His attendance record at college was not the best, but he was still on site, hidden away in an office in the union building writing reviews for the arts pages of the college newspaper, having discovered that not only could he do this, but it was also a good way to get to see films for free — and before they came out. He sat looking at his first byline — Nicholas Cross — so hard and with such intense excitement that he was surprised the paper didn’t ignite in his hands.
He arranged to see his father, who was now living above a shop in Camden Town. They didn’t meet there, but on the South Bank in the coffee bar of the National Film Theatre. Ray looked at the newspaper his son handed over and he felt almost intoxicated with pride, but also humble as he knew he could take no credit for his son’s accomplishments. He was grateful beyond words, however, that it was important to Nicholas to show him what he had done.
‘And — Dad,’ Nicholas said, becoming increasingly — surprisingly — comfortable with the nomenclature as he got older, ‘I’ve met a girl. Liz, a medical student.’
‘That’s great, Nicholas. Tell me all about her,’ Ray said, beaming. ‘I mean, if you want.’
Nicholas’ failure to turn up at college — for German lectures in particular — started to become a problem. He knew he should have done single honours French, but he’d wanted to impress his grandparents, wanted to pay them back, and foolishly opted for combined honours. His German was poor but he had a plan, to read all the set texts in English translation. Kleist, Kafka, Schiller, Böll — this stuff was relatively easy to get hold of. But the Goethe, surprisingly, was not available, and to make matters very much fucking worse, it was not available in roman script in German either, only in Gothic type.
He sat in his room one evening — the night before an essay deadline — trying to ignore the competing sounds of music playing in neighbouring bedrooms. The book lay open on his desk under the lamp. He stared at the bold, angular, spiky letters. The page looked like it had been created by someone in a secure ward with an italic fountain pen that was leaking ink. It might as well have been Arabic or Mandarin.
Maybe a drink would help?
He went down to the bar and stared at the range of drinks on offer. He was not a big drinker; he’d never really had the opportunity. The girl before him, a dental student from Guy’s, ordered a vodka and orange. He asked for the same, but the orange failed to mask the taste of the vodka, which was like some kind of foul-tasting blunt horn trying to force its way down his throat. He tried a gin and tonic. How could something utterly colourless taste so sharp and unpleasant? A vodka and grapefruit worked a little better and a gin and lime — with lots of lime — seemed to be the answer. It was important to have enough lime to hide the taste of the gin completely. You needed enough lime that it — the lime cordial itself — caught the back of your throat and made you cough.
Nicholas went back up to his room and stared at the sticklebacks and spider crabs swimming across the pages of his book. The drink didn’t help him make any more sense of Gothic script, but it made a nonsense of the looming deadline, which no longer seemed so important (or not until the following morning, at least).
Ray and Nicholas started to meet up more regularly, often on the South Bank or at the Tate or the National Gallery. Sometimes Nicholas invited Ray to come along to film screenings and afterwards they would get a coffee at Bar Italia and discuss the movie. They talked about Ray’s work, which Nicholas had started to read. Ray wanted to hear what his son thought of it. Indeed, when he was getting together material for a second collection, Ray asked Nicholas if he would mind reading the manuscript and giving him feedback. Were there some poems that shouldn’t make the cut? Was there too much of one type of subject and not enough of another? Nicholas said he was honoured to be asked, but that he felt inadequate to provide the kind of feedback he sensed was required.
‘Bollocks,’ said Ray.
Nicholas read the manuscript and he talked to Liz about it and then he read it a couple more times and arranged to meet up with Ray at Patisserie Valerie in Soho. Ray didn’t show. Nicholas waited half an hour then phoned Ray’s flat from a call box. There was no answer and his father appeared not to have an answer machine. He went back to Patisserie Valerie and waited a further half-hour. He called again later that day, but there was still no answer.
He kept trying.
Ray called the phone on Nicholas’ floor at Hughes Parry a few days later. He apologised. Something had come up, he said.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Nicholas said, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice.
‘Look, Nicholas, I’m sorry,’ Ray said, sounding like he meant it. But still. ‘I lead something of an unpredictable life. Sometimes it’s hard to keep appointments.’
Nicholas wondered if that was what he was, an appointment. Like the dentist.
‘I’ve got to go, Dad,’ he lied. He had to get off the phone.
He went down to the bar, but it was shut, so he went to the pub on Marchmont Street opposite the Brunswick Centre and ordered a pint. He drank it swiftly, feeling nothing more than a slight unsteadiness, and so he switched to spirits. A vodka and grapefruit. A gin and lime. And another gin and lime, and another — asking the bartender to be generous with the lime. The bartender complied until he suggested Nicholas might have had enough.
All his life he had expected nothing of his father. He knew it was a mistake for that to change.
He went back to the hall and shut himself in his room and ignored people when they came knocking. He ignored Liz until she threatened to go and get the floor tutor to bring a master key.
‘What the fuck is this?’ she demanded. ‘How often does this happen?’
‘It doesn’t,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t happen. It happens very rarely. It happens very fucking rarely, OK? I’m very fucking surprisingly together, all things considered.’
He sat on the floor, pressed up against the wall, his hands clenched at either side of his head. He was trying to stop it from spinning.
The next message Nicholas got, to say that his father had called, he ignored. Liz managed to persuade him to call Ray a few days later, but there was no answer. He was aware that there would be some kind of deadline for getting his remarks about the manuscript back to his father. He wasn’t conceited enough to think that his input would have any great value, but Ray had asked him and so, for all Nicholas’ hurt pride, he was determined to finish the job. He didn’t have his father’s address in Camden Town, but the address of the publisher was easy to find. He parcelled up the manuscript with a handwritten note and dropped it off.
A few days later, Nicholas walked out of the hall. A familiar figure was leaning against the railings across the street.
‘I got your package,’ Ray said. ‘I wanted to thank you.’
‘No problem, but I’m late for college.’
‘I’ll walk with you — if that’s all right?’
‘Sure.’
Ray ended up taking the Tube with Nicholas over to the East End. He told him again that he was sorry he’d failed to turn up and he asked him to trust him — he said he knew there was no reason why he should — but he would have turned up if he’d been able to. From time to time, he said, there was a possibility he might fuck up with his timekeeping. It didn’t mean he didn’t want to see Nicholas, he said. It didn’t mean he didn’t—