by Tony Parsons
My old man picked him up and kissed him. I wondered how long it would be before Pat would start squirming under our kisses. Then he kissed my dad on the face—one of those hard, fierce kisses he had learned from Gina—and I saw we still had a while.
“We’ve got your bike in the back of Granddad’s car,” my dad said. “We can go to the park on the way home.”
“Can Peggy come?” Pat said.
I looked down at the solemn-eyed child.
“Of course she can,” I said. “But we have to ask Peggy’s mommy or daddy first.”
“My mom’s at work,” Peggy told me. “So’s my dad.”
“Then who meets you?”
“Bianca,” she said. “My babysitter. Although I’m not a baby anymore.”
Peggy looked around her, gazing up at the herd of adults meeting children until she saw the face she was looking for. A girl in her late teens was pushing through the crowds, sucking on a cigarette and searching for her charge.
“That’s Bianca,” Peggy said.
“Come on, Peggy,” the girl said, offering her hand. “Let’s go.”
Pat and Peggy stared at each other.
“We’re off to the park for an hour or so,” I told Bianca. “Peggy’s welcome to come with us. And you too, of course.”
The babysitter curtly shook her head.
“We’ve got to go,” she said.
“See you tomorrow then,” Peggy told Pat.
“Yes,” he said.
Peggy smiled at him as Bianca dragged her off through the thinning crowd.
“I’ll see her tomorrow,” Pat said. “At my school.”
There was dirt on his hands, paint on his face, and a piece of what looked like egg sandwich by his mouth. But he was fine. School was going to be okay.
***
Another difference between me and my old man. After Pat fell into the empty swimming pool, I would have been quite happy to never set eyes on his bicycle again. But during one of those endless hours at the hospital, my dad drove to the park and recovered Bluebell.
The bike was exactly where we had left it, on its side at the empty deep end, undamaged apart from a bent handlebar. I would have cheerfully stuck it in the nearest Dumpster. My dad wanted Pat to ride it again. I didn’t argue with him. I thought I would leave Pat to do that.
Yet when my father took Bluebell from the trunk of his car, my son seemed happy to see it.
“I’ve straightened the handlebar,” my dad told us. “It needs a lick of paint, that’s all. Shouldn’t take a minute. I can do it for you, if you like.”
My dad knew that I hadn’t held a paint brush since I had dropped out of high school art class.
“I can do it,” I said sullenly. “Put your coat on, Pat.”
It was September and the first cold snap of autumn was in the air. I helped Pat into his windbreaker, pulling up the hood, watching the smile spread across his face at the sight of his bike.
“One more thing,” my father said, producing a small silver wrench from his car coat. “I think it’s time that a big boy like Pat took the training wheels off his bike.”
This was my old man at seventy—tough, kind, confident, grinning at his grandson with boundless tenderness. And yet I found myself railing against his genius for home improvement, his manly efficiency, his absolute certainty that he could bend the world to his will. And I was sick of the sight of that bike.
“Jesus, Dad,” I said. “He just fell off the bloody thing five minutes ago. Now you want him to start doing wheelies.”
“You always exaggerate,” my father said. “Just like your mother. I don’t want the lad to do wheelies—whatever wheelies might be. I just want him to have a crack at riding without his training wheels. It will do him good.”
My father got down on his haunches and began to remove the little training wheels from Bluebell. Seeing him at work with a wrench made me feel that I had spent my life watching him do odd jobs, first in his home and later at mine. When the lights went on the blink or the rain started coming through the ceiling, Gina and I didn’t reach for the Yellow Pages. We called my dad.
The burst boiler, the worn-out guttering, the hole in the roof—no task was too big or too difficult for his immaculately kept tool box. He loved Gina’s praise when the job was completed—she always laid it on a bit thick—but he would have done it anyway. My father was what my mother would call “good around the house.” I was exactly the opposite. I was what I would call “fucking useless around the house.”
Now I watched Pat’s face bleaching with fear as my dad finished removing training wheels from his bike. For a moment I was about to erupt, but then I kept it in.
Because if I started, then I knew all the struggles of thirty years would come pouring out—my laziness against my father’s can-do capability, my timidity against my old man’s machismo, my desire for a quiet life against my dad’s determination to get his own way.
I didn’t want all that to come pouring out in front of Pat. Not today. Not any day. So I looked on in silence as my dad helped my son onto his bike.
“Just a little try,” my dad said soothingly. “If you don’t like it, we can stop. We can stop straightaway. Okay, baby?”
“Okay, Granddad.”
My father seized hold of the bike’s handlebars with one hand and its seat with the other. Pat clung on to both handlebars for dear life, his already scuffed school shoes trailing reluctantly on the pedals as Bluebell’s wheels rolled round and round. With me bringing up the sulky rear, we wobbled past the swings and slides and across an empty patch of grass.
“Are you holding on?” Pat said.
“I’m holding on,” my dad said.
