The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy: Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys

Pat skipped on ahead of us, brandishing his light sabre and howling. When he arrived at the climbing frame he stood there in silence, shyly watching two bigger boys clamber around on the higher part of the frame. He was always full of admiration for bigger boys. Gina and I watched our son watching them.

‘I miss you like crazy,’ I said. ‘Please come home.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t some mad, passionate affair. It was just one night.’

‘It’s never just one night. If you can do it once, you can do it again. Again and again and again. And next time it will be easier. I’ve seen it all before, Harry. Seen it all with Glenn.’

‘Jesus, I’m nothing like your dad. I don’t even wear an earring.’

‘I should have known,’ she said. ‘The romantic ones are always the worst. The hearts and flowers brigade. The ones who promise never to look at another woman. Always the worst. Because they always need that new fix. That regular shot of romance. Don’t you, Harry?’

I didn’t like the way she was talking about me, as though I were indistinguishable from every other man in the world, as though I were just one of the hairy adulterous masses, as though I were just another sad salary man who got caught fucking around. I wanted to still be the one.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you, Gina. And I’ll always be sorry about it. You’re the last person in the world I would want to hurt.’

‘It can’t always be a honeymoon, you know.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said, but deep down inside what I thought was – Why not? Why not?

‘We’ve been together for years. We have a child together. It can never be all that Romeo and Juliet crap again.’

‘I understand all that,’ I said, and most of me really did. But a tiny, tiny part of me wanted to say – Oh, I’m off then.

Gina was right – I wanted us to be the way we were at the start. I wanted us to be like that forever. And you know why? Because we were both so happy then.

‘You think it’s been easy living in our house?’ she said, suddenly flaring up. ‘You think it’s easy listening to you whining about not being a teenager any more, getting Pat to stop watching Star Wars for five minutes, taking care of the house? And you’re no help. Like every man on the planet, you think that as long as you do your little job, your work is done.’

‘Well,’ I said, taken aback. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t leave years ago.’

‘You didn’t give me a reason. Until now. I’m only thirty, Harry. Sometimes I feel like an old woman. You tricked me,’ she said. ‘You tricked me into loving you.’

‘Just come back home. You and me and Pat. I want it to be the way it was before.’

‘It can never be that way again. You changed it all. I trusted you and you broke my trust. You made me feel stupid for trusting you.’

‘People don’t break up because of a one-night stand, Gina. It’s not what grown-ups do. You don’t chuck it all away because of something like that. I know it hurts. I know what I did was wrong. But how did I suddenly go from being Mr Wonderful to Mr Piece of Shit?’

‘You’re not Mr Piece of Shit, Harry.’ She shook her head, trying to stop herself from crying. ‘You’re just another guy. I can see that now. No different from the rest. Don’t you get it? I invested so much in you being special. I gave up so much for you, Harry.’

‘I know you did. You were going to work abroad. You were going to experience another culture. It was going to be incredible. And then you stayed here because of me. I know all that. That’s why I want to make this marriage work. That’s why I want to try again.’

‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,’ Gina said, ‘and I’ve worked out that nobody is interested in a woman who stays at home with her child. Not even her husband. Especially not her husband. I’m so boring, he has to sleep around.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Looking after your child – it should be the most respected job in the world. It should be worth more than going to any office. But it’s not. Do you know how many people at your fucking little television dinners and parties and launches have made me feel like nothing at all? And what do you do?’ She made it sound like a sneer. ‘And what do you do? Me? Well, I don’t do anything. I just stay at home and look after my little boy. And they stare right through you – the women as well as the men, in fact the women are probably worse – as though you’re some kind of moron. And I’m twice as smart as half of these people you work with, Harry. Twice as smart.’

‘I know you are,’ I said. ‘Listen, Gina – I’ll do anything. What do you want?

‘I want my life back,’ she said. ‘That’s all, Harry. I want my life back.’

That sounded like trouble.

Nine

Things hadn’t quite worked out how my dad had planned. Not with his home. And not with me.

