by Tim Dowling
‘Let’s look over here,’ I say, grabbing the middle one. We now seem to have our own personal guard, silently shadowing us wherever we go. The children accept this escalation as a challenge.
‘You distract her,’ says the oldest to the middle one, ‘and I’ll touch the lobster when she’s not looking.’
‘No one is going to touch anything,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t you have any sense of …’ The three of them scoot ahead of me, and the guard passes by in pursuit. I catch up as they are bearing down on two blow-up turtles fixed to a chain-link fence, and gather them by their wrists.
‘I think we’ve seen everything now,’ I say, herding everyone towards the door. ‘Time for ice cream.’ As we reach the exit I find myself calculating the extent to which my children’s behaviour can be blamed on my singular lack of authority, and how much of it is the fault of the artist Jeff Koons. A light rain is falling in the park.
‘I actually brushed the caterpillar with the back of my hand on the way out,’ says the oldest.
‘What did it feel like?’ I say.
‘Metal,’ he says.
For obvious reasons I prefer to do most of my child-rearing in private. I can do it in public if I have to, but it takes a lot out of me; parenting is largely a process of trial and error, and I don’t like other people seeing the error part. Frankly, I find being in public on my own stressful enough, and for that reason I am only too happy to use my children as an excuse to stay in. Unfortunately this is not always possible.
Somewhere in my pre-Christmas clutch of invitations is one for a book launch. Although it is organized by friends of mine, I have already placed the event in a mental box marked ‘optional’. This is because I don’t know the author and because you never know how you are going to feel about going outside on a random day in the future.
I have forgotten all about the book launch when, a few weeks hence, with my wife away in Amsterdam, one of these friends rings in order to ensure my attendance that evening.
‘I can’t,’ I say with what I hope sounds like dejection. ‘I mean I would, but I’ve got the kids and no one to baby-sit.’
‘Bring them,’ she says. Her tone hints that non-compliance is not among the available alternatives.
‘Really? OK, that sounds great.’
I scroll back through my inbox to find the details. The book is called Once More with Feeling and the launch is described as ‘a festive evening of hymn and carol singing at St James’s, Piccadilly’. I may as well extend my sons an invitation to be nit-combed.
‘Guess what?’ I say. ‘We’re going to a party, which won’t end until past your bedtime.’
The three of them, still in their school uniforms, stare at me from the sofa.
‘What sort of party?’ asks the oldest.
‘A book launch – there will be refreshments, though, and, um, a bit of carol singing.’
‘Oh no!’ screams the youngest, throwing himself to the floor.
‘It’ll be fun!’ I say.
We are late, threading our way up Piccadilly through crowds of pedestrians with shopping bags. I have foolishly driven into central London and left the car in a car park whose charges took my breath away.
‘Why is there singing at a book party?’ asks the middle one.
‘Well, the book’s a collection of hymns and carols, so I guess they thought it would be appropriate to sing hymns and carols.’
‘Hymns? You didn’t say that before!’
‘Exactly where is this thing happening?’ asks the oldest.
‘In a church,’ I say.
They all stop walking.
‘Oh my God,’ says the middle one.
‘Singing hymns in a church,’ says the oldest. ‘That is basically church.’
‘You said we were going to a party!’ screams the youngest, his eyeballs shining with fury. ‘And you’re taking us to church!’
‘But there will be refreshments,’ I say.
There are no refreshments. The youngest slumps with his forehead against the pew in front, staring at the floor. The oldest seems mildly impressed that one of the readers is Ian Hislop, whom he recognizes from Have I Got News for You. The middle one begins to sing along to the carols in spite of himself, while I repeat interesting facts I have gleaned from a pamphlet I found on my seat. ‘This church was designed by Christopher Wren,’ I whisper. For the moment, all is calm.
Afterwards I can think only about how much the car park is costing. The youngest one vanishes. The oldest drags the middle one away by the arm. ‘I’m going to get him to say “Ian Hislop” in a loud voice when Ian Hislop goes by.’
‘Don’t do that,’ I say. ‘This is a church. William Blake was baptized here.’
‘Who’s Ian Hislop?’ asks the middle one.
After ten minutes of searching I finally find the youngest one by the doors.
‘Let’s go, Dad,’ he says, grabbing my hand.
‘We need the other two,’ I say, thinking about the car park.
‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know.’ I try to walk against the tide of people leaving, but I can’t move. Then I spot the pair of them, standing on a pew near the aisle. The middle one has a beatific expression on his face. He tilts back his head, opens his mouth wide and clearly pronounces the words ‘Ian Hislop’. In the crowd I can just see Ian Hislop’s unmistakable head, looking this way, looking that way.
This is my Valentine’s Day gift to my wife: a romantic long weekend at home for one. I am taking the children away for a few days so she can work and sleep and go to the cinema with people who are not me. I left her to make all the arrangements, right down to the taxi at the other end, but sitting on the Stansted Express with our bags crushing my feet, I still take some time to congratulate myself.
