After You
Page 36
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘who is Martin?’
There was a short pause. ‘Martin is my former partner. Lily apparently insists on seeing him, even though she knows I don’t like it.’
‘Could I have his number? I’d just like to make sure I know where she is. You know, while you’re gone.’
‘Martin’s number? Why would I have Martin’s number?’ she squawked, and the phone went dead.
Something had changed since I’d met Lily. It wasn’t just that I’d learned to accommodate the explosion of teenage-related mess in my near-empty flat, I had actually started to quite enjoy having Lily in my life, having someone to eat with, sit side by side with on the sofa, commenting on whatever we happened to be watching on the television, or keeping a poker face when she offered me some concoction she’d made. Well, how should I know you have to cook the potatoes in a potato salad? It’s a salad, for God’s sake.
At work I now listened to the fathers at the bar wishing their children goodnight as they flew off on business trips – You be good for Mummy now, Luke … Did you? … You did? Aren’t you a clever boy! – and the custody arguments conducted in hissed telephone conversations: No, I did not say I could pick him up from school that day. I was always due in Barcelona … Yes, I was … No, no, you just don’t listen.
I couldn’t believe that you could give birth to someone, love them, nurture them, and by their sixteenth year claim that you were so exasperated that you’d change the locks of your house against them. Sixteen was still a child, surely. For all her posturing, I could see the child in Lily. It was there in the excitements and sudden enthusiasms. It was there in the sulks, the trying on of different looks in front of my bathroom mirror and the abrupt, innocent sleep.
I thought of my sister and her uncomplicated love for Thom. I thought of my parents, encouraging, worrying about and supporting Treena and me, even though we were both well into adulthood. And in those moments I felt Will’s absence in Lily’s life like I felt it in my own. You should have been here, Will, I told him silently. It was you she really needed.
I booked a day’s holiday – an outrage, according to Richard. (‘You’ve only been back five weeks. I really don’t see why you need to disappear again.’) I smiled, bobbed a curtsy in a grateful Irish-dancing-girl manner, and drove home later to find Lily painting one of the spare-room walls a particularly vivid shade of jade green. ‘You said you wanted it brightening up,’ she said, as I stood with my mouth open. ‘Don’t worry. I paid for the paint myself.’
‘Well,’ I pulled off my wig, and unlaced my shoes, ‘just make sure you’ve finished by this evening because I’ve got the day off tomorrow,’ I said, when I had changed into my jeans, ‘and I’m going to show you some of the things your dad liked.’
She stopped, dripping jade paint onto the carpet. ‘What things?’
‘You’ll see.’
We spent the day driving, our soundtrack a playlist on Lily’s iPod that provided one minute a heart-breaking dirge of love and loss, the next an ear-perforating raging anthem of hatred against all mankind. I mastered the art, while on the motorway, of mentally rising above the noise and focusing on the road, while Lily sat beside me, nodding in time to the beat and occasionally performing an impromptu drum roll on the dashboard. It was good, I thought, that she was enjoying herself. And who needed both eardrums to be working, anyway?
We started off in Stortfold, and took in the places Will and I used to sit and eat, the picnic spots in the fields above the town, his favourite benches around the grounds of the castle, and Lily had the grace to try not to look bored. To be fair, it was quite hard to work up enthusiasm about a series of fields. So I sat down and told her how, when I had first met him, Will had barely left the house, and how, through a mixture of subterfuge and bloody-mindedness, I had set about getting him out again. ‘You have to understand,’ I said, ‘that your father hated to be dependent on anyone. And us going out didn’t just mean that he had to rely on someone else but he had to be seen to be relying on someone else.’
‘Even if it was you.’
‘Even if it was me.’
She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I’d hate people seeing me like that. I don’t even like people seeing me with wet hair.’
We visited the gallery where he had tried to explain to me the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ modern art (I still couldn’t tell), and she pulled a face at almost everything on its walls. We poked our heads into the wine merchant’s where he had made me taste different sorts of wine (‘No, Lily, we are not doing a wine-tasting today’), then walked to the tattoo shop where he had persuaded me to get my tattoo. She asked if I could lend her the money for one (I nearly wept with relief when the man told her no under-eighteens), then asked to see my little bumble bee. That was one of the few occasions when I felt I’d actually impressed her. She laughed out loud when I told her what he had chosen for himself: a Best Before date stencilled on his chest.
