Man and Boy (16 page)

“Did you make love to the makeup girl?” I asked Eamon.

He looked at me in his dressing room mirror, and I caught a flash of something passing across his face. Fear maybe. Or anger. Then it was gone.

“What’s that?” he said.

“You heard me the first time.”

The show was taking off. Ratings were good, and the offers of lager commercials were starting to come in. But to me he was still a scared kid from Kilcarney with wax in his ears.

“Yes or no, Eamon? Did you make love to the makeup girl?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because she’s crying. We can’t even get her to put some makeup on the guests because she’s sobbing all over her powder puff. It’s gone all soggy.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“I know she left the studio with you last week.”

He twisted on his little swivel chair, turning to face me with his head framed by the mirror’s border of bare electric lights. He didn’t look so scared anymore, despite a shining trickle of sweat snaking through the thick layer of powder on his forehead.

“You’re asking me if I made love to the makeup girl?”

“That’s right,” I said. “I don’t care about your morals, Eamon. You can bugger the lighting director during the commercial break if you want to. I don’t care what you do when we’re off air. Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with the running of the show. And a weepy makeup girl who can’t do her job interferes with the running of the show.”

“You’ve been a big help to me, Harry,” he said quietly. Sometimes his voice was so low that you had to concentrate just to hear what he was saying. It gave him a certain power. “From the moment we met, everything you’ve said to me has made sense. Remember—you’re only ever talking to one person, you said. If you have a good time then they will have a good time. This stuff might not mean much to you but it’s helped me to get through it. It’s helped me to make it work. I couldn’t have done it without you and I’m grateful. That’s why I’m not angry that you’re asking me this question, a question that—perhaps you’ll agree?—would be a bit rude coming from my mother or my priest.”

“Did you make love to the makeup girl, Eamon?”

“No, Harry. I did not make love to the makeup girl.”

“Is that the truth?”

“That’s the truth. I did not make love to the makeup girl.”

“Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.”

“I fucked the makeup girl.”

“There’s a difference, is there?”

“A big difference. It wasn’t the start of a meaningful relationship, Harry. It was the culmination of something quite meaningless—that’s what I liked about it. And Carmen—that’s the makeup girl’s name, Harry, she’s called Carmen—might be a bit upset right now that there’s not going to be a repeat performance, but I strongly suspect that’s what she liked about it too. The very fact that it was a bit raw, a bit rough, and for one night only. Sometimes a woman wants you to make love to her. Sometimes she just wants to get fucked. They are just the same as us, Harry. That’s the big secret. They’re just the same.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me before now? My life would have been so much simpler.”

“I’m getting a lot of offers at the moment, Harry, And not all of them are beer commercials. Carmen’s a lovely girl. I’ll treat her with respect. I’ll be friendly to her. But she wanted exactly what I wanted and she got it. She can’t expect anything more from me. And when she gets a grip of herself, she’ll understand that.”

“You’re not the first young guy who got laid because his ugly mug is on television once a week, Eamon. Just don’t bring your personal dramas into this studio, okay?”

“Okay, Harry,” he said mildly. “I’m sorry that this has been a disruptive influence, I really am. And I understand that you’re my executive producer and telling me this stuff is why you’re here. But I’m a man, okay?”

“Yeah? Really? You sound more like some old blues song. I’m a man. Spelt m-a-n. Christ, you’re so fucking tough. You’ll be advertising aftershave next.”

“I’m a man, Harry. And the reason I’m here is to plant my seed in as many places as I possibly can. That’s why we’re here. That’s what men do.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s what boys do.”

But later I watched him leave the studio with the show’s cutest researcher and I thought—why not?

Why shouldn’t he plant his seed in as many places as possible? What would he be saving it for? And what was so great about the solitary little flower pot that I was cultivating?

***

Suddenly there were all these rules.

I could stay at Cyd’s small, top-floor flat, but I had to be gone by the time Peggy got up. Cyd was happy to have me there when Peggy went to bed, and happy about me sleeping with her on the old brass bed under a framed poster of
Gone
with
the
Wind
. But I had to be out of there before morning came.

