Tom Houghton

by Todd Alexander

  ‘You went back to the bar, Tom.’

  ‘What bar?’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, the one where my producers were. I took you away from them because you were showing all your tell-tale signs and I thought, No, not this time, I’m not going to let it happen. So Grace and I dragged you away with Eddie and then you just went right back there without me.’

  ‘Jesus, Victor, what did I do?’

  ‘I jeopardised my entire reputation bringing you here, Tom. I knew it was a fucking risk but I thought you would take this and make a go of it. You owe me more than a few paycheques, mate, and now you’ve fucked me with a fucking barge pole and I can never forgive you.’

  ‘Get to the fucking point, Victor.’ I grasped my head with the pain of raising my voice.

  ‘You told three of the producers you thought I was a one-trick pony. You told them my ideas were already tired in Australia and lugging them over here was the only way I could milk more money out of them. You called the producers one and all – and I quote – “big-time suckers”.’

  ‘But, Victor, honestly, that’s not the way I feel. I would never say anything like that . . .’

  ‘Then you were heard doing lines in the toilet with Charlie, then you came back for round two and told Mickey his wife was a moose and then you tried to stick your tongue down his throat.’

  ‘Oh shit.’ Mickey was the festival head.

  ‘I’ve had it. We all have. Eddie spent the night on my floor, poor bloke. Much like I’m sure he feels, I don’t ever want to see you again, okay?’

  I was shell-shocked. Surely this was not all as it had happened. I needed to explain myself, but how? ‘Please don’t leave it like this,’ I pleaded.

  Victor was already walking away. He stopped a few metres away from the door and turned to face me again. He shouted across the dining room: ‘By the way, I cancelled your plane ticket. You can pay your own fucking way home, you selfish motherfucking cunt.’

  • • •

  Despite the fact that I was now staying on her couch, Lexi knew none of this. How could I possibly confess? Instead I talked up the lunch with the producer, hoping against hope that word of my bar performance hadn’t reached her. Lexi was beside herself with excitement. I hadn’t had a drink since seeing Victor, aside from the three cans of beer I needed to get through the train ride from Edinburgh to London. I didn’t drink at the lunch with the producer, insisted on paying – which, as it turned out, coupled with my flight home, meant I hadn’t made a cent out of the Edinburgh run – but all she had for me was a tiny bit part, a few lines really, pivotal though they were, she said. But principal was still a few months off and could I stay in London until then, as naturally they wouldn’t be able to fly me back from Australia. I thanked her profusely for the chance, for thinking of me, told her how much I admired her work and walked away thinking this could quite possibly be the one break I’d been waiting for my entire life.

  I put on my best poker face for my daughter, told her I was riding a high after Edinburgh, that Victor was looking for other opportunities, even told her I’d turned down the panto role. Inside, however, I was ripped apart. Victor refused my calls and after a while, every time I tried him, I found his phone was off. I tried Eddie twice but on hearing his voice I couldn’t subject him to any further pain so I hung up and left the phone booth to try to occupy myself on London’s streets. Not so strangely, Eddie had reneged on Lexi’s request for leave, due to some last-minute client demands. I was alone and I simply could not connect with anyone, or anything: art failed to move me, architecture was little more than bricks and mortar, royal wealth all smoke and mirrors.

  Lexi’s housemates treated me as an anomaly. One of them was clearly homophobic and refused to look me in the eye. He was eating his dinner alone one night when Lexi and I walked in and she asked for a taste, said it was great, and then handed his fork to me to try. He did not touch his meal again after that. I was a sapping energy in their little house and they would all be glad to see the back of me, but suffered me because they clearly adored Lexi and would have done anything for her.

  On my second-to-last night I invited myself to meet Lexi at her after-work drinks. Not exactly subtle, but I hoped she would not pick up on it. It took me over an hour to navigate the various Tube lines to find the pub she’d chosen in the theatre district and when I walked in, I saw her at a booth with four male colleagues. Two wedged in beside her, two facing her. It left only one space for me, right next to Eddie.

