Fathers and Sons Read online

  I long ago gave up trying to fight or rationalise this powerful, instinctive differential. It just is. Vive la différence, and all that; Chloe is a girl and I treat her more gently and indulgently on most levels than I do the boys. Go fish.

  It doesn’t mean I love her one scintilla more or less than the others.

  So what about Tom and Dan, and Jack? What about their ‘differential’? Is there one? I am always being asked if I treat my stepsons differently from my own son.

  Absolutely. Of course. In the same way as I treated the twins differently from each other right from the start. They may be from the same egg but they’re separate human beings.

  Long before Jack was born, Judy and David, and then I, would grind our teeth at school parents (and step-parents) evenings, where teachers regularly confused Tom and Dan. One couldn’t really blame the faculty–the boys looked identical–but underneath the physiological genetic cloning, they were developing into psychologically separate individuals who required different approaches to parenting, and teaching.

  Today, one twin has a university degree and one doesn’t; one works as a pop-video director in London, the other as a fashion designer and buyer for a multinational company, living in a city hundreds of miles from his brother.

  I love these young men, my first children, completely and equally. I always did, from our very first year together when we were drenched in Cornish sunshine and later when the twins behaved with such grave courtesy before my mother.

  But have I loved them as much as Jack–my first-born, their half-brother?

  I certainly came to treat him differently, in his turn.

  But come–no prevarications. Which is it to be; which bond has the first call on a father’s and stepfather’s primal emotions? Surely the selfish gene will have to make its declaration of supremacy, now we come to it?

  At this point, I am seriously tempted to yawn. Because it honestly isn’t like that. It doesn’t have to be a case of one versus the other and neither should it be. Otherwise, why would any natural parent ever freely and lovingly adopt the children of others?

  When I see our four gathered together, laughing, arguing, teasing each other, I just see four people I adore. I feel uncomplicated happiness and affection for them all. When I try and help one of them with their problems, I don’t add or subtract a little extra tender loving care depending on which one carries my DNA and which one doesn’t.

  When their mother and I made our wills, I didn’t think of putting a little extra aside for the two children whose cells come from the Madeley gene pool. If either of us had suggested it, the other would have thought they had gone mad.

  They are all our children. Equal shares for all, in love and treasure.

  ‘Help! Help!’

  I gritted my teeth and held on tight to my squirming, kicking, yelling son as I edged my way between tables towards the restaurant exit. Jack was five now, and if I’d had hopes he would grow up as biddable and easy-going as his brothers, those hopes had faded long ago. He could be a little sod.

  ‘Help! Somebody help me!’

  ‘He’s just doing it for effect,’ I said tersely to a group of concerned diners as I sidled past, trying to keep Jack’s flying feet from kicking anyone in the head. ‘Everything’s under control, I assure you. Excuse me, can I just…thank you.’

  ‘Help!’

  When it came to iron wills, Jack could have given Stalin a few useful pointers. He had the unyielding determination of a world-class tyrant. Once he had decided to do something–or more usually, to not do something–nothing and no one was allowed to stand in his way.

  Jack’s battlefield of choice was the dining table. He regarded being asked to sit down at one as a personal and grievous affront to his amour propre and his inviolable right to self-determination.

  Today’s outbreak of hostilities had begun that Sunday morning with a typical opening skirmish.

  ‘What are we doing today, Daddy?’

  ‘We’re going out for Sunday lunch.’

  ‘No. No. We’re not, not, not!’

  At least you couldn’t accuse Jack of ambiguity in such matters. He always made his position perfectly clear from the outset.

  ‘Yes we are. At a lovely little pub in the country, a place called the Trough of Bowland, where–’

  ‘Hate the toffobolly.’

  ‘The Trough of Bowland. You’ve never been there, Jack, so you can’t possibly hate it, can you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can.’

  Two hours later we were in the quaint Inn at Whitewell, trying and failing to enjoy Sunday lunch. As were most of the other diners, thanks to Jack. He was using his usual tried and trusted tactics–rhythmically kicking the table, noisily refusing to eat, and demanding, over and over: ‘Want to go home!’

