Out Of The Winter Gardens

by David Rees

  “Maybe he doesn’t think it’s convenient to have me staying with you.”

  “I’ll decide whether it’s convenient or not,” Dad said, “to have my own son staying in my own house! Not him!” He paused. “Yes,” he went on, “it’s my house, not his, not jointly owned. He doesn’t even pay any rent.”

  “Why not?” It was none of my business, but it seemed more and more inexplicable with every passing minute that Dad and Adrian were friends, let alone lovers.

  “He doesn’t earn enough money. But what money he has, he’s very generous with.’’

  “Oh.”

  “What time will you be back? I thought we might go out after lunch. Explore the town . . . drive to Poole or the New Forest. Would you like that?”

  “Very much. I won’t be more than an hour or two.”

  Highly strung! Huh! Just plain nasty. I was lying on my towel, sandy and damp after a long swim that I felt was somehow cleansing. Anyway, I felt better. The girl was nowhere to be seen, so I eyed all the other girls instead. And thought about Dad. I was surprised not to feel much anger about why he’d left Mum and me. I couldn’t understand his homosexuality, didn’t want to understand it, but I’d accepted it without hesitation, because—well, it was a good reason, I thought, for leaving. I couldn’t explain it to myself any better than that. I would have felt more upset if he’d run off with another woman. But it didn’t account for why he had not bothered to get in touch with me for thirteen years, hadn’t sent me a card or a present on my birthdays or at Christmas. Could that be Mum’s fault? Maybe she had refused to let him have any contact with us because any reminder would be a wound. A wound to her, but did she ever consider what I wanted, what I felt like? Suddenly I began for the first time in my life to feel bitterness against her. Dad had always sent the cheques every month; we lacked nothing and Mum did not have to go out to work. She hadn’t done so badly.

  He, I thought, had done badly. That he should need a man, and a man as dreadful as Adrian, when the world was full of attractive girls, was a total mystery to me.

  The girl I’d met yesterday, the one I’d dreamed about, walked by. She smiled as she passed, and I said “Hallo.”

  When I got to the house I could hear voices raised in heated argument. I crept in quietly, tip-toed up to my room . . . but left the door open so I could listen.

  “Why has it all been done behind my back?” my father demanded. “Why do I have to be presented with a fait accompli? We could have discussed it, found some way of. . . of combining this with our life here.”

  “We are discussing it,” Adrian said.

  “Oh, no, Adrian, we are not discussing anything! You just calmly walk in and announce that you’ve got a job with the Mersey Philharmonic and expect me to be pleased!”

  “Aren’t you? Last week you said our life together was tawdry.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to end it! I was just trying to find ways of improving it.”

  “You’re not interested in me. Not really. Any more than you are in Mike. The only thing that concerns you is writing the next book!”

  “Because I need the money, damn it! Not just for myself, but for an ex-wife and a son and you. There’s very little time I can afford to spend not working.”

  “Well, you’ll have a bit more now,” Adrian said, sarcastically. “I’m going and I’m going for good!”

  My father’s voice went quiet. “Six years, and all for nothing. I don’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t want it to turn out like this.”

  “But you could still have your home here. Why not?” Dad was pleading now. “This can be your base . . . between engagements, for holidays . . .”

  “Peter, if I stay I shall lose whatever little shred of identity I have left. You eat people up! You draw them into some . . . some spell . . I can see you doing it with Mike! Oh, yes! He ought to hate you, but he’s already doing the hero-worship bit!”

  “Rubbish!”

  “It isn’t rubbish at all!”

  “You’re jealous,” Dad said. “And you timed this on purpose so it would happen when Mike was here, didn’t you? Typical of your spiteful, needy, greedy personality!”

  “This is irrelevant,” Adrian said. “The fact is I’m going; I’m going for good, and I’m going now! Today! I trust you enough to look after my things. . .the harp . . . until I’ve found somewhere permanent to live. There is really no point in talking any further.” “Adrian, you’re a bastard.”

  “Probably.”

  “But . . . I love you.”

  I fled. Forgetting the need to be quiet, I ran down the stairs, and as I left the house I heard my father say “What’s that noise?” and Adrian’s answer: “Your son, eavesdropping.”

