That was Pa. The referee was Pa.
I have to say, before I dwell further on this outrage, that there exists a perfectly rational explanation for it. The reason that mutt went for Pa is that he has a dog of his own, a basset hound called Trusty, who is in heat, and clearly some of her love scent had perfumed him. That dog is a minx. After two years of cohabitation, my father is still trying to house-train her. For one thing, she still shits around the home. Although Pa has followed the training manual (The Wolf in Your Home) and chastised her while simultaneously pushing her snout into the dung, Trusty has never quite put two and two together and made the connection between the offence and the punishment; or, if she has, she has not let it bother her, a profound canine instinct informing her, correctly, that my father’s threats are as insubstantial as the breath that transports them. Either way, he still spends a lot of time on his hands and knees, scraping up. The only effect of his remonstrations, as far as I am able to tell, has been to make Trusty more wily in her choice of location. Whereas in the past she used to squat down on the deep-pile carpet in the living-room, now, like a grande dame caught short in the palace of Versailles, she tends to climb up the stairs and do it in rarely visited corners and recesses. If you go round to Pa’s house you have to watch your step. Trusty has toilets everywhere.
But let me return to what happened to Pa at the football. My father’s tumble would under normal circumstances have had some slapstick joke value, because, and let me say this at once, I find downfalls as funny as the next man. If some clown vanishes down a manhole or lands face-first in a cream cake, I’ll slap my thigh along with everybody else. But for once I am not laughing.
Again, I have to think of Wile E. Coyote – more precisely, of his adventure with the tunnel. The coyote, tired of outlandish artifice, comes up with a scheme which is cunning simplicity itself. Using paint, he depicts a road tunnel on the face of a mountain and then hides behind a boulder, lurking. The plan is obvious: the roadrunner will mistake the fake, super-realistic tunnel for an actual one and will crash into the mountain at great speed. As usual, the plan is about 75 per cent successful. Sure enough, along comes the roadrunner in a fast cloud of dirt and, yes, up it storms, straight towards the picture of the cavern; but then, instead of rebounding off the rock, the roadrunner goes through it – through the nonexistent tunnel! For a second or two the prairie wolf gapes at us, crushed and flabbergasted; but then a what-the-hell, ask-questions-later expression animates his crumpled features and, yellow-eyed and ardent, off he races, arms outstretched and hands grabbing, hot on the heels of the bird – and thuds face-first into the mountainside.
It is then, at the moment when he is slumped in a dazed heap at the bottom of the mountain, that the true dismality of his predicament dawns on Wile E. Coyote: that, even where the laws of nature are concerned, there is one rule for him and another for the roadrunner. It is the ultimate unfairness.
I am not suggesting that what is happening to Pa breaks the laws of material physics. But it does break what I always vaguely understood to be another law of nature: the law of averages. I was always under the impression that the law of averages meant this: in the long run, probability will operate so as to effect a roughly equitable distribution of chance – you lose some, but you also win some. But what if you lose some and then, against all the odds, lose some more – and then more still? Where does that leave the law of averages? Where does that leave Pa?
This is what I was puzzling over on the bus here. My head was poised heavily on the rain-steamed window as I sat there, slowly grappling with this enormous problem. And then the penny dropped: there is no such thing as the long run. My father’s life is too short to allow probability to take effect.
The vibrations of the bus banged my head against the pane.
Now, I can see a response to this: people make their luck.
To a certain extent, this is right. You make your own bed and you lie in it. But sometimes you are forced to lie in a bed which you did not make at all. No, it is worse than that: sometimes a bed you have never seen before in your life will crash through the ceiling and flatten you before you even know what’s hit you. How much of his lot has Pa brought on himself? Merv – did Pa bring Merv on himself?
I received the telephone call at home on Friday morning. Pa asked me how I was and, before I could answer, I heard a swallowing noise – a literal, phonic gulp.
I said, ‘Pa?’
There was a pause, and then Pa said quickly in a thick voice, ‘Listen, son, do you remember Merv, Merv Rasmussen?’
Of course I remembered Merv. He was one of Pa’s best friends, his work buddy and tennis partner. I had met Merv plenty of times.
Pa said, ‘He was driving along last night, just driving along on his side of the road, minding his own business, when this car just ploughs straight into him. Head-on. Just like that.’ Pa took a swallow of wonder. ‘This guy just swings across into his lane, then …’ Here his voice crumpled. I heard it again – gulp.
I said, ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pa said. ‘The hospital told me he was critical.’
Critical was the last word I would have associated with Merv. Merv was friendly, tolerant and condoning. As far as I knew, Merv had never passed an adverse judgement on anyone in his life.
Pa said softly, ‘Johnny, I want you to do me a favour. I want you to pray for him.’ He was serious. ‘Just a quick prayer, that’s all. I’m telling you, son, right now he needs all the help he can get.’
I did not want to upset my father. I said, ‘OK, Pa. I will.’
He took a long and violent drag of air, as though surfacing from a long spell under water. His anxiety made his voice clean and eager. On the telephone, Pa can sound like a young man.
He changed the subject. ‘Have you switched the locks yet? Have you spoken to Whelan?’
‘Don’t worry, Pa,’ I said. ‘It’s under control.’
‘I want double locks on that front door,’ my father stipulated. ‘And tell Whelan to fit one of those big bolts, the ones you can’t just kick down.’
‘I will, Pa,’ I said.
‘Ask him about installing an alarm,’ Pa said, his sentences beginning to accelerate. ‘I want one of those alarm systems that are hooked up to the police station. I want an entry system, too, with a special code, and a spyhole in the door so you’ll see who’s coming.’
‘OK, Pa.’
‘I want you and your sister to be safe in that flat,’ Pa said. ‘And don’t worry about the money. I’ll take care of that.’
‘OK, Pa,’ I said – this despite the fact that there is plainly no need for this kind of security at the flat I share with my sister Rosie, which has double-glazed windows which explode when punctured, an impenetrable front door and a film of burglar-proof plastic on every pane of glass. Besides, even if some crook did break in, his pickings would not be rich. Whatever else our flat might be, it is no Aladdin’s cave. But I went along with Pa because I had learned that once he is gripped by a sense of imperilment in respect of his family – which is often – he will not be deflected. This is why we Breezes are insured against every imaginable risk. Pa has taken out a comprehensive family protection package that defends the three of us against the consequences of fire, theft, death, sickness and personal injury, of litigation, lock-outs, flooding, explosions, automobile collisions and war, of aviation mishaps, professional negligence, spatial fall-out, forgery, business interruptions and acts of God. You name it, we’re indemnified against it.
My father’s precautions do not end there. In order to guard against the tax detriments of his own death, he has ploughed as much cash as he can into an accumulation and maintenance fund in his children’s names and he has transferred to me, as a nominal gift, the ownership of the flat we live in. ‘In case I die within the next seven years,’ he said. I told him he was crazy. ‘What are you talking about? Seven years? You’re