Eating Humble Pie

"Mr Humble?"

Mike was pulled back to reality by the voice.

"Yes? Can I help you?" Mike quickly scrambled the papers on his desk to disguise the fact that he had been drawing a new frame for his secret opus, his comic book, rather than working. The man in the doorway was tall and wore a long mac in slightly middle-aged hip sort of way. There was an earring as well, a small twinkle supplied by the glow of the office Christmas lights. Who is he? He looks familiar. Mike was seized by a panic that he should know who the man was. Work mate? Customer?

"Martin Ross." The man seemed to expect recognition. "Education Welfare. About your son, Harley. Your receptionist did try to raise you on the phone, I persuaded her to let me up here." Mike’s panic deepened.

"He’s not in school again Mr Humble. I was hoping you would know where he is and how he is." The reproach was blatant. Mike felt the usual feelings that his son evoked in him rise up – panic, exasperration, irritation, sheer bloody helplessness. "Your wife suggested you might know where he is." Bet she bloody did.

"She’s my ex-wife actually." This didn’t seem to help. The man – Martin Bloody Ross – merely assumed an air of that explains a lot, and stared at him steadfastly. Mike recognised the tecnique. Ball in his court, up to him to come up with something, fuck knows what. He decided he hated Martin Bloody Ross and all his bloody tribe unto the seventh generation for his bloody superiority. This even though, at the back of his mind, he knew that practically all the misconceptions that Martin Bloody Ross had about him and his dear ex-wife Mel were actually pretty accurate.

It was the name, she had said in the end. All along she had denied and denied it had anything to do with it, turning it once upon a time into a nice bit of teasing stuff about how she must have really loved him to marry him and take on the name, but it changed gradually by degrees, until in the end she would merely say "Humble by name, wimp by nature" and other variants on this theme, no talk of love anymore. But Harley – he never complained about the name. Mike loved his son greatly but he could not claim to understand him. Unusual, his primary school teacher had called him. Harley was certainly that. He had showed no interest atall in traditional boys things right from the beginning, yet he was clearly not a miniature gay in the making, not that Mike would have cared he told himself. There had been no dressing up in frocks at playgroup or any of that stuff, it was more that he didn’t like to play with the boys. He preferred to entertain the girls. Harley had in fact posessed an unnaturally early talent for shmoozing the girls, from nine months to ninety. He was a charmer, a regular parlour room bewitcher of aunties and other grownups. And an aesthetic. When he was two he had told his mother that his favourite colour was greeny blue and please could he have his bedroom decorated in that precise colour. Needless to say they had never quite got round to it, it seemed too extraordinary in a two year old to need taking seriously. When he was five he started inventing monsters, as in drawing them, and for his seventh birthday he had asked for a video camera. This request they had obliged and Harley began making films (as he called them) which mainly starred his friends Rosie and Ed, Rosie being seventy-four and Ed being fifteen with Downs Syndrome. Harley didn’t play with children of his own age much. Once he started at the High School Harley had begun to let it be known that he found school a fairly irrelevant use of his time, even somewhat beneath him. It was not that he was in front of a computer game or slouched watching telly, far from it. Harley was conducting an experiment into how long he could go without sleep, or go without wearing socks until his mother noticed. Or he was playing his trumpet. Or reading plays and devising stage directions in the margins. Or writing letters to the Prime Minister to see whether he could interest him in letting Harley become his Minister for Youth (only a standard "The PM thanks you for your interesting letter…" reply was forthcoming).

When he could hold onto the positive, Mike thought that he had a miniature Steven Speilberg (or Ray Harrihausen) (or Miles Davis) (or Bob Geldof) in the making but Mel was not so impressed. She was the one that cleared up - or attempted to get Harley to clear up – the detritus of creativity that followed everywhere in his wake.

" You indulge him too much," she said with monotonous regularity. Oh yes, as if I forgot since yesterday that it’s all my fault. "It’s the weird Humble genes," she would also say.

Mike got rid of Martin Bloody Ross by promising to leave work immediately and go to look for his son. And furthermore he promised to speak to Harley’s mother and come up with a Plan with a captial P as to how they would deal with Harley’s "Problem" together. When the man had left Mike went in to see his boss Angela, and bigged it up a bit.

"Crisis – Harley’s missing, police involved, hysterical ex-wife etc," he said. "Need to go and lend a hand. Got a theory where he might be." And soon as he said it he actually did have a theory. Outside a few minutes later (Angela being a sypathetic boss with teenagers of her own), Mike was hit by the cold December air and the already fading afternoon light. For some reason he felt certain he knew where Harley was.

Outside Rosie’s house he paused only a moment. He could hear Harley playing his trumpet, the lovely sedate tune of the old carol, "All Poor Men and Humble". It had been Mike’s mother’s favourite, the socialist carol she had called it. She used to sing it to Mike as a child and to Harley too before she died. Harley had been four. She had been another woman who had loved a man called Humble. In her case to the sweet, not bitter end, and beyond. Mike knocked and after a few moments the trumpet stopped and Harley came to the door.

"Come in Dad, you’re just in time," he said as if he had been expecting Mike. "We’re holding a carol concert of our own, just me and Rosie, you can be the congregation. Mike smiled at Rosie and she responded, offering him tea and pushing a plate of cold mince pies towards him. Now very elderly, she was, despite her lame legs, apparently in good health, and her face was glowing in the light of her fire, her table lamp and the attention of her unusual, delightful young friend. Mike sat and settled himself and just for once let the clatter in his head about Harley subside. This boy of his was extraordinary. And damnation to all the Martin Bloody Rosses, and the voluntarily ex-members of the Humble clan who could not see him for the unique and wonderful boy that he was. The trumpet gave voice and Mike found his own as well.

"All poor men and humble,

All lame men who stumble

Come closer and be not afraid"