The Only Boy For Me

by Gil McNeil

  ‘No, Lizzie, it definitely beats doing the ironing.’

  Charlie is delighted to see me. He and Lizzie have spent the entire morning making a cake, and he’s eaten most of the icing. I make a cup of tea and Lizzie leaves, and I get Charlie into the bath. After a bit of scrubbing I manage to get the icing sugar off his arms and legs. We have supper watching telly, and I agree he can sleep in my bed. He finally falls asleep at nine thirty after a long random-chatting routine. I call Mack who says he’s been listening to ‘New York, New York’ again, and thinks he has come up with a dance routine which will score well if we ever find ourselves on Come Dancing.

  I talk to Leila and Kate who both agree that Mack sounds wonderful. I’m not sure I can cope with the full implications of this, so decide to try not to think about it and just see how it goes. I then spend hours thinking about it, and end up feeling sick. I’m due to go off to Spain with Mum soon, for the half-term holiday. Mack has to work this weekend, and has his kids next weekend. He asks if I want to bring Charlie up to stay but I think it might be a bit early to start introducing children into the picture, and anyway I have a million things to do before we leave, so we agree to meet up once I’m back from Spain. I half wish I wasn’t going away at all, but know it’s never a good idea to drop everything as soon as there’s a man on the scene, however tempting this might be. And anyway, Mum would kill me.

  ‘At least I’ll have brown legs by then.’

  ‘I’d rather you had white legs and didn’t go at all. Where are you going anyway?’

  ‘Lanzarote. And don’t make any snobby jokes. I couldn’t face another half-term holiday in the rain.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. Will my dressing gown be going?’

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘Good. I shall program it by remote to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft: with Charlie in my room and Mum next door the only thing that will need keeping an eye on is my blood pressure.’

  ‘Will your mobile still work in Spain?’

  ‘No. Mainly because I’m not taking it. Otherwise Barney will ring every day.’

  ‘Fair enough. I tried that once, but the agency sent a messenger to the hotel with a new phone.’

  ‘Christ. Don’t tell Barney.’

  Gatwick. Six thirty am. This is going to be a very long day. Mum has an enormous suitcase and has brought her entire collection of Tupperware which she says is bound to come in handy. She also has an enormous first-aid kit which she is carrying in her hand luggage, although I’m not sure how useful four miles of crêpe bandage will be if the plane ditches in the sea. Charlie has packed so much into his rucksack he can’t stand up straight, and has insisted on wearing his favourite hat, which unfortunately turned out to be a bright-yellow woolly bobble hat Mum knitted him. Sporting this combined with his new holiday shorts, he thinks he looks cool. At least we won’t lose sight of him in a crowd.

  Have a mini crisis in duty free because I can’t work out if Lanzarote is part of the EC, and therefore duty free is defunct. I have visions of buying duty-free cigarettes, being strip-searched at customs and spending the entire holiday in a Midnight Express-type nightmare with the local police. Finally a saleswoman with a bright-orange face, purple eyeshadow and blue hair comes over, squirts me with disgusting perfume and asks me if I need assistance. She confirms I can purchase duty free, so I buy cigarettes and a bottle of Chanel, to cover up the horrible smell which is actually beginning to make my eyes water.

  The flight is awful. The combination of couples having blistering rows and slapping toddlers is not conducive to relaxation, and we discover the airline has invented a new game to amuse the cabin crew: shrinking the seats so that only under-tens can actually sit down in them without dislocating their hips. I have lost all feeling in my feet before the plane even takes off. The food is indescribable, but Charlie likes all the little packets, opens them all, and then refuses to eat anything. Mum says her chicken is Nasty so she will just drink tea, if they ever bring it round. Apparently, however, hot drinks are only served five minutes before landing. Mum has packed snacks in her capacious bag, but it takes us ten minutes to get it out from under the seat, and then Charlie’s tray goes flying up into the air and deposits plastic cutlery and packets of butter all over the people sitting in front of us. They are very pleased.

