Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

He put the kettle on, leant against the sink, pushed his hands deep into his trouser pockets and stared at the floor. “Do you reckon I should marry Katie?”

Jamie wasn’t sure he’d heard this correctly. And there were certain questions you just didn’t answer in case you’d got the wrong end of a very big stick (Neil Turley in the showers after football that summer, for example).

“You know her better than me.” Ray had the look on his face that Katie had at eight when she was trying to bend spoons with mind power. “Do you…? I mean, this is going to sound bloody stupid, but do you think she actually loves me?”

This question Jamie heard with horrible clarity. He was now sitting at the door of the Cessna with four thousand feet of nothing between his feet and Hertfordshire. In five seconds he’d be dropping like a stone, passing out and filling his helmet with sick.

Ray looked up. There was a silence in the kitchen like the silence in an isolated barn in a horror film.

Deep breath. Tell the truth. Be polite. Take Ray’s feelings into consideration. Deal with the shit. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Katie and I haven’t talked that much over the last year. I’ve been busy, she’s been spending time with you…” He trailed off.

Ray seemed to have shrunk to the size of an entirely normal human being. “She gets so bloody angry.”

Jamie badly wanted the tea, if only for something to hold.

“I mean, I get angry,” said Ray. He put tea bags into two mugs and poured the water. “Tell me about it. But Katie…”

“I know,” said Jamie.

Was Ray listening? It was hard to tell. Perhaps he just needed someone to aim the words at.

“It’s like this black cloud,” said Ray.

How did Ray do it? One moment he was dominating a room the way a lorry would. Next minute he was down a hole and asking you for help. Why couldn’t he suffer in a way they could all enjoy from a safe distance?

“It’s not you,” said Jamie.

Ray looked up. “Really?”

“Well, maybe it is you.” Jamie paused. “But she gets angry with us, too.”

“Right.” Ray bent down and slid Rawlplugs into four holes he’d drilled inside the cupboard. “Right.” He stood and removed the tea bags. The atmosphere slackened a little and Jamie began looking forward to a conversation about football or loft insulation. But when Ray placed the tea in front of Jamie he said, “So, what about you and Tony?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what about you and Tony?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Jamie.

“You love him, right?”

Jesus H. Christ. If Ray made a habit of asking questions like this, no wonder Katie got angry.

Ray slid some more Rawlplugs into the door of the cupboard. “I mean, Katie said you were lonely. Then you met this chap and…you know…Bingo.”

Was it humanly possible to feel more ill at ease than he did at this moment? His hands were shaking and there were ripples in the tea like in Jurassic Park when the T. rex was approaching.

“Katie says he’s a decent bloke.”

“Why are we talking about me and Tony?”

“You have arguments, right?” said Ray.

“Ray, it’s none of your business whether we have arguments or not.”

Dear God. He was telling Ray to back off. Jamie never told people to back off. He felt like he did when Robbie North threw that can of petrol onto the bonfire, knowing that a bad thing was about to happen very soon.

“Sorry.” Ray held up his hands. “This gay stuff’s all a bit foreign to me.”

“It’s got absolutely nothing to do with…Jeez.” Jamie put his tea down in case he spilled it. He felt a little dizzy. He took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “Yes. Tony and I have arguments. Yes, I love Tony. And…”

I love Tony.

He’d said he loved Tony. He’d said it to Ray. He hadn’t even said it to himself.

Did he love Tony?

Christ alive.

Ray said, “Look-”

“No. Wait.” Jamie put his head in his hands.

It was the life/school/other-people thing all over again. You turned up at your sister’s house with the best of intentions, you found yourself talking to someone who had failed to grasp the most basic rules of human conversation and suddenly there was a motorway pileup in your head.

He steeled himself. “Perhaps we should just talk about football.”

“Football?” asked Ray.

“Man stuff.” The bizarre idea came to him that they could be friends. Maybe not friends. But people who could rub along together. Christmas in the trenches and all that.

“Are you taking the piss?” asked Ray.

Jamie breathed deeply. “Katie’s lovely. But she’s hard work. You couldn’t give her a biscuit against her will. If she’s marrying you it’s because she wants to marry you.”

The drill slid off the counter and hit the stone floor tiles and it sounded like a mortar shell going off.

Something had happenedto George.

It started that evening when she came back into the living room to find him scrabbling about under the armchair looking for the TV remote. He got to his feet and asked what she’d been up to.

“Writing a letter.”

“Who to?”

“Anna. In Melbourne.”

“So what have you been telling her?” asked George.

“About the wedding. About your studio. About the extension the Khans have added to her old house.”

George didn’t talk about her family, or the books she was reading, or whether they should get a new sofa. But for the rest of the evening he wanted to know what she thought about all these things. When he finally fell asleep it was probably due to exhaustion. He hadn’t sustained a conversation this long in twenty years.

The following day continued in much the same fashion. When he wasn’t working at the bottom of the garden or listening to Tony Bennett at double the usual volume he was following her from room to room.

When she asked if he was OK he insisted that it was good to talk and that they didn’t do it enough. He was right, of course. And perhaps she should have been a little more appreciative of the attention. But it was scary.

Dear God, there were times when she’d prayed for him to open up a little. But not overnight. Not like he’d suffered a blow to the head.

There was a practical problem, too. Seeing David when George had no interest in what she was doing was one thing. Seeing David when George was following her every move was another.

Except that he wasn’t very good at it. The listening, the taking an interest. He reminded her of Jamie at four. Froggy wants to talk to you on the phone…Get on the sofa train, it’s about to start! Anything to hold her attention.

Just before they climbed into bed he’d wandered out of the bathroom holding a soiled Q-tip to ask whether she thought it was normal to have that much wax in one’s ear.

David could do it. The listening, the taking an interest.

The following afternoon they were sitting in his living room with the French windows open. He was talking about stamps.

“Jersey World War Two occupation issues. The 1888 dull green Zululand one shilling. Perforates. Imperforates. Inverted watermarks…Lord knows what I thought I was going to achieve. Easier than growing up, I guess. I’ve still got them somewhere.”

Most men wanted to tell you what they knew. The route to Wisbech. How to get a log fire going. David made her feel she was the one who knew things.

He lit a cigar and they sat quietly watching the sparrows on the bird table and the mackerel sky moving slowly from right to left behind the poplars. And it felt good. Because he could do silence, too. And in her experience there were very few men who could do silence.