The night I took my father up west, he’d been dead for thirty-five years. I know that sounds strange, but what happened was this:
I was standing on a stool in the bathroom, stripping off the old paintwork on the linen cupboard with one of those electric hot blowers, and my mind was wandering. The paint was bubbling and lifting off easily beneath my scraper, but I still had an hour’s work ahead of me, so I was running over the events of the day, thinking about the staff problems we were having at the showroom, when I suddenly remembered that tonight was Hallowe’en. And that immediately made me think of my father.
I admit that these days I don’t think about him as often as I used to, but Hallowe’en was the date of his birthday, and although he wasn’t one for celebrations, we always used to go for a drink together on that night, usually down at the Royal Oak.
The thought struck me, as I was burning away a strip of old green paint, that he’d be fascinated by the fancy gadget I was using in place of the old-fashioned blowlamp we used to have to pump into life for paint stripping. He’d been a great one for gadgets and time-saving inventions, fascinated by the way they worked. He hadn’t any academic or technical training – it wasn’t high on the curriculum in the days when he went to school – but most evenings he’d sit in the kitchen tinkering around with something, making a musical box or a clock-case, not saying much, just enjoying the simple precision involved in such a pastime.
I was just thinking of taking a break to open a can of beer when the doorbell rang. My wife had gone out to the cinema with a friend, and they’d only left an hour ago, so as I turned off the hot blower and headed for the front door I wondered if perhaps the film they were going to see had been cancelled.
When I opened the front door I nearly jumped out of my skin.
There was my father, standing on the step in his old brown leather jacket, with his hands in his pockets. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth but no sound emerged.
‘It’s bloody cold out here,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’
I was so shocked that all I could do was stand back and hold the door open. He stepped inside and passed me in the hallway. There was a faint smell of tinned tobacco, just as there always had been when he was alive. He looked well, the way he had at the end of the summer before he went into the hospital. Tanned, slightly gaunt, hair thinning a little, glasses perched above the rather lumpy nose he’d broken so many times in his youth. A very wrinkled forehead, just like mine, and creases running from cheekbone to jaw, just like the ones that were beginning to appear on my face. My wife always said that I’d be his spitting image when I grew older.
He stood there, hands still in his pockets, waiting to be asked into the lounge. I ushered him in.
‘This is all right. Nice place. You must be doing well for yourself.’
He looked around the room before finding a straight-backed chair and sitting down on it.
‘What – what are you doing here?’ It was all I could think of to say.
‘Hallowe’en,’ he said, still turning around in his chair to study the room. ‘My birthday. I couldn’t half do with a cup of tea.’
Stunned, I went and put the kettle on. When I returned, he was still sitting there with his hands in his lap, looking admiringly at the shelves.
‘Blimey, you’ve still got that clock,’ he said, pointing to the ticking box he’d made decades earlier. ‘Does it still lose half a minute a day?’ I just stared at him.
‘How did you get here? I thought you were …’ I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, a frown wrinkling his brow even further. ‘I’ve never been back before, even on my birthday. I think I’m just here for the evening, like a treat. How’s Kath? Keeping all right?’
‘She’s fine. She’s gone out for the night.’
‘Where are the kids?’ He looked about for them.
‘They’re not kids anymore, Dad. Steven’s married, and his children are grown up.’
‘Well, I haven’t seen them for a long time.’
‘I still can’t believe you’re here.’
‘No. I suppose not.’ He rose and began to walk about the room. He never did sit still for very long. Hated the TV. Would rather be working out in the shed, making something on the lathe. The shed had gone now. The entire neighbourhood had gone.
‘Dad …’
‘Hmm?’ He was examining the photograph frames arranged on the bookshelf.
‘I don’t know what to say. This is …impossible.’
He stood there for a minute or two without speaking. He never really talked much when he was alive.
‘It’s strange for me too. Before this there was … nothing. The hospital. A long time ago, mind.’
I was conscious of the minutes passing, frightened that he would have to leave without anything important being said between us. He seemed suddenly aware of what I was thinking. He ran a veined hand through his sparse brown hair and studied me long and hard.
‘I think I can stay for the evening, old son. I don’t know how long I’ve been away. Your mother’s gone.’ It was an assumption rather than a question.
‘Yes. Not long after you.’
‘Hmm.’ He was holding the wedding photograph of Steven, my son, and his wife.
‘You still got your old motorbike?’
‘Uh, no …I haven’t had that for years, Dad.’
‘Pity, ’cause we could have gone up to Reynold’s Place and had a look at the old house.’
I didn’t like to tell him that the street stood alone now, since all the roads around it had been flattened to make way for a new ring road. Roundabouts and flyovers now covered the area where terraced houses once stood with bee hives and chicken runs in their gardens. As late as the end of the sixties the chickens were still there, in the suburbs of London. It seemed hard to believe now.
