Man and Wife (18 page)

The step-parent has a thankless job. The step-parent can’t win. You are either involved with this pint-sized stranger too much or not enough. But there’s one thing that the step-parent should always remember. It is even worse for the child.

Grown-ups can always get a new husband or wife. But the children of divorce can’t get a new father or mother, no more than they can get a new heart, new lungs, new eyes. For better
for worse, for richer for poorer, you are trapped with the parents you are born with.

Peggy was lumbered with me, this man in her mother’s bed who was neither fish nor fowl, friend nor father, just a male parent impersonator.

Uncle Dad.

A night that was just like the old days. That was the idea. There was a new print of
Annie Hall
showing at the Curzon Mayfair. Then we were going for Peking duck in Chinatown. And maybe we would end the evening with a shot of espresso in some small Soho dive before returning home for slow, lazy sex and a good night’s sleep.

Film, duck, coffee, fuck.

Then making spoons, and sharing the same pillow for a good eight hours.

The perfect date.

Our night on the town wasn’t exactly hanging out at the Met Bar with the Gallaghers, but I knew that it would make us happy. It had many times before. But maybe I tried a little too hard to make it like the old days.

The movie was good. And we walked through the narrow streets of Soho hand in hand, laughing about Alvy Singer and his Annie Hall, lost in the film and each other, just like it was in our once upon a time.

It only started to go wrong in Chinatown.

The Shenyang Tiger was crowded. There was an entire Chinese family at the next table – nan, granddad, a few young husbands and wives and their flock of beautiful kids, including a brand-new baby, a fat-faced Buddha with a startling shock of jet-black Elvis hair.

Cyd and I stared at the baby, then smiled at each other.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ she said. ‘All that hair.’

‘Would you like one? It’s not too late to change your order. I can have the duck and you can have the baby.’

I was only kidding – wasn’t I? – but her smile vanished instantly.

‘Oh, come on. Not the baby thing again, Harry. You never shut up about it, do you?’

‘What are you talking about? It wasn’t the baby thing again. I’m just pulling your leg, darling. You used to have a sense of humour.’

‘And you used to let me have a life.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I know you want me to give up the business. It’s true, isn’t it? You want me pregnant and in the kitchen. I know you do.’

I said nothing. How could I deny that I would prefer her to make dinner for her family rather than half of fashionable London? How could I deny that I wanted a baby, a family, and all the old-fashioned dreams?

I wanted us to be the way we were. But it wasn’t because I wanted to imprison her. It was because I loved her.

The waiter arrived with our Peking duck, and plates of cucumber, spring onion and plum sauce. I waited until he had shredded the duck and gone.

‘I just want you to be happy, Cyd.’

‘Then leave me alone, Harry. Let me run my business. Let me try to do something for myself for just once in my life. Stop trying to make me give it all up to be – I don’t even know what it is you want. Doris Day, is it? Mary Tyler Moore? Your mother? Some fifties housewife who doesn’t go out at night.’

My mother was actually out all the time. Doing the Four-Star Boogie and the Get In Line and the I Like It I Love It and the Walkin’ Wazi. But I let it pass.

‘I don’t mind you going out at night. I’m happy your business is going so well. I just wish that there were more nights like this. When you were spending the night with me.’

But her blood was up now.

‘You really want to be the sole breadwinner, don’t you? The big man. Are you going to spend the rest of your life trying to be your father?’

‘Probably. I can think of worse things to be than my old man.’ I pushed my plate away. Suddenly I didn’t have much of
an appetite. ‘And are you going to spend the rest of your life sucking up to creeps?’

‘Luke Moore is not a creep. He’s a brilliant businessman.’

‘Who said anything about Luke bloody Moore? I’m talking about all those drunken City boys who think they can get into your thong because you give them a bit of chicken on a stick.’

A mobile phone began to ring from deep inside her handbag. She fished it out and immediately recognised the number calling. Because it was our number.

‘Sally?’ She was babysitting for us. Cyd didn’t like anyone outside our little family looking after Peggy. ‘Well, how long has she been vomiting?’

Oh great, I thought. Now the kid’s puking all over the babysitter.

‘Everything fine?’ said the waiter.

‘Wonderful, thanks.’ I smiled.

