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And all I could do was wait.
Rufus was a smart kid but he was raw. That was his problem. Not his recklessness, or his stupidity, but his youth. I trusted him but I didn’t trust the world. You need a bit of luck at that age, I thought, and I waited at the window, and still he did not come home.
My son at seventeen. Most nights he went out in a clapped-out old Beetle bought with his own money from a summer job. We didn’t know where he went. We didn’t have a clue. You lose them after a certain age and they never come back. They start out as a part of you, indistinguishable from yourself for years and years, and they end up as people that you hardly recognise. I could see it coming.
My son and I were not quite strangers yet – I could still glimpse the same father and son who went to the park on a bike that had stabilisers. But it was a big thing between us, this not knowing, this unknown other life, the Grand Canyon of ignorance, and it felt like it was growing bigger every time he went out the front door.
And when midnight came and went I suddenly knew that I would never see him again. I knew it with a total certainty that choked my throat and tightened my chest. And I knew exactly how it would be when I told his mother and sister, and I could see the look on the faces of his grandparents, and I could imagine his dumbstruck friends and schoolmates, attending their first funeral, far too young to be wearing all that black. And I knew exactly what it would be like. It would be like the end of the world.
Then I heard his car coming up the drive.
There were lights in the window, the engine dying, a door slamming – boys do not have a light touch at seventeen – and suddenly there he was, towering above me, eye contact not easy, and as always I was both relieved and uneasy at his physical presence. Glad to have him back in one piece, yet baffled by this oversized man-child.
Who was he? Where did he come from? What was his connection to the little boy with the blond Beatle-cut? On tiptoes – and I am six foot nothing – I kissed him on the fuzzy cheek he shaved once a week, and when he gave me a sort of half-hearted sideways squeeze in response, I felt the sharp bones of my only son.
We had always kissed each other, but for a while now there had been self-consciousness and shyness in our embrace. Somehow I knew that Rufus would prefer it if the ritual, long since drained of all real meaning, would stop. But stopping it would feel like we were making too big a thing of it. So we continued with our manly kisses, even though they made both of us uncomfortable.
I felt him pull away.
‘So,’ I said, as lightly as I could manage, ‘what have you been up to?’
‘Just driving around,’ he said in his deep, booming voice – that big man’s voice coming out of my little boy! – and I felt myself flinch at the voice, at the words, at the blatant and obvious lie.
Whatever my son did at night, I knew it was not just driving around.
‘Okay,’ I said evenly, and I reached for the AlcoHawk Pro that was waiting on the coffee table.
It was a rectangular piece of plastic, gun-metal grey, about the size of one of those palm-held devices that the world and its brother seem to spend their entire lives staring into these days, when they could be looking at each other, or the stars. There was a stubby mouthpiece on one side, about the size of the cigarette butt that I had booted into the rose bushes.
‘I didn’t drink anything,’ Rufus said in his defensive baritone, although I could smell the contents of a small brewery on him.
‘Good,’ I said flatly. ‘Then it will be clear.’
I pressed the power switch and on the AlcoHawk Pro’s circular screen the red digits quickly counted down from 200 to zero. Then I handed it to Rufus. He took a breath, and blew into the mouthpiece until there was a sharp beep. He gave it back to me and we waited, saying nothing, not looking at each other, just the ambient noise of the city between us. Then there was a series of little beeps and the reading was displayed.
Three zeroes, it said; 000 – like the winning line on a fruit machine. Strange, I thought. I knew I smelled booze. I shook the AlcoHawk Pro and looked at it again. But it still said 000, and that meant there was no alcohol in the bloodstream of my son. At least he was telling me the truth about one thing in his life.
I showed the reading to Rufus and when he nodded politely, I felt like hugging him. It was such a gracious gesture, that polite little nod. There was a real sweetness about my boy, even now, a sweetness that had everything to do with his mother and nothing to do with me. I felt like hugging the kid. But I didn’t hug him. And the moment passed.
We said goodnight without risking any more embraces, and as I climbed the stairs I could hear him clumping noisily around the kitchen, foraging for food. My wife was sleeping. But when I slid into my side of the bed, I felt her stir.
‘Is he back?’ she murmured, her voice foggy with sleep, her face pointing away from me.
‘He’s back,’ I said. I listened to her breathing for a bit. That was enough for her. The fact that he was back. That was all Lara cared about.
‘But where does he go?’ I said, all despairing.
She exhaled in the darkness, a sound that was half-yawn, half-sigh. ‘He’s a good boy, George,’ she said, already sliding back into sleep. ‘And he’s fine. And he’s home. And he’s safe. Does it matter where he goes?’ Then she thought of something and half sat up. ‘You didn’t breathalyse him again, did you?’
‘I just wonder where he goes,’ I said.
I turned on to my side and we lay there, back to back, the position of animals who had found their home a long time ago. I felt Lara’s small feet on the back of my calves, the swell of her buttocks, the angle of a shoulder blade under brushed cotton pyjamas.
‘And I just don’t want him to get hurt,’ I said, very quietly, although she was sleeping by then.
