Authors: Tony Parsons
Starting Over
Tony Parsons
For Yuriko
That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains; and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for general knowledge. But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys. Wendy was grown up. You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up.
J.M. Barrie,
Peter Pan and Wendy
Part One The Canteen Cowboy V The Careless Boy
Part Two Zen And The Art Of Swimming Pool Maintenance
She doesn’t feel comfortable driving this car. It is too big, too unfamiliar, too much her husband’s car. And the woman on the sat nav just will not shut up.
‘If possible, try to make a U-turn…try to make a U-turn.’
It is late now. She doesn’t know this neighbourhood. The big BMW X5 rolls past strips of worn-out shops, ugly superstores, unlit yards protected by razor wire. And everywhere, there are the children. In groups of three or four or more, standing by their bikes, the light from their phones glowing in their fists, their faces hidden inside their hooded tops.
‘Try to make a U-turn…’
‘I’m trying!’ she shouts, suddenly aware that she has had perhaps one glass of wine too many.
Eyes follow her. At least that is how it feels. She is too well dressed for this area, the car too conspicuously expensive. She should have taken her own beat-up little runaround. But her husband had pressed the BMW X5 on her, telling her she would feel safer.
Yeah, right.
The terrain changes. Suddenly the exhausted shops and the superstores and the herds of sullen youth have gone. There are no signs of life here. These are streets full of – what are they? – warehouses. Old warehouses. Big, black buildings with long skylights that have been smashed. They look as though they were deserted years ago, as though they are rotting, as though they are waiting to be swept away and built upon. The big car barrels through the dead streets. She is perhaps a few miles from home but this no longer feels like her town.
‘Try to make a U-turn…’
‘Oh, try to put a bloody sock in it!’ she cries.
And then she sees him.
The boy lying in the middle of the road. He is curled up in a foetal position, but one arm is stretched out, supporting his head. Her foot touches the brakes, but only for a moment. It is the arm stretched out, making a pillow for his head, that makes her feel that this is wrong, all wrong, that this is trouble waiting to happen.
So she does not stop.
She puts her foot on the throttle and yanks at the steering wheel, swerving around the boy at the last moment. In the rear-view mirror she sees that he has not stirred. The car almost hit him and yet he did not move a muscle. And all at once she believes that she is mistaken.
This is someone who is really hurt, she thinks. This is someone who needs her help.
The car comes to a halt.
She pulls out her phone.
No signal.
Then she finally obeys the woman on the sat nav and makes a U-turn, abruptly pulling off the road and into an
abandoned petrol station where the pumps are gone but the roof still bears the fading name of an oil company. There is a low wall running around the petrol station and beyond it the place has been turned into a rubbish dump. Debris everywhere. She registers black bags that have been ripped open by sharp teeth, a burned-out car, a grease-blackened oven, and some old computers with their screens stoved in. Suddenly it is like driving on the surface of the moon. The BMW X5 bounces over God knows what and now she is glad to be driving this thing.
She pulls up next to a pothole where a petrol pump once stood and she leans forward, the engine idling, staring at the boy in the middle of the road lit by her headlights.
And she still doesn’t know.
She still doesn’t know if he is really hurt. She can’t just leave him lying there. But she can’t get out of the car.
So she puts her foot down and drives through the ruined petrol station, the big car lurching and bumping, and all the while she watches the boy, illuminated by her lights, and then receding in the rear-view mirror.
And he never moves.
But she knows she is not getting out of this car and so she swings it on to the road and heads back the way she came with the woman on the sat nav silent now, as if happy at last.
They could not be more understanding at the police station. They tell her she did the right thing. You don’t get out of your car in that neighbourhood. A young red-haired cop in a suit and tie drives her back to where she saw the boy in the road.
And he has gone.
The cop and the woman get out of the unmarked car.
Perhaps this wasn’t the place? No, this was definitely the place. She recognises the petrol station with the disappearing name. This is it, she insists.
And that is when they see the body.
He must have been hiding behind the low wall that skirts the petrol station. Waiting for her to stop. Waiting for her to get out of the car to help his friend. Waiting for her to do the right thing, which would have been exactly the wrong thing.