  He was wholly unimpressed to see me there, but quickly hid his disdain from his team. Lexi introduced me to her colleagues one by one, commenting on my recent success as Martha and adding, ‘You know I told you all he’s an old poof but we love him for it.’

  Eddie’s body tensed.

  ‘And of course you remember Eddie, my boss,’ Lexi said finally and I could see she knew nothing.

  ‘Yeah, of course, hello again,’ I said to him without turning fully in his direction. ‘My shout,’ I said a little too brightly. ‘What’s everyone having?’ They started calling out their various orders above the din of the pub.

  ‘Actually I’m going to have to run, sorry, chaps,’ Eddie began. I desperately wanted to protest but was saved from causing a scene by Lexi, who badgered him into staying on account of refusing her leave.

  ‘It’s the least you could do,’ she insisted.

  I returned to the table with six drinks to find Eddie was gone. I was careful to hide my disappointment, and the fact that I’d ordered for myself a light beer. I was depleted of all energy, full of remorse over my behaviour towards what was undoubtedly the most decent man I had ever met. The table was engaged in lively banter over some meteoric phenomenon and I knew I could text him a message without being sprung.

  I fucked up, I typed quickly with my clunky thumbs. Correction: I am a fuck up. Please come back? I hit the send button before I could reconsider.

  Just then Eddie came up the stairs and slid in next to me at the booth. He’d been in the toilet. His phone beeped loudly.

  ‘Oh, turn it off, boss,’ one of the boys said.

  I shut my eyes and gulped my beer. Eddie withdrew his phone from his jacket pocket and replaced it almost as quickly.

  ‘So, what’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said about you?’ Eddie asked the group.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lexi pressed.

  ‘I mean to your face, in front of you. What’s the harshest thing anyone has ever said in your company?’

  ‘Dad, block your ears,’ Lexi said. I was too stunned to move, so apprehensive of where this was heading. ‘A guy told me in bed I was the worst lay he’d ever had.’

  ‘Oh Lexi, that’s awful,’ the most handsome boy said. ‘And it’s not true, you were all right. About a four out of ten.’

  ‘Fuck you, Carlos! How can you say shit like that in front of my boss and my dad?’

  ‘Oh yeah, forgot. Sorry, Mister . . . er, sorry, Dad. I ain’t slept with your daughter, just joking.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said and laughed. I was grateful for the air of humour.

  ‘What about you, Tom?’ Eddie asked, without looking directly at me.

  Here we go, I thought. ‘Oh you know, being an actor, I’ve heard it all. Sorry to say nothing sticks out because we’d be here all night.’

  The one they all called Sarge spoke up next. ‘I was with this chick one night . . .’ he began.

  ‘Want to hear mine?’ Eddie interrupted and, being the boss, they all fell silent, nodding. ‘Someone once told me I was a waste of time. Isn’t that the simplest, most cutting thing? Nothing physical, nothing correctable. Just that I was worthless to them. And on that note I really do have to run, I am sorry, guys.’

  And then he was gone.

  • • •

  I took Lexi to the most expensive restaurant I could find with a vacancy, as though cost equalled quality. I wasn’t out to impress her but I wanted to make the evening special. I’d been so very cautiou
s never to speak about myself, to always make it about Lexi, but in the shower that morning I had an epiphany – perhaps that was exactly what she needed. What did she know of me, after all? I was a character in one of my plays and she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in cramming with crib notes. I’d resolved the best chance I had of getting to know my daughter – the only child I would ever have – was to allow her to get to know me first.

