The Trouble with Henry and Zoe (30 page)

‘He wanted to know why I wasn’t wearing the earrings,’ she says. ‘So I bloody well told him why.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Don’t take a tone, Henry. I’m warning you, do not take a tone.’

‘Do you ever wonder, Mum . . . if you and Dad are . . .’

‘Baby boy, I wonder all the time. But’ – she points her knife at the inert TV screen – ‘can you see me with someone like her husband, all moustache and
pinstripes?’

I laugh. ‘No, I really can’t.’

‘Well, there you go,’ she says. ‘You’re made for who you’re made for.’

‘What about tonight?’ I say. ‘Are you going to cancel?’

‘Henry, love, folk have had their hair done.’

‘So . . .?’

‘So get some spread on that bread.’

Of course they have booked a karaoke.

April sings ‘Sweet Home Alabama’; Brian belts out ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’; and I do ‘Islands in the Stream’ with my mother, filling in the parts she was
due to sing with her husband. Wherever he got to. By virtue of death and birth control (natural or designed), my parents have no family beyond their only son. But the pub is bustling with friends,
regulars and locals; the mood and music are set to high, and any dampening effect Dad’s absence might have had has been amply offset by several cases of pink prosecco and a table full of
sausage rolls. Even Mum appears to be enjoying herself, and when I ask if we should be worried, she whispers into my ear that Dad can take care of himself. ‘Mind you,’ she says,
‘if he leaves it much longer, he’ll have me to deal with, and I’m a different matter.’

‘So,’ says April. ‘Where’s this mystery woman? Zoe, isn’t it?’

Sitting at a table with Mum, Brian and a heavily pregnant ex-fiancée is less mortifying than I might have imagined.

‘She couldn’t make it.’

‘Didn’t run out on her, did you?’

‘Harsh,’ says Brian.

‘Hardly,’ says Mum. ‘If you want to talk about harsh, love . . .’

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I told her about you.’

April raises her eyebrows. ‘Well, that was stupid.’

Brian nods.

‘Shame,’ says April.

‘Thank you.’

‘I mean,’ April goes on, ‘I was looking forward to seeing your face when I told her myself.’

Mum laughs and nudges April with her elbow. ‘God, can you imagine.’

April stares right through me and nods slowly.
Yes,
I really can
.

And so can I. I imagine that, in the noisy intimacy of this pub, confronted with the live and thriving protagonists, Zoe might have received the news more easily than on a busy train. She might
have laughed. But then again, maybe not. As ever, my timing and judgement are way off. Despite Rachel’s insistence, I sent one more message to Zoe before joining the party tonight – a
final apology and plea for dialogue. She hasn’t called, hasn’t messaged.

I’m pulling my hair again, and the sensation feels like an old friend. Sitting in the bath, working conditioner up through my roots, clenching two fistfuls of hair and
twisting my hands away from my scalp.

Eight hours on trains and cold platforms to end up back in London minus a boyfriend that wasn’t a real boyfriend anyway. I’ve had plenty of time to think, too much probably, but my
thoughts and feelings are no less tangled than they were when I made a massive U-turn several hours ago. The inside of my head feels like a ball of knotted string. And the champagne certainly
hasn’t helped. Did I over-react? Possibly, I’m not sure. But honestly, what’s the point, after all? Five more weeks and it’s over anyway. Whatever
it
was. I still
don’t know. I certainly can’t take him to a wedding – too much like giving fate the finger.

Rachel wanted me to go back to her house, but Steve’s family are staying and – can you imagine?
So your son’s getting married. You must be so excited. Funny thing happened
to me today.

No thank you.

Rachel insisted, and when I refused she offered to come to mine. But I meant it when I said I wanted to be alone, and I suppose she must have heard it in my voice. There was mail for Alex when I
got back through the door. Two letters: one a catalogue of DJ equipment, the other offering a free valuation of our property.
We have buyers looking in your area now.
Maybe I should have
sold this place after all, I’d be halfway around the world by now. Either way, I don’t think I’ll come back to this house after I leave it in September.

How do you leave someone
at the altar
? And what’s all that with
The Graduate
? As if he was setting me up and manipulating my emotions.
Jesus Christ
, she – April
– was going to be there! And wouldn’t that have made a picture.