  The girl, Miranda, was coming out of the sea as I hurried on to the beach. “You told me you were going out for a drive with your father,” she said.

  “I think it’s been cancelled,” I replied, curtly.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” She obviously didn’t believe that, so I said “He was having an argument.”

  She spread her towel out and sat down on it. “Well . . . my parents have arguments, too.”

  “Mine are divorced. Mum lives . . . miles away. This argument was with someone else.”

  “Oh.” There was a short silence, then she said “You can have lunch with us; I expect it would be all right. I’ve never brought a strange boy back before and asked him to eat with us, but I shouldn’t think they’d object— Mum and Dad, I mean.”

  “I’d better not.”

  “We’re only having a picnic. Over there.’’ She pointed to a group of people some distance away, along the beach. A man in swimming trunks, placidly smoking a pipe; a woman taking food from a basket and arranging it on a travelling rug; two little kids squabbling. “That’s my brother Ben,’’ Miranda said, “and my sister Kate. He’s seven and she’s six.’’

  “Thanks . . . but . . . I’d rather be by myself for a while.”

  “And get over it?”

  “Yes.” I looked at her, and said “You’re nice.”

  She seemed embarrassed. “I’ll come back after lunch if you’re still here,” she said, and, wrapping her towel round herself, she walked off to join her family.

  I lay there, letting the warm wind brush my skin; it was like being dressed in silk. I picked up handfuls of dry, hot sand and let it trickle through my fingers. Kids ran in and out of the sea. A woman screamed at the first chill touch of a wave. Two men, quite near me, were playing with a football, kicking it backwards and forwards to each other. Were they, I wondered, like Dad? Or did they have girlfriends? There was no way of telling. How did such people find others like themselves? Did any of it really matter?

  No, it didn’t really matter. In itself. But why did I have the rotten luck to have one of those for a father? I glanced from time to time at Miranda’s family up the beach. The two young ones were now quite calm, eating. Dad was drinking something out of a bottle. Miranda and her mother were talking and laughing together. Happy, happy families. I didn’t have one. I did, of course—Mum and Nic and Aunt Bridie. But that wasn’t the same—just two broken pieces of families. It wasn’t fair. Nothing’s ever fair.

  Miranda returned. “I’ve brought you some food,” she said. “Even Ben couldn’t manage to swallow everything.” She offered me a cheese and tomato sandwich, a chocolate cup-cake, and an apple.

  I was hungry. “Thanks,” I said, and took a bite out of the sandwich. “Didn’t your mother mind?”

  “She joked about having to feed the five thousand, and Dad said why didn’t you come over and join us?”

  “I’ve got . . . too many problems to work out.”

  “Oh?”

  But I shook my head. Actually, I was bursting to talk to someone, but I felt shy. How could you say to a girl you’d only met a few hours ago—a girl you wanted to impress—listen, my dad’s a pouf? When I’d finished eating I said “Let’s go for a walk.
”

  “O.K.” She glanced at her watch. “Mum said I wasn’t to be too long.”

  We strolled up the sand to Boscombe pier, then on to the Overcliff Drive and sat in a shelter as the old ladies did to look at the view. This is how it should be, I said to myself, two teenage kids discussing teachers and homework, rock groups, sport: ordinary, normal life.

  She lived in Boscombe, I was surprised to discover; I’d assumed she was on holiday—though there was no reason at all, I told myself, to think everybody at the sea was a tourist. Her house was two or three roads away from my father’s. Her dad worked in a department store in the centre of Bournemouth; it was early closing day and he had the afternoon off, which was why they had come down to the beach.

  “You ought to come and say hallo,” she said. “Then Mum won’t be worried that I’ve gone off with an axe murderer.”

  They were pleasant, easy-going people. “Miranda says you’re staying with your father for a week or two,” Mrs Dean said. “And that you might be a bit lonely. Come round to our house; you certainly won’t be lonely there! I sometimes wish I could get away from the noise and the chaos!”

  “You thrive on it,” her husband said.

  “It’s not me,’’ said Ben. “I don’t make a racket. It’s all Miranda’s great trampling friends.’’