  I spend ages loitering by the loos so I won’t need reconstructive surgery for my knees upon arrival. The plane starts to descend. It actually looks like we’ll land in the sea, and Charlie gets worried. I tell him it’ll be fine: the plane has special inflatable aprons like a hovercraft so if the pilot misses the runway, we will simply float back into the airport. The woman in the seat behind us tells her husband, ‘Isn’t it marvellous, Trevor, they think of everything, don’t they?’ We land without use of inflatables, and the captain tells us to stay sitting down with our seatbelts on, and not open lockers and give fellow passengers concussion until the plane has come to a complete stop and the crew can make a quick getaway if things turn nasty.

  The luggage takes hours to appear, and we get through customs without being arrested, and locate a gaggle of reps, all in dazzlingly bright polyester outfits. The glare given off by the combination of orange and cerise is almost blinding, and I get a slight electric shock from the Welcome Pack. I find the queue for pre-booked car hire and discover everyone is making a huge fuss about being asked for 5,000 pesetas as a deposit for petrol. When it’s my turn I offer to pay 15,000 pesetas, but only if they can upgrade our car. The other passengers stare at me with undisguised contempt. One man even tries to explain to me that it’s only 5,000. I learnt this trick from Barney, who says it always works, but it is vital not to try it in Germany or they think you’re taking the piss and give you an old Volkswagen camper van.

  The car-hire man gives me a smile and the keys to a brand-new Renault Laguna estate. Everyone else gets keys for Renault Clios. They all glare at me as we make our way up the ramps to the car park. The car is very swish, with hundreds of buttons with totally inexplicable symbols on them. God knows what ± is supposed to stand for, but I decide not to press it just in case it turns out to be some sort of Gallic joke and inflates the airbags. I keep forgetting where the gearstick is and try to change gear with my left hand which hits the electric window switch, producing a small hurricane effect inside the car. Charlie thinks this is delightful.

  I manage to find the villa by sheer good luck, but pretend I had a cunning plan all along. Mum is very impressed but cannot undo her seatbelt, which seems to have locked. I spend ages trying to get it undone, and then realise Charlie has got out of the car, put his rucksack back on and disappeared through the front gates into the villa. Mum and I exchange a horrified glance, and then we hear him yell, ‘There’s a pool,’ followed by an ominous splash. Sprint to the pool. Charlie has jumped in still wearing his rucksack, and has sunk to the bottom like a small boulder. I’m just about to leap in when he bobs up, minus his rucksack, and says the water is lovely. Grabbing him, I begin a long safety lecture about never jumping into pools, especially wearing rucksacks. I hope to God this really is our villa, or the owners may appear at any moment and call the pool police. We retrieve the suitcases from the car and unpack, and then we wander down to the main road which runs the entire length of the resort and find a pizza restaurant. The ice-creams come with sparklers, which Charlie adores.

  We gradually settle into a holiday routine of swimming in the mornings, and trying to have a siesta, but Charlie thinks this is a ridiculous idea.

  ‘Only babies go to sleep in the day.’

  ‘Not in Spain. Everyone has a sleep when it gets hot, and then they stay up much later.’

  ‘How late?’

  ‘Oh, about nine or ten.’

  Charlie considers this for a moment, and attempts to lie down and sleep, but gets up again after five minutes, just as I am starting to doze off, and says, ‘It’s no good. I can’t sleep and that’s final.’ So we end up playing the Alphab
et Animal game, where you pick a letter and name all the animals you can think of. Charlie insists that Amster is acceptable for A, and Big Squirrel is fine for B. We move on to drawing.

  We attempt a bit of culture and visit the house of Cesar Manrique, a local artist and sculptor. It’s all very beautiful, with wonderful volcanic pools and gardens, and an art exhibition. Charlie is not impressed with the art, but discovers a kitten in the café and feeds it ice-cream. Charlie, and the entire café, sit rapt with delight at the kitten’s antics, and I know he’ll remember this far more than he’ll remember the art, and, I suspect, so will everybody else. We find the loos to wash his hands and discover that the doors have metal sculptures on them. The female figure has huge bosoms, and the male figure is painted bright green and has a coat hook in the form of a willy sticking straight out. In fact I could have had my eye out, and walking into a toilet door and poking your eye out on the willy of a symbolic metal figure would probably not go down too well with the holiday-insurance people. Charlie thinks the toilet sculptures are the best thing he has ever seen, and insists we take photographs to show Miss Pike.

