One For My Baby Read online

  On Friday night some of my students want me to go to the pub with them.

  I try to wriggle out of it, telling them that I don’t really drink very much and I don’t really go to pubs, but they seem hurt and disappointed and incredulous.

  An Englishman who doesn’t like pubs?

  What’s wrong with this guy?

  So I tell them that I’ll come along for just a quick one and they say that’s fine, a quick one is good, because most of them have to go to work tonight in whatever bar or burger joint or sushi conveyor belt restaurant pays their rent.

  Their local is an Irish pub off Tottenham Court Road called the Eamon de Valera, and although it’s not yet six, the place is already full of young men and women from all around the world and even a few locals knocking back the dark glasses of Guinness, Murphy’s and Coca Cola.

  ‘Irish pub,’ Zeng tells me. ‘Very friendly atmosphere.’

  We find an empty corner of the Eamon de Valera and pull two tables together. My students start to get their money out but I tell them that their teacher will buy them a drink. I get in a round of stout and Coke.

  There are five of us—me, Zeng, Wit, Gen and Astrud, a Cuban woman, married to a local. But Yumi and Imran are already in the pub, talking at the bar, and they come over to join us. Then Vanessa arrives with Churchill’s other French girl and some young black guy with locks, and soon so many people are joining and leaving our party—Astrud thanks me for her Coke and goes, saying she has to meet her husband—that I can’t tell where it begins and where it ends.

  There is something touchingly democratic about our little group. Not just because they come from every corner of the globe, but because you couldn’t imagine these people being friends or even sharing a drink in their home countries. Wit is pushing forty and Yumi is just out of her teens. Wit is permanently broke, sending every spare pound back home to his family, while Vanessa seems to have some kind of private income—all of her carrier bags are from Tiffany and Cartier. Then there is Imran, a handsome young man in Emporio Armani kit, and Zeng, who is wearing odd socks and spectacles mended with sellotape. They have nothing in common apart from Churchill’s International Language School. But studying there has created a bond between them and I find myself doing something that I haven’t done for a long time.

  I find myself having a good time.

  More drinks are ordered. Students shout at each other in fractured English over the sound of the Corrs asking what they can do to make you happy. Zeng is sitting next to me and I take the Guinness he is clutching away from him as he starts to nod off.

  ‘Always sleeping,’ Yumi tuts.

  ‘Wah,’ Zeng says, shaking himself awake. He smiles apologetically and reclaims his beer. ‘Sorry, sorry. Last night I did not sleep. My host family were arguing. Now I am very…I am very…fuck.’

  Gasps of astonishment around the table. A few snickers of laughter.

  ‘No bad words!’ Yumi says.

  Zeng looks embarrassed. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, avoiding eye contact with his teacher.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘These words are part of the language you’re studying. A lot of great writers have used the vulgar vernacular. This is interesting. What are you trying to say? That you’re very tired?’

  Zeng sighs. ‘Yes. Last night my host family were arguing about some such thing. They were very drunk.’

  ‘He rents a room from a family who rent the room from someone else,’ Yumi says. ‘Illegal. And with very low people. Uneducated.’

  ‘They are not so bad,’ Zeng says. ‘But now I am very, very…fucking.’

  ‘No,’ Wit says. ‘You are fucked off.’

  ‘That means angry,’ I say.

  ‘He is…perhaps…fucked up?’ Wit suggests helpfully.

  ‘He could say that. But that implies something other than tiredness. He could just say—I am fucked.’

  Zeng chuckles. ‘Yes, it’s true. I am fucked.’

  ‘So many of these bad words in English,’ Wit says. ‘In German, there are many words for you. Du, dich, dir, Sie, Ihnen, ihr and euch. In English, there’s only one word for you. But many bad words.’

  ‘Not so many bad words,’ I say. ‘But lots of different meanings to the bad words.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gen says. ‘Such as—I do not give a fuck.’

  Yumi gasps. Vanessa titters. Wit stokes his chin in contemplation.

  ‘Means—I do not care,’ Gen says loftily.

