Man and Wife

by Tony Parsons

  Her stay there must have overlapped with the early years of my marriage to Gina, and I expressed surprise that we hadn’t met back then.

  ‘Gina-san was very busy in those days. Very busy with her two boys.’

  But I knew it was more than that. In the early part of our relationship, Gina and I thought that we were completely self-sufficient. We honestly believed that we didn’t need anyone else. Not even our oldest and dearest friends. We let everyone drift away. It was only when everything fell apart that we saw how wrong we had been.

  ‘Who was that man, Kazumi? The man in the garden? The one who was crying?’

  I knew I was pushing it. But I was curious about this beautiful, self-contained woman who could inspire nervous breakdowns on her garden path.

  ‘Ah. Crying man? That was my husband.’ She thought about it. ‘Ex-husband.’

  Then she was on her feet. She had told me enough. Too much, perhaps.

  ‘You want to see more photo of Pat? Just had contact sheet develop.’

  We went up to Gina’s old study. The house was almost empty now. The only things that were here belonged to Kazumi.

  She spread a sheaf of eight by tens out on the floor. She was technically brilliant. Composition, clarity, her choices all seemed sublime to my layman’s eyes. The monochrome images of my son goofing around in the garden perfectly captured the fleeting moments of his childhood. And although the photos were all black and white, they were infused with real warmth. I felt again that she liked my son.

  ‘Why did you leave Tokyo?’

  Strangely, I want to know more. I want to know why she is so far from home, a story that I suspect has nothing much to do with Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Capa.

  ‘I was like Gina.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Shufu.’

  I had picked up scraps of Japanese over the years. But not enough. I was guessing now.

  ‘A…mother?’

  ‘No, no. That’s okasan. Shufu means literally Mrs Interior.’

  ‘Mrs Interior?’

  ‘Housewife, they say England. Homemaker, they say America. In Japan – shufu. But Gina wanted to be shufu. No?’

  ‘Yes, I guess. For a while.’

  Until she decided she wanted her life back.

  ‘My husband wants me to be shufu. I don’t want it so much!’

  She seemed to find it highly amusing. But I didn’t know if it was the very idea of her being a housewife that tickled her funny bone, or if it was the job description of Mrs Interior. Or perhaps she was just covering her embarrassment.

  ‘And it didn’t work out?’

  Obviously it didn’t work out, Harry, you bloody idiot. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here with her husband crying in her front garden and other strange men knocking on her door and lying through their teeth.

  But she had told me enough for one day.

  ‘Married,’ she said, and I didn’t immediately realise that she was talking about me now.

  She was looking at the thick gold ring wrapped around the third finger of my left hand. ‘Married again. Married now. To some other lady. Not Gina-san.’

  I looked at my wedding ring, as if noticing it for the first time, as if it had been planted there. I hadn’t contemplated removing it before I came to see Kazumi. It hadn’t even occurred to me.

  Because I couldn’t get it off these days. Something had happened to that ring. It got stuck.

  ‘Didn’t work out,’ Kazumi said to herself, as if this was a new phrase that she would quite like to take for a test drive. ‘It just didn’t work out.’

  Gina sent me a photograph.

  And I saw that my son had a new smile.

  It was gappy and gummy and pulled at my heart. Two teeth were gone. On the top, right in the middle. The missing teeth gave him a ludicrously jaunty air – he looked like a drunken sailor returning from shore leave, or a raffish prize fighter out on the town.

  In the picture he was all dressed up, kitted out for the camera, head to toe in official New York Yankees merchandise. Baseball cap, sweats, and what my mum would call an anorak. All dark blue, all carrying that white Yankees logo. Under that anorak, he was wearing a stripy blue-and-white Yankees shirt that was a few sizes too big.

  He looked like a little American. I phoned him immediately, not reading the letter from Gina, not caring what else was in the envelope.

  Gina picked up but went to get him immediately.

  ‘What happened to your teeth?’ I asked him.

  ‘They falled out.’

