Starting Over (12 page)

Ruby was down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor, her hair tied back with an elastic band. She glanced up at me and grinned at the flowers, then went back to her scrubbing. I could see Rufus in the back garden, emptying a rubbish sack into a recycling bin. Crumpled beer cans clattered down. When it was full he carried the recycling bin into the kitchen, and said to his sister, ‘Come and help me with this, Rube.’

Our children melted away.

I placed the flowers on the kitchen table. ‘Lara? I got these for you.’

She picked up a flower and absent-mindedly pulled a clump of dried mud from its stem. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘That’s okay,’ I said, and wondered if I should sit down, or just leave her alone for a bit now that I had given her the flowers. But then she began to speak before I could decide, so I just stood there listening.

‘There comes a moment when you don’t recognise them,’ she said, and she still didn’t look up, so it was as if she was addressing the dirt-encrusted rose in her hand rather than me. ‘At the start, you have all this unconditional love. It’s as if you never knew you had that kind of love inside you, that you were capable of feeling that strongly, that deeply. That much love.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. I thought it was right for me to say something at this point.

‘But then it changes,’ Lara said, ignoring me. ‘It changes almost without you noticing that it’s changed. Suddenly it feels like the connection to the past has been broken. It’s as brutal as that. As final as that. You just don’t recognise them any more. It’s as if they are a different person – I mean, quite literally someone else. And that’s the big problem.’ She held the rose in both hands. A pinprick of deeper red welled on her thumb where a thorn had pierced her. ‘How do you keep loving someone when they are no longer the same person?’ she said. ‘It’s not that you don’t
love
them. It’s worse than that. You don’t even
know
them.’

I pulled up a chair and sat down.

‘Lara, they grow out of it,’ I said. ‘I know it’s tough – and I know exactly what you mean. You love them as babies, and you love them as children, but suddenly it gets harder to love them when they become teenagers and start driving you nuts. But – and this is what I really believe – they are
still the same child that you loved. That baby, that toddler, that ten-year-old – they are still in there somewhere. And you get them back. You really do. You get the mad years out of the way and then you get them back.’

She put down the rose and looked at the blood on her thumb.

‘Lara?’

And now she looked up at me.

‘Not the kids,’ she said. ‘I mean you, George. I’m talking about you. Do you want to help bring up these kids? Or do you want to be one?’

I shook my head.

Face burning. Heart pounding. Eyes stinging with self-pity and shame. I fought the urge to say, I got a tattoo for you.

‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘It’s really not fair.’ She stared at me as I got up from the table and backed out of the kitchen.
‘It’s not fair!’

And I could still feel her eyes on me as the front door of our home slammed behind me.

She had made me a bed on the sofa.

The sofa of shame.

A makeshift bed where I would toss and turn and atone for my sins. I shook my head and almost laughed.

Lara walked into the room.

‘Have we got a guest?’ I said, nodding at the sofa of shame.

She stopped and stared at me, the sofa between us. ‘Don’t you get it yet?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be around you right now.’

I felt the self-pity swell and rise and break the banks.

‘After all I’ve been through,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, ‘after all you’ve put me through. It was
bad enough when you were encouraging Rufus to drop out of school.’

‘I didn’t –’

‘You were the one who was always banging on at them about getting an education. Having the chances that you never had.’

‘He will get an education if he does stand-up,’ I insisted. ‘It’s the University of Life.’

‘The University of Life?’ she said. ‘Telling jokes to a bunch of drunken bums in some grotty East End pub? That’s not the University of Life. It’s not even a polytechnic.’ A derisive snort. ‘And it was bad enough when you were encouraging Ruby to think she was some kind of eco-loony.’

‘She already –’

‘But this is
our home
, George. This is where we’ve raised our children. This is where we live our lives. Do you remember how excited we were when we moved in? Do you remember how happy we were, and how worried about if we could really afford it? Do you remember any of that?’

Of course I did. I remembered all of it.

‘This is our home, George,’ she said, and I saw how tired she was – tired of clearing up somebody else’s mess, tired of me, tired of everything. ‘Our home,’ she said. ‘And look what you did to it.’

We looked at it together. The four of us had done a good job of clearing up. But there were still ugly black cigarette burns on the carpet. Assorted stains had not quite come out of the furnishings. And out the window I could see where the flowerbeds had been trampled flat by people having sex, throwing up or passing out. Or perhaps just destroyed for fun. We had worked hard, all four of us. But it was not the same. And it would probably never be the same.

