Sweet Sorrow(39)

Later, at school, I would discover that most dads were terrifying drill sergeants, remote and frightening, storming in to inspect kit and quarters at the end of each day, their presence unnerving. As far as I can remember, my dad was always there and for the most part we got on with our own small projects side by side, fuelled by tea and juice, cheap biscuits and sweet desserts in chemical pink made with water from the kettle, and early childhood was scrappy and grubby and disorganised and also a kind of bliss.

They married in 1984. I’m in their wedding photo, three years old, dressed in a comical corduroy three-piece suit, Dad in a skinny tie standing unnaturally straight. My mother, in ironic white, stands in profile to emphasise the immense bump that contains my sister, and waves her fist at Dad in jokey rage. At least we took it as a joke. My friends now are careful to set the stage before starting a family, establishing career, the mortgage, spare bedrooms. Still in their early twenties, my parents chose to improvise. I remember wild parties, the flat crammed with musicians and nurses, nitro meeting glycerine. I remember lighting strangers’ cigarettes.

Billie – after Holiday – arrived and for a while there would be four of us, stepping on the toys, waking each other at all hours. A comfortable sort of chaos became fraught and fractious, so that it was almost a relief to start school. Almost; my father cried at the gates as if I were an evacuee. ‘What I’d like to do,’ he said, holding my head in his long fingers as if it were a prize, ‘what I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, is take your head right off and carry it around with me. Is that all right?’

These were the memories my mother had called on when she’d claimed that Dad and I were close, that we’d be fine living together, and, in fairness, there were flashes of that bond on days like this particular Saturday. On a tray by my bed, there was warm tea, a cold can of Coke, aspirin displayed on a paper doily. The window had been opened and a panel of blue sky suggested a lovely day, but I was unable to face the challenge of a staircase until the afternoon. Dad was crouched by the stereo, head close to the speakers just as he used to do, his fingers tapping the air where his saxophone used to be, as Ornette Coleman played a jazz rendition of the violent disorder in my own head.

‘Could you turn it down a little please?’

He twisted round, with an indulgent half-smile. ‘Have fun, did you?’

‘Yes, thanks Dad.’

‘I don’t know, Charlie, you stay up all night then come home, reeking of cinnamon …’

The mystery of my return was not discussed and never would be, for which I was grateful. At some point I would need to phone Harper. Violence was fine as long as it looked like fun, but to lose control like that … I’d need to apologise. Through the haze, the image of the dent in the plasterboard returned and I could recall, too, the snap of pleasure I’d felt as the pool ball had left my hand. I’d have to phone Lloyd too, to reassure him, and myself, that I’d meant to miss. For the moment, I could only curl into the corner of the sofa and try not to move my head. Weren’t young people meant to be impervious to hangovers? Contact with the sofa cushions, even the air, bruised me. ‘It’s possible to drink in moderation, you know. You don’t have to do yourself harm.’

‘I know!’

I would never drink again, or only in the urbane, sophisticated manner of people who drank wine, people like Fran; wine without a screw top, out of proper glasses. Another pang of guilt; I’d meant to spend the day reading Romeo and Juliet. I’d no hope of impressing her but I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, and the idea of opening that script …

Blissfully, brilliantly, the day had clouded over, which meant that it was possible for Dad to ask, ‘Want to watch films with me?’

We were at our ease in front of movies. With my friends, it was rare to watch a film that was not set in space, the jungle, the future or some combination of these. But on days like this I craved what I thought of as Dad films, long, grand and familiar. We’d been watching the same rota since my childhood, British films with Julie Christie and Alec Guinness, John Mills and Richard Burton, spaghetti Westerns and film noir, Spartacus and The Vikings and The Third Man. We couldn’t afford to buy them but the library stocked a few and working through the shelves was one of Dad’s informal projects. ‘I’ve got Once Upon a Time in the West, Where Eagles Dare and The Godfather Part II.’

That was nine hours at least, enough to get through the half-life of alcohol and take us into night-time with tea on our laps. He joined me on the sofa, the remote within easy reach.

‘We’re going in,’ he said and we sat in companionable silence, lulled by the familiar confrontations, the gunfire and explosions, as the alcohol sputtered out and dissipated, and this was a good day with my dad.





Sampson


On Monday, the fine weather broke and I lay in bed, listening to the clamour of a whole summer’s rain falling. The first rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet was at nine thirty, and at eight forty-five it was still roaring down, the light as dim as a December afternoon. Perhaps it was a sign. When I was sixteen, the sole purpose of weather was to send me personal messages and the rain pelting the window was a hand on my chest saying, nothing good can come of this. You’ll look like a fool. Forget her. Stay in bed.

I’d spent the previous afternoon trying to understand the play, revising for a test, the test of Fran’s approval. In the rectangle of cement that counted as our garden, I sat as straight and scholarly as the deckchair allowed, took the script from my bag and began to read the Prologue.