As we backed out of the drive, I noticed that the front door of our house was hanging open. I knew that my mother would stand there, waving till our car was out of sight. But I didn’t realise that this would be the final time that I would see the house I had grown up in as it truly was, a beautiful assembly of red-brown bricks and casement windows, a home so neatly curtained off by trees that you could only see its face when you were playing in the garden. I didn’t know that we were making it a relic.
My father put the car in forward gear and we arced slowly past the house. He struck the horn twice with his fist. It was a friendly noise, intended for my mother, and it was loud enough to shoo the pigeons from the garage roof—they startled her. As we drove off, she was smiling at herself, a limp hand spread across her heart. It was the last I ever saw of her.
I suppose that every liar has to possess some credibility. My father understood this well and built half of his life upon the premise. He told mistruths in varying degrees: as letting agents put a shine on wretched houses with their bluster, as car salesmen adjust the mileage on a rust heap, as doctors conceal negligence by tampering with patients’ notes. The lies that reeled me in towards the end were predicated on my faith in him, which makes them the hardest lies to stomach.
After his relations with my mother began to sour, he tried to use my weaknesses to gain favour with her. I was a studious boy with narrow interests and a tendency to turn the things I cared about into obsessions. For example, I was ten years old the day my mother—trying to introduce some sunlight to my ‘librarian’ complexion—took me to a jumble sale at St John the Baptist church. On a trestle table there, displayed beside a set of romance novels and a letter opener, I saw what I assumed to be a broken pair of scissors, made of tarnished brass, all handles and no blades; but, inspecting them, I realised that they were spectacles, a strange old kind whose lenses moved around a central rivet, and I bought them with the small change that my mother let me have. They were, it turned out, French scissor-spectacles from 1901, not especially valuable in modern terms, given their condition, but far from worthless. And it should tell you something about how easily I give up on a fixation that they formed the basis of a spectacle collection that today contains over three hundred pieces, some of them (the early slit-bridge bow specs and the Adams-style lorgnettes) museum-worthy.
I’m not sure how my father learned about them—perhaps my mother let it slip about the jumble sale during a routine argument over the telephone, or maybe, in a teary lull after she passed me the receiver, I told him about the specs because I had nothing left to say. My parents weren’t quite separated at this time, but their marriage was about to die as surely as a family dog that no longer gets up from the carpet, and my father was calling home every other night to fend off the inevitable. He was staying with a friend in Dublin and helping to construct the set for Brand, an Ibsen adaptation. I remember that he rang me to discuss my birthday gift. ‘Listen, Dan, I’ve been a little short of time. But I went out to a few antique shops here with Lydia, trying to get my hands on some of those old specs you like.’ His voice was breathy, tired. I didn’t know who Lydia was or why he expected me to recognise her name. ‘Well, we didn’t have much luck with those, but we did find something—a fancy sort of magnifying glass. It’s proper silver and the lens is in good order, so the lady said. How about I go back there and buy it for you? I mean, it probably won’t arrive exactly on your birthday if I get it in the post tomorrow, but, anyway—how’s that sound?’
I think this brief exchange gladdened my mother for a while, to know he’d been attuned to something I was interested in. After this, their phone conversations sounded cheerier, ran on longer, and she started to refer to him in kinder tones. Until his final days, he’d go on swearing that the gift got lost in transit; he even produced a letter of apology from a Dublin post office branch to persuade us of the fact. With my father, there were no straightforward apologies, no admissions of guilt, just this—an aftermath of make-believe excuses that grew more and more pathetic.
I expect he thought it quite unusual for a young boy to obsess about antique spectacles, and I appreciate that it was difficult for a man like him—somebody who grew up baling hay and tending sheep with his own father—to rationalise it. But it’s clear that my attentiveness to artefacts derived from him. In fact, I only seized upon those spectacles because I saw them as an opportunity to bring us closer.
Months before that jumble sale, he’d surprised me at the school gates, whistling to me from the kerbside where he’d parked the car—I’d walked right past him. ‘Danno! Oi!’ He was dressed in paint-streaked overalls, puffing on a cigarillo. The car’s suspension rocked as he stood upright from the bonnet. ‘You needn’t look at me like that. It’s fine. I’ve cleared the whole thing with your mother.’ A lie, as it transpired.