  ‘This is awful, Richard,’ Judy whispered as people at other tables looked across with increasing hostility. ‘He’s ruining it for everyone…perhaps we’d just better go.’

  ‘No. We mustn’t give in to him. Appeasement never works.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. This is Lancashire in 1990, not Munich 1938.’

  I glared at my son, now blowing noisy bubbles through a straw and throwing ice from his Coke at his sister opposite.

  ‘Jack!’

  He glared back. ‘Want to go!’

  ‘Right, that’s it, mister. You’re going all right. I’m taking you out to the car. You can sit in there while we have our lunch in peace.’

  Shoulders at nearby tables sagged with relief.

  Exile was our ultimate sanction and Jack hated it. Deprived of his audience he would usually subside after a few minutes and be brought back to the table, docile enough. He’d knew he’d lost a battle but not the war, and there would be other campaigns to fight.

  But he never went without a struggle. Today, as I picked him up and put him over my shoulder, he called dramatically: ‘No! Not the car!’

  Faces turned. One or two looked slightly concerned. What was that man about to do to his little boy?

  Jack’s radar was good. He picked up the signals and exploited them straight away, stretching out his hands beseechingly to the room behind me.

  ‘Not the car,’ he sobbed piteously. ‘Not the car, Daddy!’

  There were stirrings among the tables. ‘Is everything…all right?’ a woman asked as we passed. Before I could answer the little swine on my back consolidated his grasp on the initiative.

  ‘Help! Please help! Not the car…help!’

  They must have thought I was going to lash him to one of the wheels.

  ‘It’s all right, everyone,’ I said with forced cheeriness. ‘Situation completely under control. He’s just playing to the gallery.’ Once again, I sounded like Basil Fawlty, Judy told me later.

  Was that a smile of secret triumph lurking on my son’s face as I strapped him into his car seat, and left him for a few minutes while I had a cigarette? It certainly looked like one. But when I returned he appeared contrite.

  ‘Sorry, Daddy.’

  ‘All right. Promise to be good now?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Hmm. That’s what Napoleon said after his first great defeat and exile. He was already planning his comeback at Waterloo.

  God knows how my father would have fought a Battle of Bowland if I’d made such a scene back then. Mealtime discipline was so much stricter in the 1960s that I can’t in all honesty conceive of anything like it happening when I was a boy. Going out for meals was a rare treat, usually confined to birthdays, or on holiday where the atmosphere in the hotel dining room was almost churchlike, with everyone talking incredibly quietly, like priests in the confessional.

  Nor can I imagine my parents taking me out for a meal when I was little. Restaurants were for grown-ups and older children, not tinies. They wouldn’t be able to appreciate the experience.

  Perhaps they were right.

  Meanwhile, we didn’t need a child psychologist to work out what was driving Jack’s determination
to call the shots at the dinner table. There were two fundamental reasons, aside from that iron will of his.

  His brothers. The twins were ten years older than Jack and the poor kid was stuck in a never-ending game of catch-up with them. He yearned to have their freedoms, to be given a golden pass that would allow him access to all areas of their comparatively privileged lives. It must have been deeply frustrating for him to have to bob along so far behind in their wake.

  His sister. Chloe had arrived when Jack was only thirteen months old. He was simply too young to understand what was going on, other than to instinctively grasp the primary point: that his position had been usurped. There was a new baby demanding his parents’ attention, and why should he do anything but resent it? The day after Chloe was born I took Jack in to St Mary’s to see his mother and meet his new sister. I’d tried to tell him what was happening but when they’re barely one year old you might as well try to explain how Parliament works.

  We arrived in Judy’s room, where she was feeding the baby. Jack looked astonished. When I lowered him on to the bed, he kicked out at them with his foot and started to cry.

  A textbook case of sibling rivalry.

