Starting Over. Tony Parsons
frontal bear hug,’ the instructor said, motioning my father to step forward, ‘you are gripped around the arms and the waist.’ He proceeded to embrace my father in a way that I had never embraced him. Perhaps my mum had never embraced him like that either.
‘First – knee your opponent in the testicles,’ said the instructor.
‘What’s that?’ said the old lady.
‘Testicles, dear,’ my mum said. ‘Knee your opponent in the testicles, dear.’
My dad gamely lifted his foot a few inches off the floor as he mimed crushing the instructor’s testicles.
‘Next,’ the instructor said, ‘with the inner edge of your shoe scrape his shin-bone from just below the knee to the ankle.’
My father traced the assault in slow motion.
‘Then – stamp on his foot,’ said the instructor, and – playing to the gallery, as always – my dad pretended to bring his heel down on the instructor’s foot.
The pensioners all chuckled. There was some mild applause. My mother beamed with amusement and pride. My dad looked very pleased with himself.
‘If he still hasn’t got the message,’ the instructor said, giving a little jerk of his head, ‘then smash your forehead as hard as you can against the bridge of his nose. And goodnight, Vienna. Okay, let’s try that in our pairs.’
I sat on a bench and watched my parents and their friends, marvelling at their vitality and bravery, but most of all stunned at their heartbreaking innocence and trust in the world.
How could they feel so certain of being attacked by just one person?
At the end of the class they came over to me. My mum kissed me and oohed and aahed over some recent pictures of the kids taken at home after I got out of the hospital, and she said she couldn’t believe how Rufus was turning into such a handsome young man and that Ruby, little Ruby, was practically a young lady already.
And my mum looked very hopeful when I said that we must have them round for Sunday lunch soon. But my dad saw right through me. My father, the retired policeman, always saw straight through me. He waited until my mum had gone off to the changing rooms.
‘Still not back at work, then?’ he said.
Sometimes I was down.
It was less a swing of mood – the heart doctor had told me to expect those – than a change of perception. I suddenly got it. The fragility of all things. Especially me. And our boiler. I could hear it spluttering its guts out in the bathroom. It will need a plumber soon, I thought with a sigh that was silent and endless, and I wondered exactly when my life had shrunk to a list of domestic chores.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Lara said, putting her arm around me.
But I didn’t know where to start, or where to end, or what the middle should look like.
‘I might be up for a while,’ I said, and she took her arm away, and nodded, and soon I could hear her moving around in our bedroom. And then after a while I heard nothing, apart from the midnight hum of the fridge and the coughing and spluttering of the boiler on the blink.
The bottle of red wine was half gone by the time Rufus came home. He looked in a bad way. And he reeked of beer. Like something the cat had dragged in and washed in Special Brew. He looked at the AlcoHawk Pro sitting on the coffee table.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, suddenly seeing it for the ludicrous bit of plastic it was. ‘I think we can skip that tonight.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, and he bent his ungainly frame to pick it up. He looked at the shiny grey device in his hand. And then he looked at me. ‘I didn’t drink anything,’ he said.
I smiled. ‘Right,’ I said. It was so blatantly untrue that I had to admire his front. ‘Just try to get some in your mouth next time.’
Then there was that sudden flare of outrage, the easy outrage that is the natural habitat of the teenage boy. ‘You don’t believe anything I say, do you?’ he said.
‘Volume lower,’ I said. ‘Your mother and sister are sleeping.’
‘Not a word of it,’ he said, shaking his head at the AlcoHawk. ‘Not a bloody word.’
I sighed. ‘But, Rufus,’ I said, shaking my head with wonder at his ability to stand there stinking like a brewery and lie to my face, ‘I can smell it.’
‘But I didn’t drink it,’ he said. ‘They threw it. They chucked beer at me, Dad.’
He had lost me. ‘They did what? Who are you talking about? Who are they?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, although I could tell it mattered more than anything.
And I looked at my son, this great gawky monster, this thin-skinned stranger, and I willed myself to see the mophaired boy he had once been, the boy I could hug and who would hug me back, and who would not pull away.
‘What happened to us, Rufus? We were mates, weren’t we? Do you remember when you were little? We went to the park. We went to the football. We went to Legoland. Remember Legoland?’
‘Legoland? Yeah, I was carsick. Puked all the way to Windsor.’
‘But you enjoyed yourself once you were there. Remember? Once we had cleaned you up a bit. What happened?’
He snorted, looked away. ‘Yeah, well. I grew up.’
Was that it? Was that all it was? Really? The gap that opens up between the father and the son as the years go by? Was it really only natural? I couldn’t believe it. I felt that somewhere along the line I had taken a wrong turn, and that’s why I had lost him.
‘It’s not easy,’ he said. ‘Having a copper for a father. Somebody everyone seems to know. Always getting compared. Always getting measured. Being your father’s son and nothing more. Always seen that way.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Living in your famous shadow.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not famous,’ I said. ‘Bill Gates is famous. Brad Pitt is famous. The Dalai Lama…You should be grateful the Dalai Lama is not your father. I’m not famous.’
‘Oh, but you are,’ he said. ‘On a local level. Everyone round here knows who you are. Or who you were, before you got ill. You’re famous in that modern, micro-celebrity sort of way.’
‘You’re too kind.’ I poured myself a large measure of red. Then suddenly there was concern on his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘A bit of a rotten night. Probably the drugs. They tend to swing your moods around. Don’t worry. Just a lousy night. Like you. Or did you think that you invented lousy nights?’
He still had the AlcoHawk Pro in his hand. I indicated what was left of the red wine.
‘You want a drop of this? They told me not to drink. But I’m really tired of being told what to do. You ever feel like that?’
Rufus shook his head. ‘I don’t drink, Dad. It’s not my thing.’
He put down the AlcoHawk Pro. I looked at him for a long time.
‘Then where do you go?’ I asked him.
And he told me.
When he had finished I gave him one of my clumsy hugs and he gave me one of his awkward squeezes in return and I left him in the kitchen, foraging for food and making a racket.
Upstairs in the bedroom the lights were all off, but my wife was still awake, and waiting for me.
I was jolted awake long before dawn.
This was not me. I had always slept like a baby.