It was the first time I had seen him in six weeks, since she’d filled a dozen bin liners with his clothes and dumped them on our driveway. I can only guess which of his infidelities had triggered the eviction. He was sleeping with a red-haired woman at the driving range around this time; I know because he often took me there to watch him swing and miss. He’d leave me in our cubicle with a bucket of golf balls and a baby five iron, whacking at the astroturf, while the redhead serviced him in the staff toilet. Her name is not important, though every man at the golf centre appeared to know it (‘That Nadine is gagging for it. I’d love to peel those little shorts off’). I didn’t witness anything explicit, you’ll be pleased to hear—it’s more that I observed it in my father’s twitchiness when he resumed his golfing, in the pinched fabric of his shirt, in the flush of Nadine’s cheeks when we returned our empty buckets to the pro shop.
‘Come on, jump in,’ he told me. ‘I want to show you something.’ He drove me from the school gates to High Wycombe that afternoon—about six miles west—and parked by the Swan Theatre. We went in through the loading doors in a back alley, and he marched me through the dark guts of the building, up onto the stage. ‘There wasn’t much of a budget,’ he told me. ‘It’s all coming down on Tuesday week, so I thought I’d better bring you now.’ He gestured at the set: a dingy bar with green-rinsed walls festooned in paper chains, two French doors backlit with a cityscape. It was for The Iceman Cometh. ‘So, what d’you reckon? Will it do?’ I don’t know what level of response he was expecting from a ten-year-old, but I gave him an enthusiastic nod. He let me run around in circles on the stage awhile, observing from the wings, but I could’ve been anywhere in the world right then, circuiting the rubble of a landfill site with the same degree of interest, and he must’ve realised it. ‘Okay, stop mucking about,’ he said. ‘Let’s take you back. I thought you’d like to see what I’ve been up to lately, that’s all. Never mind.’ I was beckoned off the stage. He was always keen to show me things he thought made him extraordinary. ‘Your mother seems to think I’ve had my feet up this whole time, living the good life in hotels. Well, take a look. You can see what I’ve been doing, can’t you? Now when she asks you, you can tell her where my head’s been.’
My attention shifted, then, to all the painted flats and groundrows that made up the set. There was a queasy angularity to the scenery—I admired the trick it played on my eyes from far away, how all the shapes lost depth as I got near. ‘What’s it all made of?’ I asked.
‘Well—’ He paused, inhaled. ‘Mostly wood and fibreglass. A bloke drew me a picture and I built it how I thought was best.’
I went to get a closer view of what was on the table, centre stage: wonky candelabras, clouded wine glasses, lustreless old cutlery. I lifted up a teaspoon. ‘Did you make this?’
‘No. That’s real. The props department sourced it. Probably from a junk shop.’
‘What’s a props department?’
‘Why d’you want to know?’
‘I like to know things.’
He huffed, scratched at his temple. ‘Well, all right,’ he carried on, ‘that spoon you’re holding is what they ca
ll a prop. A prop’s an object that the actors use during a play. The props department are the men—or women, in our case—who find the objects and make sure they’re put where the actors need them to be in every scene. Sometimes, if the script asks for a certain object to be used but the real thing is too expensive—like that chandelier up there, or, I don’t know, a fancy Chinese vase, let’s say—the props department has to make it out of something cheaper. It’ll look the same, except it won’t cost much.’
‘Can’t people tell it’s different?’
‘Not from where they’re sitting, no. Not if the prop maker’s any good.’
I examined the teaspoon in my fingers. ‘Can you make props too, Dad?’
‘I can—I mean, I have before—but I prefer to build the sets, and furniture, occasionally. You know, structural things.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, son. I just do.’
I put the spoon back on the table. ‘When can we make props together?’
‘One day, when you’re older.’
‘I want to be your props department.’
‘That’d be nice,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, you need to be at least yay high to get the gig.’ He levelled a hand against his chin. ‘Why don’t you start one at school? That’s how most people get into it.’
