Father and Son by Lucy Deedes
‘That the only bag you have? Stick it in the boot… Mind that tray of plants!’
‘I don’t need much, I’m only here for a few days.’
‘Try telling that to your stepmother.’
‘It’s easier on the train if you don’t have much.’
‘Why you can’t fly to Barcelona like normal people.’
‘How was your time away on the boat?’
‘Turkey and back. Hard work. Then we got home and the tenants had left the place a tip…’
‘But good money, no? All those summer lets?’
‘We earn it, I can tell you.’
The young man wound down the window. ‘Aaah! Feel that sun.’
‘You don’t look like you’ve seen much sun’
‘I have been ill for a while. And London’s cold just now.’
‘But you’re all clear now, no? That’s all done and dusted. Got some work lined up?’
‘A bit.’
‘Doesn’t do to let the grass grow.’
‘It’s organic. I find one thing leads to another.’
‘What’s that girlfriend of yours doing?’
‘Saving lives, Dad. She’s called Tasneem.’
‘Not thinking of producing a grandchild for us then?’
‘Certainly not. No plan like that.’
‘That’s the trouble with your lot. No forward planning.’
‘Whereas you know who’s coming for dinner a year next October.’
‘Nothing wrong with keeping a diary.’
‘What happened to doing things on the spur of the moment?’
‘Overrated. Billy and Toby are coming for the weekend, by the way.’
‘Oh good!’
‘So they’ll eat us out of house and home, smoke in their bedroom and forget to tip Maria.’
‘Well I love them. They’re kind and funny.’ He leans out of the window.
‘Shut the window, the air-con’s on.’
‘Fresh air is free, Dad.’
‘Don’t even think about a save the planet lecture.’
‘I wouldn’t even try.’
‘Still, Penny has plans to get Toby’s advice on the new gravel garden.’
‘So he will be singing for his supper while he’s drinking the cellar dry and offending the staff?’
‘Too bloody right he will.’
‘Do you ever – just a thought – have people out here just for the sheer joy of seeing them?’
‘All the time! Why do you think we ask them?’
‘For a gossip. Because you miss home.’
Crash of gears. ‘Spain is home.’
‘What’s my holiday job then? Is there a little project lined up?’
‘Do you object to helping out while you’re here?’
‘Not at all. I’m all ready to do some gardening or clean out the fish pond, whatever. I feel flabby and white.’
‘You look it. What I actually need is help re-tiling the Turkish bathroom floor. The damp’s lifted them up and it’s a bugger of a job.’
‘Oh, great.’
‘You can’t expect to spend all your time lolling about in the sun, just because you’ve been a bit under the weather.’ ‘Heaven forfend that I should think that. As you often told us, no such thing as a free lunch.’
I’m surprised that the son bothered to visit at all!
Very good tetchy stuff, oh so real. ‘ like normal people’, good fun.
This felt completely real. I’m sure all relatives feel the generation gap and different values and interests when the kids leave home, and re-establishing relationships is always hard. This dialogue captured all those tensions and old rivalries perfectly.
Simon says: This is a very good response to the challenge and it demonstrates the power of simple dialogue, uninterrupted by ‘he said’s. It is also a neat study of two characters and their relationship. The father’s desire for primacy is right there in the first sentence with the ‘Mind that tray of plants’. And the son’s forbearance is very well expressed. The two have never had a close relationship and the advent of the stepmother has probably increased the distance between them. I get the feeling the son gets on better with his birth mother who, given the father’s character, I think was rejected rather than deceased. The setting, of the older man in a Spanish villa with the Mark Two wife is economically set up. Conversation between father and son is a minefield which the younger man has learned over the years to negotiate carefully. He knows not to take issue when his father has a snide dig at him, over his green credentials or many other potential flashpoints. The dialogue is very well calibrated to describe the central relationship of one character constantly needling the other. I don’t envy the son his ‘family time’ in Spain.