Man and Boy

by Tony Parsons

  I wasn’t going to roll over and die just because he was our commissioning editor.

  “Spontaneous TV, Barry, that’s what you pay him for. On this kind of show it’s not what the guests say that makes news. It’s what they do.”

  “We don’t pay him to assault the guests.” Barry indicated the papers on his desk with a thin little smile. I picked up a fistful of them.

  “Front page of the Mirror and the Sun,” I said. “A two-column story on page one of the Telegraph… Nice color picture of Marty on page three of The Times…”

  “This is the wrong kind of news,” Barry said. “And you know it. I repeat—this isn’t talk radio anymore. You’re not just being listened to by a couple of cranks and their cats. And it’s not as though we’re some crappy little satellite outfit scratching in the dust for viewers. There are advertisers, there are broadcasting authorities, there are viewers associations, there is the man upstairs. And please take my word for it, Harry—they are all going fucking ape shit.”

  I put the papers back on his desk, my fingers black with print. As nonchalantly as I could manage, I rubbed my hands together. But the print wouldn’t come off.

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen, Barry. Marty is going to be called every name in the book—and next week we will get our biggest ratings ever. That is what’s going to happen. And they are going to be talking about that last show for years—that’s going to happen too.”

  Barry Twist shook his head.

  “It was too much. It’s not just Marty. The man upstairs is getting called every name in the book—and he doesn’t like it. Over the last twelve months The Marty Mann Show has had drunken guests, abusive guests, and guests that have tried to remove their clothes. But this is the first time you’ve had a guest that has been beaten up. It’s got to stop. We can’t have a manifestly unstable man going out live on national television.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “No more live shows, Harry. Record the show on the afternoon of transmission. That way, if Marty assaults anyone else—or decides to beat them to death with his ego—we can edit it out.”

  “As live? You want us to go as live? Marty will never stand for it.”

  “Make him stand for it, Harry. You’re his producer—do some producing. Doesn’t your contract come up for renewal soon?”

  I knew they couldn’t drop Marty. He was already too big for that. But for the first time, I understood that it wasn’t Marty’s hide that was on the line.

  It was mine.

  ***

  Despite all his games of death and destruction, Pat was a very loving child. He was always hugging and kissing people, even total strangers—I had once seen him embracing the old geezer that cleaned our street—in a way that was no longer permissible, or even wise, in the lousy modern world.

  But Pat didn’t know or care about any of that. He was four years old and he was full of love. And when he saw me on the doorstep of his other grandfather’s home he went crazy, holding my face in my hands and kissing me on the lips.

  “Daddy! Are you staying with us? Staying with us on our—on our—on our holiday at Granddad Glenn’s?”

  I found them the day after they left. It wasn’t difficult. I made a few phone calls to Gina’s friends from college, the ones that had turned up for her thirtieth birthday party, but it had been years since she had been really close to any of them. She had let them drift out of her life, kidding herself that she could get everything she needed from me and Pat. That’s the trouble with a relationship as close as ours—when it comes undone, you’re left with no one.

  It didn’t take me long to work out that Gina had been so desperate for somewhere to stay that she had gone home to her father, who was currently between marriages.

  Glenn lived in a small flat right on the edge of the A to Z, among golf clubs and green belts, a neighborhood that he must have thought looked a bit like Woodstock when he first moved in. But instead of jamming with Dylan and The Band, every day Glenn took the commuter train to his guitar shop in Denmark Street. He was home when I knocked on his door, greeting me with what seemed like real warmth as I stood holding my son.

  “Harry, how are you doing, man? Sorry about your troubles.”

  In his early fifties now, what was left of Glenn’s hair was carefully arranged to approximate the Viking feather cut of his prime. He was still snake-hip thin and still wore clothes that would have looked appropriate on a Jimi Hendrix roadie. And he was still good-looking, in a faded old roué kind of way. But he must have looked pretty funky walking down the King’s Road in 1975.

  For all his faults—the missed birthdays, the forgotten promises, the fact that he tended to fuck off and leave his wife and kids every few years—Glenn wasn’t really an evil man. He had a friendly, easy charm about him that I could see flashes of in Gina. Glenn’s fatal flaw was that he had never been able to see further than the end of his own gratification. Yet all the wounds that he inflicted were unintentional. He wasn’t a cruel man, not unless weakness is another kind of cruelty.

  “Looking for Gina?” he said, putting an arm around me. “She’s inside.”

  Inside Glenn’s modest flat, The Verve was booming from the speakers. He wasn’t one of those classic rock freaks with a copy of Mojo and his gramophone needle stuck forever on the music of his youth. Glenn’s devotion to the cause was so great that he always liked to keep up with the big new bands. I didn’t know how he managed it.

  Gina came out of the little guest room, serious and pale. Very pale. I felt like kissing her. But I didn’t.

  “Hello, Harry.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Of course. There’s a park nearby.”