‘It’s nearly end of term.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Any prop man worth his salt has to collect things between productions, store them up in case they’re useful later—that way, he’s prepared for anything; Shakespeare, pantomimes, you name it. If you want to start with something from that table, I won’t tell on you.’
For a moment, I considered it. ‘No, it’s for the actors.’
‘They won’t miss one little spoon.’
‘But I’ll get in trouble.’
‘Only if you’re caught.’
I frowned at this. The mere suggestion made me shiver. He was leading me downhill.
‘Your decision, son,’ he told me, checking his watch. ‘Don’t take all day, though.’
I never admitted it to him—because it took a fortnight for my mother’s rage over this episode to subside, and for us to be allowed to speak again—but when I saw the antique spectacles at the jumble sale a few months later, I thought they were the prop on which I’d base our future, his and mine.
The next school play was announced in September, and I went to volunteer my services with the teacher after registration, bringing her the specs and the stolen spoon to underline my credentials. I believe she laughed at me: not cruelly, just unthinkingly. ‘Oh no, you keep hold of those, my love. They’re much too nice,’ she said. ‘We’ve got boxes full of things already, don’t you worry.’ I felt some burning part of me extinguish. It didn’t matter how robust that spark of goodness was I sheltered for my father, it always seemed to get snuffed out. I wonder if he sensed this, too. I wonder if, towards the end, he deemed it kinder on us both to forsake goodness altogether.
A pearly remnant of the moon was still hanging in the sky as we left Little Missenden. The low carriage of the Volvo meant that I could feel each lump and corrugation in the beaten track of Taylors Lane, passing the nurtured gardens of the manor house I never thought I’d miss, all the post-and-wire fences in the meadows. My father didn’t say a word until we reached the junction. He stopped the car and let the indicator go on ticking left-left-left. A single lorry thudded by us. ‘Right then, Danno,’ he said, twisting. ‘Think you’re up to navigating?’ He hooked his arm to fetch the road atlas before I could reply. Its flat weight dropped into my lap. ‘I’ve already marked the route. All you need to do is keep your finger on the roads, follow the lines as we go. A clever lad like you can do it with his eyes closed.’
The Ordnance Survey Road Atlas of Great Britain is now an heirloom of the past. If it hadn’t been so integral to my father’s plans that week, I would probably reflect on it with the same dreamy sentiment I confer on the antiques in my collection. Instead, I picture it exactly as it was: an ungainly book of cold, stiff pages, warped by damp. It was not the simplest document for a child to read: a bizarre logic fused together sections of the country—on page thirty-seven was the fractured coast of south-east England, on page thirty-eight the witch’s brow of northern Wales—so the first effect of leafing through it was bewilderment. My father’s edition was a year out of date, but he said this didn’t matter. ‘I shouldn’t think they’ve moved anything. Not without asking my permission, anyway.’
Looking through it earlier, I hadn’t seen the highlighted tracks that he’d made on the middle pages, or noticed the home square (E3) that he’d coloured in for me on page twenty-two. Little Missenden was inked yellow, and branching away from it were all the roads and places that he wanted me to guide us through.
Cars were flashing past in both directions now. He waited for a minute, then became impatient, seizing a gap in the onrushing traffic. As we straightened up, he let the wheel spin through his fists. He said: ‘Christ, you’d have thought somebody would’ve let us out there, wouldn’t you? They could see I was turning.’ He glared at the rear-view mirror. ‘This idiot behind us, look. Where’s he got to go that’s so important? Joker!’ I didn’t know how to respond. He let me focus on the map. ‘Anyway, who cares? We’re on our way now. Bang on schedule.’ His arms levelled. He leaned back. ‘So, come on then, navigator: what’s this road we’re on?’
I had my index finger on the number already, expecting he would ask. ‘The A314.’
‘Ah,’ he said, as though he hadn’t driven it a thousand times. ‘The trusty old A314. And where does this one take us?’
‘Aylesbury,’ I said. ‘Dad, are you going to do this all the way?’