When my parents had bought the place where I grew up, the area had been countryside. But the city had been creeping closer for thirty years. Fields where I had roamed with an air rifle were now covered with ugly new houses. The old High Street was full of estate agents and solicitors. What my parents had thought would always be a living, breathing episode of The Archers started being swallowed by the suburbs from the moment we moved in.

My mum didn’t much mind the changes – she was a city girl, and I can remember her complaining about our little town’s lack of shops and a cinema when I was a kid – but I felt for my dad.

He didn’t like the army of commuters who clogged the railway station on weekdays and the golf courses at the weekend. He didn’t like the gangs of would-be yobs who drifted around the estates pretending they were getting down in South Central LA. He hadn’t expected to be so close to crowds and crime this late in life.

And then there was me.

My parents came to the door expecting to see the three of us arriving for dinner. But there was only their son. Bewildered, they watched me drive past their gate, looking for somewhere to park. They didn’t get it.

When I was a kid, there were no cars parked on this street – one garage for every family had been more than enough. Now you practically had to give yourself a double hernia looking for a parking place. Everything had changed.

I kissed my mum and shook my dad’s hand. They didn’t know what was happening. There was going to be too much food. They were expecting Gina and Pat. They were expecting happy families. And what they got was me.

‘Mum. Dad. There’s something I have to tell you.’

The old songs were playing. Tony Bennett live at Carnegie Hall was on the stereo, although it could just have easily been Sinatra or Dean Martin or Sammy Davis Junior. In my parents’ home the old songs had never stopped playing.

They sat in their favourite chairs staring up at me expectantly. Like a couple of kids. I swear to God they thought I was going to announce the imminent arrival of another grandchild. And I stood there feeling the way I so often felt in front of my parents – more like a soap opera than a son.

‘Well, it looks like Gina’s left me,’ I said.

The tone was all wrong – too casual, too glib, too uncaring. But the alternative was getting down on all fours and weeping all over their shag carpet. Because after yesterday’s trip to the park and a second sleepless night in a bed that was far too big for just me, I was finally starting to believe that she might not be coming back. Yet I felt I was too old to be bringing my parents bad news. And they were too old to have to hear it.

For a few moments they didn’t say a word.

‘What?’ said my father. ‘Left you where?’

‘Where’s the baby?’ my mother said. She got it immediately.

‘Pat’s with Gina. At her dad’s place.’

‘That punk rocker? Poor little thing.’

‘What do you mean she’s left you?’ the old man demanded.

‘She’s walked out, Dad.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He really didn’t get it. He loved her and he loved us and now all of that was finished.

‘She’s buggered off,’ I said. ‘Done a runner. Gone. Scarpered.’

‘Language,’ my mother said. She had her fingers to her mouth, as if she were praying. ‘Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry.’

She came across the room towards me and I sort of flinched. It would be okay if they weren’t kind to me. I could get through it if they didn’t put their arms around me and tell me that they understood. But if they were going to be kind, I didn’t think I could take it. I knew it would all get clogged up inside me. Luckily, the old man came to the rescue. Good old Dad.

‘Walked out?’ my dad said angrily. ‘What – you’re getting a divorce? Is that what you mean?’

I hadn’t really thought about that. Getting a divorce? Where do you start?

‘I guess so. Yes. That’s what people do, isn’t it? When they split up.’

He stood up, the colour draining from his face. His eyes were wet. He took off his glasses to wipe them. I couldn’t stand to look at him.

‘You’ve ruined my life,’ he said.

‘What?’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My marriage falls apart and he becomes the victim? How did that happen? I was sorry that his precious daughter-in-law had walked out of his life. I was sorry that his grandson had seen his parents break up. And most of all, I was sorry that his son had turned out to be just another dumb schmuck bumbling towards the divorce courts. But I wasn’t going to let my father hog the starring role in our little tragedy.

‘How have I managed to ruin your life, Dad? If anyone’s the victim here, it’s Pat. Not you.’

‘You’ve ruined my life,’ he said again.

My face burned with shame and resentment. What was he so bitter about? His wife had never left him.

‘Your life is over,’ I told him angrily.