I had a feeling that I would not sleep much tonight. But then I felt Lara’s body making itself comfortable against mine, and I knew that sleep would eventually come if I didn’t think about it too much.
And I knew that there was something more that I wanted for our son, something more than good sense and safety first, and cool heads to prevail, and the bit of the luck you need at seventeen, and perhaps less lies once in a while, just for a change.
And it was this – what every parent wants for the gawky teenage boy who they suddenly see accelerating towards the grown-up world without a crash helmet or a safety belt, imagining that everything is completely under control.
The silent prayer of the terrified parent.
I wanted to stop the clock.
We rarely saw Rufus at breakfast. In the morning he was an almost mythical figure, elusive yet lumbering, his enormous form sometimes glimpsed banging out the door, rucksack stuffed with books slung over one shoulder like the Yeti of Year 13, or whatever they call the sixth form these days.
The kitchen was full of clues that he had already come and gone. His chair pushed roughly back. A lone Coco Pop on the floor. The cereal bowl dumped in the sink for someone else to wash up.
I felt a ripple of irritation. I knew what this was about. He just wanted to avoid my porridge.
I made one meal a day for my family, and it was breakfast – tasty, nutritious Scott’s Porage Oats. I figured a healthy start balanced out the unhealthy remainder of my day – the cigarettes I secretly puffed, the junk food I noshed at work, the spikes of blood pressure. Every morning I built a barrier against early death. A wall of porridge. But my son never stuck around for it.
Lara appeared as I was drying his bowl. ‘He makes me so angry,’ I said.
She kissed my cheek and patted my ribs. ‘Everything makes you angry, darling.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘Ruby!’ No response. She took the bowl from me and put it away, shaking her head. ‘She’ll be late again. Go and get her, will you?’
I checked that the porridge was simmering nicely and went back upstairs. The door to our daughter’s room was open. She was sitting at her computer, in her school uniform, pulling her hair back and knotting it in a ponytail. I smiled at the seriousness of the expression on what was a fifteen-year-old version of her mother’s perfect face.
It wasn’t true that everything made me angry.
My daughter never made me angry.
I could hardly look at her without smiling.
And it had always been that way.
Apocalyptic images moved across her computer screen. Factories belching industrial filth. Dead fish floating in polluted rivers. Highways jammed with unmoving cars.
‘Anyone in here like porridge?’ I said, knocking on the open door.
‘Just let me…’ Her voice trailed away as she stared at ice caps melting, the earth’s crust boiling, the sky ripped asunder by plague and pestilence. ‘I just have to see…’
‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about all that stuff. It’s not the end of the world.’
She looked at me and grimaced. ‘That’s not funny, Daddy.’
But it made me laugh.
When we came downstairs the porridge had gently bubbled to that perfect consistency of creamy thickness that I liked.
Lara came in from the garden, holding something in her right hand. A cigarette butt. She threw it at me. It hit me in the middle of the chest, just where I always felt the tightness. A spitfire, my dad would say. She’s a little spitfire.
‘Do you know what that is, George?’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘That’s another nail in your coffin.’ She sat down at the breakfast table and covered her face with her hands. Ruby and I looked at each other and then back at Lara. ‘Thanks a lot, George,’ my wife said, her voice muffled by her hands. ‘Thanks a bloody million.’
Then we ate our porridge.
Rufus was still at the bus stop.
I stopped the car on the other side of the road and opened the window. He looked across at the car containing his father, his mother and his sister, and seemed to cringe, and looked away. There were a few other kids from his school at the bus stop, but he didn’t seem to be with any of them.
‘Do you want a lift?’ I shouted, the rush-hour traffic roaring between us.
He tore his eyes from the pavement and screwed up his face. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Can’t hear.’ Other kids stared across at us.
I looked at Lara in the passenger’s seat. ‘What could I possibly be asking him? What else could I conceivably be asking the kid?’
Ruby leaned forward. ‘What’s the capital of Peru? If God really exists then why is there so much suffering in the world?’ She sat back with a chuckle, smiling wearily at her big brother scanning the street for a sign of his bus. ‘He wants to get the bus, Daddy.’
She was right.
So we left him at the bus stop, and took Ruby to school – right up to the gates. We were still allowed to do that. She even gave us both a peck on the face, without first checking who might see.
She really did make me smile all the time.
And the smile only faded when she fell into step with one of her classmates, and I saw her moving her skinny hips from side to side as she hiked up her grey skirt. She had started wearing her white school socks above her knee and it was not a good look.
‘Young lady,’ I called.
She turned, raised her plucked eyebrows, and gave us a little wave of the hand that could have meant anything. Okay. Goodbye. Bugger off. But the hemline on that grey school skirt did not go any higher, and that felt like the most I could ask for.
Lara touched her watch as we eased back into the slow morning traffic. ‘I’m going to be late,’ she said.
I hit a switch on the dashboard.
‘No, you’re not,’ I said.
I swung the car to the wrong side of the road as the siren began to wail, watching the oncoming traffic pulling over at the sight of the two blue lights that were flashing inside my grille, and everyone hearing me long before they saw me, and all of them getting out of the way.
Life the way it should be.
