It was an out-and-about day for me anyway, mostly doing quotes—in town and a couple in outlying villages. I figured I could look at a few possibles on my route.
The first one is down a back street near the station. The window in what the landlady immediately—and unbelievably optimistically, as it turns out—refers to as “your room” has curtains the thickness of tracing paper, only less attractive. You can kind of see that they must once have had some sort of pattern, but they’ve been so faded by the sun and dust and age that they can’t be bothered to be patterned any more. They’ve just shrugged their shoulders and given up. God knows how they’ve got faded by the sun because this is not a sunny room we’re talking about here. We are talking welcome to the Land of Gloom. She switches on the overhead light, but the bulb must be about 3 watts because it makes absolutely sod all difference. The wallpaper is some colour that can’t be arsed to work out whether it’s grey or green with a knobbly design on it that makes me want to pick bits off with my fingernail. The bed is low and would be perfect for a kid of about ten. I doubt Rosie could even fit in it. There’s a rug the size and sumptuousness of a pocket handkerchief set mysteriously at an angle in one corner—presumably to cover up the bloodstain of the last tenant who must surely have shot himself out of depression.
Hideous is not the word. It is through hideous and out the other side. It is so awful that I can barely speak. Instead, I nod vigorously and pat the bed pointlessly to make it look as if I’m considering it all seriously. She tells me that it is very spacious, which might work if I was a blind person, but given that I’ve still got the use of my sight I can clearly see that it is not only not spacious, but that it is in fact only a nice size if you were planning on using it as a spare closet. I nod anyway, heading for the door, saying thank you so much, I’ll certainly give it some serious thought, yes indeed, I’ve got your number, thank you.
* * *
At least the next one can’t be as bad. I comfort myself with this thought as I pull up outside an OK looking terraced house in a quiet street on the north edge of town.
For once, I’m right. It’s not “as bad.” It is worse, much much worse. There is the distinctive odour of reheated cabbage, always a favourite with me, and it almost—but not quite—manages to cover up a sort of undercurrent whiff of piss. The room has been decorated by someone who thinks orange and brown is the way to go when it comes to colours—except for the bed, which has a quilted velvet pink headboard with—oh, joy!—a yellowish head-shaped stain in the centre. The bed is bigger than the last one at least but when I bounce gently on the edge of it, it feels and sounds as if the mattress has been stuffed with old newspapers. The wardrobe is a child-size one in genuine wood-effect melamine with Disney cartoon stickers on the insides of the doors. There is a dark green old person’s type chair with one of those doily things on the back and, in the corner—I kid you not—a tubular framed commode that looks like it’s been nicked from a hospital and it’s half-covered with an old army blanket. I tell her it’s terrific, really, but I think I need something a bit nearer the junction for the M20. In fact, I’d rather sleep on the junction for the M20, with my head sticking out from the slip road.
By the time I get to the third one, I’m ready for anything. But the room’s all right actually. It’s bright and you can even turn round without accidentally rearranging the furniture with your elbows. The woman seems nice enough but on the side of nosy. Where am I from? What do I do? I’d already decided to be a bit economical with the truth and say I was a rep for a pharmaceuticals company because I figured that’d make people’s eyes glaze over and they wouldn’t know what else to ask. That’s what my mate Roger does and it is boring beyond belief, even he says so. I say I’m seeing new customers in the area so I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying, maybe just a couple of nights or maybe a few weeks, it’s hard to say. But this one wants to know am I married, have I got children, what do I like for breakfast, do I prefer tea or coffee and I’m finding it all a bit much when I hear a loud banging on the wall. She flushes then and scurries out, closing the door behind her.
I hear her raised voice through the wall:
“That’s enough now! Enough! There’ll be no dinner for you if you carry on like that!”
I’m thinking “Poor little mutt"—but I’m not sure I want to stay somewhere with a dog, could be barking its head off at all hours. Funny how I never heard it bark though and I’m wondering how it made that banging noise when she comes back in.
