My Father calculates the possible refund on his season ticket

My Father is good at mental arithmetic. And right now, gazing sightlessly out of the train window, as the south London suburbs slide by – Raynes Park, Berrylands, New Malden, Surbiton – he is engaged in a calculation. If he paid £389 19s 6d for his annual season ticket at the beginning of November – and he is fairly sure he did; My Father is good with money, too – how much might he be entitled to by way of refund, if he cashes it in now? At first sight, it looks easy. If he rounds it up to £390, all he needs to do is divide by three – since he has had near-as-dammit eight of the 12 months paid for. Which would means a refund of around £130; definitely worth having. But My Father – who is also good with small print – is almost certain that refunds on annual season tickets are not made on a pro rata basis, instead diminishing with every month that passes. He suspects he will be lucky to get 15% back, which of course would come to a little over £60. Still a sum not to be sneezed at; enough to take the Woman He Loves for a weekend at that idiosyncratically run little hotel in Devon she likes so much. But what if the refund were only, say, 13.5%? What, exactly, would the amount returned be then?

My Father is doing hard sums to distract himself from the very much more difficult task that lies ahead of him today. Ending his marriage to My Mother. Well, perhaps he doesn’t actually have to do it today. But the Woman He Loves has made it clear he will not be welcome in her tall narrow house – or indeed in her wide fragrant bed – until he has definitively unencumbered himself of My Mother. She has not presented this ultimatum explicitly. But she has driven him across London, to see him onto his train at Waterloo; and, in taking leave of him, she has whispered, fiercely, “Real. Now.” And then she has pressed her index finger against his lips, hard, to signify that the only response acceptable to her requires action from him, not words.

And so here he is, on this achingly familiar journey from Waterloo to Worplesdon – which, he quickly calculates, he must have made roughly 3200 times – on his way to commit an act of emotional demolition. He is going to blow up a family. He imagines he must feel a little like a terrorist smuggling a lethally charged briefcase into a crowded café; certain that his cause is righteous, but appalled by the necessary carnage he is about to unleash.

Is his mission really so terrible, though? Perhaps he is being melodramatic? Marriages, after all, break up every day – many of them as long as his, or even longer – without fatal consequences. His children, it’s true, are younger – particularly My Father’s Daughter – than they would ideally be, at this transitional moment in their lives. But they will survive; children are famously resilient. And he will still be their father. In fact, he tells himself, he may well be a better father to them – kinder, more engaged, more interested in their hobbies, and so on – once he is no longer linked to them via his failed and toxic relationship with their mother. For a moment, he imagines himself taking his daughter to Hamleys, or standing on the boundary at one of his younger son’s cricket matches, exchanging knowledgeable comments with other parents (“Looks like it’s doing a bit out there?”), or even attending one of his elder son’s “gigs” (preferably accompanied by the Woman He Loves, who will be able to advise him on correct etiquette at such events).

But it’s no good; the ticking from the briefcase is getting louder, drowning out My Father’s attempts to soothe himself. He feels, as he has felt so often throughout his adult life, in danger of being sucked down below the surface of a swirling sea of sadness (oh what a terrible thing!), guilt (oh how can I do such a terrible thing?) and self-pity (oh why do I have no choice but to do such a terrible thing?). He feels, more strongly still, that he needs a drink, before he gets home. And how incongruous that last word sounds to him, as he thinks it. He supposes that the spacious detached family house in Worplesdon that he owns must once have fulfilled that role in his life, but the only place on earth where he can now imagine feeling at home is in the immediate vicinity of the Woman He Loves, wherever she happens to be.

The train’s brakes tighten and take hold, as it approaches Woking. For a moment, My Father considers breaking his journey here, for refreshment. But even in his current desperate state of alcoholic depletion, the prospect of walking the desolate streets of Woking in of search of a drink is just too grim to contemplate. A better idea occurs to him. He’ll stay on the train until Guildford, where he knows a pub or two. He won’t drink much. Just enough to take the edge off. Just enough to stop him experiencing quite so intensely all the emotions that every second of the 44 years he has lived and breathed and walked the earth has resulted in him feeling at this moment now. He is pretty sure a couple of drinks, maybe three, will do it.