‘So if you have to sleep down here for a bit,’ Lara said, ‘then I reckon you’re getting off lightly.’

That brought my resentment – which had been simmering quietly as I stirred it with a generous serving of guilt – back to the boil.

‘After all I’ve been through, I’m expected to camp out in my own house,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ Lara said, exhaling a sigh full of such exhaustion that it chilled me. ‘You take the bed. I’ll have the sofa.’

‘You love me,’ I said, and it sounded like I was accusing her of something.

She hung her head. ‘I love the memory of you,’ she said. ‘I love the way you were. Kind. Strong. Responsible.’ She looked back up, her eyes roving, and I could see that she was sneering at the length of my hair. Bloody cheek.

‘I loved you when you were a real man,’ she said. ‘Not just one more pathetic, middle-aged
boy.
Did you get a Porsche yet? Isn’t that that happens with you lot? Shouldn’t you start fancying a Porsche about now?’

‘A Porsche?’ I said. ‘That’s not a bad idea. I can see myself in a Porsche.’ I shook my head. ‘Is that what you think this is – some kind of mid-life crisis? I don’t want a bloody sports car. I don’t want to roger some WAG.’ I reached across the sofa of shame and took her little hands in mine. ‘I just want to
live
, Lara. I just want to remember what really matters. I feel like all the juice has been sucked out of my life. And I want the juice back.’

She pulled her hands away.

‘Don’t worry about juice,’ she said. ‘Worry about the lager stains on our bedroom floor. Worry about your children. Worry about our home.’ She picked up the pillow from the sofa of shame and threw it at me. ‘Just
grow up
, will you?’

I caught the pillow easily. She slumped on to the sofa of shame and covered her face with her hands. Her breathing was suddenly very fast.

‘I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it…’

I put my arm around her and she shoved it off with all the force she could muster. She began tugging at her wedding ring, and when she couldn’t get it off she started cursing.

‘Here,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’ve got one you can have.’

But I couldn’t get mine off either. The band of gold scrunched up against the bony knob of my knuckle and stuck there, pressed into a barricade of flesh. I looked at Lara. She had given up and was just sitting there, one hand pressed against her forehead, her hair hanging down, trying to steady her breathing.

I went to the kitchen, opened the fridge and found a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

I smeared some of it around my knuckle and my wedding ring came off in an instant. I went back into the living room brandishing my ring triumphantly.

‘Ha!’ I cried. ‘Ha!’

Lara looked up. It was the face that I had loved for half of my life. She had never looked as old as she did today and I had never loved her more. Right here, right now. Never loved her more.

She took my wedding ring and looked at it, the yellow and the gold, the wedding ring and the more-or-less butter that had set it free. And she smiled. But it was a smile of such infinite sadness that it made my panic soar. I didn’t want to lose her.

‘But we’re happy, aren’t we? Most of the time? Nearly all the time? We’ve had fun, haven’t we?’

I began to pace the room and she watched me, and it
was etched into every line on her face. More than the stress of my illness. More than the exasperation of living with the new, improved me. And more than the raging bitterness that she felt at having her home smashed up by a bunch of morons.

She surrendered. She had had enough. She was giving up on me.

‘Yes, George,’ she said. ‘It’s been fun.’

Mention of the
f
-word encouraged me to pick up the pillow from the sofa of shame and throw it at her.

I imagined that she would throw it back again, laughing this time, and soon we would be having a happy pillow fight and end up rolling around on the floor like a couple of pups.

But the edge of the pillow must have caught her in the eye, because she recoiled, crying with pain.

‘Oh Jesus, Lara, I’m so sorry,’ I said, falling on my knees before her as she pressed her fingertips against her wounded eye and then examined them for blood.

‘Yes, you’re always sorry,’ she said, squinting at me with her good eye. ‘And you always have so much to be sorry about.’ She waved me away. ‘Leave me alone. Can you just do that for a while?
Just please leave me alone, please.
’

I took back my wedding ring.

‘For how long?’ I said.

‘How long?’ she said, and it was as if I had asked her to unravel the secrets of the universe.

I nodded. ‘Like – how long?’

She shrugged.

‘A few days? Until things get better? I don’t know. Can’t you get a room or something?’ Get a room? Get a room?

I began wiping the butter off the third finger of my left hand.

Where was I going to get a room?

There were boys playing football in the park.

Hoodies for goalposts. Laughter and shouts and goal celebrations they had seen on television. A medley of club shirts on either side, unlikely allies, Liverpool and Arsenal and Real Madrid against Manchester United and Chelsea and Barcelona.

