“And how are you, my little man?” his father asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Tony could not speak. He was in no pain, but his entire throat felt frozen, numb. His father was a big man, physically imposing, with a loud insistent voice and a constant air of urgency about him. His father frightened him more than a little. The two of them had never been close. Tony, an only child, was never allowed to have dinner with his parents when his father was at home. Only when his father was gone could he sit at the big dining room table with his mama.
“They tell me you were crying all night,” his father said sternly.
Tony could not answer, but tears sprang up in his eyes. They had left him alone in the strange hospital room, without Mama, without even his nanny.
“Now listen to me, Antony,” said his father. “These people here in the hospital are my colleagues. They look up to me and respect me. It wouldn’t do for them to think that my son is a coward, now would it?”
Slowly, reluctantly, Tony shook his head.
“So we’ll have no more of this crying, eh? Chin up. Brave lad. Do what you’re told and don’t give the sisters any difficulty. Right?”
Tony nodded.
“Good! That’s the spirit. Now look what I’ve brought you.” His father pulled a small packet from his overcoat pocket. It was wrapped in bright gold paper.
“Open it up, go on.”
Tony pulled at the paper ineffectually. His father’s smile withered into an exasperated frown; he took the packet into his big, deft-fingered hands and swiftly removed the wrapping. Then he opened the slim box and showed Tony what was inside it.
A hand-sized telly! Tony goggled at it. Lifting it from the little box, he turned it over in his trembling fingers until he found the postage-stamp screen and the red power button. He pressed the button and the screen came to life instantly.
His father showed him how to pull the earphone from its all-but-invisible socket. Tony wormed it into his left ear.
The picture on the screen was of the red planet, Mars. The voice he heard was that of a young Brazilian scientist named Alberto Brumado, who was saying in a softly beguiling Latin accent, “Someday human explorers will travel to Mars to unravel the mysteries of its red sands…”
His father tousled his hair roughly and then left Tony watching the tiny pictures of Mars.
Tony’s parents lived entirely separate lives under the single roof of their Chelsea home. As he grew up, Tony began to understand that his father kept a series of mistresses elsewhere in London. He changed them every year or so, like buying a new outfit of clothes for the spring. But he was never without a mistress for long.
His father paid Tony almost no attention whatever; the big gruff man always seemed preoccupied, busy, on his way out of the house somewhere. And when he did notice his son it was:
“Tennis? That’s a damned silly game. When I was your age I was all for football. Now there’s fun!”
No matter that Tony was slim and lithe where his father was bulky and powerful.
“Tennis,” the old man fumed. “Game for foreigners and effeminates.”
It was easy to get his graying mother’s attention. She was a sweet, porcelain-white woman with the grace and beauty of a china doll. She looked frail, long-suffering, but Tony knew she could protect him from his cold yet demanding father. Everyone who met her loved her, and Tony loved her most of all. All he had to do to get her attention was to pretend to be ill. A cough or a sneeze would bring her fluttering to him. Before he was nine Tony learned how to fake a fever by holding the thermometer under the hot water tap. As he grew up he began to suspect that his mother knew all his little tricks, and forgave him unconditionally. He was the man of the house most of the time. He had his mother all to himself except when his father was home.