CHAPTER 8
8
W E HAD ONLY BEEN back in England from our honeymoon a few months when we received an unexpected visitor. I was reading through some case notes at home when the doorbell rang and I opened it to find a man standing outside, in his early seventies I judged, with a slim build and a few scraps of grey hair dragged mercilessly across his crown.
‘You must be Aaron,’ he said, and I was a little taken aback that a stranger should know my name.
‘I am,’ I said.
He extended a hand. ‘We haven’t met,’ he said. ‘I’m Daniel. I work with your wife at the airline. Nothing as exciting as what she does, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t be safe with me in the cockpit! No, I’m in Human Resources. I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, but there were a few documents that I needed her to sign and I’m away on holiday for the next two weeks and, since your house was on my way home, I—’
‘Oh right, of course,’ I said, standing back and ushering him inside. ‘Sorry, please come in. She’s just taking a bath though, so it might be a few minutes.’
‘No problem. I’m happy to wait if you’re happy to have me.’
We made our way into the living room and I tried not to notice how carefully he studied everything in the room – the books on the shelves, the paintings on the wall, the magazines on the coffee table – as if he was considering renting a room from us.
‘Very nice,’ he said quietly, more to himself than me. ‘Very nice indeed.’
‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ I asked.
‘You could, yes, but would it be very rude if I asked for something a little stronger? Only it’s fierce cold out there tonight and I’m not as young as I used to be.’
‘I might have a beer in the fridge,’ I said.
‘Maybe a whiskey?’
It seemed like a slightly forward request from a guest, but I offered to look, walking into the kitchen, where, hidden away at the back of a cupboard, I found an unopened bottle of Bushmills.
‘Water? Ice?’ I asked, standing in the doorway and displaying it to him.
‘We won’t disgrace it with dilution,’ he said, and I poured him a glass, neat, bringing it back with me and leaving the bottle on the table between us. The scent of it, one I rarely experienced, brought me back to my childhood, to my own father, who had always enjoyed a glass of Glenfiddich on Friday nights when I was a child. It was a comforting memory.
‘You won’t join me?’ he asked, and I shook my head.
‘Better not,’ I said. ‘Work in the morning.’
‘Did no one ever tell you that it’s the height of bad manners to leave a man drinking alone in your home?’
His tone was just on the polite side of confrontational, and he wore such a disturbing smile that I was left feeling rather unsettled. He continued to stare without so much as raising his glass to his lips so, when I realized that he actually meant it, I returned to the kitchen and took a bottle of Heineken from the fridge.
‘That’s much better,’ he said when I returned. ‘I can enjoy my drink now. You have a lovely home,’ he added, looking around.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘We’re only renting, of course, but in time—’
‘Wasted money.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said, wasted money. Filling a landlord’s pockets when you could be paying your own mortgage.’
I looked at him, uncertain how to respond to this.
‘When I was a young man,’ he continued, ‘when I married, there was no such thing as renting. I went from my parents’ house to my marital home. I never gave a penny to anyone else, other than the banks, who fleeced me, of course, because that’s the nature of the beast, but I paid it all off before I turned fifty and then what was mine was mine. Or at least I thought it was.’
I was glad of the Heineken now and took a long swig from it, feeling a slight sense of relief that there were a few more in the door of the fridge if I needed them.
‘You’re a doctor,’ he asked after a moment. ‘Did I hear that about you?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘What kind of a doctor, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Psychology. Child psychology, to be precise.’
‘Child psychology,’ he said, musing on this. ‘Freud,’ he added, apropos of nothing.
‘Well, Freud was a psychoanalyst,’ I replied. ‘I’m more of a—’
‘Obsessed with sex, wasn’t he? Freud, I mean.’
I shrugged.
‘I think that’s rather a clichéd notion of his philosophies, to be honest.’
‘Thought everyone wanted to murder their father and sleep with their mother. Like that lad over beyond in Denmark.’
