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

‘I haven’t held one of these for years,’ Eamon said. ‘But you never forget, do you?’ He grinned at Pat. ‘I come from a little town called Kilcarney. And when I was growing up, I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker felt growing up on Tatooine. You know Tatooine?’

‘Luke’s home planet,’ Pat said. ‘With the two suns.’

‘What’s that?’ Eamon said. ‘Luke’s home planet, you say? Well, that’s right. And he felt cut off from the rest of the galaxy, didn’t he? Luke felt a long way from the action, stuck out there under the two suns of old Tatooine. And when I was growing up in sleepy old Kilcarney, I also dreamed of escaping and having lots of adventures in faraway places that I could hardly imagine.’ He handed Pat his light sabre. ‘And that’s exactly what I did.’

‘Yes,’ said Peggy. ‘But what happened between then and now?’

‘What’s that you say?’

Was he completely deaf?

‘I said – what happened between leaving your home planet and today ?’ Peggy shouted.

‘Well, that’s what I want to talk to your daddy about,’ Eamon said.

‘He’s not my daddy,’ Peggy said. ‘My daddy’s got a motorbike.’

‘The boy’s mine,’ I said, indicating Pat. He was still staring at Eamon with profound approval for his light sabre technique.

‘He’s got it,’ Eamon said, smiling with what seemed like real warmth. ‘Around the chin, I mean. He’s got it. He’s a handsome lad, all right.’

‘Come into the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘I’ll make us some coffee.’

‘Coffee, you say? Top man.’

While I put the kettle on he sat at the kitchen table poking his ears with an index finger and muttering to himself.

‘Bad day?’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

I put a cup of coffee down in front of him and put my face very close to his. He had those black Irish good looks and a long-term scruffiness, like a Kennedy who has just spent the summer sleeping in a doorway. And he seemed to be as deaf as a post.

‘I said – what’s wrong with your hearing?’

‘Ah that,’ he said. ‘Let me explain about the ears thing. There’s a posh place down in the West End where they fit hearing aids. But they also fit ear pieces – for television presenters. So their producers and directors can talk into their lugholes while they’re presenting a programme. You might know the place.’

I knew it well. I remembered when Marty had been down there to get fitted for his ear pieces. That’s when we knew we were really leaving radio.

‘I just came from there,’ Eamon said. ‘Left in a bit of a hurry, as it happens. What the hearing man does when he is measuring you up, he pours some stuff like warm wax into your ears. Then you have to wait for a while until it sets. And then they know what size ears you have. For your ear pieces, that is.’

‘I understand.’

‘Except with me, he never got quite that far. He had just poured the hot wax into my ears and we were waiting for it to set when I thought – what the fuck am I doing here?’ Eamon shook his head. Flakes of dried wax flew out. ‘What makes me think that I can present a television show? What makes anyone think that I can present a television show? I’m a comedian. I do stand-up. Some people like it. But so what? Why does that mean I will be able to present a TV show?’

‘So you were being fitted for your ear pieces and you got stage fright.’

‘Before I got anywhere near a stage,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you could dignify it with the term stage fright. I suppose a bollock-shrivelling panic attack is probably more what it was. Anyway, I ran out of there with the wax still sloshing about in my ears. It seems to have set quite well.’

I gave him a tissue and some cotton buds and watched him scrape the hardened wax out of his ears. They always measure them for two ear pieces, one in either ear, although nobody ever uses more than one. Now I saw that it was just a ploy to stop you running away.

‘I really wanted you to produce the show,’ he said. ‘I need – what do they call it? – an enabler. Someone to show me the way. Same as you showed Marty Mann the way when he left his radio show. I was disappointed when they said you weren’t going to do it.’

‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ I said. ‘I’m looking after my son. Alone. I can’t go back to work full-time. I need to be around for him.’

‘But I notice he’s wearing a uniform. Isn’t the little feller at school now?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So he’s out of the house for most of the day?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So – forgive me asking – what do you do all day, Harry?’

What did I do all day? I got Pat up, got him dressed and got him off to school. I shopped and cleaned. I was waiting for him at the school gates in the afternoon when he came out. Then I made sandwiches, read to him and got him ready for bed. What did I do all day?

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Don’t you miss it? Work, I mean?’

‘Sure I miss it. I used to have quality time with my son – meaning I saw him for five minutes at the start and at the end of each day. Now I have quantity time instead. I didn’t choose that change. That’s just the way it has worked out. But that’s why I can’t produce the show for you.’

‘But you could be the executive producer, couldn’t you? You could come in a few times a week just to oversee the show? You could tell me what I need to do to stop looking like a complete eejit? You could help me play to my strengths, couldn’t you?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

I had never even considered the possibility that there was a compromise between working full-time and not working at all. It had never crossed my mind.

‘Look, I admire what you’re doing with your boy,’ Eamon said. ‘Believe me, you would go down a storm with the mothers of Kilcarney. But I need you. I’m here for really selfish reasons. I’m shitting coloured lights about presenting this show. That’s why I’m dropping bits of hardened wax all over your kitchen floor. And I know you can get me through it without total humiliation. It might even be good.’

I thought about the long mornings and endless afternoons when Pat wasn’t around. And I thought about my most recent meeting with the bank manager, who was impressed by my efforts to look after my son and less impressed by my expanding overdraft.

But most of all I thought about how good Eamon had been with Pat – admiring his light sabre, talking to him about Luke’s home planet, telling me that he was a special kid.

I knew that at this stage of my life – and at all the future stages of my life, come to that – I would like anyone who liked my boy. When you are alone with a child, you want as many people rooting for him as you can get. This young Irish comic with dried wax in his ears seemed to be on our side. And so I found myself on his side, too.

I was ready to work with him on a part-time basis because I was bored and broke. But most of all I was ready to work with him because he thought my son was going to make it.

‘I need to see your act,’ I said. ‘I need to see what you do on stage so I can think about how it could work on the box. Have you got a show reel?’

‘What?’ he said.

Whatever the opposite of inscrutable is, that’s what small children are.

Maybe in ten years’ time Pat would be able to hide his feelings behind some blank adolescent mask and the old man – me – wouldn’t have a clue what he was thinking. But he was four going on five and I could tell that the latest phone call from his mother had given him the blues.

‘You okay, Pat?’

He nodded listlessly, and I followed him down to the bathroom where he squirted some children’s toothpaste on his Han Solo toothbrush.