'But he's irresponsible.'
'Kettle, pot and black are three words that spring immediately to mind. Now if you don't mind, I'm trying to sleep. Get your act together, Dan, do the right thing. You know you can't be a dad if you can't decide what the right thing is without phoning someone in the middle of the bloody night for advice.'
She cut the line.
She was probably trying to make some kind of point, but it was lost on me. It was too cold to think. I was getting a sore head. I wanted a nice warm bed. And a cup of hot chocolate. I wanted a hug from my wife and some late movie to snuggle down to. I was getting old and I really didn't mind.
Fuck it.
I made another attempt, really put my heart and soul into it, and finally managed to hoist Davie onto his feet.' Come on, mate, come on, have to get you home.'
His legs went all floppy. But I held him up. I slapped at his face.' Come on, Davie, come on.'
Eventually, eventually, he started to come round. He mumbled incoherently for a bit as I led him further up the street.
'I need to know where you live. I need to know the house, Davie.'
'Isssabiginj usuphere.'
I led him on.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I'm really sorry.'
'That's okay. Let's just get you home.'
'I'm sorry,' he said again.' Really, I'm sorry.'
'Let's just get home.'
'But I'm sorry.'
'Will you shut the fuck up and keep walking?'
We did the old three steps forward, two steps back for another five minutes before Davie stopped me outside a large house with a sweeping drive.' Thisit,' he said.
I looked up. There were lights on.' No one's going to try and shoot me up there, are they?'
Davie sniggered.' Don't be daft,' he said.
He lurched forward.
I followed quickly, just in time to stop him falling over, then guided him to the front door. He leaned his head against it and I rang the bell. There was a short delay, then the bolts went back and a woman I gratefully recognised as his mum opened the door. Then she stepped back as her son fell through it.
She blinked down at him for a moment, then fixed her gaze on me.
'Well,' she said, shaking her head, 'I see nothing's changed with you pair.'
She was a nice woman, but sad since her husband died, and clearly not entirely over the moon at how her son had turned out. I was sobering up quite quickly. Davie was upstairs in bed, and I was sipping tea. It was nearly two in the morning. I wanted to sleep, she wanted to talk.
'He took it very hard,' she said.
'His dad?'
'No — Joe Strummer.'
'Yes. I know.'
'He should have retired and taken up gardening.'
'Yes. I know. Joe Strimmer.'
'What?'
'Joe . . .'
'I mean his dad. He worked too hard. Worked himself into the grave. It's very lonely. Don't work too hard, Dan, it's not worth it.'
'Don't worry about that. It's extremely unlikely.'
She smiled and sipped her tea.' Did he ask you?'
'Did he ask me what?'
'About the trip.'
'What trip?'
Mrs Kincaid rolled her eyes.' Heavens to God, that boy.' She shook her head.' Big strapping fella could shoot a Fenian at two hundred metres, but he can't ask his best friend a favour.'
I wasn't entirely sure about the Fenian, but in this land you have to make allowances for all creeds and bigotries. And as for being his best friend . . . he had to get out more. The idea of Davie looking for a favour from me was somewhat worrying as well. Again, I should have left it.
But I never do.
Just shut up, Dan. But no, slabber your way into more trouble.
'What sort of a favour, Mrs Kincaid?'
'He's just a big shy lump, so he is.'
I nodded. She would get there eventually.
'He's shy, yet he's loud, he's got no confidence, yet sometimes he's the bravest person in the world. He was shot, you know. Several times. He should have been retired on the sick years ago, but he stuck in there because he loved it. But he hated it as well. Do you know what I mean?'
'Yes, Mrs Kincaid.'
'I really thought he was going to settle down with this girl, but Davie's such a handful, I think he scared her away. So he's kind of stuck.'
'In what way, Mrs Kincaid?'
'With the honeymoon.'
I nodded. She nodded. She showed no immediate inclination to continue, so I said, 'In what way, stuck?'
