asks.
‘I was reaching into a cupboard and I grazed my wrist on a cheese grater, how stupid can you get?’ I say in a rush.
If my dad saw me now with my cut-up wrists, he would be really really mad at me, although he would not say a thing. He would unstrap my holster and take away my gun. He would unpin my tin star. You are not fit to ride with me, that is what he would mean to tell me. You are no longer my right-hand man.
This brings me to rule number eight.
8. WHEN YOU ARE GOING THROUGH DARK TIMES, PACK UP YOUR KNIVES AND GIVE THEM TO A FRIEND.
I mean all of them, all your knives. If you are at all inclined to slice yourself up in dark times, to pretend you are a tomato, which is an ideal fruit for testing the sharpness of filleting knives, carpet cutters, cleavers, X-acto blades, Stanley knives and safety razor blades, to watch with fascination as the blood rises to the surface in particularly sensitive zones of your body such as wrists and ankles, then rule number eight is one for you. It will mean an expensive period of shopping at Marks & Spencer for ready meals, ones with bite-sized pieces of prawn or chicken in chilli tomato sauce, for instance. Or you can buy pricey pots of tomato sauce or roasted aubergines to put on pasta. Italian clam sauces are available in small jars from the best Italian delis. Or you can just eat a lot of yogurt and nuts and mashed banana. Buy bread in small shapes, i.e., bagels, or baguette de tradition you can break off bits from. It will be all right. If you feel like eating during dark times, you will not go hungry in a house empty of knives.
The second time I paid attention to rule number seven (ALWAYS CARRY A BOOK WITH YOU) and it was of no use to me was when my dad said goodbye to me before I took a coach to the airport on my way back home after my summer holiday, the one which featured the car ride and the quest for a herbal remedy for depression.
I have already waved to my mother. I asked her not to come with me because parting between us is a wrenching business, even for five minutes or so, even if we separate on a shopping expedition or something. I know I cannot go through the airport thing with her, no.
My dad lays his big hands on my little shoulders at the coach station, my two small cases at my feet. I am pretty sure my mother will have slipped some treat into my carry-on bag and I am looking forward to finding it as soon as my dad goes. Something about his two big hands on my shoulders just now has me worried. It feels ominous, like just before Joey warns Shane in the final shoot-out about the man aiming at him from the balcony. You know Shane cannot die, but he could. He could. He comes so close.
‘Jem,’ says my dad in a lower voice than usual.
I glance at his face and then stare at his chest. ‘We have done everything we can. We love you. We don’t know what else to do anymore. You have to look after yourself now. Got your ticket, passport, enough cash?’
‘Yuh.’
‘We’ll see you in a few months. We love you.’
As I watch him walk away from me, a slightly lurching walk, heels making their mark on the ground, arms swinging a little and the hands hovering loose but ready at holster height, I think, One shot. One shot is all it would take.
No, Jem, no. Never shoot a man in the back. Don’t you remember anything?
I want to scream after him, too. I want to scream, ‘Do you love me right now, though? Do you even like me now? Do you?’ But I just get on the coach and stare out of the window into the evening through a veil of tears, and at the airport I cannot read or eat the nice treats my mother stashed for me, I am good for nothing. My dad does not love me and I am on my own, I have to look out for myself, okay. These are my first steps in that direction and all I can do is pace up and down the airport lounge and cry quietly. There are no prizes for behaviour like mine and even rule number seven is of no use to me, goddamnit. I am thinking of making a pyre of my rule book or ripping it up in tight angry irretrievable pieces to flutter over the ocean. Tomorrow maybe. And I will never watch a western again. I hate westerns now.
9. ALWAYS HAVE SOME SPORTS NEWS AT HAND FOR WHEN YOUR DAD IS IN HOSPITAL AFTER A SCARY OPERATION TO DO WITH A FATAL DISEASE.
I’ve got my sports news ready in case my dad can talk to me, even for a few seconds. There was a tumour in him, they cut it out. My dad could have done this himself. Take a shot of cognac, stuff a hanky in your mouth, polish the knife on a rock, cut it out. Like snakebite, no problem. Today I might get to speak to him. Everyone is there with my mother – Ben, Jude, Harriet and Gus, even Ben’s wife and Gus’s girlfriend, who is pregnant. They have all flocked to him from wherever they live and are running and fetching and worrying and trying to joke with Mum and making calls to the outside world. I am the only one not there. Does he know it? Does he know I am not there? I am in the outside world. I just can’t go. I cannot be there. I am on the outside, waiting for calls. Sometimes the boys explain things to me about the operation, but I do not take it in. I have the same feeling when someone is explaining an abstruse political news item to me. It is a nightmare of information. I listen and nod and hope the person will shut up soon. I do not take it in. I tell myself, I’ll work it out later, I’ll find out for myself what this all means.
I have not washed properly in five days, I only splash at the sink. I eat bread and cheese and stay up watching videos of westerns, way into the night, when it is only afternoon for my dad and the family. I watch The Gunfighter, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, My Darling Clementine, and Shane. Shane is my favourite of all time.
‘He’d never have been able to shoot you if you’d seen him!’
‘Bye, little Joe.’
‘He’d never even have cleared the holster, would he, Shane? … Shane? Shane! Come back! … Bye, Shane!’
Finally, Mum puts my dad on the phone.
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘You are going to be fine,’ he says.
What?
‘YOU-are-going-to-be JUST-FINE.’
‘You mean you are going to be just fine, right? You. How are you, Dad?’
‘Everything is going to be all right, you are going to be fine, we are going to be—’
He does mean me.
‘Dad?’
‘Jem, you are—’
‘Dad? Are you okay?’
‘I am okay! I am o-KKKAAY—’
I clasp the receiver even tighter and jump up from a sitting position. I join in. ‘O-KKAAAY … co-RRAAAL, o—’ but my mother has taken the phone from him and I don’t know now. I do not know if he was really singing the tune from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral or not.
Mum stays on the line for only a second or two, enough time to say she’ll call back later or tomorrow and I hang up and sit in the dark room and feel cut off and panicky and manacled by this question. I want to know if my dad was doing the tune from the western with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas playing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. I need to know. And I wonder if the whisky-soaked angels are still hanging out with my dad, if they are hovering over the hospital, getting all confused, some of them keeling over suddenly and looking surprised and silly. What is going on here? That must be morphine! Some of them want to go, but the big-cheese angel says, Hang in
