Lessons for a Sunday Father

by Claire Calman

  I know he did it with another woman. Like a mistress or whatever. I bet it was someone younger. I thought when he left that he went to live with this woman, but Rosie said he was in a B&B. She keeps acting like she knows everything, but she doesn’t because she didn’t even know about the other woman until I told her. She didn’t even know hardly anything about sex till I told her last year. She thought it was all eggs and tadpoles, she didn’t know any of the good bits. He was probably just waiting till he could get a flat and his girlfriend’ll probably move in then, that’s what’ll happen. That’s how it always happens, and pretty soon they have a whole other family, then they forget about you and all you get is a card and maybe a CD once a year on your birthday and that’s it. I don’t care anyhow.

  Rosie’s being such a suck-up. She keeps going on about Dad’s new flat and how he’s going to do up a room specially for her and he said she can have anything she likes, she can have it all in mauve if she wants ‘cause it’s her favourite colour. I said it sounded like it would look really dumb to have it all the same and she wouldn’t be able to find the bed if it was the same colour as the walls, would she, then she said well, it wasn’t up to me, was it, and she was going to choose what she wanted and I was just jealous because there wasn’t a room for me and even if there was, she bet Dad wouldn’t decorate it specially because I hadn’t spoken to him for months and it jolly well served me right.

  I hate Rosie too. I hate all of them. I might move in with Steve, his mum says she likes having me round there, though his dad makes all these pathetic remarks that are supposed to be funny, looking at me and going to Steve’s mum, “You know, I was sure we only had the three children. Did you adopt another one while I popped out for fags?”

  “Never mind him, Nathan love,” his mum says. “You’re always welcome here, you know that. Here, have some more potatoes.”

  Steve said his mum was only being nice to me ‘cause she felt sorry for me ‘cause my dad left, so I wrestled him to the floor and made him take it back.

  “You’re just dead jealous ‘cause your mum likes me more than you.”

  “So?” He was trying to hit me, but no chance. I’m a better fighter than he is. “Mums are always nice to other people’s kids. It’s what they do. It doesn’t mean anything anyhow. She’s just being polite. They’re only a pain in the neck with their own kids. Everyone knows that.”

  That’s not true, is it? Mind you, my mum is always nice to Steve and I don’t reckon she likes him all that much. And she’s nice to Jason, even though he’s always picking his nose.

  I dunno. Maybe I’ll go and live in London on my own. They’ll put it on the news and say I’ve disappeared and Mum and Dad will have to go on TV, crying and begging me to come home. I might go to America. Kieran’s family took him to New York and he said it was brill, just like being in a TV cop show, the police had guns just like they do on TV and there were yellow taxis and ginormous great skyscrapers everywhere. We never go anywhere. We went to some stupid Greek island a couple of years ago and Mum and Dad both got sunburned and could hardly move. I did too. Rosie only didn’t because Mum put sun gloop on her about every 10 seconds and made her wear a hat and long sleeves even though Rosie went all whiny and said she wanted to go brown.

  Last year we went to one of them dome things that’s always warm inside. Dad said it was spooky and he felt like we were in this vast playpen being observed by scientists and he kept ducking out of sight behind the plants so they couldn’t watch us. Mum said she didn’t care who was watching so long as it was warm and she didn’t have to cook. She liked it ‘cause there was loads of stuff for me and Rosie to do so she didn’t have to look after us. Well, Rosie. I don’t need looking after. It was OK when we got there with a whacking great water chute and a wave machine and everything, but you couldn’t swim properly because there were too many people, and anyway we should have gone to New York. I’ve started saving up for a flight. Jason’s supposed to be saving, so he can come too, but he keeps spending his money. He is clueless sometimes. I don’t want him holding me back if I decide to take off suddenly. I’ll have to see. It’s OK. I’ll probably just go on my own.

  Gail

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

  Cassie stuck her tongue out at me.

  “Come on. Why not? What have you got to lose?”

  “I don’t have to give a reason. I just don’t want to. I’m too old for all that.” Cassie was trying to fix me up with a date. A blind date if you please. With a work contact of her husband’s, some man called Michael. Divorced.

