The Importance of Being a Bachelor (11 page)

‘There isn’t anyone else involved, is there?’ asked Luke.

‘Of course not,’ replied their dad, genuinely horrified at the question. ‘What kind of man do you take me for?’

‘I don’t know, Dad,’ replied Luke, ‘with this news you’re making it hard for me to tell.’

‘Look boys, I know you’re angry—’

‘Angry doesn’t even begin to describe it, Dad!’ interrupted Luke. ‘It’s like we don’t even know you. How can you just stand there and tell us that after the best part of forty years of marriage you’ve had enough and you’re off? How did you think we were going to react? Did you think we’d congratulate you? Well done there, Pops, for smashing up the family unit?’

Luke’s anger was rising. Something needed to be done to bring the temperature of the room down a few degrees before things got said that they would all regret. Russell glanced over to Adam in the hope that he might step up and do the big brother thing but he clearly wasn’t about to. Maybe Adam, having had time to deal with his reactions, was simply standing back and giving himself and Luke the opportunity to get fully up to speed.

‘Look,’ Russell was surprised by the forcefulness of his own voice used in the presence of a group of people with whom he was rarely if ever forceful, ‘why don’t we all just calm down. I understand this must be really difficult for you, Dad,’ continued Russell in his role as peacemaker, ‘but I’m still having a lot of trouble getting my head round this, so if Luke and I both promise to keep our mouths shut, will you tell exactly what’s happened?’

Everyone nodded and Dad explained everything again only this time more slowly and with a lot more detail.

‘OK Dad,’ said Adam, aware that his brothers were looking at him with a ‘So what now?’ expression. ‘Now we’ve got to sort out the way forward. First thing we need to know is what time Mum’s getting back.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Dad. ‘Maybe you should go over there now and make sure she’s all right. She’ll need all the support she can get.’

‘Too right,’ snapped Luke in his father’s direction. ‘In fact I’m getting out of here right now. Just being in the same room with you is driving me insane.’

‘Luke, wait!’ commanded Adam. ‘Just wait, OK? And then we’ll all go. Look, Dad, with the best will in the world I really can’t take the idea of you and Mum splitting up seriously. I don’t know what’s going on with you but I’ve got a strong feeling that you’re going to regret this once Mum finds out. So here’s what going to happen: you’ll stay here, me, Luke and Russ will go over to yours and get rid of the letter, we’ll tell Mum you felt ill last night, stayed at mine and that you’re fast asleep now. Then once you’ve had a couple of hours to yourself we’ll pick you up and take you back home, OK?’

‘You’re talking as though you haven’t heard a word I’ve said!’ shouted Dad. He took a moment to compose himself. ‘I know it’s hard for you boys but it really is over between your mum and me and I’m not going back. So just leave the letter where it is and let things proceed the way they were meant to.’

‘Not a chance!’ snapped Luke. ‘Maybe we can’t make you stay if you don’t want to, but I’m not going to let you split up with a woman you’ve been with for forty years by letter!’

Dad didn’t say a word. He sat down on the sofa and hung his head in his hands.

‘Luke’s right, Dad,’ said Russell. ‘You can’t just walk out on Mum like that.’

Still no word.

‘They’re both right,’ said Adam. ‘This is no way for things to end. So you’re doing what you think you’ve got to do, but we’re doing exactly the same.’

‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

As Luke’s car pulled into Mum and Dad’s road Adam was thinking how odd it had been to hear his father talk about his emotions like that. Adam had never seen such an explicit emotional outburst from his father in his life. Not when his grandad Tom died, not when Uncle Al died, not even when at the age of fifteen Adam had had to break the news that Luke had been knocked down by a car outside school. These were all times when the whole family had been in tears and yet their dad had never shared a single shred of what was going on inside his head. Instead he took action; he made arrangements and got things organised and remained calm and focused throughout. Even though they were polar opposites Adam had always admired his father’s lack of emotion because that meant there was at least one member of the family he didn’t have to worry about. Maybe it was an eldest child thing; the fear that goes hand in hand with knowing that his brothers were always looking to him for leadership. Yet while as a child (and later as a teenager) Adam worried about every member of his family (his mum especially) whenever they left the home without him, he never, ever worried about his dad because he knew Dad could look after himself.

‘Maybe we should have called Mum on her mobile and told her that we’d pick her up,’ said Russell as the car came to a halt outside his parents’ house. ‘You know, just to be on the safe side.’

‘Have you tried talking to Mum on her mobile?’ scoffed Adam. ‘First of all it’s a miracle if she answers it at all and secondly she can never hear anything you say so you end up bellowing into your phone like some kind of nutter. Anyway, you know what trains are like. She’s probably running late.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Luke, who was still very much in glowering mode. ‘Then how come I can see her in the front bedroom opening the curtains?’

Adam leaned across his brother and peered out of the passenger window up at the house. He was right. Their mum was indeed opening the upstairs curtains.

‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘You know what Mum’s like when she gets back from being away. It’s always shoes off, kettle on and make a brew, so chances are she’s breezed past the letter on her way upstairs to give the house one of her famous “good airings” even if she’s only been away overnight. Let’s just keep calm, grab the letter and make this as quick and as painless as possible. Because do you know what? I’m shattered and after I’ve finished patching up our parents’ marriage the first thing I’m going to do is head home, climb into bed and try to forget this day has ever happened.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Right then, let’s go.’

The boys climbed out of the car, made their way up the front path and paused while Adam used his set of keys to open the door. They could see their mum’s overnight bag sitting in the middle of the carpet but there was no sign of the letter. They began frantically searching around the hallway in the hope that it had accidentally fallen off the stool but to no avail. Adam was just about to suggest that they split up and check over the house when he became aware that they were no longer alone: his mum was standing at the top of the stairs watching them.

