by Rose Tremain
Now I asked my father his name and what he did. I knew how to work Dad, of course. Soon he was more interested in me than in the other man. Yet my fear didn’t diminish: didn’t we look similar? I wasn’t sure. My clothes, as well as my sparkly new teeth, were more expensive than his, and I was heavier and taller, about a third bigger all over – I have always worked out. But my hair was going grey; I don’t dye it. Dad’s hair was still mostly black.
An accountant all his life, my father had worked in the same office for fifteen years. He was telling me that he had two sons: Dennis, who was in the Air Force, and me – Billy. A few months ago I’d gone away to university, where, apparently, I was doing well. My all-female production of Waiting for Godot – ‘a bloody depressing play’, according to Dad – had been admired. I wanted to say, ‘But I didn’t direct it, Dad, I only produced it.’
I had introduced myself to Dad as Peter, the name I sometimes adopted, along with quite a developed alternative character, during anonymous sexual encounters. Not that I needed a persona: Father would ask me where I was from and what I did, but whenever I began to answer he’d interrupt with a stream of advice and opinions.
My father said he wanted to sit down because his sciatica was playing up, and I joined him at a table. Eyeing the barmaid, Dad said, ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’
‘Lovely hair,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately, none of her clothes fit.’
‘Who’s interested in her clothes?’
This was an aspect of my father I’d never seen; perhaps it was a departure for him. I’d never known him to go to the pub after work; he came straight home. And once Dennis had left I was able to secure Father’s evenings for myself. Every day I’d wait for him at the bus stop, ready to take his briefcase. In the house I’d make him a cup of tea while he changed.
Now the barmaid came over to remove our glasses and empty the ashtrays. As she leaned across the table, Dad put his hand behind her knee and slid it all the way up her skirt to her arse, which he caressed, squeezed and held until she reeled away and stared at him in disbelief, shouting that she hated the pub and the men in it, and would he get out before she called the landlord and he flung him out personally?
The landlord did indeed rush over. He snatched away Dad’s glass, raising his fist as Dad hurried to the door, forgetting his briefcase. I’d never known Dad to go to work without his briefcase, and I’d never known him to leave it anywhere. As my brother and I used to say, his attaché case was always attached to him.
Outside, where Dad was brushing himself down, I handed it back to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have done that. But once, just once, I had to. Suppose it’s the last time I touch anyone!’ He asked, ‘Which way are you going?’
‘I’ll walk with you a bit,’ I said. ‘My bag isn’t heavy. I’m passing through. I need to get a train into London but there’s no hurry.’
He said, ‘Why don’t you come and have a drink at my house?’
My parents lived according to a strict regime, mathematical in its exactitude. Why, now, was he inviting a stranger to his house? I had always been his only friend; our involvement had kept us both busy.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come.’
Noise and night and rain streaming everywhere: you couldn’t see farther than your hand. But we both knew the way, Dad moving slowly, his mouth hanging open to catch more air. He seemed happy enough, perhaps with what he’d done in the pub, or maybe my company cheered him up.
Yet when we turned the corner into the neat familiar road, a road that had, to my surprise, remained exactly where it was all the time I hadn’t been there, I felt wrapped in coldness. In my recent dreams – fading as they were like frescoes in the light – the suburban street had been darkly dismal under the yellow shadows of the streetlights, and filled with white flowers and a suffocating, deathly odour, like being buried in roses. But how could I falter now? Once inside the house, Dad threw open the door to the living room. I blinked; there she was, Mother, knitting in her huge chair with her feet up, an open box of chocolates on the small table beside her, her fingers rustling for treasure in the crinkly paper.
Dad left me while he changed into his pyjamas and dressing gown. The fact that he had a visitor, a stranger, didn’t deter him from his routine, outside of which there were no maps.
I stood in my usual position, just behind Mother’s chair. Here, where I wouldn’t impede her enjoyment with noise, complaints or the sight of my face, I explained that Dad and I had met in the pub and he’d invited me back for a drink.
Mother said, ‘I don’t think we’ve got any drink, unless there’s something left over from last Christmas. Drink doesn’t go bad, does it?’
‘It doesn’t go bad.’
‘Now shut up,’ she said. ‘I’m watching this. D’you watch the soaps?’
‘Not much.’
Maybe the ominous whiteness of my dreams had been stimulated by the whiteness of the things Mother had been knitting and crocheting – headrests, gloves, cushion covers; there wasn’t a piece of furniture in the house without a knitted thing on it. Even as a grown man, I couldn’t buy a pair of gloves without thinking I should be wearing Mother’s.
In the kitchen, I made a cup of tea for myself and Dad. Mum had left my father’s dinner in the oven: sausages, mash and peas, all dry as lime by now, and presented on a large cracked plate, with space between each item. Mum had asked me if I wanted anything, but how would I have been able to eat anything here?
As I waited for the kettle to boil, I washed up the dishes at the sink overlooking the garden. Then I carried Father’s tea and dinner into his study, formerly the family dining room. With one hand I made a gap for the plate at the table, which was piled high with library books.
