by Nick Hornby
‘I don’t know, do I?’
‘Supposing he’s left home?’
‘People don’t leave home like that. People don’t say, “I’m going to make myself a sandwich,” and then, bang, they’re gone.’
I didn’t say anything, but from what I could tell, that was exactly what people did. You can watch the local news just about any night of the week and see some mother talking about how her son never even said goodbye. And then there’s a phone number appealing for information.
‘He might have gone round Becca’s, I suppose,’ said Dave.
‘Shall I call her?’
‘No. Give him some time. If we don’t hear from him tomorrow, we’ll call then.’
Becca was Mark’s girlfriend. She had her own place a few streets away, but Mark didn’t usually stay there during the week, because Becca had a flatmate with a boyfriend up North. He usually spends the weekends round there, when they’ve got the place to themselves.
I hadn’t thought about Becca up until now, but once Dave had mentioned her, I couldn’t help it. What…? How…? I had to stop myself, but Dave and I both went quiet at the same time, so I’m sure we were thinking about the same thing.
Just then, we heard the key in the lock, and Mark came in and sat down in the armchair. For a moment all three of us watched the TV.
‘I thought there was something wrong when you said you wanted to see how the film turned out,’ Mark said, and it was only then I realized that we were watching Man United beating a French team.
‘How did you find it?’
‘Karen Glenister put it through the letter-box.’
‘Karen Glenister? What was she doing with it?’
‘Carl saw it round a mate’s house, and borrowed it when he recognized you.’
‘Have you watched it?’
‘I have. Your dad hasn’t.’
‘And I won’t,’ Dave said, as if Mark was trying to persuade him.
‘How do other people cope?’ I said.
‘Which other people?’ Mark asked.
‘Other mothers. Families. I mean, they all have mothers, don’t they, porn stars?’
‘I’m not a porn star,’ said Mark.
‘What are you, then?’ said Dave.
‘I’m not a star, am I? Stars are people like Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy.’
‘Who?’
‘They’re porn stars. You wouldn’t know them.’
‘Exactly. So you could be a porn star, for all I know. You might be the most famous porn star in Britain, and I wouldn’t have a clue.’
‘You think Ron Jeremy lives at home with his mum and dad?’
‘He might do! I don’t know who Ron Jeremy is! “Ron Jeremy.” He sounds like exactly the sort of person who lives with his mum and dad.’
I was getting frustrated. I didn’t want to talk about where Ron Jeremy lived. I wanted to talk to my son about what he was doing with his life.
‘How did this start?’ said Dave. ‘How long has it been going on? How many films are there?’
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me for a moment that there’d be others.
‘It started…Well. Sort of through Becca.’
‘Becca? She’s a porn star too?’
Mark sighed. ‘Mum. Becca works in a playgroup. You know that.’
‘I don’t know anything any more. I don’t know what she does.’
‘So when we went to their Christmas play last year, you thought that was a set-up, or what? Becca doesn’t know anything about…you know. My other job.’
‘But you just said…’
‘Will you let me talk? You know Becca’s got a flatmate? And this flatmate’s got a boyfriend who lives in Manchester? Well, that’s what he does. He makes porn films.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Dave. ‘That explains everything. You couldn’t really help it, could you? If your girlfriend’s flatmate’s boyfriend makes porn films in Manchester, you pretty much had to help him out. I mean, once you’ve had a call from him…Must be like getting a phone call from the Queen. You can’t say no. And how come Becca doesn’t know anything about it?’
‘Because…You really want to go into this?’
‘Yes. We both do,’ said Dave.
‘It means talking about some pretty embarrassing stuff.’
‘I don’t want to talk about what you do. Just how you got involved. How it happened.’
‘It still means saying things you might not want to talk about.’
‘We know everything,’ said Dave. ‘Your mum’s seen the film, remember.’
‘Yeah, well. Seeing isn’t the same as talking. We could just leave it at that, and never mention it again.’
‘How could we not mention it again?’ I said. ‘How could we sit here night after night eating our tea, with all that going on?’
‘Not much goes on, most of the time,’ said Mark. ‘Most of the time, I’m not making porn films.’
