by Tony Parsons
They started down the aisle and every eye followed them. I could tell which of the boys was the groom now. He smiled at the girl, turned his head to the ground and then looked at her again. Tracey began to smile and dab at her eyes. Although he was head and shoulders shorter than the rest of the front row, I could just about see Ken. And I watched him watching the bride, narrowing his eyes as he squinted at her face, as if she was a girl he knew from somewhere, but it was just out of reach.
The next time I saw him he had a glass of champagne in each hand and was staggering through the wedding reception to where I was talking to the vicar.
‘Beautiful service,’ he said, and attempted to kiss her full on the lips.
The vicar flinched and pulled away but somehow he kept going, eyes closed and lips pursed in readiness. I intercepted him before he fell and as he steadied himself a small crescent of champagne sloshed from one of the glasses and down the vicar’s cassock.
Ken blinked at her from behind his glasses. ‘Beautiful,’ he said.
‘Thank you so much,’ the vicar smiled, and quickly slipped away. Ken watched her go, thoughtfully draining one of the champagne flutes. I gently removed the other one from his hand and downed it before it could do any more harm.
We were in a marquee in the grounds of a country house hotel. It felt like more than a fancy tent, as though it had stood for a thousand years instead of having been erected that morning. When the music began – a big blast of happy funk, ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang – it seemed to bounce off ancient walls.
Ken headed for the dance floor.
I followed him, suddenly understanding why I had felt the need to stick around.
Tracey cut us off, looking concerned.
‘Dad?’ she said. ‘Have you tried the canapés?’
But Ken kept going, gently bouncing off a waiter with a silver tray of Bellinis and on to the dance floor.
Tracey touched my arm. ‘Don’t let him spoil it for me,’ she said.
He was the third person on the dance floor. Only the bride and her groom were out there before him, holding each other and swaying from side to side, the curious dance of people who had never really learned how to dance. They seemed glad to see Ken appear, if only as a distraction from their embarrassment.
Ken was smiling, doing a technically perfect twist – the ball of one foot stubbing out a cigarette while his hands moved as if drying himself after a shower – and I wondered what long-ago night out with his wife had lodged in his head. People began to clap and cheer. The bride broke away from her husband and reached out for her grandfather.
He looked at her face and his smile vanished.
‘Dot,’ I saw him mouth. ‘My Dot…’
Then his good leg seemed to slip from under him and he was sitting down, still looking up at the girl in her wedding dress, staring at her face as if he remembered everything.
And there was laughter now, not the good kind, as he sat there on the dance floor, and all around the marquee I could see the blue-white glow of screens as people filmed him with their phones as he sat there on the ground. The bride and groom were laughing too, and Kool and the Gang were ordering everyone to have a real good time as I pushed my way through the crowd to get him.
And despite the ten-grand party and the designer duds and the river of cocktails, I could see them in all their modern ugliness now.
The hard-eyed women with the tattoos on their arms and legs not quite hidden by their dresses. The soft-bodied men with elaborate hair, as brittle as toffee apples from styling products, or shaved escaped-convict close to cover the old male pattern baldness. Some of the men were like children – tieless at a wedding, as though they had yet to master the knot. And the children dressed like adults – little girls in high heels, little boys in bow ties wielding mobile phones like blunt instruments, filming the old man on the floor.
All drunk, all overweight.
I shoved the last of them out of the way and bent down to lift Ken. Suddenly his daughter was there, her face in mine.
‘Get him out of here,’ she hissed.
In the shadow of the country house hotel, we sat by a swimming pool, the lights under the water making it shimmer blue and gold.
Music from the marquee drifted to us across the manicured grounds. I could hear that the DJ had moved from family favourites to club classics.
Some guests were coming out of the tent and drifting across to the hotel. Behind us were open French doors, and an almost deserted bar.
Ken groaned. ‘It’s killing me,’ he said, and I helped him on to a sun lounger and watched him roll up his trouser leg until it was above his knee.
His prosthetic limb looked completely lifelike, yet totally inanimate. It seemed alive and dead at the same time. I watched him unclamp it and place it to one side with a relieved sigh. He began to massage the flesh above his knee. It was a mass of scars.
‘You can get these new legs,’ he said. ‘Sports legs, they call them. Where you see all the joints and hydraulics showing.’ His fingers vigorously pressed his livid flesh. ‘All right if you’re a kid,’ he said. ‘Fancy a dip? I might just have a paddle.’
I helped Ken to the side of the pool. Me holding him as he took these grunting, steady hops. We took off our shoes and socks and dangled our three feet in the water.
‘Lovely do,’ he commented, staring towards the distant sound of ‘Pump Up the Volume’. He gave me a sideways look. ‘Remind me what you’re sticking around for? You don’t know these people. I don’t know most of them myself.’
‘Designated driver,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. And I know you, don’t I?’
He produced his Rizlas and his tin of Old Holborn and rolled himself a cigarette. I was happy that there was no one to stop him. And I thought that these men should be allowed to smoke wherever they wanted to. If you free the world from tyranny, I thought, you should be allowed a roll-up. He smoked slowly, as more people came out of the tent and began drifting across the grass.