“All sorted!” Her voice is bright and chirpy and she claps her hands like a nursery teacher calling the children to attention. She sees my face and realizes she better say something. “It’s just Raymond. He’s fine really. No trouble 99.9 per cent of the time. It’s just we had a teensy problem this morning getting him to take his medication. Now, don’t you worry—he stays in his room most of the time. You won’t hear a thing. Good, thick walls, these.”
At this, there is a low moan from the other room, followed by more rhythmic banging. She smiles even more brightly and I hotfoot it out to the hallway, saying thanks so much, I’ll have a think, be in touch, cheers now. Bye!
I get some quotes sorted out and measure up for some french windows a few miles south of town, then go and have a dekko at this barn conversion down on the marshes. Some total prat has put in cheapo council-house type windows and they’ve been badly done anyway and the whole thing’s a right old pig’s breakfast. Fortunately, the woman agrees with me and she wants decent casements put in instead and she’s thinking of having some doors done while we’re at it so Harry’ll be pleased. Anyway, I trot round to do a bit of measuring and calculating and she brings me a cup of tea and we’re nattering away and she tells me the reason they’ve got so much space is they’re planning to do B&B but they can’t start advertising for guests because it’s not finished yet but they’ve got a bank loan as big as India’s national debt so they better get on with it.
I ask to have a nose round one of the bedrooms and it’s all right. Better than all right, but it’s not been decorated yet and the old wallpaper’s peeling off in places. So I say how would you like your first proper customer and you do me a good deal and I’ll wallpaper the room for you and give you a good price on the windows. And we barter a bit and then we shake on it and she says come back tonight and the bed’ll be made up and she’ll even throw in some supper seeing as how I’m their first real guest.
Now all I have to do is tell Harry I’m moving out.
Rosie
Yesterday, Nat said I was just being nice to Dad ‘cause he buys me chips and toys and stuff. He was leaning against my wardrobe and I ran at him and hit him as hard as I could until he held my wrists and threatened to give me a Chinese burn. When I charged him, it shoved him hard against the wardrobe and it made a bang against the wall, so Mum came running upstairs saying what was the matter, what were we up to and Nat said it was nothing, he had just dropped something and why did she have to fuss over everything all the time, no wonder Dad had left.
Mum went all quiet then. I thought she was going to say something, but then she made her mouth go all tight and squished like it was just sewn on like Alfie-Bear’s. She looked at me, then she looked back at Nat.
“Is that what you think?” she said.
Nat jerked his chin up, the way he did when that big boy down the road said he was going to sort him out and he put his hands in his pockets and twisted his trainer into the carpet as if he was squishing a bug. He shrugged and made one of his noises that isn’t a real word.
“Mn.”
Then Mum told me to go downstairs or to my own room and I said why should I, it wasn’t my fault, Nat started it, it wasn’t fair, just because I’m little I always have to miss out on everything, then Mum told me not to answer back but to go downstairs right this minute and play quietly or look at my book. I kept my mouth closed but I stuck my tongue out at her inside my cheek so she couldn’t see. When I got to the stairs, I heard her say, “R
osie?”
“Mn,” I copied Nat’s noise.
“Have a chocolate cup cake if you like. In the red tin.”
I had meant to go only halfway down the stairs so I could hear what she said. I bet she was going to give Nat a good telling off. You can always tell ‘cause she starts calling him “Nathan” and her face goes all serious like this and she folds her arms like a teacher. Serves him right, horrible pig. I meant to listen, but by the time I was halfway down I was thinking about how many stairs I could jump to the bottom and how I bet I could do four instead of three, but how I would wait till later in case I made too much noise and Nat might get let off. And how I would eat my chocolate cup cake.
It’s best if you peel the icing off slowly first, all in one go. It’s all smooth and shiny and round, like a brown ice rink. So, you carefully peel it off and put it to the side ‘cause it’s the best bit. Then you pull back the silver paper from the spongy bit and eat the sponge. Then you eat the icing, really slowly, letting each bit melt in your mouth. Then at the end you go round the silver paper case where all the chocolate icing has got stuck in the grooves and you scrape it off with your bottom teeth.
