Tony Parsons - The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy - Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys

‘Listen, Harry. You don’t want me to move you sideways into some little nothing job that you could do with your eyes closed. That would look terrible, wouldn’t it?’

‘Marty,’ I said. ‘Marty. Hold on. Hold on just a minute. I really need this job. Now more than ever. There’s the thing with Gina – I’ve got Pat living with me – and I don’t know what’s going to happen. You know all that. And I can’t lose my job. Not now.’

‘I’m sorry, Harry. We need to make some changes.’

‘What is this? Punishment for not being available twenty-four hours a day when my marriage is breaking up? I’m sorry I wasn’t in the office this morning, okay? I can’t leave my son alone. I had to –’

‘Harry, there’s no need to raise your voice. We can do this in a civilised fashion.’

‘Come on, Marty. You’re Mister fucking Controversy. You’re not worried about a little scene, are you?’

‘I’m sorry, Harry. Siobhan’s in. You’re out. And you’ll thank me for it one day. This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. No hard feelings?’

The little shit actually held out his hand. I ignored it, getting up as quickly as I could and smacking my thighs against the side of the table.

He shook his head, all disappointed in me.

I began to walk out of the restaurant, my legs aching and my cheeks burning, only turning back when I heard Marty shriek with pain.

Somehow the waitress had spilled an entire plate of pasta in his lap.

‘Boy, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Would you like a little parmesan on that?’

My parents drove Pat home. My mother went around turning on all the lights while my father asked me how work was going. I told him that it was going great.

They stayed with Pat while I did our shopping at the local supermarket. It was only a five-minute drive away, but I was gone for quite a while because I was secretly watching all the women I took to be single mothers. I had never even thought about them before, but now I saw that these women were heroes. Real heroes.

They were doing it all by themselves. Shopping, cooking, entertaining, everything. They were bringing up their children alone.

And I couldn’t even wash Pat’s hair.

‘His hair’s filthy,’ my mum said as my parents were leaving. ‘It needs a good old wash.’

I knew that already. But Pat didn’t want me to wash his hair. He had told me so when I had casually dropped hair-washing into the conversation after we had come back from Glenn’s. Pat wanted his mother to wash his hair. The way she always did.

Yet we couldn’t put it off any longer. And soon he was standing in the middle of the soaking wet bathroom floor wearing just a pair of pants, his dirty blond hair hanging down over eyes that were red from tears and the baby shampoo that Gina still used on him.

It wasn’t working. I was doing something wrong.

I knelt by his side. He wouldn’t look at me.

‘What’s wrong, Pat?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing.’

We both knew what was wrong.

‘Mummy’s gone away for a little while. Won’t you let Daddy wash your hair?’

Stupid question. He shook his head.

‘What would a Jedi Knight do at a time like this?’ I asked him.

He didn’t reply. Sometimes a four-year-old doesn’t bother to reply.

‘Listen,’ I said, fighting back the urge to scream. ‘Do you think that Luke Skywalker cries when he has his hair washed?’

‘Don’t know, don’t care.’

I had tried to wash his hair with him leaning into the bath, but that hadn’t worked. So now I helped him out of his pants, scooped him up and placed him sitting down in the tub. He wiped snot from his little nose while I ran the water until it was the right temperature.

‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We should do this together more often.’

He scowled at me. But he leaned forward and allowed me to run the water over his head. Then he felt my hands applying more shampoo and something snapped. He stood up, throwing one of his legs over the side of the bath in a pitiful attempt to escape.

‘Pat!’ I said. ‘Sit down, please.’

‘I want Mummy to do it!’

‘Mummy’s not here! Sit down!’

‘Where is she? Where is she?’

‘I don’t know!’

He blindly tried to climb out of the bath, howling as the suds dripped into his eyes. I pushed him back down and held him there, quickly hosing off the shampoo and trying to ignore his screams.

‘This is not how a Jedi Knight acts,’ I said. ‘This is how a baby acts.’

‘I’m not a baby! You are!’

I towelled him down, took him by the hand and dragged him back to his bedroom, his little legs moving quickly to keep up with me. We glared at each other while I put him in his pyjamas.

‘Making such a fuss,’ I said. ‘I’m really disappointed in you.’

‘I want Mummy .’

‘Mummy’s not here.’

‘But when will I see her again?’ he said, suddenly plaintive. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know, darling.’

‘But what did I do?’ he said, and it broke my heart. ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it at all.’

‘You didn’t do anything. Mummy loves you very much. You’ll see her soon. I promise.’

Then I took him in my arms, smelling the shampoo that I had missed, holding him close for a long time, and wondering how two flawed adults had ever managed to make something so perfect.

I read him Where The Wild Things Are until he fell asleep. When I came out of his room there were three messages on the answer machine. All of them were from Gina.

‘I’m sorry, but I had to get away for a while. You’ll never know how much you hurt me. Never. It was supposed to be for life, Harry. Not until one of us got a bit bored. Forever – not until one of us decided that things were getting a bit dull in the old marital bed. It doesn’t work like that. It can never work like that. Do you think I could let you touch me when I know you’ve been touching someone else? Your hands, your mouth…I can’t stand all that. The lying, the sneaking around, the sound of someone crying themselves to sleep every night. I had enough of that when I was growing up. If you think –’

The machine cut her off. It only let you talk for a certain amount of time. There was a beep and then her second message. She was calmer now. Or trying to be.

‘I just spoke to Glenn. He told me that you collected Pat. That really wasn’t necessary. He was perfectly happy there. And I know how busy you are at work. But if you are going to look after him until I get back, then you need to know that he has his hair washed every Sunday. And don’t let him put sugar on his Coco Pops. He can go to the toilet by himself – you know that already – but sometimes he forgets to lift the lid. Make sure he cleans his teeth. Don’t let him watch Star Wars videos all the time. If he doesn’t sleep in the afternoon then make sure he’s in bed by no later than –’

Another beep. A final message. Not so calm any more, the words tumbling out.

‘Just tell Pat I love him, okay? Tell him I’ll see him very soon. Take good care of him until then. And don’t ever feel too sorry for yourself, Harry. You’re not Mr Wonderful. Women all over the world look after children alone. Millions of them do it. Literally millions. What’s so special about you?’

Long after I had turned off all the lights, I stayed there watching our boy sleep. And I saw that I had let everyone down.

Gina. My mother and father. Even Marty. I hadn’t been strong enough, I hadn’t loved them enough, I hadn’t been the man they wanted me to be, or the man that I wanted myself to be. In different ways, I had betrayed them all.