by Tony Parsons
Something was sticking in her back.
She rolled on her side and pulled my scrunched-up Racing Post from beneath her.
She frowned. Then grinned.
‘The Racing Post?’ she said, with genuine marital amusement. She held it between her thumb and index finger, as if about to conduct a forensic examination.
‘Since when did you start reading the Racing Post?’
I had actually been reading it for quite a while. She just hadn’t noticed.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Every now and then.’
I kissed her neck, her forehead, her ear.
But she was laughing quite hard by now. It’s difficult to stay completely in the mood when someone’s having a good old laugh.
‘Hilarious,’ she said.
Have you noticed that when anyone says, ‘Hilarious,’ it is never, ever even remotely funny? Saying hilarious is the kiss of death to humour. And everything else. I rolled on to my back. Cyd crossed her legs and actually began flicking through the Racing Post.
After a while I realised she was looking at me.
‘What are you doing?’ she said. She wasn’t smiling now. It wasn’t hilarious now. None of it. ‘You’re not…? I don’t believe it, Harry. You’re not actually…gambling, are you?’
I sat up. ‘I never actually thought of it as gambling,’ I said. ‘It’s just – you know. Having a flutter. A bit of a laugh.’
She stood up, smoothing her white shorts. She flopped down on the sofa. She took a sip of coffee, still examining the Racing Post as if it revealed some dark secrets about my soul. Then she put down her coffee, too hard. Some of it splashed over the little table. ‘A bit of a laugh?’ she said. And then the same again, but with the volume turned way up. ‘A bit of a laugh?’
I got up off the floor and lifted my coffee just as she chucked her kitchen appliance catalogue at me. It only brushed my arm but it was like being hit by a telephone directory, or a very large brick. I cursed, and cursed again, most of my coffee sloshing down the front of my jeans and shirt.
‘Jesus Christ, Cyd,’ I said and put down the cup, and went off to clean up. She came after me.
‘Have you seen all the bills in the top drawer?’ she said. ‘All those red-coloured bills, Harry? Those bills from gas, electricity and every other bastard we owe money to?’
I was at the sink tearing off kitchen towel. It was no good. I was going to have to change, shower, start again. ‘I’m going to get a job,’ I said. ‘And until I do, I’m going to get a loan. From the bank. I keep telling you.’
I turned to go but she barred my path. ‘Yes, you keep telling me,’ she said. ‘That’s all you ever do – tell me. Tell me how everything’s under control and everything’s going to be good tomorrow. What is it you bloody English say? Jello tomorrow. That’s what my life with you is like, Harry. It’s all bloody jello tomorrow.’
I pushed past her, glad our kids were not here for this. ‘Jam tomorrow,’ I said. ‘The expression is jam tomorrow.’
‘You’re the expert.’
I went to the bathroom and began taking off my clothes. I thought she had left me alone but after a while she appeared in the doorway, a sheath of papers in her hand. She began throwing them at me one by one.
‘British Gas,’ she said, and for just a second I remembered how much I loved her crazy accent. The way she said ‘British’. It made something inside me ache. But then the moment was gone, gone the moment she threw the bill at me. It fluttered between us. ‘Eastern Electricity…Virgin Media…Vodafone for Joni…’
I stood there in my pants, my hands held up in bewilderment. ‘Vodafone for Joni? Why is a seven-year-old girl receiving a bill from Vodafone?’
‘For her cell, stupid,’ Cyd said. And then, switching to a grotesque parody of a London accent, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins: ‘For her moh-bile fone, mayte, innit?’
She kept reading the names of the bills and throwing them at me. When she began reading out a letter from the Cheltenham and Gloucester about our mortgage, I decided I had had enough. I started putting my coffee-soaked clothes back on.
