his door, crying my eyes out and saying, “Dad, that big boy pushed me over—go and get him back.” I don’t want to deal with this on my own. I don’t want to deal with it, full stop. Then I think of Ella. I look at my watch. In twenty minutes or so, there’ll be the toot-toot of her horn and she’ll pull up outside. I wonder if she’d mind closing the hatch and cuddling me in the dark of the back of the van. We’d be surrounded by sandwiches and crisps and cakes and people would be banging on the hatch demanding their lunch. But we would just stand there, holding each other, her eyes shining in the half-dark, her cheek soft against mine. Twenty minutes. I don’t want that Chris still here when she comes.

* * *

I nod slowly.

“You’re right. Give the old man my best.”

I sense his surprise at my change of tone, but he’s still standing there not leaving.

“Bye then.” I smile and reach for the phone to show that our pleasant conversation is now terminated. “Great talking to you. Bye.”

Dad’s going to lose his job. Mum says it’s not his fault but the business is being sold and the new owners want to have someone else instead of him. She says that but none of the others are going except for Harry and he’s old anyway, so it’s only Dad who’s been sacked. He’s always messing things up. Now we won’t have any money for anything.

Mum says I should go round and see him, see his flat and everything, she says, “Go and see him, Nat, even if only for an hour or two. He’s had a tough time recently, what with Harry being so ill and First Glass being sold. You know it’d mean such a lot to him.”

Yeah, like he’s hardly managing to get along without me. Rosie says they have a brilliant time on Sundays and Dad’s girlfriend shows her how to do painting and make cakes and girl stuff like that. So they’ll really be wanting me along. I don’t want to make stupid cakes in any case. We have to in home economics class at school and that’s bad enough, I’m not doing it on the weekends as well. The other night, Cassie was round seeing Mum and she was saying about going to Dad’s flat as well. Cassie’s pretty cool though. So I dunno. Maybe I should check out Rosie’s room. See this stupid painting that his
girlfriend
did. And make sure he’s not spoiling Rosie or anything. He doesn’t know about stuff like that.

Anyway, I’ll only go if
she’s
not going to be there.

There’s a knock on my bedroom door. Rosie’s knock—three little taps—not Mum’s.

“What?”

“Natty?”

“Yeah?”

The door opens a tiny bit and her hand waves at me through the gap.

“Let me come in.”

“There’s not an elephant leaning against the door on this side, Rozza. No-one’s stopping you.”

She comes in and walks placing one foot really carefully just in front of the other, holding her arms out to balance like she’s on a tightrope.

“Don’t look down or you’ll fall off, kiddo.”

“I’m walking across the Grand Canyon,” she says. “It’s over one and a half kilometers to the bottom.”

“Then you definitely don’t want to look down.”

“Sssh! You’ll break my concentration.”

I blow a big raspberry at her.

“I never asked for the Grand Canyon to be in my room.”

She does the last few steps in a little run, then dives for my bed, and I clap like crazy.

“She’s done it! And this is extraordinary, ladies and gentlemen, the atmosphere here at the Grand Canyon has been nail-bitingly tense, but this young wire-walker from Ashford in England has wowed the world with her incredible feats of daring …” I hold my pen under her chin like a mic. “Tell us, Rosie, what is your secret? Is it true you owe it all to your big brother, your personal trainer and manager?”

She punches me on the arm.

“No, Natty!”

She lays back on the bed and points her feet at the ceiling then starts bicycling in the air.

“Rozza?”

“What?”

“You still going to Dad’s flat on Saturday night?”

“Yes. He said we could have pizza.”

“Is it just you and him? Like, I mean, is he having anyone else round?”

“He might be.”

“You don’t know, do you? You don’t know
anything!”

“I do know. I do so. Ella and Jamie come most Saturdays and we all have breakfast on Sunday morning and Dad gets up and cooks it and I have mushrooms on toast. Or beans. Because I’m vegetarian.”

“Yeah? Like so not. You had chicken nuggets only last week and I saw you eating fish fingers yesterday.”

“Fish doesn’t count. And nor does nuggets.”

* * *

Who the hell is Jamie? I’m not asking Rosie. Bet I can get her to tell me though.