The dog walkers were giving them a wide berth, although for all their noise they were harmless. In their teens but only just, and still young enough to think that one day they would replay these same celebrations before an audience of billions. Still young enough to dream, or to kid themselves, or whatever you call it.

An overstruck pass brought jeers and the ball was suddenly coming my way. I half-turned, killed it on the top of my thigh and volleyed it back before it touched the ground. Some of the boys turned to each other and conferred. And it turned out that one side was a man short, and they asked me if I wanted a game.

So I shyly trotted on to the field of play, and soon I was dreaming too –
Me, me, over here, over here!!
Hanging on the wing, holding out my palms, to show that I was free.
Yes! I’m free!
My T-shirt soaked with sweat, the blood pumping and an exquisite ache in the back of my legs.
I’m free!

It was a high-scoring game, although nobody seemed to be counting, and a match apparently without half-time or end. But eventually a midfield maestro from Real Madrid strolled off and collected his bike, saying his mum was waiting.
The numbers on each side began to dwindle as we got closer to teatime.

A few of us played on for hours yet, booting the ball between those makeshift goalposts, our limbs aching and our voices hoarse and our new hearts pounding, giddy with happiness in the fast-fading light.

I awoke with music in my head.

It was coming from downstairs. Music that I knew. I could hear my mum singing along with the radio, doing a duet with Boy George as she prepared breakfast. There was the smell of frying bacon and the blaze of a summer’s day beyond my bedroom curtains. Everything was as it had been long before. I had slept late again.

I sat up in bed and discovered that I was still wearing my jeans. There was confetti in the bed – no, not confetti but pieces of paper that had fallen out of my pockets.

Charlotte
and a telephone number scrawled on a napkin.
Sara
and a number scribbled on a matchbox from a bar I didn’t remember.
Tomoko
and an email address carefully printed on the back of a business card.

I scratched my head.

Who were these people?

My mouth felt like a plumber’s rag, and I rolled out of bed with a moan, stood up and stared at myself in the mirror.
My scar began to throb the moment it caught my eye, as if bidding me good morning.

My room was a mess. There were clothes strewn all over the floor, stacks of books everywhere, some fossilised pizza in a box the size of a vinyl LP. My mum had placed a stack of fresh washing on a chair. Order among the chaos. I picked up a shirt from the clean pile, pulled it on and buttoned it up. The scar settled down.

Out in the garden, my father was talking to Winston, and I could hear their soft, conspiratorial laughter and the swish of Winston’s net as it was dragged through the water. I went to the window.

It was a beautiful day. Shirtless and lean and tanned, my dad swaggered around his back garden like a Mediterranean beach bum on the pull for Scandinavian tourists. He nodded and chuckled with Winston, the small shining rectangle of turquoise water between them. My dad had worked all his life to own that little swimming pool.

I staggered on the spot, my head all woozy. Where was I? Oh yes.

I was home.

I went downstairs and my mum smiled at me from the cooker. ‘You’re missing this beautiful day,’ she said, and began loading a plate with bacon, scrambled eggs and toast. At the open window another golden oldie played on the radio, ‘Come On Eileen’, tinny and perfect.

Everything was eerily as it was before. My mum at the cooker. Dexy’s Midnight Runners on the radio. Me sitting there with a hangover and a big appetite and vague memories of yesterday’s girls. All it needed for this day to feel like all the days of my youth was my dad to come in, moaning about some domestic disappointment.

He barged through the back door on cue. ‘That filter’s gone again,’ he said, and then he stood there with my mum and they both watched me as I wolfed down my breakfast. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe that I was back. I couldn’t quite believe it myself. My mum took my plate and began to refill it.

‘Got to keep your strength up,’ she said, giving me a quick, meaningful look. ‘You’ll be all right. You and Lara. You’ll be fine. You’re just going through a rough patch. Everybody goes through a rough patch every now and then.’

My dad snorted, settling himself opposite me, armed only with the
Daily Express.
‘A rough patch,’ he said. ‘I’ve been going through a rough patch for forty-five years.’

‘Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say, George,’ my mum frowned. He was called George too. ‘And put a shirt on,’ she told him. Then a song came on the radio and she lifted her head with a smile. A heavenly saxophone solo swirled around the room, and my mum waved her wooden spatula as if she was a conductor. It was another song that I knew. I knew all the songs this morning.

‘Oh, I love this one,’ said my mum.