“Could you look after Pat on Saturday night for me?” I said.
“Saturday night?” he said, as if it was a strange request, as though I knew very well that was the night he and my mom liked to go out.
“Yes, I’m going out.”
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll always look after him for you. Something to do with work, is it?”
“Nothing to do with work, Dad. I don’t have any work right now, remember? I’m going out with a girl.” That didn’t sound quite right. “With a woman.” That didn’t sound quite right either.
I thought that it might have stopped him. But he carried on in his half-crouch, supporting Pat’s bike as we made our way through the daisies and the dog crap.
“Who is she?” he said.
“Just a friend. We might go to the movies.”
He finally stopped, rubbing his back as he straightened up to look at me.
“You think that’s appropriate behavior for someone in your position, do you?”
“Going to the movies? I don’t see why not.”
“I’m not talking about going to the pictures. I’m talking about going out with a strange woman just after—” He nodded at the hood of Pat’s windbreaker. “You know.”
“There’s nothing strange about her,” I said. “And we’re only going to the movies. We’re not eloping.”
He shook his head, dumbfounded at what the world was coming to.
“I don’t care what you get up to,” he said. Then he indicated Pat again. “What I care about is him. This girl—is it serious?”
“I don’t know, Dad. Can we get our first date out of the way before we start picking out curtains?”
I was playing the injured innocent. But I knew that if I went out with a woman it would confuse and frighten him. It wasn’t my intention to hurt him. I just wanted to show him that I was thirty years old and that he couldn’t decide when I took my training wheels off.
We had come to a ragged scrap of tarmac in front of an old stage.
“Are you ready?” my father asked Pat.
“Ready,” Pat said, sounding not very ready at all.
“I’m holding you, okay?” my dad said, increasing his pace. “I’m going to keep holding you. Just keep your back straight. And pedal.”
“Okay.”
“Are you holding on?”
“I’m holding on!”
They took off across the tarmac, Pat’s face hidden by the hood of his jacket and my father bent double by his side, like a little elf being chased by a hunchback. Then my dad let go of the bike.
“You holding on, Granddad?”
“I’m holding on!” he cried as Pat left him behind. “Pedal! I’ve got you!”
His little legs pedaled. Bluebell gave a dangerous wobble as Pat splashed through a puddle, but the bike seemed to right itself and gather speed.
“You’re doing it!” my dad shouted. “You’re doing it, Pat!”
He turned to look at me and we both laughed out loud. I ran to my father’s side and he put his arm around my shoulders. He smelled of Old Spice and Old Holborn.
“Look at him go,” my dad said proudly.
The bike reached the edge of the tarmac, bounced once, and skidded onto the grass. Pat was moving a bit slower now, but still pedaling furiously as he made a beeline for the trees.
“Don’t go too far!” I shouted. But he couldn’t hear me. He disappeared into the shadows of some old oak trees, like some hooded creature of the forest returning to his lair.
My father and I looked at each other. We weren’t laughing now. We took off after him, our shoes sliding on the wet grass, calling his name.
Then he was nonchalantly riding toward us out of the trees, the hood of his jacket flown off, hair flying and grinning from ear to ear.
“Look what I can do,” he said proudly, briefly standing up in the Bluebell’s stirrups before skidding to a halt.
“That’s brilliant, Pat,” I said. “But don’t go off like that again, okay? Always stay where we can see you.”
“What’s wrong with Granddad?” he said.
My father was leaning against a tree, clawing at his chest and gasping for air. The blood was drained from his face, and there was something in his eyes I had never seen before. It might have been fear.
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Granddad?” Pat said.
“Granddad’s fine,” he said.
After a long, desperate minute, he managed to get some air in his lungs. Still breathing hard, he laughed off the concern of his son and grandson.
“Just getting old,” he said. “Too old for a jog in the woods.”
And I thought that’s exactly what it was—old age catching up on a man whose body had endured so much in his youth. All my life those small pieces of shrapnel, jagged and black, had been squeezing out of his tough old body. Every summer we saw that giant starburst of a scar on his side. All that pain and punishment was bound to catch up on him sooner or later.
But I was wrong. It wasn’t the past calling. It was the future.
“Don’t worry about me,” my father told us. “I’m fine. Let’s go home.”
We walked back to his car through the lengthening shadows of that September afternoon, Pat riding his bike ahead of us, my old man humming “You Make Me Feel So Young,” consoled and comforted by his personal Dean Martin, his own private Sinatra.
twenty
When you are deep into a relationship that you expect to last forever, it never crosses your mind that one day you will be taking your third shower of the day and getting ready to go out on a date.
Like getting your mom to do your washing or having to borrow money from your dad, you think that all those nervy bathroom rituals are way behind you.
You never dream that there will again come a time when you are as fanatical about your personal hygiene as a fifteen-year-old with a permanent erection. That you will once more find yourself standing in front of the mirror trying to do something with your hair. That you will be brushing teeth that are already perfectly clean. And that you will do all these things so you can sit in the dark for a couple of hours with a member of the opposite sex you have only just met.
