DAD
‘I’ll tell you this for free,’ said Crow.
‘Hmm.’ (I am trying to work, trying to entertain the notion of Crow a bit less since I read a book about psychotic delusions.)
‘If your wife is a ghost, then she is not wailing in the cupboards and corners of this house, she is not mooching about bemoaning the loss of her motherhood or the bitter pain of watching you boys live without her.’
‘No?’
‘No. Trust me, I know a bit about ghosts.’
‘Go on.’
‘She’ll be way back, before you. She’ll be in the golden days of her childhood. Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.’
I look at Crow. Tonight he is Polyphemus and has only one eye, a polished patent eight-ball.
‘Go on then. Tell me.’
‘Really?’
‘Please.’
‘I’m not a performing monkey.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s more like a scent, or a synaesthetic memory, but it is something like this …’
He sits still. His neck ceases jutting, his beak refrains from jabbing. For the first time since his arrival he stops suggesting constant readiness for violence with his posture.
He sits as still as I have ever seen an un-stuffed animal sit. Dead still.
‘Right … p p p, yes, ooh hold on, paradiddle parasaurolophus watch with mother spies and weddings hang on, ignore that, here we go …
Playdates! Red Cross building, parquet floor, plimsolls. Brownies. Angel biscuits.
Fig Rolls. Dance-offs. Fig Rolls. Patchwork for Beginners. Invisible ink.
Chase, I mean, tag, catch, you know. Rope swings. Her dad’s massive hands.
Rock pools (Yorkshire?). Crabbing, nets, sardines, hiding, waiting.
Counting (abacus? beads?).
Trampolines/aniseed sweets/painted eggs.
Pencil sharpenings? Magic Faraway, Robert the … something, Robert the Rose Horse?’
We sit in silence and I realise I am grinning. I recognise some of it. I believe him. I absolutely blissfully believe him and it feels very familiar.
‘Thank you Crow.’
‘All part of the service.’
‘Really. Thank you, Crow.’
‘You’re welcome. But please remember I am your Ted’s song-legend, Crow of the death-chill, please. The God-eating, trash-licking, word-murdering, carcass-desecrating math-bomb motherfucker, and all that.’
‘He never called you a motherfucker.’
‘Lucky me.’
BOYS
Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if ever they forgot things about their mother.
There were a lot of equations and transactions in their small family. One boy dreamed he had murdered his mother. He checked it wasn’t true, then he put a valuable silver serving spoon that his father had inherited in the bin. It was missed. He felt better.
One boy lost the treasured lunchbox note from his mother saying ‘good luck’. He cried, alone in his room, then threw a toy car at his father’s framed Coltrane poster. It smashed. He felt better. The father dutifully swept up all the glass and understood.
There were a lot of punishments and anticipations in their small family.
DAD
The boys fight.
BOYS
The cold woke one of them, so he woke the other saying FATHER IS GONE, and the other agreed. Their mother had gone — she had either lain down in the snow and slept to death or been taken by wolves — so they knew a thing or two about how a small house smells and sounds when a parent is gone, and they were right, their father was gone.
Perhaps, said one of the boys, he’ll come back, and the other boy ruffled his hair and smiled with his eyes, because no, he wouldn’t come back. A gone dad is a gone dad ever.
So they sang the tidy up song as they went about the place, putting things away, and they put on all their clothes so they looked much fatter than they were, and off they went.
They walked for three days, sleeping only as they rolled down hills, so they were never still. They lost their childish bodies and grew beards and popped through layers of clothing so that by the fourth day, when the sun came out, they were big naked men.
Look at you, said one to the other. Look at our willies, said the other to his brother.
They came upon a little cottage and they knocked at the door. As soon as the terribly beautiful woman answered they knew they weren’t ready for her to be anything other than a mother, so they scurried home, wee wee wee, up the hills, across the frozen woodland, into the house, up the stairs, into bed — eyes squeezed shut — and when they woke up their father was cooking breakfast.
DAD
We went to a Birds of Prey Flying Display. In a field. Deep country somewhere, with half a dozen old dears and the plump ginger guide with a radio mic; ‘here she comes, the star of the show.’
The first bird out was a bald eagle, stunning, massive, with a six-foot wingspan. Ooh, yeah, we said. Ooh yeah. The boys were transfixed.
‘Now look as she decides whether or not to turn on the OW-WOOP, THERE SHE GOES, lift, lift, UP SHE GO GIRL, that’s MY GIRL!’
And she soared. She got lift. We got lift.
The boys were gripping the plastic seats and the situational artifice of the captive bird performing dropped away and I was just excited by the bald eagle. The physical magnificence of the eagle.
‘Oh, now here you are, who’s this? Oh, lordy lordy, you tasty little bugger, excuse my language folks. It being springtime the carrion crow in this field here is protecting eggs, as well you would with a bloody eagle about, HOW ABOUT THAT! That, ladies and gentlemen, is a brave little bastard. That is a crow, SURFIN’ A BALD EAGLE!’
I turned sideways and the boys were spontaneously holding hands.
‘Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the bloody miracle of nature. That is two birds basically giving each other a bloody great nod of respect. You may be many bloody kilograms heavier than me, about forty times my size, but if you come near my eggs I’ll bloody show you a thing or two about flying!’
Up we shot, all three of us. A standing ovation. ‘GO CROW!’ we yelled.
‘Why ever not,’ said the red-faced lover of birds, our dude, our guide, ‘why ever fucken not. GO CROW!’
Go crow. Go Crow.
And that was probably the best day of my life since she died.
BOYS
Once upon a time there was a king who had two sons. The queen had fallen from the attic door and bashed her skull and because the servants in the kingdom were busy polishing sculptures for the king, she bled to death. The king was often busy with futile curse-lifting and the prevention of small wars. And so it was that the little princes would fight.
They slapped. A little cuff, a little jab. The short fat younger prince (called Ivan the Lazy, or Guilty Beast, or Greedy Wolf) would move the chair and send his brother tumbling to the cold marble floor. Trips, shin-kicks, tickles.
Then, as they missed their mother, more and less, the fights got better, worse. The handsome one (called Prince In-a-Bit, or Idle Eagle, or Hungry Deer) would kneel on his brother on the fleshy underarms, and roll his knees upon the slipping muscle. They would lie at opposite ends of the throne-room benches and kick kick kick kick kick until his sobbing brother pleaded mercy, harder.