After developing a roll of black and white negatives, I cut the film into six-frame strips and store them in plastic wallets, waiting to be scanned, cropped, enlarged, manipulated. I
haven’t printed any, and now I never will. Seven envelopes, seven rolls of film, all thrown in the bin along with a sugarcraft bride and groom and ten months’ worth of mail for my dead
boyfriend.

There was no wine in the house, but I needed a drink. The last bottle of champagne stood impatiently in the small shelf where it had been chilling for quite long enough. Maybe I was saving it to
drink with Henry, but that’s not happening now, so I popped the cork, took the bottle upstairs and ran a very hot bath.

Maybe I’m just a little bit envious. Henry did what I never had the courage to do. Regardless of how he went about it, he removed himself from what I can only assume was a bad
relationship. But lucky old Zoe, I never had to choose between saying yes and saying no.

The champagne bottle is empty, my fingertips are wrinkled now and the water from my new boiler has cooled. My scalp tingles from me knotting handfuls of hair around my fist, but I haven’t
pulled any out, so I guess that’s progress.
Yay for me!

Looking at myself in the mirror, I all of a sudden look like a stranger. Thinner in the face, a single vertical wrinkle between my eyes from scowling. When I frown at my reflection, the wrinkle
deepens and lengthens. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling this girl Zoe Bubbles. And this graduated bob, Henry’s handiwork hanging in wet ringlets. Not me either.

There is a pair of scissors in the bathroom cabinet, not ideal for the task, but what’s new there. I pull a length of hair away from my head and cut it two inches from my scalp. Then I
take another and cut again.

There are boxers and there are brawlers, they say. Brawlers bite down on their gum shield and go toe to toe, throwing knuckles like savages. Boxers feint, draw, parry, move;
they fight tactically, wearing you down and picking you off. Dad was a boxer – the sweet science, he calls it – but as his skills and mobility waned, he began to rely more on grit and
his right hand, arguably taking more damage in his last half dozen fights than in all the rest leading up to that point. But even now, it seems Big Boots has retained a little of the old ring
craft.

The first we know of his return, a little after nine, is Keith the Karaoke placing a microphone on our table and nodding towards the small, makeshift stage. The opening bars of Sonny and
Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’ jangle out of the boxy speakers, and Dad raises his microphone towards his wife. Dad may have once resembled a certain Memphis crooner, but whatever shabby
similarity remains, it stops short of the vocal cords. Not that Dad can’t sing; more that he doesn’t, not exactly. He delivers the lyrics –
They say we’re young and we
don’t know
– with just enough melody and black pepper to elevate it above the spoken word. It’s a narrow range, but the voice matches the man – rugged and sincere and a
little battered. Mum’s timing is perfect, standing on cue and returning the lyrics normally delivered by Sonny. And she can sing. Mum arrives at Dad’s side –
and baby I got
you
– and takes his hand. She shakes her head with a combination of love, resignation and admonition. Dad shrugs it off, and with no sign of communication between them, they switch
seamlessly into their gender assigned lines: Mum worrying about the rent, him buying her flowers in the spring. The only thing that stops me crying – because lord knows, I come close –
is Brian’s infectious concern for April, who is sobbing to the brink of hyperventilation and with surely enough force to induce labour. We each hold one of her hands through to the final
Babe
, at which point my mother slaps Big Boots hard around the sideburns, in response to which, the old man takes her face gently in his big hands and kisses her like I imagine he did forty
years ago today. April’s hand slides out of mine, and I make a point of not looking at her or Brian until my mother returns to the table with Dad in tow.

‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ says April.

‘Who you calling a cat?’ Dad says, glancing at Mum. She smiles thinly, but still has the tense air of a thing undetonated. Dad puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Son.’

‘Dad.’

‘Well,’ he says, taking in the table, ‘this is . . . you know . . .’

‘Weird?’ says Brian.

‘That it is. So . . . Just us, is it?’

‘She dumped him,’ says April, not without some pleasure.

‘This true?’

‘Looks that way,’ I say. ‘So, happy anniversary, I suppose?’

Dad looks at Mum who still hasn’t said a word since returning to the table.

Brian goes to stand. ‘Maybe we should . . .’