  I’m slowly getting the hang of the hire car, but still have nightmare moments when for a split second I think I’m in the passenger seat and Charlie is driving. We visit the local hypermarket which turns out to be something of a challenge because Charlie insists on buying anything unusual-looking, as it might be lovely. And Mum insists on buying anything British. Supper consists of Spam, instant mashed potato and digestive biscuits, with Coke for Charlie to drink. He eats far too much, and then runs about screaming.

  Mum suggests a slap might be in order. ‘Be my guest, but I don’t think it’ll calm him down, do you?’

  ‘Don’t take that tone of voice with me, I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Oh right, and slapping him is going to do that, is it? He’s not used to having Coke with meals, or so many biscuits.’

  ‘Oh of course, I might have known it would be my fault. Children are never naughty any more, are they? They just have sugar highs or food allergies.’

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘Well, honestly.’

  At this point Charlie pauses in his manic run-about and says, ‘Mummy. Stop being horrible to my lovely nana.’

  I’m sorely tempted to explain that lovely Nana is advocating slapping, but manage to restrain myself.

  ‘Shut up, Charlie, you’re being very silly. Stop running around and come and have a bath.’

  ‘I hate you, Mummy, and so does Nana.’

  Nana smirks, but says, ‘Don’t be rude, Charlie. Come on, you and me will go and get you a lovely bath.’

  I’m left fuming in disgrace.

  Mum reappears and says Charlie is now in the bath and will not stop splashing, so perhaps I might like to use nonviolent tactics to get him to stop. I march into the bathroom and pull the plug out of the bath, and order Charlie to get out instantly as I’ve had enough.

  ‘Enough of what, Mummy?’

  ‘Charlie, don’t push your luck. Stop splashing and get out now. Or there will be no ice-cream tomorrow. At all.’

  I’m not sure bribery is an official good-parenting technique, but at least the NSPCC is not currently running a campaign against it, so I guess it’ll have to do.

  Later on, when Charlie is asleep, we sit on the balcony drinking tea, and Mum says, ‘I’m sorry about earlier, I was just a bit tired.’

  ‘Oh don’t be daft, Mum, it’s fine. I know he can be annoying – well, more than annoying really. Sometimes I wish there was a remote control for children and you could put them on pause for a while.’

  Mum smiles. ‘You were much worse.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  It’s vital I head her off now before she can start on her When You Were Young stories. If I have to hear one more time about the day the vicar came to tea and I ate a whole box of Maltesers under the spare bed, and then came downstairs and was sick all over the living-room carpet, I shall definitely scream.

  ‘I’ll cook tomorrow, if you like. I could do pasta.’

  ‘No, I want you to have a proper rest.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum, I like cooking.’

  This is a downright lie, but I don’t want her to spend the entire holiday cooking. She’s actually a really good cook, but likes to rely on tins when she’s abroad because ‘you know where you are with a tin of corned beef’. Quite.

  ‘All right then, that would be lovely. We’re very proud of you, you know, your father and me. And you’re doing a grand job with Charlie.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  We visit the volcano park on the island, and Charlie gets very excited and wonders if the tyres will burst driving over molten lava. Mum goes very quiet. We drive for ages over what was once lava, and the landscape is quite extraordinary. At the top of the mountain, there’s a huge car park. Mum refuses to get out of the car, saying she has brought a flask of tea and would rather stay and drink it and read her book. I eventually persuade her to come with us by telling her that the car will not lock if there is still a passenger sitting inside it, and the alarm will go off. We walk up the path from the car park and join a cluster of people gathered round a series of small holes in the ground. A park ranger is standing by a hole with a bucket of water. I have a sinking feeling this will turn out to be one of those demonstrations where a tiny puff of steam is produced, and children get very bored. But instead he pours the entire bucket of water down the hole, and without warning a huge jet of steam shoots about fifty feet into the air and everybody screams. Mum drops her camera, and Charlie sticks his head up my sweatshirt.