‘“Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty,’ I said. ‘Taken from the album
City to City
, which knocked the soundtrack of
Saturday Night Fever
from the top of the Billboard 100.’

My mum began to make tea for everyone. When the middle sax break came in she gestured at the radio with a pint of semi-skimmed.

‘That bit,’ she said. ‘That’s a good bit.’

‘The famous saxophone solo,’ I said, ‘played by top-flight session musician, Raphael Ravenscroft.’

‘Aren’t you clever, Georgie?’ My mum smiled.

My dad didn’t look up from the
Daily Express.
‘Knowing
a lot about pop music,’ he sighed. ‘There’s a lot of money in that racket.’

I ignored him. ‘Funnily enough, Mum, although it is one of the most famous singles of all time, “Baker Street” never made it to number one.’

My mum looked stunned at the news.

‘You want a cup of tea, Winston?’ my dad shouted, half turning towards the back door. Out in the garden, still skimming his net across the water, Winston didn’t respond. He was the same age as my parents – cresting seventy – but he seemed much older.

‘Deaf as a bleeding post,’ my dad said.

‘I’ll take him one out,’ my mum said.

‘It’s ironic that the song is named after a famous tube station,’ I said, ‘because at one point Gerry Rafferty earned his living busking on the London underground.’

We were all silent for a while, just listening to ‘Baker Street’ playing on the radio, and alone with our thoughts.

‘I like it, it’s nice,’ said my mum.

‘A very pleasant melody,’ my dad said emphatically, as if that was the last word on the subject.

My mum sugared the tea and placed great steaming mugs on the table before us. She took one out to Winston and placed it by his side as he knelt before the clogged filter. My dad spoke without looking up from his paper.

‘You’ll be wanting a job,’ he said.

‘A job?’ I said, as though it vaguely rang a bell.

He nodded. ‘Paying for your keep,’ he said. ‘You want to pay for your keep, don’t you?’

Then my mum came back. She picked up a shapeless pile of wool and came towards me. I squirmed away, laughing as she held it to my throat like a hangman measuring a noose.
My mum was knitting me something. I think she secretly liked having me back home.

‘Your
hair!
’ she said with appalled delight, slapping my flowing locks with her bad knitting, and I ducked and laughed as the summer blazed, the bacon fried and the big hits kept on coming. My dad just sighed, and rolled his eyes, and buried himself in the
Daily Express.

My daughter looked at me shrewdly.

‘If it’s too much of a drag meeting me at home, you can meet me at school,’ she said. ‘I know she can be a bit of a bitch.’

I tried to look disapproving. ‘Don’t say that, potty mouth. That’s not a nice way to talk. I don’t know what you mean.’

But I knew exactly what she meant. And my treacherous heart secretly thrilled to hear Ruby openly criticise her mother. We were walking through the crowds on Camden High Street. A Range Rover crawled by our side, slowed down by palefaced locals and pierced tourists strolling in the middle of the road. The woman at the wheel began tossing rubbish out of her window. Here it all came: a coffee cup, a plastic bottle, the remains of her lunch, splatting on the road before being lifted by the summer breeze. Some millionaire’s missus in a fifty-grand motor chucking her garbage into the street, as unthinking as a Victorian fishwife emptying the family bedpan.

‘That makes me so bloody angry,’ I said. ‘Wait here.’

‘Oh,
Dad
,’ Ruby groaned, and it followed me into the road. ‘
Daaaaad.
’

But I was on my way, weaving through the crawling traffic, and I collected the coffee cup, the bottle, a half-eaten panini, all of it. Then I carried it across to the Range Rover, reached
in the open window and gently placed it all on the passenger seat. ‘You dropped something,’ I said, and even behind Chanel sunglasses the size of dessert plates, there was no missing the loathing in the woman’s eyes. As I walked back to the pavement there was a smattering of applause from a
Big Issue
seller standing outside the tube station. But Ruby was shaking her head.

‘The earth’s dying,’ she said. ‘You think you can stop that by picking up after some Hampstead housewife?’

‘That’s exactly what I think,’ I said, and she just laughed and took my arm, giving it a squeeze as we fell back in step with the crowds.

‘We recycle our Perrier bottles, and we wave our little banners, and it doesn’t change a thing,’ she said, and sighed with the infinite wisdom of sixteen. ‘We only do it to make ourselves feel better.’

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ I said, and I wondered if she was still coming out to the airport at the weekend.