  He sounded surprisingly calm.

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll get new ones, Pat. You’ll get grown-up teeth to replace the ones you’ve lost.’

  ‘Meat teeth for my milk teeth. I know. Mummy told me.’

  Those two front teeth had been wobbling for ages. For some reason, I had assumed that I would be around when they fell out. Now they were gone, and they reminded me of all I was missing.

  I realised there was a matchbox in the envelope. It said: Il Fornaio – 132a Mulberry Street – between Hester and Grand.

  ‘You having a good time in America?’

  ‘New York is very big. Bigger than London, even. And the taxis, right? They’re yellow, and not black at all. But where we live, they got fields. It’s not the city, where we live.’

  ‘You go to this restaurant with Mummy and Richard? You like II Fornaio, darling?’

  ‘They got pizza. Did you look inside?’

  Inside the matchbox were two jagged pearls. My son’s missing front teeth.

  ‘Are these for me? Can I keep them?’

  ‘You can sell ’em to the Tooth Fairy.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll just keep them for myself. Maybe I’ll just keep them. How does that sound?’

  ‘That sounds okay.’

  ‘You okay, darling?’

  ‘I’m very busy.’

  ‘I bet you are.’

  ‘Still unpacking.’

  ‘Is there much left to unpack?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m only seven.’

  ‘That’s right. I forgot. Well, no more of our Sundays for a while.’

  ‘I know. Connecky – connacky—’

  ‘Connecticut.’

  ‘Yes. Connecticut is too far for you to come. On a Sunday.’

  ‘But we can talk all the time on the phone. And I’ll come out to see you. And you can come back here and stay with me during the holidays. Soon. Very soon.’

  ‘But where will I stay?’

  ‘I’ll find you somewhere good. In my house.’

  ‘What about my stuff? Where will all my stuff go?’

  ‘We’ll make sure there’s room for your stuff. Plenty of room.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  ‘America’s going to be great. You’ll love it. Where you’re living, there’s lots of space.’

  ‘I can have a dog. Mummy said. We’re going to get a dog as soon as the unpacking is done and we’re not quite so busy.’

  ‘A dog? That’s great. What are you going to call him?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Because he might be a girl dog. So it’s different.’

  ‘And Pat?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t forget me, okay? Don’t forget your old dad who loves you so much.’

  ‘I don’t never forget you.’

  Then Gina was on the line, wanting to talk. I didn’t want to ask her how it was going. As long as Pat was all right, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care. But she wanted to tell me all about it.

  ‘We’re staying with Richard’s family in Connecticut. He’s been catching the train into Manhattan every day, looking for a job in the city.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I thought he had a job to go to. I thought it was all arranged.’

  ‘He did, but he quit.’

  ‘He quit already? You’ve only just got there. How could he have quit already?’

  ‘It wasn’t what h
e expected. He thought he could walk into something better, but the economy’s rough all over. Not many jobs around for someone like Richard. And accommodation is a nightmare. Do you want to commute for three hours every day? Or walk to work and live in a shoebox? That’s the choice.’

  ‘So it’s not what you expected?’

  ‘Overqualified. That’s what they’re calling Richard. How can somebody be overqualified? How can you be too smart for a job?’

  ‘Beats me. I guess that’s the price of genius. But Pat’s okay?’

  ‘I think he loves it, Harry. Richard’s family make a big fuss of him. Treat him – I don’t know. Like one of their own.’

  Decent of them, I thought. But I said nothing.

  ‘Richard’s sister has got a little boy a year younger than Pat. They hit it off. Spent a lot of time together. They’re out in Connecticut too. All of his family.’

  ‘But it’s not what you expected?’

  ‘There’s no Promised Land, is there? I am starting to realise that now.’

  ‘So when are you coming home?’

  She sighed. ‘This is home now, Harry. Richard’s been offered another job, at Bridle-Worthington.’

  ‘What’s that? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘They’re brokers, Harry. Bridle-Worthington are brokers on Wall Street.’

