Men from the Boys. Tony Parsons
because she had stopped drinking coffee during her years in Tokyo and only drank tea now.
‘How well you know me,’ she said after I had persuaded some Lithuanian girl to exchange a coffee for tea. Was she that sharp when we were together? I don’t think so. She was another one who had got angrier with the years.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Stupid of me not to read your mind.’
And we took it from there.
‘Japan’s over,’ she said. ‘The economy is worse than here.’
‘Nowhere is worse than here,’ I said. ‘Ah, Gina. You could have called.’
‘Yes, I could have called. I could have phoned home and had to be polite to your second wife.’
‘She’s not my second wife,’ I said. ‘She’s my wife.’
My first wife wasn’t listening.
‘Or I could have phoned your PA at work and asked her if you had a window for me next week. I could have done all of that but I didn’t, did I? And why should I?’ She leaned forward and smiled. ‘Because he’s my child just as much as he’s your child.’
I stared at her, wondering if there ever came a point where that was simply no longer true.
And I wondered if we had reached that point years ago.
‘What’s with the keep-fit routine?’ I said, changing the subject. She was in terrific shape.
‘It’s not a routine.’ She flexed her arms self-consciously. ‘I just want to look after myself as I get older.’
I smiled. ‘I can’t see you on the yoga mat.’
She didn’t smile back. ‘I had a scare a couple of years back. A health scare. That was something you missed.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Please don’t apologise.’
‘Jesus Christ – why can’t you just let me say I’m sorry?’
‘And why can’t you just drop dead?’
We stared at our drinks.
We had started out with good intentions. Difficult to believe now, I know, but when we divorced back then we were a couple of idealistic young kids. We really thought that we could have a happy break-up. Or at least a divorce that always did the right thing.
But Gina had blown in and out of our lives. And gradually other things got in the way of good intentions. In my experience it is so easy to push good intentions to the back of the queue – or to have them quietly escorted from the building.
Gina wanted to be a good mother. I know she did. I know she loved Pat. I never doubted that. But she was always one step from fulfilment, and life got in the way, and everything let her down. Her second husband. Working abroad. And me, of course. Me first and worst of all.
We sat in silence for a bit.
‘Is this the way we are going to do it?’ I said.
‘What way?’
‘You know what way, Gina.’
‘What way do you want to do it? Shall we be nice to each other? First time for everything, I guess.’
‘I don’t want us to be this way,’ I said. ‘How long are we going to spit poison at each other?’
‘I don’t know, Harry. Until we get tired of the taste.’
‘I was tired years ago.’
We sat in silence as if the people we had once been no longer existed. As if there was nothing between us. And it wasn’t true.
‘He’s my son too,’ she said.
‘Biologically,’ I said.
‘What else is there?’
‘Are you kidding me? Look, Gina – I think it’s great you’re back.’
‘Liar.’
‘But I don’t want him hurt.’
‘How could he be hurt?’
‘I don’t know. New man. New job. New country. You tell me.’
‘You don’t break up with your children.’
‘I love it when people say that to me. Because it’s just not true. Plenty of people break up with their children, Gina. Mostly, they’re men. But not all of them.’
‘Do you want me to draw you a diagram, Harry?’
‘Hold on – I’ll get you a pen.’
I lifted my hand for the waitress. Gina pushed it down. It was the first time we had touched in years and years, and it was like getting an electric shock.
‘I broke up with you, Harry – not him. I went off you – not him. I stopped loving you – not him. Sorry to break this to you, Harry.’
‘I’ll get over it.’
‘But I never stopped loving him. Even when I was busy. Preoccupied. Absent.’ She sipped at her tea and looked at me. ‘How is he?’
‘Fine. He’s fine, Gina.’
‘He’s so tall. And his face – he has such a lovely face, Harry. He was always a beautiful kid, wasn’t he?’
I smiled. It was true. He was always the most beautiful boy in the world. I felt myself softening towards her.
‘He’s in the Lateral Thinking Club,’ I said, warming up to the theme, happy to talk about the wonder of our son, and we both laughed about that.
‘Bright boy,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know what Lateral Thinking is – thinking outside the box? Training the mind to work better?’
‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘He can explain it better than me.’ I had finished my coffee. I wanted to go home to my family. ‘What do you want, Gina?’
‘I want my son,’ she said. ‘I want to know him. I want him to know me. I know we – I – have wasted so much time. That’s why I want it now. Before it’s too late.’
And I thought it would never be too late. There was a Gina-sized hole in Pat’s life, had been for years, but I thought that it could never be too late to fill it. For both of them – I thought that there would always be time to put things right. That’s how dumb I am. Already my mind was turning to the practicalities of shipping Pat around town.
‘Where you living, Gina?’
‘I’ve got a two-bedroom flat on Old Compton Street,’ she said. ‘Top floor. Plenty of space. Nice light.’ She looked out the window. ‘Five minutes from here.’
I was amused. ‘Soho?’ I said. ‘That’s an interesting choice. What you trying to do – recapture your youth?’
Her mouth tightened at that.
‘I didn’t have any youth, Harry,’ she said. ‘I was married to you.’
Then my phone began to vibrate. I took the call as Gina looked away and a woman with a Jamaican accent told me that they had Ken Grimwood at the hospital.
When he was seven years old my son almost drowned. We were in a quiet corner of Crete called Agios Stephanos – years before the island was claimed by the boys in football shirts – and the last thing we were expecting on our mini-break was death and tragedy. We could get all that at home.
These were the years after I split up with Gina, and then my dad died and then my mum got sick – and it felt like every time you turned around someone was either walking out or dying. We were not really in Crete for sun, sea and Retsina. We just wanted to catch our breath.
In my mind