  “Oh, right then. You’ve booked your plot already then, I take it?”

  “What? What plot?”

  “Your cemetery plot. Why not move in now? You sound like you’re ready to. If you don’t want to get the good out of life any more, shove over and make room for someone else.”

  She took my arm and propelled me over to the mirror.

  “Look. What do you see?”

  “A very pushy, pain-in-the-bum best friend?”

  “Ho-ho. And …?”

  “Me. I see me, of course. Should I be expecting someone else? What’s your point? That I’m getting on a bit so should hurry up and lasso a man before yet another wrinkle takes up permanent residence?”

  Cassie stood, hand on hip, scrunching up her nose at me.

  “Finished? All I’m saying is you talk as if you’re 103 but—”

  “I might as well be. Women of forty aren’t in huge demand, you know. How many forty-year-olds do you see on the cover of Cosmopolitan?”

  “Thirty-nine. Why are you rushing into being forty? It’ll get here soon enough. But no. You’re right. Sign up for the geriatric day care centre. You’re no use to the world now.”

  “Aaaarrggh! Cassie, I may have to hit you in a minute. The fact is I’m very nearly forty and I feel like I look every single day of it. But even if I looked twenty-two and had the body of a supermodel and the face of an angel, I’d still not want to go on a blind date.”

  “Babe, if you looked like that, you wouldn’t have to.”

  “Oh, charming!”

  She plonked me down on the couch.

  “Hey, relax, will you? I’m joking. You know you’re attractive so let’s just cut out this poor-little-plain-me bollocks, OK? Look, all I’m saying is if you really don’t want to get back with Scott, then why not start having a bit of fun? I don’t think a convent would take you in now anyway, so you might as well be getting your end away.”

  I shrugged. Still, I bet Scott’s not been going without. We all know what he’s like.

  “It’s not that I don’t miss making love. I do. And cuddles and male company, all that, but I don’t think I could handle a date. It’s just not me.”

  “What? You can’t handle going out to dinner and the cinema? Those are the best bits. Are you completely barking?”

  “No, not that. I mean having to laugh at a whole new bunch of terrible jokes and getting used to a different set of disgusting habits, and putting up with their macho driving and listening to them moan about their ex-wife. Everyone’s got so much baggage by the time they’re our age.”

  “Better that than some spurting virgin still living at home with his mum at forty-five.”

  “True.”

  “So you’ll meet him?”

  I wrinkled my nose.

  “You swear he’s definitely not a psycho?”

  “I dunno—I believe he may have mentioned something about his collection of axes—oh, for heaven’s sake, Gail, he’s just a bloke.”

  “And he’s not bald?”

  “Thinning, but only at the front.”

  “Height?”

  “For God’s sake, I don’t know. Not a gnome anyway. Anything else? Quantity of nostril hair? Willy length and diameter? Name of shop where he buys his underpants? Meet him and if he’s hideous, then just smile politely and don’t give him your phone number.”

  I thought about it for another minute.
/>   “OK, then, I’ll do it. But I’m not promising to enjoy it.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  To be fair, although Michael was certainly no James Bond, he wasn’t bad looking. He was smart and tidy at least and what was left of his hair had seen a comb in the recent past. There was a little light sprinkling of dandruff across his shoulders but then we’re none of us perfect, are we? He held my chair out for me at the restaurant, which threw me completely having spent most of my adult life with someone who just plonks himself down and is already wondering what he’ll have for dessert without noticing I’m still wrestling with some huge great chair that seems to be made of lead. Scott thinks if he even remembers to say thank you once a day then he’s doing well.

  Cassie had told me that Michael was “forty-something,” by which she apparently meant about fifty-five. The plus side of this was that it made me feel incredibly young and I had to stop myself from skipping across to the bar and kicking my legs up in a can-can.

  “So hello there, Gail!” he said, darting forward to kiss me on the cheek when he introduced himself. Not a good start. What on earth makes a man think you want to be kissed by someone you’ve never even met?