After I’d finished my homework, Dad always liked me to go through the radio schedules, marking programmes I might record for him. If I was lucky, he would read to me, or talk about the lives of the artists he was absorbed with – these were his companions. Their lives were exemplary, but only a fool would try to emulate them. Meanwhile I would slip my hand inside his pyjama top and tickle his back, or I’d scratch his head or rub his arms until his eyes rolled in appreciation.
Now in his bedwear, sitting down to eat, Dad told me he was embarked on a ‘five-year reading plan’. He was working on War and Peace. Next it would be Remembrance of Things Past, then Middlemarch, all of Dickens, Homer, Chaucer, and so on. He kept a separate notebook for each author he read.
‘This methodical way,’ he pointed out, ‘you get to know everything in literature. You will never run out of interest, of course, because then there is music, painting, in fact the whole of human history—’
His talk reminded me of the time I won the school essay prize for a tract on time-wasting. The piece was not about how to fritter away one’s time profitlessly, which might have made it a useful and lively work, but about how much can be achieved by filling every moment with activity! Dad was my ideal. He would read even in the bath, and as he reclined there my job was to wash his feet, back and hair with soap and a flannel. When he was done, I’d be waiting with a warm, open towel.
I interrupted him. ‘You certainly wanted to know that woman this evening.’
‘What? How quiet it is! Shall we hear some music?’
He was right. Neither the city nor the country was quiet like the suburbs, the silence of people holding their breath.
Dad was holding up a record he had borrowed from the library. ‘You will know this, but not well enough, I guarantee you.’
Beethoven’s Fifth was an odd choice of background music, but how could I sneer? Without his enthusiasm, my life would never have been filled with music. Mother had been a church pianist, and she’d taken us to the ballet, usually The Nutcracker, or the Bolshoi when they visited London. Mum and Dad sometimes went ballroom dancing; I loved it when they dressed up. Out of such minute inspirations I have found meaning sufficient fo
r a life.
Dad said, ‘Do you think I’ll be able to go in that pub again?’
‘If you apologise.’
‘Better leave it a few weeks. I don’t know what overcame me. That woman’s not a Jewess, is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Usually she’s happy to hear about my aches and pains, and who else is, at our age?’
‘Where d’you ache?’
‘It’s the walk to and from the station – sometimes I just can’t make it. I have to stop and lean against something.’
I said, ‘I’ve been learning massage.’
‘Ah.’ He put his feet in my lap. I squeezed his feet, ankles and calves; he wasn’t looking at me now. He said, ‘Your hands are strong. You’re not a plumber, are you?’
‘I’ve told you what I do. I have the theatre, and now I’m helping to set up a teaching foundation, a studio for the young.’
He whispered, ‘Are you homosexual?’
‘I am, yes. Never seen a cock I didn’t like. You?’
‘Queer? It would have shown up by now, wouldn’t it? But I’ve never done much about my female interests.’
‘You’ve never been unfaithful?’
‘I’ve always liked women.’
I asked, ‘Do they like you?’
‘The local secretaries are friendly. Not that you can do anything. I can’t afford a professional.’
‘How often do you go to the pub?’
‘I’ve started popping in after work. My Billy has gone.’
‘For good?’
‘After university he’ll come running back to me, I can assure you of that. Around this time of night I’d always be talking to him. There’s a lot you can put in a kid, without his knowing it. My wife doesn’t have a word to say to me. She doesn’t like to do anything for me, either.’
‘Sexually?’
‘She might look large to you, but in the flesh she is even larger, and she crushes me like a gnat in bed. I can honestly say we haven’t had it off for eighteen years.’
‘Since Billy was born?’
He said, letting me caress him, ‘She never had much enthusiasm for it. Now she is indifferent … frozen … almost dead.’
I said, ‘People are more scared of their own passion than of anything else. But it’s a grim deprivation she’s made you endure.’
He nodded. ‘You dirty homos have a good time, I bet, looking at one another in toilets and that …’
‘People like to think so. But I’ve lived alone for five years.’
He said, ‘I am hoping she will die before me; then I might have a chance … We ordinary types carry on in these hateful situations for the single reason of the children and you’ll never have that.’
‘You’re right.’
He indicated photographs of me and my brother. ‘Without those babies, there is nothing for me. It is ridiculous to try to live for yourself alone.’
‘Don’t I know it? Unless one can find others to live for.’
‘I hope you do!’ he said. ‘But it can never be the same as your own.’
If the mortification of fidelity imperils love, there’s always the consolation of children. I had been Dad’s girl, his servant, his worshipper; my faith had kept him alive. It was a cult of personality he had set up, with my brother and me as his mirrors.
Now Mother opened the door – not so wide that she could see us, or us her – and announced that she was going to bed.
‘Good night,’ I called.
Dad was right about kids. But what could I do about it? I had bought an old factory at my own expense and had converted it into a theatre studio, a place where young people could work with established artists. I spent so much time in this building that I had moved my office there. It was where I would head when I left here, to sit in the café, seeing who would turn up and what they wanted from me, if anything. I was gradually divesting myself, as I aged, of all I’d accumulated. One of Father’s favourite works was Tolstoy’s ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’
I said, ‘With or without children, you are still a man. There are things you want that children cannot provide.’