‘What do you want to do, Dad?’
He replaced the photograph and turned to me.
‘I don’t mind. We could go for a pint down the Royal Oak.’
‘They pulled it down. The Sun in the Sands is still there. You’ve been away for thirty-five years. A lot has changed.’
Just then, an idea came to me. It seemed to strike him at the same time. ‘You want to see some of the new things we’ve got now, Dad. All sorts of things have happened.’
A light came into his eyes and he smiled broadly. He began to zip up his old leather jacket. I noticed he was wearing the clothes he had worn the summer before he died.
‘Come on then … show me what they’ve done since … what year is it?’
‘Two thousand and three, Dad.’
‘Blimey. These old houses have lasted well. The way things were going, I never thought you’d make it this far.’
‘Where do you want to begin?’
‘Here, in the house.’ He was prowling around the room, keen to be shown something interesting.
‘Okay,’ I started. ‘Oh, guess what, we had a woman prime minister for years.’
‘Blimey, you’re joking, how was she?’
‘Bloody awful. Let’s see … lasers, and computers, they’ve come a long way with those.’
‘I thought they would. Do you still make things in glass? Animals and things?’
‘No, everything’s done by machines now. I’m a showroom manager. There’s no call for what I used to do. Have a look at this.’ I showed him my old digital watch.
‘Bloody hell, they’re using mercury. Doesn’t weigh much, does it?’
‘Quartz crystal. It emits a pulse when you put an electrical charge through it.’
‘Expensive?’
‘No, garages give them away. Look at this, you’ll like this.’ I showed him my home computer, lighting up the screen, and then logged onto the internet. I opened a simple puzzle game, and explained how the thing worked.
‘You mean they developed all this just as a children’s toy?’
‘Oh no. It has loads of practical applications. You can find out all sorts of things, it’s just not as good as everyone thought it would be. Too much stuff nobody wants.’ I showed him some websites, and let him tap the keys.
‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ he said, fascinated. ‘The boffins used to muck about with this idea during the war. Turing and that mob. What else you got?’
For the next hour I went through the house pulling out drawers and opening cupboards, finding all kinds of gadgets to tell him about. Looking through his eyes, I wondered if the world was less interesting than he’d hoped it would be. Only the small stuff had changed. The house still had old chairs and tables and beds and a TV. Silly things amused him, like a little robot dog that wagged its tail when I whistled. He was very interested in the CD player.
‘It’s like a record,’ I explained. ‘Covered in tiny holes which are read by a concentrated beam of light. It’s been around for years.’
He turned one over in his hand, his fingers leaving no smudges of condensation on the surface of the disc. I touched his hand briefly. It was cold and dry.
I had a sudden thought, and pulled my mobile phone from my pocket, flicking it open. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘a telephone small enough to carry in your pocket. No wires. And it can take pictures.’
He squinted at the tiny screen. ‘What for?’
‘I don’t know.’
After we had gone through Steven’s wedding photographs, I suggested we went for a beer. He wanted to know all about the instrument panel in the car, why it lit up like the CD player. It seemed too fussy to him, unnecessarily complicated.
‘Who made this, anyway?’ he asked, peering into the back seat and out of the windows as we headed toward Tottenham Court Road.
‘The Japanese,’ I replied, ‘they make a lot of cars now.’
He stayed silent until we had parked the car in an underground garage off Shaftesbury Avenue.
‘Lots of new buildings around here. They don’t look very well finished to me. All this glass, no privacy.’
‘Everything’s made by machines in factories and assembled,’ I explained. ‘Nobody makes anything by hand anymore. Things don’t break down like they used to.’
‘That’s good. The streets are very scruffy, aren’t they? Roads all dug up, what’s going on? There are more people than I remember.’ He pointed at someone using a cashpoint to get money. I explained what it was.
‘How do they know it’s you and not somebody else?’ he asked.
‘You have this little card, see?’ I removed mine from my wallet. ‘And a special number that nobody else has.’
‘Computers again. Hmm.’
‘That’s right.’
We walked into one of the older Soho pubs. I thought he would be more at home here than in a place with flashing lights and video screens. I found a brand of bitter which he was prepared to drink, and we settled down in a corner, away from the jukebox.
‘They’ve still got all this loud music then. Blimey, look at them, all dressed up for Hallowe’en.’
Two goth girls had come in and were heading for the bar. Both were dressed in black plastic and leather, with white faces and chained noses.
‘Oh, they’re … a bit like Teddy Boys.’ I couldn’t think of any other way to describe them to him. ‘They just dress like that when they’re going out.’
‘There must be something that’s stayed exactly the same,’ he said.