I have enough experience of the Stansted Express to know that it doesn’t deserve the second part of its name. Even now it is crawling through North London, pausing for long periods, the drawn-out silences punctuated by incomprehensible apologies. It doesn’t matter, I think, because we are so incredibly early. If this journey takes twice as long as it’s meant to, we will still be at the airport before check-in opens. I look at my children, all staring into tiny screens, their faces alight with eerie concentration. There is, unusually, so little adrenaline in my system that I fall into a gentle sleep.
I am awoken by a sudden lack of forward momentum. As I open my eyes the lights go out and the air conditioning ceases to whir. Don’t worry, I think. We are still so very, very early. After ten minutes the PA system buzzes to life. ‘Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen,’ says a voice. ‘Unfortunately, we have hit somebody, an individual who was intending to commit suicide.’ I look at the oldest, who is sitting across from me and staring into his lap while tinny music leaks from his ears. I look at the youngest one, who is watching what the oldest has described as an ‘amazingly inappropriate’ episode of Family Guy on his brother’s iPod, and laughing quietly. I look at the middle one, who is looking at me.
‘Did you hear that?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Don’t tell the other two.’ In the seat in front of us, a passenger is trying to explain the situation to a German couple, but they don’t seem to get it. With the power off, the carriage quickly turns chilly.
Eventually, in response to a quizzical look from the oldest, I take a notepad from my bag and write, ‘Someone jumped in front of the train’ on it. He removes his earphones and watches policemen wander up and down the track. The other passengers conduct themselves with seemly reserve, talking in hushed tones into mobiles. There is no trouble when the snack trolley immediately runs out of everything.
After an hour it becomes apparent that we will not be moving for at least another hour. I ring my wife to ask, almost in a whisper, about the possibility of other flights, if necessary to other airports.
‘There’s one at six-thirty to Munich,’ she says. ‘If München is Munich. It is, isn’t it?’
‘Well,
I’d always thought so,’ I say, but it occurs to me that I once believed that Bayreuth was just an alternative spelling for Beirut. ‘Now I’m not sure.’
The youngest one suddenly laughs out loud. He still has headphones on, and he is still watching Family Guy. His brother prods him in the shin.
‘Do you actually even know what’s going on?’ he says. The youngest looks up.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘A poltergeist comes and Stewie gets sucked into a portal.’
The man in front of us tells the Germans that this sort of thing happens once or twice a year. In fact, I discover later, this is the fourth ‘fatality’ on the Stansted line in two months. The full sadness of it struck me only later in the evening, back home nine hours after setting off. Only then did I remember the conductor walking into our silent carriage to ask the trolley man for a coffee for the driver.
Now I think of it, the term ‘trial and error’ is a bit misleading when applied to fatherhood, because one is rarely in a position to adapt in response to mistakes. You can’t just stop doing things because they keep going wrong; you’re more or less required to carry on. You take your children to a restaurant, and it ends badly. A month later you try again, and it goes badly again. Over the long term you may begin to notice incremental improvements in the outcomes, but this is more to do with your children getting older than anything you’re doing.
My wife’s book group – of which she is a founder member – meets monthly in various locations, including, occasionally, our kitchen. The last time this happened I was away, so I’m not certain how the children and I are to be accommodated.
‘What happens to us?’ I ask while my wife arranges cheeses on a plate.
‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Just stay out of the kitchen, that’s all. And don’t let them shout swearwords on the stairs. Or fight. I don’t want anyone running in covered in blood.’
When the women of the book club begin to arrive, I assemble all three boys in the sitting room.
‘Put your shoes on,’ I say. ‘We’re going out.’ I take them to the Thai restaurant over the road. At my insistence, we order starters none of us has tried before. We chat about school, sport, politics and YouTube videos we’ve seen of people falling off things. The children, to my quiet astonishment, comport themselves with uncharacteristic maturity. They are polite. They are open-minded about some of the stranger dishes. They do not bicker, or complain, or knock over my beer while fighting over a dumpling. No one asks to play with my phone, or storms out leaving the word ‘Arsehole!’ hanging in the air.
The restaurant, almost empty on our arrival, fills up, mostly with groups of women, some of whom look over and smile. After a while I start to grow self-conscious, losing the drift of the conversation and beginning to see myself in the way I imagine these women see me: as an embattled single father bringing up three boys on his own, beautifully. When I occasionally catch one of their admiring glances, I try to acknowledge it wearing a modest, vaguely embarrassed expression that says, ‘Yes, it has been a struggle, but it’s been worth it. These kids mean everything to me.’
‘Why don’t you just shut up?’ the youngest says to the oldest.
‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ the oldest says to the youngest.
‘Can we have the bill?’ I say to the passing waiter.
When we get home, the book club is still in session in the kitchen. We creep into the sitting room and I shut the door quietly behind us.
‘It was a good dinner,’ I say softly. ‘We’ve expanded our repertoire to include starters four and seven, and I learned a lot about the many different ways a person can hurt himself skateboarding off a roof.’
‘Whatever,’ the youngest says, kicking off his shoes so they hit the window blinds and then diving face first into the sofa. The middle one picks up the TV remote and points it at the screen. As the tail end of Police, Camera, Action! comes blaring into the room, he starts playing keepy-uppy with a dirty tennis ball. The oldest one is already sprawled on the other sofa with his laptop open under his chin like a sun reflector. Seizing the opportunity to check my email, I pull my phone from my pocket and turn my back to the noise.