‘Help me up, will you?’ he said.
I got him up and we held on to each other, my arms around his waist, his arm around my shoulder. With his free hand he extinguished his roll-up and tossed it aside. We watched the wedding guests coming towards us. When they were coming up the slope to the pool, the old man began to shout.
‘Shark!’ he screamed. ‘Help me! Shark! Shark! Oh God! Help! Shark!’
Somebody screamed. We stared at their appalled faces, the eyes wide with horror, and then I helped Ken back on the sun lounger, both of us rocking with laughter.
He was clamping his leg back on when Ian arrived. ‘That wasn’t funny when you did it when we were kids,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t funny at Frinton, Clacton or Margate. And it’s not funny now.’
And then there was Tracey.
‘Do you know why he left?’ she said.
Ken rolled down his trouser leg. ‘Who?’ he said, genuinely interested.
‘Your son,’ she said. ‘Your precious Mick. Your favourite child. Do you know why he went away? Know why he moved to Australia, do you?’
Ken wasn’t smiling now. ‘A better life,’ he said quietly. ‘Sun. Barbecues. Penguins. A higher quality of life.’
Tracey laughed, shaking her head. ‘To get away from you,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t stand it any more. He left England to get away from you.’
After they’d gone back into the hotel, Ken smoked another roll-up in silence and then we made our way down to the car. It was nearly two now, and the wedding party was breaking up.
In front of the hotel, a crowd had gathered to see off the bride and groom.
We could hear them all cheering, and then the sound of tyres on gravel and the tin cans that had been tied to the bumpers, as the happy couple went off to start their new life.
‘Let’s get you home,’ I said to Ken as he sagged against my car.
The old man was very tired.
‘It’s not true,’ he said.
‘We
need to keep the noise down a bit,’ I said, as I put the kettle on, and Ken began to noisily clear his throat. The sound of a dying seal. I glanced meaningfully at the ceiling, indicating my sleeping family.
Behind those glasses, his eyes followed mine.
‘Things bad at home, are they?’ he asked.
I could see how he could get exhausting after a lifetime or so.
‘It’s not that things are bad at home,’ I said. ‘But it’s – what? – the middle of the night. My wife has to get up for work in the morning.’ I turned back to the tea, milk and sugar. ‘And I don’t.’
He made himself comfortable at the kitchen table. ‘That must be tough,’ he said. ‘When the missus is the breadwinner. That’s not easy for her. Or you.’
I turned to look at him to see if he was taking the piss. His face was impassive. I went back to my boiling kettle.
‘It’s just temporary,’ I muttered.
‘Still,’ he elaborated. ‘Not like my day. More simple then.’
‘You’ve had your day,’ I said, and it sounded far more cruel than I had intended.
But it made him laugh.
‘Poor you,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a wife that takes care of you. I only had to deal with Nazi Germany.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Poor me.’
I brought two cups of tea to the kitchen table. He was only here because he had declared all the way home that he was, ‘Gasping.’ He was always gasping, that old man.
Gasping for a cup of tea. Gasping for a cigarette. Gasping for air.
And I finally saw what it was in him that reminded me so much of my father. There were the obvious similarities – the war, the medals, the hard, damaged bodies that would carry their scars to the grave.
And there were equally obvious differences – my father was every inch a suburban dad, all for Home Counties politesse, tending his garden and not swearing in front of the children, while Ken Grimwood had never left the council estate, never left Nelson Mansions. But what they shared was this – a bottomless well of bitterness about how their country had treated the boys who came home.
We gave everything. Some of us never came back. And you bastards let us down.
My father hid it better than Ken Grimwood, but it was there just the same. Behind the net curtains and manicured lawn of my family’s little pebble-dash semi – the modest house that demanded my dad work at three jobs just to scrape together the deposit – there was a man who was beyond anger.
And as I grew up, and the crop-haired blond lad became just another mousey, fallible adult, capable of cocking up his life, and the lives of all those around him, I could not hide from the fact that I was one of the many bastards who had let my father down.
‘You have ruined my life,’ he told me when I broke the news that my marriage to Gina was over.
‘You’ve had your life,’ I told him, wanting to hurt him as much as he hurt me.
There was ice in my father. He was a decent man, and a gentle man, and there were many good things about him. But there was that hard black ice, too, and I never saw it melt until my son was born. It wasn’t until Pat came along that I ever really saw a look on his face that perhaps things could be good again after all.
‘Good cup of tea,’ Ken said, nodding approvingly.
I glanced at my watch. I still had to get him back to the Angel and then come home. I took a gulp of tea although it burned my mouth.
And then I saw the light in the garden.
More of a glow than a light. Out in the darkness, inside the Wendy House, a pinprick of light that burned bright red for a moment and then settled to a tiny smouldering ember.
‘That little bastard,’ I said, kicking back my chair as I got up.
Ken looked at me and then at the garden. He saw nothing.
‘My son,’ I said. ‘He’s in the Wendy House. He’s smoking Mexican weed in the Wendy House.’