  Jack, then, was a completely different kettle of fish from his brothers: stroppier, angrier, endlessly assertive. Where Tom and Dan were content to negotiate with the world, Jack was more likely to chuck down the gauntlet and challenge it to a fight.

  Lots of little boys are like that, I realised, but the twins had given me an easy ride by comparison and a lot of what I’d learned about the business of fatherhood with them wasn’t going to work with the little box of fireworks we called Jakie-Pops; always fizzing over and popping off.

  My own childhood experiences with my father didn’t really help either. The dynamics of my family were so different to his–it was only me and my sister, and my mother stayed at home to look after us–that I had nothing to draw on.

  I had rather more to do with bringing up Jack than his mother in the first couple of years after Chloe was born. Judy was necessarily occupied with the baby, and then succumbed to a vicious bout of post-natal depression which caused her to quietly withdraw into herself for many months, until we realised what was happening to her and sought help.

  Trying to work out what made my little fireball of a boy work was a challenge. The key, I slowly discovered, was to roll with the punches as much as possible. He wasn’t particularly badly behaved; he was simply trying to carve out his own niche in our complicated little family. Although his endless declarations of independence could be draining, it was usually wise to let his little storms blow themselves out. And I also learned that, with Jack, forewarned was defused. He hated surprises or suddenly announced plans. So if on Saturday I casually announced we were all going out for lunch the following day, the scale of his opposition was muted; it didn’t interfere with his immediate plans and, anyway, tomorrow was another day. He’d still be grumpy at table, granted, but his full-scale guerrilla campaigns of disruption became things of the past.

  Anyway, if they returned there was always The Car.

  In the summer of 1996 we moved to London, with the transfer of our morning show from Liverpool to the capital.

  I had left London twenty summers before, bouncing like a pinball between the cities of the north–Carlisle, Leeds, Manchester. Now I’d ended up back where I’d started, although in a very different neighbourhood.

  Romford and the East End lay on the other side of town. The money two successful TV careers had provided bought us a large house up on one of London’s ancient hills, in heavily wooded Hampstead. Not a ‘mansion’ as some newspapers claimed, but a comfortable family home nevertheless.

  It stood facing a scrap of preserved medieval fields, the remnant of what used to be Wyldes Farm. Constable, Turner and Gainsborough once lodged at the farmhouse–which still stands–to paint in the clear country air high above toxic London, escaping its stench and smoke and disease. Now the surviving meadows, hedgerows and trees were part of a turn-of-the-century addition to the more famous heath, the Heath Extension.

  It felt safe there; as safe as Old Broadway had. Families walking dogs and throwing Frisbees roamed the fields opposite. We thought it a perfect place to bring up our children, and after a long interval I again had my little make-believe corner of countryside to look at. I woke up the morning after we’d moved in, and felt like a pigeon back in its loft.

  The twins had stayed behind in Manchester to begin their degree courses, but came down for our first Christmas in London.

  On Christmas Day afternoon I left Judy and nine-year-old Chloe in the kitchen and wandered into the television room where Tom and Dan were watching Rory Bremner’s alternative Queen’s speech. Jack poked his head round the door, holding his main present, a remote-control car.

  ‘Can I take this on to the heath? I want to see how far it goes before the signal packs in.’

  I glanced through our front window. There were plenty of Christmas Day walkers out on the frosty meadow opposite.

  ‘Sure. But stay in sight of the house and don’t be too long–we’ll be eating soon.’

  ‘OK, Dad.’

  And he was gone.

  Tom and Dan were sitting on a sofa next to the window that looked out on to the heath. ‘Just keep an eye on Jack, would you?’ I asked them.

  ‘Sure.’

  They turned round every now and then to check on their ten-year-old brother.

  After a few minutes, Tom stood up and peered out for a little longer.

  ‘Has Jack come back in?’ he asked me over his shoulder. ‘Only I can’t see him any more.’