'Well, it's all booked and paid for. One of those fly-by-night holidays in Florida.'
'Fly-drive . . .' I began to correct and then stopped as an idea of what she was about to ask sprang fully formed into my drunken head.' Right . . . right. I see what you're getting at. He's stuck with the honeymoon.'
She nodded sadly.' He'll lose it all, you know, at this late stage. Different if he was ill or she got her head sliced off in a tragic elevator accident — he could claim the money back. But he'll get nothing for getting dumped within sight of the altar. So he was kind of embarrassed about approaching you.'
'Well, he shouldn't have been. I'm . . . flattered he even thought of me. As long as we can — you know, come to some agreement — I'd be delighted.'
Mrs Kincaid smiled now.' Ouch, that's great, Dan.'
I smiled too. Patricia would be over the moon. I'd arrive home with a hangover and a cut-price holiday to Florida. We hadn't been away in years. It was exactly what we needed. Romance. Rest. Set her up for her egg harvestation and my second attempt to wank into a cup.
'He'll be delighted.'
'No trouble, Mrs Kincaid.'
'He said you always talked about going to America together. When youse were kids.'
'We . . .'
'He said to me, "Dan and I were going to do a real rock'n'roll tour when we got the money together, but we never did. This is the perfect opportunity. Forget my troubles and have a cracking time with my old mate, Dan Starkey".'
Gulp is the correct word, I believe.
'So you're up for it, Dan, are you?' Mrs Kincaid asked.
'Absolutely,' I said.' But would you mind phoning my wife and letting her know?'
5
She's an old trouper, my wife. Swears like one, too. Consideration for her reputation prevents me from relating in detail the torrent of abuse which was hurled at me when I told her I was going to Florida with Davie — although the words fucker and wanker figured strongly. This was of course understandable; she was in quite a delicate state because of the whole infertility/surrogacy situation. It might even be considered as indelicate in some quarters that I was contemplating disappearing off for a holiday in the sun when she was feeling so vulnerable, but I mean, it was free. All I needed was spending money, and I could borrow that off Patricia. She wasn't going anywhere.
'You are the most callous, insensitive little fucker I ever met.'
This was after the first torrent had abated and I had politely enquired about her fiscal liquidity because the PR job with Why Don't You Come Home for a Pint? paid bugger all, but I was so pissed off with her attitude that I am now forced to reconsider my concern for her reputation. Sometimes you have to present a woman with all of her inglorious flaws for others to understand how difficult she can be to live with. Perhaps, as an artist, I am just overly sensitive, but some of her language was uncalled for.
'You have to look at the bigger picture sometimes, Trish,' I said.
'Fuck your biggest picture, you're sloping off to America without me.'
'I'm doing it to help Davie.'
'Aye fuck you are. You're going off on a two-week bender.'
'I'm not, I'm just trying to help him through a difficult time.'
'Aye fuck you are.'
'I am, he's—'
'I don't give a fuck, Dan. What about me — what about my difficult time?'
'What difficult time?'
'Christ!'
'I mean —
I know it's been hard. But we got good news, didn't we? We can do the IVF treatment, my swimmers are world-class . . .'
'If they are yours.'
'That's not fair, Trish. I made a mistake — they're mine now.'
'Yeah, right.'
'They're going to help us find a surrogate, aren't they? It'll be fine.'
'You've really no idea, have you? You've no idea of what's involved. The injections I'll need, the pain, the waiting, the counselling. We have to go before a fucking ethics committee, we have to meet a surrogate, we have to trust her to look after our baby for nine months, and you know at the end of it, at the fucking end of it she can hold onto it if she wants. Legally she can just keep it and we can do fuck all about it — and you'll have to fucking pay for its upkeep. You do know that, don't you?'
'Yes, of course.' I did indeed have some vague memory of a counsellor at the hospital telling us about that, although I have to confess most of my thoughts at the time continued to be about Joe Strummer. 'But it'll be fine.'