  Everyone then recovers and begins laughing, and Charlie re-emerges and says, ‘Make him do it again.’ It turns out he stands there chucking buckets of water down holes at five-minute intervals, and we see steam shoot out four more times before Charlie will agree to have a drink in the very stylish café built right on top of the volcano. I presume they have some sort of early-warning system to avoid the café being shot down the hill on a lava flow, but all the same Mum is not keen to linger over coffee just in case. We find a little stone hut built over what appears to be a large barbecue. Then we realise it’s actually a huge iron grille over a hole which goes right down into the volcano. The heat is sufficient to cook whole chickens, and we peer down and see a distinct red glow. I manage to restrain Charlie by his hood, and explain that climbing on to the grille to get a closer look would not be a good idea, as apart from anything else his sandals would melt.

  We gradually adjust to the slower pace of life, and I rediscover the joys of lying in the sun drinking gin. Bliss. I buy a huge inflatable whale for Charlie to play with in the pool. It takes hours to blow up and I nearly pass out twice. Mum keeps him plastered with factor 200 suncream, which makes him look like one of those nutters who swim the English Channel covered in a thick layer of goose fat. I ring Mack midweek – I’ve been thinking about him a lot. Being away from home has given me a whole new perspective. I miss him, but I’ve also managed to get myself totally panicky and wish we could go back to the Brief Encounter stage. I end up deciding that the whole thing is doomed, and can’t work out what on earth he sees in me. Maybe I’ve just had too many gin and tonics.

  I spend the first ten minutes of the phone call having a lovely flirty chat but suddenly find myself going all pathetic and saying, ‘Um, Mack, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Oh, God. You shouldn’t do that, you know.’

  ‘No, I was just thinking, you know, trying to work out what on earth you see in me.’

  Christ, I can’t believe I really said that.

  ‘Well, you’ve got my dressing gown, for a start. Will that do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bugger. Um, well, you make me laugh. That’s important.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve been thinking and I’m not an obvious choice for a man like you.’

  ‘What do you mean, a man like me?’

  ‘Well, one surrounded by gorgeous young women all day lo
ng, with no kids and flat stomachs. And legs like giraffes. I mean, I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you are rather gorgeous, you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Quasimodo.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Oh great, back to the swearing now. Have you been talking to that Leila friend of yours?’

  ‘No, and that may be part of the problem. I know if I rang her she would tell me to get a grip.’

  ‘I like that woman more and more. Look, I don’t know who these women are that are supposed to be surrounding me, but the only ones I meet can drink me under the table, and frankly they frighten me a little bit. Well, quite a lot actually. I don’t have time for all that serial-dating stuff and anyway I’m crap at it. I’m sorry if things have gone a bit fast, but I don’t like hanging about. I like you. You’re strong, and you make me laugh.’

  ‘Do you mean strong like carrying bags of potatoes on my head? Because I can’t do that either.’

  ‘No, and stop interrupting. I mean strong as in not clingy. And you know, it’s funny, but I’ve never met a majorly beautiful woman who wasn’t just a tiny bit vacuous and smug. And none of them are sexy. At all. Believe me.’

  ‘You should go into advertising, you know; you’re quite good at the old persuasive pitching. I feel much better now.’

  ‘Good. So have I got the job, then?’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s looking good, James, it’s looking good.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. You had me worried for a minute. Sweet dreams, darling.’

  And he puts the phone down. I wish he wouldn’t do that. Arrive back at the villa with a very stupid grin on my face. It looks like I may have got myself a new dressing gown for a little while longer.

  Chapter Six

  Of Lice and Men, and 101 Dalmatians

  The journey home from Spain is horrendous. A family with a small baby sits behind us on the flight, and one with a lively toddler sits in front. Both scream for the entire journey. The toddler does let up for a bit, but only to try to steal his mother’s food. She slaps him, and he starts up all over again. Think the NSPCC should do emergency training sessions on all charter flights.