One Day

Half an hour later he is still in the bathroom, wondering what he can do to stop the sweating. He has changed his shirt twice, showered in cold water, but still the perspiration comes bubbling up on his back and forehead, oily and viscous like vodka which perhaps is what it is. He looks at his watch. Late already. He decides that he’ll try driving with the windows down.

There’s a brick-sized parcel by the door so that he won’t forget it, elaborately wrapped in layers of different coloured tissue paper, and he picks this up, locks the flat and steps out into the leafy avenue where his car waits for him, a Mazda MRII convertible in racing green. No room for passengers, no possibility of a roof rack, barely room for a spare tyre let alone a pram, it’s a car that screams of youth, success, bachelorhood. Concealed in the boot is a CD changer, a futuristic miracle of tiny springs and matt black plastic and he chooses five CDs (freebies from the record companies, another perk of the job) and slides the shiny disks into the box as if loading a revolver with bullets.

He listens to The Cranberries as he negotiates the wide residential streets of St John’s Wood. It’s not really his thing, but it’s important to stay on top of stuff when you’re forging people’s tastes in music. The Westway has cleared of rush-hour traffic and before the album ends he is on the M40, heading westward through the light-industrial estates and housing developments of the city in which he lives so successfully, so fashionably. Before long the suburbs have given way to the conifer plantations that pass as countryside. Jamiroquai is playing on the stereo and he’s feeling much, much better, raffish and boysy in his sporty little car, and only a little queasy now. He turns up the volume. He has met the band’s lead singer, has interviewed him several times, and though he wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend, he knows the guy who plays the congas pretty well and feels a little personal connection as they sing about the emergency on planet earth. It’s the extended mix, massively extended, and time and space take on an elastic quality as Dexter scats along for what seems like many, many hours until his vision blurs and judders one last time, the remnants of last night’s drugs in his veins, and there’s a blare of horn as he realises that he is driving at 112 miles an hour in the exact centre of two lanes.

He stops scatting and tries to steer the car back into the middle lane, but finds that he has forgotten how to steer, his arms locked at the elbows as he tries to physically wrench the wheel from some invisible grasp. Suddenly Dexter’s speed has dropped to fifty-eight miles an hour, his feet on the brake and the accelerator simultaneously, and there’s another blast of horn from a lorry the size of a house that has appeared behind him. He can see the contorted face of the driver in the rearview mirror, a big bearded man in black mirror shades screaming at him, his face three black holes, like a skull. Dexter wrenches the wheel once more without even checking what is in the slow lane and he is suddenly sure that he is going to die, right here and now, in a ball of searing flame while listening to an extended Jamiroquai remix. But the slow lane is empty, thank God, and he breathes sharply through his mouth, once, twice, three times, like a boxer. He jabs the music off and drives in silence at a steady sixty-eight until he reaches his exit.

Exhausted, he finds a lay-by on the Oxford Road, reclines his seat and closes his eyes in the hope of sleep, but can only see the three black holes of the lorry driver screaming at him. Outside the sun is too bright, the traffic too noisy, and besides there’s something shabby and unwholesome about this anxious young man wriggling in a stationary car at eleven forty-five on a summer’s morning, so he sits up straight, swears and drives on until he finds a roadside pub that he knows from his teenage years. The White Swan is a chain affair offering all-day breakfasts and impossibly cheap steak and chips. He pulls in, picks up the gift-wrapped parcel from the passenger seat and enters the large, familiar room that smells of furniture polish and last night’s cigarettes.

Dexter leans matily on the bar and orders a half of lager and a double vodka tonic. He remembers the barman from the early Eighties when he used to drink here with mates. ‘I used to come here years ago,’ says Dexter, chattily. ‘Is that right?’ replies the gaunt, unhappy man. If the barman recognises him he doesn’t say, and Dexter takes a glass in each hand, walks to a table and drinks in silence with the gift-wrapped package in front of him, a little parcel of gaiety in the grim room. He looks around and thinks about how far he’s come in the last ten years, and all that he’s achieved — a well-known TV presenter, and not yet twenty-nine years old.

Sometimes he thinks the medicinal powers of alcohol border on the miraculous because within ten minutes he is trotting nimbly out to the car and listening to music again, The Beloved chirruping away, making good time so that within ten minutes he is turning into the gravel drive of his parents’ house, a large secluded 1920s construction, its front criss-crossed with fake timber framing to make it look less modern, boxy and sturdy than it really is. A comfortable, happy family home in the Chilterns, Dexter regards it with dread.

His father is already standing in the doorway, as if he’s been there for years. He is wearing too many clothes for July; a shirttail is hanging down beneath his sweater, a mug of tea is in his hand. Once a giant to Dexter, he now looks stooped and tired, his long face pale, drawn and lined from the six months in which his wife’s condition has deteriorated. He raises his mug in greeting and for a moment Dexter sees himself through his father’s eyes, and winces with shame at his shiny shirt, the jaunty way he drives this sporty little car, the raffish noise it makes as it swoops to a halt on the gravel, the chill-out music on the stereo.

Chilled-out.

Idiot.

Loved up.

Buffoon.

Sorted, you tawdry little clown.

He jabs off the CD player, unclips the removable facia from the dashboard, then stares at it in his hand. Calm down, this is the Chilterns, not Stockwell. Your father is not going to steal your stereo. Just calm down.In the doorway, his father raises his mug once again, and Dexter sighs, picks up the present from the passenger seat, summons up all his powers of concentration, and steps out of the car.

‘What a ridiculous machine,’ tuts his father.

‘Well you don’t have to drive it, do you?’ Dexter takes comfort from the ease of the old routine, his father stern and square, the son irresponsible and cocky.

‘Don’t think I’d fit in it anyway. Toys for boys. We were expecting you some time ago.’

‘How are you, old man?’ says Dexter, feeling a sudden swell of affection for his dear old dad, and instinctively he loops his arms around his father’s back, rubs it and then, excruciatingly, kisses his father’s cheek.

They freeze.

Somehow Dexter has developed a kiss reflex. He has made the ‘mmmmoi’ noise in his father’s tufted ear. Some unconscious part of him thinks that he is back under the railway arches with Gibbsy and Tara and Spex. He can feel the saliva, wet on his lip and he can see the consternation on his father’s face as he looks down at his son, an Old Testament look. Sons kissing fathers — a law of nature has been broken. Not yet through the front door and already the illusion of sobriety has shattered. His father sniffs — either with distaste or because he is sniffing his son’s breath, and Dexter is not sure which is worse.

‘Your mother is in the garden. She’s been waiting for you all morning.’

‘How is she?’ he asks. Perhaps he’ll say ‘much better’.

‘Go and see. I’ll put the kettle on.’

The hallway is dark and cool after the sun’s glare. His older sister Cassie is entering from the back garden, a tray in her hands, her face aglow with competence, commonsense and piety. At thirty-four she has settled into the role of stern hospital matron, and the part suits her. Half smile, half scowl, she touches her cheek against his. ‘The prodigal returns!’