We wandered into a clothes shop. Rows of T-shirts and denim. A woman approached me with a pair of jeans so worn and frayed that they looked as though they had been dipped in toxic waste. ‘Do you work here?’ she said, and I quickly shook my head. ‘Well, you look as though you work here,’ the woman said. Ruby was quite insulted. I took it as a compliment.

We moved on.

‘I want to go in here,’ I said.

It was one of those independent bookstores that always seemed on the verge of going out of business. I had decided that I wanted to give places like this my custom. And maybe Ruby was right. In the great big scheme of things maybe it didn’t make any real difference. But if you are not part of
the problem you are part of the solution. Or was it the other way round?

There was an intense young man with a wispy beard behind the counter. He looked alarmed when we came in, as if he hadn’t been expecting company. ‘Can I help you guys?’

‘I’m looking for a book,’ I said. ‘
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig.’

He lifted his chin, making a small gesture with his wispy beard. ‘In the back. Under philosophy-slash-spirituality.’

‘Thanks.’

Ruby trailed after me, lazily running her fingers along the spines of the books. It felt more like a library than a bookstore. It was an airless maze, narrow spaces between shelves of books that didn’t appear to have been touched for years. I found philosophy-slash-spirituality and the book I was looking for. I pulled it out and read the first paragraph.

I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of my cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid. When it’s this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, I’m wondering what it’s going to be like in the afternoon.

Wonderful stuff. Freedom. Adventure. The open road. Kerouac on a motorbike. I often felt like that when I was cycling around Primrose Hill. My heart raced at the words, and I could feel my scar pulsing with delight. For those few dreamy moments I was riding pillion with Robert Pirsig, heading towards the Dakotas on a warm summer morning in search of meaning, and truth, and everything, smelling the oil on the hot metal of the motorbike beneath us, my child and I.

I closed the book and turned smiling to look at Ruby, wanting to tell her how great this book was, and that she should definitely read it, and thinking that I might buy two copies, one for my daughter and one for me. And just as I turned I saw her slip two slim green paperbacks into her rucksack.

She caught my eye, gave me a grin and turned away, heading for the door, and I stumbled after her with my paralysed smile, thinking that I must have somehow got it wrong, that this was not what it appeared to be. I still thought that she was going to do the right thing.

‘Cool shop, mate,’ she trilled at the man behind the counter, but he had his back to her as he tore open a cardboard box, and merely grunted a response. A warning bell pinged as Ruby stepped into the street. I hesitated at the counter, stared at his back, and followed my daughter into the street. The door pinged again.

‘Are you nuts?’ I asked her.

She began to walk away. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said. A gang of boys in paint-splattered trousers walked past, all turning to check her out. I stared at them with death in my eyes. They didn’t notice.

I took her arm and pulled her into a shuttered doorway. ‘What did you just do? Come on, Ruby.’

With exaggerated languor, she fished two books halfway out of her bag. Penguin Popular Classics.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

I shook my head. The books were slipped back inside the rucksack. ‘I didn’t even know that you liked Arthur Conan Doyle.’

‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ she said. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. You know. The fun of getting something for nothing. The fun of getting away with it. The fun of being smarter
than they are.’ She raised her eyebrows, which I suddenly realised had been plucked almost out of existence. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.’ Then she placed a palm on my chest. ‘Wait.’

The young man with the beard was standing outside the shop, his beady eyes scanning the crowded street.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ I said.

‘He’s not looking for me, Dad. He’s looking for you.’

And we both stared at the copy of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I still had in my hand. She took my arm and pulled me into the crowds, dragging me quickly away as she chuckled softly to herself.

‘What are you going to do, Daddy?’ she said. ‘You can’t give it back, can you?’

And by then I knew we were probably going to get away with it, and I was confused, and my scar throbbed like it had never done before.

‘They budget for shoplifting,’ Ruby told me as we slid into a booth at Marine Ices. ‘It’s like electricity or water or something. What do you call it? An overhead. To them it’s just a business expense.’

We tucked into elaborate ice cream sundaes and then sat there, happily bloated, not talking much, just watching the crowds thin out as the sun went down over Chalk Farm.

The lights came on in the Roundhouse, all crimson and beautiful. And as the waitress cleared our plates, Ruby chewed her bottom lip until I could see the tooth marks.

‘And when do you think you’ll be coming home?’ my daughter asked me, staring out the window.

‘Soon,’ I said. ‘I’ll be coming home soon.’

I walked her to the bus stop and when she was safely on
her way, waving from the top deck until she couldn’t see me any more, I went to get my bike.