‘How did it happen?’ said Dave.
‘You’ve seen the film, Mum,’ said Mark. ‘So you know…’ He stopped. ‘Oh, bloody hell. I can’t talk about this to you two. I’ve spent the last whatever it is, ten years, not talking to you about this.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the film, and I’ve seen…I’ve seen why they’d want you in it.’
‘OK,’ said Mark. ‘Right. Good.’
He stopped again. We’ve never had problems talking, in our family. Usually everyone’s talking at once, so these pauses and silences were something new for us. Obviously we’ve been talking about the wrong things all these years. It’s easy to talk about nothing much.
‘Becca,’ said Dave, as if Mark had lost his thread.
‘Becca,’ said Mark. ‘When we first started going out, she had a chat with Rache. Her flatmate.’
‘What sort of chat?’
‘A whatever. A girly chat, sort of thing. About me. And my problem. Which had sort of become her problem too, if you catch my drift.’
‘Oh.’
‘And Rache passed the information on. To her boyfriend. And he phoned me. And we went on from there. And Becca never knew nothing about it.’
‘You’ve never told her?’
‘Course not. You know Becca, Mum. She wouldn’t understand.’
‘And what happens if she finds out?’
‘I’ll be looking for a new girlfriend, I should think.’
He liked Becca, but I knew he wasn’t going to end up with her, and so did he. They were already at that point where it was so comfortable that Mark was becoming uncomfortable, and there was definitely an element of Russian roulette in this. If the decision to split were taken out of his hands, he’d have been grateful.
‘Hold on, hold on. Rewind,’ said Dave. ‘You went on from there.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But why did you go on from there?’
‘Why?’ Mark repeated the question as if Dave were weird for asking it.
‘Yeah. Why?’
Mark shrugged. ‘A bit of extra cash, obviously…And I was interested. Plus, I dunno. This probably sounds mad, but, I mean…I haven’t really got another, like, talent, have I? I watch all these people, like Beckham and all them. And they’re entitled to make money out of what they’re born with. Up until I met Robbie, Rache’s boyfriend, it had never done anything for me. And I thought, What’s the difference? What’s the difference between, I don’t know, having a…Having what I’ve got and, and being able to play the piano?’
‘What’s the difference?’ said Dave. ‘You can’t see what the difference is?’
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘Tell me.’
‘Having a big thing isn’t a talent, is it? Playing the piano is hard. I mean, what you’ve got doesn’t…you know. It’s not hard. It doesn’t give people pleasure.’
Mark and I stared at the carpet. I was trying not to laugh. Everything sounded like a Benny Hill joke. Eventually Dave caught on, and it didn’t make anything better. It could have been one of those moments that you
see on TV, when everyone starts to laugh together, and the problem no longer seems as big as it did. But Dave just lost his rag.
‘It’s not fucking funny.’
‘No one’s laughing,’ I said.
‘You were trying not to.’
‘I don’t know what more we can do than not laugh at something you don’t think is funny.’
‘But you still saw the joke. I can’t see the joke. My son is a porn star. Where’s the joke in that?’
‘I’m not a porn…’
‘Whatever. You’re a freak, Mark. Being a freak isn’t the same thing as having a talent.’
Dave was angry, but there’s still no excuse, is there? You can’t call your own kid a freak and expect him to take it on the chin.
‘You know it’s wotsit, don’t you?’ said Mark. ‘Hereditary?’
He knew what he was doing. He must have guessed years ago that he and Dave didn’t share the same problem, otherwise it would have come up by now. (Oh, for God’s sake…) People say that when men argue, what they’re arguing about, underneath it all is, Who’s got the biggest? And here were my two men, my husband and my son, arguing about exactly that–except there was no argument. I’m probably the only person in the world who’s seen both of them, and there was no need for a tape measure, if you know what I mean. Mark won, hands down. (Is that dirty, ‘Hands down’? It sounds dirty, doesn’t it? But I don’t know what it would mean.)
‘Yeah? Well, you don’t get it from me. Mine’s normal. Isn’t it, Lynn?’
‘Normal? Is that what you call it?’