  We took Pat. Glenn pointed out that, for all the surrounding greenery, the park was actually a fair distance away, past a sad little string of shops and endless big posh houses. So I suggested we take the MGF. Pat almost squealed with delight. Although she wasn’t a four-year-old boy, I hoped Gina might also be impressed—from the moment I saw that car I knew I wanted to drive around with some special person by my side. Now I saw with terrible clarity that the special person had always been Gina. But she didn’t say anything until we arrived at the park.

  “No need to worry about recapturing your youth, Harry,” she said, swinging her legs out of my new car. “You never really lost it.”

  Pat skipped on ahead of us, brandishing his light saber and howling. When he arrived at the climbing frame he stood there in silence, shyly watching two bigger boys clamber around on the higher part of the frame. He was always full of admiration for bigger boys. Gina and I watched our son watching them.

  “I miss you like crazy,” I said. “Please come home.”

  “No,” she said.

  “It wasn’t some mad, passionate affair. It was just one night.”

  “It’s never just one night. If you can do it once, you can do it again. Again and again and again. And next time it will be easier. I’ve seen it all before, Harry. Seen it all with Glenn.”

  “Jesus, I’m nothing like your dad. I don’t even wear an earring.”

  “I should have known,” she said. “The romantic ones are always the worst. The hearts and flowers brigade. The ones who promise to never look at another woman. Always the worst. Because they always need that new fix. That regular shot of romance. Don’t you, Harry?”

  I didn’t like the way she was talking about me as though I was indistinguishable from every other man in the world, as though I was just one of the hairy adulterous masses, as though I was just another sad salary man who got caught fucking around. I wanted to still be the one.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you, Gina. And I’ll always be sorry about it. You’re the last person in the world I would want to hurt.”

  “It can’t always be a honeymoon, you know.”

  “I know, I know,” I said,
but deep down inside what I thought was—Why not? Why not?

  “We’ve been together for years. We have a child together. It can never be all that Romeo and Juliet crap again.”

  “I understand all that,” I said, and most of me really did. But a tiny, tiny part of me wanted to say—Oh, I’m off then.

  Gina was right—I wanted us to be the way we were at the start. I wanted us to be like that forever. And you know why? Because we were both so happy then.

  “You think it’s been easy living in our house?” she said, suddenly flaring up. “You think it’s easy listening to you whining about not being a teenager anymore, getting Pat to stop watching Star Wars for five minutes, taking care of the house? And you’re no help. Like every man on the planet, you think that as long as you do your little job, your work is done.”

  “Well,” I said, taken aback. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave years ago.”

  “You didn’t give me a reason. Until now. I’m only thirty, Harry. Sometimes I feel like an old woman. You tricked me,” she said. “You tricked me into loving you.”

  “Just come back home. You and me and Pat. I want it to be the way it was before.”

  “It can never be that way again. You changed it all. I trusted you and you broke my trust. You made me feel stupid for trusting you.”

  “People don’t break up because of a one-night stand, Gina. It’s not what grown-ups do. You don’t chuck it all away because of something like that. I know it hurts. I know what I did was wrong. But how did I suddenly go from being Mr. Wonderful to Mr. Piece of Shit?”

  “You’re not Mr. Piece of Shit, Harry.” She shook her head, trying to stop herself from crying. “You’re just another guy. I can see that now. No different from the rest. Don’t you get it? I invested so much in you being special. I gave up so much for you, Harry.”

  “I know you did. You were going to work abroad. You were going to experience another culture. It was going to be incredible. And then you stayed here because of me. I know all that. That’s why I want to make this marriage work. That’s why I want to try again.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Gina said. “And I’ve worked out that nobody is interested in a woman who stays at home with her child. Not even her husband. Especially not her husband. I’m so boring, he has to sleep around.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Looking after your child—it should be the most respected job in the world. It should be worth more than going to any office. But it’s not. Do you know how many people at your fucking little television dinners and parties and launches have made me feel like nothing at all? And what do you do?” She made it sound like a sneer. “And what do you do? Me? Well, I don’t do anything. I just stay at home and look after my little boy. And they stare right through you—the women as well as the men, in fact the women are probably worse—as though you’re some kind of moron. And I’m twice as smart as half of these people you work with, Harry. Twice as smart.”

  “I know you are,” I said. “Listen, Gina—I’ll do anything. What do you want?”

  “I want my life back,” she said. “That’s all, Harry. I want my life back.”

  That sounded like trouble.

  nine

  Things hadn’t quite worked out how my dad had planned. Not with his home. And not with me.

  When my parents had bought the place where I grew up, the area had been countryside. But the city had been creeping closer for thirty years. Fields where I had roamed with an air rifle were now covered with ugly new houses. The old High Street was full of real estate agents and lawyers’ offices. What my parents thought would always be a living, breathing episode of The Archers started being swallowed by the suburbs from the moment we moved in.