  I came over to the window. The field was much emptier now; only a few figures moved against a background of skeletal trees and an already darkening midwinter sky. Jack must have come back. I went through to the kitchen where Judy and Chloe were peering at the gravy. ‘It needs more stock, Mum.’

  ‘D’you think so? I don’t want it too watery…’

  ‘Has Jack come in?’

  They looked vaguely at me and shook their heads. ‘Don’t think so.’

  I went to the front door and opened it. Now the heath was completely deserted, and a little mist had begun to rise from a stream running under a hedgerow on the far side. I cupped my hands to my mouth.

  ‘Jack!’

  My voice echoed back to me, but that was the only reply. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to his bedroom.

  ‘Jack! Are you up there?’

  Nothing. A faint sensation of unease moved deep inside and I went back to the kitchen.

  ‘I can’t find Jack.’

  Judy nodded to the back door. ‘He’s probably in the garden.’

  ‘You would have seen him come through though, wouldn’t you?’

  She shrugged and I went to open the door. It was locked, top and bottom.

  I took a deep breath and turned round.

  ‘Seriously, Judy, he’s vanished. He’s not in the house, or the garden, or on the heath.’

  ‘He must be. You can’t have looked properly, that’s all.’

  I went back to the open front door and stared out again. It was darker now, and there was nothing moving out there.

  ‘Jack!’

  I crossed the road and went on to the grass. I heard voices and suddenly a couple walking their dog materialised out of some bushes. I jogged over to them.

  ‘Have you seen a boy in a blue jumper? He’ll have been playing with a remote-control car…a red one.’

  They shook their heads. ‘No, sorry…have you lost him?’

  ‘I don’t know…I mean, no. He was–’

  ‘Is he there?’ Judy called from our front steps. For the first time she sounded worried.

  ‘No.’

  The couple walked quickly on, not wanting to get involved.

  By now Tom and Dan were making a room-by-room search of the house, in case Jack was playing some stupid trick, or listening to his Walkman, deaf to our calls.

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nbsp; I suddenly remembered the side gate to the back garden and cursed. Of course, he could have gone through that way. But when I raced on to our lawn, it was as silent and deserted as the heath opposite.

  I rejoined Judy on our front steps as the twins clattered breathlessly down the stairs. Not there.’

  ‘Not there.’

  Judy turned to me, white and wide-eyed.

  She said it first. What we’d both started thinking, at the edges of our minds.

  ‘We’ve lost him. Some bastard must have seen him playing with his truck and gone over and said to him, “Hey–I’ve got one of those in my car. Come and have a look.” Oh God, Richard, he’s been taken, he’s been taken.’

  I looked wildly around me. We’d warned our children time without number not to go off with strangers, but it happens. A couple of years before Jack had been on his bike in Old Broadway and had ridden straight into a car cruising slowly down the street. He wasn’t hurt and we were in the house, oblivious. A few minutes later he ran in to tell us what had happened and finished with the words, ‘But I did cry a bit and the lady sitting next to the man driving put me on her knee and cuddled me. She was very kind, Mummy.’

  I’d had visions of a latter-day Hindley and Brady on the prowl and exploded. ‘You never, ever get into a strange car. Not ever!’

  Now it looked like he had, and this time the Big Bad Wolf really was behind the wheel. I had a sudden, vivid image of my son panicking in some paedophile’s car, now miles away somewhere on the North Circular. I pushed it away.

  ‘Hang on. Let’s think. Is there anywhere he could have gone? What about Ronnie and Jan?’

  They used to live in our house. They had only moved a few hundred yards up the road, and had sons around Jack’s age.

  They’d become friends. Jack always asked us if he wanted to call on them but perhaps, in all the excitement of Christmas Day, he’d forgotten. I grabbed my mobile phone and punched in their number. Jan answered.

  ‘Oh hi, Richard–Merry Christmas!’

  I could hear party noises in the background, and the squeal of children’s voices.

  ‘Jan, is Jack there?’

  My voice had cracked slightly, and she sounded startled as she said quickly, ‘Why? What’s wrong?’