At this point the door swings open. I glance up from my phone and see my wife, and behind her a group of rather elegant women in long coats, peering in. My wife gestures with one upturned palm, in the manner of a museum curator.
‘Typical,’ she says. ‘Any time of day or night, if you open this door, this is the scene that greets you.’
I start to say something in protest, but then I see myself as the six smiling women framed in the door see me, and I decide to go with it.
One fine autumn day I elect to take my children to the grand opening of London’s new mega-mall, because it is half-term and we need an activity, and because the mega-mall happens to be very near our house, which has not heretofore been very near anything. In fact, it is now our closest retail experience, our local forty-three-acre shop, and I want them to be familiar with it so that in future I can ask them to nip out and get me some Louis Vuitton luggage.
We are worried, however, that we might be underdressed for the occasion. Our shoes are muddy. The middle one is wearing a hoodie, which for all I know might disqualify him from entry. The youngest is sporting a huge cut above his blackened eye, the result of running into a friend while celebrating a goal with his shirt pulled over his head. We ditch the hoodie, change coats, wipe food from each other’s faces.
As we walk along the road I try to set the mega-mall opening day in some sort of wider historical context, because we should really be going to a museum or something in half-term.
‘This entire area was the site of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, the centrepiece of which was the dazzling White City,’ I say, lowering my voice as we pass other pedestrians in case my facts are wrong.
‘Is that why the Tube station is called White City?’ the middle one asks, pointing.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That is exactly why. They also held the 1908 Olympics here.’
‘Dad,’ the youngest says, ‘remember on Family Guy, Stewie was like—’
‘I’m talking. The last remaining exhibition halls were demolished to build the giant mall,’ I say, ‘a temple to capitalism.’ As we pass the new Tube station I see the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, chatting to reporters. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘There is the mayor of London, Boris Johnson.’ The older two crane their necks appreciatively.
We enter the mega-mall just as Dannii Minogue opens the new branch of Next, and become caught up in the whirling vortex of the crowd trying to get a look at her. We ride escalators while consulting a map we were handed at the door. Eventually we end up on a balcony towering over the atrium. Three storeys below, flashbulbs are popping at the foot of a stage.
‘The man now shaking hands with Boris Johnson,’ I say, ‘is Philip Green, the owner of the Arcadia group.’
‘Who’s that one?’ the oldest asks.
‘That,’ I say, ‘is Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks and Spencer.’
‘Ah,’ he says. My children seem oddly intrigued by the proximity of fashion industry bigwigs.
‘And that man, unless I’m mistaken, runs the—’
‘Bye,’ the youngest says suddenly, turning on his heel.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Anywhere,’ he says, ‘but here.’ His sullen expression and cut eye make him look like someone in search of trouble.
‘You can’t wander around a giant mall by yourself,’ I say. He stalks off defiantly to lean against a pillar twenty yards away, where I can just see him being quizzed by a succession of security guards.
The other two insist on waiting for the ribbon cutting. I begin to feel I have overplayed the historical significance of what is essentially the opening of a bunch of shops. People pile in around and behind us. Half an hour later, an orchestra starts playing. Boris Johnson makes a speech, but we can’t make out the words, only the familiar harrumphing cadences. Finally I pull them a
way.
‘This is a mall,’ I say. ‘Let’s shop.’ As we approach the youngest and his pillar, I can see that he is being questioned by yet another security guard. He answers, but the guard puts his hand to his ear, unable to hear anything above Leona Lewis singing below.
The boy leans towards the cupped ear. ‘CELEBRATING A GOAL!’ he shouts.
I once made an incredibly realistic giant pencil, which my oldest son wielded as part of a Book Week costume, in the guise of a fictional character called the Number Devil.
Honestly, this pencil was amazing – it could have come straight from the props department of The Borrowers. I kept it around for years because I was so proud of it, and also because it was the perfect length for batting the TV aerial back into position whenever strong winds pushed it out of alignment, a dangerous chore that required me to clamber out of a third-storey window and up onto the flat roof at the back of the house. Getting back inside was even trickier – some dangling was required – and I usually spent at least ten minutes sitting on the edge of the roof contemplating unwanted outcomes before I got cold enough to go for it. It was during one of these periods of reflection that I realized what a macabre detail the giant pencil would add to reports of my death. It would probably be enough to upgrade my obituary to the status of quirky page four news item. After that I started using an old mop handle, and the pencil got thrown away.
The point is, I am good at making things. I approach creative tasks with a fussy precision you don’t find in many eight-year-olds; above all I am proficient at damping down the childlike enthusiasm that causes children to be so rubbish at making things. For this reason I can sometimes be a difficult collaborator. Trust me – you don’t want my help with your science project. You want me to do it for you.
Towards the end of the Easter holidays my wife starts finishing every statement with the words ‘because I have done everything and you have done nothing’. I am left trying to recall even a brief period in the last fortnight when I had the opportunity to do nothing, but I’m too knackered to think.
