In a Seven Year Old Anxiety Can Present as Boredom, by Barry Tench

2B were doing ‘My Father’s Job’ that week. I recall that the lilac trees in the school playground were heavy with flower and that the purple dripped with April rain.  I searched the grey sky behind the roofs of the terraced houses opposite for some sign of the sun that would mean holidays weren’t far away. My desk lid was scored by the pointed ends of countless protractors, initials and dates scarred the soft wood. What if I made my dad sound interesting, and by implication insurance? Would I be forced to follow in his footsteps, to become an insurance salesman for the rest of my life?

I had watched him return home in the evening, stand in the frame of the back door and blow cigarette smoke out into the garden; walk through the house into the living room, did he ever speak? I don’t remember. He would turn on the television, open the evening paper, light another cigarette. The kettle would whistle in the kitchen but he wouldn’t turn his head to see if someone was going to take it off the stove.

I went to his office once; he’d forgotten to collect me from the dentist and I walked through town to his office. I wasn’t sure which way to go, I traced my steps back, took another street. I asked a woman if she knew where my dad’s office was. I didn’t know the name of the building but said, he is an insurance man. She pointed me up the bank to a tall grey building.

“There are offices in there young man”. 

I used to have dreams of a Tyrannosaurs Rex hunting me, crashing through the rooms of our house to where I was hiding behind a jar of pickles on the top shelf in the pantry.

I stumbled in through the glass door. The lobby of the office block smelled of damp paper, cigarettes and feet. The walls, the windows, the beige linoleum on the floor, everything looked like it was coated with a thin film of grime. I sat next to his desk as he joked with colleagues about forgetting to collect me from the dentist, he smoked another cigarette.

I faced 2B. I wanted to say my dad was a teacher, a bus driver, a shop keeper but I didn’t have time to consider the details. Miss made those ‘go-on’ eyes at me. I looked at the faces of my classmates. Is he going to cry? Is he going to piss himself?

“John what does your father do?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes he does. What job does he do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where does he go in the morning?”

“He’s dead.”

“Sit down John. I’ll speak to you later”.

I walked back to my desk past Brian Evans whose father had been killed last summer when his motorbike had hit a tree. I still can’t decide if he was smiling.