The Good Father

by Marion Husband

The garden has become overgrown, of course and the tree-house looks forlorn. It is missing the boys, just as I miss them. I see them less often these days; Inkerman Terrace becomes altogether too tiny when the twins visit and they soon become bored with no garden to play in. They could play out on the street, but Jack won’t allow it; he thinks the local children who play football on the road outside my window are much too rough for his boys to mix with. Bored, Stephen and Martin ask me why I’m living here. Stephen called it ‘a horrid little house’, and Jack told him off at once, embarrassed as he always is in my company these days. He thinks it’s idiotic that I should have left my father’s house, that it now stands empty. Sometimes, uncharitably, I believe he would rather have me living there looking after it for him, a caretaker whilst he makes up his mind about what is the done thing. Of course, he doesn’t think of how humiliating that would be.

  Val tells me that she believes Jack would like to sell the house, but that he thinks it’s somehow not done. She looked at me as though I have the power to put an end to Jack’s discomfort, as though I was holding back some vital piece of information that would make Jack content. It seems to me that all she wants is Jack’s contentment; if he is content, well then, the ship can be gently steered in the direction she wants it to take. Sitting at my kitchen table, she asked me if I would speak to Jack again, tell him again that I won’t contest my father’s will, and am happy not to, happy that everything is his.

  ‘Do you think I’m happy about it?’ I asked her in return.

  She frowned at me. ‘Aren’t you? If not happy, then at least you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I don’t mind that I’ve lost a fortune.’

  Flatly she said, ‘You do mind. I’m sorry – it’s just that you seem happy.’

  I was happy because she was sitting in my kitchen, because we had just finished a good supper and a bottle of beer, and because until a few moments earlier I had managed to forget all about Jack and the fact that she was his fiancée. Since she’d reminded me, I could hardly bring myself to look at her. I got up and began clearing away the supper plates.

  She got up too, and we washed the dishes in silence. We are often quiet together but that evening, the silence was awkward. After a while, as I handed her a plate to dry, she said, ‘Are you happy – generally, I mean?’

  She looked so concerned that I wanted only to reassure her. ‘Yes, I’m happy.’

  She smiled, relieved.

  We don’t tell Jack that we have supper together each Wednesday evening when Matthew goes to see his sister; it’s an unspoken agreement between us that we should keep our relationship secret. She tells me I’m her best friend; she thinks I’m a Bohemian and Bohemian men can be friends with women in a way work-a-day men like Jack cannot. If I asked her to pose for me naked I’m almost certain that she would because I am an artist with pure, artistic motivations; she can’t see how much I want her. I’ve become too adapt at hiding desire.

  When Jack first introduced me to her one Saturday evening in the Grand Hotel’s bar, she laughed, astonished. ‘We’ve already met – Peter has just moved in next door to us.’

  Jack was only mildly surprised, mildly put out. He said, ‘Well, it’s a small world,’ and then he put his arm around her waist, drawing her close to him, gazing at me with just a hint of warning in his eyes. He doesn’t really believe I could take a woman from him; besides, he thinks a woman like Val wouldn’t look twice at me. So he laughed, patting her bottom as he said, ‘Shall we sit down?’ Val glanced at me, embarrassed I think, by Jack’s behaviour. It’s all he can do to keep his hands off her. He calls her ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak her name, except to me, when we’re alone. The day before we met in the hotel he said, ‘I’ve asked Val to marry me. She said yes. I’d like you to meet her.’ He hesitated, then in a rush said, ‘I’d value your opinion.’

  In his heart, he thinks Val is common; it’s quite obvious in the way he speaks about her, his way of being around her. He wanted me to tell him that she’s not. I asked him what my opinion mattered anyway, since they’d already agreed to marry, and he said crudely, ‘I just hope I haven’t allowed my dick to rule my head.’

  Val and I talk during our Wednesday suppers. She tells me about her job, that she has the fastest typing and shorthand speed of anyone in the office, and that these were skills that seemed to take very little effort on her part, but came as naturally as talking does to an infant. She told me she rose through the ranks at Davies & Sons, but that she has gone as far as she can go and is bored. She looked pensive then, her gaze fixed on the circles she was tracing on the table with a teaspoon. ‘If there was anything special about me – if I had a talent like yours . . . ’ She smiled at me then, only to lower her eyes again.