  ‘I thought he was overqualified.’

  ‘It’s not exactly what he was looking for. A lot less money. But they’ve offered Richard a job. As I say, not the salary he would have liked, but for now—’

  ‘I thought you either commuted for hours or lived in a shoebox. I thought that’s what you said.’

  ‘Nowhere’s perfect. But Connecticut is beautiful. An hour on the train to New York, maybe a little more. We’re looking at schools in Hartford and New Haven. They are a million times better than what he would be in if we were still in London. London is finished.’

  ‘Not for me, Gina. London’s not finished for me. Look, why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because I want you to know it’s not about taking Pat away from you, Harry. It’s about getting a better life. For our family.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’ve got your own family.’

  ‘Not since you stole my son.’

  She was silent for a moment. I could hear her seething, across all those thousands of miles.

  ‘What a relief to be away from you, Harry. How great it will be to have you out of my life. That’s what I’m looking forward to most of all. Making you a stranger.’

  Then she was gone.

  And in one hand I had the dead phone, and in the other, those two priceless little pearls.

  twelve

  Some nights we put Peggy to bed and one of us would read to her until she was sleeping and then we would watch TV and make love on the sofa and our little family seemed to be thriving.

  Some other nights Peggy stayed over at her dad’s place, and things were never as good. Jim Mason had a new girlfriend, and the woman was clearly making every effort to show how wonderful she was – making space in their relationship for Peggy, lavishing her with attention and presents, acting as if it would be like this forever. It was on these nights when Peggy was absent that Cyd always seemed to work late.

  Everything took a little longer when Peggy wasn’t around. The launch parties in the West End, the conferences in the City – maybe it was just a coincidence, but there were no early nights for Cyd when there was no Peggy to come home to. Yes, maybe it was just coincidence. That’s what I thought. Until I started to recognise his car.

  I waited by the window until I saw the Porsche 911 come into view. It was always late by now, the early hours, and the familiar 911 came down our street with the menacing grace of a shark moving through shallow water.

  The 911 parked. I could see their shadows. I could watch the silhouettes of my wife and Luke Moore as she sat in his Porsche, just talking. That’s all. Just talking.

  But by the time I heard her key in the lock I was in bed, lying very still on my side, eyes closed, my breathing even.

  My wife tiptoed into our bedroom and began taking off her clothes as quietly as she could.

  Pretending to be coming home late from work, while her husband lay there in the darkness, pretending to be asleep.

  There was some old man sitting in my father’s chair.

  It made me feel like I had come to the wrong place. None of us ever sat in my dad’s chair – not my mum, not Pat, not me. The old armchair by the fireplace was not the best seat in the house – it faced the TV at an awkward angle, and its soft cushions were sunken with the ages – but it was always my dad’s chair, a suburban throne in his pebble-dash palace, and although he had been dead for two years now, it was still my dad’s chair. So who was this old man?

  ‘Howdy, pardner,’ he said to me.

  Howdy, pardner?

  What was he going on about?

  The old man was practically the exact physical opposite of my father. Where my dad was gleaming, chrome-smooth bald, this geezer had a luxuriant head of silvery hair, elaborately brushed back. Where my father was stocky, thickset and muscular, this character was as wasp-waisted as an elderly gigolo. And at home my old man always wore his Marks & Spencer mufti – carpet slippers, baggy gardening trousers, and cardigans in any colour, as long as it was forgettable. A real suburban dad, despite the horrific war wounds that I knew were hidden under his sensible sweaters.

  This impostor was dressed like a cowboy.

  A fringed shirt. Pointy-toed, stack-heeled boots. Tight, skinny Levi’s with a big buckled belt. You could almost see the bulge of his ageing meat and two veg. Glen Campbell’s granddad.

  ‘Howdy, pardner,’ he repeated, slowly getting up out of my dad’s chair. Taking his time about it. ‘Tex is the name. You must be Harry. Mighty pleased to meet you, stranger. Elizabeth has told me all about you.’