‘And is it solid or liquid?’ Cyd said. ‘Okay, okay. Well, can’t you get her to be sick down the toilet? Right, right. Look, we’ll be home in half an hour, Sally. What? Well, just change her pyjamas and stick the dirty ones in the washing machine. We’re going to jump in a cab. See you.’

‘Something wrong?’

‘Peggy. You know she doesn’t like it when we’re both out at the same time. She gets an upset tummy.’ She beckoned a passing waitress. ‘Can we get the bill, please?’ Then she looked at my stony face. ‘Are you sulking because Peggy is sick?’

‘We should stay. You should eat your lovely duck. There’s nothing wrong with Peggy.’

‘She’s just brought up her Mister Milano pizza. How can you say there’s nothing wrong with her?’

‘This always happens.’ It was true. Every time we had one of our rare nights out, it was as if Peggy was sticking her fingers down her throat. ‘Look, if she was really sick, I’d be as worried as you.’

‘Really? As worried as me? I don’t think so, Harry.’

‘Can’t you see? It’s a kind of blackmail. She only does it to get you to come home. Eat your dinner, Cyd.’

‘I don’t want my dinner. And you should understand how she feels, Harry. If anyone should understand, it’s you. You know what it’s like to be a single parent.’

‘Is that what you think? That you’re a single parent?’ I shook my head. ‘You’re married, Cyd. You stopped being a single parent on our wedding day.’

‘Then why do I still feel like a single parent? Why do I feel so alone?’

‘It’s not because there’s something wrong with Peggy.’ A waiter placed a bill and a quartered orange in front of us. ‘It’s because there’s something wrong with us.’

Outside the night had soured.

The good-natured, slow-moving crowds of early evening had been replaced by mobs of noisy drunks. The tourists were coming out of
Mamma Mia!
and
Les Misérables
, desperately hailing cabs that were already occupied. The streets were full of yobs in from the suburbs and beggars in from faraway towns. A scrappy, half-hearted fight was starting outside a packed pub. You could hear the sound of broken glass and sirens.

Then I saw her.

Kazumi.

She was in the queue outside that church on Shaftesbury Avenue that they had turned into a club almost twenty years ago. Limelight. Gina and I had gone there a couple of times. I didn’t even know that Limelight was still open.

Kazumi was with a bunch of men and women, slightly younger than herself, all locals by the look of them. She was at the centre of the crowd, the boys trying to impress her, the girls wanting to be her friend. She smiled patiently, caught my eye and stared straight through me, not recognising the man from her friend’s past, or just not caring.

Kazumi was going dancing.

I was going home just as she was going out.

It wasn’t a different kind of night out.

It was a different kind of life.

fifteen

Another postcard from America. On the front, under the words
Connecticut – the Nutmeg state, New England
, a rural wilderness ablaze with the colours of fall. On the back, in joined-up writing, a message from my son.

Dear Daddy. We have a dog. His name is Britney. We love him. Goodbye
.

‘Britney’s a funny old name for a dog,’ said my mother. ‘I suppose that was Gina’s idea.’

My mum had once loved Gina. I always said that when they first met, my mum thought Gina was a Home Counties version of Grace Kelly, a perfect combination of blue-eyed beauty, old-fashioned decency and regal bearing. Since our divorce my mum had slowly revised her opinion. Now Gina was less the Princess of Monaco and more the Whore of Babylon.

‘Maybe Britney is a bitch, Mum.’

‘There’s no need for talk like that,’ said my mother.

We were at my dad’s grave. It was the first time I had been here since Christmas Day after picking up my mum to take her to our place for the holiday. Three months ago now. It had been a surprisingly good Christmas – my mum and Cyd amusing each other greatly as they stuffed a giant turkey, Peggy on the phone to Pat for an hour comparing gifts, and the look on Peggy’s face when she opened her surprise present – an Ibiza DJ Brucie Doll, including his own little turntables.

With Pat gone, I was expecting Christmas to be steeped in feelings of sadness and loss, and in fact it was more of a respite from those things. But time was grinding on, and I saw that my dad’s headstone was no longer as white and pristine as it had seemed a few months ago. It was now stained by the winter, tilted by time. Things were wearing out without me even noticing.