  “Well, here we are!” he laid a hand on my arm. “And what’s your tipple, Gail? No, let me guess! Campari and lemonade, am I right? Or are you dying for a gin and tonic? I know what you girls are like.” He leant towards me then, as if he was telling me a very important and intriguing secret.

  This particular girl is just dying to pelt you with ice cubes, I thought, edging away subtly so he’d stop grabbing my arm every three seconds.

  “Just a white wine please.”

  He grinned and gave me this sort of knowing nod, like he’d guessed all along that I was really a white wine girl.

  “Medium?”

  “Dry.”

  Actually, I do prefer medium, but I can’t bear people who act like they know you and come over all chummy immediately.

  I couldn’t figure out exactly what was odd about him at first, but then it hit me. For all his breezy manner and apparent confidence, he was actually seriously depressed. No, not a little bit down in the dumps. Not having a bad day. Depressed. Underneath the jolly exterior, you could sense this great, awful black hole of sadness. I looked away, embarrassed, as if I’d accidentally seen him naked. And the jolliness only made it worse, more desperate somehow. He looked like depression was his natural vocation and now that he’d found it he had no plans to look around for something else to occupy him. His skin had the dull, almost grey look of someone who’s spent too many hours writing letters of complaint to the council and not nearly enough time playing beach-ball.

  Near the end of the evening, Michael leant right in close to me: “It’s been great to meet you,” he confided, “I really feel I’ve moved on from the pain of my marriage now.”

  I smiled sympathetically and made one of Nat’s vague “mn” sort of murmurs.

  “You know,” he said, smiling as if he was about to tell me a joke, “my wife and I had stopped having sex. We hadn’t made love for over five years.”

  “Hm-mm.” I nodded, trying to look caring in a detached, don’t-you-dare-touch-my-arm-again sort of way, as I reached behind me for my jacket. Why are you telling me this? I thought. I don’t want to know. Maybe he imagined I might whisk off all my clothes out of pity and say, “You mustn’t go without sex for even one more minute. Take me now!”

  “Well,” I said, looking at my watch. It was quarter past ten. “I really must be making a move. The babysitter, you know …”

  Cassie found the whole thing hilarious, of course.

  “Bet it makes you appreciate Scott now, eh?”

  “Is that why you set me up with Michael?”

  “Hey, no. No, I didn’t. I’m sorry. He really sounded like a nice guy from what Derek said.”

  “He was OK. I’m not blaming you. But, he was just so sad. Everything about him, even—look, he had these really well-polished shoes, OK?”

  “Well how the hell is that sad? Shows he takes care of himself. You were always pissed off with Scott and saying he should smarten himself up.”

  “Shut up for two seconds and I’ll tell you. It was sad because somehow you could just tell that he’d really taken his time doing them, that he hadn’t just given them a quick buff up while he was running out the door like the rest of us. I bet he’d sat down with a proper shoe-cleaning kit and spun it out because he didn’t have enough else going on in his life.”

  “You could still have whisked him home and tried to shag some life into him. Then he’d have taken his shoes off and you wouldn’t have had to look at them.”

  “Thank you, Cassie, Queen of the Agony Aunts. Do you ever dispense advice other than: go out and get laid?” She looked at me, head tilted to one side in that way she has. “I know, I know, you think I’m a horrible person. I should have been more sympathetic, but I felt if I’d spent even ten more minutes in his company then his sadness would have, I don’t know, engulfed me like a great clammy grey cloud. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.”

  “Ah, well. It’s all practice. And now you’ve got the first one out of the way, you won’t be so nervous when you meet someone else.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry to whinge, I know you meant well. Anyway, it did have its plus side …”

  “He paid for dinner?”

  “No, we went Dutch. But after, when I came home, I sat up a while in the kitchen and gradually this great wave of, well, relief, swept over me. I know it sounds mean, but I was just so glad that I was me and not Michael, that I’ve got my two gorgeous, precious kids, my sisters, my parents, you—people who love me, I suppose, people I really love. I don’t ever want to be that lonely. I’d rather be back with Scott again than be like that.”