  More than anything, I want not to be in love with her, not to feel my stupid, dogged heart ache whenever she mentions Jack. She doesn’t love him, I’m certain. She loves someone else, I’m certain of that, too – a man who broke her heart. She pretends that it was all a long time ago, but I can see that it wasn’t; the pain in her eyes is too fresh.

  Walking back from my father’s house, I called in on Jack because seeing the tree-house had made me long to see the boys, to be mobbed by them, flattered by their excitement at seeing me. I thought I might take them to the park, perhaps even ask Hope along too. I imagined the four of us as happy together as we always were before Hope grew up, and it was these memories that made me optimistic as I approached Jack’s house. He was mowing the front lawn, something he always does on a summer Sunday afternoon, the boys sitting on the low garden wall eating ice creams from the van that had just driven away, its chimes sounding ‘Green Sleeves’ down the street full of children playing, of mothers and fathers working in their gardens or chatting over the privet hedges.

  Stephen jumped from the wall and ran to me. ‘Give me a piggy-back!’

  I took his hand. ‘Later.’

  Jack stopped pushing the lawn-mower, wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm. ‘Oh good – just the man!’

  ‘Am I? Why?’

  Martin had jumped from the wall too and I lifted him into my arms, taking a lick from his ice cream. Raising his voice to be heard over Martin’s squeals of outrage, Jack said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind looking after the boys for me – just while I go and see Val. Do you mind?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Uncle Peter?’

  I set Martin down. ‘No, Martin, why should I mind? We’ll go to the park, eh? Where’s Hope? Go and ask her if she’d like to come with us.’

  The twins giggled, hands over their mouths, and Jack grunted. ‘All right boys, behave yourselves.’ He looked at me. ‘Stephen and Martin think it’s a huge joke, but Hope’s got a visitor.’ Crouching down to unhook the grass box from the mower, he said, ‘The boy she met at that party you drove her to?’ He glanced at me then returned his attention to the box. ‘Guy.’ Laughing dismissively, he added, ‘I think he’s a little s-h-i-t, but then I suppose I would.’

  ‘We know you said shit, Daddy.’

  Jack sighed; straightening up he said, ‘Go and wash your hands and faces – you’re covered in ice cream.’

  When they’d gone inside the house, Jack took his cigarettes out and lit one, exhaling smoke wearily. At last he said, ‘You look surprised, Pete. Even a bit shocked. We knew it would come, didn’t we – that she’d start courting, that she wouldn’t be our little girl any more.’ He looked at me from gazing at the tip of his cigarette. ‘Don’t worry, I’m making sure the boys don’t give them any peace or any amount of time alone.

  He turned towards the bay-windowed sitting room, screened from the street by the lace curtains Carol had bought. Drawing heavily on the cigarette, he turned back to me. ‘Go and introduce yourself – you can tell me what you think of him.’

  ‘I met him at that party.’

  ‘Oh? So, what did you think? Because I think he’s a cocky little bugger. Well,
he’ll get all that nonsense knocked out of him soon enough. He’s off to do his National Service soon. Thank Christ.’

  The boys came out of the house, unwashed. Behind them came Hope, her face flushed and angry. She didn’t look in my direction but deliberately ignored me as she said to Jack, ‘They’re saying I have to go to the park with them. I don’t want to, you can’t make me.’

  Stepping round Hope, the boy I’d met at the party smiled at me. ‘Hello again, sir.’

  He seemed older than I remembered – more confident, if that were possible. I thought of myself at his age, a child in comparison, unsure of everything and everyone. He looked supremely sure; it occurred to me that his parents must have indulged him since the day he was born to have turned out a boy like this one.

  Sardonically, Jack said, ‘Oh, Hope – it’s such a lovely day! Of course you and Guy should go to the park with the boys and Uncle Peter. I don’t want you cooped up in the house on a day like this. What kind of a father would that make me, eh, not seeing that his growing girl gets her vitamin D?’

  ‘We can sit in the garden.’

