He did.
He wasn’t tense, or annoyed, he didn’t try to make me feel bad for the months of silence. I talked lightly about cricket for a while, and he seemed happy to join in. “I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I’m really sorry, I’ve been very busy.” He said it was all right, he had been very busy too.
I felt a rush of relief at that, and also, I think, a rush of love. “We should meet up soon,” I said.
“That would be nice.”
“As soon as you like! I could take you out to dinner for your birthday. Or before your birthday! I could take you out to dinner before your birthday and on your birthday. Do you fancy that? Do you fancy a pre-birthday dinner?”
And he said, and it was the first time in the whole conversation that there was an edge to his words, “You’re always asking me out to eat. You think I want to eat? You think it’s food that excites me?”
“Well,” I said. “What would excite you?” Already dreading the response.
He told me.
He said, “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
I said, “I wouldn’t have to do anything, would I? I mean. I could just watch.”
“Of course,” he said. “A lot of people just come to watch.”
“All right.”
“You don’t have to approve. But it’d be nice, I think, if my son understood who I really am. If you got to see me, once— the real me, I mean. Because who knows how much longer I have? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”
“Don’t talk like that, please,” I said. “You’ve got years left.”
“If I’ve got years left,” my father told me, “this is what keeps me alive.”
We agreed to meet the very next day after I’d finished work. He’d take me to his club. I asked if it would be a problem I’d be wearing my office suit, and he told me, no— there wasn’t a dress code, and everyone liked a man who dressed smart.
Father was dressed in a suit too, nothing too formal, the jacket was a little faded. He explained that we weren’t going to a real club, not as such; it was the private residence of a Mr J. C. Tuck. I asked Father who this J. C. Tuck was, and he said he had no idea—it wasn’t forbidden to discuss your private lives, but it was considered a little crass. Father carried a plastic bowl full of guacamole. He said he’d brought enough for both of us, but if I chose to come again it’d be polite to get some refreshments of my own.
“This is it,” Father said at last. We were standing outside a pretty semi-detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac off the main road; the front garden was neatly mown; the path to the door was a crazy paving; the curtains were drawn. Father rang the doorbell. The noise it made was reassuringly mundane.
J. C. Tuck answered the door. He wasn’t wearing a suit; he looked comfortable in a sweater and slacks. “Welcome, welcome!” he said. He was about sixty, I think. He was tall and slim, and his silver hair was nicely combed; I guessed he was a solicitor, or perhaps a bank manager—he smiled with the gracious cheer of someone approving a loan. Father handed him his guacamole. “How lovely!” He introduced me, and said I was there to observe only—“How lovely, of course, you’re welcome!” He stood aside and waved us into the house, and it was only then I realised he was wearing a pair of tight black gloves. “Come through, how lovely, we’re about to begin!”
He led us into a large room. There was no furniture, but there were beanbags and settee cushions against the walls. Each of them was occupied—those men who weren’t lucky enough to find one squatted on the floor. Most of the men looked up as we entered, some of them smiled at my father and raised a hand in greeting. And their faces grinning wide in anticipation were wrinkled, the men were white-haired, or bald, their smiles showed teeth that were cracked or missing altogether. They were all so old; and when I looked at my father, acknowledging their hellos and smiling back in easy recognition, I realised how old he was too.
J. C. Tuck placed our guacamole down in the middle of the room, one of a whole army of bowls. There was salad dressing, and soup, and soft cheese—but it wasn’t all food, there was potpourri too, crushed roses and perfumes, and some liquid that looked suspiciously like urine. Tuck looked down at his collection and actually clapped his gloved hands together once in delight. Then he addressed the room.
“Welcome to you all,” he said. “I want you to be happy here. I want you to feel relaxed. There is no judgement in this room, you may do whatever you wish. I only remind you to respect the boundaries of others, which may not yet extend as broadly as your own. We have dips. And this evening we welcome some newcomers.” I thought he was talking about me, but he indicated a couple of elderly men in the corner of the room, and both were so excited, their eyes bulging out of shallow sockets at the thrill of it all. I thought they might have been twins. “Take care of them. Remember it was your first time once as well. Enjoy yourselves! Be happy! Have fun!”
And for all his fine words, for a moment I thought it had all gone horribly wrong. Everyone stared at him, reluctant to start. And then, around the room, I heard what sounded like faint clapping, and I thought they were giving him a rather half-hearted round of applause. And I realised instead that these old men were tapping at their fists, tapping hard until their thumbs popped out.
And then the sucking began. The men were putting their thumbs into their mouths, some of them were cramming them in so easily. There was one man opposite me who seemed to have no teeth at all and he was able to shove his whole hand in there. And then the slurping—and I realised how discreet my father had been in the restaurant those months ago, there was no need for such niceties here—there was the smacking of lips, and pops like little burps and farts, and the odd squelch as gobbets of saliva spilled out of their mouths and on to their chins.
My father sat next to me, slurping with just as much passion as the rest of them, his eyes closed to savour the experience—and then opening them and looking at me and, either disappointed by my reaction or merely disinterested, shutting them tight once again.
After the first bout of thumbsucking was over, some of the men shuffled over to the finger bowls in the middle of the room. They’d stick in thumbs still wet with spit, they’d scoop out generous portions of mayonnaise or hummus. And some of them would lick their thumbs dry, holding them up like ice-cream cones—others would thrust the whole sticky mass straight into their mouths. And then, cupping their thumbs so nothing would drip to the carpet, they’d return to the throng—they would offer their thumbs up to the other men to suck, and those men would break away from their own and instead take inside their mouths these strangers’ thumbs all laden high with goodies.
And there, still standing, taking no part in the proceedings but smiling as if with love and pride, was J. C. Tuck. He caught me looking at him and winked. I looked away.
One man approached my father. He offered him a thumb covered with apricot jam. My father smiled and shook his head. I was relieved by that, at least, that there were depths to which my father would not stoop. Then the man offered him his other thumb, and it was dripping with guacamole, our guacamole, and my father nodded eagerly and took the thumb into his mouth in one gulp. A man to his side lifted my father’s left hand, and began sucking on his thumb; my father didn’t even appear to notice. A man to the other side took his right thumb—and my father was blind to it all, all he cared about was licking every trace of crushed avocado away, licking that thumb clean and then licking still further—and with his arms spread out and supported by the elderly men guzzling at his side Dad looked like a starfish or Jesus on the cross in beatific bliss.