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

‘How’s Mummy?’

‘She’s all right. She’s got a cold.’

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t about to cry. His eyes were dry and his mouth was still. But he was down.

‘You want to watch a video?’ I asked him, watching him polish teeth that still looked brand new.

He spat into the sink and shot me a suspicious look.

‘It’s school tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I know it’s school tomorrow. I don’t mean watch the whole film. Just, say, the start of the first film up until the two ’droids get captured. How about that?’

He finished spitting and replaced his brush in the rack.

‘Want to go to bed,’ he said.

So I followed him into his bedroom and tucked him in. He didn’t want a story. But I couldn’t turn out the light knowing that he was depressed.

I knew what he was missing and it wasn’t even what you could call a mother’s love. It was a mother’s indulgence. Someone who would tell him that it didn’t matter if he couldn’t tie his shoes up yet. Someone who would tell him that he was still the centre of the universe when he had just learned what we all learn on our first day of school – that we are not the centre of the universe. I was so desperate for him to make it that I couldn’t be relaxed about him making it. Gina’s indulgence. That’s what he really missed.

‘She’ll be back,’ I said. ‘Your mother. You know that she’ll be back for you, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘As soon as she’s done her work,’ he said.

‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’ I asked him. ‘You and me – we’re doing okay, aren’t we?’

He stared at me, blinking away the fatigue, trying to understand what I was going on about.

‘We’re managing without Mummy, aren’t we, Pat? You let me wash your hair now. I make you things you like to eat – bacon sandwiches and stuff. And school’s okay, isn’t it? You like school. We’re all right, aren’t we? You and me?’

I felt bad about pushing him like this. But I needed him to tell me that we were doing all right. I needed to know that we were coping.

He gave me a tired smile.

‘Yes, we’re all right, Daddy,’ he said, and I kissed him goodnight, hugging him gratefully.

That’s the worst thing about splitting up, I thought as I turned out his light. It makes children hide their hearts. It teaches them how to move between separate worlds. It turns them all into little diplomats. That’s the biggest tragedy of all. Divorce turns every kid into half a pint of semi-skimmed Henry Kissinger.

‘I come from a little town called Kilcarney,’ said Eamon Fish, removing the mike from its stand and gently tapping the transparent hearing device in his left ear. ‘A quiet little town called Kilcarney where the girls are legendary.’

I was watching him on a monitor, sitting in the front row of the small studio audience that was facing the backsides of five cameramen. Although we were surrounded by all the usual paraphernalia of the television studio – lights burning in the rigging, cables snaking across the floor, the shadows beyond the cameras teeming with people whose jobs ranged from floor manager to working the autocue to pouring water, all of them wearing what we called ‘blacks’ – the director was shooting Eamon’s act to make it look more like a stand-up routine than just another late-night chat show. There were already too many talk shows that looked like boot sale David Lettermans. But what would really make it different was the host.

‘For those of you who have never been to that beautiful part of my country, you should know that Kilcarney has largely been untouched by the modern world. There are, for example, no vibrators in Kilcarney.’ The audience tittered. ‘It’s true. The priests had them all removed. Because Kilcarney girls kept chipping their teeth.’

There was laughter from the audience, laughter which grew slightly nervous as Eamon ambled off the small stage and slowly came closer to us.

‘I mean, I’m not saying Kilcarney girls are stupid,’ he said. ‘But why does a Kilcarney girl always wash her hair in her mother’s sink? Because that’s where you wash vegetables.’

The laughter grew louder. None of the studio audience – the usual collection of the bored and the curious on the lam for a couple of hours of free fun – had ever seen this Eamon Fish before. But now they felt he was harmless. Then he turned on them.

‘Actually, I’m making all this up,’ he said. ‘It’s all bollocks. Kilcarney girls have the best exam results in western Europe. In fact, the average Kilcarney girl has more A levels than the average Englishman has tattoos. It’s not true that the only difference between a Kilcarney girl and a mosquito is that a mosquito stops sucking if you hit it on the head. It’s not true that Kilcarney girls only get fifteen minutes for lunch because any longer than that and you have to retrain them. It’s not true that what Kilcarney girls and bottled Guinness have in common is that both of them are empty from the neck up. None of it is true.’

Eamon sighed, ran his free hand through his thick mop of black hair and sat down on the side of the stage.

‘What is true is that even in this Guardian -reading, muesli-munching, politically correct age we seem to need someone to hate. Once it was the thick Irishman and the ball-breaking mother-in-law. Now it’s blonde girls. Essex girls. Kilcarney girls.’

He shook his sleepy head.

‘Now we all know in our hearts that geographical location and hair colour have got bugger all to do with sexual morality or intelligence. So why do we need a group of people who we can sneer at? What fundamental need in our pathetic souls does it fulfil? When we laugh about the blonde Kilcarney girl from Essex who turns off the light after sex by closing the car door, what’s in it for us?’

It was only the pilot show, but I could already tell that Eamon was going to do it. After removing all the dried wax from his ears, he had crashed through the fear barrier and was learning how to be himself with five cameras watching. Fish was fine. I was more worried about the studio audience.

They had come in expecting to have their funny bones tickled, and had discovered that they were expected to defend their prejudices. They felt cheated, not good. It was a problem that we were always going to have with Eamon’s show. As I saw it, the only way to solve this dilemma was to get them all pissed.

At our first production meeting after the pilot I told the AP to open a few bottles and cans and serve them to the audience while they were waiting in line to come into the studio. Everybody looked at me as if I were a genius.

That’s what I love about television. You recommend opening a few cans of lager and they act as though you just painted the Sistine Chapel.

‘So, it’s a better job than the last one but they pay you less money,’ my father said. ‘How do they work that out then?’

‘Because I don’t work all week,’ I told him yet again.

We were in their back garden, supposedly kicking a ball around with Pat, although he had retreated to the far end of the garden with his light sabre and dreams of conquering intergalactic evil. So that left me and two pensioners kicking a plastic football around between us in the autumn-tinged sunlight.

It was turning cold, but we were reluctant to go back inside. It was late September. The year was running out. There wouldn’t be too many more Sunday afternoons like this one.

‘If it really is a better job then they should cough up the readies,’ said my dad, the international businessman, gently side-footing the ball to his wife. ‘All these TV companies are loaded.’

‘Not the ones Harry works for,’ my mum said, thinking she was being loyal, and trapping the ball under the sole of her carpet slipper.