  “Trampling?” his father questioned.

  Ben nodded, gravely. “Trampling,” he insisted.

  I said I’d better be going home; Mrs Dean repeated her invitation for me to drop in, and Miranda said she’d see me later. I walked up the cliff-path much happier than when I’d come down. If the situation got any worse, I now had somewhere else to go. Miranda was interesting and pretty. I could, of course, return to Alresford if life with Dad became too embarrassing or intolerable, but I didn’t want to go back before my time was up. As I said, I already liked my father.

  He was sitting, hunched, in a chair. The Mahler was on the stereo, its agony stabbing and slicing the room. “He’s gone,” Dad said.

  “Already?”

  His eyes moved slowly round until they were gazing at me. “What do you mean, already?”

  “I . . er . . . heard something of . . . what was happening when I came in at lunch-time.”

  “Gone. Gone. Gone.” The words sounded like an old cracked church bell, tolling for a funeral. “You’d better go too,” he said.

  “Me? Why?”

  “I don’t think . . . I’m in a proper state to look after you. This isn’t a . . . a good scene.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “My turn to ask why.”

  “I like it here,” I said. The lacerations of the music suddenly changed to the beautiful, bitter-sweet tune— the soaring violins, the anchoring harp. The man in bed, terminally ill, seeing all the lost sunsets.

  “I had every reason in the world to leave him Dad said. “Not the other way round. He could be violent. Smashed things up. Kicked me with his heavy, wooden clogs, moody, irritable and selfish. Expected to be given everything and give nothing in return. Jealous, possessive—you name it; he had all the faults. Even got angry if I spent five minutes talking to someone he didn’t approve of. I want, I want always. Never a moment to consider what I might want. Many times I was on the point of telling him to leave. But I never did.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. That’s the only thing I can say . . . because.” He smoothed his hair back with his right hand, then stood up, crossed the room and poured himself a gin.

  “I don’t understand it at all,” I said.

  “How could you possibly? I’m embarrassed and worried . . . plunging you into this . . . this adult situation. It’s wrong.”

  “Can we do without that music?” The sunset was fading, fading, fading.

  “If you like.” I took the pick-up off the record, and the silence was sweet. “Mahler is full of self-pity, I know,” Dad went on. “Which doesn’t help anyone very much. Look . . . if you’re hungry, do you think you could find something in the kitchen? I’m not up to putting a meal together tonight. Can you manage the stove?”

  “I expect so.”

  “I’m sorry. . . all I’m fit for is getting drunk. I guess I’m a pretty terrible father.”

  “Not the usual type.” I laughed. “You don’t really want me to go home, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Dad. . .” I stopped, not sure how to say it. “I used to hate you, for just not being around. When I got over that, I didn’t think about you at all. I couldn’t have cared less. Now I’ve met you . . . there’s . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . we’re actually able to talk! I said yesterday I was looking forward to . . .well, sex. How many boys of sixteen are there who don’t want that? But how many of them feel they can say so to their fathers? It’s odd . . . something weird’s happened. Last week I was a child playing games on the railway line with Nic. Now . . .”

  “Ah.” He stared at his drink. “In standing water between boy and man, Shakespeare said.” He sat down, and smiled at me. “I’m glad we’re able to talk.” “One thing’s bothering me. Why the long silence? Why have Mum and you had no contact all these years? Why don’t you even send me birthday cards?” I’d almost worked myself up into a state in which I’d soon feel tears at the back of my eyes. “Not even birthday cards,” I repeated.

  “Well. . .” He paused for a long time. “You could think this is self-justification . . . but I have to blame your mother entirely. No, blame is the wrong word. But it was your mother’s doing. She was so hurt . . . she just wished to forget I ever existed. She didn’t want to see me, speak to me, anything—except for getting the monthly cheque. She said she didn’t need me ‘contaminating’ you. She felt you should grow up entirely free from such an influence. As if it was infectious, like bubonic plague . .

  “I don’t think anybody could turn me into . . . I mean, I’ve never thought I’d like to do something with another boy. Hmmm. I suppose it’s possible.”