And when the woman had turned her car round, when she had finally made that U-turn, she had driven right across him.
The one who was hiding, the one who was waiting. She looks away quickly but not fast enough to avoid seeing the tyre marks on his face. Too young, she thinks. Still in his teens. Too young for this to happen.
And then he makes a noise and both the woman and the cop cry out.
Somehow he is alive.
Somehow he is still alive.
But not for long.
And at the hospital, after the young unknown male has been pronounced dead in the A&E, the red-haired cop stands with the duty nurse and signs a form acknowledging receipt of the sad contents of the dead boy’s pockets. One by one, the policeman drops them into a small plastic bag.
Some keys. An Oyster card. A wallet with a picture of a small child, somewhere between a baby and a toddler. A little boy, thinks the cop, but only because the Babygro is blue. A woman is holding the child. You can see her hands, her arms, and a part of her smile.
There are a handful of credit cards, each bearing a different
name. Hiroshi Yamamoto. Deirdre Smith. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. A few crumpled notes. And a cheap mobile phone, still switched on. It suddenly lights up and begins to ring. Some popular tune or other. The cop places it to one side, staring at it, as if trying to place the melody.
And finally there is the blue plastic card. The cop looks at the card.
It’s not much.
It is just a blue plastic card with a few white words and a splash of red, in the shape of a heart.
And the woman is at home, safe and sound but still shaking, with her husband and a stiff drink, and he says thank God she did the right thing by staying in the car.
And she sips her drink and she thanks God too.
Once upon a time she would have got out of the car. She would have reached out a helping hand to her fellow man.
But you grow out of all that.
I waited for my son to come home.
I watched the late news and turned it off. I flicked through the paper and tossed it aside. I went to the back door and smoked a cigarette with one foot in the kitchen and the other in the garden, watching the smoke disappear into the night sky, waving it on its way, destroying the evidence.
But all the while I was waiting.
My head ached with all the things that can go wrong at seventeen. The wrecked car. The knife pulled. The powder cut with poison. Beyond my window there were children killing children, and my boy was out there among them.
And all I could do was wait.
Rufus was a smart kid but he was raw. That was his problem. Not his recklessness, or his stupidity, but his youth. I trusted him but I didn’t trust the world. You need a bit of luck at that age, I thought, and I waited at the window, and still he did not come home.
My son at seventeen. Most nights he went out in a
clapped-out old Beetle bought with his own money from a summer job. We didn’t know where he went. We didn’t have a clue. You lose them after a certain age and they never come back. They start out as a part of you, indistinguishable from yourself for years and years, and they end up as people that you hardly recognise. I could see it coming.
My son and I were not quite strangers yet – I could still glimpse the same father and son who went to the park on a bike that had stabilisers. But it was a big thing between us, this not knowing, this unknown other life, the Grand Canyon of ignorance, and it felt like it was growing bigger every time he went out the front door.
And when midnight came and went I suddenly knew that I would never see him again. I knew it with a total certainty that choked my throat and tightened my chest. And I knew exactly how it would be when I told his mother and sister, and I could see the look on the faces of his grandparents, and I could imagine his dumbstruck friends and schoolmates, attending their first funeral, far too young to be wearing all that black. And I knew exactly what it would be like. It would be like the end of the world.
Then I heard his car coming up the drive.
There were lights in the window, the engine dying, a door slamming – boys do not have a light touch at seventeen – and suddenly there he was, towering above me, eye contact not easy, and as always I was both relieved and uneasy at his physical presence. Glad to have him back in one piece, yet baffled by this oversized man-child.
Who was he? Where did he come from? What was his connection to the little boy with the blond Beatle-cut? On tiptoes – and I am six foot nothing – I kissed him on the fuzzy cheek he shaved once a week, and when he gave me
a sort of half-hearted sideways squeeze in response, I felt the sharp bones of my only son.
We had always kissed each other, but for a while now there had been self-consciousness and shyness in our embrace. Somehow I knew that Rufus would prefer it if the ritual, long since drained of all real meaning, would stop. But stopping it would feel like we were making too big a thing of it. So we continued with our manly kisses, even though they made both of us uncomfortable.
I felt him pull away.
‘So,’ I said, as lightly as I could manage, ‘what have you been up to?’
