Tony Parsons: Men from the Boys

For my son.And for my daughter, too.

‘I remember everything!’ cried Pinocchio. ‘Tell me quickly, dear snail, where did you leave my good fairy? What is she doing? Has she pardoned me? Does she still remember me? Does she love me still?’

Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

Cover Page

Title Page Men From the Boys Tony Parsons

Dedication For my son.And for my daughter, too.

Epigraph ‘I remember everything!’ cried Pinocchio. ‘Tell me quickly, dear snail, where did you leave my good fairy? What is she doing? Has she pardoned me? Does she still remember me? Does she love me still?’ Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

Part one: autumn term – the secret language of girls Part one: autumn term – the secret language of girls

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Part two: spring term – if i were a boy

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Part three: summer term – what are you waiting for?

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

September. The first day of school. New blue blazers everywhere, leaves and conkers underfoot, but an untouched sky and summer clinging on. And now I thought I understood why my son had been so quiet and preoccupied all through the long holiday. I should have guessed, shouldn’t I? Sooner or later, there was going to be a girl.

I had wanted to believe it was just because he was almost fifteen.

I watched my son watching the girl. His face got red just looking at her.

‘You could talk to her,’ I said. ‘You could just walk right up to her and – you know. Talk to her.’

Pat laughed. He watched the girl dawdling by the school gates. Black haired, brown eyed. Laughing, swinging a rucksack stuffed with books. Tall for her age. Radiant in the blue blazer of Ramsay MacDonald Comprehensive School. Surrounded by admirers.

‘Talk to her?’ he muttered, all polite disbelief, as though I had said, Levitate, why don’t you? The ladies love a bit of levitation. The chicks go crazy when they see a lad who can levitate. ‘Probably not,’ he said.

‘Is she in your year?’ I said.

He shook his head, and a matted veil of blond hair fell over his eyes. He pushed it away with a sigh, the love-sick Hamlet of the local comp.

‘No, she’s in the year above me.’

So she was fifteen. Or maybe already sixteen. An older woman. I should have guessed he would fall for an older woman.

I watched him fumbling nervously with the Predator football boots that were resting on his lap.

‘Do you know her name?’ I asked. He took a breath. He swallowed. He brushed some flakes of dried mud from his Ramsay Mac blazer. He did not look at me. He kept looking at her. He was afraid he might miss something.

‘Elizabeth Montgomery,’ he said.

The eight syllables tripped off his tongue. The way he said them, it was infinitely more than a name. It was a sigh, a prayer, a kiss, a love song. He slumped back in the passenger seat, weak with exhaustion. It had taken a lot out of him, saying Elizabeth Montgomery’s name.

‘Just talk to her,’ I said, and his face burned again at the very thought of it.

He looked at me. ‘But what would I say?’

‘What do you want to say?’

‘I want to tell her…’ He shook his head, struck dumb, but then it came in a barely audible torrent. ‘I want to tell her that she is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. That her eyes – they shine. They just shine, that’s all. Like…black fire or something.’

I shifted uneasily in my seat.

‘Well, Pat, some of that stuff you might want to save for the second date.’

He was that age where he still believed in the secret language of girls.

The age where you believe that girls speak in an Esperanto that is alien to you – a mere boy, consumed with longing and unworthiness, tongue-tied by youth and yearning.

And I wanted to help him. I really did. I wanted to be the Yoda of love he could turn to. And even if it did not work out with him and Elizabeth Montgomery – if they never fell in love, if he was not the millionaire who shared her wedding day, if she never became the one the angels asked him to recall – then at least I thought I might be able to help him have a conversation with the girl. That did not seem too much to ask.

A distant bell began to ring. Elizabeth Montgomery moved off, the centre of attention in a blue-blazered crowd of boys and girls. It was not just Pat. Everybody loved Elizabeth Montgomery.

I drove him to school every morning. Although by the time they are pushing fifteen you no longer really drive them to school. You drive them close to school and let them walk the rest of the way before you have a chance to embarrass them with kisses, hugs or words of sage advice on the mysteries of attraction. He opened the passenger door.

‘You around tonight?’ I said.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. It had grown long over the summer. ‘I’ve got my Lateral Thinking Club after school and then I’m around,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m around,’ I said. ‘But late – there’s some black-tie thing. The show’s up for an award. Lateral Thinking?’

‘You know. Thinking outside the box. Creative thinking. Edward de Bono.’

‘Oh right – Edward de Bono. Used to be married to Cher. No, that was Sonny Bono. Before your time.’

‘Everybody was before my time,’ he laughed, getting out of the car. ‘I haven’t had my time yet.’

He slammed the door shut and looked at me through the window.

‘Enjoy your Lateral Thinking,’ I said. ‘And talk to her, kiddo. Talk to Elizabeth Montgomery.’

He waved and went. That was my son. Some kids his age were out mugging old ladies for their iPods. But he had his Lateral Thinking Club and his one-way love for Elizabeth Montgomery. I watched him go as the bell faded away.

Parents were still milling around, so I did not look twice at the woman parked directly across from the school gates. In fact, I didn’t really look at her once. But then she got out of her car and I saw that she was watching Pat too.

And now I looked.

She was tall, blonde, and a little too thin. Dressed for serious exercise – a dark tracksuit, proper trainers – and a raincoat thrown over the top of her running clothes. Looking a touch unkempt and exhausted, but who doesn’t in the aftermath of the school run? Despite the blue September sky, the morning was cold enough for me to see her breath.

I stared straight at her, and straight through her and then we both watched Pat go through the gates, the tail of his white shirt already coming out of his trousers, unfurling like a flag of surrender.

And then I looked at her again and something deep inside me fell away.

Because I always think that it is bizarre – no, I always think that it is unbelievable – that you can love someone, really and truly love someone, and then one day you do not recognise their face.

If you have loved someone, you would think that you would know that face always and forever – wouldn’t you? Shouldn’t every line of that face be stamped on your heart?

But it is not. Your heart forgets.