  We went shopping for new outfits and I convinced her to let me splurge on a beautiful dress for her to wear. I settled on something more modest for myself, but certainly more befitting the London atmosphere; I was tired of looking like a tourist. While we tried on clothes we spoke only of materials and colours. When we caught the Tube we discussed smells, crowds, germs and timetables. And when we had lunch she spoke of meals she’d had in foreign locations – never mentioning who with, always just referring to herself. Lexi was an expert gabbler, never an awkward silence to fill, and I admired her ability to put people at ease. She really was enchanting. She was the best of her mother, that young girl who’d managed to convince me women (or a lack of them) was where I was going wrong and despite the grotesque caricature she’d turned into, I had lately started recalling some more of the magical moments we’d shared. The first day I laid eyes on my daughter in the humidicrib and her limbs were so impossibly small that her fragility took my breath away, I’d walked into Lou’s hospital room and we’d both lain sobbing in each other’s arms at the beauty of what we’d created. And before Lexi, Lou had been an incredible strength in my life, defending me against taunts in a local pub one night when she’d punched a drunk smart-arse clean in the mouth and we’d raced through the backstreets of Glebe, brazen and feeling immortal. I really do love you, you know, she’d said. I would do anything for you. To have Lexi as proof that we’d managed to create something important together was still humbling.

  How do you summarise your whole life in one evening? How do you lay yourself bare to a daughter who may not, in fact, be all that interested in seeing it?

  I started with my childhood. I felt I needed her to understand more about Lana because Lana, let’s face it, was the reason we were here. Lana was not infallible but to understand her at least afforded a possibility of empathy. I talked for a long time about Mal, a man Lexi had never met because I had deliberately kept them apart, fearing Mal’s presence would derail me and I could not stand to be so weak in front of my daughter. And when I saw him now, there was still something, embarrassment perhaps, itching beneath the epidermis, something making it impossible for me to love him, or acknowledge all he had done for me.

  Lexi sat in rapt silence. She did not ask questions, she did not encourage me to go on when I found it difficult to speak. She wiped away tears when I told her matter-of-factly of the bullying I’d endured in primary school, and then found it in herself to laugh along with me when I admitted how much of that I’d brought upon myself.

  ‘You asked to touch the hair on his legs?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Father, you may as well have asked to marry him!’

  ‘I know! I know!’ I said with a chuckle over my glass of wine – the last drinks I was determined ever to have. Tonight of all nights I needed lubrication. And wasn’t it funny, really when I looked back on it now – the dolls and the cards and the movie quotes and the silver moth suit? How utterly subversive – and ignorant – could I have been towards my own social fate? I failed every test in the book and I kept going back for more, feeding them more and more ammunition.

  Thomas Houghton Hepburn was a different matter. Gone was the humour, and I found myself crying, proper great sobs as I relayed to my daughter the impact that young man had on me, the sway he held over my sanity and how his ghost drew me in to convince me I was someone other than myself. I couldn’t explain to her shocked face that bond, why I felt wholly unable to let go of him but, to this day, seeing pictures of him pricked my skin like an apparition. I suppose, I said, I wished I had been capable of saving him and that led me to tell her of my suicide attempt.

  ‘Not that suicide is what it felt like to me,’ I said earnestly. ‘I truly did not think I was killing myself. I thought nothing of next. I was just so embroiled in his death that I found myself longing to emulate it.’

  ‘Did you ever think of getting help?’ she asked while wiping the moisture from her eyes.

  ‘Honestly, I didn’t know anything was wrong with me,’ I said simply. ‘I lived in my own world, sure, but I still don’t think I had a screw loose.’

  She smiled forcefully.

  ‘I so desperately wanted out, that’s all you need to know. I saw no other way. I just couldn’t become one of them.’

  And then I spoke about Lexi’s mother. Of how beautiful and free-spirited Lou had been. She was the most generous person I knew, never once making demands of me or making me feel I had disappointed her. It wasn’t love, I conceded, not even close to it, but I felt safe with her, safe for the first time in my life. I was barely eighteen, had no idea where my life was taking me, desperate to drop my slight Kiwi accent and even more determined to lose traces of a Seven Hills drawl, and forge my own way against all those adults who’d let me down. She allowed me to do that, supported my whims and pulled me short of fancy. But we could never have been together, not least because of my sexuality, but mostly because I felt suffocated in my life with her, as if it was drawing me back to Seven Hills, back to the only place I knew I could never return.