It was just a little joke, an attempt to jolly everyone along. On a normal evening, no one would have taken offence, but this wasn’t a normal evening, and offence was taken. I wasn’t even thinking about the size thing. I’d forgotten for a split second what wasn’t normal, so I didn’t mean to suggest that Dave’s was small. (It’s not. It’s…Well, it’s normal.) I just meant that it wasn’t, I don’t know, curved, or covered in green and yellow spots, or it could talk. That sort of abnormal. Jokey abnormal, not opposite-of-Mark’s abnormal. If I’d thought it through, I wouldn’t have said anything; if I’d thought it through, I wouldn’t have found myself lying in bed at one in the morning talking to Dave about an affair I had twenty-five years ago.
‘You know that thing with Steve?’
‘No.’
‘Steve. Steve Laird. You know.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
It wasn’t as though I was playing dumb, because I don’t think I’ve heard his name since we got married. But even so, it wasn’t like he appeared in the middle of our bed that night completely out of nowhere. I can’t explain it, but when Dave brought Steve up, it sort of made sense. There was sex in the air that night, and it wasn’t safe sex, if you know what I mean–it wasn’t the comfortable, enjoyable sex that Dave and I have, the sort of sex you don’t even have to think about. The sex we’d been breathing was a dark, scary sex, and it was as if Dave had converted it into the only thing he had to hand.
‘Was that what it was about?’ he asked me.
‘What?’
‘That.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know.’
‘No.’
‘That. Normal. Not normal.’
‘Are you asking me whether your penis is too small? Or whether Steve had a bigger one than you?’
‘Shut up.’
‘OK. I will.’
I listened to him breathing in the dark, and I knew we weren’t finished. It wasn’t much of an affair, really. I wasn’t married, for a start, although Dave and I were living together, and we were unofficially engaged. I only slept with Steve two or three times, and the sex wasn’t anything much. It certainly wasn’t the point, although what the point was I don’t exactly remember now. Something to do with feeling I was in a rut? And I know that Dave was in two minds about everything, and he had a flirtation going with this girl at work which he said never went anywhere, although I was never quite sure…
‘Yeah,’ he said, like about five minutes later.
‘Yeah what?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.’
‘Of course it wasn’t about that. You know it wasn’t.’
‘Right.’
‘And I can’t answer the other question. Not because the answer would upset you, but because I can’t remember. You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. Well, I know that’s what you’re supposed to say, anyway.’
‘It’s the truth. It’s like, I don’t know. It wouldn’t have mattered if he was taller than you or not.’
‘It would have mattered if I’d been five foot and he’d been six foot.’
‘Yeah. But. Five foot is pretty small. You’re not small like that, are you?’
‘Oh, so what am I small like?’
‘You’re not small. For Christ’s sake, Dave. You’re smaller than your son. But I’ve seen your son, and believe me, you wouldn’t want to be like him. Neither would I want you to be like him. Oh, and Steve wasn’t like him, either.’
‘You just said you couldn’t remember.’
‘You think I wouldn’t remember something like that? Blimey. If he’d been like Mark, I’d have had to talk to one of those therapists people see after disasters.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dave. I love Dave for loads of reasons, and one of them is that he always knows when he’s making a berk of himself. ‘It’s been a weird evening, though, hasn’t it?’
I laughed. ‘You could say that, yes.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’m not sure we can do anything. It’s his life. There are worse things to worry about.’
‘Are there?’
‘Yeah. Course. Drugs. Violence. All that stuff.’
‘Porn’s like drugs, though, isn’t it? I mean, they’re both a menace to society,’ Dave said.
‘Put it this way. All those nights we’ve lain here listening for him to come home late at night…You worry about whether he’s been stabbed, or whether he’s been taking crack, or whether he’s driving home pissed. But have you ever stayed awake worrying he’s been making a porno film?’
‘No. But that’s because I never thought of it before.’
‘Yeah, and why didn’t you think of it?’
‘I dunno. I never thought he had it in him.’
‘That’s not it. You never thought of it because it couldn’t kill him. If it could have killed him, I would’ve thought about it, because I’ve thought about everything else.’
