‘It was naughty to run away.’ He asked, ‘Did you see your dad’s dead body?’
‘Not in life.’ Andrea took a notebook from her rucksack and wrote, ‘“Goes to see dead body of father in morgue”. In the film, she will, now.’
‘Dad looks normal to you,’ said Wallace. ‘But he was in trouble once. He ran away too and he drank cider. He was a burglar, and he had rainbow hair. Didn’t you, Dad?’
‘Wow,’ said Andrea. ‘He doesn’t look like that kind of guy now.’
Wallace said, ‘Will you still let him work for you?’
‘What d’you think?’
‘I think you should let him. But only if you put me in the film.’
‘There might be a small part for you. Have you acted before? Tell you what, I’ll pretend to hit you and you have to react. Remember, the action is in the reaction. The camera and the people will be looking at you. Stand up.’
She pretended to hit him a few times. Wallace was sufficiently histrionic on the floor.
Wallace let Andrea kiss him goodnight. Mal accompanied Wallace upstairs and got into bed beside him. Mal’s young son often slept between Mal and his wife, but Mal had never slept beside his first son. Wallace fell asleep almost immediately, his comforter twitching in his mouth. He was still filthy; no water had passed over him on this trip.
Mal cuddled Wallace but couldn’t sleep. He listened to the sea through the open balcony door. He got up, dressed and went out, locking the door from the outside. On the street it was dark and windy, but there were plenty of people about. The sea was further out than he thought, but he got there.
He realised that he seemed to breathe more easily with so much space around him. He wanted to drift along the beach, following the lights and voices to a crowded bar, to drink and talk with strangers, to find out whether their lives were worse or better than his. But Mal could still see the hotel and what he guessed was their room, the sleeping child just beyond the open balcony door. He couldn’t lose that patch of light in the distance.
Mal noticed a group of kids not far away, older than students, listening to a boom-box and passing around plastic bottles of cider. Mal went over to one of them and said, ‘Can I dance here?’
‘Everyone needs to feel free,’ said the kid, who appeared to have been in a fight. Mal hesitated. The dance he had last been familiar with was ‘the pogo’. ‘Feel free,’ repeated the boy.
Mal offered him a swig of whisky from the bottle he had brought out. ‘It’s been a long time though.’
The boy left him. Mal moved closer to the music and began to shuffle; he jerked his body and shook his head. He was hopping. He began to pogo, alone of course, jumping up towards the sky with his arms out for as long as he could, until he fell over in the wet shingle, getting soaked to the skin.
The sun came brightly through the window of the hotel dining room as Mal, wearing shorts and shoes without socks, filled himself with buttered kipper and fried mushrooms and toast, a starched napkin tucked into the front of his shirt. He had become the sort of man he’d have laughed at as a boy.
‘I wonder if you’ll remember much of this trip,’ he said to Wallace. ‘I think I’ll get the hotel manager to take a photograph of us outside. You can put it next to your bed.’
‘Dad … I mean, Mal —’
Newspapers were excellently designed for keeping boys’ faces from the sight of their father.
They were on the train when Andrea rang to say she liked the idea of helping Mal move his cutting-room and family to the town for the duration of the film. She had been nervous of suggesting it herself for fear it would put Mal off the job.
Wallace was saying, ‘I need to speak to her urgently.’
Mal passed him the phone and heard him explain that he was prepared to be in the film only if he didn’t have to cut his hair or kiss girls.
‘Andrea agreed,’ said Wallace. ‘But will mum let me be an actor for her?’
‘She might if you tell her you’re getting paid.’
The house was deserted when they got back. Mal had guessed his wife would want to avoid them. He opened the doors to the garden and cooked for them both.
Over lunch, Wallace mentioned his piano lessons for the first time. Mal hunted out a Chopin piece played by Arturo Michelangeli and put it on. As they listened, Mal tried to say why he loved it, but he began to weep. He carried on talking but couldn’t stop his tears. What he dreaded was driving Wallace home. How could any love survive so many interruptions?
Late that afternoon, before they reached the motorway turn-off, Mal stopped at a service station and had a Coke with his son.
He said, ‘When we get to your house, you won’t want to say goodbye to me properly. But I want you to know that I will think of you when you’re at school, or asleep, or with your friends.’
‘I never miss you. I won’t be thinking about you.’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll do the thinking, okay?’
Soon they were at Wallace’s front gate. The boy scrambled out of the car and ran around the back of the house. Mal carried the bags to the front door and returned to the car. He watched Wallace’s stepfather and mother appear and take the bags inside, almost furtively, as though they were stealing them. Mal wanted to look at the couple more, to try and put these two connected families together, but he just waved in their direction and drove away, turning off his phone.
Mal returned to London without stopping. He parked near the house but went past it without going in. He walked to a nearby pub, frequented by northern men working during the week in London. ‘No children or dirty boots’, it said on the door.
Mal bought cigarettes and set himself up at the bar, ordering a pint and a chaser. He was unsure whether he was celebrating his new job or commiserating with himself over what he had just endured, but he toasted himself.
‘To Mal,’ he said. ‘And everyone who knows him!’
Touched
He shouted and jumped up and down. ‘See you soon, soon, soon, I hope!’
He continued waving until they disappeared round the corner, his many aunties, uncles and cousins, packed into three taxis. Ali and his parents were standing on the pavement outside the house. The Bombay part of their family had been staying in a rented flat in Dulwich for the summer. Ali and his parents had seen them nearly every day; tomorrow they were returning to India.
‘Come inside now.’ Ali’s father took his hand. ‘I don’t like to see you so upset.’
Ali was embarrassed by his tears. His neighbour Mike was standing across the road, shuffling his football cards and scratching, watching and pretending not to. He had been round earlier. After the uncles and aunts had begun their goodbyes, the front door bell had rung and Ali had opened it, thinking it was a taxi. His cousins had crowded behind him.
‘Comin’ out?’ Mike had asked, biting his nails, trying to examine the faces behind Ali. Mike had lost a clump of hair; his father had pulled it out, beating him up. ‘What’s goin’ on? We could ’ear you lot from down the road, makin’ a noise all day.’
It was the Saturday of the fifth cricket Test. India had been playing England at the Oval. In the morning, Ali’s three rowdy uncles and his father had taken their places in the small front room, pulling the curtains and shutting the door. The men had smoked, drunk beer and cursed the Indian bowlers, while the stolid Englishmen, Barrington and Graveney, batted all day. The uncles blamed the Indian captain Prince Pataudi, who had only one eye. The Indian aunties had been teaching Ali’s English mother to prepare several dishes which she promised to make for her husband and son. The women carried the dhal, keema and rice into the room, which they had been cooking in huge pans first thing in the morning. The men had eaten with their fingers, plates shuddering on their laps, not taking their eyes from the screen. They had yelled abuse in Urdu.