We looked at each other with something approaching hatred and then he walked out. I could hear him shuffling around upstairs. I was already sorry about what I had said. But I felt that he had given me no choice.

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ my mum said. ‘He’s upset.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Nothing bad ever happened to me before, Mum. I’ve had it easy. Nothing bad ever happened to me before now.’

‘Don’t listen to your father. He just wants Pat to have what you had. Two parents. Somewhere settled and stable to build his life. All that.’

‘But it’s never going to be like that for him, Mum. Not if Gina’s really gone. I’m sorry, but it’s never going to be that simple.’

My dad came back down eventually and I tried to give them some background as we waded through dinner. There had been trouble at home, things hadn’t been too good for a while, we still cared about each other. There was hope.

I left out all the stuff about me fucking a colleague from work and Gina feeling that she had thrown her life away. I thought that might make them choke on their lamb chops.

When I left, my mum gave me a big hug and told me that things would turn out all right. And my dad did his best too – he put his arm around me and told me to call if there was anything they could do.

I couldn’t look at him. That’s the trouble with thinking your father is a hero. Without saying a word, he can make you feel that you are eight years old again, and you have just lost your first fight.

‘Our guest next tonight no needs introduction,’ Marty said for the third time in a row. ‘Fuck…fuck…fuck…what is wrong with this pigging autocue?’

There was nothing wrong with the autocue and he knew it.

Up in the gallery, the director murmured soothing words into his earpiece about going for the rehearsal again when he was ready. But Marty tore off his microphone and walked off the floor.

When we were live, Marty had always been fearless in front of an autocue. If he made a mistake, if he stumbled over the words rolling before him, he just grinned and kept going. Because he knew that he had to.

Recording was different. You know you can always stop and start again if you are taping. This should make things easier, of course. But it can paralyse you. It can do things to your breathing. It can make you start to sweat. And when the camera catches you sweating, you’re dead.

I caught up with him in the green room where he was ripping open a beer. This worried me more than the tantrum on set. Marty was a screamer, but he wasn’t a drinker. A few beers and his nerves would be so steady he wouldn’t be able to move.

‘Recording a show is a different rhythm,’ I told him. ‘When you’re live, the energy level is so high that you just zip through it from beginning to end. When you’re recording, the adrenaline has to be more controlled. But you can do it.’

‘What the fuck do you know about it?’ he asked me. ‘How many shows have you presented?’

‘I know that you don’t make it easier by ranting about the autocue girl.’

‘She’s moving that thing too fast!’

‘Yes, to keep up with you,’ I said. ‘If you slow down, so will she. Marty, it’s the same girl we’ve been using for a year.’

‘You didn’t even try to keep the show live,’ he sulked.

‘As soon as you smacked Tarzan, all this was inevitable. The station can’t take a chance on that happening again. So we do it live on tape.’

‘Live on fucking tape. That says it all. Whose side are you on, Harry?’

I was about to tell him, when Siobhan stuck her head around the door of the green room.

‘I’ve managed to find a replacement for the autocue girl,’ she said. ‘Shall we try again?’

‘We’re watching telly-vision,’ Pat told me when I arrived at Glenn’s place.

I picked him up and kissed him. He wrapped his arms and legs around me like a little monkey as I carried him into the flat.

‘You’re watching TV with Mummy?’

‘No.’

‘With granddad Glenn?’

‘No. With Sally and Steve.’

In the little living room there was a boy and a girl in their mid teens tangled around each other on the sofa. They were wearing the kind of clothes that don’t look quite right without a snowboard.

The girl – thin, languid, blank – looked up at me as I came into the room. The boy – podgy, spotty, blanker – tapped the TV’s remote control against his lower teeth and didn’t take his eyes from a video of an angry man with no shirt on, a singer who looked as though he should be helping police with their enquiries. Glenn would know who he was. Glenn would have all his records. He made me wonder if music was getting crap or I was getting old. Or both.

‘Hi,’ the girl said.

‘Hi. I’m Harry – Pat’s dad. Is Gina around?’

‘Nah – she went to the airport.’

‘The airport?’

‘Yeah – she had to, you know, what do you call it? Catch a plane.’