When my dad eats a cup cake, he eats it all at once in three bites—gulp, gulp, gulp. But he lets me have the silver paper.
Nat is disgusting when he eats his. He licks at the icing until it is all sticky, then he folds the icing bit over like a sandwich and eats that. Then he puts the sponge in his mouth, the whole thing in one go and it makes his cheeks go all fat and he tries to talk and crumbs come out of his mouth and Mum tells him not to talk with his mouth full and can he please just try and eat something normally for once, he’s not a baby any more, for goodness’ sake, can he just make an effort.
Mum does not eat chocolate cup cakes.
Scott
I am lying in bed with the quilt half over my face, telling myself that it’s not rain I can hear pattering against the window. It is definitely not raining—because, if it is raining then Scott’s Master Plan of taking Rosie for a long, leisurely bike ride along the coast will have to bite the dust. So much for Plan A. And, because I barely possess two brain cells to rub together, I haven’t given much thought to a Plan B. That’s not much thought as in no thought at all, not of any kind. We’ve done McDonald’s to death. We’ve seen every film out that’s suitable for kids.
It’s probably just a little light drizzle. We can wear our waterproofs and she’s got a helmet anyway. Barely more than the odd spot of rain. A passing shower. Check the clock: it’s already after nine. Bugger—it’s already cutting it fine if I want a cooked breakfast. My sole treat of the week in this black hole that I laughingly call my life is tucking in to a decent brekkie on a Sunday. After all, what’s the point of staying in a B&B if you’re only getting B but no B?
Drag myself to the window and open the curtains. Just an inch. No point in overdoing these things.
It is pissing down outside. An entire crew of effects people must be up there chucking down bucketloads of water from a great height. This isn’t rain, this is a monsoon. I need webbed feet to go out in this. And where are my wellies and my walking boots? In the garage at home. Of course. Much though Queen of Tidiness likes chucking out my stuff, I notice she never gets round to offloading anything that I might actually need. Still, maybe as the weather’s so foul she’ll let me come back in the house and spend some time with Rosie indoors. I mean, she’s not going to want Rosie to get pneumonia, is she? I could see Natty as well. He can hardly ignore me if I’m right there in the house, right? Yeah, and maybe Gail’ll put down a nice big plate of steak and chips in front of me, give me a big squelchy kiss and say, “Welcome home, darling!” Dream on, Scotty, dream on.
What the hell do people do with their children all day? The dads, I mean. Is there some secret place they all hang out that I haven’t been let in on yet? It’s probably a club, like Freemasons. The Sunday Fathers. Once you’ve been through all the initiation rites—your wife telling you to drop dead, your son pretending you don’t exist, your nine-year-old daughter feeling sorry for you, sponging off your friends like a sodding charity case, living like a student in a bedsit—then maybe you get your club badge and they tell you how it’s done. They teach you the special Sunday Father look, the cheery wave to your kid as you get back in your car feeling like someone’s just ripped your guts out and it’s another week before you’ll see her little face again.
They always say museums and art galleries, don’t they, but what would I know about stuff like that? What would I do in a museum? That’s for smart-arse proper dads, ones who can tell their kids all clever stuff and show off how much they know. What if you don’t know anything? I’m not going to show myself up in a museum. I’ll feel like a right prat, watching the other dads point out all the different bones in a Tyrannosaurus or explaining the principles of aerodynamics. I never know things like that. Jeez, I barely know what day of the week it is half the time.
When I come down, Fiona asks have I time for a proper breakfast, it’s filthy weather out there, have I seen? I put on the toast while she cracks some eggs into a pan.
She’s a woman. She might know what to do. I clear my throat and she half turns towards me.
“Say you had a nine-year-old girl to entertain on a rainy day, where would you take her, d’you think?”
“Would this be your daughter by any chance?”
“Mmn.”
Fiona reaches into a cupboard for a plate, talking to me over her shoulder.
