by Tim Dowling
‘Don’t tell Mum what it cost,’ I say as we try to jam the tree into the car.
‘You’re just gonna have to drive with the branches in your face,’ the youngest one says.
My wife opens the front door as we’re hauling the tree up the steps. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘It looks like your father finally got the tree he wanted.’
Slipping into the kitchen, I take another look at the receipt. I see the price includes the planting of a corresponding tree in Africa, which makes me feel a bit better. I bin the receipt and return to the sitting room, where my wife and children are holding the tree and marvelling at its height.
‘There is no way that’s going to fit into our stand,’ I say.
‘All right,’ my wife says. ‘Let’s not ruin Christmas.’
Lessons in primatology 5
From time to time I’m obliged to address complaints about how undignified it is to be a character in someone else’s chronicle. Normally I can justify the intrusion by pointing to something I have recently paid for, and shrugging in a way that suggests an ongoing invasion of privacy is simply the price one pays for Which? magazine’s top-rated dishwasher. Occasionally, however, it becomes necessary to blur the identities of real people. This additional precaution will not, I hope, still be fooling anyone at this point.
So anyway, my life partner Sean is bemoaning our domestic situation in his usual barbed but amusing fashion.
‘This house is collapsing,’ he says. ‘And you do nothing.’
I point to the hanging light above the kitchen table that I rewired not three weeks ago, and flip the switch at the wall. The light comes on, and I bow slightly from the waist. Then the bulb falls out and lands in the fruit bowl.
Sean sighs heavily and pushes a card across the table for me to sign. Anton, the second-oldest of our adopted ex-research chimps, is seventeen today. It can be hard to find a suitable present for a near-adult chimpanzee, although they only ever want one of two things: new tyre swing or Nando’s voucher. In any case, it’s nearly midday, and Anton’s still asleep.
Kurt, the younger chimp, surfaces first, bounding into the kitchen and making the sign for ‘What’s up?’ Sean slides another card across the table and makes the sign for ‘sign’. Kurt picks up a permanent marker and draws all over the card, and across much of the table.
Eventually Anton comes downstairs, blinking and yawning. ‘Happy birthday,’ Sean says, handing him a card. Anton shreds the envelope and eats it, before finding something inside. He examines it carefully, makes the sign for ‘Nando’s voucher’ and turns his lips inside out.
‘You’re welcome,’ Sean says.
In the afternoon, we all go to the cinema. Many people, including some leading primatologists, might question the wisdom of taking two ex-research chimps to see Foxcatcher, but it’s important for them occasionally to leave their specially adapted environment. Anyway, if you put hoodies and glasses on them, most of the time no one says anything.
The trouble doesn’t start until after the film, when, as we leave the cinema, Sean signs, ‘What did you think of that?’ Kurt replies with two thumbs up, but it is clear from the increasing volume of Anton’s cycle of distress calls that Foxcatcher was not his cup of tea.
‘I agree that the narrative got a bit elliptical in the middle,’ I say, ‘but if you just allow yourself …’
Anton embarks on a series of distinctive pant-hoots, and assumes a defensive posture, which seems to suggest that if you can’t make a character’s motivations apparent, you haven’t got a story worth telling.
Kurt makes the sign for ‘Shut the fuck up’.
Anton makes the sign for ‘You shut up’.
Sean signs, ‘Please don’t do this here.’
Anton signs, ‘Why are you blaming me?’
The argument resumes over supper, with Sean making repeated attempts to mediate. ‘Stop being so aggressive!’ he shouts. Anton turns an angry backflip and leaves the room. Kurt climbs onto the table and rolls in his food, before following Anton upstairs. ‘Why are they like this?’ Sean asks with transparent exasperation.
‘The thing is, you make it worse when you intervene,’ I say. ‘Let them have it out.’
‘You would say that,’ Sean says.
‘Indeed,’ I say. ‘I’ve written a respected primatology paper on the very subject.’
‘Just do nothing,’ Sean says, ‘is your answer to everything.’
‘It’s a constant battle to maintain position in a linear dominance hierarchy,’ I say. ‘It’s not really about Foxcatcher.’
Sean makes the sign for ‘Shut up’.
CONCLUSION
There is a large package on the kitchen table, addressed to me.
‘What’s in it?’ my wife asks as I lift its lid.
‘Socks,’ I say. ‘Socks in a box.’
‘What for?’ my wife says.