“Well, if you and Dad and Ella and Jamie are all going to be there, doesn’t sound like there’s a whole lot of room for anyone else. I mean, this
Jamie—
“

Rosie stops bicycling and stands up.

“You’re being horrible again. You said you’d come and see the painting on my bedroom wall and now you’re trying to sneak out of it, but I don’t care and I’m going to eat your share of the pizza as well as mine.”

She stomps across the room to the door.

“Oi, Rozza!”

“What?”

“You just fell down the Grand Canyon.”

There goes my mobile again. It’s been non-stop today.

“Yup?”

“Scotty?” It’s Harry.

“Hello, mate. Not ready for your deathbed yet then?”

“Still struggling on. They’ll have to knock me over the head with a mallet if they want to get rid of me. Thought you’d forgotten me. Been busy, has it?”

“Yeah, well, you know. That lot couldn’t tie their own shoelaces if I wasn’t there keeping an eye on them.”

“Maureen said you were probably up to your eyes, and that’s why you hadn’t been round.”

“Hang on a sec. That’s not it. I’ve phoned at least three times, but Maureen said you were having a nap or were out on your allotment. And I didn’t come to see you ‘cause Chris said you’d been ordered not even to think about work and you could do without the stress.”

“I see.”

“This sell-off, Harry? It is
your
idea, right?”

“Come off it. You know me—if it was up to me, they’d have to prise my cutter out my hand when I’m laying in my coffin.”

“Yeah, true—but your box will wait, you don’t have to rush.”

I
knew
it wasn’t his idea. Now what?

“Still, it’s probably best, eh? You don’t need the agg. of all that.” Why am I trying to talk him into it? Shut up, Scott. Just shut the fuck up. “And you’ve got your bowls to stop you getting up to mischief. And your allotment.”

“Scott. Do me a favour, will you?”

“Course. Anything. Name it.”

“Come and see me. Not at home. At the allotment.”

I’ve not been since last summer. Then Harry was falling over tomatoes—great fat ones that tasted of, well, tomato—which is something of a rarity nowadays. And courgettes. I took some home for Gail to cook. And runner beans, hundreds of them it looked like, hanging off these bamboo wigwams like dangly green earrings. Early potatoes, damp and sticky with soil. Lettuces with frilly leaves like the can-can petticoats in that awful show I saw in Margate one time. That was last summer, before my life became this thrilling rollercoaster ride, up and down, my stomach lurching into my mouth one minute, then down into my boots the next.

We fix on tomorrow morning. Harry’s to keep active, the consultant says. Easy on the stress but no becoming a couch potato. He’s been put on a diet and he’s to take exercise. Gardening gets the thumbs-up.

It is a fresh day, sunny but cold, with snapping gusts of wind from the east. I clang the metal gate closed and make my way in a succession of right angles across to where I see Harry stooping in among his beds. He is wearing a pair of old black gumboots and a brown jumper with holes in the elbows.

“Ooh-arr,” I do my daftest country accent. “'Ow goes it, ‘arry-lad?” He smiles and claps me on the back.

“Weeds and slugs. My two great enemies. Whatever I do, they just keep coming.”

“Need a hand?” Course, what I know about gardening could be written on the point of a toothpick. Can’t tell a weed from a prize cabbage.

“You could get the barrow from the shed. It’s open.” He points to a small shed at the far end of his patch. “And my other shovel. The old one.”

We begin moving a mound of soil from one corner of the allotment to another bed near the middle for some reason. It is the kind of pointless thing gardeners seem to like doing.

“Will you move it all back tomorrow?”

“Cheeky so-and-so.” He taps the side of his head. “It’s all in here, my son, all part of the plan.”

And, although it’s true I can barely tell one end of a rake from the other and I’m certainly not as fit as I once was, it’s kind of fun, pottering about on the allotment with old Harry. Like making mud pies or messing around in the woods or on the gravel heaps when I was a kid—getting grubby and being out in the fresh air and not feeling like you’re supposed to be somewhere else. I
am
supposed to be somewhere else, of course, but Lee and Martin and Gary and Denise are all in today and if they can’t handle most things by now between them then God help them when they come to be working for the new lot. They won’t know what’s hit them. A big company’s not going to be as easygoing as me and Harry, that’s for sure. Besides, it’s not my problem any more.