*

My Father has been proved correct! He is sitting in the almost deserted lounge bar of the Jolly Farmer, where he has just completed his third drink (well, his third proper drink; his three large Scotches have been accompanied by a similar number of glasses of a surprisingly decent Côtes de Provence rosé, for purely thirst-quenching purposes), and yes, he does feel a lot better.

In fact, he allows himself a small rueful grin as he remembers the terrible state he was in, so recently, on the train. But, really, why? Now that he is thinking calmly and logically again, the situation seems much more manageable. What he needs to do, he realises with dazzling clarity, is control the flow of information; something he has done successfully countless times in his professional life. My Mother must be made aware, immediately, that he will no longer be even semi-resident in Worplesdon; but, for the time being, there is no requirement at all for her to know about the Woman He Loves, whose existence can be introduced into the conversation, incidentally, incrementally, over the coming weeks and months. Maybe by Christmas – which seems impossibly distant – My Mother will know he has left her for another woman. Or, wait a moment, perhaps by then it will be possible to present the Woman He Loves as a recent arrival in his life; someone he has met, and become involved with, since his relocation to London, back in June? In any case, the line, for now, is that My Father and My Mother are separating because their preferred lifestyles have become incompatible and and, more specifically, because the pursuit of his career goals requires him to be (temporarily at least) London-based.

It’s true there are certain practical difficulties in maintaining this position that will need to be overcome. Like, where will he tell My Mother that he is living? Spending the odd night on Ian’s sofa-bed has served him well, but he probably shouldn’t expect her to believe that he has moved in permanently with his non-existent colleague. Such niggling details can wait, though! He will come up with something plausible-sounding, as and when required. He has lied to My Mother throughout their marriage, so it seems uncontroversial to him that he should continue to do so as their relationship enters this new disaggregated phase.

But what does bother him is the knowledge that he will also have to deceive the Woman He Loves. Because her clearly stated aim (“Real. Now.”) is fundamentally irreconcilable with his newly devised strategy of gradual disentanglement. She must believe that he has severed ties with My Mother; and she will only believe this if she is satisfied that My Mother understands she has been replaced as My Father’s official consort by her, the Woman He Loves. This will, of course, soon be the case. But for the duration of the transitional period that My Father now envisages, he will have no choice but to protect the feelings of the Woman He Loves by concealing certain aspects of the situation they regrettably find themselves in. He feels sad that he will have to do this – the love between him and the Woman He Loves has been so pure and true until now – but certain there is no other practicable option. And he’s pretty sure he can get away with it. After all, how is the Woman He Loves ever going to know what passes between him and My Mother?

*

Two or three drinks later – certainly not more than four – My Father feels he is ready to go home, and do what needs to be done. He is definitely not drunk, but he does feel more resolute, more sure of himself, less fearful of consequences, than he did earlier on the train.

Returning to the station, he finds he has just missed the 4.24, which means he will have to wait almost an hour for the next Worplesdon train. So he takes a taxi. It will cost him the best part of three quid, but he knows he needs to take advantage of the can-do spirit he is currently imbued with, while it lasts.

In the taxi, nosing its way through Guildford’s unexpected light-industrial suburbs, figures once again flit through his consciousness – specifically, 20 and 24 – though this time, he is not immediately aware what it is they quantify. 20? 24? What could they mean? Twenty-four, he supposes, must be the train he has just missed. And 20 could, of course, be today’s date. But what’s significant about either of them? And what do they have to do with each other?

And now it comes to him. My Father is good with dates. He never forgets a birthday. He could tell you what day of the week the Armistice was signed. And yet somehow, until this moment, it has eluded him that on the 24th of June – in four days’ time – he will have been married to My Mother for 20 years. It’s their 20th anniversary! And, far from planning to whisk his wife away to some romantic spot in which to celebrate this milestone, he has spent today concocting a scheme for ending their marriage, without her knowing it.