I stared at him, uncertain to whom he was referring. Was there some appalling psychopath emerging from Copenhagen that I’d missed out on?
‘Hamlet,’ he said, leaning forward and enunciating the word carefully, as if he was on the stage of the Globe itself.
‘Oh right,’ I replied. ‘Of course. Yes.’
‘Can I ask you a personal question? Is there good money in psychology? Or child psychology?’
I didn’t quite know how to answer such a peculiar question.
‘Relative to what?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Relative to being a GP, for example.’
‘Well, it’s not really about the pay scales,’ I told him. ‘We all know the NHS runs on too little as it is. Everyone says how much they love it, but no one wants to pay for it.’
‘Would you not think of going private, no?’ he asked, and I realized now that he was Irish, although his accent was not particularly strong. ‘Would there not be more money in that?’
‘No, I don’t approve of private healthcare.’
‘Do you not?’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I don’t believe that patient care should depend on a person’s wealth. Especially when it comes to the well-being of children. Every person has the right to the same level of support, regardless of their circumstances.’
‘You don’t think that if a man, for example, has worked hard all his life and earned a good living that he should be entitled to spend his money any way he wants?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘And if he wants to spend it on luxury hotels, first-class flights, fancy cars or a season ticket to his favourite football club, then I say good luck to him. But should he be allowed to jump the queue for medical attention? I think that’s a bit more complicated. Morally speaking, I mean.’
‘That sounds like socialism to me,’ he replied, frowning. ‘Which, in my experience, is a luxury only those with a few quid in the bank can afford. But then, perhaps you’re one of those very people.’
‘I think, perhaps, you overestimate our financial situation,’ I said, trying to sound light-hearted, and he glanced around again, a raised eyebrow suggesting that he wasn’t sure he was. Our home might have been rented, but it was in a good part of North London, after all, and was expensively furnished. My parents had owned their house and been scrupulous savers, and so, when they died, I inherited more than enough to get a good start in life. The only reason we were still renting was because we hadn’t yet decided whether we wanted to remain in London or move abroad.
‘In a perfect world,’ said Daniel, ‘you must wish you were unemployed.’
I sat back, baffled by why he would say such a thing.
‘Because,’ he continued, sensing my confusion, ‘if no one had any need of you, then all the little children would be happy. There’d be no one looking for the help of a child psychologist.’
I thought about it. It was, to be fair, a reasonable point, one I’d never considered before.
‘You don’t have children yourself, do you, Aaron?’ he asked, and I shook my head. ‘When you do, you might have a different attitude about private healthcare. Should one of those children fall ill, God forbid, you would want them to receive treatment as soon as possible. Even if it meant that some poor unfortunate child who’d been ahead of you in the queue got left behind. It’s human nature. We look after our own first.’
I could have protested but suspected he was probably right. I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that principles had a peculiar habit of disappearing when confronted by brutal reality.
‘By what you say, I assume you’re a father,’ I said, hoping to lighten the mood. He finished his whiskey and held his glass out to me with a smile. I took this as his signal that he wanted another, so lifted the bottle and duly refilled it.
‘I am,’ he said, his voice quieter now, more reflective. ‘I was blessed with two but, sadly, we lost one.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘There is nothing more unnatural in this world,’ he said, looking directly at me and pointing a finger in the air, ‘ nothing more unnatural than for a parent to lose a child. No man or woman should ever have to experience that level of grief.’
‘No,’ I agreed, glancing towards the closed door that led to a corridor which, in turn, divided our bedroom and spare room on one side from the bathroom on the other. I hoped to hear the water rushing from the bath, knowing the sound would bring Rebecca to us within a few minutes.
‘And are your parents still alive, Aaron?’ he called after me when I went back to the kitchen to retrieve a second beer for myself.
‘No,’ I replied, when I returned.
‘They must have died young.’
‘My father suffered a heart attack in his forties. My mother developed cancer a few years later and, unfortunately, it was late stage by the time it was diagnosed.’