“I’m glad you came,” says Harry. “I wanted to have a word here—not at home, you know.”

He means away from Chris, away from Maureen even, but he won’t say it.

“Course.” I plunge the spade deep into the soil. “'bout time I did some real work for a change anyhow.”

He stands astride one of the narrow beds and bends down to pull up some carrots, one by one. I’m not sure exactly what he wants to say, but whatever it is, he’s finding it tricky. He’s as bad as I am. Worse even. I feel a sudden rush of—what?—something like, no, it sounds bloody daft. Well, don’t tell anyone, but sort of affection, as if, just for a second, our positions were reversed and he’s my son, standing there struggling, not knowing what to say. It’s so rare for me to be the one who’s not at a loss for words that I figure I should help him out a bit.

“Harry. About the business. It
is
OK, you know. Chris told me I’ll not be needed. I’ll manage. I can turn my hand to anything.” I’m not half as confident as I sound. I can’t just do anything—I need to earn decent dosh. Most of what I take home goes straight to Gail, aside from enough for rent and bills and to take Rosie out. It’s tight enough as it is. I want to take Ella on holiday—she says there’s a place in Ireland where you can even swim with a dolphin—or at least out to a fancy restaurant for dinner once in a blue moon, give her a chance to dress up a bit. She could do with a treat.

“If I’d had a whiff of that condition at the beginning, I’d never have let him go ahead with it.”

“It’s no sweat. Honestly. I should have been moving on anyhow. I can’t be a sad old bugger like you, stuck in the same firm for forty years, can I?” He laughs and looks down at the carrots in his hand, rubs the soil off with his finger and thumb.

“I’ve come to a decision,” he says. “About the money.”

“It’s OK. Chris told me. Three months’ pay. It’s all right.”

“Shut up a minute. It is
not
all right and it’s
not
up to him. He should
never
have said that, it was totally out of order!” He’s practically shouting now.

“Keep calm. Watch your blood pressure. Come on, sit down for a sec.”

He lowers himself onto one of the grass paths at the edge. I’m in my not-so-crap trousers because I’ve got customer calls to do later, so I squat next to him.

“If none of
this
had happened,” he strikes his chest, “I’d have gradually taken a back seat anyway and made you a proper partner in the business.”

“Harry, I—”

“No, hang on. I should have done it years ago. Let’s face it, you’ve been running the place for years. Yes, you have—I know you like to make out I’m still in charge but any fool could see through that in two minutes.”

“But I never—”

“Will you shut up?”

“Yes, Boss.”

“And then when I died—”

“Who’s talking about dying all of a sudden? The doctor said—”

“I’m saying
when I went,
you’d have got the business—with a share in the profits for Maureen, of course, and a bit to go to Chris too. But it would have been yours.”

There is a silence. I don’t know what to say. I never knew all this. I want to say thank you, thank you for thinking of it for even a second, even though it won’t happen now. I want to say these things but I can’t speak.

“But, because of
this
—” He strikes his chest again. It makes me think of King Kong in that old film, beating his chest, towering over the jungle. But this is Harry, a man old before his time, sitting on a grass path beside
his
patch, his beloved allotment with its funny little beds of fruit and vegetables. He’s still trying to be strong, though, proud—on his own territory now, in charge again. “Because of this, my family …” He pauses and I know he wishes he’d chosen different words, not the f-word, the one that excludes me. “Maureen and Chris have made me see I’ve got to have a decent nest egg for my retirement.”

“They’re right. You have.”

“Still, I may be old and getting feeble, but I’ll not be bullied. You’re to have a share of the money from the sale.”

“I don’t want it. You may need it. What if you get sick or something?”

“There’ll be enough. I’m not arguing with you, so save your breath. I’ve made up my mind.”

My dad says he’s going to be a company director. What he’s going to do is sell his car and have a van instead and it’s going to have his name painted on the side and he’ll be the boss. Only there won’t be anyone else for him to be the boss of because it’s just him, but he’ll still be the boss and that’s what matters. He says it was all Ella’s idea and if it doesn’t work out she’s going to be in big trouble and he’ll have to tickle her to death.