Actually, there were not lots of rules. There was just that one rule. But it felt like a lot of rules.

“Maybe later it will be different,” Cyd said. “If we decide—you know—we want to take it further. If we want to make a proper commitment.”

But as soon as I stopped looking into her wide-set brown eyes and she had turned out the light, I didn’t feel like making a proper commitment. To tell you the truth, what I really felt like was something a bit less complicated.

I wanted to be able to sleep in my girl’s arms without being woken up and told it was time to go home. I wanted the kind of relationship where you didn’t have to remember the rules. Most of all, I wanted things to be the way they were before everything got all smashed.

***

I was still dreaming when I felt Cyd’s mouth on mine.

“Baby,” she whispered. “Sorry. But it’s time.”

It was still dark outside, but I could hear pigeons hopping around on the roof directly above our heads, a sure sign that it was time to put on my pants and piss off before the sun came up.

“Got it all worked out, haven’t you?” I sighed, rolling away from her and getting out of bed.

“I wish you could stay, Harry. I really do.”

“So how long is it since you split up with Peggy’s dad? Three years? More? And how many men have you introduced her to?”

“You’re the first,” she said quietly, and I wondered if that was true.

“I just don’t understand what harm it does if she sees me eating a bowl of cornflakes. Jesus—the kid sees me all week long.”

“We’ve been through all this,” Cyd said in the darkness. “It’s confusing for her if you’re here in the morning. Please try to understand. She’s five—you’re not.”

“She likes me. And I like her. We’ve always got on fine.”

“That’s all the more reason for going now. I don’t want you to be an uncle to Peggy, okay? I want you to be more than that or less than that. But you’re not going to be an uncle. She deserves better. So do you.”

“Fine,” I said. “Absolutely fine.”

“You should love me for being like this,” she said, more angry than hurt. “You should understand that I’m just trying to protect her and do what’s best for her. You’ve got a kid yourself. You know what it’s like. If anyone should understand, then you should understand.”

She was right.

I should have loved her.

***

For the first time in my life I could sort of understand why men of my age go out with younger women.

I never really got it before. Women in their thirties, their bodies are still springy and you can talk to them. They are still young, but they have seen something of life—probably quite a few of the same views that you have seen.

Why would any man trade that kind of equal partnership for someone with a pierced navel whose idea of a hot date is some awful nightclub and half a tab of something pretending to be Ecstasy?

If you can go out with someone who has read the same books as you, who has watched the same TV shows as you, who has loved the same music as you, then why would you want someone whose idea of a soul singer is the guy in Jamiroquai?

But now I got it. Now I could understand the attraction. Men of my age like younger women because the younger woman has fewer reasons to be bitter.

The younger woman is less likely to have had her heart bashed around by broken homes, divorce lawyers, and the sight of children who are missing a parent. The younger woman doesn’t have all those disappointments that women—and men too, don’t forget the men—in their thirties drag around with them like so much excess luggage. It was cruel but true. The younger woman is far less likely to have had her life fucked up by some man.

Men in their thirties and forties don’t go out with a younger woman for her bouncy body and her pierced tongue. That’s just propaganda.

They go out with her so that they can be the one who fucks up her life.

***

Heidi was a nanny from Munich.

Well, not exactly Munich—more Augsburg. And not exactly a nanny.

A nanny is a professional child-minder who has made a career out of caring for small boys and girls. Heidi was a nineteen-year-old who was away from her parents for the very first time. She was just one economy flight on Lufthansa away from a bedroom full of stuffed toys and having her mom do her washing. She knew as much about childcare as I knew about theoretical physics. Heidi was more of an au pair.

The plan was that Heidi was going to cook, clean, and cover for me with Pat on the days I was working on the show. For this she would receive bed, board, and pocket money while she studied English.

Pat was swaying on the sofa, listening to Sally’s tape, when I took Heidi through to meet him.