He said, ‘We all, in this street, are devoted to hobbies.’
‘The women, too?’
‘They sew, or whatever. There’s never an idle moment. My son has written a beautiful essay on the use of time.’
He sipped his tea; the Beethoven, which was on repeat, boomed away. He seemed content to let me work on his legs. Since he didn’t want me to stop, I asked him to lie on the floor. With characteristic eagerness, he removed his dressing gown and then his pyjama top; I massaged every part of him, murmuring ‘Dad, Dad’ under my breath. When at last he stood up, I was ready with his warm dressing gown, which I had placed on the radiator.
It was late, but not too late to leave. It was never too late to leave the suburbs, but Dad invited me to stay. I agreed, though it hadn’t occurred to me that he would suggest I sleep in my old room, in my bed.
He accompanied me upstairs and in I went, stepping over record sleeves, magazines, clothes, books. My piano I was most glad to see. I can still play a little, but my passion was writing the songs that were scrawled in notebooks on top of the piano. Not that I would be able to look at them. When I began to work in the theatre, I didn’t show my songs to anyone, and eventually I came to believe they were a waste of time.
Standing there shivering, I had to tell myself the truth: my secret wasn’t that I hadn’t propagated but that I’d wanted to be an artist, not just a producer. If I chose, I could blame my parents for this: they had seen themselves as spectators, in the background of life. But I was the one who’d lacked the guts – to fail, to succeed, to engage with the whole undignified, insane attempt at originality. I had only ever been a handmaiden, first to Dad and then to others – the artists I’d supported – and how could I have imagined that that would be sufficient?
My bed was narrow. Through the thin ceiling, I could hear my father snoring; I knew whenever he turned over in bed. It was true that I had never heard them making love. Somehow, between them, they had transformed the notion of physical love into a ridiculous idea. Why would people want to do something so awkward with their limbs?
I couldn’t hear Mother. She didn’t snore, but she could sigh for England. I got up and went to the top of the stairs. By the kitchen light I could see her in her dressing gown, stockings around her ankles, trudging along the hall and into each room, wringing her hands as she went, muttering back to the ghosts clamouring within her skull.
She stood still to scratch and tear at her exploded arms. During the day, she kept them covered because of her ‘eczema’. Now I watched while flakes of skin fell onto the carpet, as though she were converting herself into dust. She dispersed the shreds of her body with her delicately pointed dancer’s foot.
As a child – even as a young man – I would never have approached Mother in this state. She had always made it clear that the uproar and demands of two boys were too much for her. Naturally, she couldn’t wish for us to die, so she died herself, inside.
One time, my therapist asked whether Dad and I were able to be silent together. More relevant, I should have said, was whether Mother and I could be together without my chattering on about whatever occurred to me, in order to distract her from herself. Now I made up my mind and walked down the stairs, watching her all the while. She was like difficult music, and you wouldn’t want to get too close. But, as with such music, I wouldn’t advise trying to make it out – you have to sit with it, wait for it to address you.
I was standing beside her, and with her head down she looked at me sideways.
‘I’ll make you some tea,’ I said, and she even nodded.
Before, during one of her late-night wanderings, she had found me masturbating in front of some late-night TV programme. It must have been some boy group, or Bowie. ‘I know what you are,’ she said. She was not disapproving. She was just a lost ally.
I made a c
up of lemon tea and gave it to her. As she stood sipping it, I took up a position beside her, my head bent also, attempting to see – as she appeared to vibrate with inner electricity – what she saw and felt. It was clear that there was no chance of my ever being able to cure her. I could only become less afraid of her madness.
In his bed, Father was still snoring. He wouldn’t have liked me to be with her. He had taken her sons for himself, charmed them away, and he wasn’t a sharer.
She was almost through with the tea and getting impatient. Wandering, muttering, scratching: she had important work to do and time was passing. I couldn’t detain her any more.
I slept in her chair in the front room.
When I got up, my parents were having breakfast. My father was back in his suit and my mother was in the uniform she wore to work in the supermarket. I dressed rapidly in order to join Dad as he walked to the station. It had stopped raining.
I asked him about his day, but couldn’t stop thinking about mine. I was living, as my therapist enjoyed reminding me, under the aegis of the clock. I wanted to go to the studio and talk; I wanted to eat well and make love well, go to a show and then dance, and make love again. I could not be the same as them.
At the station in London, Father and I parted. I said I’d always look out for him when I was in the area, but couldn’t be sure when I’d be coming his way again.
Telescope
JOANTHAN BUCKLEY was born in Birmingham, and has written both fiction and travel guides (for Rough Guides). He lives in Brighton with his wife and son. His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published in 1997, followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004) and the critically acclaimed So He Takes the Dog (2006). His new novel, Contact, will be published in 2009. ‘Telescope’ is from a novel-in-progress about ‘an absolute outsider’.