‘You have the same awful sense of humour,’ I said, and she tried not to look pleased.
It was then that the owner, overhearing our conversation, mentioned that he had a photograph. ‘I keep pictures of all of my tattoos,’ he said, from under a heavily waxed handlebar moustache. ‘I like to have a record. Just remind me of the date?’
We stood there silently as he flicked through his laminated binder. And there it was, from almost two years previously, a close-up of that black and white design, neatly inked onto Will’s caramel skin. I stood and stared at the photograph, its familiarity taking my breath away. The little black and white patterned block, the one I had washed with a soft cloth, which I had dried, rubbed sun cream into, rested my face against. I would have reached out to touch it, but Lily got there first, her fingers with their bitten nails tracing gently over the image of her father’s skin. ‘I think I’ll get one,’ she said. ‘Like his, I mean. When I’m old enough.’
‘So how is he?’
Lily and I turned. The tattooist was sitting on his chair, rubbing at a heavily coloured forearm. ‘I remember him. We don’t get many quadriplegics in here.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?’
A lump rose suddenly to my throat.
‘He’s dead,’ said Lily, baldly. ‘My dad. He’s dead.’
The tattooist winced. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I had no idea.’
‘Can I keep this?’ Lily had started to work the photograph of Will’s tattoo out of its plastic binder.
‘Sure,’ he said hurriedly. ‘If you want it, take it. Here, have the plastic cover as well. Case it rains.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, tucking it neatly under her arm, and as the man stuttered another apology, we walked out of the shop.
We had lunch – an all-day breakfast – silently in a café. Feeling the day’s mood leach away from us, I began to talk. I told Lily what I knew of Will’s romantic history, about his career, that he was the kind of man who made you long for his approval, whether just by doing something that impressed him or making him laugh with some stupid joke. I told her how he was when I met him, and how he had changed, softened, starting to find joy in small things, even if many of those small things seemed to involve making fun of me. ‘Like I wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food. My mum basically has ten set meals which she’s rotated for the past twenty-five years. And none of them involves quinoa. Or lemongrass. Or guacamole. Your dad would eat anything.’
There was a short pause. ‘Martin is my former partner. Lily apparently insists on seeing him, even though she knows I don’t like it.’
‘Could I have his number? I’d just like to make sure I know where she is. You know, while you’re gone.’
‘Martin’s number? Why would I have Martin’s number?’ she squawked, and the phone went dead.
Something had changed since I’d met Lily. It wasn’t just that I’d learned to accommodate the explosion of teenage-related mess in my near-empty flat, I had actually started to quite enjoy having Lily in my life, having someone to eat with, sit side by side with on the sofa, commenting on whatever we happened to be watching on the television, or keeping a poker face when she offered me some concoction she’d made. Well, how should I know you have to cook the potatoes in a potato salad? It’s a salad, for God’s sake.
At work I now listened to the fathers at the bar wishing their children goodnight as they flew off on business trips – You be good for Mummy now, Luke … Did you? … You did? Aren’t you a clever boy! – and the custody arguments conducted in hissed telephone conversations: No, I did not say I could pick him up from school that day. I was always due in Barcelona … Yes, I was … No, no, you just don’t listen.
I couldn’t believe that you could give birth to someone, love them, nurture them, and by their sixteenth year claim that you were so exasperated that you’d change the locks of your house against them. Sixteen was still a child, surely. For all her posturing, I could see the child in Lily. It was there in the excitements and sudden enthusiasms. It was there in the sulks, the trying on of different looks in front of my bathroom mirror and the abrupt, innocent sleep.
I thought of my sister and her uncomplicated love for Thom. I thought of my parents, encouraging, worrying about and supporting Treena and me, even though we were both well into adulthood. And in those moments I felt Will’s absence in Lily’s life like I felt it in my own. You should have been here, Will, I told him silently. It was you she really needed.
I booked a day’s holiday – an outrage, according to Richard. (‘You’ve only been back five weeks. I really don’t see why you need to disappear again.’) I smiled, bobbed a curtsy in a grateful Irish-dancing-girl manner, and drove home later to find Lily painting one of the spare-room walls a particularly vivid shade of jade green. ‘You said you wanted it brightening up,’ she said, as I stood with my mouth open. ‘Don’t worry. I paid for the paint myself.’
