of sheet the size of a handkerchief as the room got light.
It was too soon to feel really bad. Pushed to the back of my mind there was the thought of Gina and all the promises I had ever made to her – promises from the days when I was trying to persuade her to love me, the promises we made on our wedding day, and all the promises of all the days beyond, all that stuff about undying love and never wanting anyone else that I had really meant at the time. And still did, I discovered. Now more than ever, in a funny sort of way.
Later, this would all really get to me, and driving home I would look in the mirror wondering when I had become the kind of man I used to hate. But now was too soon for all that. I lay there as the night faded away thinking to myself – well, that seemed to go okay.
The reason that most men stray is opportunity, and the joy of meaningless sex should never be underestimated. It had been a meaningless, opportunistic coupling. That’s what I had liked most about it.
What I liked least about it was that already I was starting to feel like a traitor.
And it was far from great. You try too hard with someone new. You try too hard to truly enjoy yourself. Sex with someone new is too much like taking your driving test. Yet when I thought of all the things that could have gone wrong – and all of them seemed to involve timing – it was okay.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
But all the time I was with Siobhan, while half of me thought that this was probably the woman I hadn’t realised I had been looking for all my life, this pale Irish beauty who would have lovely red-headed children, the other half of me sort of missed my wife.
I missed the easy familiarity you get with someone who you have been with for years. If I was going to be unfaithful, then I kind of wished it could have been with Gina.
Still, you can get tired of always being the man who pays the mortgage and calls the plumber and can’t put together the self-assembly furniture. You get tired of being that man because in the end you don’t feel like much of a man at all, more of a domestic appliance.
So you go home with some stranger who doesn’t let you have your share of the duvet and end up feeling more tired of yourself than ever. Now what did I do with my trousers?
Daylight was creeping into the room as I got dressed, and glimpses of Siobhan’s life floated into view. It was a good flat – the kind of comfortable, ordered flat I had always wanted but never had. I seemed to have gone straight from student squalor to domestic disorder.
The only photographs I could see were of Siobhan as a teenager, laughing as she held on to grinning dogs or some sweet-looking old people. Pictures of pets and parents.
There were some Japanese prints on the walls, of peasants struggling through a rainy landscape – stuff Gina would have liked. Shelves neatly stacked with books and CDs revealed a taste for literature that had made it to the movies and a weird mix of rock groups and mellow jazz – Oasis and U2 next to Stan Getz, Chet Baker and the softer side of Miles.
Looking at her books and records made me like her more. But probably looking at anyone’s books and records will make you feel that way, even if they have lots of rubbish. Because what they like, and what they used to like, reveals things about them that they wouldn’t normally choose to advertise.
I liked it that Siobhan had probably grown out of white rock bands and was now looking for something a bit more cool and sophisticated (it seemed unthinkable that she might have started out on Chet Baker and Miles Davis then later switched to U2 and Oasis). It showed she was still really young and curious, still discovering what she wanted from the world. Still inventing her life rather than trying to recover it.
It was very much a young single woman’s apartment, the flat of a girl who could please herself. Despite the magazines and clothes that were strewn around, there was none of the real mess and clutter that you get in a place with a child, none of the homely chaos I was used to. You could make it all the way to the door without stepping on a Han Solo figurine.
But I sort of missed all of the clutter and mess that I knew from my home, just as I already missed being the kind of man who knows how to keep his promises.
Gina was crying when I got home.
I sat on the side of the bed, afraid to touch her.
‘It was crazy after last night’s show,’ I said. ‘I had to stay at the station.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘It’s your mum, Harry.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s so good with Pat,’ Gina choked. ‘It just comes so easily to her. I’ll never be like her. She’s so patient, so kind. I told her that I sometimes feel like I’m going crazy – at home all day with nobody to talk to but a little boy. And when he’s at his nursery school, it’s even worse.’ She looked up at me, her eyes brimming. ‘I don’t think she even understood what I was talking about.’
Thank Christ for that. For a moment there I thought she knew everything.
‘You’re the best mother in the world,’ I said, taking her in my arms. And I meant it.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said. ‘You want me to be. And I want to be, I really do. But just wanting something doesn’t make it true.’
She cried some more, although her sobs had lost that desperate edge. It happened sometimes, this crying, and I never knew what might start it off. To me it always looked as though she was crying about nothing. Not a good mother? I mean, what was all that about? Gina was a brilliant mother. And if she was feeling a bit isolated during the day, she could give me a call at work. My secretary would always take a message. Or there was an answering machine on my mobile. How could she ever be lonely? I just didn’t get it.
I cuddled her until the tears were gone and then I went downstairs to make us some coffee. There were about a million messages on the machine. The world was going crazy about Marty. But I wasn’t too worried about the newspapers and the station.
I had heard somewhere that a problem at work is like a plane crash that you can walk away from. It’s not like your home life, where you can’t get away from your problems, no matter how far you run.
Every father is a hero to his son. At least when they are too small to know any better.
Pat thinks I can do anything right now. He thinks I can make the world bend to my will – just like Han Solo or Indiana Jones. I know that one day soon Pat will work out that there are a few differences between Harrison Ford and his old dad. And when he realises that I don’t actually own a bullwhip or a light sabre, he will never look at me in quite the same way again.
But before they grow out of it, all sons think their dad is a hero. It was a bit different with me and my dad. Because my father really was a hero. He had a medal to prove it and everything.
If your saw him in his garden or in his car, you would think he was just another suburban dad. Yet in a drawer of the living room of the pebble-dashed semi where I grew up there was a Distinguished Service Medal that he had won during the war. I spent my childhood pretending to be a hero. My dad was the real thing.
The DSM – that’s important. Only the Victoria Cross is higher, and usually you have to die before they give you that. If you saw my dad in a pub or on the street you would think you knew all about him, just by looking at his corny jumper or his balding head or his family saloon or his choice of newspaper. You would think that you knew him. And you would be dead wrong.
I picked up the phone. I could ignore all the messages from the station and the papers. But I had to call my parents.
My old man answered the phone. That