  Jack shook his head, his voice ordinary again as he said, ‘No, Hope. You either go out with Peter and your brothers or Guy goes home.’ He glanced at Guy, only to turn to Hope again. ‘It’s up to you.’

  Guy said, ‘I’d like to go to the park, actually.’

  ‘There you are.’ Jack began to roll the mower towards the back of the house and the garden shed. Over his shoulder he said, ‘I’ll be back around eight, Peter. You don’t mind giving the kids their supper, do you?’

  Hope and Guy walked ahead of us, holding hands but keeping a decorous distance from each other so that their arms and entwined fingers formed a deep v between them. I carried Stephen on my shoulders; very soon both boys will be too big to be carried, to want to be carried. They will be seven in a few weeks; they barely remember Carol at all.

  Holding Martin’s hand, I said lightly. ‘Do you like Guy?’

  ‘He gave us money to leave him and Hope alone.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘Sixpence each. We took it but we didn’t leave them alone, Daddy didn’t want us to.’ Martin looked up at me. ‘Can we go in the café?’

  ‘Maybe. Do you still have your sixpences?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know it was wrong to take Guy’s money then not keep up your part of the bargain, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s not allowed to kiss Hope.’

  ‘No, but I think you should give him his money back. It’s the honourable thing to do.’ I stopped and lifted Stephen down. ‘Show me the money.’

  They reached into the pockets of their shorts and reluctantly held out the silver coins on the palms of their hands. ‘All right. Go and give them back to Guy. Say sorry.’

  ‘But he was wrong too!’

  ‘Go on.’

  Hope and Guy had stopped, Hope continuing to ignore me so pointedly that it obviously embarrassed Guy. As the boys ran up to him and pressed the sixpences into his hand he looked at me in surprise. At once he didn’t look confident at all, only rather sheepish. At least he had the grace to smile. Recovering himself a little he said, ‘Thank you. Now I can buy us all an ice cream.’

  ‘I think they’ve had enough for now, Guy,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to the swings first.’

  Sulkily, Hope said, ‘We’re not coming.’

  Guy laughed. ‘Why not?’ To the twins he said, ‘Come on, you two. I’ll race you!’

  And he ran off, pursued by the boys. At once Hope followed them, almost breaking into a run in her haste to get away from me.

  Chapter 17

  Guy sat on the grass, watching Hope on the swing, the desultory way she moved back and forth, keeping her feet half on the ground. He had sat down to catch his breath, although her brothers were still running around like devils with their backsides on fire, as was that friend of their father’s, Peter Wright. Suddenly one of the boys – he could barely tell one from the other – jumped on his back, shouting, ‘Get up!’

  Wright stood over him. ‘Martin, leave Guy alone now. Go and see Hope, ask her to push you on the swings.’

  Martin went, Stephen hard on his heels. Sitting down next to him, Wright said, ‘Tag with those two isn’t a game for the faint-hearted.’ He smiled. ‘With a bit of luck Hope will keep them occupied for five minutes whilst I get my breath back.’

  He didn’t sound breathless at all, and despite the fact that he looked thin enough for a light breeze to blow him away, he’d swung the boys about as though they were no heavier than Ava’s rag dolls. He couldn’t understand why Hope disliked him so much. At least he wasn’t a sarcastic, angry bastard like her father, Jack. Wright seemed decent – kind, even. Her brothers obviously adored him; they even seemed like nicer children when he was around, as though they wanted to behave well for this man who treated them with so much warmth and fairness. Guy remembered the sixpences that had been returned to him and looked away, not wanting to catch Peter’s eye, knowing that he would look guilty as sin.

  Wright said, ‘Hope’s father tells me you’ve been called up?’

  Guy plucked a blade of grass; running his thumbnail down it, he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any preference?’

  ‘Army.’ Guy managed to look at him. ‘I get sea sick and I’m not keen on flying.’

  Wright laughed. ‘Sometimes even soldiers have to travel abroad.’

  ‘But I’m hoping we’ll spend most of the time on dry land.’

  ‘Well, no harm in hoping.’

  Curious, Guy asked, ‘Were you in the Army, sir?’

  Peter smiled at him. ‘You don’t have to call me sir. Peter will do.’ After a moment he said, ‘I was a Captain in the West Yorkshire Regiment.’