  ‘Or you could call someone a useless fuck,’ I say.

  ‘Means he is not very good at making love?’ Yumi says.

  ‘No, no,’ I say, blushing furiously. ‘It just means he’s a useless person.’

  ‘Eskimos have fifty different words for snow,’ Wit observes. ‘The English have fifty different words for fuck.’

  ‘Fuck my old boots,’ I say.

  Frowns around the table.

  ‘What is this—fuck old boots?’ Wit says.

  ‘It’s an expression of surprise,’ I explain. ‘Like fuck a duck.’

  ‘Sex with a…beast?’ Zeng says. ‘Like in yellow films? Love with a duck?’

  ‘We don’t call them yellow films. That’s a Chinese expression. Here we call pornography blue films.’

  ‘Wah!’

  ‘No, fuck a duck’s another exclamation of surprise.’

  ‘Like—fuck all?’ Wit asks.

  ‘No, that means—nothing.’

  ‘Fuck all means—nothing?’

  ‘That’s right. You’re thinking of fuck me.’

  ‘In the steakhouse where I work,’ Wit says, ‘there were these bad men. Very drunk.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Vanessa says. ‘Very English, no?’

  ‘They were unhappy with their bill and called for the manager,’ Wit continues. ‘Then they threatened to kick the fuck out of him! And called him fuck face!’

  ‘That’s very bad,’ I say.

  ‘What is this expression—to fuck someone’s arse off?’ Gen says, as if he’s enquiring about some arcane point of etymology. ‘Is it sex—how to say?—in the rear? Sex—how to say?—up the Wembley Way? That you are a back door man?’

  ‘No, it’s got nothing to do with that. It just means sex that’s done with a degree of enthusiasm. You see?’ I tell them. ‘The great thing about English—the reason you are studying English rather than Chinese or Spanish or French—is that it’s an endlessly flexible language.’

  ‘But English is a strange language,’ Wit insists. ‘What is this funny book—Roger’s Thesaurus?’

  ‘Roget’s Thesaurus,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s not a dictionary. It’s a book of synonyms, yes? No book like that exists in my country.’

  ‘I think a book like Roget’s Thesaurus is unique to English. That’s why so many English words find their way into other languages. You can do what you like with it.’

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ Zeng says, getting up to go. ‘I must fuck off.’

  ‘He is leaving!’ Gen says triumphantly. ‘Zeng has to leave for General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen.’

  ‘He must fuck off to work,’ Wit enunciates carefully, like a professor of phonetics concluding a particularly tricky tutorial. ‘Or the fuckers will give him the fucking sack.’

  And soon more of them are slipping away. Gen to the kitchen of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Brewer Street, Wit to that grim old-fashioned red-plush steakhouse on Shaftesbury Avenue where the bad men go, Vanessa to some smitten English boy at the bar who is going to take her dancing.

  Soon there’s only Yumi and me at our table in the Eamon de Valera and I’m finally speechless as I feel the effects of two pints of Guinness and her shining brown eyes.

  ‘I like you, you’re nice,’ she says.

  Fucking hell.

  six

  My grandmother is telling some big shot from the BBC that she is eighty-seven and still has all her own teeth. My mother looks wonderful in a long red dress, her hair piled on top of her head, and she see
ms very happy as she smiles and moves among the guests, checking that everyone is okay.

  I am hovering on the edge of the evening, trying to overcome the quiet panic that I always feel at parties, fighting the fear that there will be no one for me to talk to. But after a while even I start to relax. It feels like a special night.

  It’s true that the guests are a very mixed bunch. The guffawing sports journalists with their Liverpool and Estuary and Irish accents seem to belong at a different gathering to the garrulous, well-spoken girls from television. The authors with their acres of corduroy and denim seem strangely subdued next to the leering late-night DJs with their big cigars. My nan, as frail as a sparrow in her floral party dress, seems to come from a different century from the man in Armani from the BBC.

  But it is surprising how well people from different worlds can get on when there is goodwill in the air and expensive alcohol in their bloodstreams and good sushi being offered around. And there is real affection for my father in this room.

