The Complete Man and Boy Trilogy: Man and Boy, Man and Wife, Men From the Boys

‘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 mum 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 saver,’ she laughed, looking down at Peggy. ‘You must be Peggy. You haven’t got a light saver too, have you?’

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

‘It’s a boys’ game, isn’t it?’ my mum said, never much of a one for breaking down traditional gender stereotypes.

Peggy followed Pat into the house and my mum 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 mum 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 mum 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 mum would call a smasher.

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

The kitchen table had been carried out 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 centre 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 favourite 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 motor. Or he should do.’

‘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 mum 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 would never and 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 barbecue-flavoured crisp.

‘Bit went down the wrong hole,’ he explained.

My mum 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 subsidised by the state and my mum 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 mum said.

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 mum, the right time to remove the stabilisers on a child’s bike with my dad.

And she made all the right noises – admiring my mum’s sausage rolls (‘Home-made 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 who I had danced with a couple of times in a suburban club, one of the Kims and Kellys who 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 towards her conspiratorially. ‘Good card players, Texans.’

‘It must be lovely having sisters,’ my mum 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 were 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.’