“This is Heidi, Pat. She’s going to stay here and help us around the house.”

Pat stared blankly at the big blond German girl, his mouth lolling open, lost in the music.

“A lively and active boy,” Heidi smiled.

Trying to show willing, she asked me what I would like for dinner. I told her that I would grab something in the green room at the station but she should fix something for her and Pat. She shuffled about in the kitchen until she found a big can of tomato soup.

“Is okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said.

Trying to let her get on with it, I sat at the kitchen table jotting down notes on next week’s shooting script.

Pat wandered in to watch her, leaving the music still blasting from the living room, and I sent him back to turn it off. When he came back he started pulling at my sleeve.

“Guess what?” he said.

“Let Daddy work, darling.”

“But guess what Heidi’s doing?”

“And let Heidi do her work too.”

Elaborately sighing, he sat down at the kitchen table and idly fiddled with a couple of his little plastic men.

Heidi was clanking about by the stove but I didn’t look up at her until I heard the bubbles of boiling water. That was strange. Why was she boiling water to heat up a can of tomato soup?

“Heidi?”

“Is soon ready.”

She had placed the unopened can of soup in a saucepan of water and brought it to a boil. She gave me a hesitant smile just before the can exploded, flinging steaming red gruel all over the ceiling, the walls, and us.

Wiping the tomato soup from my eyes, I saw the livid red slime slide down Heidi’s face, her eyes staring through the oozing muck, mute with shock and wonder. She looked like Sissy Spacek in the prom night scene in
Carrie
.

Then she burst into tears.

“Guess what?” Pat said, blue eyes blinking in a crimson face mask. “She can’t cook either.”

So Heidi found a nice family in the suburbs.

And I gave Sally a call.

Auntie Ethel was on her knees in her front garden, planting spring bulbs for next year.

Auntie Ethel wasn’t my real auntie, but I had called her Auntie Ethel ever since we had moved next door to her when I was five years old, and the habit had proved hard to break. Auntie Ethel straightened up, squinting over her lawn mower at Cyd and Peggy and Pat and me as we climbed out of Cyd’s old VW Beetle, and for a moment I felt as though I was a little kid again, asking Auntie Ethel if I could have my ball back.

“Harry? Is that you, Harry?”

“Hello, Auntie Ethel,” I said. “What you planting there?”

“Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths. And is that your Pat? I don’t believe it! Hasn’t he grown? Hello, Pat!”

Pat halfheartedly saluted her with his light saber. We had never been able to persuade him to address Auntie Ethel by her proper title, and he clearly wasn’t going to start now. Auntie Ethel turned her attention to Peggy, a cloud of confusion drifting across her familiar old face.

“And this little girl…”

“This one’s mine,” Cyd said. “Hi, Auntie Ethel. I’m Cyd. Harry’s friend. How you doing?”

“Like Sid James?”

“Like Cyd Charisse.”

Auntie Ethel’s eyes twinkled behind her glasses.

“The dancer,” she said. “With Fred Astaire in
Silk
Stockings
. A good pair of legs.” Auntie Ethel sized up Cyd. “Just like you!”

“I like your Auntie Ethel,” Cyd whispered, taking my arm as we came up the drive. Then I felt her grip tighten. “Oh God—that looks like your mother.”

My mom was standing at the door, all smiles, and Pat ran to meet her.

“Happy birthday!” she cried, sweeping him up in her arms. “Five years old! Aren’t you a big boy—ouch!” Still holding him under one arm, she pushed his Jedi weapon away with her free hand. “Blooming light saber,” she laughed, looking down at Peggy. “You must be Peggy. You haven’t got a light saber too, have you?”

“No, I don’t like
Star Wars
very much. I just play it because he likes it.”

“It’s a boy’s game, isn’t it?” my mom said, never much of a one for breaking down traditional gender stereotypes.

