Tony Parsons - Man And Wife

I hung up the phone.

Peggy had disappeared.

I found her in her bedroom, hiding under her duvet. On the walls were posters of boy bands and Lucy Doll in all her incarnations, their fixed grins and perfect worlds shining down on one sad little girl.

I stroked her head. ’Your dad will see you next time, darling. You know he loves you.’

’He’s got a bad tooth.’

’I know.’

’And it hurts him.’

She sat up and I dried her eyes with an official Lucy Doll tissue, thinking what a great kid she was, and how she deserved better than her feckless father. But then every child in the world deserved a better father than Jim.

’Tell a story, Harry. Not from a book. Tell a story from your head. A real one.’

’A real one?’

’Urn.’

’Okay, Peg.’ I thought about it for a minute. ’Once upon a time, there was an old man called Geppetto.’

’That’s a funny name.’

’And Geppetto found a magical piece of wood that – guess what? – could laugh and cry.’

She gave me a dubious smile.

’Really?’

’Honestly.’

’You’re making this up, Harry,’ she said, her smile growing.

Tm not, Peg,’ I said, smiling back at her. ’Every single word is true. And from that piece of magic wood – guess what? Geppetto made Pinocchio.’

’Who was Pinocchio?’

’He was a puppet, Peg. Just this piece of wood that could act like a human. He could laugh and cry and everything. But what he wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be a real dad.’

Did I say dad?

I meant boy.

Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy.

’Only twice in your life do they pronounce you anything,’ Eamon said. ’The first is man and wife. The second is dead.’

There was always work. Even when my mother was sleeping with the lights on, and my wife was directing me to the condoms and my son was packing for a new life on the other side of the ocean, there was always work.

Work is far easier than family. It is easier to feel like you are some kind of successful human being at work. Whatever you do, don’t try that at home.

’I come from one of those huge Irish families,’ Eamon said, moving across a TV studio floor that was set and lit to look like one of those clubs where he honed his stand-up routine. ’Ten kids.’

Whistles from the audience, who were encouraged to act as though they were in some intimate Soho basement, rather than an antiseptic television studio in White City.

’Yeah, I know. Can you believe it? Ten of us. But after the tenth my parents had this great method of contraception. Never failed. Every night before they went to bed, they would spend a couple of hours with me and my brothers and sisters.’

Even when my ex-wife was accusing me of harassing her husband, and talking about restraining orders, when there was really no need because soon I would be restrained by the Atlantic Ocean, there was still work. And when every hour with my son felt like another hour gone – that’s what the absent dad feels most acutely, not the being with, but the countdown to the being apart – there was still work, with its cold crumbs of comfort, with its quick fix of fulfilment, and Eamon and his brilliant career.

’One day my dad came home early and found me mam in bed with the milkman,’ Eamon said. ’She was naturally horrified. ”Oh God!” she says. ”Don’t tell the postman!’”

Eamon Fish had come a long way since he first showed up at my door two years ago, dark-eyed and good-looking and scared, fresh off the stand-up circuit, wondering if TV was going to make him famous or swallow him alive. Now he had all the trappings of success – a show that was in its fourth series, three National Television Awards, two undecorated flats in fashionable neighbourhoods (Temple Bar, Dublin and Docklands, London) and – oh yes – a £200-a-day cocaine habit.

Despite coming so far from the green fields of Kilcarney, and despite making such a splash in London, Eamon still enjoyed playing the wide-eyed Irish boy, fresh off the farm and the early Aer Lingus flight from Cork. He clung to the myths of his past life like a drowning man with a wonky lifebelt.

I had produced Eamon’s late-night talk show from the start. Fish on Friday worked because we played to Eamon’s strengths. Despite those two years on the box, he was still a stand-up at heart. He could talk to the guests, banter with all the bit players of the showbiz whirl, but he was never so good as when he was talking to himself.

’Most of the babies in Kilcarney are very beautiful. It’s true, I tell you.’ The little nervous cough he used for punctuation. Stolen from his hero, Woody Allen, although Eamon had made that cough his own. ’But I was so ugly when I was born that the midwife said, ”He’s not done yet,” and shoved me back in. I don’t know. It’s so different over here – all the gynaecologists are men. What’s that about? That’s like getting a mechanic who has never owned a car.’

His monologues about the men and women back in his home town of Kilcarney were always the best segments, with the biggest laughs, and when he was most at ease. And he was young enough to still be getting better. After two years in front of the cameras, Eamon had a confidence that wasn’t there before. These days Eamon wasn’t quite so desperate to be liked, he could relax into his material, knowing that he still had control over his audience. Like other people I had worked with in television, his audience was the one thing in his life that he could actually control.

’I’m thinking of getting back together with my girlfriend. Mem. She’s Thai. A dancer. Well, not really a dancer.’ Cough. ’More of a stripper.’ Cackles all round. The studio audience were eating out of his hand. They laughed even when he wasn’t joking. ’Great, great girl. And I look at all these photographs of when we were together – on holiday in Koh Samui, at Christmas in Kilcarney, the lap dance she gave me for my birthday – and it just feels like we should be together. But those photographs are a warped record of our relationship. I know that. Where are all the bad times? We didn’t take photos of those. And I wonder why we only take pictures of the good times. Why didn’t I take a photograph of Mem when she had cystitis? Her PMT – where’s that in the photo album?’ Rueful laughter. Mocking catcalls from the girls. ’We broke up because we disagreed about marriage. Single men actually know more about marriage than married men. If we didn’t, we would be married too. Personally I think that marriage consists of overestimating the difference between one woman and all the other women. And my ex-girlfriend thinks – oh, Jesus, Jesus.’

Suddenly there was blood everywhere. The blood was over Eamon’s hands and face, splashing on the microphone. So much blood that you couldn’t see where it was coming from.

The floor manager stared at me, as Eamon reeled backwards, covering his face with his hands, and the audience gasped shocked, appalled, but laughing a little, wondering if this was all part of the act. I was making cut-it, cut-it, cut-it gestures across my throat to the director up in the gallery when it dawned on me that the blood was coming from Eamon’s nose.

There was always work. No matter how bad things got at home, there was always that.

Then Eamon’s nose almost fell off on live television. And then there wasn’t even work.

Pat didn’t talk about moving.

I knew Gina had discussed it with him, had tried to explain why it was happening and what it would mean. She had spoken of Richard’s job in Manhattan, the family home in Connecticut

– names that were as remote to Pat as Mars and Venus. She had attempted to reassure him that although he wouldn’t see me every Sunday, like now, there would be long, long holidays where he could stay with me and see his grandmother and Bernie Cooper and all the things he loved in London. She had told our son that he would be happy.