‘All on me, Harry,’ she said. She was calmer now, but that was somehow worse. ‘This house needs two incomes. This house needs both of us contributing. But it’s all on me. We’re lucky I’m busy right now. We’re lucky Food Glorious Food has more work than it can handle. Otherwise – I don’t know.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. And I truly was sorry. ‘I know it’s hard.’ I zipped up my jeans, adjusted my penis. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘Then don’t gamble, Harry,’ she said, pleading now. ‘It’s insane, baby! Can’t you see that? We have no money – we are right at the limit – and you are starring in a remake of Casino Royale.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘It’s just a few quid, now and then.’ I left the bathroom and walked, just wanting to get some distance between us. ‘It’s a bit of fun. Some light relief.’ She was right behind me, following me. I turned to look at her. ‘God knows I deserve some.’
She nodded, as if she understood everything. ‘Living with me, you mean?’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’
‘I do my bit for this family – and plenty more,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever forget it, mister.’
We were on the stairs. Going nowhere. I turned to look at her. We were right by the alcove that contained all my prizes. My BAFTA from the long lost era of The Marty Mann Show. My glass earhole from quite recently. A glass pigeon from somewhere that I couldn’t quite recall.
‘And what about me?’ I said. ‘I’ve worked like a dog for years.’
‘What kind of dog would that be, Harry? A Chihuahua? A little Shih Tzu?’
I gestured at my illustrious prizes. ‘They don’t give these away for serving chicken satay,’ I said, because I knew it would hurt her. But I could not stop myself. We had got to that point where we could not stop ourselves from hurting each other. It was all we wanted now.
Cyd looked at my prizes, less than impressed.
‘It’s a glass earhole, Harry,’ she said. ‘It’s just a glass earhole.’ She saw my face turning red. She saw the little vein in my right temple start to throb. And she laughed. She knew she had scored a bull’s-eye. ‘What shall we do, Harry? Shall we try to pay our mortgage with your glass earhole?’
My voice was very quiet. ‘If you don’t like it,’ I said, ‘then why don’t you go back to fucking Jim?’ We stared at each other. ‘Your ex-husband. If you’ve had enough of me, then why don’t you drag the carcass of that marriage around the block one more time?’
‘What?’ she said.
I pushed past her. Going back down the stairs now. Over my shoulder. ‘You heard,’ I said.
She sat on the stairs. I went to the kitchen and ripped off a rubbish sack. Then I went back to the alcove that displayed my prizes. Cyd was still sitting on the stairs, her face in her hands. I began tossing my prizes into the rubbish sack. The glass earhole went first. Cyd looked up with wet eyes as we heard it explode.
‘What are we doing to each other, Harry?’ she said, and her lovely face was all twisted with what we had become. ‘Oh, please don’t throw away your pigeon.’
‘Too late,’ I said, and the pigeon went in, followed by my BAFTA from the days when we thought that TV would always love us – my beautiful BAFTA! – and it smashed the pigeon and the earhole a bit more. I hung my head and I covered my face too.
Then the doorbell rang.
Cyd and I looked at each other and then slowly descended the stairs. The doorbell was still ringing. I was still holding the rubbish sack, and the broken glass tinkled like jewels. The sound of the shattered prizes made Cyd cry a bit harder. There was a sob the size of a ten-year-old marriage in my throat.
I opened the front door.
There was a smiling Japanese woman holding a newborn baby, and a shy-looking Japanese man behind her, dressed for the golf course. I couldn’t work out what was happening. Then Joni and her
friend Asuka jumped out whooping from either side of the door, surprising me, and then standing there jumping up and down and hugging each other and chanting this mantra.
‘Best friend,’ the two girls sang. ‘Best friend, best friend.’
‘Very good playdate,’ said the smiling Japanese lady, and the tiny mop-haired baby in her arms began to mew. Her husband nodded shyly in agreement. Joni brushed past me.
‘Can Asuka have a sleepover with me next weekend?’ she said.
‘Very good girl,’ said the kind, sweet Japanese lady, and her decent, golf-playing husband nodded again.
Then the shy, smiling, decent Japanese family looked at my wife and me, really looked at us for the first time, and their smiles faded.
