Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

She slips her book inside her nylon coat and picks up her bucket. Then she walks out without saying another word.

“Some people just can’t take a joke,” says Lenny the Lech.

Lena is waiting at the end of our street.

There’s an old spit-and-sawdust pub on the corner and grinning men with pints in their fists are looking out of the stained windows at her, leering and evaluating and scratching bellies that are displayed like prize gourds.

“Alfie.”

I walk straight past her.

“You used to like me.”

I look at her, this young woman who has bewitched my father, made him move to a rented flat, encouraged him to search for his youth on a rowing machine, made him drop his swimming trunks in a public place, and I try hard to find her ridiculous. It’s difficult. She has got the blonde hair and legs that go on like a river, but I know she is no bimbo. I know that she is smart. Although how smart can she be if she has shacked up with my old man?

Lena is not ridiculous. It’s the situation that’s ridiculous. It’s my father who is absurd.

“I still like you,” I say.

“You just don’t like the thought of anyone having sex with your father. Except your mother.”

“Not even my mother, now you come to mention it.”

We smile at each other.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Lena. It’s hard to think of you as a friend of the family. My family is in pieces.”

I look at her, trying to imagine how my father sees her. I can understand how he could fall for the face, the legs, the body. I can understand how exciting she must be after half a lifetime of marriage. But surely he can see that wanting her is being greedy?

“You should understand, Alfie. If you love someone, you want to be with them.”

“My father doesn’t know the first thing about love.”

“Why are you like this? I know you feel sorry for your mother. But it’s more than that.”

“Because he wants too much. Too much life. He’s had his life. He should accept that.”

“You can’t want too much life.”

“You can, Lena. You can be a glutton for life, just like you can be a glutton for food or drink or drugs. If this thing with you is more than just a fling, if my dad really wants to start again, if it’s serious, then he wants more than he deserves.”

She asks me if I want a coffee and I agree to go across the road with her to the little Italian café called Trevi, just to get her off the street. It’s not the grinning fat men in the old spit-and-sawdust pub that bother me. It’s the thought that my mother might come around the corner at any moment.

“I just don’t understand what’s in it for you,” I say when we have ordered our cappuccino. “You haven’t got any visa problems, have you? There are no problems staying in the country, are there?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Why not? I don’t get it. Even if you want an older man, you don’t have to go for my dad. I mean, there’s old and there’s ready for the knacker’s yard. There’s old and there’s Jurassic Park.”

“He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s wise. He’s kind. He’s lived.”

“I’ll say.”

“He knows things. He’s seen life. And I love his book. Oranges for Christmas. It’s just like him. Full of tenderness and heart.”

“What about my mother? What happens to her? Is she just meant to crawl into the corner? Where’s the tenderness and heart for her?”

“I’m sorry for your mother. I really am. She was always very good to me. But these things happen. You know that. When two people fall in love, someone else often gets hurt.”

“It can never work. He’s an old man. You’re a student.”

“Not anymore.”

“He’s not an old man anymore?”

“I’m not a student anymore. I’m not going to do my MBA. What’s the point?”

“What happened?”

“I dropped out of college. I’m going to be Mike’s personal assistant.”

“Mike doesn’t need a personal assistant.”

“He does, Alfie. There are always people calling him up and asking him to write things. To do events. To appear on TV or radio.”

“What he needs is an answer machine.”

“He needs someone to protect him from the outside world. He can’t concentrate. I can help him. He can take care of the writing. I’ll deal with everything else. That’s more worthwhile than any degree. And it will give us a chance to be together all the time.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“You should be happy for us, Alfie. He needs me. And I need him.”

“You both need your heads examined. Especially you.”

“Older people can be amazing, Alfie. We saw your grandmother. We took her some of those chocolates she likes. With the old-fashioned soldiers and the ladies on the box. Something street.”

“Quality Street. She said that you ate all the soft ones.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry at me.”

“I’m not angry at you. I feel sorry for you. I’m angry at my father. You’re silly. He’s a cruel, stupid coward.”

“Oh, Alfie. He’s a wonderful man.”

I shake my head. “He’s only doing this-setting up home with you-because he was forced into it.”

“It would have happened anyway.”

“That’s not what married men do. Married men stay. They stay in their homes for as long as they can.” Under the table, I touch the ring I still wear. “They stay until they are forced out.”

I get a complaint about Lenny the Lech from one of my students. Yumi, the Japanese girl with all the blond hair, stays behind after class and tells me he has been pestering her.

“In the corridor he tries to touch me. He always says-‘Come for a drink, baby. Let me give you extra lessons, baby. Oral lessons, baby. Ha ha ha.’ ” She shakes her head. “I don’t want those kind of lessons from Lenny the Lech. He’s not even my teacher. You are.”

“Can’t you tell him you’re not interested?”

“He doesn’t listen.”

Her eyes well up with tears and I pat her arm.

“I’ll have a word with him, okay?”

During morning break I find Lenny in the staff room. He is drinking instant coffee with Hamish, a fit-looking thirty-year-old down from Glasgow who is far too good-looking to be heterosexual.

“So basically you came to London because you’re a bum bandit?” Lenny is saying.

“You could put it like that,” says Hamish. “I came here because it’s the best place to pursue a discreetly gay lifestyle.”

“And does a discreetly gay lifestyle mean you have a committed relationship with one partner? Or that you get jerked off on Hampstead Heath every night by a succession of anonymous strangers?”

“Can I have a word, Lenny?” I say.

I take him to one side. He puts his arm around me. Lenny is a very tactile man. But it’s more than that. I think he actually likes me. Because I have also taught in Asia, he is under the illusion that we are the same kind of guy.

“What is it, my old mate?”

“It’s a bit embarrassing, Lenny. One of my students has had a word with me. About you. Yumi.”

“The little Jap model? Miss Toyota, 1998? Not very big but you can bet she really burns your rubber.”

“Yumi. The girl with all the hair. The thing is, Lenny, she says you’re misreading the signals.”

“Misreading the signals?”

“How can I put it? She’s not interested in you, Lenny.” Lenny’s monstrous sweating head is corrugated with a frown. “God knows why not, Len, but there you go. Women, eh? It’s just not going to happen, mate.”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Lenny says. “I really am. I had no idea little Yumi was spoken for.”

“No, it’s not-”

“There’s plenty more fish in the sea.” He chortles in that Lenny the Lech way. “I’ll cast my enormous hook elsewhere.” He slaps me on the back. “No problemo.”