  Nanci Griffith was singing ‘Lone Star State of Mind’. My mum came into the living room carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, humming to herself.

  ‘I see you’ve met Graham, dear,’ she said.

  ‘Graham? I thought—’

  ‘Tex is my line-dancing name,’ he said, without a trace of shame. ‘Graham – I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound right when you’re doing the Walkin’ Wazi, does it?’

  ‘Ooh, you should see Graham – I mean Tex – doing the Walkin’ Wazi,’ my mum chuckled, passing around the ginger nuts. ‘He really kicks his old legs in the air.’

  A line-dancing friend. So that was it. Perfectly innocent. Nothing suspicious. Two sprightly OAPs having a bit of a boogie in the autumn of their years. Completely natural. But I couldn’t help it. I was still stunned by the presence of Tex.

  My mother – who had six brothers, who had no daughters or sisters, who had spent her entire life surrounded by men – had always been strictly homosexual in her friendships. Every friend she ever had was a woman. Apart from my dad. He was her best friend of all.

  ‘Met your mother when we were doing the Four-Star Boogie,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘Gave her a few tips. Her and—Elsie?’

  ‘Ethel,’ my mum said. ‘The Four-Star Boogie.’ She tutted at the memory. ‘That’s such a tough one. All that turning.’

  ‘Pivoting,’ Tex gently corrected her. ‘The Four-Star Boogie is a four-wall line dance,’ he informed me, as if I gave a toss. ‘As opposed to something like the Wild, Wild West, which of course, as you probably know, is only a two-wall line dance.’

  ‘You from round these parts, Tex?’

  ‘Southend. Straight down the A127, take a right at the old Fortune of War.’

  ‘Graham was an insurance salesman,’ my mum said. ‘Retired now, of course.’

  Tex poured the tea. ‘One lump or two?’ he asked me. ‘I’m sweet enough already.’

  My mum guffawed at this as though it was Noël Coward at his pithy best. When she went back into the kitchen for the milk chocolate dige
stives, I excused myself to Tex and followed her.

  ‘I thought you went line dancing with Auntie Ethel?’

  ‘Ethel’s dropped out. It’s her arthritis, Harry. All that stomping gives her gyp. Poor old thing.’

  ‘What’s John Wayne doing in our front room? What’s he doing in Dad’s chair?’

  ‘He’s all right, old Graham. Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless. He gives me a lift home in his car. He’s a bit full of himself, I grant you. All the old girls have got a soft spot for him.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ My mum laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Don’t worry, Harry, I’m past all that. When I ask a man in for tea and biscuits, that’s exactly what I mean. All he’s being offered is a custard cream.’

  ‘Does Tex know that?’ I thought of the obscene rise in the old gent’s Levi’s. Although my mum was in her seventies, I could see how she might catch the eye of some randy old git. She was still a lovely-looking woman. ‘He’s not going to start reaching for his six-gun, is he?’

  I said it with a grin, to pretend that I already knew the answer.

  But my mum wasn’t smiling now.

  ‘I had a husband,’ she said. ‘That’ll do me for one lifetime.’

  ‘Your mother needs to express her sexuality,’ my wife said. ‘She’s still a woman.’

  ‘She’s a little old lady! She should be expressing – I don’t know – her knitting.’

  We were getting undressed for bed. Something we had done perhaps one thousand times before. It still excited me to see my wife taking off her clothes. The long limbs, casually revealing themselves. I don’t think she felt quite the same way about watching me put on my stripy pyjamas.

  ‘I think it’s great she’s got a male friend, Harry. You know how much she misses your father. You don’t want her to sleep with the light on for the rest of her life, do you?’

  ‘She was with my old man forever. She’s bound to miss him. And it’s right she misses him.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be faithful to you when you’re dead?’

  I snorted. ‘I’ll be happy if you’re faithful to me when I’m alive.’

  She froze inside the T-shirt she was pulling over her head. Then her face appeared, her eyes narrowing. ‘What does that mean?’