The youngest walks in. I read the note that came with the socks.
‘A PR company has sent me some posh socks as a Father’s Day gift,’ I say. ‘Also, some coffee.’
‘Why you?’ the youngest says.
‘Because I am one of Britain’s most beloved fathers,’ I say.
‘No, really,’ he says.
‘Father’s Day isn’t even a thing,’ my wife says.
I hold up a pair of socks with a monogrammed T on them. ‘I think you’ll find it is,’ I say.
On Sunday morning, I lie in for as long as I can, but my wife proves the more determined sleeper. Eventually I give up and get up.
‘Please bring me a cup of tea,’ she says, opening one eye.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘The perfect start to a perfect Mother’s Day. Except it’s Father’s Day.’
‘Nobody gives a shit about Father’s Day,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I’m taking you to the cinema.’
‘You’re taking the children to the cinema, and you’re making me come.’
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Don’t come.’
I take the dogs to the park, then sit in the garden by myself. The Archers omnibus, blaring from two radios on different floors, echoes through the house as if it were being performed in a cathedral. After a few minutes, the dampness of the bench I’m sitting on drives me back inside. I find my wife in front of the computer, the youngest one by her side.
‘Jurassic World, three o’clock,’ my wife says. ‘We can go to lunch before.’
‘There won’t be any tickets,’ I say. ‘It’s the most popular movie ever. And it’s Father’s Day.’
‘There are plenty of tickets,’ my wife says.
‘Happy Father’s Day, father,’ the youngest says in a plummy voice he normally uses to heap scorn on outmoded formalities.
‘Yeah, cheers,’ I say.
The oldest one, recently arrived back from university, is the last one out of the house, with wet hair and untied shoes. The last time we all piled into the car as a family, we had a different car. As my wife turns onto the ramp of a rooftop car park, I involuntarily lurch away from the passenger door.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she says.
‘You were a bit close on my side,’ I say.
‘You seem to be under the impression that this car is bigger than it is,’ she says. ‘It’s not a 4×4.’
‘It is sort of a 4×4,’ I say.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she says. ‘It’s smaller than the old car.’
‘You just don’t want people to think you’re a 4×4 mum,’ I say.
‘That’s not what a 4×4 mum is,’ she says.
‘It has the shape of a 4×4,’ I say.
‘A 4×4 mum is a woman who has four children by four different fathers,’ my wife says. ‘I have three children, all by the same idiot.’ The tyres squeak against the concrete as she pulls into a parking space.
‘I think that counts as a zing, Dad,’ the youngest says.
‘Don’t say “zing”,’ I say. ‘Say “burn”.’
In the restaurant where we have lunch, there is a card
on the table advertising a Father’s Day special. ‘Book now,’ it says. I look up: the place is almost empty. Maybe Father’s Day really isn’t a thing.
And, really, why should it be? What have I bequeathed my children? They’re the ones who taught me how to be a father, more or less from scratch. Before the first one came along, I knew nothing. By the time he was two, I could cut a baby’s fingernails without feeling faint. Over the course of twenty-odd years the three of them extracted what they needed from me; I learned all my lessons in retrospect. I only mastered fatherhood in time for it to be of no further use. That part of my life – shockingly brief, in hindsight – is almost over. But still, I think, it’s nice to be here, all of us together, on a random Sunday.
‘Your father is staring into space,’ my wife says. ‘Who’s going to volunteer to talk to him?’
‘I will,’ the middle one says.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Nick Pearson, Mark Handsley, Lottie Fyfe and Alice Herbert at Fourth Estate. Four Guardian Weekend editors – Melissa Denes, Clare Margetson, Sue Matthias and Merope Mills – have been obliged to put up with me across a decade and 500 columns. They’ve given me tremendous freedom and, when necessary, they have reined me in.
I owe a great debt to my agent Natasha Fairweather for her patience, not to mention her blind faith. This book, like the ones before it, stands as a tribute to her misplaced confidence. I am grateful to my wife for her ability to remind me – sometimes with nothing more than an arched eyebrow – that writerly hysterics butter no parsnips.
Above all I would like to thank my three sons – oldest, middle, youngest – for the grace they have always displayed about having their childhoods cobbled into subject matter. They’ve never complained, unless shouting ‘This is all lies!’ counts as complaining. I know I can never repay them, and I wish they would stop invoicing me.
ALSO BY TIM DOWLING
How To Be a Husband
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