  “But not probable. Your sexual orientation is fixed by the time you’re three or four, or earlier perhaps, even if, like me, it takes years to discover it.”

  “You could still have sent me a birthday card,” I said.

  “Yes. I could have done—should have done. I was trying to respect Nora’s wishes. Guilt . . . feeling I ought to do whatever she wanted me to do. But she hasn’t a monopoly, I guess, on what is right.”

  “She often thinks she has.”

  He looked at me, surprised. “Don’t you two get along?”

  “Yes, fine, I suppose. She’s . . . she’s Mum. I certainly couldn’t talk to her like this.”

  He laughed, and said “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Well . . . I’ll . . . find something to eat. Are you sure you don’t want any food?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “I might go out later.”

  He waved an arm. “Do anything you like, short of getting into trouble.”

  “Mum would ask where I was going, and who with, and what time will I be back.”

  “I think I can trust you to be sensible, so there isn’t a need to ask. Bournemouth’s not exactly Sin City. You’re . . . a good boy, Mike. Rather more mature than I’d have guessed.”

  “I don’t feel very mature. I feel . . . muddled.”

  “One always does,” he said.

  “Isn’t there a time when everything slots into place?”

  “One thinks there is. But it’s an illusion.”

  After I’d eaten—I found some cold chicken and salad in the fridge—I changed my clothes. I had a new tee-shirt, and a new pair of white trousers, and I spent a long time looking at myself in the mirror. Soon I’d have to shave every day. Something exciting would happen this evening, I told myself; I didn’t know what exactly, but it would be . . . exciting.

  I went round to Miranda’s house. There was nobody in. Disappointed, I walked up the street to the main road, wondering what to do with myself. A bus came along, City
Centre on its direction sign. Why not? I hadn’t explored the centre of Bournemouth. I jumped on. But I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I wished I wasn’t sixteen. You aren’t allowed into discos—unless they’re organizing some special event for teenagers—or bars, and that leaves coffee shops, arcades with pinball machines, and hanging around on street corners. I had a coffee, then wasted thirty pence in an arcade. The excitement was still tingling inside me, but it was turning into frustration. What did I want? A girl. To be quite honest, sex: all the way.

  The town had a keyed-up, holiday air. I watched people getting in and out of cars, going into pubs and clubs. But I was excluded, just as I was from the happy, happy families. There is no such thing as fairness. Why did Miranda have to be out? We could have gone for a walk on the cliffs, held hands, enjoyed the warm night wind and the flower scents, or paddled through the sea’s edge in the dark. The tide was in, the waves churning restlessly round the legs of the pier, and crashing on the sand. They drifted gently back, reformed, and curled over again. Courting couples in the shelters. A dog, sniffing at lamp-posts.

  Waste of an evening. I decided to get rid of my surplus energy by walking all the way home; it took a good hour or more. The wind never stopped fretting the pine trees, slamming gates shut, blowing paper across the grass on the cliff tops, wailing in telephone wires.

  Dad was there, sitting in the same armchair. The ash tray was full and the gin bottle empty. He was snoring. The stereo was on, the needle going back and forth in the centre of the Mahler record. I switched it off, drank the gin still left in his glass, turned out the lights and went to bed, leaving him where he was.

  4. Fear of flying

  He was still in the same chair next morning. “Oh, my head!” he moaned.

  “Serve you right,” I said, primly.

  “I know, I know. I don’t need my son to tell me that!”

  During the next few days he kept off the bottle, but he was very depressed. He seemed shrunk, almost a husk of a man, the inside dried up. He talked little, and his movements were like a grandfather’s—shuffling and slow. But his appetite was not affected by what had happened; he ate normally, enjoying to some extent, I think, cooking meals: if I hadn’t been there, he said, he would probably have lived on snacks—sandwiches and soup. I began to realize that my being around was useful; if it didn’t stop him brooding, it meant he was brooding less than if he had been alone. His chief complaint was that he couldn’t sleep properly—he’d doze off all right at eleven or midnight, but wake at two or three in the morning, unable to sleep again. I never heard him during the small hours, but he would go to his study or lie in bed and read till I woke.