‘Well,’ I pulled off my wig, and unlaced my shoes, ‘just make sure you’ve finished by this evening because I’ve got the day off tomorrow,’ I said, when I had changed into my jeans, ‘and I’m going to show you some of the things your dad liked.’
She stopped, dripping jade paint onto the carpet. ‘What things?’
‘You’ll see.’
We spent the day driving, our soundtrack a playlist on Lily’s iPod that provided one minute a heart-breaking dirge of love and loss, the next an ear-perforating raging anthem of hatred against all mankind. I mastered the art, while on the motorway, of mentally rising above the noise and focusing on the road, while Lily sat beside me, nodding in time to the beat and occasionally performing an impromptu drum roll on the dashboard. It was good, I thought, that she was enjoying herself. And who needed both eardrums to be working, anyway?
We started off in Stortfold, and took in the places Will and I used to sit and eat, the picnic spots in the fields above the town, his favourite benches around the grounds of the castle, and Lily had the grace to try not to look bored. To be fair, it was quite hard to work up enthusiasm about a series of fields. So I sat down and told her how, when I had first met him, Will had barely left the house, and how, through a mixture of subterfuge and bloody-mindedness, I had set about getting him out again. ‘You have to understand,’ I said, ‘that your father hated to be dependent on anyone. And us going out didn’t just mean that he had to rely on someone else but he had to be seen to be relying on someone else.’
‘Even if it was you.’
‘Even if it was me.’
She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I’d hate people seeing me like that. I don’t even like people seeing me with wet hair.’
We visited the gallery where he had tried to explain to me the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ modern art (I still couldn’t tell), and she pulled a face at almost everything on its walls. We poked our heads into the wine merchant’s where he had made me taste different sorts of wine (‘No, Lily, we are not doing a wine-tasting today’), then walked to the tattoo shop where he had persuaded me to get my tattoo. She asked if I could lend her the money for one (I nearly wept with relief when the man told her no under-eighteens), then asked to see my little bumble bee. That was one of the few occasions when I felt I’d actually impressed her. She laughed out loud when I told her what he had chosen for himself: a Best Before date stencilled on his chest.
‘You have the same awful sense of humour,’ I said, and she tried not to look pleased.
It was then that the owner, overhearing our conversation, mentioned that he had a photograph. ‘I keep pictures of all of my tattoos,’ he said, from under a heavily waxed handlebar moustache. ‘I like to have a record. Just remind me of the date?’
We stood there silently as he flicked through his laminated binder. And there it was, from almost two years previously, a close-up of that black and white design, neatly inked onto Will’s caramel skin. I stood and stared at the photograph, its familiarity taking my breath away. The little black and white patterned block, the one I had washed with a soft cloth, which I had dried, rubbed sun cream into, rested my face against. I would have reached out to touch it, but Lily got there first, her fingers with their bitten nails tracing gently over the image of her father’s skin. ‘I think I’ll get one,’ she said. ‘Like his, I mean. When I’m old enough.’
‘So how is he?’
Lily and I turned. The tattooist was sitting on his chair, rubbing at a heavily coloured forearm. ‘I remember him. We don’t get many quadriplegics in here.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?’
A lump rose suddenly to my throat.
‘He’s dead,’ said Lily, baldly. ‘My dad. He’s dead.’
The tattooist winced. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I had no idea.’
‘Can I keep this?’ Lily had started to work the photograph of Will’s tattoo out of its plastic binder.
‘Sure,’ he said hurriedly. ‘If you want it, take it. Here, have the plastic cover as well. Case it rains.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, tucking it neatly under her arm, and as the man stuttered another apology, we walked out of the shop.
We had lunch – an all-day breakfast – silently in a café. Feeling the day’s mood leach away from us, I began to talk. I told Lily what I knew of Will’s romantic history, about his career, that he was the kind of man who made you long for his approval, whether just by doing something that impressed him or making him laugh with some stupid joke. I told her how he was when I met him, and how he had changed, softened, starting to find joy in small things, even if many of those small things seemed to involve making fun of me. ‘Like I wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food. My mum basically has ten set meals which she’s rotated for the past twenty-five years. And none of them involves quinoa. Or lemongrass. Or guacamole. Your dad would eat anything.’