'That's just you all over, isn't it? It'll be fine. Everything will be fine. Everything's always fine with you, Dan.'
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I made all the appropriate noises. She appeared to calm down. I said I was going away to America and I'd really miss her. She said she'd miss me too. I said perhaps we should make love now. I went to give her a hug and she punched me in the stomach. I pulled her hair and she bent my fingers back until I screamed. It was another uneventful day down at the Ponderosa.
I had to see my psychiatrist.
I know, me and a psychiatrist, where's the sense in that? Me and some chrome dome with a file and a couch saying I have unresolved issues, like he'd know anything about it. I think I am a well-adjusted individual, although clearly not perfect; I am willing to concede that I may occasionally have an attitude problem, and that perhaps from time to time I don't act my age, but I'm no head the ball. So why a psychiatrist?
Well, not out of choice.
There are actually many and varied reasons, but the one best worthy of your consideration contains the words 'court' and 'appointed'.
Dr Raymond Boyle, psychiatrist to the stars in their own heads, was foisted on me by a senile judge who seemed to think my clearly accidental reversing of a car into Patricia's former lover Tony had enough elements of what he laughingly referred to as 'the sinister' to warrant some form of punishment. My solicitor was canny enough to indulge in a bit of plea bargaining in which I, against my better judgment, and mostly because Patricia ordered me to, admitted causing Tony grievous bodily harm but got off with a conditional discharge, the condition being that I voluntarily undergo psychiatric evaluation and treatment if required. Either that or jail time.
The road to hell is paved with gypsy flagstones.
I have tried to live a good life, it's just that I always end up wearing clown shoes. I have a hoop in my trousers.
'I wasn't trying to kill him,' I told Dr Boyle at my first appointment.
'You ran over him in your car.'
The mitigating circumstances were that I was drunk and really angry, neither of which were likely to carry much weight with the judge. So the only person who really knew the truth was my solicitor, and only because I trusted her, and the fact that she had a nice smile and a spiky fringe. 'I just wanted to flatten him. You know like, in a cartoon, when you flatten someone in a car and he gets up again and he's all kind of . . . flat. That's what I wanted to do.'
'Life isn't a cartoon, Dan.'
'You should look at my CV.'
Wisely, she warned me to shut the fuck up.
Patricia, though she told me she believed it had been an accident, didn't really. I could tell. It was in her eyes. Besides, she should have been grateful for my rather admirable restraint. I hadn't actually killed him. And if he'd had any sort of reactions at all, even those of a particularly lethargic sloth, he would have been able to leap effortlessly out of the way. I'd even sounded my horn. Really, I just wanted to give him a bit of a shock. But no, he stood staring at my reverse lights, like a rabbit frozen by the sight of Art Garfunkel. There was no particular intent. It was more, well, opportunistic. If his having to spend three months in traction in the Royal Victoria Hospital allowed Patricia and me the space and time to get back together, well that was just an unforeseen happy consequence of a tragic accident. Besides, lying with his feet up — admittedly in plaster — for most of the winter wasn't a punishment: that was a career break.
Alcohol, no matter how practised you are at it, is a real mind-fucker. It conspires to turn coincidence into conspiracy. I could see it in Dr Boyle's eyes, and in the way he had the temerity to suggest that the fact that I'd removed the number-plates from my car shortly before the incident was somehow indicative of my desire to also remove Tony from this mortal coil. Clearly, nothing could have been further from the truth. Besides, as I pointed out to him, only a complete idiot would remove his number-plates in an attempt to hide his identity, but neglect to remove the letters emblazoned across the front windscreen: Dan & Patricia. They had been there all the way through our marriage and subsequent separation; somehow as long as they remained in place I felt there was hope for us, and wasn't I proved right? Actually, the windscreen wasn't big enough to get on what I really wanted: No, I Don't Want To Buy A Fucking Big Issue You Romanian Bastard.