  My mom didn’t much mind the changes—she was a city girl, and I can remember her complaining about our little town’s lack of shops and a cinema when I was a kid—but I felt for my dad.

  He didn’t like the army of commuters who clogged the railway station on weekdays and the golf courses at the weekend. He didn’t like the gangs of would-be yobs who drifted through the suburbs pretending they were getting down in South Central L.A. He hadn’t expected to be so close to crowds and crime this late in life. And then there was me.

  My parents came to the door expecting to see the three of us arriving for dinner. But there was only their son. Bewildered, they watched me drive past their gate, looking for somewhere to park. They didn’t get it.

  When I was a kid, there were no cars parked on this street—one garage for every family had been more than enough. Now you had to practically give yourself a double hernia looking for a parking place. Everything had changed.

  I kissed my mom and shook my dad’s hand. They didn’t know what was happening. There was going to be too much food. They were expecting Gina and Pat. They were expecting happy families. And what they got was me.

  “Mom. Dad. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  The old songs were playing. Tony Bennett live at Carnegie Hall was on the stereo, although it could just have easily been Sinatra or Dean Martin or Sammy Davis Jr. In the home of my parents, the old songs had never stopped playing.

  They sat in their favorite chairs staring up at me expectantly. Like a couple of kids. I swear to God they thought I was going to announce the imminent arrival of another grandchild. And I stood there feeling the way I so often felt in front of my parents—more like a soap opera than a son.

  “Well, it looks like Gina’s left me,” I said.

  The tone was all wrong—too casual, too glib, too uncaring. But the alternative was getting down on all fours and weeping all over their shag carpet. Because after yesterday’s trip to the park and a second sleepless night in a bed that was far too big for just me, I was finally starting to believe that she might not be coming back. Yet, I felt that I was too old to be bringing my parents bad news. And they were too old to have to hear it.

  For a few moments they didn’t say a word.

  “What?” said my father. “Left you where?”

  “Where’s the baby?” my mother said. She got it immediately.

  “Pat’s with Gina. At her dad’s place.”

  “That punk rocker? Poor little thing.”

  “What do you mean she’s left you?” the old man demanded.

  “She’s walked out, Dad.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He really didn’t get it. He loved her and he loved us and now all of that was finished.

  “She’s buggered off,” I said. “Fled. Gone.”

  “Language,” my mother said. She had her fingers to her mouth, as if she was praying. “Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry.”

  She came across the room toward me and I sort of flinched. It would be okay if they weren’t kind to me. I could get through it if they didn’t put their arms around me and tell me that they understood. But if they were going to be kind, I didn’t think I could take it, I knew it would all get clogged up inside me. Luckily the old man came to the rescue. Good old dad.

  “Walked out?” my dad said angrily. “What—you’re getting a divorce? Is that what you mean?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that. Getting a divorce? Where do you start?

  “I guess so. Yes. That’s what people do, isn’t it? When they split up.”

  He stood up, the color draining from his face. His eyes were wet. He took off his glasses to wipe them. I couldn’t stand to look at him.

  “You’ve ruined my life,” he said.

  “What?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My marriage falls apart and he becomes the victim? How did that happen? I was sorry that his precious daughter-in-law had walked out of his life. I was sorry if his grandson had seen his parents break up. And most of all, I was sorry that his son had turned out to be just another dumb schmuck bumbling to
ward the divorce courts. But I wasn’t going to let my father hog the starring role in our little tragedy.

  “How have I managed to ruin your life, Dad? If anyone’s the victim here, it’s Pat. Not you.”

  “You’ve ruined my life,” he said again.

  My face burned with shame and resentment. What was he so bitter about? His wife had never left him.

  “Your life is over,” I told him angrily.

  We looked at each other with something approaching hatred and then he walked out. I could hear him shuffling around upstairs. I was already sorry about what I had said. But I felt that he had given me no choice.

  “He doesn’t mean it,” my mom said. “He’s upset.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Nothing bad ever happened to me before, Mom. I’ve had it easy. Nothing bad ever happened to me before now.”

  “Don’t listen to your father. He just wants Pat to have what you had. Two parents. Somewhere settled and stable to build his life on. All that.”

  “But it’s never going to be like that for him, Mom. Not if Gina’s really gone. I’m sorry, but it’s never going to be that simple.”

  My dad came back down eventually and I tried to give them some background as we waded through dinner. There had been trouble at home, things hadn’t been too good for a while, we still cared about each other. There was hope.

  I left out all the stuff about me fucking a colleague from work and Gina feeling that she had thrown her life away.

  I thought that might make them choke on their lamb chops.

  When I left, my mom gave me a big hug and told me that things would turn out all right. And my dad did his best too—he put his arm around me and told me to call if there was anything they could do. But I couldn’t look at him.

  That’s the trouble with thinking that your father is a hero.

  Without saying a word, he can make you feel that you are eight years old again, and you have just lost your first fight.