Golden Boy

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘Three guesses! My father.’

  ‘Lavinia?’

  ‘My boyfriend.’

  ‘Pamela?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Eddy?’

  ‘The cunt who threw himself in front of my lorry.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Becky said.

  Julian dismissed the objection. ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  At the end of the round he came back to Freddie. ‘If you were to play the game, Freddie, who would you most like to see in the chair?’

  Freddie was taken off guard. ‘My father.’

  ‘Okay.’ He looked round the group. ‘You’d like to see your boyfriend, Lavinia; Pamela would like to see her mother. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find out more about some of these people? Let’s nominate one of them to put in the chair.’

  ‘I’d like to know more about Freddie’s father,’ Bill said.

  ‘Has anyone an objection?’ Julian looked round the group.

  ‘Okay, Freddie, what I want you to do now is to sit in that chair and pretend to be your father. What was his name?’

  ‘Hugh.’

  Feeling like an idiot, wondering what he had let himself in for, Freddie got up reluctantly and took the chair in the centre of the room.

  ‘You’d be more comfortable if you took off your shoes.’

  Freddie unlaced his trainers and kicked them beneath the chair.

  ‘Okay,’ Julian said, ‘I want you to adopt your father’s posture. I want you to sit exactly the way he would sit.’

  ‘I haven’t seen my father since I was 6!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re Hugh now. You’ve become Hugh. None of us here has had the pleasure of meeting you. Tell us about yourself, Hugh, introduce yourself. What clothes are you wearing, what are you thinking about, what’s going on in your head?’

  Freddie looked at Julian. He looked round the circle at the members of the group. He made himself smaller, straightened his back, pulled back his shoulders, and sat upright in the chair as if he had served in the army.

  ‘My name is Hugh Lomax, Dr Hugh Lomax. I am 43 years old…’

  It was stifling in the basement (Freddie had complained to the office about the old-fashioned radiators which blasted away and which you could not control), like the heat of a hot summer’s day. He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater, rolled them up like the sleeves of the white cotton shirt – which was tucked into his grey flannel trousers – over the dark hairs on his arms.

  ‘What year is it, Hugh?’ The voice was Julian’s.

  ‘The year is 1958.’

  ‘Could you describe what you look like?’

  ‘I am five foot nine tall, I am clean-shaven, I have brown hair brushed back with Brylcreem – I keep the jar in the bathroom.’

  In the medicine cupboard above the washbasin, next to the tin of Germolene and the Andrew’s Liver Salts.

  ‘Where are you just now, Hugh?’

  Freddie was taken by surprise. ‘I’m dead.’

  ‘Okay, but where are you?’

  ‘I’m dead. I’m not anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t you exist as a spirit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you were to exist as a spirit, Hugh, where would you be?’

  Freddie thought about it.

  ‘Out there…’ He waved his hand vaguely towards the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Would you be at peace?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What would you be doing?’

  ‘Watching.’

  ‘Who would you be watching?’

  ‘Freddie.’

  ‘But you left Freddie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you want to leave Freddie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you leave him?’

  ‘To punish him. He wanted me run over by a bus, he wanted to push me into the canal, he wanted me to drown.’

  ‘Evil thoughts are not evil deeds, Hugh. If you were to hear about Freddie’s success as a banker, about his family, about the way he has cared for his mother, about what he has achieved, what would you think of him?’

  ‘I…suppose I’d be proud.’

  ‘Would you like to meet Freddie?’

  ‘I’d like that more than anything in the world.’

  ‘If you were able to meet him, what would you say to him?’

  ‘Why…?’ There was a break in Freddie’s voice. ‘Why did you let me down?’

  ‘But Freddie didn’t let you down, Hugh.’

  ‘He got the sack.’

  ‘Due to the economic climate.’

  ‘He lost his job. He always loses things. He shoots himself in the foot. He broke the china cat.’

  ‘Small boys lose things, they break things. Did you say goodbye to Freddie?’