‘I might check in every so often, yeah.’ He sniffed. ‘Just to make sure you’re pulling your weight. I mean, we can’t have you leading us off course. We might end up in the sea.’
He was trying to lighten my mood. But we had spent so little time together in the past two years I found it hard to interpret all the tiny fluctuations of his personality. I didn’t know how much of it—the fatherly patter, the fleeting rage at other motorists, the bonhomie—was artifice, and how much of it was Francis Hardesty. I suspect he didn’t know either. And I couldn’t let myself relax too quickly in his company, because it felt disloyal to my mother somehow, to allow so easy a transition from estrangement to familiarity. ‘Hey, see over there,’ he said, pointing to my side of the windscreen. ‘What’s it got, a mouse?’
Above the dry beige grassland in the distance, a red kite was hovering. ‘A vole,’ I said. ‘That’s what they’re meant to like.’
‘Where’d you learn that?’
‘Someone came to talk to us at school.’
‘What, from the RSPB?’
I nodded.
‘That sounds nice. Wish I’d seen that.’
‘It was just an assembly.’
‘Well, maybe they might come again and I can go next time.’
‘Yeah, maybe. I don’t think parents are allowed, though.’
The bird got more defined as we drove up to it. From half a mile away, it was simply a dark figure pinned against the sky, but all the subtle movements of its wings could be discerned from closer up, each elevating twitch. My father braked so I could see it properly. ‘Majestic,’ he said.
Its russet wings were spread out in a T, patched white. The deadweight of a creature dangled from its talons. ‘I think it’s a rabbit,’ I said.
‘What’s it waiting for?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why doesn’t it fly off and eat the thing?’
It disappeared from view, above the roof and into history. ‘I think it was looking for more.’
‘Must’ve been a female,’ my father said. ‘Maybe it’s got chicks to feed, or whatever baby kites are called.’ We were suddenly accelerating again. ‘Kitelets. Kitelings.’ The world became a smudge beside his head. ‘Kitty-kites.’
I snickered at him. ‘How many miles is it to Leeds?
’
He eased off the pedal. ‘You bored of me already?’
‘No, I just want to know how many miles it is.’
‘Well, you’re the navigator, you tell me.’
‘But you’ve done this journey loads before. It’s easier if you say.’
‘You’ve got the map there, haven’t you? Work it out. Each square on that grid’s about two inches high and wide. And there’s roughly three miles to an inch. So, if you count them all—’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s about three hours away. Mum already told me.’
‘And you’re just going to take her word for it, are you? What a cop out.’
‘I’ll just wait for a sign to tell me, then.’
‘Cop out.’
I shrugged at him.
‘I thought you were a lad who liked to know things.’
‘Why can’t you just tell me?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘life’s not always as straightforward as you want it to be. And the things that you remember when you’re older aren’t the things that just get handed to you, they’re the things you had to work at. Like this car, for instance. You want to know how I got this car?’
He was going to tell me, of course, whether I cared to hear it or not.
‘I got this car from an old lady whose house I decorated. A fantastic job I did on that place for her, believe me—something out of Ideal Home it looked like, after I was done with it—but I’ll tell you what else, it was some of the hardest decorating work I ever did. Not just painting every room, three coats emulsion, two coats gloss, but she had wallpaper in that house from before the war that’d been glued on with something industrial. Like earwax it was, underneath. I had to strip and scrape and sand the place from floor to ceiling before I could put on a lick of primer. Still, by the end of it all, that old woman was so pleased she wanted me to take her husband’s car—he’d died not long before, and she was going to sell it, but she said, You know what, Fran? I’ve seen how hard you work, and that little van you’ve got just seems to make a lot of smoke, so I want you have Edward’s car. She said she wanted it to go to someone decent, someone who’d appreciate it. Now, see that number there?’ He jabbed his finger on the Perspex screen that covered the milometer. ‘Over a hundred thousand on the clock, right? Well, it had nine hundred on it when she gave it to me. Every mile I drive in this car makes me feel proud, and I’ve never regretted a single ache and pain I got from painting that woman’s house. You understand what I’m telling you?’
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 2