  Nat

  Our Aunty Mari came over last night—to babysit Rosie. I don’t need anyone looking after me. Mum said she was going out with a friend, but I reckon it was more like a date. For a start, she took like about fifteen hours getting ready. Normally, when she used to go out, which was practically never anyhow, it was more like fifteen minutes. Mum came downstairs in this blue dress that she never wears any more. It comes all the way down to here at the back so she can’t wear a bra with it. She came in the kitchen and I gave her a look, then she went straight back upstairs again and came down in a black skirt with a red top and a jacket over it.

  She got back quite late, after half-ten. I stayed up, waiting for her to come home, and I looked out the window to check out the guy when I heard a car pull up outside, but it was just Mum getting out of a taxi.

  Then this morning I’m eating some Sugar Puffs straight from the box when Mum comes in.

  “Good time last night?” I did that thing with my eyebrows, making them go up and down really fast. “You were late enough.”

  And then she laughed, which was kind of weird, and she rolled her eyes the way Dad does. Used to.

  “Not really, but thank you for asking.” Then she came over and tried to hug me.

  “Mu-u-um! Gerroff!”

  “Oh, Nathan. You’re so precious, you’ve no idea.”

  I think she’s lost the plot. What’s brought on all this luvvy-duvvy stuff?

  “What’s up with you then?”

  “Nothing’s up with me. Actually, yes it is. I suddenly feel rather lucky and pleased to be me for once. It’s a nice feeling.”

  Oh no, I thought, that’s all we need. Don’t tell me she’s gone all flaky for this guy. Flake City, here we come.

  “You seeing him again then?”

  “What? Who?”

  I shrugged and chucked a Sugar Puff high in the air and caught it in my mouth.

  “This guy. Your date.”

  “Ha! You little detective, you.” She gave me another squeeze and kissed the top of my head. “Nope. Definitely not, in fact.”

  “Mn.”

  “You think that’s why I’m so cheerful?�
��

  “Mn.”

  She leant against the counter and fished into the cereal box. She never does stuff like that. Normally, it’d be: Get yourself a bowl, Nathan. Sit down and eat properly, Nathan. For goodness’ sake, Nathan, can’t you eat like a normal person?

  “No, it’s not that. Hey, these aren’t so bad without milk, are they? It’s just—well, you know I’ll be forty next week.”

  “Yeah. You’ve gone on and on about it so it’s not like I’ve been allowed to forget.”

  “Have I really? Sorry. Well, maybe I have. I’ve felt pretty lousy about it to be honest, as if my whole life is over. Especially with the problems between your dad and me, you know?”

  “Mn.”

  “It sounds strange maybe, but suddenly I feel like I’ve woken up. So I’ll be forty—so what? Big bloody deal. I’m still healthy, still attractive—don’t you dare give me that look, Nat, you cheeky so-and-so—and I’m not giving up on myself. Or not yet at any rate.”

  I still say she’s becoming a bit of a loony tune since Dad left, but at least she was in a good mood and wasn’t telling me off, so I guess maybe it’s OK.

  “Oh. Right. Mum?”

  “Yup?”

  “Can you lend us some money so’s I can get some talk time for my mobile?”

  She laid her head down on the counter like she was about to go to sleep.

  “I give up.” Then she chucked a Sugar Puff at me. Parents aren’t supposed to do stuff like that, are they? I mean, Dad always did, but he wasn’t like a real parent anyway, he only ever said parent stuff about doing your homework and not watching too much TV when Mum told him to. And now she’s getting just as bad. I don’t know. Parents. I mean, what are they like?

  Scott

  We’ve got into something of a routine, me and Rosie. I pull up outside at bang on 10 a.m. on a Sunday. I cheat actually—I get there a few minutes early and park round the corner so I can arrive on the dot. Well, it means Gail’s got no excuse to have a dig at me and Rosie seems to like it. She stands by the window in the front room with her nose pressed to the glass so she can watch out for me. I don’t even need to ring the bell.