I put Pat down. He settled himself among the Star Wars figures that were scattered over the floor, shooting admiring glances at the spotty youth. Pat really did love big boys. Even dumb, ugly big boys.

‘Where did she go?’

The girl – Sally – frowned with concentration.

‘To China. I think.’

‘China? Really? Or was it Japan? It’s very important.’

Her face brightened.

‘Yeah – maybe Japan.’

‘There’s a big difference between China and Japan,’ I said.

The boy – Steve – looked up for the first time.

‘Not to me,’ he said.

The girl laughed. So did Pat. He was only little. He didn’t know what he was laughing about. I realised that his face was dirty. Without a bit of encouragement, Pat had a very cavalier attitude to personal hygiene.

Steve turned back to the television with a satisfied smirk, still tapping the remote control against his lower teeth. I could have cheerfully stuffed it down his throat.

‘Do you know how long she’ll be gone?’

Sally grunted a negative, absent-mindedly squeezing Steve’s beefy leg.

‘Glenn not around?’ I said.

‘Nah – my dad’s at work,’ said Sally.

So that was it. The girl was one of Glenn’s abandoned kids, from a marriage or two after Gina’s mother.

‘You visiting?’ I asked.

‘Staying here for a while,’ she said. ‘Been getting a lot of hassle from my mum. Whining about my friends, my clothes, the time I come home, the time I don’t come home.’

‘Is that right?’

‘“You’re treating this place like a hotel,”’ Sally screeched. ‘“You’re too young to smoke that stuff. Blah blah blah.”’ She sighed with the weariness of the very young. ‘The usual. It’s not as though she didn’t do it all herself back in the dark ages, the hypocritical old bitch.’

‘Bitch,’ said Steve.

‘She’s a bitch,’ smiled Pat, a Star Wars figure in each tiny fist, and Steve and Sally laughed at him.

This is how it works, I thought. You break up and your child becomes a kind of castaway, set adrift in a sea of daytime television and ducked responsibilities. Welcome to the lousy modern world where the parent you live with is a distant, contemptible figure and the parent you don’t live with feels guilty enough to grant you asylum any time things get too tense at home.

But not my boy.

Not my Pat.

‘Get your coat and your toys,’ I told him.

His dirty little face brightened.

‘Are we going to the park?’

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘we’re going home.’

Ten

We were meant to be celebrating.

Barry Twist had come up with the idea of a fifteen-minute delay system for the show, meaning we would go back to doing the thing live, but with a short time-lag before transmission as insurance against either the host or the guests going bananas.

The station was happy because it meant there was still time to edit out anything that was really going to give the advertisers the running squirts, and Marty was happy because it meant he no longer got paralysis of the lower autocue.

So Marty took me to lunch at his favourite restaurant, a fashionably spartan basement where well-fed people in television put authentic Italian peasant food on their expense accounts.

Like most of the places we went to, its bare floorboards and white walls made it look more like a gym than a restaurant, possibly to make us feel that we were doing ourselves some good in there. When we arrived just after two – I was running late after delivering Pat to my parents, leaving him with them because with Gina gone there was no one to pick him up after nursery – the place was already crowded, but the reception desk was empty.

A waitress approached us. She was clearly not having a good day. She was hot and flustered and there was a red wine stain on her white uniform. She kept doing this thing with her hair, which was shiny and black and cut in one of those old-fashioned bell shapes that you imagine on women in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, or on Hong Kong girls in the fifties. A bob. That’s what you call it. The fringe kept flying up as she stuck out her bottom lip and blew some air through it.

‘Can I help you?’ she said.

‘We have a table,’ Marty said.

‘Sure,’ she said, picking up the book of reservations. ‘Name?’

‘Marty Mann,’ he said, with that special little emphasis that indicated he expected her to recognise him now and practically faint with excitement. But Marty didn’t mean a thing to her. She was American.

‘Sorry,’ she said, consulting the book. ‘Can’t see your name on the list, sir.’

Then she gave us a smile. She had a good smile – wide, white and open. One of those smiles that just shines.