“Well, what sort of things does she like doing?”
I shrug. “Dunno, really.”
* * *
I say it casually, without thinking, but suddenly it makes me realize that I really don’t know. What does Rosie like doing? My own daughter who I’ve known her whole life and I’m here asking a virtual stranger who’s never even met her what the hell I should do with her.
I turn away and concentrate on buttering the toast, fiddling with the jars on the counter as if I can’t make up my mind whether to have marmalade or jam or Marmite. Fiona flips the eggs out onto the plate, carefully slides two halves of grilled tomato alongside.
“How about taking her swimming? Can she swim?”
Swimming. Swimming without Nat? Unthinkable. It was Nat who taught Rosie to swim when she was only five or six. Nat’s a star swimmer, swims for his school. Beats me every time and it’s one of the few things I’m not bad at. Whenever I walk past a swimming baths and get a whiff of chlorine, I think of Nat. No. No swimming.
I shake my head.
“Yeah, she can, but I don’t fancy it myself.” It sounds lame, selfish. I gesture at the rain outside the window. “Feel I’d never get dry again, you know?”
The pan hisses as Fiona plunges it into the sink.
“Oh, OK. Cinema perhaps? There’s a paper there with the listings in if you want. Or ice-skating? I’m not sure where the nearest rink is though …”
It’s about 30 miles away. Sixty miles round trip. Sounds a bit far, but it’s easier when we’re in the car. Facing front, playing games with the cars and the registrations. Racking up points every time you spot a car with the latest reg. or shouting out a word that uses all the letters on the number plate. Rosie’s good at that. Better than me half the time.
“… or a museum?” Fiona tops up my coffee and leans against the counter. I don’t know what my face looks like, but it must be a picture, ‘cause she says, “Oh, come on—they’re much better now, not like they were in our day.” She makes it sound as though I’m hundreds of years old rather than a man still (virtually) at his peak. “There are plenty of things for the kids to do and try out. None of those dusty exhibits mouldering in glass cases with faded labels on any more. Everything’s interactive now. You might even enjoy it yourself.”
My memories of museum visits are not so hot, as you’ll have gathered by now. A few depressing school trips (my parents are not exactly the museum-going type), with teacher making all us “difficult”
boys hold hands with the “good” girls as an attempt to keep us under control. The girls are outraged by being lumped with us and we’re not exactly chuffed either even though we take pleasure in pinching them and giving them Chinese burns, flirting with them by being obnoxious, the only way we know how at the age of ten. As soon as teacher’s eye is off us, we shake off the girls’ hands and are up to whatever mischief we can think of. It all sounds pathetically mild now, what with the papers full of children sniffing glue and smoking crack on every street corner. We just ran around like wild things, touching anything that said do not touch and capering about, whooping and pretending to be chimpanzees. No, I’ve no idea why. It seemed like fun at the time.
And that awful, awful moment on a day trip when everyone gets out their packed lunch and you sit with the boy who lives next door ‘cause at least you know he won’t have any posh cake or cans of orangeade or fruit either, just a single round of cheese or sardine sandwiches, a couple of plain biscuits—and a flask of tea as if you were a grown-up navvy on a building site and not a kid out for the day wishing he was someone else. And you make out you’re not all that hungry, you had a massive breakfast you say, with bacon and eggs and that, and you make fun of your mum, she must be going scatty, she’s forgotten to put your crisps and your drink in, shame ‘cause they were salt and vinegar and there was a can of 7-Up, you know ‘cause you saw them right there on the counter, still you’re not fussed, you’ll have them later while you’re waiting for your tea. And you drink the contents of your flask because you’re thirsty, but all you can think of is how much you’d give to be normal and to hear the sharp hiss as you open your can of Coke or 7-Up or Fanta, still cold from the fridge, sweet and fizzy glugging down your throat, bubbles giggling up your nose, gulping it down fast so you can do burps deliberately—see who can do the biggest burp—me now—no, me. It doesn’t work with tea.
Lessons for a Sunday Father Page 17