A crushing weight of guilt and despair descends upon him, pinning him to the back seat of the taxi. How has his life come to this? How can a man so good and kind and generous-spirited and exceptionally able be about to commit an act so cruelly despicable? And, worst of all, how can his memory – that mighty organ, widely renowned for near-supernatural retentiveness – have let him down so badly? He has no answers.

“Say when, chief,” says the taxi driver, slowing down as they near their destination.

“Just up here on the right,” murmurs My Father. “Opposite the white gates.”

*

17.10

My Father feels like a stranger in his own home

My Father has lost his keys (My Father has never not lost his keys), so he goes round to the back garden, and lets himself in through the kitchen door, which is always open. Inside, he senses immediately that he is alone in the house. Of course, it’s possible that My Father’s Elder Son is upstairs in his room, absorbed in translating the passage of Tacitus that he has to hand in tomorrow. Or that My Mother is in the sitting room, enjoying Iris Murdoch’s latest with a cup of tea. So My Father calls out, “Hello? It’s me!” But he has lived here for nearly 10 years, and there is something in the quality of the silence that tells him he won’t receive any response.

He doesn’t. And now My Father stands in the high-ceilinged kitchen of the spacious family residence that belongs to him, wondering what to do next. It occurs to him that My Mother may have deliberately vacated the house, to ensure his home-coming goes unwelcomed, unremarked. But he dismisses this possibility on the grounds that he has given her no warning of his arrival. (Wrongly. My Mother has made complex deductions about his likely movements, and, based on these, arranged for herself, and their children, to be out as much as possible over the weekend.) He supposes (rightly) that she may be watching My Father’s Younger Son play cricket, as he does on Saturday afternoons in summer.

Leaving his canvas hold-all on the kitchen table, he crosses the hall into the sitting room. My Mother’s current book (not Iris Murdoch, but Elizabeth Bowen) is on a side-table by her favoured armchair, but otherwise, there is little evidence of family life. On their infrequent forays from their own rooms, My Father’s Sons generally raid the kitchen for food, or watch TV in the playroom. Little used, this sitting room is large and airy, and filled with sunshine on a June afternoon. Yet to My Father, today, it seems dingy and depressing. The art on the walls – a seascape, some irises in a vase, an old drawing of My Mother by her Talented Younger Brother – is laughably bad; the furniture looks both careworn and garish; the carpet pattern vulgar. My Father thinks of the tall narrow house inhabited by the Woman He Loves, every objet and item of decor curated by her, and wonders how he could ever have endured living here.

My Father needs a drink. He must not, on any account, be drunk whenever My Mother returns. But, equally, he needs to remain topped-up, if he is to give a good account of himself in their preliminary skirmishes. He has no intention of embarking on The Conversation about their future as a family until tomorrow, when they will have the entire day before them. But he fully expects My Mother to go on the offensive from the moment of their reunion. My Father strides purposefully upstairs, in search of the bottle he keeps in the drawer of his desk, in his study overlooking the garden.

He sits at his desk, surrounded by Himalayan mounds of unprocessed paperwork – My Father does not keep a tidy workstation – and drinks exactly the right amount. And then he shuffles into his daughter’s bedroom, which is next to his study, where he sits down on the bed, alongside her gonk and Threadbear, a geriatric teddy she has inherited from her older brothers. On the wall is a selection of dinosaur posters, not far off life-size. And, if My Father knew it, Sasha and Paul are still gasping for oxygen in the toybox at the foot of the bed.

He wonders where his beautiful daughter is. Presumably with My Mother, wherever she may be. And now, perhaps for the first time, the sadness of the situation he finds himself in really grips My Father by the heart. He must, as an urgent imperative, start a new life with the Woman He Loves. No less unequivocally, he needs to break free from My Mother, whom he no longer loves. (Did he ever? His head aches and spins with the effort of trying to remember the early days of their relationship, when he knows, for a historic fact, that he considered himself happy.) But his children! His poor children! And especially his poor, poor not-yet-9-year-old daughter! No one could accuse My Father of not loving his children. And he has no difficulty at all conjuring up images of happy times he has spent with them, admittedly mostly in the fairly distant past. He sees himself bathing his infant daughter in a yellow plastic tub, while she chuckles and tries in vain to grasp bubbles with her fat little hands; playing in the garden with all three of his children, dousing them with a hosepipe so thoroughly that their squeals and shrieks of laughter are almost painful; teaching his sons to play Pontoon, the only useful skill he acquired during National Service. He was a loving father! No, he is a loving father! So much more loving than his father was to him! And yet here he is, with his hand on the detonator, about to blow up their lives. He has failed, utterly, catastrophically, in his family life just as he has failed, horribly, publicly, in his professional life. My Father weeps.