‘You know you shouldn’t do this,’ Lara said, sinking into her seat with embarrassment, but laughing at the same time.
I smiled, happy to make my wife happy, proud that I could get her to work on time, and looking forward to the moment when I was alone at last, and lighting up the first one of the day.
two (#ulink_daa4987d-2b1d-5ea5-82b8-26384c845b33)
Just as Eskimos have fifty different words for snow, so the police have endless terms for the copper who never leaves the station.
Station cat. Canteen cowboy. Shiny arse. Clothes hanger. Uniform carrier. Bongo (Books On, Never Goes Out). Flub (Fat Lazy Useless Bastard). And an Olympic torch (yet another thing that never goes out).
And despite the light show that I had put on for Lara, that was me. A shiny-arsed canteen cowboy. Or at least, that is what I had become.
I was third generation. My father and grandfather were both coppers. Unfortunately, policing wasn’t the only thing that ran in the family. So did heart disease. Health issues, a man with glasses called it, not an expression that my grandfather or my father ever had to hear. So despite the dodgy tickers that ran in the family, the old boys never suffered the humiliation of being a shiny-arsed station cat.
But that was another time.
When I got to the station, I went straight to the parade. This is the part of the day that the cop shows get right – a room full of men and a few women, most of them in uniform, all of them drinking the first caffeine of the day while listening to an Onion – onion bhaji, sargie, sergeant – also known as the skipper – talk them through the shift ahead. At the back of the room I saw someone watching me. A heavy man in his forties wearing a cheap suit, grubby white shirt and a tie as lifeless as a dead snake. My old partner, Keith, now in the company of some bright-eyed young boy who was actually taking notes. Keith grinned and lifted his Styrofoam cup in salute, spilt a splash of tea on his chin, cursed and wiped it off with the back of his hand. Then, stifling a yawn, he looked back at the Onion.
‘Might seem a long way off, but already we need to start thinking about Carnival weekend. I have before me the official figures –’ the Onion was saying, turning a page of his notes ‘– and I know you will all be enormously relieved to hear that, according to these statistics, last year’s Carnival went off without a major incident.’
Disbelieving groans from the crowd. The Onion glowered at them from under thick eyebrows, playing it straight.
‘There were six stabbings, forty-eight robberies, and a medium-sized riot around the Boombastic Dancehall Sound System when it was asked to reduce the volume at 3.45 a.m. Happily, the environmental health officer who asked them to turn down the Bob Marley –’ mocking jeers from some of the younger officers ‘– is expected to be out of hospital within a month. The council tell us that the loss of his spleen will not prevent him carrying out his duties. Fortunately, and rather wonderfully, none of these incidents were Carnival-related, so citizens should feel free to bring the wife and kiddies for this year’s fun-packed extravaganza.’
Keith’s new partner busily wrote it all down. I watched the Onion’s briefing, feeling like a man with no fruit and nuts in a knocking shop.
I didn’t know why I came here every morning. No, that’s not true – I knew exactly why I came. As the Sergeant went through his shopping list of stolen cars, burglaries, muggings and knife crime, it made me feel as though I was still chasing the wicked, still part of the war on crime, and still the man I wanted to be.
But when the parade was over, I went up to my desk, forbidding myself a glance at my watch. If I could only stop myself from looking, then the time would pass more quickly. So I lost myself in checking MG3s – reports that officers make to the Crown Prosecution Service, who then get to decide which naughty people to prosecute, and which naughty people to pat on the head and release back into the wild.
When I looked over the top of my computer screen Keith was standing there, dabbing at the tea stain on his shirt.
‘Fancy running a few red lights?’ he said.
Keith’s young partner was waiting in the passenger seat of their car. He looked up from his notes with a shy smile as Keith stuck his head in the window.
‘DC Bailey and I are on an undercover operation all day,’ Keith told him. ‘So sling your hook.’
The young man got out of the car with a bewildered look. ‘But – but what am I supposed to do while you’re undercover with DC Bailey?’
Keith erupted with exasperation. ‘I don’t know, do I? Go and do a bit of face painting. Do what you like.’
I slipped into the passenger seat and settled myself. It felt good. Keith eased himself behind the wheel, red-faced and muttering about a lack of initiative among the younger generation. We left the kid standing in the car park, staring after us with a wistful look.
Out on the road, Keith pulled out a couple of packets from under the dash. Zestoretic. Amlodipine. He pushed out a pill from each and washed them down with a swig from a can of Red Bull.
‘Goes a treat with your blood-pressure medication,’ he smiled.
‘We’re getting old,’ I said. Keith was forty-two, five years younger than me, although he looked as though he had even more miles on the clock. ‘In fact, we are old.’
Keith just laughed and pulled out a packet of cigarettes with a skull on the front. Then with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his high-tar snouts, he pulled his car on to the wrong side of the road and really put his foot down, as if he was trying to outrace someone.
We came across a woman crying.
‘Pictures of my children,’ she sobbed. ‘It had all the pictures of my children.’
‘Someone thieve your phone?’ Keith said, and when the woman nodded, he motioned for her to get in the back of the car. ‘Hop in, love,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll get your phone back for you.’
