Читать книгу The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy: Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys - Tony Parsons - Страница 32

When the chain-smoking babysitter realised that we weren’t going to steal her away forever, Peggy was finally allowed to come home with Pat for a couple of hours.

‘Look what I’ve got,’ she told me, producing a little man made of moulded plastic. He was looking very pleased with himself inside white satin trousers, a spangly silver waistcoat and what looked like a purple tuxedo.

‘Disco Ken,’ she said. ‘Barbie’s friend. Going to the disco.’

It was strange watching them play together. Pat wanted to blow up the Death Star. Peggy wanted to hang drapes in the Millennium Falcon.

Excited to the point of hysteria at having his friend in his very own living room – although noticeably unimpressed by Disco Ken – Pat bounced off the furniture waving his light sabre above his head and shouting, ‘I’ll never join you on the Dark Side!’

Peggy considered him with her solemn dark eyes and then began moving little Star Wars figures around the Millennium Falcon – heavily Sellotaped on one side after crash landing into a radiator – as though they were having tea and buttered scones at the Ritz.

Nature or nurture? I knew that Pat had never been encouraged to play violent games – in fact his never-ending blood baths often drove me up the wall.

Not quite five years old, he was actually a gentle, loving little boy who was too sweet for the rough and tumble of the playground. There had been some bullying because he didn’t have a mother waiting for him at the school gates, and neither of us had yet worked out a way to deal with it.

Peggy was completely different. At five-and-a-half, she was a strong, confident little girl who nothing seemed to faze or frighten. I never saw any fear in those serious brown eyes.

Pat wasn’t built for hunting and gathering, and Peggy wasn’t made for making jam and jumpers. Yet give them a box of Star Wars toys and suddenly they were responding to their gender stereotypes. Peggy just wasn’t interested in games of death and destruction. And that’s all that Pat was interested in.

It didn’t stop them from enjoying each other’s company. Pat hung on to the back of the sofa, grinning with love and admiration as Peggy shoved little figures of Princess Leia and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker around grey plastic spaceships which had clocked up a lot of miles in hyperspace.

‘Where’s your mum?’ Peggy asked him.

‘She’s in abroad,’ Pat said. ‘Where’s your mum?’

‘She’s at work. Bianca picks me up from school but she’s not allowed to smoke in the flat. It makes her grumpy.’

There didn’t seem to be a man anywhere near Peggy’s life, but that was hardly worth commenting on these days. I wondered who he was – probably some jerk who had fucked off the moment he was asked to buy some nappies.

The door bell rang. It was one of those young men who are out of work but not yet out of hope. I admire that spirit, and I always try to support them by buying some chamois leather or rubbish sacks. But this one didn’t have the usual kitbag full of household goods.

‘Really sorry to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’m Eamon. Eamon Fish.’

At first it didn’t register. Living in the city you get so used to complete strangers knocking on your door that it comes as a shock when someone who has actually touched your life rings the bell.

But of course – this was Eamon Fish, the young comedian who would probably be doing beer commercials and sleeping with weather girls by this time next year. Or next month. Or next week. The same Eamon Fish whose show I was asked to produce and had turned down because of fish finger cooking duties.

I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t know why he was here. I was expecting some down-at-heel young man who was going to sell me chamois leather. And here was some down-at-heel young man who would soon be getting pissed at the next BAFTAs.

‘What can I do for you?’ I asked him.

‘What’s that?’ he said, frowning and cocking his head towards me.

‘What do you want?’

‘Can we talk? It would mean a lot to me.’

I let him in. We went into the living room where Peggy and Pat were sitting surrounded by an avalanche of toys. Pat still had his light sabre in his hand.

‘Wow,’ Eamon said. ‘A light sabre! Traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights! Can I have a look?’

A slow smile spreading across his face, Pat stood up and handed the young stranger his light sabre.

‘Good fellow you are,’ Eamon said.

He swept the light sabre back and forth, making a buzzing sound that made Pat’s smile grow even wider.

‘I haven’t held one of these for years,’ Eamon said. ‘But you never forget, do you?’ He grinned at Pat. ‘I come from a little town called Kilcarney. And when I was growing up, I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker felt growing up on Tatooine. You know Tatooine?’

‘Luke’s home planet,’ Pat said. ‘With the two suns.’

‘What’s that?’ Eamon said. ‘Luke’s home planet, you say? Well, that’s right. And he felt cut off from the rest of the galaxy, didn’t he? Luke felt a long way from the action, stuck out there under the two suns of old Tatooine. And when I was growing up in sleepy old Kilcarney, I also dreamed of escaping and having lots of adventures in faraway places that I could hardly imagine.’ He handed Pat his light sabre. ‘And that’s exactly what I did.’

‘Yes,’ said Peggy. ‘But what happened between then and now?’

‘What’s that you say?’

Was he completely deaf?

‘I said – what happened between leaving your home planet and today?’ Peggy shouted.

‘Well, that’s what I want to talk to your daddy about,’ Eamon said.