‘Siblings?’
I shook my head.
‘So you’re all alone in the world.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I have Rebecca.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he replied, nodding his head. ‘But you have no one of your own to fall back on.’
‘Again, Rebecca.’
‘No one of your own blood, I mean.’
I sighed. He seemed determined to have his way on this. ‘I suppose not,’ I said.
‘The little boy that Santa Claus forgot.’
I frowned. I had never thought of myself in quite those terms before.
‘It’s a good thing you met Rebecca so,’ he said. ‘She’s a wonderful young woman.’
‘She is,’ I agreed.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’
This was the second time he had asked this, and I felt we’d already gone well past polite small talk but nodded cautiously.
‘If you had to describe your late parents in a single word, what word would that be?’
I thought about this for a little before answering.
‘Successful,’ I said eventually.
‘Now that’s a very strange reply,’ he said. ‘Successful in what way? In their work?’
‘In a sense. You said that the worst thing that can happen to any man or woman is to lose a child, and I don’t disagree with you on that. But, by the same token, the best thing that any man or woman can do in life is to be a good parent. To give their children a happy childhood. And my parents did that. They were kind people. They loved me, they took care of me. Always made me feel worthwhile.’ Perhaps the beer was getting to me because I added: ‘There was a time, in my teens, when I struggled with life. During those years, I wasn’t always as kind to them as I might have been. But they never pushed me away. They were always in my corner, even when I gave them cause to run far from it. So the reason I say “successful” is because they took on the most important role in the world and did a great job at it.’
He nodded his head. ‘Now that’s a lovely thing to say,’ he told me. ‘And if they’re listening from up there in heaven, then I imagine they’ll have a smile on their faces hearing such generous words. I only hope my daughter, my surviving daughter that is, will be able to say the same thing about me some day. And that, in time, when you’re a parent yourself, you’ll follow their example.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. Since our night out with Vanessa and Ron around the time of our wedding, Rebecca and I had never discussed her comments regarding not wanting to bring a child into the world. We should have, of course, but I hoped that it had simply been a throwaway remark, one designed to hurt her mother. I still assumed that one day we would have kids of our own. Although, of course, to have a child would require actually having sex.
‘Still, at least you’re married,’ continued Daniel, betraying a little more of his accent now. ‘Which is the right way to be. All these girls today having babies with no sign of a ring on their fingers. There’s a cheapness to them, don’t you think? A lack of self-respect.’
‘I don’t think people care about those sorts of things any more,’ I said.
‘That’s because the young behave like animals,’ he replied, leaning forward, his face darkening. ‘And we allow it. God created marriage for a reason.’
‘God didn’t create marriage,’ I told him. ‘Man did.’
He waved this away dismissively.
‘A child should have a father and a mother,’ he insisted. ‘And that father and mother should be joined in the sacrament of marriage, a sacrament, I might add, that no court order can dissolve, even if the world thinks otherwise. Don’t you agree with me, Aaron?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘If a child has two parents who love each other and remain together, then that’s obviously a good thing, but whether they’re married or not seems neither here nor there. And a parent can bring up a child alone and do a great job. Ultimately, it’s about love.’
‘My wife and I waited,’ he told me, tapping a finger against his nose, as if I was to keep this piece of intelligence to myself. He poured himself another healthy shot of the whiskey and held it to the light, looking at it admiringly. ‘Or rather, I waited. She had a history, I’m sorry to say. One that I was willing to overlook, which is as much to my shame as it is to hers. When I met her, she’d already been with other men. Only a few, she told me, but who’s to say? Women lie. You know that as well as I do. It’s in their nature. They are inherently deceitful. Especially when they’re trying to trap a man, and she trapped me well and good, so she did. Oh, for a stupid woman, she was very clever when it came to snaring her catch. It took a long time for us to conceive a child, and it wasn’t for want of trying, oh no. Let me assure you, Aaron, that relations between us in those early years were as regular as they were convivial, but month after month we were left disappointed. Let’s go to a doctor, she said, and I did as I was told because is there anything that a man wants more than a quiet life? So we went to the doctor, a lady doctor, mind you, and didn’t she – the lady doctor, I mean, not my wife – didn’t she suggest that it might be my fault that we were having no success. If I wasn’t a man who’d been brought up to respect the fairer sex, I’d have given her a good slap for her troubles, and there wouldn’t have been a jury in the land that—’
He broke off for a moment when he said this and took a long breath, closing his eyes. I allowed the silence to linger, not wishing to say anything.