Peggy followed Pat into the house and my mom smiled at Cyd, who was holding back, half a step behind me, still gripping my arm. I had never seen her looking shy before. My mom grabbed her and kissed her on the cheek.

“And you must be Cyd. Come in, dear, and make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” Cyd said.

Cyd went into the house where I had grown up and my mom gave me a quick smile behind her back, lifting her eyebrows like a surprised lady in one of those old saucy seaside postcards.

It had been quite a while, but I had brought home enough girls to know what that look meant.

It meant that Cyd was what my mom would call a smasher.

***

And in the back garden was what my mom would call quite a spread.

The kitchen table had been carried out to the back and covered with a paper tablecloth splattered with images of party balloons, exploding champagne bottles, and laughing rabbits.

The table had been loaded with bowls of crisps, nuts, and little bright orange cheesy things, plates of sandwiches with their crusts cut off, trays of mini-sausage rolls and six individual little paper dishes containing jelly and tinned fruit. In the center of this feast was a birthday cake in the shape of Darth Vader’s helmet with five candles.

When we were all seated around the table and had sung a few renditions of “Happy Birthday, Dear Pat,” my dad offered around the mini-sausage rolls, looking at me shrewdly.

“Bet you had a job all getting into that little sports car,” he said.

From the living room I could hear one of his favorite albums on the stereo. It was the end of side two of
Songs
for
Swingin’ Lovers!
, Frank breezing his way through Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes.”

“We didn’t come out in the MGF, Dad,” I said. “We came in Cyd’s car.”

“Completely impractical, a car like that,” he continued, ignoring me. “Nowhere for the children, is there? A man has to think of those things when he buys a car. Or he should.”

“My daddy’s got a motorbike,” Peggy told him.

My father stared at her, chewing a mini-sausage roll, lost for words. Her daddy? A motorbike?

“That’s nice, dear,” my mom said.

“And a Thai girlfriend.”

“Lovely!”

“Her name’s Mem.”

“What a pretty name.”

“Mem’s a dancer.”

“Goodness.”

We all watched in silence, waiting for further revelations, as Peggy lifted open her sandwich and examined the contents. The further revelations didn’t come. Peggy closed her sandwich and shoved it in her mouth.

I crunched my way through some bright orange cheesy things, feeling depressed.

My parents were trying as hard as they could. But this tiny little girl already had another life that they could never be a part of. The all-consuming delight that they felt for their grandchild could never be felt for little Peggy. That kind of unconditional love was already impossible. She would always be too much of a stranger. I felt for them. And for Peggy too.

“Mem’s not really a dancer,” Cyd said, watching my face, reading my mind. “She’s more of a stripper.”

My old man coughed up a piece of a barbecued chip.

“Bit went down the wrong hole,” he explained.

My mom turned to Cyd with a bright smile.

“Jelly?” she said.

***

Once we had Mem’s job description out of the way, the party settled down. And my parents liked Cyd. I could tell that they liked her a lot.

There were minefields to be negotiated—my dad had this thing about single mothers subsidized by the state and my mom had this thing about working mothers—but Cyd skipped through them without spilling her jelly.

“The state can never take the place of a parent, Mr. Silver—and it shouldn’t try.”

“Call me Paddy, love,” my dad said.

“Some women have to work, Mrs. Silver—but that doesn’t mean their children don’t come first.”

“Call me Elizabeth, dear,” my mom said.

And she talked to Paddy and Elizabeth about all the things they wanted to talk about—the kind of films that a five-year-old should be allowed to watch with my mom, the right time to remove the training wheels on a child’s bike with my dad.

And she made all the right noises: admiring my mom’s sausage rolls (“Homemade they are, dear; I’ll give you the recipe if you like”) and my dad’s garden (“Harry’s never been interested in gardens—I can’t understand that attitude myself”).

But Cyd wasn’t some little local girl with whom I had danced a couple of times in a suburban club, one of the Kims and Kellys that I had brought home all the time until the day I brought home Gina.