It’s scary. Dating is a young person’s game. You get out of practice. You might not be any good at it anymore.
You use a different part of your brain for going out with someone you have just met than you do for going out with someone you are married to. You use different muscles. So perhaps it’s only natural that when you start using those muscles again, they can feel a little stiff.
Two grown-ups going through all those teenage mating rituals—trying to look nice, meeting at the arranged hour, knowing what it is time to do and what should wait a while and what should wait forever. It should be really difficult to get back into all that stuff after you have been with someone for years. But it didn’t feel difficult with Cyd. She made it feel easy.
***
“I know we’re just friends and all, but our choice of movie tonight is really important,” Cyd said.
I tried to look as though I knew what she was talking about.
“A lot of people on a first date try to play safe. They go for a big summer movie. You know, one of those films where New York gets destroyed by aliens or a tidal wave or a big monkey or something. They think that kind of movie guarantees a good time. But a big summer movie is not a good choice.”
“It isn’t?”
She shook her head. “Nobody really has a good time at those movies apart from thirteen-year-old kids in Idaho. It’s the law of diminishing returns. When you’ve seen the Empire State Building blown up once, you don’t need to see it again.”
I was starting to get it. “You think the earth is going to move. But you end up yawning as the aliens zap the White House.”
“If you choose a big summer movie, it shows you have really low expectations,” she said, shooting me a look as I squeezed the MGF through the afternoon traffic clogged up around the Angel. “About everything. It means you think life is essentially just a bucket of stale popcorn and a carton of flat Diet Coke. And that’s the most that anyone can hope for.”
I tried to remember the first film I had seen with Gina. It had been something arty and Japanese at the Barbican. It was about depressed people.
“Art house movies are just as bad,” Cyd said, reading my mind. “It means you are both pretending to be something that you’re probably not.”
“And think of all those couples around the world whose first film was Titanic,” I said. “All those budding relationships doomed before they had even really begun. Before they had even left port.”
She gave me a punch on the arm. “This is serious,” she said. “I had a friend back home who got married to a guy who took her to see The Fly on their first date.”
“And later he turned into a bug?”
“As good as,” she said. “He certainly changed. For the worse.”
“So what do you want to see?” I asked her.
“Trust me?” she said.
“I trust you,” I said.
She wanted to see one of those films that they put on television every Christmas, a film that I somehow imagined I had already seen a dozen times. But I don’t think I had ever really seen it at all.
I don’t know why they were showing It’s A Wonderful Life down at the NFT on the South Bank. It might have been a Frank Capra season or a James Stewart season. They might have had a restored, digitally enhanced, freshly polished print. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. That was the movie we went to see on our first night together. And in the beginning it seemed like pretty grim stuff.
The special effects were from the steam age. Up in a starry sky that was clearly just a painted sheet of cardboard with a torch behind it, some angels—or rather, heavenly beings represented by pinpricks in the cardboard—were discussing George Bailey, pillar of his community, and his date with destiny.
As the action
switched to a small American town and their merry little Christmas, I found myself yearning for aliens or a tidal wave or a big monkey to come along and destroy the lot. If Cyd’s theory about the omens of your first film were true, then we would be lucky to last the evening. Then gradually, as all of James Stewart’s hopes and dreams began to recede, I found myself drawn into this story of a man who had lost sight of why he was alive.
The film was far tougher than I remembered it when it had been flickering in black and white in the background of my multicolored childhood, sandwiched between Top of the Pops and my mom’s turkey sandwiches.
As his world starts to unravel, James Stewart abuses one of his children’s teachers on the phone and gets punched out by her husband in a bar. He bitterly resents the loving wife for whom he gave up his dreams of traveling the world. Most shocking of all, he is rotten to his children—an irritable, bad-tempered bully. But you know that it’s not because he doesn’t love them enough. It’s because he loves them so much.
In the darkness, Cyd reached over and squeezed my hand.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everything works out all right in the end.”
***
It was still light when we came out of the film, but only just. We bought slices of pizza in the NFT café and ate them at those long wooden tables outside where you have to share with other people and you feel like a student.
The NFT is in an ugly building in a beautiful part of town. It’s inside a dumb concrete sixties block plonked down just where the Thames curls south as it passes under the shadow of Waterloo Bridge, and it faces right across the river from the lights of the Victoria embankment and St. Paul’s. That’s where Cyd told me that she had grown up in a home full of women and movies.
“The first film my parents saw together was Gone with the Wind,” she said. “And after my dad died, my mom saw it sixteen times alone. She would have seen it more often. But she was trying to ration herself.”
Cyd was the youngest of four sisters. Her mother worked as a nurse at the Texas Medical Center—“Where big shots go to get their hearts fixed,” she said—and her father drove trucks out in the oil fields.