‘Believe me,’ Marty said, ‘we do have a table.’

‘Not here, you don’t.’

She slammed the book shut and moved to walk away.

Marty blocked her path. She looked pissed off. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew some air through her fringe. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

She was tall and thin with a dancer’s legs and wide-set brown eyes. Good-looking, but not a kid. Maybe a couple of years older than me. Most of the people working in this restaurant that looked like a gym were cool young things who clearly thought they were on their way to somewhere better. She wasn’t like that at all.

She looked at Marty and massaged the base of her spine as though it had been aching for a long time.

‘Do you know how important I am?’ Marty asked.

‘Do you know how busy I am?’ she replied.

‘We might not be on the list,’ Marty said very slowly, as though he were talking to someone who had just had part of their brain removed, ‘but one of my people called Paul – the manager? You do know Paul?’

‘Sure,’ she said evenly. ‘I know Paul.’

‘Paul said it would be okay. It’s always okay.’

‘I’m real glad that you and Paul have got such an understanding relationship. But if I don’t have a spare table, I can’t give you one, can I? Sorry again.’

This time she left us.

‘This is fucking stupid,’ Marty said.

But Paul had spotted us and quickly crossed the crowded restaurant to greet his celebrity client.

‘Mr Mann,’ he said, ‘so good to see you. Is there a problem?’

‘Apparently there’s no table.’

‘Ah, we always have a table for you, Mr Mann.’ Paul’s Mediterranean smile flashed in his tanned face. He had a good smile too. But it was a completely different smile to the one she had. ‘This way, please.’

We walked into the restaurant and got the usual stares and murmurs and goofy grins that Marty’s entrance always provoked. Paul snapped his fingers and a table was brought from the kitchen. It was quickly covered with a tablecloth, cutlery, a wedge of rough-hewn peasant bread and a silver bowl of olive oil. A waitress appeared by our side. It was her.

‘Hello again,’ she said.

‘Tell me this,’ said Marty. ‘Whatever happened to the good old stereotype of the American waitress? The one who serves you with a smile?’

‘It’s her day off,’ the waitress said. ‘I’ll get you the menu.’

‘I don’t need the menu,’ Marty said. ‘Because I already know what I want.’

‘I’ll get it anyway. For your friend here. We have some interesting specials today.’

‘Shall we have this conversation again once you’ve turned on your hearing aid?’ Marty asked. ‘Read my lips – we eat here all the time. We don’t need the menu.’

‘Give her a break, Marty,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ She looked at me for the first time. ‘Give me a break, Marty.’

‘I’ll have the twirly sort of pasta with the red stuff on top and he’ll have the same,’ Marty said.

‘Twirly pasta.’ She wrote it down on her little pad. ‘Red stuff. Got it.’

‘And bring us a bottle of champagne,’ Marty said, patting the waitress on her bum. ‘There’s a good girl.’

‘Get your sweaty hand off my butt before I break your arm,’ she said. ‘There’s a good boy.’

‘Just bring us a drink, will you?’ Marty said, quickly removing his hand.

The waitress left us.

‘Christ, we should have ordered a takeaway,’ Marty said. ‘Or got here a bit earlier.’

‘Sorry about the delay,’ I said. ‘The traffic –’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, raising a hand.

‘I’m glad you agreed to the fifteen-minute delay system,’ I told him. ‘I promise you that it’s not going to harm the show.’

‘Well, that’s just one of the changes we’re making,’ Marty said. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

I waited, at last registering that Marty was nervous. He had a set of breathing exercises which were meant to disguise him having the shakes, but they weren’t working now. And we weren’t celebrating after all.

‘I also want Siobhan more involved with the booking of guests,’ Marty said. ‘And I want her up in the gallery every week. And I want her to keep the station off my back.’

I let it sink in for a moment. The waitress brought our champagne. She poured two glasses. Marty took a long slug and stared at his glass, his lips parting as he released an inaudible little belch. ‘Pardon me,’ he said.

I let my glass stand on the table.

‘But all those things – that’s the producer’s job.’ I tried on a smile. ‘That’s my job.’