Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

And now I can sort of understand how it works, I can see how the world turns around and the child becomes the parent, the protected becomes the protector.

“Don’t cry,” I tell her, just as she told me after I had lost my first playground fight. “Don’t cry now.”

But I can’t stop her. Because she’s not just crying for herself. She’s crying for Mike and Sandy.

You have to be a cold, hard man to walk out on a family and my father is not a cold, hard man.

Weak, perhaps. Selfish, definitely. Stupid, without question. But he is not cold and hard. At least, he is not cold and hard enough to do what he has just done-to amputate a family from his life-with ease. When I turn up at the doorstep of his rented flat, he looks torn. Torn between a life that is not quite over and another life that hasn’t quite begun.

“How’s your mother?”

“Take a wild guess. How do you think she is?”

“You’re too young to understand,” he tells me defensively, letting me inside.

Lena is not around. But there are the clothes of a young woman drying on a radiator.

“Understand what? That you felt the need for a bit on the side? That you thought you could play away and not get caught? That you’re an old man who’s desperate to recapture his youth? Understand what exactly?”

“To understand what can go wrong with a marriage. Even a good marriage. The passion wears off. It just does, Alfie. And then you have to decide if you can live without it. Or not. Do you want a cup of tea? I think we’ve got a kettle here somewhere.”

It’s a good flat in a rich, leafy area. But it is very small and it belongs to someone else. The color of the paint was chosen by someone else. The pictures on the wall were bought to satisfy the taste of some stranger. I try hard but I can’t imagine my father living here. In every way you can think of, this is just not his place. Everything feels rented, as though it could be repossessed at any moment, all snatched back by the rightful owner. The flat, the furniture, the girl. All just borrowed from someone else.

“How long is this going to last?” I ask him. He is still looking for a kettle. But he can’t find one. “Dad? Can we forget the tea? You no longer own a kettle, okay? Start living with it. No kettle. Okay?”

“What are you talking about?”

“How long are you going to stay here with Lena?”

“Until we can find somewhere better.”

“She’s-what?-twenty-three?”

“Twenty-five,” says my father. “Nearly.”

“Younger than me.”

“She’s very mature for her age.”

“I bet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I slump onto the leather sofa. My father hates leather sofas. Or he used to.

“Why couldn’t you have just slept with her?” I ask, although I am very afraid that he is going to start giving me the details of their Olympian sex life. Please. Anything but that. “Isn’t that what’s meant to happen? I can understand why you’re attracted to her. I can even sort of see why she would be attracted by you. An older, successful man. All that. But you’re not meant to set up home together. This is madness, Dad.”

My old man starts to pace up and down. The flat’s living room is easily the biggest room in the place but it’s still not very big. He takes a few steps and then he has to turn around. He is wringing his hands. I feel a jab of pity for the poor old bastard. He is not cut out for this game. He can’t play it as ruthlessly as it needs to be played.

“These things have a momentum of their own. I tried to keep it under control, I really did. For a while there I felt like the luckiest man alive. I had the perfect wife and the perfect mistress.”

“Your perfect wife wants to throttle you.”

“But it doesn’t last,” he says, ignoring me. “That time doesn’t last. It moves on. You can’t have it all. And you have to decide.” He turns to me, pleading for understanding. “Isn’t that what every man wants? A wife and a lover? We want stability, support, a quiet life. But we also want romance, excitement, passion. Why should it be wrong to want the best of both worlds?”

“Because it’s too much. You want too much. You ruin other people’s lives by wanting too much.”

“I can’t help falling in love. I didn’t plan for it to work out this way, Alfie.”

“Love,” I say. “Give me a break. Don’t call it love.”

“What else should I call it?” he says, suddenly angry. “Look, I’m sorry about your mother, Alfie. I really am. It’s terrible the way she found out. But the heart wants what the heart wants.”

“Dad,” I say. “Listen to me. Lena is a great girl. But she dances when she eats. She still dances when she eats, okay? Haven’t you noticed that? She bops around when she’s listening to the radio, even if she’s eating her breakfast. She’s a child.”

“She looks cute when she does that.”

“Come on. She’s young enough to be your daughter.”

“Age has nothing to do with it.”

“You’d love Lena if she was your age, would you? If she was almost sixty? I don’t believe you. And she wouldn’t want you if you were some kid of twenty-three living on a student loan and working in a burger joint.”

“Twenty-five,” he says. “Nearly.”

“You can work it out with Mum. Apologize. Ask her to forgive you. We all make mistakes. You can’t end a marriage because some au pair wags her tail at you.”

“I can’t do that. I’ve left your mother. And I’ve done it for love. Sorry, Alfie. But I have my principles.”

I feel like hitting him.

“You’ve insulted love,” I say, thinking of my mother’s garden. “You’ve spat in its face, you ridiculous old man. You have someone in your life who has stuck by you for years, who supported you when you had nothing, and you do this to her. Don’t talk to me about principles, okay? Don’t paint yourself as some kind of romantic hero. You’re not. And you didn’t leave. You ran away.”

He stops pacing.

“I’m sorry, Alfie. But I think I’ve done the right thing.”

“Oh, you think you did the right thing, do you? You think that getting caught with your swimming trunks around your ankles in front of absolutely everyone you know was a smart move, do you? Well, Dad, that’s open to debate.”

“Leaving. I did the right thing by leaving.” He gives me a strange look. “Did you know that your mother was expecting you when we got married?”

“I worked it out. It didn’t take a mathematical genius. There’s five months between your wedding and the day I was born.”

“She was pregnant. That’s why we got married. I loved her and everything. But we got married because-that’s what you did back then. It’s not like now. And do you know what they all told me? My family, my friends, my in-laws? They all told me: you’ve had your fun. And I said nothing. But I always thought: that was it? That was my fun?”

“You think the party’s just beginning, do you?”

“Look, I want to live with the person I want to sleep with. Is that so wrong? You’re a man. You should try to understand. They say that if you want to stay with them you don’t want to fuck them and if you want to fuck them then you don’t want to stay with them. But I know now that’s not true. Because I want it all from Lena.”

“But it’s not real. You’ve been listening to too many old records. This is not a Smokey Robinson song, Dad. This is real life.”

My father looks at me with something approaching pity.

“Don’t tell me about real life, Alfie,” he says quietly, and I know exactly what he is about to say next so I get up to go. I try to leave quickly because I don’t want to hear it, I am heading toward the door of his rented flat before he can even get the words out.