Ken tilted his head to one side. The Wendy House? Mexican weed?
I spluttered, speechless, and then realised that I couldn’t be bothered.
‘I’ll kill him,’ I said simply, and suddenly Ken sort of got it, holding up a hand as I headed for the garden door.
‘They say a child needs your love most when he deserves it the least,’ the old man told me.
I stared at him. ‘Oh, is that what they say?’
He nodded. ‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Like I’m going to take advice from a man who just got kicked out of his granddaughter’s wedding.’
Ken Grimwood just smiled. ‘Is it all right to smoke in here?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, and I went into the garden.
I could smell that sickly sweet Mexican scent before I even reached the Wendy House. And I could see Pat inside, Gulliverlike, hunched up and far too big for the playhouse. I opened the door and went inside. Defiantly, he took a toke on his joint. That red glow again. And I knew that I was not going to kill him. Not tonight or ever. I loved him, you see.
‘You don’t need that,’ I said.
He ran his hand across his shorn head, as if he could still not quite believe that his hair was gone. ‘Maybe it’s exactly what I need.’
But then he coughed, suddenly sickening, and inhaled deeply, trying to regain control. He stared at the soggy joint in his hand.
‘Not so cute any more, am I?’ he said.
‘You’ll always be cute to me,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Rotten liar, aren’t you?’
‘Always,’ I smiled.
He sighed and ran the red tip of the joint over his bare arm. I heard the fair, almost invisible hair on his arm sizzle and burn. I could smell it too. The burned hair on his arm. I held my breath. Then he took the joint away, and I breathed again.
‘It’s not your fault, Pat,’ I said. ‘None of it. This whole mess that’s been going on for years.’ He wasn’t looking at me. ‘None of it is your fault.’
He laughed shortly. ‘I blame the parents,’ he said.
‘I wish,’ I said, and he looked up at me as my voice got caught. ‘I wish it could have been…more settled for you. When you were growing up. And now. I just wish that it could have all been a bit more settled.’
He shook his head furiously. ‘You already told me,’ he said. He did not want to talk about all that.
Then he looked at me. He looked at me at last.
‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ he said.
‘Then you come here,’ I said. ‘You come back to me. When there’s nowhere else to go, you just come home. And you stay as long as you want. Okay?’
He thought about it.
‘Okay.’
‘Come inside,’ I said, standing up.
‘Okay,’ he said again. I watched him throw his Mexican weed on the floor and stub it out. The sparks flew and died. We had to bend our heads to get out of the Wendy House.
We looked up at the house. It was in darkness apart from the light in the kitchen. All the houses were in darkness. I put my arm around my son’s shoulder and I realised with a jolt that he was taller than me. When did that happen?
Then we walked back to the house, where the old man was waiting.
Part three: summer term –
what are you waiting for?
Twenty
Then there was the day my wife came home too soon.
I was up in my room, editing a shooting script for PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. I had been back in gainful employment for a month, although it all felt a bit different now. Somehow this was more like the work my father had done. Because it wasn’t a career any more. It was a job.
I was going over a scene that had been nagging at me all morning, when I heard the Food Glorious Food van down on the street. I looked at my watch and then turned back to the script.
In the scene I was stuck on, PC Filth had a violent career burglar down in the cells. He – PC Filth – was whistling, ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ and doing a little jig a
round the cell. Police brutality seemed on the cards. It was a direct rip-off of Tarantino, but that wasn’t what troubled me. It was the role reversal – giving the uniformed officer all the power and the catchy pop song, and having the bad guy squirm. As if the good would ultimately triumph and the bad would be punished.
And the thing that bothered me was – I knew that just wasn’t true.
I put the script down and went to the window. The Food Glorious Food van was parked outside. That did not make sense. It was lunchtime. The van should be down in Canary Wharf. I watched Cyd get out of the driver’s seat. She went to the back of the van and began taking out trays of food. One of her girls was standing next to her. Not helping too much because she was crying. I went downstairs.
Cyd was coming through the front door with her trays. Mozzarella fingers. Gyoza dumplings. Sashimi. Chicken satay. Mini frittatas.
‘What happened?’ I said, standing to one side. Her girl was behind her, sniffing and sobbing over a sixty-piece oriental platter. I took it from her and carried it into the kitchen. The food was lined up on the surfaces where it had all been prepared earlier. Cyd was already coming back out.
‘Turn on the TV,’ she said.
I stared at her back. I hate it when people say that to me. Turn on the TV. It means that something is wrong. It means that everything is wrong. I turned on the TV and at first I could not understand what I was looking at.
The pictures were coming live from some shining glass tower. Men and women in suits were coming out, and they were all carrying boxes. Some of them were crying. Some of them were angry, shouting at the camera crews and the heavens. Someone threw a skinny latte in the face of a photographer. The camera closed in on one young buck with a champagne box in his arms containing a riding crop and a golf club. The wind whipped some papers from his box but he did not seem to notice, or care. There was a name on the side of the glass tower in big bold letters. The camera went in close. The name rang a distant bell.