  I told my mother that he had no real friends, but I was wrong. I feel that these people are all genuinely proud to know my dad. I sense that they admire and like him. They are honoured to be here and excited about surprising him on his birthday. I feel proud of him, glad that he’s my father.

  They have come from the four corners of the city to celebrate my father’s birthday. There are brash, beefy men who knew him from his years on the sports pages of national newspapers. There are youthful middle-aged men in coloured spectacles, and loud girls in combat boots who know him from his appearances on their radio and television shows. There are people from his publishing house, sympathetic critics, important booksellers, talk show hosts, fellow writers, all these friends, colleagues and allies who have aided and abetted my dad’s brilliant career.

  The party is around our indoor swimming pool. We are in here because it is the only room in the house big enough to hide almost a hundred people. They are milling around the pool, taking drinks and satay and tamaki rolls from the waiters, making jokes about going for a dip. But this is a good place for a celebration.

  The bright fluorescent lights make the party feel like it’s being held in some kind of giant spotlight. The swimming pool shimmers turquoise and gold, the light catching the silver trays of the white-suited caterers as they move among guests holding twinkling flutes of champagne. A special night for a special man.

  ‘He’s coming!’ my mother announces and the main lights go out. But the room is still not quite dark because there are spotlights in the swimming pool, shimmering under water like yellow ghosts. Someone hits another switch and the room is suddenly pitch black.

  Guests giggle and murmur in the darkness as we listen to my father’s Mercedes purring on the street. After a while the engine dies and soon there is the sound of his key in the door. There are another couple of self-conscious laughs which are urgently shushed. We wait for my father in complete darkness and total silence. Nothing happens. We wait some more. Still nothing happens. Nobody speaks. And then the door to the pool room finally opens.

  There are shadows in the doorway, the soft ruffle of clothes, something like a sigh. We hear him step into the darkened room and wait for him to turn on the lights. But he doesn’t. Instead there’s the sound of creaking wood. He’s on the diving board! He’s going for a swim! All around me I can feel the laughter being stifled, the tension mounting.

  Suddenly the lights come on and the room is full of grinning people and far too bright.

  ‘Surprise!’ someone shouts, and then the laughter abruptly dies in our throats.

  My father is standing naked on the diving board, his disbelieving eyes slowly taking in the presence of everyone he knows. His eyes stop on my mother’s face for a short horrible moment, and then he looks away in shame.

  Lena is kneeling in front of him, fully clothed, her golden head bobbing up and down to some inner rhythm. She is making the diving board squeak.

  But I’m the one she fancies, I think. That should be me! It’s not fair! Then my father rests a hand on the back of her head. She stops moving, slowly opening her eyes, looking up at him.

  The noise my mother makes is not a scream. It’s not quite as formed as that, not so clear in its meaning. The noise my mother makes is more of a howl that somehow manages to contain disbelief, humiliation and a shame she doesn’t deserve.

  The party is paralysed for a few seconds. Then my mother turns and pushes her way through the guests, barging aside a waiter, who loses his balance, seems to regain it for a second and then starts toppling towards the pool. A silver tray carrying half a dozen champagne flutes slips away from the palm of his hand and lands with a crash of metal and glass as he hits the water.

  ‘Does this mean the party’s over?’ says my nan.

  My parents were always Mike and Sandy. Never Sandy and Mike. Always Mike and Sandy. Always and forever, my father had top billing.

  They seem like old-fashioned names to me, Mike and Sandy, names from an England that no longer exists, the England that was there when my parents and their friends and neighbours and my aunts and uncles were young.

  It was an England of country pubs, dinner dances and trips to the seaside on Bank Holiday Monday. A land of small pleasures, quietly savoured—card schools (men and women) on Christmas night, football (men and boys) on Boxing Day, a trip to the local for a game of darts and a couple of pints (men only) when we had ‘guests’.