  Wright was quiet for a while, watching Hope push the boys on the swings, alternating between the two of them. Finally he turned to him. ‘Off you go with Hope. See she gets home safely.’

  They went to the empty house and sat in the garden where the remnants of the flowerbeds, lupins and hollyhocks and delphiniums, struggled against the weeds. The long grass was warm and Hope lay down, closing her eyes against the sun. Guy gazed down at her, at her beautiful, familiar face, and for a moment hoped that she would sleep so that he could go on watching her in this peaceful quiet. Earlier, at her house, she had cried because he was going away, becoming angry when he promised that he would always come back to her, no matter what. ‘You say that,’ she wiped her eyes impatiently and glared at him. ‘But people change when they go away.’

  ‘I won’t, I swear.’

  The twins had rushed in then and ran round and round the sofa where they were sitting, whooping and hollering because they were Red Indian braves. He had bribed them to go away because once they had noticed that Hope was crying they had stared at her in astonishment, nagging at her to tell them why. But Hope’s brothers were spoiled little monkeys and only left them alone once they heard the chimes of the ice-cream van. Attempting to smile after them, Hope said, ‘They’ve never seen me cry before. I think they were a bit scared.’

  He too had been scared, scared of the depth of her feeling. Yet he had been in awe of her since that moment weeks ago when she had lain down on the rug and unbuttoned her blouse. What Hope did was beyond his wildest fantasies; he still felt shocked by her. At times, when he was away from her, he convinced himself that she was mad. She had allowed him to have sex with her on their first date. More than allowed – she had responded with a passion that had left him breathless. Alone, remembering, sometimes he would laugh at the unexpected sheer bloody joy of it. But there was always the suspicion that she wasn’t quite right in the head, and his laughter made him feel as though he was as crazy as she was. He tried to imagine Irene, or any of the sisters of boys he’d known at school, behaving like Hope, and couldn’t. Perhaps it was because she didn’t have a mother, not even an aunt, no one to instil in her that lying down with boys was wrong. Her father, he guessed,
was useless.

  Guy lay down beside her now. Above them, in the sycamore tree, a blackbird sang teacher teacher teacher. It flew down to land a few feet from them and he watched its stop-start search for insects. In a neighbouring garden, children were playing cricket with their father, who shouted, ‘How’s that!’ Lazily, Guy turned on his side and kissed Hope’s mouth. He whispered, ‘Are you sleeping?’

  ‘No.’ She opened her eyes to look at him. ‘I’m sorry I cried.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I never cry. Never ever. I hope the boys don’t tell Dad – he’ll know then.’

  ‘Know what?’

  She sighed. ‘You know what. Can I have a cigarette?’

  He lit two cigarettes at once, and handed her one. She smoked steadily, having long mastered the knack of inhaling. Nowadays, she seemed to need cigarettes more than he did. He left the open packet and box of matches beside her and got up, wandering the garden’s perimeter restlessly, unable to stay still any longer. He hadn’t slept for nights. Although he was used to going away, to leaving home – such as it was – for unknown places full of unknown boys, this felt different. He tried to tell himself that the camp they were sending him to for his basic training would be just like one of his schools, most of which had a brigade with uniforms and rifles, but he had never felt like this before, so desperate not to go. Before Hope he didn’t care, had been content to go with whatever the unknown powers that governed his life had in store for him next. Since Hope he could only think of how much he would miss her. But there was something more, a tiny part of him that suspected she would soon find someone else, would throw herself at him, wrapping her legs around his waist and crying out his name just as she did with him. He loathed himself for suspecting this – but if she had slept with him, why not with others?

  He stood at the end of the garden and looked back at her. She had sat up and was plucking at the grass listlessly. Often she seemed sad like this and hardly spoke, wanting only to make love. Make love! Such a hugely adult expression! He had set out with the intention of trying only to get his hand inside her knickers, expecting her to stop him with at least a show of outrage; yet now they were lovers. And she seemed older than him at times, and at other times young and very vulnerable – those times when he held her afterwards, her head against his heart. Oh Christ, he thought. Sweet Jesus Christ.