An October Evening 2012
There was a beginning, middle and an end to Steven Pyke’s days as a retired newspaper reporter and child minder in South London. The weekends were a little different and we will come on to that later. But it was the weekdays he looked forward too. Not that he was ever very keen to let his daughter, Katie (she preferred and often insisted upon: Katherine) know that.
Most evenings when she got home from work in the city she would flomp into the large beanbag in Daisy’s ‘Rumpus Room’, watch her father preparing dinner through the hatch, feel he was overdoing it and say:
‘I should get a nanny. I can afford it.’
‘No point Katie,’ was always his answer.
Truth be known, once Daisy was in bed and the storm of looking after her for the day had abated he would miss her. If Katie was going to be very late in he was so often tempted to wake Daisy, take her downstairs and bung on a Tweenies DVD with her. He never did. He was a good grandfather – but it was always there in his mind. Tweenies with Daisy was far more preferable to anything Channel four ever had to offer.
‘She was so smart today’
‘Hmmm.” (This from behind a copy of ‘In Style magazine’ and sunken into the depths of the huge leather poof thing).
‘She notices everything. And she remembers everything we say’
He could hear the pages of the glossy turning slowly as one silly, Dolce and Cabana American celebrity was turned onto her face and another one exposed to the glare of the flashlight. “Olga Spleen at the Armani after show fundraiser in Gucci” Stephen had flicked through those magazines whilst Daisy took her nap and shivered. They weren’t even sexy. He preferred Sarah Jane and the darker one with big teeth on ‘Tum Tum Tells a Tale’ any day. Kids TV was great…for grown ups.
He tried again.
‘Sharp as button, that one.’
No response from Katie. Did she have no interest in her children? What was the point of working so hard if you didn’t even get home in time to tuck them into bed at least?
‘She has an amazingly mature grasp on ‘woman things’ she pointed out the Feminine Hygiene section to me very kindly in the chemist today. Did you tell her about it? (no you didn’t did you)
Stephen carried on pottering about the kitchen, Mixing the salad and putting it on the table.
‘Wine?’
‘Katie? Wine? It’s Tuna steak.
Stephen poked his slightly greying mop of hair followed by his face through the hatch. At first he thought his daughters eyesight must be deteriorating rapidly as she had In Style very unstylishly pressed against her nose. She was asleep.
Stephen sighed. Poured himself a glass of Nottage Hill from Waitrose and placed it on the table. He then placed daisy’s ‘drag about’ quilt over his gently snoring daughter and returned to the table to eat.
As he ate he read the local paper which he had picked up as he came though the front door with Daisy earlier. There was a story on the front page with a huge headline. Nanny finds her Billy. It was hardly the lead story he would have worked on in his day – even in those far off days on the local rag in the north. He read the first paragraph. Clearly written by some aspiring reporter with an eye on moving to the nationals.
Life is looking up for Eva. The 23 year old nanny who escaped her own war torn country to start a new life in Britain has married the man who’s children she looks after.
Single Father William Hopkins...blah blah…
Stephen didn’t bother with the rest. That was about as much local colour as he could take. Those stories were only fluff to fill up the parts of the paper where the property classifieds didn’t reach.
The Big story on The Today Programme when he had tuned in earlier in the week was the threat of rocketing interests rates and a housing market collapse. That little item he noticed had been dismissed in two lines as a filler on page 4. Of course, there were no houses for sale on page 4, just a huge half page devoted to rock bottom priced MP3 players from Dixons. (now known as Dixons Digital) Not mush use to Stephen; Katie had given him an MP3 player for Christmas and he had even managed to get a USB 2 connection fitted into his PC to download stuff forty times faster than if he hadn’t fitted a USB 2. Either way Matt Munro sounded the same.
Katie groaned. He turned. Her big eyes were looking at him from under the child sized blanket.
‘ I must have dropped off, How long have a I been asleep?’
’15 years, but don’t worry I have managed to get Katie up to read chemical engineering at Cambridge.’
Katie smiled. 15 years – aren’t you dead then?’
‘ No I decided to take some little pills which were invented for old people to annoy their children. Now come and eat, you look like you are about to fade away.’
Katie dragged herself to the table patting her father on the head as she passed him.
‘Did you have lunch’
‘No, I was in meetings back to back – there were sandwiches but I never got to them.’
‘Well Katie, you are wasting away and working too hard...’ he stopped. His daughter was gripping her knife and fork tightly and staring at the pattern on the John Lewis table cloth. Stephen had learned when to stop.
‘I’ll get your supper.’
They finished their meal in silence. This was the way it went. Often Stephen or Katie would suggest a decaf coffee afterwards. It was like a sign... an invitation to chat about the day, about Daisy, work or whatever. Lately Katie had been turning the coffee down and going off to bed or to her computer leaving Stephen to clear the dishes away and have the house tidy for the next day. He didn’t mind. He knew how much his daughter loved her work and how hard she worked at it.. PR, Marketing, Online media something… Whatever it was there were a lot of meetings with men who still had pony tails at 50.
Stephen, on the other hand had it easy and without Katie he would have been stuck without a roof over his head.
As Stephen made his way up to the top of the house where he occupied the Mansard extension he passed his daughter’s study. He thought he could hear her muffled voice. Speaking on the Phone to New York no doubt. He could also hear the bleep of her computer. Stephen hesitated for a moment, tempted to knock and say goodnight. He was worried about her. She had always been an aloof person – even as a child. She took after him. But just recently he had become worried. Was work going badly? Did she have money worries? Hardly. She needed a man in her life. someone to share the precious moments away from the hard slog of a career. Ever since Richard had walked out she had appeared self contained, content. It had taken him weeks to get her to talk about it.
‘Good God Dad, you have no idea how glad I am to be out of all that. I have my work I have this house, the cottage. What else could I need.’
She had forgotten to mention Daisy, who was 15 months old at the time, but Stephen had let it go, wished her goodnight and put the phone down.
‘She’ll be fine’ This to Eleanor, his anxious wife who was finding her daughters marriage break-up very hard to deal with. She never really warmed to Richard but this on top of her own troubles was not what her doctor had ordered.
Three months later Stephen was a widower. He was also broke.
By the new year after long discussions with Katie he had moved to London and occupied the top floor of their Five bedroom House in SW11.
It was supposed to be temporary and that’s how they both treated the arrangement. But somehow neither of them quite believed that.
He crept on down the corridor and looked in on Daisy who was in a contorted position with the quilt thrown off and her Pyjamas riding up her little chest. He gently put the covers back and closed the door.
He went on up avoiding the one creaky step in an otherwise solidly built extension.
Stephen was tired. He didn’t bother to clean his teeth. He just threw off his clothes, switched on his digital radio and got into bed. He usually read before turning out the light. Tonight be would put his head down straight away and drift off to the sometimes bizarre sounds of Late Junction on radio 3. It would be better that way. Things had felt wrong all day. All out of Synch. Don’t dwell on it. Go to sleep. It would be better in the morning when daisy would burst through his bedroom door leap on his stomach and demand breakfast.
He drifted off to sleep in the relative silence of an evening in South London, washed away on a sea of distant police sirens, screaming motorbikes and the chink chink clink of the swings in the park at the back of the house.
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