  ‘There was no time.’

  ‘Would you like to say goodbye to him?’

  Freddie nodded.

  ‘Okay, Hugh, you can say goodbye to Freddie. What would you tell him?’

  Freddie opened his mouth. His throat had seized up from the heat, the dry air in the room. He was unable to answer.

  Julian threw the question open. ‘What about the rest of you? Has anyone else any ideas?’

  Becky raised her hand.

  ‘Hugh’s run into difficulties, Becky,’ Julian said. ‘Would you like to come and double for him?’

  Becky got up from her chair and stood behind Freddie. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘If you were to say goodbye to Freddie, Hugh,’ Julian looked at Becky and repeated the question, ‘what would you tell him?’

  The group waited expectantly.

  ‘I love you, Freddie,’ Becky said.

  ‘For Christ’s sake…!’ Freddie put his head in his hands.

  ‘Okay, I want you to sit in the chair now, Becky,’ Julian said. ‘You play Hugh, and Freddie can come back here and play himself.’

  Taking out his handkerchief, Freddie blew his nose and resumed his seat.

  ‘Talk to your father, Freddie.’

  Freddie put away his handkerchief. ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Hallo, Freddie,’ Becky said. ‘Nice to see you again. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Pissed off.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Why do you think? I’ve lost my job. I can’t get a job. Let’s face it, there are no prospects of getting a job. A proper job. You only get one bite at the cherry. Once chance. I’ve blown mine. There are no deals around. I’ve lost my touch… My wife has turned her back on me. My children don’t need me. My mother. You must know what happened to Lilli…’

  ‘Is there anything you want to say to me?’

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ Freddie’s voice rose. ‘A rotten bastard! Why did you leave me, Dad? Why did you go away?’

  ‘I’m here, Freddie, I’m still around. I’d like to see you again. It’s been a long time. I haven’t seen you since my funeral…’

  ‘I didn’t come to your funeral! Mummy wouldn’t let me come to your funeral.’

  ‘Oh!’ Becky said. ‘You know where I’m buried…?’

  Freddie shook his head.

  ‘If I tell you where I’m buried, will you come and see me? Will you visit my grave?’

  ‘I’d really like that.’

  ‘Will you bring me something?’

  ‘What shall I bring?’

  ‘What would you like to bring?’

  ‘Flowers…?’

  ‘Not flowers. Something special. Something dear to you. Something you love very much, Freddie. Something you’d like to show me.

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘Jane?’

  ‘My wife, Dad. Dad?’

  ‘Yes, Freddie?’

  ‘I wish I could see you again.’

  ‘What would you do if you saw me, Freddie?’

  Freddie was back in the summer garden. He stood rooted to the spot unable to move his feet in their Startrite sandals as his father, still clutching the cricket
ball, lay motionless on the lawn.

  ‘What I’d like to do, what I’d really like to do…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to give you a big hug, Dad.’

  Watched by the group, Freddie got up from his chair, crossed the silence that filled the room, and the brown lino, and, kneeling at Becky’s feet, buried his head in her lap. She put her skinny arms round his shoulders and held him close. From her strangled sobs, Freddie knew that Becky was weeping. Through her black leggings Becky could feel Freddie’s warm tears.

  ‘What was there in that for you, Becky?’ Julian asked later, when they were into the ‘sharing’ part of the session. ‘Tell us what it felt like, being Freddie’s dad?’

  ‘Amazing! I only wish I could have given my dad a hug like that.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you?’ Eddy said.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare. He would have started touching me up, the dirty bugger.’

  ‘You got pretty close to Freddie.’

  ‘That was okay. I was safe with Freddie. I was his father. I wasn’t a woman… I was a man.’

  Forty-one

  Freddie was flexing his biceps and expanding his pectorals in front of the open window. A late developer, he had been nicknamed ‘sparrow chest’ at school and had been exercising – press-ups and weights – since the age of 14. He grinned when Kay came into the room.