Cyd was visibly a woman with a past—meaning a past that contained marriage, pregnancy, and divorce, although not necessarily in that order. And it felt like the only way my parents could deal with that past was by ignoring it.

Their conversation lurched between her childhood in Houston to the present day in London, as if everything in between had been withdrawn by censors.

“Texas, you say?” my dad said. “Never been to Texas myself. But I met a few Texans in the war.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Good card players, Texans.”

“It must be lovely having sisters,” my mom said. “I had six brothers. Can you imagine that? Six brothers! Some women don’t like watching football and boxing on the telly. But it never bothered me. Because I had six brothers.”

But Cyd’s broken marriage was always there waiting to be confronted. In the end Cyd dealt with it as casually as if it was just a stale sausage roll that had to be found and cast aside. She had never seemed more American.

“My family is like your family,” she said to my mother. “Very close. I only came over here because Jim—that’s Peggy’s father—is English. That didn’t work out, but somehow I never made it back. Now I’ve met your son, I’m glad I didn’t.”

And that was it.

My mom looked at us as if we were Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw in
Love
Story
. Even my dad seemed to be brushing away a tear from his eye. Then I realized it was just a crumb from a mini-sausage roll.

By the time Pat blew out his five candles and we cut the cake, my parents were acting as if they had known Cyd and Peggy all their lives.

If they were put out by the fact that the girl of my dreams had chosen someone to share her dreams with before me, then they were pretty good at hiding it. This should have pleased me more than it did.

While Cyd was helping my mom clear the table and my dad was showing Pat and Peggy how he dealt with the menace of snails, I went into the living room and over to the stereo.

Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!
had stopped playing hours ago, but the cover of the record—an old vinyl LP, my father had never joined the CD revolution—was still propped up against the Sony music station.

That album cover had always been special to me. Sinatra—tie askew, snap brim fedora on the back of his head—grins down at the perfect fifties couple, some Brylcreemed Romeo in a business suit with his suburban Juliet in pearl earrings and a little red dress.

They look like an ordinary couple—you can’t imagine them hanging out with the Rat Pack in Vegas. But they look as though they have wrung as much joy out of this world as anyone possibly could. And I always loved looking at that couple when I was a child because I always thought they looked like my parents at the exact moment that they fell in love.

Someone called my name from the garden, but I stared at the cover of
Songs
for
Swingin’ Lovers!
, pretending that I hadn’t heard.

They don’t make them like that anymore, I thought.

***

“Everybody had a good time,” Cyd said.

“It seemed to go very well,” I said.

We were back in London and up in her flat. Peggy and Pat were sitting on the sofa watching a tape of
Pocahontas
(Peggy’s choice). Tired from a couple of hours in Cyd’s wheezing old Beetle, they were starting to snap at each other. I wanted to get home.

“Everybody had a good time,” Cyd said again. “Pat liked his presents. Peggy ate so much that I won’t have to feed her for a week. And I really loved meeting your mom and dad. They’re really sweet people. Yes, everybody had a good time. Except you.”

“What are you talking about? I had a good time.”

“No,” she said. “And what hurts me—what really hurts me—is that you didn’t even try. Your mom and dad made an effort. I know they loved Gina and I know it couldn’t have been easy for them. But they really tried to make it work today. You just couldn’t be bothered, could you?”

“What do you want me to do? Start doing the Lambada after a couple of Diet Cokes? I had as good a time as I could ever have at a kid’s birthday party.”

“I’m a grown woman and I have a child, okay? You have to learn to deal with that, Harry. Because if you can’t, we haven’t got any kind of future.”

“I like Peggy,” I said. “And I get on great with her.”

“You liked Peggy when she was just the little girl who palled around with your son,” she said. “You liked her when she was just the cute little kid who played nicely on the floor of your home. What you don’t like is what she’s become now that you’ve started going out with me.”

“And what’s that?” I said.

“The reminder of another man’s fuck,” she said.

The reminder of another man’s fuck? That was a bit strong. You couldn’t imagine Sinatra sticking that on one of his album covers.