Men from the Boys

Families that had had a good divorce – they were the Waltons to us. They were the Jacksons. They were the Little Broken Home on the Prairie. They were what we would have loved to have been and what we would never be.

Families that had had a good divorce – we could hardly stand to look at them. Because it was nothing like that for us. Me and my boy.

It never felt like much to ask. A life like other lives. A divorce that could hold its head up high. Some love to remain after the love had flown.

Dream on, kiddo.

Home at midnight. And in a bit of a state.

I had not really touched dinner – rubber chicken for five hundred – so now my stomach was growling and my head was reeling and I was a shade drunker than I had planned to be. My bow tie was coming undone. There was a smear of crème brûlée on the black satin collar of my dinner jacket. Now how the hell did that happen?

It was a school night and Pat should have been tucked up in bed like the rest of the family. But he was sitting at the dining-room table, Japanese homework scattered around him, pushing a fistful of hair out of his eyes as I came into the room with the exaggerated care of the accidental drunk.

He was always mad at me if he thought I had drunk more than I could take.

‘Celebrating, are you?’ he said, tapping an impatient biro.

I suddenly realised that I was carrying a bag containing a magnum of champagne and – something else. I looked inside. The something else was a shiny gold ear set on a base of glass and chrome. My award. The show’s award. I placed both the bottle and the award on the table, careful to avoid Pat’s homework.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, softening a little. ‘The show won. You won.’ But then he scowled again when he saw me fumbling with the foil on the bottle. Just a nightcap, I thought.

‘No show tomorrow?’ he said. ‘I thought you had a show tomorrow.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘And I thought recovering from hangovers became harder as you got older.’

I had removed the foil and now I was easing off the wire. ‘So they say.’

‘They must be getting really hard for you then,’ he said. ‘Now you’re forty.’

I stopped and looked at him. He had this infuriating smirk on his face. ‘But I’m not forty, am I?’ I said. ‘I’m only thirtynine and three-quarters.’

He got up from the table. ‘You’re almost forty,’ he said, and exhaled the endlessly exasperated sigh that only a teenager can make. He went off to the kitchen and I put the champagne unopened on the table. It was true. We were on air tomorrow. Opening a bottle at midnight was possibly not the best idea I ever had.

Pat came back with a pint glass of water and gave it to me.

‘Dehydration,’ I said, trying to worm my way back into his good books. ‘My body’s dehydrated.’

‘And your brain,’ he said dryly, and he began collecting his books. I saw that he had been waiting up for me. Then he thought of something. ‘Someone called. He wanted you. An old man. He didn’t leave a message.’

‘That’s strange,’ I said. ‘We don’t know any old people, do we?’

‘Apart from you, you mean?’

I chugged down some water and followed him as he went around turning off lights, and checking locked doors.

I watched him making sure we were safe, and with my wife and our daughters sound asleep upstairs, for a few moments it felt as though the family had once again boiled down to just the two of us. The last light went out.

I did not mention his mother.

The next day, when he was back from school, we walked to the large expanse of grass at the end of our street.

The recreation ground, it was called with no apparent irony. There was a patch of concrete where some lost civilisation had once built an adventure playground, brimming with swings and slides and seesaws and all manner of wonders. But that was all long gone, destroyed by vandals and health and safety officers, and now the recreation ground was just a place to boot your ball, or take your dog for a dump, or get your head kicked in after dark.

‘Three and in?’ I said, balancing the football on my forehead, feeling some flakes of dried mud fall away.

Pat was sitting on the grass, lacing his Predator boots. ‘Just take shots at me,’ he said.

We took off our tracksuit tops, threw them down for goalposts and I smiled as Pat went through some stretching exercises. He was tall for his age, all long-limbed awkwardness, and he always seemed surprised at how far and how fast he had grown. But he looked like what he wanted to be. He looked like a goalkeeper. And I really thought he would make the school team this year but I knew better than to mention it.

Some things are too big to talk about.

I curled a shot at him and he leapt up and snatched it from the air. There was a round of mocking applause and we turned and saw a group of teenagers who had annexed the two benches that were the highlight of the recreation ground. They were maybe a bit older than Pat. Or perhaps just wilder. A couple of girls among a group of boys. One of them was a lot bigger than the rest, built more like a man than a boy, and the shadow of his beard looked all wrong above his Ramsay Mac blazer. They leered at us, roosting on the back of the benches with their feet where their baggy-arsed trousers were meant to go.

Pat rolled the ball out to me and I drove it back at him, low and hard. He got down quickly, his body behind the ball. More applause, and I turned to look at them again. In the fading light, their cigarettes glowed like fireflies.

‘That’s William Fly,’ he said. ‘The big one.’

‘Just ignore them,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

Pat threw the ball out to me and I trapped it, took another touch, and banged it back. Pat skipped across his goalmouth and hugged the ball to his midriff. No applause this time, and I looked up to see the little group had wandered off to the knackered strip of shops that lay beyond the recreation ground.

‘William Fly,’ Pat said. ‘He nearly got expelled for putting something down the toilet.’

‘What did he put down the toilet?’

‘The physics teacher,’ he said, bouncing the ball at his feet. ‘William Fly is famous.’

He kicked the ball back to me.

‘No,’ I said, watching it coming. ‘Winston Churchill is famous. Dickens. Beckham. David Frost. Justin Timberlake is famous. This guy is not famous. He’s just a hard nut.’

‘Same thing,’ Pat said. ‘Same thing when you’re at school.’

He was on the balls of his feet, springing around the goalmouth because he saw me flicking up the ball, getting ready to unload my legendary volley. I laughed, happy to be here, and happy to be alone with my son.

The ball came off my instep with a crisp smack. Pat threw himself sideways, stretched at his full length, but he couldn’t get to it.

Then he went to get the ball while I ran round in circles in the fading light, trying to avoid what irresponsible dog owners had left behind, my arms held aloft in triumph.

Cyd went to the foot of the stairs and called their names. All three of them. Pat. Peggy. Joni. My kid. Her kid. Our kid. Although after ten years we thought of them all as our kids.

From the kitchen I heard chairs being shoved back from computers, doors slamming, laughter. A high, tiny voice struggling to make its point amid two bigger voices. And then a small herd of elephants – our mob coming down for dinner. Cyd came back and watched me trying to chop up parsley without removing a few fingers.

‘Did you tell him yet?’ Cyd said.

I shook my head. ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘The time wasn’t right.’