  ‘You’ve got a great smile, Freddie, I didn’t know you could smile.’

  ‘Got to get back in condition. Believe it or not I was a rowing blue. My muscles have gone to pot.’

  ‘What did you think of the psychodrama?’

  ‘Load of bullshit. I think Becky got something out of it. Poor kid, she wants desperately to be hugged.’

  ‘I understand you’ve been hugging her. And introducing her to music. Art heals. It helps us to get in touch with ourselves. You’re doing a great job. Kylie tells me that you’re discharging yourself. Do you think that’s wise?’

  ‘All this rest and relaxation has made me feel better. I must admit you were right. I was in pretty poor shape when I came in here. I didn’t realise. Now it’s time I went home.’

  ‘Back to the Black Label?’

  Freddie shook his head. ‘I told you, I feel good. A couple of jogs round the park and I’ll be back on form.’

  ‘What about your therapy?’

  ‘With all due respect, Kay, I don’t need therapy. I’ve been talking to Sefton.’

  He had taken to meeting the American in the Jacuzzi before dinner. Sefton had never divulged to Freddie what his problem was, and Freddie had not asked. Some of the patients at the Chesterfield preferred to keep their troubles to themselves. All that Freddie had managed to get out of Sefton was that he was in business in Colorado, and was as irritated as Freddie at the way the Chesterfield was run. Freddie looked forward to the daily discussions in which they put not only the world, but the hospital, to rights.

  ‘It’s a question of gross mismanagement, administrative bungling, and a criminal lack of organisation,’ Freddie had said a couple of nights ago as, with arms stretched along the sides of the tub, they faced each other through the steam. ‘That Hartley couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.’

  ‘Hartley’s not a businessman. He came to the Chesterfield from alternative medicine. He had some kind of practice in Bournemouth.’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he was lining his own pockets, taking a bit off the top.’

  ‘Someone is knocking off the food, that’s for sure,’ Sefton said. ‘One of the dining-room staff told me.’

  ‘In that case they must be gluttons for punishment! The food’s inedible. The chef needs to be shot. The whole place is overmanned, the staff turnover is phenomenal, and morale is non-existent. What I would do…’ Freddie dunked his shoulders beneath the water ‘…is get rid of Hartley, put in a hands-on administrator who knows how to liaise with the nursing administration and the domestic administration, tighten up the the whole operation – man the front entrance, make sure telephone messages were passed on, and patients were not kept waiting – have a blitz on internal communication and time-keeping, jack up the therapeutic input – half the bloody beds are empty – refurbish the place from top to bottom, fill the common parts with some decent furniture and contract flower arrangements, put some pleasant pictures on the walls, and market the place properly.’

  ‘You think you could make a better job of it?’

  ‘I think a retarded child could make a better job of it.’

  ‘How would you like to try?’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Taking over the administration of the Chesterfield?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ll come clean, Freddie. My company, Colorado Clinics Inc., owns the Chesterfield. It’s been dying a slow death. I was sent over to check it out.’

  ‘I’m a banker…!’ Freddie said.

  Sefton nodded. ‘I’ve been checking you out.’

  Freddie smiled, a man after his own heart.

  ‘I’m perfectly aware it’s not your field, but I thought that while you were looking for something more suitable, you might just consider getting the Chesterfield on its feet.’

  ‘I’d need to think about it,’ Freddie said. But the microchips were back in the motherboard, and in the split second that had elapsed since Sefton’s question and his own reply, he had made up his mind.

  The Chesterfield was not a corporate finance department, neither was it a merchant bank. But in the two weeks that he had been a patient, Freddie had remarked – much to his surprise – that the clinic, far from being a haven for neurotics, was both doing valuable work and fulfilling a definite need. The salary commensurate with being a hospital administrator would enable him to repay Tom Glidewell and be sufficient to persuade the Porchester Bank to look more favourably upon the amount of his overdraft. Tristan, he thought, wryly, would be more than pleased.