Reluctantly I must concede that there were also several snippets of evidence available to the police which, if presented in a certain light, might possibly have strengthened their case against me and led to a substantial amount of prison time — if they'd had the opportunity to present them. They did have fifteen positive witness identifications plus a video tape from a security camera in which I was plainly visible behind the wheel of the car. If I had been content with merely knocking him down I might have gotten away with it, because my face on that part of the tape was mostly in shadow, but my decision to reverse back over him meant that I was caught clearly from a different angle.
Don't misunderstand me. I am not a violent man. I was merely in love. I did not deliberately reverse over Tony twice. I reversed over him once by accident. I then drove forward, allowing him plenty of time to crawl out of the way. Aware that I had struck something, I then reversed back again to see what it was, totally unaware that Tony had shown the rank stupidity of the ginger-haired by agonisingly dragging himself forward, only to be inadvertently struck again. The other hugely positive thing to come out of this unfortunate accident, besides allowing Patricia and me to get back together, was the fact that it revealed a blind spot in the car's mirrors, which I was able to quickly communicate to its manufacturers. I probably saved thousands of lives that day, instead of merely endangering one.
'Dan?'
'Mmmm?'
'You're wandering again.'
I cleared my throat and looked Dr Boyle in the eye. 'Sorry.'
'Last time we spoke you'd been offered the largest advance of your publishing career.'
'The only advance of my publishing career. The only one worthy of being called an advance.'
'But you rejected it.'
'You know why.'
'You don't think it might have been a cathartic process, Dan? The fact is that you still find it impossible to unburden yourself to me — whereas a book about your son might enable you to do that in a medium to which you're obviously much better suited. The written word.'
'They want me to cash in on my son's death by writing about it. They want pornography for necrophiliac paedophiles. It's not for me.'
'Well, how is it going to get out then?'
'How is what going to get out?'
'Your hatred and guilt.'
'I don't have any hatred or guilt.'
He fixed me with a look. 'Dan. A blind man in a coal bunker can see the hatred and guilt.'
I glanced at my watch.
He said, blankly, 'Thirty-three minutes, Dan.'
'And three more sessions. Then I'll be done.'
'U
nless you volunteer for more.'
I smiled.
He smiled.
'And I'm going to have to miss our next appointment.'
His smile faded.' The court made it a condition—'
'I'm going to be on holiday. I didn't think it would be a problem.'
He lifted a pen and tapped it against his teeth. I had already told him about the IVF and the surrogacy. He didn't think either was a good idea. He seemed to think we could do without the stress.
'Well,' he said after a while, 'a vacation could be beneficial. Somewhere nice and sunny, I hope.'
'Florida.'
'Lovely. You'll be able to talk this whole surrogacy thing through away from the distractions of daily life.'
'That's what I thought.'
'It's really a very positive step, Dan. I'm pleased.'
'I thought you might be.'
'Though of course you're not doing it to please me.'
I smiled. 'I try not to do anything to please you.'
'Do you ever think about him, Dan?'
'Who? My son?'
'No. The Colonel.'
'I try not to.'
'Out of sight, out of mind?'
'Something like that.'
'What about Patricia?'
'You'd have to ask her psychiatrist that.'
'You still don't discuss it.'
'There's a joke I know, Doctor.'
'Excuse me?'
'A joke I know which kind of explains my attitude to this, to just about every bloody thing you want me to talk about.'
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. His hair was thinning and he'd crow's-feet around his eyes, which was the best place for them. He wore a brown suit and a yellow tie and beige brogues. He was as bland as a New York cheesecake. He had a hangdog look about him which was more Clement than Sigmund.
'Hit me with it,' he said, and then added, 'metaphorically, of course.'
'How many country and western singers does it take to change a light bulb?'
Most of us would just say, 'I don't know, how many?' but he was a psychiatrist. He tried to figure it out, which says it all really. I gave him ten seconds and then answered my own question. 'Six. One to change the bulb, five to write a song about it.'
Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) Page 4
