Tom Houghton (25 page)

‘Tom, hi,' he said, walking into my dressing room with his left hand outstretched. ‘I have to say, you're nothing at all like I thought you would be.'

I shook his hand awkwardly, hoping to mask my confusion. Had I met him before? My mind raced through a thousand performances, and triple that number of drunken nights.

Lexi looked on bemusedly but said nothing.

‘I'm sorry, what I meant to say was that Lexi has said so much about you and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but anyway it's a pleasure to meet her father after all this time, I –'

‘No, really,' escaped from my mouth without a hint of humour.

‘Ah Tom, not everyone's here to gush pathetically so don't become a parody, for fuck's sake. Dad, this is my, um, boss, Eddie. Eddie, meet Tom Houghton.'

Oh, he wasn't my type at all. All tall and wiry, freckly-faced, a hint of auburn among his brown hair. Long fingers, dressed like a private school boy confined to the stand on game day, rounded accent and pink, puckered lips.

‘I hope you don't mind if I tag along to dinner,' he said. ‘I do hope I'm not imposing.'

I looked at Lexi, who merely pressed her lips together.

‘It'd be my shout, I'd insist,' Eddie added.

‘Well . . .' I said breathlessly, ‘I suppose if my daughter says it's all right then it's all right by me.'

Presumptuously, he'd made a late reservation at a fine-dining restaurant just down the road, one famous for its after-theatre menu. One of the wait staff recognised me and complimented me on my Martha, then the maître d' sat us in one of the (apparently) sought-after booths at the back of the room. Eddie suggested we order champagne but I knew this would set me off on the wrong road, so suggested instead we begin with a cocktail, which I insisted I would pay for, though as it transpired Eddie paid for everything surreptitiously.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom before the drinks arrived and stood staring at myself in the dimly lit, designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life bathroom. Checking that the room was empty, I said aloud to my reflection: ‘Tonight is about Lexi. You will not talk about yourself. You will
not
talk about yourself.'

Back at the table, the drinks were being served and I took a slurp of my kamikaze. It tasted good and strong.

‘How's work?' I said at the same time as Lexi asked: ‘How's Lana?'

‘You first, my lovely,' I encouraged her. ‘News of home can wait, it's going nowhere fast. I want to hear all about your chaotic London life.'

Lexi and Eddie clearly did not share a typical boss–employee relationship. I thought they might be lovers, or at least, might once have been. She touched him on the shoulder affectionately whenever he qualified one of her statements, even ruffled his hair when he said something stupid (though I'd missed it). I was pleased that, once on a roll, Lexi had no trouble talking about herself, telling me of all the places in Europe she'd been since she arrived, many of which I'd barely even heard. She worked to travel, reminding me so much of the younger Hanna that I knew the two of them would one day be fast friends. She'd managed to get two promotions at the sales company and had only recently started working with Eddie – always with, never
for
– a crack team employed to deal with the prestige clients. Eddie chimed in effortlessly, as though he was a boyfriend here to charm the visiting out-of-town businessman dad. It was working. He was older than Lexi, but furiously intelligent, clearly very adept at navigating his way through the corporate world when I would have been in my red hood marching straight into the jaws of a hungry wolf. I admired that skill, and the way he let Lexi be herself without any hint of hierarchy. She was clearly in very good hands (and my how long those fingers were).

We got to talking of Lana's condition – stable but infuriatingly vague. I found myself lying and telling Lexi she asked after her on many occasions when it seemed, to me at least, that Lexi's existence was one of the things that had definitely been erased by my mother's latest turn. Lexi hinted she should return home to be with Lana and I reached across the table to physically slap her hand.

‘That would be throwing your life away for a life that's already been thrown,' I said, and Eddie raised his glass (we were on to wine) to salute my wisdom.

I asked Lexi about her mother, though hearing about that wretch made me want to retch. I knew it was the right thing to do and had silently kept reminding myself to make tonight about Lexi and stop with the predictable lambasting of her mother. Bouts of rehab, another declaration of bankruptcy, a new boyfriend, sobriety, job helping disadvantaged youth, theft and drugs and the spiral (ah-ha!) was in freefall all over again.

While we were talking of Lexi and her mother, it was Eddie who most surprised me. He had a sensitivity not common in men, and a forthright matter-of-factness I found refreshing. He was unafraid to express his view, regardless of how it may have come across. And this directness was also turned to me on numerous occasions throughout.

‘So tell me, Tom, why did you ever have a child with the woman in the first place? I mean, what were you thinking, if you were thinking at all?' and ‘But surely, if you knew you wanted to be an actor your whole life, you knew that you would never have the chance to be a decent full-time parent? Don't you need a licence to own a dog these days? Yet any pair of fuckwits can rub funnies and create a child and to hell with what that means for the poor kid's future.'

These weren't as accusatory as they might sound, and I responded with poise.

‘Lexi knows about my confusion in those days, my reticence to be who I knew I really was. I was hiding behind others, afraid to let too many people in. And I suppose I'm still a bit like that – even with you, wouldn't you say, Lexi?'

‘We love each other but we don't really know each other. You're the gay man who left my mother to a drug-fucked existence and I'm the thing that reminds you of a truth you weren't prepared to embrace, back in the day. I'd say we've found a medium, happy or otherwise.'

‘But don't you want more from each other?' Eddie pressed. ‘I love Lexi more than anyone else I've met and you seem like a bit of an enigma, Tom. Drop all the acting shit and beneath that there's a man who has a story to tell. It'd be fascinating.'