With his head in his hands, he slumps sideways, pushing Threadbear aside, and allowing his head to rest on his daughter’s cool pillow. Perhaps he has drunk just a little too much. With the tears still dribbling down his cheeks, and into his ears, My Father goes to sleep.

*

Some time later, My Mother returns with My Father’s Younger Son, who is depressed because he has bowled poorly, and goes straight up to his room. My Mother finds My Father’s hold-all on the kitchen table, and calls out to him in greeting. Receiving no answer, she swiftly and methodically searches his bag. It contains nothing obviously incriminating. Only clothes, and a loose toothbrush. But what isn’t in it tells a story. Because if My Father has now returned to the bosom of his family after a period of enforced absence, why hasn’t he brought at least three more suits that are no longer in his wardrobe upstairs, not to mention half a dozen shirts and most of his underwear, which are also missing? And where is his washbag?

Torn between terror and an unfamiliar feeling which may be rage, My Mother hums calmly to herself as she moves through the house, in search of My Father.

She finds him, still asleep in their daughter’s room, her gonk nestled up against his face.

“Good heavens,” she says, loudly and cheerfully. “How honoured we are – you’re finally home!”

*

The evening passes in a bizarre simulacrum of domestic normality. My Mother has a very different conception of the big conversation that needs to take place, but, like My Father, she has scheduled it for tomorrow. So, until then, difficult topics – anything relating, however tangentially, to My Father’s three-week absence or his plans for the future – are off-limits, and My Mother will be forced to fall back on her virtuosic mastery of the art of filling dead air with words.

“Do you think you will be well enough to eat supper?” she asks My Father, solicitously, when he eventually emerges from their daughter’s room, and trails downstairs to join her in the kitchen.

“When have you ever known me not well enough to eat?” he says, adopting a jocular tone that has never previously played any part in their relationship. “And anyway, I’m not unwell, just tired.”

This is dangerous, because his fatigue is due to his exertions during the campaign, which must not be spoken of. So My Mother says brightly, “Why don’t you have a bath, while I get supper. And don’t worry about clearing up all the mess. I’ll do it. I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“That would be nice,” he says, dead-batting her reference to his well-deserved reputation for leaving the bathroom looking like a typhoon-ravaged flood-zone.

A little later, they and My Father’s Younger Son sit uncomfortably round the kitchen table, sharing a Vesta chicken curry that she has prepared. My Mother is talking about My Father’s Daughter, who, very unusually, is staying the night with a schoolfriend, just around the corner.

“Goodness knows how she will cope,” says My Mother, with maternal concern. “She cried all morning, so of course I told her she didn’t have to go through with it unless she was quite sure she wanted to. She insisted she did. But she went off looking like a wet weekend, clutching her little bag – which reminded me of when I was evacuated, of course. I do hope it goes well. I’m half-expecting to get a call in the middle night, from that awful woman – Sadie’s mother, I mean. It’s all really rather heart-breaking, but I do hope it will be good for her confidence!”

What My Mother doesn’t mention is that it was her idea for My Father’s Daughter to spend this almost unprecedented night away from home, and that she has pushed the scheme through against strong resistance from all parties, because she knows My Father will be looking forward to seeing his youngest child.

The curry is gloopy on the plate, claggy in the mouth, and supernaturally salty. They eat it warily, feeling like gastronomic pioneers. My Father, heroically, does not open a bottle of wine. My Mother turns her attention to My Father’s Elder Son, who has left earlier in the day to prepare for his band’s gig tonight.

“Goodness knows when he has time for any school work,” she says, glumly. “He’s always playing that wretched guitar, or off practising with his friends.”

