Free Swan River by David Reynolds Page A

didn’t have to go. Even though I had passed the exam, I could still get out of it.

5
    Dinner in Dalston
    On a freezing Saturday, shortly before Christmas, my father and I drove dangerously through ice and sleet to High Wycombe to buy my mother’s Christmas present. He was feeling flush.
    â€˜I’ve decided to buy her a gramophone,’ he had confided to me that morning during breakfast, while my mother was out of the room.
    I was thrilled. At last! ‘You mean a record player? One that will play singles and LPs?’
    He had to think for a moment. ‘Yes… although I don’t see why it can’t be called a gramophone.’ He pointed at the huge walnut-veneered radiogram in the corner of the dining room. ‘It does just the same as that, except it will play records that go round more slowly.’
    I didn’t argue. Everyone I knew had had a record player for at least two years. ‘It’s not really a present for Mum, though, is it? We’ll all use it, won’t we?’
    He shrugged. ‘She’s always playing records. It’ll be hers.’ I must have looked worried, because he went on. ‘All right, we’ll buy her something else as well… bath salts. What about bath salts?’
    Every year cousins and aunts gave my mother bath salts, and every year she gave bath salts to other people, sometimes carefully recycling the previous year’s offerings. I could think of nothing more dull than bath salts. ‘We ought to buy a record, an LP. Otherwise she’ll have a record player and nothing to play on it.’
    He smiled. ‘You’ve always been very bright, Sunny Jim, very intelligent.’ He grabbed my hand across the table and squeezed it. Then he felt in his pocket and handed me two half-crowns. ‘There you are. Five bob. You buy her a record with that, and you can get some bath salts with the change, and I’ll buy her one too. We’ll need more than one record; otherwise we’ll go mad listening to the same one all the time.’
    â€˜A single is six and fourpence.’ I knew, because I had helped Richard and Adam choose them in Martin’s, the electrical shop in Chapel Street. ‘She probably won’t want a single, because she likes Bach and Beethoven and symphonies. They’re on LPs. They cost twenty-one shillings, I think.’
    â€˜Good God.’ He smiled and looked at me over his glasses as he took back the two half-crowns. ‘We’ll see what we can do when we get to the shop.’
    We got stuck in traffic on the steep hill down into High Wycombe and sat for long minutes with the engine turned off, gradually getting colder and periodically wiping condensation from the windscreen with a duster. He talked about his mother and his father, telling me a lot I didn’t know, as he rolled one cigarette after another. He had never been so open with me before – my mother had told me truthfully where babies come from when I had first shown curiosity at the age of five, and she had told me about homosexual men when I was seven, and lesbians when I was eight. Now that I was thirteen and he had something to say, my father mentioned sex for the first time ever as he told me about his parents.
    It took us more than an hour to get into Easton Street. We parked and sat in the car as my father continued to talk; his hands gripped the steering wheel as he told me how clearly he remembered the day in 1902 when his father packed two suitcases, said goodbye to him and walked off down the street. The windscreen misted over and my father opened the small, triangular window beside the steering wheel. He flicked his ash through the opening. ‘Before he left, he bent down and kissed me quickly on the lips and said, “Goodbye, old chap. Don’t worry. I’ll see you before long.” I was crying. They told me I would see him again soon… But I never saw him again.’ He reached for his