He had a discomforting way of maintaining eye contact, the intensity of which was hard to decipher. It may have been that he saw straight through me, or perhaps it was his form of self-protection, or then again, perhaps confident projection.

‘Well, thanks for obliterating my reason for being –'

‘Now, now, don't get precious, we're all friends here.' And with this questionable statement he punched me lightly in the arm. ‘We're all screwed up, it's just that some of us don't pretend we're not.'

No one had ever spoken to me like this. It was shocking and thrilling in equal measures. I didn't know whether to psyche him out or try to kiss him. I kept looking for intimacy between him and Lexi but if they were together, they were doing their best to keep PDAs to a minimum. Despite his verbal cockiness, however, his mannerisms betrayed some sort of nervous energy. The way he constantly fingered his wine glass, then wiped away his smudged prints with a paper napkin. The tearing of the napkin between thumb and forefinger, a slight trembling of his left leg – he was not without his insecurities, I was sure.

The meal, as promised by all the reviews printed inside the menu, was exquisite. The prices matched. It was an evening of which I was proud, an interviewer genuinely interested in the responses to my probing. By its end, I realised that we'd not once mentioned the play, or other plays I'd been in, or famous actors I'd met, or reviews I'd received – for these topics, it seemed, neither my daughter nor her would-be suitor gave a solitary shit.

As they were staying in the same hotel, we agreed to end the evening with a nightcap in the lobby. This time I did put them on my tab. Lexi chose a black coffee, dismissing my concerns she would never sleep, while Eddie introduced me to warm Benedictine. Lexi told me of her plans to move to the company's headquarters in Dubai within a year and promised she would come to see the play again before it finished its run. We agreed to reignite the plan for me to sleep on her couch before I flew back to Australia and Eddie granted her time off work to show me about London. I suggested another round, but Lexi insisted she was tired and Eddie excused himself at the same time. I envied the ease they shared and wondered what their sex would be like. Lexi gave off nothing short of supreme sexual confidence and he would have been complicit. Martha and George, perhaps.

I ordered myself a glass of Hunter Valley Shiraz – for the price of a bottle back home – a guilty treat, but the first sip alone made it worth it. Halfway through the glass, Eddie walked back into the lobby. Assuming he'd forgotten something, I looked about the table where he'd sat.

Before I could say there was nothing here, he eased himself into the chair next to me (where Lexi had been), saying, ‘On second thoughts, I'm not that tired. Mind if I join you for another?'

More of my salary was spent ordering him a glass of the same but it was the least I could do given the meal was probably ten times that amount.

‘Have you ever been married?' I asked, suddenly fearful that Lexi was his office affair and she'd throw her life away on a man constantly promising, though never intending, to leave his chaste and wealthy wife.

‘Ah, no,' he said into the bulb of his glass, which made me suspect that, though he had no wife, Lexi was no more than his mistress.

‘She's a good girl, my Lexi,' I said, deliberately placing the possessive.

‘None better,' he said. ‘She helped me through my last break-up like the most seasoned trouper. I doubt I'd have made it through without her sage fuck-you to reality.'

‘Ha!' I said.

‘I think you're a remarkable individual,' he said out of the blue.

‘Eddie, you really do know how to flatter. I thank you, and take the compliment. If you don't mind me saying, though, you have done enough.'

‘Enough?'

‘That was your intention, wasn't it? To win me over?'

He blushed. Since when does a man of his age blush? ‘Am I really that transparent?'

‘Well . . .' I sighed. ‘I'm being a little “protective father”, I suppose. I might not have been around much for her but I still have her best interests at heart. I like you, Eddie, you're a decent man, I can tell that. But buying the meal, finishing her stories . . . I don't need all of that. You have my best wishes. I consent like a fat king upon a throne.'

He stared at me for what must have been thirty seconds.

‘What a monumental cock-up,' he said, still maintaining my gaze. He took a long gulp of his wine, then laughed to himself. ‘I must be the least effective suitor in the history of man.'

‘On the contrary, Eddie, I told you I give you my blessing.'

‘Tom, it's not your blessing for your daughter I want.'

M
um let me have the day off because I complained of being tired, and hadn't slept a wink. This tactic usually worked. She knew the school year was winding down already and we'd sat our final tests weeks ago. Not that sixth grade really mattered much, she said.

I slept in until I heard her leave for the butcher shop. I went into the kitchen and was surprised to see Mal there, quietly making his breakfast.

‘Morning. I didn't hear you.'

‘You were out like a light, eh?'
Heh heh heh
.

‘Want a cuppa?'

‘Had one, thanks. Spoke to your mum, eh, bro?'

‘Yeah?'

‘You still tired?'

‘No, not really.'

‘Wanna come for a run up the coast? Thought we could take your boat out and give her a burl, a mate of mine's interested in buying her.'

I pretended I hadn't heard them talking about it in the kitchen. ‘Really?'

‘Yeah, just wants a runabout for the lake so we wouldn't have to clean her up or nothin', eh? He's already got a big one for the ocean.'

‘When would we go? When would we be back?'

‘Thought we should leave this morning. I'm taking a sickie today too.'
Heh heh heh
. ‘We could stay up there overnight, or two if you want?'

‘Overnight?'

‘Yeah. Boys' weekend, like I said.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah!'

Heh heh heh
. ‘Better get yourself ready then, eh, bro?'

•  •  •

The boat trailer had a flat tyre so we changed it and then hooked the boat up to the back of Mal's van. It was a blinding hot day, moisture rising from the ground in visible waves. Mal's van didn't have air conditioning and he pulled of his T-shirt and suggested I do the same.