‘Is Pat all right?’ my mum said. ‘Does he like his school? Has he made friends? There was trouble here, wasn’t there? You and Gina had to see his teacher, I remember. Is he all right now?’

‘He’s fine, Mum,’ I said, although in truth I had no idea if Pat was a straight-A student or wandering his new classroom at will. It didn’t feel like my son was thousands of miles away. It felt like light years.

‘I miss him, you know.’

‘I know you do, Mum. I miss him too.’

‘Will he come back for the holidays?’

‘The summer vacation. He’ll be back for that.’

‘That’s a long time. Summer’s a long way away. What about Easter? Couldn’t he come over for Easter?’

‘I’ll talk about it with Gina, Mum.’

‘I hope he comes back for his Easter holidays.’

‘I’ll try, Mum.’

‘Because you never know what’s going to happen, do you? You never know.’

‘Mum, nothing is going to happen to him,’ I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. ‘Pat’s fine.’

She looked up at me, briskly rubbing her hands together, wiping off the dirt from my father’s grave.

‘I’m not talking about Pat, Harry,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about me.’

And I just stared at her, as I felt the world turn and change.

I had always believed that my dad was the tough one. My mum didn’t drive, she wouldn’t open her front door after dark, and she hated confrontation of every kind. And because she
didn’t have a driving licence, because she was polite to rude waiters, because she slept with the light on, I was stupid enough to believe that my mother was a timid woman. Now I was about to learn that my mother had her own well of courage.

‘What happened, Mum?’

She took another breath.

‘Found a lump, Harry. When I was in the shower. In my breast.’

I could feel my heart.

‘Oh God, Mum. Oh Jesus.’

‘It’s small. And very hard. I went to see the doctor. You know how much I hate seeing the doctor. A bit like your dad, really. Now I’ve got to go for tests. Graham’s going to take me in his car.’

This is how it happens, I thought. You lose one parent, and then you lose the other. Selfishly, I thought – I went through all this with Dad, and I don’t know if I can do it again. But I knew I would have to. It was the most natural thing in the world.

I could imagine her in the shower. I could see her washing herself with the Body Shop soap in the shape of a dolphin that her grandson had bought her for Christmas. I could see my mother’s face, her kind and irreplaceable face, as she discovered something that had never been there before.

A small, hard lump.

That lump the size of a planet.

When I came home I found Peggy sitting cross-legged on the carpet, studying a book on Lucy Doll.

‘Look what I’ve got, Harry.’

I sat on the floor with her and looked at the book.
I Love Lucy Doll: The World’s Favourite Dolly
was a serious coffee-table job, full of social analysis and cultural deconstruction. First article – ‘Where Is Lucy Doll From?’ I skimmed the article, because I had always wondered that myself. It turned out that Lucy Doll was born in Paris of a part-Thai, part-Brazilian mother and an Anglo-Zulu father. The book revealed that Brucie Doll was from Ibiza.

There were more scholarly articles. Lucy Doll as modern icon. Lucy Doll as a feminist role model. Lucy Doll as a repository for traditional values. Lucy Doll as a radical of the sexual revolution. Lucy Doll was the perfect doll – you could get her to be anything you wanted her to be.

‘Where did you get this, darling?’

‘Uncle Luke gave it to me.’

‘Uncle Luke?’

‘He came home with Mummy in his racing car.’

‘Did Uncle Luke come in?’

‘No. But he gave Mummy this book for me. It’s for big girls.’

I wondered why these creeps always gave this little girl the wrong presents. Her dad with those useless huge stuffed animals that were no good to man or beast. And now a coffee-table book from Uncle Luke. Peggy was at least a decade too young for
I Love Lucy Doll: The World’s Favourite Dolly
. But what did I know? She loved poring over the pictures, and there were page after page of reproductions from all the Lucy Doll catalogues down the ages.

‘All the different Lucy Dolls,’ Peggy said.

There they were in all their glory. Office Lady Lucy Doll (Lucy Doll when she was working for a giant Japanese corporation before the bubble burst). Rio Dancer Lucy Doll (Carmen Miranda feathers and tails). And Working Girl Lucy Doll (the blonde locks dyed brunette to denote career-girl seriousness, Working Girl Lucy Doll carried a briefcase and wore spectacles with no lenses).