Mum puts a hand on his knee. ‘You’re family now,’ she says.

Brian looks at me:
Is this true?

I shrug:
Suppose so.

‘So?’ says my mother, swivelling her eyes onto my father.

Dad places a small oblong box on the table. ‘Happy anniversary, beautiful.’

Mum looks at the box, at my dad, back to the box. She opens it, closes it, begins to cr y.

‘What is it?’ asks April.

Mum slides the box to the girl I increasingly think of as her daughter, and April pops it open.

‘Not sodding earrings,’ says Dad with a wink.

‘Nice bracelet,’ says Brian.

Mum puts her arms around Dad’s shoulders and kisses him. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Rightly so,’ says the old man.

One piece of jewellery stirs thoughts of another.

‘April?’ I say, turning to my ex-fiancée.

‘You know the fields at the back of Mum and Dad’s house?’ she says, apparently anticipating my line of enquiry.

‘Yeees.’

‘Well, if they’re not sprouting diamonds by next spring, I don’t know what to tell you.’

It’s past two before Big Boots sees the last of the guests off the premises; roughly half an hour after we have steered Mum up the stairs and into bed. Me removing her
shoes, Dad carefully removing her ruby bracelet and returning it to the black velvet box. After my mother unloaded on him this afternoon, he drove to Manchester and after ‘a few
hiccups’, managed to exchange the earrings for something less incendiary. They have danced, kissed, argued a little, and dueted again with ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’,
‘It Takes Two’ and, somewhat bewilderingly, ‘Ebony and Ivory’. Brian and April did a passable impression of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and I drank too much pink
prosecco. In the empty bar my ears are ringing with chatter, laughter and bad song. Dad let the bar staff go an hour ago, and the tables are strewn with glasses, the floor sticky with spilt drink
and trodden-in buffet.

‘Same again next year?’ I say to Dad.

‘We should do it more often,’ he says, laughing.

‘Maybe you could turn up next time.’

Dad throws a playful jab at my chin.

‘And what about you? Keep letting these women slip through your hands?’

‘Want me to do the glasses?’

‘You’d probably drop ’em. Anyway, got a couple of girls coming in the morning.’ Dad takes a seat at the bar. ‘Buy your old man a drink?’ he says, slapping the
wood.

I pour two whiskies, sit next to my father and proceed to tell him everything there is to know about Zoe. About Alex, Thailand, Cornwall, the Duck and Cover, the white streak in her hair, the
way she snorts when she laughs too hard. I tell him that I wish I’d met her two years earlier.

‘Aye,’ says Dad, laughing. ‘Would have saved us all some trouble. So . . . what you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. And even if I could . . . she’s still leaving next month. Maybe it’s easier this way.’

‘Yeah, that’s a tough one.’

Dad places his splayed hands flat on the bar, staring at his prominent, calloused knuckles. The scars from where he had a frame holding his wrist together are still visible on his right
hand.

‘Couldn’t remember where I got ’em,’ he says.

‘Got what, Dad?’

When he looks up at me, his eyes are tired and sad. ‘Earrings,’ he says. ‘I left with a light under me, didn’t take the bag or receipt. Just the earrings in a black box;
no label. Was only there a week ago and I couldn’t remember where I’d got ’em.’

‘That what took you so long?’

‘Must have gone in practically every jeweller’s in Manchester.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t get arrested. Why didn’t you call me?’

Dad shrugs. ‘Keys, names, what I’m doing in the cellar. Head like a sieve, son.’

‘We all do that.’

Dad taps the back of his left hand and I notice a small number ‘3’ written in black ink. ‘Car park,’ he says.

‘How bad is it?’

Dad turns his hands over and clenches them into fists. ‘Fighting’s as much about heart as hands. You know that?’

I nod that I do.

Dad taps his chest. ‘Bite down and dig deep,’ he says. ‘But . . . sooner or later, you find yourself in a fight you can’t win. Bust up, can’t see the punches
coming, can’t get your shots off. Just getting hit and hurt and damaged. And every fighter’s thought it, though most won’t say, you just want a way out.’ Dad relaxes his
hands and looks me dead in the eye. ‘All you have to do is lower your lead hand a little, hang out your chin . . . and it’s over.’