husband? A homosexual love spat? I could see that they didn’t know Richard well enough to get it immediately. So he spelled it out for them, never taking his eyes off me.
‘This gentleman is the father of my stepson,’ Richard explained. ‘The poor little bastard.’
And that’s when I lost it, lurching across the table, scattering bread rolls and little silver dishes of olive oil, which I am almost certain the peasants don’t have in their Tuscan farmhouses. Richard’s dining companions recoiled, half rising from their chairs, shrinking from the trouble, but two waiters were on me before I could reach him. They started pulling me away, one of them trapping my arms to my side in a bear hug, the other trying to get a grip on the collar of my car coat.
‘You leave us alone,’ I said, digging my heels into the sawdust-strewn floorboards, managing to reach out and grab a fistful of linen tablecloth, despite my pinned arms. ‘You just leave my son alone, Richard.’
The waiters were too strong for me. Unlike Richard, I hadn’t spent hours pumping iron and running on the treadmill. I felt all the strength go out of me as they easily pulled me away. But because I still had hold of the tablecloth, I took it with me, and it all came crashing down: the glasses, the plates of robust pasta dishes, the rough-hewn chunks of bread, the little silver dishes of olive oil.
On to the floor and into their laps.
And Richard was on his feet, angry at last, ready to try out his new biceps and eager to punch my lights out, seafood linguini dripping down the front of his trousers.
‘You’re not taking my son away just because you can’t cut it in this city, Richard.’
‘That’s for Gina and me to decide.’
‘I’m his father, you bastard. And I’ll always be his father. You can’t change that.’
‘One question, Harry.’
‘What’s that, dickhead?’
I watched him wipe a prawn from his tomato-stained flies.
‘What the hell did she ever see in you?’
It was Eamon Fish who first told me about the blended family. Which is ironic, because Eamon was the most single man I knew. The sap was still rising in Eamon, but it hadn’t quite reached his head yet.
Although he was a modern boy about town, Eamon was painfully old-fashioned when it came to love, marriage and all of that. Blame it on his Kilcarney background. He had a single man’s view of wedlock, simultaneously wary and romantic. But I’ll say this for Eamon – he was the only one who warned me about what I was walking into.
‘Harry, good man you are,’ he called to me across my wedding reception. ‘I want a word with you.’
I watched him weave his way through the crowd, nodding and smiling as he went, polite and friendly to people who recognised him, grateful to the ones who didn’t. He was holding his champagne flute aloft to prevent spillage, looking even more dishevelled than usual, all shirt tails and floppy fringe and droopy eyelids, but he had those dark Irish good looks that belonged to a young Jack Kennedy, so even in his cups he resembled a rake rather than a slob. He put his arm around me, clinked our glasses.
‘Here’s to you. And your lovely bride. And your – what do they call it? – blended family.’
‘My what?’ I was still laughing.
‘Your blended family. You know. Your blended family.’
‘What’s a blended family?’
‘You know. It’s like The Brady Bunch. When a man and a woman put their old families together to make a new family. You know, Harry. A man living with kids that are not his own. A woman becoming a mammy to children she didn’t give birth to. A blended family. Like The Brady Bunch. And you, Harry. You and The Brady Bunch. God bless you, one and all.’ He put his face next to mine, and pulled me close. ‘Good on you, pal. Here, let’s sit for a minute.’
We found a quiet table in the corner and Eamon immediately produced a small cellophane bag from out of a jacket that was still sporting a beat-up carnation. This was new. The Charles was new. When I first met him, he had never taken anything stronger than draught Guinness and a packet of pork scratchings.
I looked anxiously around the room as Eamon carefully tipped a mound of white powder on to the back of our wedding invitation and began chopping out chunky white lines with his black Am Ex.
‘Jesus, Eamon. Not in here. You can’t take this stuff when there are kids around. At least take it to the toilets. This is not the time or the place.’ Then I came out with one of my father’s lines, almost as though the old man was speaking through me. ‘Moderation in all things, Eamon.’
That gave him a chuckle. He started rolling up a ten-pound note.
‘Moderation? You’re – what? Thirty-three now? Thirty-two? You’re already on your second marriage. You’ve got a son who doesn’t live with you and a stepdaughter who does. So don’t lecture me about moderation, Harry. There’s nothing moderate about you.’
‘There are children around. And my mum. And my Auntie Ethel.’
‘Your Auntie Ethel doesn’t mind, Harry.’ The chopped white lines were deftly hoovered up his nose. ‘She was the one who sold it to me.’ He held out the rolled-up, slightly damp tenner to me. I shook my head and he put his drugs away. ‘Anyway – congratulations to you, mate.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Just don’t ruin it this time.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Keep your head out of the clouds and your dick in your trousers.’
‘Oh yes, that’s one of the traditional wedding vows, isn’t it? Church of England, I believe.’
‘I mean it. Don’t get restless when the fever wears off. Don’t start thinking about the grass being greener next door, because it’s not. Remember that your knob is attached to you, rather than the other way round.’
We watched Cyd coming towards us across the crowded room. She was smiling, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her looking lovelier than at that moment.
‘And don’t forget how you feel today,’ Eamon said. ‘That above all. I know what you are like, because all men are the same. We forget what’s in our hearts.’
But I wasn’t listening to him any more. I thought that the day I needed marital advice from a coked-up comedian would be a black day indeed. I got up to talk to my wife.
‘You look happy,’ she said.
‘I’m better than happy.’
‘Wow. Better than happy. Then I hope I don’t disappoint you.’
‘You could never disappoint me. As long as you do one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dance with me.’
‘You’re