One thing My Mother and My Father agree on is their elder son’s limitless academic potential, and the threat posed to its fulfilment by his obsession with music. My Mother goes on, “I talked to that dreadful little squit who teaches him Latin, at the most recent of many parents’ evenings that you have been unavoidably prevented from attending, and he was in despair about his grade next year. No chance whatsoever of an ‘A’, he said. So no chance of him doing Greats, if he goes on like this.”

She says this with relish, because she knows My Father’s biggest regret is his own failure to read Greats (Latin and Greek) at Oxford, an intellectual challenge he shirked in favour of the far less prestigious study of Modern Greats (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). He craves redemption through his brilliant elder son.

“Well,” he corrects her, “it’ll depend on the impression he makes at interview. If they like him, they’ll make him a low offer.”

“We’ll see,” she says, on an ominous descending inflection; a way she has of bringing an unsatisfactory strand of conversation to a resoundingly downbeat conclusion.

My Father’s Younger Son, who is a fussy eater, is looking miserable, and redistributing his food around his plate, in the hope of making it appear he has eaten more than he has.

“You look as if you’ve found sixpence and lost a shilling, as my grandmother used to say,” My Mother tells him, unanswerably.

He says nothing.

“Go on,” she says, with weary resignation. “Go and make yourself a Marmite sandwich. We’ll pretend we haven’t noticed. Go on, you must be hungry after playing cricket. Go on!”

He doesn’t move, or speak. But My Mother is relentless.

“Of course, I know why you are sunk in gloom. It’s because you think you bowled badly. But you didn’t – I know that for a fact. I talked to Mr Williamson while you were bowling. I asked him why they kept on hitting the ball all over the place, when you were trying so hard. And he told me that it was nothing to do with you bowling badly; it was just one of those days when the other school had all the luck. He told me he was quite sure that you would bounce back, and be better for it! So, you see, it wasn’t anything to do with you bowling badly.”

My Father feels he should step in. But all he can think of to say is, “You know, this stuff really isn’t so bad. Indian food is very ‘in’ in London right now.”

“Well, you’d know about that,” snaps My Mother.

My Father’s Younger Son lays down his fork as quietly as possible, and leaves the table to make himself a Marmite sandwich.

*

After supper, My Mother and My Father’s Younger Son watch TV together in the playroom. She hands him the remote control, which she hasn’t yet learnt to operate, and invites him to choose between the Val Doonican Show on BBC 1 and A Man Called Ironside on BBC 2 (she does not approve of ITV). The remote rattles like a burst of machine gun fire, and My Father’s Younger Son has made this difficult decision. In tribute to the Beatles, at this moment of their disintegration, the becardiganed Irishman is crooning a medley of their hits: All My Loving segueing into Paperback Writer into Lady Madonna into Yesterday. My Father’s Younger Son lacks the historical perspective to understand that he is witnessing the death of the 1960s dream, but knows what he sees on the screen is ineffably sad.

My Father has already escaped to his study, taking with him the newspapers, which he has managed to avoid until now, as self-punishment. He will read every word of news and editorial before he lies down to sleep on the divan next to his desk, which is where he has passed every night he has spent in this house within living memory.

*

Later, while My Father sleeps deeply, My Mother lies awake on her side of the marital bed, poised on the lip of the central trench excavated by his much greater weight, over many years. She has not taken her usual nightly Seconal, because she is half-expecting the phone to ring. Well, perhaps more like three-quarters-expecting.

*

My Father’s Daughter is not asleep either. Less than half a mile away, in her friend’s pony-themed bedroom, she is in the upper bunk – which Sadie has kindly allowed her to have – wishing she was safe at home in her own bed. She wants to go to the loo, but doesn’t dare get up (and can’t remember where the loo is, anyway). She wants a drink of water. Her tummy hurts, and she feels sick. She wants to cry.

She knows she is being silly – very silly indeed – but she wants to call her mummy and ask her to come and take her home. And her mummy said she could ask Sadie’s mum to do that, if she felt sad or scared. But she doesn’t dare ask Sadie’s mum, who is probably asleep. And she knows somehow that if she did, it would make her mummy sad.

*****

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