‘Just driving around,’ he said in his deep, booming voice – that big man’s voice coming out of my little boy! – and I felt myself flinch at the voice, at the words, at the blatant and obvious lie.
Whatever my son did at night, I knew it was not just driving around.
‘Okay,’ I said evenly, and I reached for the AlcoHawk Pro that was waiting on the coffee table.
It was a rectangular piece of plastic, gun-metal grey, about the size of one of those palm-held devices that the world and its brother seem to spend their entire lives staring into these days, when they could be looking at each other, or the stars. There was a stubby mouthpiece on one side, about the size of the cigarette butt that I had booted into the rose bushes.
‘I didn’t drink anything,’ Rufus said in his defensive baritone, although I could smell the contents of a small brewery on him.
‘Good,’ I said flatly. ‘Then it will be clear.’
I pressed the power switch and on the AlcoHawk Pro’s
circular screen the red digits quickly counted down from 200 to zero. Then I handed it to Rufus. He took a breath, and blew into the mouthpiece until there was a sharp beep. He gave it back to me and we waited, saying nothing, not looking at each other, just the ambient noise of the city between us. Then there was a series of little beeps and the reading was displayed.
Three zeroes, it said; 000 – like the winning line on a fruit machine. Strange, I thought. I knew I smelled booze. I shook the AlcoHawk Pro and looked at it again. But it still said 000, and that meant there was no alcohol in the bloodstream of my son. At least he was telling me the truth about one thing in his life.
I showed the reading to Rufus and when he nodded politely, I felt like hugging him. It was such a gracious gesture, that polite little nod. There was a real sweetness about my boy, even now, a sweetness that had everything to do with his mother and nothing to do with me. I felt like hugging the kid. But I didn’t hug him. And the moment passed.
We said goodnight without risking any more embraces, and as I climbed the stairs I could hear him clumping noisily around the kitchen, foraging for food. My wife was sleeping. But when I slid into my side of the bed, I felt her stir.
‘Is he back?’ she murmured, her voice foggy with sleep, her face pointing away from me.
‘He’s back,’ I said. I listened to her breathing for a bit. That was enough for her. The fact that he was back. That was all Lara cared about.
‘But where does he go?’ I said, all despairing.
She exhaled in the darkness, a sound that was half-yawn, half-sigh. ‘He’s a good boy, George,’ she said, already sliding back into sleep. ‘And he’s fine. And he’s home. And he’s safe.
Does it matter where he goes?’ Then she thought of something and half sat up. ‘You didn’t breathalyse him again, did you?’
‘I just wonder where he goes,’ I said.
I turned on to my side and we lay there, back to back, the position of animals who had found their home a long time ago. I felt Lara’s small feet on the back of my calves, the swell of her buttocks, the angle of a shoulder blade under brushed cotton pyjamas.
‘And I just don’t want him to get hurt,’ I said, very quietly, although she was sleeping by then.
I had a feeling that I would not sleep much tonight. But then I felt Lara’s body making itself comfortable against mine, and I knew that sleep would eventually come if I didn’t think about it too much.
And I knew that there was something more that I wanted for our son, something more than good sense and safety first, and cool heads to prevail, and the bit of the luck you need at seventeen, and perhaps less lies once in a while, just for a change.
And it was this – what every parent wants for the gawky teenage boy who they suddenly see accelerating towards the grown-up world without a crash helmet or a safety belt, imagining that everything is completely under control.
The silent prayer of the terrified parent.
I wanted to stop the clock.
We rarely saw Rufus at breakfast. In the morning he was an almost mythical figure, elusive yet lumbering, his enormous form sometimes glimpsed banging out the door, rucksack stuffed with books slung over one shoulder like the Yeti of Year 13, or whatever they call the sixth form these days.
The kitchen was full of clues that he had already come and gone. His chair pushed roughly back. A lone Coco Pop on the floor. The cereal bowl dumped in the sink for someone else to wash up.
I felt a ripple of irritation. I knew what this was about. He just wanted to avoid my porridge.