‘Well, Cliff Richard’s still around.’
He stayed quiet when the goth girls were joined by two boys in heavy makeup and strapped boots. The group spoke German. Some Rastafarians seated themselves in the corner, laughing and drinking.
‘There’s no one speaking English in here,’ he said. It wasn’t really a complaint, more an observation. On the whole he seemed less surprised than I thought he would be about what to him was a sudden leap into the future.
‘Travel’s cheap, Dad. You can go anywhere in the world now.’
‘No more wars, then?’ he asked as he drained his bitter.
‘Yes, but they’re different now, more to do with making money than taking land. Fancy another?’
‘I’d get you one but I don’t think I’ve got enough.’ He pulled out a handful of old coins, tanners and threepenny bits.
‘They’re no good anymore, Dad.’ I showed him the new currency.
‘Too small,’ he said, weighing some ten pence pieces in his hand. ‘Too light. Doesn’t feel like real money. Probably doesn’t buy as much either.’
We had another pint, and I talked about some of the things I’d been doing since I last saw him. It all sounded so ordinary, so trivial. I had wondered before – as I suppose lots of people do – what I would say to him if we ever met again, and I knew I’d remember all the things I really wanted to say after he was gone. I looked up at the clock. It had just turned eleven.
‘They haven’t rung the bell,’ he said, surprised. ‘At least they’ve finally done something about the licensing laws, then.’
As we finished our pints, seated side by side behind the small brass-railed table, he stared off into the distance, listening to the music. He was tapping the fingers of his left hand on the rail, frowning. Then he grinned.
‘Remember those rides on the old bike, down to Dettling and Box Hill?’
‘How could I forget, Dad? Egg sandwiches in the meadow, and Mum lighting a primus stove for tea. We used to have a good laugh.’
‘I was tough on you, though.’
‘I turned out all right. It’s just the way things were then. Life’s very different for kids growing up these days.’
‘Better?’
‘In some ways. But they have more to worry about.’
Outside, walking along the street away from the lights of Leicester Square, the night air moved coldly around us, to draw heat from the windows of Chinese restaurants lining the far end of the road. I noticed that his old sheepskin gloves were thrust into his jacket pocket, unneeded. We stopped in front of an electronics store. A big sign in the window read: REMOTE CONTROL PTERODACTYLS NOW HALF PRICE. I explained how digital cameras worked. He nodded as I talked, interested, but realising as I did that his time was drawing to a close.
‘When do people get time to use all this stuff?’ he asked. ‘What do they do with it all?’
‘People own a lot more than they used to,’ I told him. ‘Life is faster now, people want to be amused all the time.’
‘Why don’t they just talk to each other?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘All these things. Seems bloody daft.’
We had reached the corner of Cambridge Circus. There weren’t many people about. I looked at my watch. It was three minutes to midnight. Opposite, a chicken takeaway was closing its doors.
‘I’m sorry I missed Kath. She’s a good girl. Funny, coming up west again. It looks the same, but more crowded together.’ He took off his glasses and absently wiped the lenses clean.
‘I’m very glad you turned up,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a good time tonight.’ He was looking around, up and down Charing Cross Road, waiting for something. There seemed to be very little traffic heading north. In the distance, a bright empty bus was moving towards us.
‘I think what it is …’ he slipped the glasses back on the bridge of his nose, ‘is that this is the birthday I missed. Being in the hospital so long. I think someone in the family arranged for me to come back.’
I could hear the bus engine idling as it waited for the traffic lights on the other side of the circus to change.
‘That sounds fair.’
‘I think it’s just coincidence, being Hallowe’en. I can’t be doing with that sort of thing. Your mother was the one who believed in fate, tea leaves and horoscopes.’
The bus had crossed the lights, and by rights should have continued around the roundabout to the north side of Charing Cross Road. Instead, it drew alongside. I could see now that there were a couple of other passengers, a young Asian boy and an old lady. My father patted his pockets and turned to me.
‘I think I’ve got everything.’
‘Is this your bus?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Will you come back again?’
‘I don’t think I can. I think you just get one night out.’
I smiled as I watched him climb up onto the platform of the bus. Just as it began to pull out into the road, he turned back to me and grinned.
‘I bet it was your aunt Nell,’ he said, suddenly laughing. ‘Well, when I see her, I’ll be able to tell her you turned out all right, Billy boy. I’ll bet she’s still got that bloody mynah bird.’
‘Wait.’ I reached forward and gave him the digital watch. ‘It’s not much.’
He went inside to find himself a seat on the lower deck of the bus. But he looked back at me standing there, right until the bus lights had dimmed in the cold haze that blurred the road ahead, and the sound of its engine had blended with the rumble of the distant city traffic.
As I walked away, I began to look forward to visiting my son.