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

‘Come on, Gina. Forget all that stuff about finding yourself. This is all about punishing me.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing coming out here. But a few words from you and suddenly I know I did the right thing.’

‘So you’re staying out there, are you? In your flat the size of our kitchen?’

‘I’ll be back. But just to collect Pat. To bring him out here. I really want to make a go of it, Harry. I hope you can understand.’

‘You’re kidding, Gina. Pat out there? I can’t even get him to eat beans on toast. I can just see him tucking into a plate of sprats on rice. And where’s he going to live? In a flat the size of our kitchen?’

‘Christ, I wish I’d never mentioned the size of the bloody flat. I just can’t talk to you any more.’

‘Pat stays with me, okay?’

‘For now,’ she said. ‘That’s what we agreed.’

‘I’m not handing him over until it’s the best thing for him. Not you. Him. That’s what I agree to, okay?’

Silence. And then a different voice.

‘That’s for the lawyers to decide, Harry.’

‘You tell your lawyer – Pat stays with me. You were the one who left. Tell him that.’

‘And you tell your lawyer that you were the one who was fucking around!’

‘I can’t – I don’t have a lawyer.’

‘You should get one, Harry. If the thought of trying to steal my son from me ever crosses your mind, then get a very good lawyer. But you don’t mean it. We both know you can’t look after Pat permanently. You can’t even look after yourself. You just want to hurt me. Look – do you want to talk about it like adults? Or do you want to argue?’

‘I want to argue.’

There was a sigh.

‘Is Pat there?’

‘No – he’s out having dinner with a few of his fast-set pals. Of course he’s here. He’s four years old. Where do you expect him to be? On a hot date with Naomi Campbell? I told you he’s in the bath. Didn’t I tell you that?’

‘You told me. Can I talk to him?’

‘Sure.’

‘And Harry?’

‘What?’

‘Happy birthday.’

‘That’s tomorrow ,’ I said angrily. ‘My birthday is tomorrow .’

‘Where I am it’s almost tomorrow.’

‘I’m not in Japan, Gina. I’m here.’

‘Happy birthday anyway. For tomorrow.’

‘Thanks.’

I got Pat from the bath, dried him down and wrapped him in a towel. Then I knelt in front of him.

‘Mummy wants to talk to you,’ I said. ‘She’s on the phone.’

It was the same every day. There was a jolt of surprise in those blue eyes and then something that could have been either joy or relief. By the time I gave him the receiver he looked more guarded.

‘Hello?’ he whispered.

I guess I was expecting bitter tears, angry recriminations, torrents of emotion. But Pat was always cool and composed, muttering one-word answers to Gina’s questions until he eventually handed me the phone.

‘I don’t need to talk to Mummy any more,’ he said quietly.

He walked off to the living room, the towel still wrapped around him like a shawl, leaving a trail of small wet footprints behind him.

‘I’ll call him again tomorrow,’ Gina told me, more upset than I had expected her to be, in fact so unravelled that I felt better than I had for days. ‘Is that okay, Harry?’

‘Any time is fine,’ I said, wanting to ask her how we had got to a place where we threatened each other with lawyers, how two people who had been so close could become a divorce-court cliché.

Was it really all my fault? Or was it just random bad luck, like getting hit by a car or catching cancer? If we had loved each other so much, then why hadn’t it lasted? Was it really impossible for two people to stay together forever in the lousy modern world? And what was all of this going to do to our son?

I really wanted to know. But I couldn’t ask Gina any of that stuff. We were on opposite sides of the world.

We were halfway to my parents’ house when my mobile rang. It was my mother. She was usually a calm, unflappable woman, the still centre at the heart of the family. But not today.

‘Harry!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s your dad.’

God, I thought – he’s dead. On my thirtieth birthday. Even today he has to be the centre of attention.

‘What happened?’

‘We were burgled.’

Christ. Even out there. Even that deep into the suburbs. Nowhere was safe any more.

‘Is he okay? Are you okay?’

‘Please, Harry…come quick…the police are on their way…please…I can’t talk to him…’

‘Hang on, okay? Hang on, Mum. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.’

I hung up, swinging the car out into the fast lane and slamming the accelerator to the floor. The MGF surged forward, as if this were the moment it had been built for.

On the passenger seat next to me, Pat laughed out loud.

‘Wicked,’ he said.

Now where did he get that from?

My mother opened the door in her best dress, all dolled up for her son’s birthday. But her party clothes were undermined by the white, shaken look on her face.

‘It’s awful, Harry. We were burgled. In the living room. Look.’

She took Pat off to the kitchen, gently deflecting his questions about his granddad, and I let myself into the living room, steeling myself for the sight of my father half-dead in a dark puddle of blood. But the old man was standing by the fireplace, his sunburned face creased with pleasure. I had never seen him look happier.

‘Hello, Harry. Happy birthday, son. Have you met our guests?’

At his feet were two youths, belly down on the carpet with their hands tied behind their backs.

At first I thought I recognised them – they had exactly the same washed-out menace that I had seen on the face of Sally’s boyfriend over at Glenn’s place, although they didn’t look quite so menacing now – but I only recognised the type. Expensive trainers, designer denim, hair so slick with gel that it looked as sticky and brittle as the skin of a toffee apple. My dad had trussed them up with the pair of silk ties I had bought him last Christmas.

‘Saw them out on the street a bit earlier. Skylarking around, they were. But it turned out to be a bit more than skylarking.’

Sometimes it felt like my old man was the curator of the English language. As well as his love for outmoded hipster jive, another peculiarity of his speech was his use of expressions from his youth that everyone else had thrown out with their ration books.

He was always using words like skylarking – his arcane expression for mischief, fooling around and generally just mucking about – words that had gone out of fashion around the same time as the British Empire.

‘They came in through the French windows, bold as brass. Thought nobody was home. Your mother was doing the shopping for your birthday – she’s got a lovely roast – and I was upstairs getting spruced up.’

Getting spruced up. That was another one he was preserving for the archives.

‘They were trying to unplug the video when I walked in. One of them had the cheek to come at me.’ He lightly prodded the thinnest, meanest looking youth with a carpet slipper. ‘Didn’t you, old chum?’

‘My fucking brother’s going to fucking kill you,’ the boy muttered, his voice as harsh in this room where I had been a child as a fart in church. There was a yellow and purple bruise coming up on one of his pimply cheekbones. ‘He’ll kill you, old man. He’s a gangster.’

My dad chuckled with genuine amusement.

‘Had to stick one on him.’ My father threw a beefy right hook into the air. ‘Caught him good. Went out like a bloody light. The other one tried to make a run for it, but I just got him by the scruff of the neck.’