  That land was a cold, insular place with real winters, where every foreign holiday to Greece or Spain felt like the trip of a lifetime. The Beatles had come and gone and left behind a kingdom where suburban grown-ups smoked for the same reason that they wore paisley shirts and miniskirts, the same reason they nervously went to Italian and Indian restaurants—because they thought it made them look both young and sophisticated. The England of my childhood, that innocent place that yearned to be grown-up. Mike and Sandy’s country.

  Mike and Sandy. They are friendly names, approachable names, sociably abbreviated, the name of a respectable married couple who know how to have a laugh. Within reason.

  Mike and Sandy. They are not their given names, of course. My father was Michael and my mother was Sandra. But somewhere in the sixties and seventies, when the clothes and the television sets and the expectations were going from black and white to colour, when the austerity that had clung to the country like acne for twenty-odd years was finally clearing up, the names of the young—and the not quite so young, the new mothers and fathers—were becoming brighter and breezier too.

  Mike and Sandy. The name of a married couple who were at home in a country where nobody ever left, nobody got divorced, nobody ever died and every family lasted forever.

  He somehow gets his clothes on and escapes with Lena—or maybe he doesn’t get his clothes on, maybe he just hops bollock-naked into his flash car and drives away—but as the caterers fish the waiter from the pool we hear the Mercedes pulling away with a frightened shriek of rubber, as if he can’t get out of our lives fast enough.

  The next morning I wander through the silent house, looking at all the top-of-the-range detritus of his life, all those things he values so much, and I wonder why my mother doesn’t trash the lot. It wouldn’t settle the score. But it might make her feel better.

  My mother could obliterate every trace of his rotten life. I wouldn’t blame her. In fact I would be very happy to help her.

  But she doesn’t touch any of his things.

  Instead, when she finally emerges from her bedroom the next morning, pale-faced and red-eyed, still wearing her beautiful party dress, insisting that she is all right, adamant that she doesn’t want anything to eat or drink, my mother goes out to the garden she loves and sets about destroying it.

  At the end of the garden there is a trellis where honeysuckle grows and smells sweet on summer mornings. My mother does her best to rip that down with her bare hands but she can’t quite manage it, she can only pull down half of it and leaves the rest smashed but
still attached to the wall.

  There are terracotta pots containing new bulbs that she hurls against the garden wall, leaving behind shell bursts of exploded dirt. She hacks at her flower beds with rake and trowel and fingers, aborting all the spring bulbs that she recently planted with such endless care.

  By the time I reach her she is tearing her hands to pieces by pulling up the rose bushes. I put my arm around her and hold her tight, determined not to let her go until she has stopped trembling. But she doesn’t stop trembling. Her body shakes with shock and grief and rage and I can’t do anything to stop it. She keeps shaking long after I have taken her back into the empty house and drawn all the blinds and tried to shut out the world.

  And now I can sort of understand how it works, I can see how the world turns around and the child becomes the parent, the protected becomes the protector.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I tell her, just as she told me after I had lost my first playground fight. ‘Don’t cry now.’

  But I can’t stop her. Because she’s not just crying for herself. She’s crying for Mike and Sandy.

  You have to be a cold, hard man to walk out on a family and my father is not a cold, hard man.

  Weak, perhaps. Selfish, definitely. Stupid, without question. But he is not cold and hard. At least, he is not cold and hard enough to do what he has just done—to amputate a family from his life—with ease. When I turn up at the doorstep of his rented flat, he looks torn. Torn between a life that is not quite over and another life that hasn’t quite begun.

  ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘Take a wild guess. How do you think she is?’

  ‘You’re too young to understand,’ he tells me defensively, letting me inside.

  Lena is not around. But there are the clothes of a young woman drying on a radiator.

  ‘Understand what? That you felt the need for a bit on the side? That you thought you could play away and not get caught? That you’re an old man who’s desperate to recapture his youth? Understand what exactly?’

  ‘To understand what can go wrong with a marriage. Even a good marriage. The passion wears off. It just does, Alfie. And then you have to decide if you can live without it. Or not. Do you want a cup of tea? I think we’ve got a kettle here somewhere.’