‘He’s not my daddy,’ Peggy said. ‘My daddy’s got a motorbike.’

‘The boy’s mine,’ I said, indicating Pat. He was still staring at Eamon with profound approval for his light sabre technique.

‘He’s got it,’ Eamon said, smiling with what seemed like real warmth. ‘Around the chin, I mean. He’s got it. He’s a handsome lad, all right.’

‘Come into the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘I’ll make us some coffee.’

‘Coffee, you say? Top man.’

While I put the kettle on he sat at the kitchen table poking his ears with an index finger and muttering to himself.

‘Bad day?’ I said.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

I put a cup of coffee down in front of him and put my face very close to his. He had those black Irish good looks and a long-term scruffiness, like a Kennedy who has just spent the summer sleeping in a doorway. And he seemed to be as deaf as a post.

‘I said – what’s wrong with your hearing?’

‘Ah that,’ he said. ‘Let me explain about the ears thing. There’s a posh place down in the West End where they fit hearing aids. But they also fit ear pieces – for television presenters. So their producers and directors can talk into their lugholes while they’re presenting a programme. You might know the place.’

I knew it well. I remembered when Marty had been down there to get fitted for his ear pieces. That’s when we knew we were really leaving radio.

‘I just came from there,’ Eamon said. ‘Left in a bit of a hurry, as it happens. What the hearing man does when he is measuring you up, he pours some stuff like warm wax into your ears. Then you have to wait for a while until it sets. And then they know what size ears you have. For your ear pieces, that is.’

‘I understand.’

‘Except with me, he never got quite that far. He had just poured the hot wax into my ears and we were waiting for it to set when I thought – what the fuck am I doing here?’ Eamon shook his head. Flakes of dried wax flew out. ‘What makes me think that I can present a television show? What makes anyone think that I can present a television show? I’m a comedian. I do stand-up. Some people like it. But so what? Why does that mean I will be able to present a TV show?’

‘So you were being fitted for your ear pieces and you got stage fright.’

‘Before I got anywhere near a stage,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you could dignify it with the term stage fright. I suppose a bollock-shrivelling panic attack is probably more what it was. Anyway, I ran out of there with the wax still sloshing about in my ears. It seems to have set quite well.’

I gave him a tissue and some cotton buds and watched him scrape the hardened wax out of his ears. They always measure them for two ear pieces, one in either ear, although nobody ever uses more than one. Now I saw that it was just a ploy to stop you running away.

‘I really wanted you to produce the show,’ he said. ‘I need – what do they call it? – an enabler. Someone to show me the way. Same as you showed Marty Mann the way when he left his radio show. I was disappointed when they said you weren’t going to do it.’

‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ I said. ‘I’m looking after my son. Alone. I can’t go back to work full-time. I need to be around for him.’

‘But I notice he’s wearing a uniform. Isn’t the little feller at school now?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So he’s out of the house for most of the day?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So – forgive me asking – what do you do all day, Harry?’

What did I do all day? I got Pat up, got him dressed and got him off to school. I shopped and cleaned. I was waiting for him at the school gates in the afternoon when he came out. Then I made sandwiches, read to him and got him ready for bed. What did I do all day?

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Don’t you miss it? Work, I mean?’

‘Sure I miss it. I used to have quality time with my son – meaning I saw him for five minutes at the start and at the end of each day. Now I have quantity time instead. I didn’t choose that change. That’s just the way it has worked out. But that’s why I can’t produce the show for you.’

‘But you could be the executive producer, couldn’t you? You could come in a few times a week just to oversee the show? You could tell me what I need to do to stop looking like a complete eejit? You could help me play to my strengths, couldn’t you?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

I had never even considered the possibility that there was a compromise between working full-time and not working at all. It had never crossed my mind.

‘Look, I admire what you’re doing with your boy,’ Eamon said. ‘Believe me, you would go down a storm with the mothers of Kilcarney. But I need you. I’m here for really selfish reasons. I’m shitting coloured lights about presenting this show. That’s why I’m dropping bits of hardened wax all over your kitchen floor. And I know you can get me through it without total humiliation. It might even be good.’

I thought about the long mornings and endless afternoons when Pat wasn’t around. And I thought about my most recent meeting with the bank manager, who was impressed by my efforts to look after my son and less impressed by my expanding overdraft.

But most of all I thought about how good Eamon had been with Pat – admiring his light sabre, talking to him about Luke’s home planet, telling me that he was a special kid.

I knew that at this stage of my life – and at all the future stages of my life, come to that – I would like anyone who liked my boy. When you are alone with a child, you want as many people rooting for him as you can get. This young Irish comic with dried wax in his ears seemed to be on our side. And so I found myself on his side, too.

I was ready to work with him on a part-time basis because I was bored and broke. But most of all I was ready to work with him because he thought my son was going to make it.

‘I need to see your act,’ I said. ‘I need to see what you do on stage so I can think about how it could work on the box. Have you got a show reel?’

‘What?’ he said.