The waiter spoke quietly, but firmly. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to my father. “But would you please put that away?”
Father turned about, as if looking for whomever else the waiter was addressing, then narrowing his enquiry upon his own offending digit. “I’m sorry,” Father said at last. “But I’m sure I’m doing it quietly. I’m not slurping.”
“It’s not a question of volume, sir. It’s our policy. And there have been complaints.”
“Indeed?” And my father looked around again, and this time I did too—but there were no other diners watching us, they were all staring intently down at their food.
“It’s policy,” said the waiter again. “We don’t seek to discriminate…”
“No, no,” said Father. “Well, then. Well.” And he lowered his thumb, tucked it back deliberately into the palm of his hand.
“Thank you. Now, may I fetch you gentlemen some dessert?”
“I’ll have the crème brûlée,” I said.
“He’s my son,” said Father.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“I said he’s my son. Don’t go thinking otherwise.”
“I’m sure he is whatever you say he is. Dessert?”
“I’ll have the crème brûlée,” I said.
“No,” said Father. “The bill. Just the bill, please.”
“Just the bill, sir. Probably for the best.” The waiter nodded, smiled perfectly politely, and was gone.
I started on some new conversation, but it was hard because Father wasn’t joining in, and the restaurant seemed so much quieter somehow and I thought everyone was listening. I was relieved when the waiter returned. He put a little silver plate between us; on it were the bill and two very small mints. “When you’re ready, gentlemen,” he said, and this time confirmed it, there was a slight edge to the “gentlemen” and emphasis upon the word that seemed ironic.
“I’ll get this,” muttered Father.
“Dad, no, I invited you out for dinner…”
“I said, I’ll get this.” He took out his credit card and said to the waiter, “How much of a tip do you usually expect?”
“Tipping is at the customer’s discretion, and in the circumstances…”
“No, no, I want to do it properly. I want to be proper, I want it to be above board. How much?”
“Fifteen per cent,” said the waiter. “Usually.”
“Usually, eh? Well, my maths isn’t very good. Perhaps you could look at this and tell me how much I should add.” He handed the waiter the bill, making it very clear he was keeping his thumb as far away from the sheet of paper as possible.
The waiter calculated, told him. My father gave him his credit card, thumb pointedly still angled away, and all the while he stared at him, he never took his eyes off him—and the waiter grew uncomfortable, he made a mistake with the card machine, tutted under his breath, had to start again.
“I don’t judge,” the waiter said quietly.
“What was that?”
“I don’t judge.” No louder than before. “I’m just doing my job.” He put the credit card and the receipt down on to the table, far from my father, as far from my father as he could manage. And then he hurried off. Father and I put on our coats, and it was only as we reached the exit that the hubbub of conversation behind us seemed to return to normal.
Out on the street, and it was already dark, and I was pleased because this meant the evening was nearly over. “Let’s get you to the tube,” I said, and on the way I spoke brightly about the weather and things. And eventually my father said, “Are we really not going to discuss what just happened?” And he didn’t sound cross, and I honestly thought he was going to apologise to me.
But instead he said, “I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. But they’re my mistakes. Okay? What I am, it’s up to me.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “If you like.”
“You’re my son,” he said. “I’d have stood by you, whatever. If you’d ever been caught shoplifting. If you’d got on drugs.”
“I don’t do drugs,” I said.
“Oh, what’s the point?” Again, he wasn’t angry, he just sounded tired. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how old a man my father is.
We walked all the way back to the tube station in silence.
“Well, then,” he said, when we reached the entrance.
“Well!” I said. I’d normally have offered him my hand, but I wasn’t sure what he’d do with it.
“You think that waiter was right, don’t you? Come on.”
“Well,” I said. “You’ve got to admit, it’s a posh restaurant. I mean! It’s not like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Finger lickin’ good, I mean!” I laughed, and I thought he might laugh too.
“A man needs a hobby,” he said. “What have you got that’s so special?”
When I got back home, Peggy was watching television. I settled down on the sofa next to her. When the commercials came on, she said, “How’s your dad?”
“He’s okay, I think.”
“Good.”
“We had steak.”
“Did you give him my love?”
“I did, yeah.”
I did consider discussing the thumbsucking incident, but I couldn’t be sure how to express it as a funny anecdote or as something that should be of concern, and I wasn’t sure, moreover, that either approach could be comfortably confined within the length of a commercial break. And I didn’t know how Peggy would react to thumbsucking; thumbsucking was one of the many areas of the conversational no man’s land into which we no longer strayed.
We finished that programme, and then we watched another. At some point I suggested to Peggy that she’d be welcome to join me and my father for dinner some time, and she said that might be nice; at another point, she came up with the idea that maybe we should invite him over to ours for a home-cooked meal. Not now. Not soon. But some time.
And after a while, we went to bed.
The next day I phoned my mother. A man I didn’t recognise answered.
“Who was that?” I asked her, when finally she got put on. “Was that Jim?”
“There is no Jim any more,” she said. “That’s Frank. Anyway. How are you?”
I told her I was fine. Peggy, fine. How was she? She was fine too.
“I wondered if you’d spoken to Dad recently?”
She gave it some thought. “I don’t think so, no. There was Christmas, I think. I spoke to him then.”
“Right.”
“But whether it was this Christmas or the Christmas before, I really couldn’t say. What’s the matter? Is he ill? Is he dying?”
“No, no, nothing like that. He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine.”
“Fine is good,” she said, and to her credit, she did actually sound relieved.
“I’m just worried about him,” I said. “He doesn’t seem his usual self. I think maybe he’s lonely.”
And at that Mother gave a little hollow laugh. “Well,” she said, “we’re all bloody lonely, aren’t we?”
Yes, he was lonely, and the solution was easy—I’d just make more time to spend with him. But I didn’t. I didn’t call him to arrange a dinner, I didn’t call him at all. And one day I realised three months had passed, and that was the longest time in my whole life I had ever spent apart from him.
His birthday was drawing near, and I knew I’d have to speak to him on his birthday, how could I not? And I knew too that I couldn’t wait until the birthday itself. I’d have to call him some time before it, or the birthday would look too obvious, so I decided to call him one week before his birthday, one week before exactly. Time enough, I hoped, to break the ice, and make that dreadful birthday conversation we’d have to have a little less awkward. I phoned. My heart was pounding. I was scared. I didn’t know why. This was my father, a man who had never hurt me all these years, who had never let me down, who loved me—I knew it—and deserved my love back. I clutched the receiver in my hands, and, dear God, I hoped he wouldn’t pick up.