I made one meal a day for my family, and it was breakfast – tasty, nutritious Scott’s Porage Oats. I figured a healthy start balanced out the unhealthy remainder of my day – the cigarettes I secretly puffed, the junk food I noshed at work, the spikes of blood pressure. Every morning I built a barrier against early death. A wall of porridge. But my son never stuck around for it.
Lara appeared as I was drying his bowl. ‘He makes me so angry,’ I said.
She kissed my cheek and patted my ribs. ‘Everything makes you angry, darling.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘Ruby!’ No response. She took the bowl from me and put it away, shaking her head. ‘She’ll be late again. Go and get her, will you?’
I checked that the porridge was simmering nicely and went back upstairs. The door to our daughter’s room was open. She was sitting at her computer, in her school uniform, pulling her hair back and knotting it in a ponytail. I smiled at the seriousness of the expression on what was a fifteen-year-old version of her mother’s perfect face.
It wasn’t true that everything made me angry.
My daughter never made me angry.
I could hardly look at her without smiling.
And it had always been that way.
Apocalyptic images moved across her computer screen. Factories belching industrial filth. Dead fish floating in polluted rivers. Highways jammed with unmoving cars.
‘Anyone in here like porridge?’ I said, knocking on the open door.
‘Just let me…’ Her voice trailed away as she stared at ice caps melting, the earth’s crust boiling, the sky ripped asunder by plague and pestilence. ‘I just have to see…’
‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about all that stuff. It’s not the end of the world.’
She looked at me and grimaced. ‘That’s not funny, Daddy.’
But it made me laugh.
When we came downstairs the porridge had gently bubbled to that perfect consistency of creamy thickness that I liked.
Lara came in from the garden, holding something in her right hand. A cigarette butt. She threw it at me. It hit me in the middle of the chest, just where I always felt the tightness.
A spitfire,
my dad would say.
She’s a little spitfire.
‘Do you know what that is, George?’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘That’s another nail in your coffin.’ She sat down at the breakfast table and covered her face with her hands. Ruby and I looked at each other and then back at Lara. ‘Thanks a lot, George,’ my wife said, her voice muffled by her hands. ‘Thanks a bloody million.’
Then we ate our porridge.
Rufus was still at the bus stop.
I stopped the car on the other side of the road and opened the window. He looked across at the car containing his father, his mother and his sister, and seemed to cringe, and looked away. There were a few other kids from his school at the bus stop, but he didn’t seem to be with any of them.
‘Do you want a lift?’ I shouted, the rush-hour traffic roaring between us.
He tore his eyes from the pavement and screwed up his
face. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Can’t hear.’ Other kids stared across at us.
I looked at Lara in the passenger’s seat. ‘What could I possibly be asking him? What else could I conceivably be asking the kid?’
Ruby leaned forward. ‘What’s the capital of Peru? If God really exists then why is there so much suffering in the world?’ She sat back with a chuckle, smiling wearily at her big brother scanning the street for a sign of his bus. ‘He wants to get the bus, Daddy.’
She was right.
So we left him at the bus stop, and took Ruby to school – right up to the gates. We were still allowed to do that. She even gave us both a peck on the face, without first checking who might see.
She really did make me smile all the time.
And the smile only faded when she fell into step with one of her classmates, and I saw her moving her skinny hips from side to side as she hiked up her grey skirt. She had started wearing her white school socks above her knee and it was not a good look.
‘Young lady,’ I called.
She turned, raised her plucked eyebrows, and gave us a little wave of the hand that could have meant anything.
Okay. Goodbye. Bugger off.
But the hemline on that grey school skirt did not go any higher, and that felt like the most I could ask for.
Lara touched her watch as we eased back into the slow morning traffic. ‘I’m going to be late,’ she said.
I hit a switch on the dashboard.
‘No, you’re not,’ I said.
I swung the car to the wrong side of the road as the siren
began to wail, watching the oncoming traffic pulling over at the sight of the two blue lights that were flashing inside my grille, and everyone hearing me long before they saw me, and all of them getting out of the way.
Life the way it should be.
‘You know you shouldn’t do this,’ Lara said, sinking into her seat with embarrassment, but laughing at the same time.
I smiled, happy to make my wife happy, proud that I could get her to work on time, and looking forward to the moment when I was alone at last, and lighting up the first one of the day.