Tony Parsons: Man and Boy

Even framed by all those plastic carrier bags and chaperoning a little kid, the woman was the kind that you look at more than once.

What you noticed about her child – and he was certainly her child – was that he was carrying a long, plastic tube with a dull light glowing faintly inside.

If you had been to the cinema at any time over the last twenty years you would recognise it as a light sabre, traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights. This one needed new batteries.

The beautiful woman was smiling at me and the salesman. The little kid pointed his light sabre, as if about to strike us down.

‘ Daddy ,’ he mouthed from the other side of the plate-glass wall which divided us. You couldn’t hear him, but that’s what he was saying.

‘My wife and son,’ I said, turning away, but not before I caught the disappointment in the salesman’s eyes. ‘Got to go.’

Daddy. That’s me. Daddy.

‘You don’t even like cars,’ my wife reminded me, edging our old VW estate through the thick early-evening traffic.

‘Just looking.’

‘And you’re too young for a mid-life crisis,’ she said. ‘Thirty is much too young, Harry. The way it works, you wait for fifteen years and then run off with a secretary who’s young enough to be your second wife. And I cut off the sleeves of all your suits. Not to mention your bollocks.’

‘I’m not thirty, Gina,’ I chuckled, although it wasn’t really all that funny. She was always exaggerating. ‘I’m twenty-nine.’

‘For one more month!’ she laughed.

‘It’s your birthday soon ,’ our boy said, laughing along with his mother, although he didn’t have a clue why, and tapping me on the back of the head with his sodding light sabre.

‘Please don’t do that, Pat,’ I said.

He was back there with the week’s shopping, strapped into his little car seat and muttering under his breath, pretending to be in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon with Harrison Ford.

‘I’ve lost my starboard engine,’ he jabbered away to himself. ‘Fire when ready.’

I turned to look at him. He was four years old with dirty blond hair that hung down over eyes that were the same shade of blue as his mother’s. Tiffany blue. Catching my eye, he grinned at me with pure childish delight.

‘Happy birthday, dear Daddy,’ he sang. ‘Happy birthday, birth-day.’

To Pat, my birthday was a chance to finally give me the home-made card he had hidden under his bed (Luke Skywalker decapitating a space monster with his trusty light sabre). To me it meant that the best might already be over. It really did.

When would I feel the way I felt the night my wife said that she would marry me? When would I feel the way I felt the morning my son was born? When would life be that – I don’t know – real again? When?

‘When did you become interested in cars?’ Gina asked. She wouldn’t let this car thing rest. ‘I bet you don’t even know what kind of petrol this one uses, do you?’

‘Oh, come on, Gina.’

‘What is it, then?’

Fucking hell.

‘The green kind,’ I said, taking a wild guess. ‘You know – non-leaded. The one that saves a rain forest every time you fill her up.’

‘It’s diesel, you doughnut,’ she laughed. ‘I never knew a man less interested in cars than you. What happened?’

What could I tell her? You don’t tell a wife that some inanimate object somehow represents all those things you know you are never going to have. The places you are never going to see, the women you are never going to love, the things you are never going to do. You can’t tell a wife all that stuff. Not even a wife you love very much. Especially not a wife like that.

‘It only carries one passenger,’ she said.

‘What does?’ I said, playing dumb.

‘You know very well what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘It only carries one passenger – one thin, female passenger.’

‘You’re still pretty thin and female,’ I said. ‘Or you were the last time I looked.’

‘What’s brought all this on, Harry? Come on. Tell me.’

‘Maybe I’m compensating for becoming an old git,’ I said. ‘I’m joining the old gits’ club, so, pathetically, I want to recapture my glorious youth. Even though I know it’s ultimately futile and even though my youth wasn’t particularly glorious. Isn’t that what men do?’

‘You’re turning thirty,’ she said. ‘We’re going to open a couple of bottles and have a nice cake with candles.’

‘And balloons,’ Pat said.

‘And balloons,’ Gina said. She shook her lovely head. ‘We’re not having you put down, Harry.’

Gina was a couple of months older than me. She had breezed through her thirtieth birthday surrounded by friends and family, dancing with her son to Wham’s greatest hits, a glass of champagne in her hand. She looked great that night, she really did. But clearly my own birthday was going to be a bit more traumatic.

‘You don’t regret anything, do you?’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘You know,’ she said, suddenly deadly serious. ‘Like us.’

We had married young. Gina was three months pregnant with Pat on our wedding day and it was, by some distance, the happiest day of my life. But nothing was ever really the same again after that day. Because after that there was no disguising the fact that we were grown-ups.

The radio station where I was working gave me the week off and we spent our honeymoon back at our little flat watching daytime television in bed, eating M&S sandwiches and talking about the beautiful baby we were going to have.

We talked about eventually taking a proper, grown-up honeymoon – Gina wanted us to snorkel among the tropical fish of Okinawa. But by the time there was a bit of money and a bit of time, we had Pat and the course of our lives seemed set.

Gina and I found ourselves separated from the rest of the world by our wedding rings. The other married couples we knew were at least ten years older than us, and friends our own age were still in that brief period between living with their mothers and living with their mortgages. Our little family was on its own.

While our friends were dancing the night away in clubs, we were up all hours with our baby’s teething problems. While they were worrying about meeting the right person, we were worrying about meeting the payments on our first real home. Yet I didn’t regret any of it. Yes, we had given up our freedom. But we had given it up for something better.

I loved my wife and I loved our son. Together, the two of them made my world make sense. My life without them was unimaginable. I knew I was a lucky man. But I couldn’t help it, I just couldn’t help it – lately I found myself wondering when I had stopped being young.

‘I just really hate the way that life starts to contract as you get older,’ I said. ‘The way your options narrow. I mean, when did owning a car like that become ridiculous for me? When exactly? Why is it such a joke? I would love to know. That’s all.’

‘The Force is strong in this one,’ Pat said.

‘A red sports car,’ Gina said to herself. ‘And you don’t even like driving .’

‘Listen, I was just looking, okay?’ I said.

‘Happy birthday to you ,’ Pat sang, smacking me across the ear with his light sabre. ‘Squashed tomatoes and glue. You-look-like-a-monkey-and-you-act-like-one-too.’

‘That’s not nice,’ I told him, as the traffic ground to a halt and my ear began to throb.

Gina put the handbrake on and looked at me, as if trying to remember what she had liked about me in the first place. She seemed a bit stumped.

I remembered what I had liked about her. She had the longest legs I had ever seen on a woman. But I still didn’t know if that was the best basis for the love of your life.