Читать книгу William’s Progress - Matt Rudd - Страница 28

Only two days until I go back to work. Bravely, I volunteer to take Jacob out for an hour on my own to give Isabel some morning ‘me-time’. I aim for the park, proud new dad pushing quite grumpy baby. Grannies smile as I lift him out of the buggy to show him what our local trees look like. In a few months, he’ll be on those baby swings. In a couple of years, he’ll be on the next swings up. Then he’ll be on the big slide. Then he’ll be snogging another teenager over there. Then he’ll be smoking cigarettes behind the hut over there. Then he’ll be sitting on this bench with his own baby, thinking about the future.

This is it now. This is my life. It is all mapped out. My plans to resign from my boring office job, retrain as a sailor and enter the Vendée round-the-world yacht race have been put on hold indefinitely. Ditto resigning and moving to a yurt on the Mongolian steppe. Or resigning and moving to Buenos Aires to drink heavy red wine and master the tango. Adventure and unpredictability have vanished, or rather, they have been condensed into the child looking up at me right now. I think this is probably fine.

‘Are you looking for salvation?’ A man in an anorak is peering down at me through milk-bottle glasses.

‘Sorry?’

‘You look sad. Are you looking for salvation?’

I notice he is clutching a pile of pamphlets entitled Let Jesus Save You. Right now, this seems unlikely. Can’t a parent sit in peace mulling over lost freedoms without being God-bothered? I tell him I’d love to be saved, but I have a nappy to change and it’s going to be a big one. So he leaves.