‘What about AIDS?’
I got up, put my dressing gown on and hammered on Mark’s door.
‘What?’
‘What about AIDS?’
‘Go to bed.’
‘No. Not until you’ve talked to me.’
‘I’m not going into any details. But I’m not daft.’
‘You’d better give me a few more details than that. That’s not good enough.’
‘Thanks a bunch. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever to worry about.’
‘I just want to say one more thing,’ said Dave when I’d gone back to bed.
‘Go on.’
‘One more thing about Mark’s, you know. His talent.’
‘If you must.’
‘If it’s hereditary…It must have been your dad.’
My dad…Jesus.
I hope this never happens to you, but when you get your dad’s thing and your son’s thing dangled in your face, all on the same day…Well, you can imagine. It’s not the sort of day you never want to end.
I went to sleep all right, though, because for some reason that I can’t and don’t really want to explain, Dave and I ended up having sex that night, and it wasn’t the sort of sex we usually have. It was more his idea than mine, but, you know. I joined in.
My mum lives with my sister Helen in Walthamstow, a couple of miles away. It’s just one of those things that happened: Helen got divorced soon after Dad died, and sh
e’s never had kids, and it just seemed like a happy solution for everyone–especially, if I’m honest, for me and Dave. Helen moans about it a bit to me, tries to make me feel guilty and so on, but the arrangement suits her, really. It’s not like Mum’s a geriatric. She’s only sixty-eight, and she’s pretty fit, and she goes out a lot–she goes out more than Helen, in fact. Helen says that Mum stops her from meeting anybody, but the only way that would work is if Mum’s actually copping off with the men that Helen is interested in.
I went round to see them on the Saturday morning. I bumped into Karen Glenister on the way to the bus stop; she just happened to be putting her recycling out the very moment I walked past her front door, and if you believe that you’ll believe anything.
‘So,’ she said.
‘Hello, Karen.’ I gave her a big smile.
‘Did you watch it?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen it all before,’ I said. ‘Did Carl enjoy it?’
She looked at me. ‘He wasn’t looking at Mark, you know.’
‘Oh, course not. I’m sure he’ll get a girlfriend soon enough.’
‘And does he get it off his dad?’
‘Have you ever wondered why I’m always so cheerful?’ I said. And then I just kept walking.
I hadn’t made up my mind whether I was going to try and talk to Mum. We’ve never had that kind of conversation before, and once you get to a certain age, you’re tempted to think that you’ve got away with it, aren’t you? But it just seemed important. When Dad died, I went through that business of regretting that I hadn’t spent enough time talking to him; I loved him, but I seemed to spend a lot of time resenting him, and trying to avoid him, and getting pissed off with him. And now I was trying to work out whether this business was something I should know. Was it a part of him? And if so, was it a good part or a bad part?
Dad was really sick for the last couple of years of his life, and sick is how I remembered him best. But when I found out about this other thing, I started to think about him in a different way. I don’t mean I started to think about him in, you know, a weird way. It’s just that knowing what I knew meant that I thought about him being healthy and young, or younger, anyway. It just seemed to follow. Because finding out something like that…You can’t help but wonder about a period in his life when he would have been using it, if you know what I mean, and he couldn’t have been using it much at the end, poor sod. And it really helped me to think about him in these other ways. I started to remember other things: the way he dressed when Helen and I were kids, for example–in trousers like Mark’s, even though he must have been young in the sixties and seventies, when people were wearing tighter trousers. And on the bus that morning, I suddenly had a flash of the way he looked at my mum sometimes, and the way she looked at him. I’ll tell you the truth: I suddenly got all weepy, on the top of the bus. I was sad, but it wasn’t just sadness. There was something else in there, too–it was that happy/sad, sweet-and-sour feeling you can get when you look at baby photos of your grown-up kids. I don’t know. When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories come to pretty much the same thing. It’s all just emotion, in the end, and any of it can make you weep. Anyway, when I’d dabbed at my eyes a bit, I almost started to laugh. Because who’d have thought that what began with Karen Glenister dropping a porn film through the letter-box would end up with that sort of stuff going through your head?