  Yesterday morning he had been in his room listening to the final moments of Idomeneo – Idomeneo calling to the Gods of love and marriage to instil their spirit of peace – when Sefton, dressed in his street clothes, came in search of him. Putting his Burberry and his briefcase on the bed, as Freddie switched off the radio, the American outlined his proposal.

  ‘I don’t mean to pressurise you, Freddie, but I had a call last night. I’m booked on the Pan Am flight. Am I to tell CCI that I’ve found an administrator who’s willing to turn the Chesterfield around?’

  Hospital Administrator. It was not what he was used to. He wondered what Lilli would say, then realised that it no longer mattered, that he no longer had to live up to her expectations of him, he was no longer accountable to her for his actions. Lilli was dead.

  ‘It’s certainly a challenge.’

  ‘My impression is that you like challenges, Lomax.’

  ‘When you’re going under for the third time, and a lifebelt is chucked into the water,’ Freddie said, ‘what choice do you have? When do I start?’

  As Freddie finished telling Dr Chapman about the outcome of his exchanges with Sefton in the Jacuzzi, there was a knock on the door. Not waiting for an answer, the cleaner came in with her mop.

  ‘Not now, Maria,’ Dr Chapman sighed.

  ‘That kind of interruption will be a thing of the past,’ Freddie said as the door closed behind the girl. ‘You’re not getting rid of me, Kay. From next month on you’ll be seeing me around.’

  He had had no idea how hard it would be to leave the Chesterfield. He could not believe how close he had grown, in two short weeks, to a bunch of strangers who had become his friends. It was like saying goodbye to his family. He had had a long session with Eddy in the dining-room over lunch, and had exchanged cards with Bill with whom he had developed a close rapport and who needed all the support he could get. But it was leaving Becky which had really creased him up. Becky, who had been swimming with Freddie (the first exercise she had taken in years), showed a new interest in life, and had actua
lly started to eat again, had been distraught.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Freddie. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you, Becky. I’m going to take you to the opera, remember? We’re going to keep in touch.’

  They were sitting on the sofa in the Day Room.

  ‘I know you’ll think this is stupid, Freddie, but I want to ask you a favour. Will you do something for me?’

  Freddie wondered what was coming. He wondered why he felt choked at leaving this undernourished, untidy waif.

  ‘I’d like to have a picture of you, Freddie. Will you send me a photo of yourself?’

  It was Becky who came to the door with him. Becky who saw him off. He had never clung to Rosina as he had clung, choked with unfamiliar emotions, on the steps of the clinic, to Becky. She was his loving child.

  Whistling down the King’s Road, inhaling the bouquet of the diesel fumes as if they were vintage wine, catching sight of his reflection in a window, Freddie returned his own smile.

  His main reason for discharging himself from the Chesterfield was that he wanted to see Jane. He wanted to apologise, to make it up to her for the way in which he had treated her over the past few months. Passing a florist’s, he retraced his steps. Yellow roses, Jane’s passion. ‘La Vie en Rose’. Sorting the long stems into an arrangement, the Cellophane stapled and garlanded with ribbons, which she scraped with her scissors until they trailed seductively off the table in long green tendrils, the girl in the checked overall wondered what Freddie was smiling about as he tendered the plastic he had been so near to losing.

  In Chester Terrace, George, the postman, was delivering the midday mail.

  ‘Good holiday, Mr Lomax?’

  Freddie looked at his bag and his flowers. ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Been somewhere warm?’

  Freddie thought of the radiators blasting away at the

  Chesterfield. ‘Very warm.’

  ‘We can do with a bit of sunshine. Cheers then.’

  ‘Cheers then, George.’

  Freddie, his heart thumping, put his key in the door.

  ‘Jane?’

  The house was silent. There was a wilting plant on the table amongst the piled-up mail in the hall.

  ‘Jane!’

  Somewhere he thought he heard a baby cry.