The restaurant was bullish and manic. And the young waiter was offhand and woundingly ugly. It wasn’t his fault, obviously, but somehow his ugliness seemed a weapon of his rudeness. His elaborate facial hair—facial topiary, really—made Helen think of the dreaded face-painting that went on at her kids’ parties: scrawled lions’ manes and tiger whiskers, difficult to remove whatever the kindhearted and absurdly patient teenage volunteers claimed. She was irritated that the place was so loud (Toto, of all things, on the sound system), the service so casual and juvenile. Roger, her impeccably tailored young assistant in London, had done some research: it was new, it was very near the hotel, had had good reviews for its French-Cambodian-American, whatever that was, food. But they’d have been better off eating in the dim, cave-like hotel restaurant. This was exactly the sort of place Dad hated—basically a noisy gym with food, everybody toned, young, and fuck-off fit.
Alan’s gray head shone singly, as if spotlit. He looked knackered, she thought, but maybe that was just airports and jet lag. His jacket sleeves—a tiny bit too long. I must see him more often than I do. But not if that involves going up to Northumberland. To Candyland.
Yet he was smiling at her, as if to say, I know what you’re thinking, there’s no need to apologize for the restaurant, these things happen, we’re in New York, after all …
“We’re in New York!”
“Yes, Dad, a bit painfully—I’m sorry. You won’t be able to hear anything I say.”
“You may have buggered up your hearing with all those concerts, but my hearing is fine.” His lips silently shaped: “I’M SHOUTING AT YOU BUT YOU CAN’T HEAR ME!”
“Ha-ha, very funny, Dad.”
He continued: “NO, REALLY, I’M SHOUTING AT YOU.” It was a family tradition that Alan’s jokes went on too long—like, she now thought, an alarm you fumbled to switch off in the morning.
“No, but seriously” (the snooze button had been located), “I like the noise, I don’t mind missing a bit here and there. Selective deafness might be useful up in Saratoga?”
“Springs. Saratoga Springs. Saratoga is somewhere else. Florida, I think.”
“Yep, I know that name.”
“But let’s talk about that later, no?”
“Okay.”
The waiter arrived, with two bowls of olive oil and several torn pillows of artisanal loaf.
“What have you been doing in New York?”
“Oh God, too much, it’s been absolutely crazy here, it’s always like this. Lots of big meetings, a lot of corporate and legal bullshit—the Americans are very good at looking after you, they do things properly, but you have to work for it, work, work. They do love their eight a.m. breakfast meetings! I’m … I’m quite a big deal here, actually…”
“I’m not at all surprised.”
“They make a fuss of me.”
“What’s that?”
“They make a fuss of me, they look after me very well.”
“Yes, so they should, so they should … Do you actually like New York?”
“Well, I don’t want to live here, if that’s what you mean.”
He didn’t really know what he meant; he just felt slightly argumentative.
“All this flashy money and noise,” he added.
“You just said you liked it!”
“I do, but I always feel that something is going to fall on my head.”
“Icicles do sometimes come down in this season. A student was killed a few years ago. Look, I enjoy the city, though much less since the kids were born, I certainly can’t imagine trying to bring up children here … They’re fine, by the way, Dad!… And Tom sends his love … I like it, and I like how straightforward Americans are, in the business world. There’s none of that tiresome English hand-wringing, that subterfuge, the perpetual apologies. More money, less crap: that’s the simple reason why Europeans come over and work here. Isn’t it? Also, Sony have been great employers.”
“Have been…?”
Speaking to her father about work, she always made sure to emphasize the business side: a storm of meetings and deals, indistinguishable from banking or the law. The hours spent flat on her back, headphones on, listening to rubbishy hopeful recordings, all the anxiety when a new record was being released, the immense amount of organizing and electronic paperwork—that we ignore, because Dad, apart from a few quiet songs by Pink Floyd and one particular eccentric thing by Ian Dury, had never had time for contemporary music, for her music. Dad thought her colleagues all looked and acted like Leon Russell at the Concert for Bangladesh, i.e., circa 1971—the crazy white beard and the long hair. “These blokes,” he once said, looking over her shoulder at a copy of Melody Maker with a photo of someone like Eric Clapton but not Eric Clapton, in mid-solo, head thrown back, “look, it’s just male exhibitionism, mating rituals—he’s holding his penis out in one hand”—he pointed at the neck of the guitar—“and strumming his balls with the other.” Maybe not the most original observation, but you didn’t forget it when your dad was the one saying it. This was the time when Dad was noticing such things. Having failed to groom Vanessa—bespectacled, unkempt, even a bit smelly in those days—Dad turned his attention to Helen, told her what “looked good” on her, told her that “you know you’re attractive when male drivers stop in busy traffic to let you cross the road” (a truth annoyingly hard to dismiss), praised himself for never spending more than four minutes in the bath, of all the silly male vanities … The strange thing was that though he could be, on occasion, a male bore and a selfish shit, he was not innately those. At that time, he seemed to be playing the role of patriarch, as if someone were paying him to act it out. But later she understood why: it was not so long after Mum moved out and went to live with the repellent Patrick Needham, and Dad was still angry and terribly insecure, his wounds flowing …
The waiter arrived to take orders, and complimented them on their excellent taste: “Very good choices.” He pronounced “Madam” as “Madame.”
“Well, I’ll be the judge of that,” said Alan once they were alone.
“Of what?”
“Of whether I’ve made a good choice.”
“It’s a weird American mania—it’s catching on in London. You now get praised for everything. For having a birthday or ordering a meal or having finished your year at school, or just buying something really expensive in a shop.”
They started eating.
“I can’t help thinking, though,” Helen continued, “does he do that with everyone, even when there are six people at a table? I mean, we can’t all be making identically good choices, can we?”
“Sounds like a philosopher’s job.”
They looked at each other. This wasn’t the place to talk about Vanessa, she thought as the music—something she knew but couldn’t now name—loudly worked the room.
It would have to wait, Alan thought—the conversation. Christ, he was tired.