Tony Parsons - Man And Wife

’You two boys come far?’ he said.

I held my son close.

’Oh yes,’ I said. ’We’ve come a very long way.’

Cyd had hung balloons on the front door, and it filled me with gratitude and love.

She was waiting for us as I paid the driver, wreathed in smiles. As I dragged Pat’s suitcase up our garden path she crouched down and threw her arms around him and I felt like we were becoming a real family at last.

Peggy was in the living room watching a Lucy Doll video. It was a film that Peggy and I had watched before, an animated double bill featuring a cheapo cartoon version of Lucy Doll Rock and Roll and her blank-faced band getting stranded in a fifties time warp.

’Lucy Doll Rock and Roll and her friends can’t wait to join the hep teens down at the soda shop for a bebopping, finger-licking good time,’ said Peggy. ’Strap yourself in for action, because the countdown to fun has begun!’

Pat smiled shyly at his oldest friend.

’Hello, Pat,’ Peggy said with the brisk formality of minor royalty. ’So how’s America?’

’Good,’ he said. ’I’ve got a dog. His name’s Britney. He’s not allowed in the house because he licks his willie right in front of everybody.’

’Sorry to disappoint you, Pat,’ sniffed Peggy. ’But he can’t be a boy dog if his name is Britney. Because Britney is a girl’s name, stupid.’

Pat looked up at me for support. ’Britney is a boy dog, isn’t he?’

I thought of Britney licking his enormous great penis at the dinner table.

’I would say so, darling.’

’Do you want to watch Lucy Doll’s American Graffiti with me?’ said Peggy. ’Lucy Doll Rock and Roll magically comes to life in this stunning adaptation of the much loved classic.’

Cyd and I smiled at each other. She gave my arm a little squeeze. She knew how much this meant to me.

Pat considered the vision in pink doing a Chuck Berry duck-walk across the TV screen.

’Lucy Doll sucks,’ he said.

’Pat,’ I said.

’Lucy Doll sucks big time.’

’ Pat.’

’Lucy Doll can kiss my royal ass.’

’Pat, I’m warning you.’

’Lucy Doll can go fuck herself.’

And it sort of went downhill from there.

I had never seen my mother so happy in my life.

This was more than happiness. Seeing her grandson again provoked a kind of ecstasy, a kind of delirious abandon. My mum lost herself in her grandson.

Before I had the handbrake on she had picked him up and squeezed the air out of him. She held him at arm’s length and stared with wonder at his gorgeous face. She shook her head, unable to believe that he was back.

If only for a week.

We went inside. Pink and purple leaflets were strewn across her coffee table. My mother quickly began to gather them up. But not before I caught sight of some of the titles.

Here for You. Coping with a Diagnosis. Breast Reconstruction. Friends of Breast Cancer Care. Going into Hospital. Zoladex. Taxol. Taxotere. Arimidex. Chemotherapy. Radiotherapy.

I didn’t even understand half of the titles. But I knew what they all meant.

’You okay, Mum?’ I asked, the most useless question of all, but one I couldn’t stop myself asking. Because I wanted so much for her to tell me that everything was going to be all right, and that she would always be in this world.

’Oh, I’m fine,’ she said, not wanting to make a fuss, seeking to avoid self-pity and melodrama at all costs. ’They sent me this stuff. I don’t know how they expect me to read it all.’

She gathered up her cancer leaflets and stuffed them into a drawer.

Then she clapped her hands.

’I’m going to make a nice cup of tea for my two boys,’ she said. ’How about that?’

’I can’t have caffeine,’ Pat said, picking up the television remote. ’Mummy said.’

’And I’ve already had a few cappuccinos,’ I said. ’My doctor doesn’t want me to have more than three shots of caffeine a day. Bad for blood pressure, you see.’

’Oh,’ said my mum, bewildered. ’Oh, all right. I’ll just make one for myself then, shall I?’

So Pat and I slumped on that sagging old sofa that seemed to know every last nook and curve in our bodies and my mum went off to the kitchen, humming Dolly Parton’s ’Jolene’, and contemplating this strange new world where her son and grandson were both forbidden from having a nice cup of tea.

Later we were in the park watching Pat tackle the upper regions of a rusty climbing frame. He wasn’t the tentative small boy he had been only a couple of years earlier. Now he was as fearless as a mountain goat.

Two bigger boys were clambering around the very top like monkeys in Tommy Hilfiger. Every now and again Pat would pause, hold on tight, and gaze up at them with adoration. He still loved bigger boys. They ignored him completely.

’It’s good to have him back,’ I said. ’Feels more like a proper family again. Especially when we are out here with you. Just a regular family where you don’t have to think too much about anything. Where it all seems – I don’t know – normal. Like you and Dad.’

My father would have happily concurred with my yearning for normality. The old man would have bemoaned the death of the family, the rise in the divorce rate, the generation of children who were being brought up with one of their parents missing. He would have done all that while rolling himself a cigarette.

My dad was all for normality.

But my mum was made of different stuff.

’What’s normal?’ she said. ’Your dad and I were married for ten years before you came along. You call us normal? We felt like anything but normal. We felt like freaks.’

The two bigger boys jumped off the climbing frame and ran to the swings. Pat smiled at them with undiluted affection.

’All our friends were having children,’ my mum said. ’Like a bunch of rabbits, they were. One of them always had a bun in the oven. Up the spout, in the club, knocked up. But it didn’t happen for us.’ She gave a smile. ’And you call us normal, Harry. Bless you. We didn’t feel very normal, I can tell you.’

I watched my son laboriously edging his way up the climbing frame, his face stern with concentration, and rosy-cheeked from the cold.

’You know what I mean. We were normal. You, me and Dad.’

And I thought of Christmas with all the aunts and uncles, caravan holidays in Cornwall, the smell of the Sunday roast cooking while my old man washed his car in the little driveway. I remembered runs to Southend, not for the pier or the beach, but for the dog track. And I remembered lying on the back seat of the car, the yellow lights of the Essex A-roads streaming about my head, coming home from seeing my nan or, once a year, a pantomime at the London Palladium, telling my mum that I couldn’t sleep, I wasn’t tired, not tired at all. Just rest your eyes, she would tell me. Just rest your eyes. There was a simplicity and a goodness about my childhood, and already it seemed too late for my son to have the same thing. ’You couldn’t get more normal than us,’ I said.

’So we became normal when you came along? And if you hadn’t come along, we would have stayed freaks?’

’I don’t know. I just know it felt sort of easy. In a way that it doesn’t feel easy any more. Pat and Peggy are not talking. Cyd’s angry with me because she thinks I’m spoiling Pat. I’m mad at Cyd because I think she resents Pat coming over for just one lousy week.’

’Why aren’t Pat and Peggy talking?’

’They had a bit of a bust-up. He called Lucy Doll a two-dollar crack whore. You know how Peggy feels about Lucy Doll.’

’Brothers and sisters fight all the time. I nearly stabbed one of my brothers.’