They saw it all. The coffee on my unbuttoned shirt. The grief on our faces. The red bills that were scattered across the hall like the betting slips of lost races. And in the rubbish bag I held, they heard all the glittering prizes, reduced to jingling-jangling pieces of trash.
They gathered up their children.
They nodded a polite goodbye, as if we were normal people too.
And then they got out of there.
Sixteen
I sat up in my office, watching DVDs of PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. It was a depressing business. But I was going to an interview for a production job on the show and they always expected you to know the thing inside out.
I knew exactly what some sniffy little twelve-year-old executive producer would ask me. How did you feel when PC Dibbs got shot at the end of the fourth series? How about the sub-plot of the cross-dressing copper? Should DCI Rooney still be struggling with his booze problem in series five? How about reconciliation with his estranged wife? Is the police dog a distraction from the action, or does it rope in the animal lovers? Should we hang a hoodie in the cells? Or just beat the crap out of him in the police canteen? They wanted you to share your ideas. They were very big on sharing.
And they got massively offended if you weren’t totally up to speed with their little show. If they knew that I would cross the road to avoid watching it, I would have never got through the door. So I bought the boxed set online – PC Filth: An Unfair Cop, series 1 to 5 – ‘Well Worth Getting Nicked For!’ – and I studied it, and I made notes, and I knew that in the end they would still give the production job to someone else.
I pressed pause when I heard the delivery van, feeling as if I was coming up for air. I went to the window and down on the street four men were easing a giant box off the back of their lorry. I went downstairs, eager to help, and even more eager to escape PC Filth: An Unfair Cop.
Because I wanted to be good. I wanted to provide and protect. I wanted to try to be the man that my father was without trying. I wanted to watch over my family like a statue of a Golden Retriever.
I could hear Polish voices in the hallway. The box was on its side and being eased through the front door. It seemed to be stuck. Cyd stood watching with her arms folded across her chest. She did not look at me as I came down the stairs.
They got the box through the door and stood it up. It was ten feet tall, almost touching the ceiling. Joni came downstairs and we all stood watching as they got the box on to a trolley and wheeled it into the kitchen, giving a light bulb a whack on the way.
Joni danced after her mother and the men and the box as I steadied the light. I followed them into the kitchen. One of them began disconnecting the old fridge while the rest of them cracked open the box. It was a new refrigerator. The King Kong of fridges. A double-doored American monster in stainless steel.
Joni crawled into the box and looked out.
‘Like a Wendy House for indoors,’ she said. ‘Can we keep it? Can we keep the box? Can we?’
‘No,’ said Cyd, and she took a step closer to peer at the magnificent fridge with her wide-set brown eyes. I had once lost myself in those eyes. It seemed like a long time ago.
‘Beautiful,’ I said, above the babble of Polish and Joni pleading to keep the box forever. ‘But can we afford it?’
Cyd glanced at me with those far-apart eyes and then she looked away.
‘Let me worry about that,’ she said.
And suddenly the room was so quiet that you could have heard my penis dropping off.
I waited for Peggy outside the club.
I stayed in the car, the engine running, and the only time I took my eyes off the door was to quickly glance at my watch.
Ten to midnight. She was meant to come out at twelve. There was a big man on the door, a giant skinhead in a black Crombie, and he lifted and lowered a red velvet rope with surprising delicacy. He stared impassively at the kids in the queue, letting them advance when the mood took him, a Pied Piper with a history of steroid abuse, and I willed the minutes away.
Then I saw Peggy and her friend. Skirts too short and heels too high. But laughing, happy, which was good. And with a group of boys, which was bad. One of the boys was doing all the talking, trying to sell them something. A ride, a party, the notion that the night was still young.
I recognised him.
The bulk of his body – big for his age – and stubble like a black cloud on his face. William Fly did the talking, while Spud Face and the others held back, fixed grins on their ugly mugs, content to let the big man do the talking. And he did. Peggy turned to look at him, throwing back her head with a laugh.
She was a good, sensible girl. And there were boys around every day at her school. But not that kind of boy. She shook her head, her smile fading, and turned away.