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t be with you,’ I confessed. ‘Not that I didn’t love you, you must know that.’

  ‘I do know you love me, in your own way,’ she said tellingly.

  ‘I am a selfish person, I know. Guilty as all fuck on that count. I seriously doubted my ability to serve you well, to protect you from me, if I found myself anchored to one place. There was no future for your mother and me, that much was certain, and I detested myself for being less than perfect when that’s what every child is entitled to.’

  ‘I never wanted perfection. All I ever wanted was availability and you just shut yourself off from me. You still do. I’m the one who has to make the move, every single time. I did it first when I was nine, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Sometimes I think if I never contacted you, we would never speak again.’

  ‘That might actually be true.’

  ‘Don’t you dare feed me some bullshit line about you not me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t insult you, Lexi. I think I realise I need to be a loner. It’s in my nature. I love you, I’m proud of you, but I can never be what you need me to be.’

  ‘And that’s where you’re wrong again. I never wanted you to be anyone other than Tom Houghton.’

   Twenty-nine

  Mal came to get me from the hospital. I didn’t ask how long I had been in there, nor did I care. I did not ask where Lana was and this information was not offered to me either. When Mal took me back to his house, I did not question why. I was tired, beyond exhaustion. I could not say I was full of remorse or anything of the sort. In the hospital, I had hit a low when I realised my life could not get any worse. Hopeless was an understatement. I craved death so ravenously I tried to starve myself in the hospital but they simply stuck a drip in my arm. Doctors spoke to me condescendingly, psychologists pretended to be my friend while asking a barrage of inane questions intended to catch me out and certify me loony. At odd moments I was proud of what I had done. I had given the plan my entire energy and though it had not worked, hadn’t it been otherworldly once inside the silver suit? Hadn’t Spencer looked at me in a way that showed he was truly in awe? And even if I had failed in some respects, I knew I was no longer Seven Hills Tom Houghton. I’d been made stronger.

  They did not explain why Mum had not been to see me, but I had worked it out for myself. Hushed conversations in hospital corridors have the habit of sounding like yelled arguments; they echo and carry to you as if by magic, every precise syllable you’re not meant to hear. But Mal overruled my doctors and stepped in to te
ll me the truth eventually anyway.

  ‘They say you’re not well enough to hear this, buddy, but I told them they’re full of shit, eh? I reckon it’s all the lies and pretending and not being honest that gets people into these sorts of situations and I’m not gonna stand for it any more, mate. I’m not gonna let you be shielded from the things you need to know. See, I know you, Tom, I know you better than them and it’s the truth you need to hear, eh?

  ‘Your mum, mate, she checked herself in again. On one of her, what does she call them?’

  ‘Spirals . . .’ I whispered.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Spirals. Lana hasn’t been well for a bit, we’ve both seen her in that bed, mate. But that day, the day you . . . well, she found you, mate, in the garage. You were on the floor, unconscious. She called the ambulance, she called me and she was shrieking, off her head like a rabid monkey, Tom, I can’t tell you how sad and desperate she sounded. And in her voice I heard it, eh? I heard something I’ve never ever heard before, Tom – a love so deep that it hurts, you know? She loves you more than I’ve ever seen a person love anything, mate, and when I keep replaying that phone call in my mind, I can’t stop myself from thinking that you’re the luckiest boy, to have a mum who loves you as much as that, eh?’

  He wiped a tear from his right eye. Just the one.

  ‘She rode in the ambulance with you, Tom, made sure she got you here and made sure the doctors took you in and when they told her you were gonna be all right, she just called a taxi to take her straight to the . . . mental hospital, you know? I dunno how long she’s going to be away for but you understand, don’t you? You know she needs to get better so she can help you. You forgive her, don’t you?’

  I said yes because I was desperate to tell Mal what he wanted to hear. I was too numb to feel anything, if the truth were known. Sorrow seemed wholly too vacuous a word to describe my pain.