‘Anyway, rest assured, I never laid a hand on her. And, as it turned out, it wasn’t my fault at all. There was nothing wrong with me. Or her, in fact. It was just God’s way of making us wait so that we would love our children even more when they finally arrived. And He knows that we treated those girls like they were princesses of the royal blood. There was never, let me tell you, two little girls who were loved more.’
He took a longer swig from the whiskey now, and I could tell that he was growing drunk. Somewhere at the back of my mind, an idea started to suggest itself to me, but, like a ship lost at sea on a dark night, it was still partly hidden by fog.
‘When you do have children, Aaron,’ he said, ‘may the good Lord see fit to bless you with sons. What is it that fella in The Godfather says, when he visits the Don at the wedding? The lad who ends up sleeping with the fishes. May your first child be a masculine child! Good strong boys who can look up to you and take after you. I loved my girls, I did, but a house full of women with their potions and their notions, their concoctions and their gossiping, and their bras and their panties hanging out on the washing line every afternoon, it can be too much for a man. A taunt. Something to get him all riled up. No, a man needs sons, that’s the truth of it. And a man like me, in my position, with all I had to give, should have had sons. Sons would have stood up for me in my hour of need and not abandoned me like the women in my life did. That woman I called a wife and those girls I called daughters and who made up the most despicable lies about me. Have you ever had someone make up a despicable lie about you, Aaron? Have you ever had to endure a calumny that blackens your name and your reputation for ever? There is nothing worse, let me tell you. When someone says that you’ve done a thing that you would never in a million years do, not unless you were invited to anyway, and the world hears about it and it turns on you and it says abominable things, well, it’s like no other form of torture. You won’t have had that happen to you, of course not, you’re just a young man yet, but in time you might, so if you become a father, and I hope you do, then please God, may your first child be a—’
I sprang to my feet, upsetting the table, and he reared back, looking at me in surprise.
‘Get out,’ I said, a feeling of nausea overwhelming me as I finally realized who my visitor was and that he had no more connection to Rebecca’s airline than I did. To my right, I heard the bathroom door open, then the bedroom door, and knew that Rebecca would be with us shortly.
‘But why should I leave?’ the man asked, holding his hands out to me like a supplicant. ‘A man has a right to see his daughter.’
‘You lost all your rights after what you did.’
‘Eleven years rotting away in Midlands Prison with nothing to do but stare at the four walls all day and try to get from breakfast to dinner without having the head beaten off me by murderers and rapists and drug dealers because they needed someone to look down on, and who else only Muggins here, Muggins who was stitched up by his whore of a wife and his slut of a daughter, who he’d given everything to, who he’d worked every day of his life for, and who abandoned him when he needed them the most. Don’t you think after something like that happens that a man has a right to look that bitch in the eye and ask, why did you do that, darling girl, why did you do that to me? Don’t you know that everything I ever did was for you and your sister, that I loved you both, that I would have laid down my life for—’
The door opened and Rebecca stepped into the living room in oversized pyjamas, running a towel through her wet hair.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘I feel like some Thai food if you—’
She paused, obviously surprised to find someone else in the room with me, probably embarrassed that he would discover her in her nightwear, and I could tell that it took a few moments for her brain to catch up with her eyes and recognize who had invaded her place of safety under false pretences.
Her scream was a sound that haunts me still.