William Fly reached out and held her wrist.
And I was out of the car, calling her name. I stepped forward and nearly went under the front wheels of a lorry. The driver leaned on his horn, and by the time it had passed Peggy and her friend were crossing the road towards me.
The pack of boys were watching them go, grinning and sharing their witless observations.
‘Thanks for coming, Harry,’ Peggy said, and then looked at her watch. ‘We’re not late, are we?’
I got them in the car and hit the button for central locking. Two children dressed like women. My daughter watched my face in the rear-view mirror.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Put your seat belts on.’
‘Look at my house, Daddy,’ Joni said.
I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the giant cardboard box that had held the refrigerator. Joni had lined the walls with stuffed animals and assorted dolls. At seven, she was getting a bit old for this stuff, and she could feel it. The pressure to grow up was all around, and it made her nostalgic for earlier times. She missed being a little girl. She was nostalgic for the simple pleasures of Ken and Barbie.
‘You can come and visit, if you want,’ she said, rearranging a couple of Bratz and a monkey from London Zoo.
I crawled into the box, and Joni had to shuffle to one side as I turned around. It was the size of a telephone box. We peered out, both of us laughing. Cyd walked into the room and stared at us.
‘Hard at it?’ she said to me. She had her coat on. She was going out. It was the first I knew about it.
‘I was just making a cup of coffee,’ I said. ‘Then I was going back to work.’
I crawled out of the box. The new refrigerator hummed self-importantly. Cyd opened the door and took out a bottle of water. ‘Watching old episodes of The Bill all day long?’ she said. ‘Nice work, if you can get it.’
‘It’s not The Bill,’ I said. ‘It’s PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. You know that one. I thought you were a fan. And I’m only – ’
‘Yeah,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘I know.’ The fridge bathed her in a golden light. She closed the door and the light was gone. ‘Peggy’s got her eye on Joni, so don’t let her stop you.’
‘Daddy was just visiting,’ Joni said.
Cyd bent down to kiss the top of her head. ‘We’re not keeping this old box in the house forever,’ she said, and stood up as Peggy drifted into the room.<
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Peggy did this sort of spin, like a lazy ballet move, and crouched down in front of the box.
‘Would you like to visit?’ Joni said.
‘Love to, darling,’ Peggy laughed, and she crawled into the box.
The front door closed quietly behind Cyd and I stared at it for a while. I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on, not really hearing the sound of my daughters playing or the unbroken hum of the fridge. My mind was elsewhere, to tell you the truth, up in the leafy highlands of North London. I walked back down the hallway and stared at the door.
I felt for her. I really did. This was not easy for her. This was not something that she could do lightly.
And I could hardly blame her. Truly.
Overlooking the fact that she was ripping out my heart, and tearing it into a billion tiny pieces, I could even understand it.
Because how can it be infidelity when you have had enough of someone?
I stood across the street from the house in Belsize Park.
I didn’t care if the neighbours looked at me as if I was a master burglar casing the joint. And I didn’t care if they saw me from his flat. I was beyond caring about all that stuff. I wanted it all out in the light, no matter how ugly it looked. I was sick to my stomach with all the things that were being left unsaid, unseen, unknown.
It began to rain, and still I stood there. Then it got dark, and still I stood there. In the end, after a lifetime or so, the door opened. And this time there were three of them. Cyd and Jim and a woman that I did not recognise at first. But then the last time I saw her was many years ago, sitting on the back of a motorbike on her wedding day.
Liberty, still in her nurse’s uniform.
You can buy that kit on the Internet, I reflected. A nurse’s uniform – that’s sex wear for some sickos. How do we know she’s a real nurse? We just have her word for it.
They were locked in a group embrace. Heads down, hugging.
The three of them?
What kind of evil was abroad in Belsize Park?
I stepped forward, realising that I was soaked to the bone. They all looked at me as I crossed the road. Then I realised that Jim was crying. And Liberty. Only my wife was dry-eyed, and she looked at me with an expression that I could not read.