‘Mum,’ said Adam guiltily. ‘You’re home.’

‘Of course I’m home,’ she replied tersely. ‘There’s my bag and shoes right in front of you.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Adam. His mum came downstairs and he gave her a kiss with Luke and Russell following suit.

‘So what are you all doing here?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Adam casually. ‘We were just passing on our way to a thing in town so we thought we’d drop in and say hello.’

Russell stepped forward. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

‘It was fine.’

‘And the taxi ride over here was OK?’

‘It was all fine.’

‘I know,’ suggested Adam, determined to move her out of the current hallway search zone. ‘Why don’t you put your feet up and we’ll put your stuff away for you?’ He tried to usher his mum into the living room but she refused to budge.

‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

Adam was confused. Although his mum had always been a big fan of rhetorical questions he couldn’t work out what had provoked this one. ‘I never said anything of the sort, Mum,’ he said cagily. ‘I was just suggesting that you have a rest. Since when was that a crime?’

‘Adam,’ she said fixing him with her most stern look, ‘do I look like an idiot to you?’ She didn’t wait for his response. ‘Then don’t treat me like one.’ Then she made her way into the kitchen.

Adam exchanged perplexed glances with his brothers and followed. She was in the process of filling the kettle but as the boys entered the room she carefully turned off the tap, set down the kettle on the kitchen counter and faced them.

‘This is about your father, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’ bluffed Adam.

A look of utter exasperation flooded her face. ‘Adam,’ she said carefully. ‘What did I tell you less than a minute ago about treating me like an idiot?’

Adam decided the game was up. ‘You mean you’ve already seen the letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘The letter from Dad?’

‘What letter from Dad?’

Adam’s brain was about to explode. ‘Are you saying that you haven’t seen the letter Dad wrote to you?’

‘I’ve just told you that,’ snapped his mum impatiently. ‘Have you got something wrong with your ears?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Adam. ‘If you haven’t seen the letter then what do you think we’re here about?’

‘Your father of course.’

Adam rubbed his throbbing temples. ‘So you already know Dad is at mine?’

‘Is that where he went? Doesn’t surprise me.’

‘Mum, look, I don’t know what you know or what you think you know and I hate being the one to tell you but it’s like this . . .’ He felt sick. This was no way for a woman of his mum’s age to hear news like this.

‘I came in last night from a night out to find Dad sleeping on the sofa at mine. Apparently he wrote you a letter telling you that he was leaving you and we’re here because we were hoping that we could get rid of the letter before you could read it.’ Adam put his arms round his mum and hugged her tightly. ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

She pushed Adam away. ‘So where is this letter?’

‘I don’t know. Haven’t you got it?’

‘No, and do you know why that is? Then let me enlighten you: you can’t find the letter because there was no letter and there was no letter because your father didn’t leave me . . . I threw him out. Now if you don’t mind, boys, I’d like some time on my own.’ Her expression indicated that she would brook no further questioning. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ she snapped like she used to when they were all kids, ‘Move! And whatever you do,’ she added as her fury reaching maximum velocity, ‘don’t slam the front door on your way out!’

‘I eat out a lot.’

‘None of this is making any sense,’ said Adam, staring into his pint. ‘Dad’s claiming he’s left Mum; Mum’s counter-claiming that she kicked him out; and I’ve got a horrible feeling that they’re both lying through their back teeth.’

It was mid-afternoon and Adam and his brothers were sitting in BlueBar trying make sense of the weirdest couple of hours in the Bachelor family’s history.

It was incredible that their mother had thought she could get away with dropping a bombshell like ‘it was me who kicked your father out’ and expect them to accept the situation without any further clarification, but there had been no getting through to her. Adam and his brothers had bombarded her with questions but she had simply refused to engage and had made herself a cup of tea which she took into the living room. Switching on the TV as if she hadn’t a care in the world she had flicked through the cable stations to TCM and made it clear through her body language that she had every intention of following the plot of
Rio Bravo
. For ten whole minutes she kept up this charade until finally she said in a voice that made it clear she was only going to say it once: ‘I want you to leave, boys. Right now. This is between me and your father and nobody else.’ Realising they were smacking their heads against a brick wall, they headed to BlueBar for a drink and the opportunity to regroup.

‘I agree,’ said Luke in reponse to Adam’s statement. ‘Dad’s story about the letter didn’t stack up because there was no letter. But I can’t understand why he would make up something like that.’

‘Maybe it’s true that Mum kicked him out and he was trying to save face,’ suggested Russell. ‘Maybe all that stuff about the marriage being over and wanting to be free to do his own thing was actually what Mum said to him when she asked him to pack his bags.’

‘There’s no way Mum kicked Dad out because she wanted a last chance to sow her wild oats or whatever,’ said Luke firmly. ‘First off, Mum’s just not like that and second off, you know as well as I do that Mum’s mantra has always been that the Bachelors don’t air their dirty laundry in public. If Mum really has kicked him out the neighbours will be all over it within the week! Now for her to put herself up for that kind of public scrutiny, there has to be a more solid reason than “I fancy a bit more time to do my crocheting” or whatever.’

Adam agreed, especially given how much she disapproved of people ‘living over the brush’. All any of Adam’s reprobate friends had to do to go up in her estimation was to get hitched; it didn’t seem likely that she would give up on forty years of marriage without a fight.

‘So what do you think happened?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, do I?’ sighed Luke. ‘But my guess is that the answer to this mess lies with Dad, not Mum. Mum looks to me like someone reacting to circumstances outside her control.’

Adam looked over at Russell. ‘And what do you think?’

‘I think I need another drink.’

As Adam stood at the bar and ordered two pints of Peroni and a Coke for Luke he spotted Rob and Ashley, a couple of old regulars, and chatted to them for a while, glad of the distraction.