Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

“I’m sorry,” said Dad. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Christ, Dad. You’ve got a nice house. You’ve got money. You’ve got a car. You’ve got someone to look after you…” She was angry. It was the anger she’d been saving for Ray. But she couldn’t really do anything about it, not now the lid was off. “You haven’t wasted your life. That’s bollocks.”

She hadn’t said bollocks to Dad for ten years. She needed to get out of the room before things really started to go downhill.

“Sometimes I can’t breathe.” He made no attempt to wipe the tears from his face. “I start sweating, and I know something dreadful is about to happen, but I have no idea what it is.”

Then she remembered. That lunchtime. Him running out and sitting on the patio.

Downstairs Jacob had stopped wailing.

“It’s called a panic attack,” she said. “Everyone has them. OK, maybe not everyone. But lots of people. You’re not strange. Or special. Or different.” She was slightly alarmed by the tone of her own voice. “There are drugs. There are ways of sorting these things out. You have to go and see someone. This is not just about you. You have to do something. You have to stop being selfish.”

She seemed to have veered off course somewhere in the middle there.

He said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“There’s no maybe about it.” She waited for her pulse to slow a little. “I’ll talk to Mum. I’ll get her to sort something out.”

“Right.”

It was the patio all over again. It frightened her, the way he soaked it all up and didn’t answer back. It made her think of those old men shuffling round hospitals with five o’clock shadow and bags of urine on wheelie stands. She said, “I’m going downstairs now.”

“OK.”

For a brief moment she thought about hugging him. But they’d done enough new things for one morning. “Can I get you a coffee?”

“It’s all right. I’ve got a flask up here.”

She said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” in a wholly inappropriate comedy Scots accent, out of relief mostly. Then she closed the door behind her.

When she reached the kitchen, Jacob was sitting on Mum’s knee, being fed chocolate ice cream from the tub. As an anesthetic, no doubt. On top of the chocolate biscuit, presumably.

Mum looked up and said, in a jaunty voice, “So, how did your father seem to you?”

The ability of old people to utterly fail to communicate with one another never failed to astonish her. “He needs to see someone.”

“Try telling that to him.”

“I did,” said Katie.

“I got a bump,” said Jacob.

She bent down and cuddled him. There was ice cream in his eyebrows.

“Well, as you doubtless found out,” said Mum, “trying to get your father to do anything is pointless.”

Jacob wriggled free and began trawling through his Batman rucksack.

“Don’t talk about it,” said Katie, “just do it. Talk to Dr. Barghoutian. Drive Dad to the surgery. Get Dr. Barghoutian to come here. Whatever.”

She could see Mum bridling. She could also see Jacob marching toward the hallway with A Christmas to Remember in his sticky paws. “Where are you going, monkey nuts?”

“I’m going to watch Bob the Builder with Grandpa.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Jacob looked crestfallen.

Perhaps she should let him go. Dad was depressed. He wasn’t eating lightbulbs. The distraction might even be welcome. “Go on then. But be nice to him. He’s feeling very tired.”

“OK,” said Jacob.

“And Jacob?”

“What?”

“Don’t ask him if he’s dying.”

“Why not?” asked Jacob.

“It’s rude.”

“OK.” Jacob toddled off.

She waited, then turned to Mum. “I’m serious. About Dad.” She waited for her to say Look here, young lady… but she didn’t. “He’s suffering from depression.”

“I realized that,” said Mum, tartly.

“I’m just saying…” Katie paused and lowered her voice. She needed to win this argument. “Please. Take him to the doctor. Or get the doctor to come here. Or go to the surgery yourself. This is not going to go away on its own. We’ve got the wedding coming up and…”

Mum sighed and shook her head. “You’re right. We don’t want him making a fool of himself in front of everyone, do we.”

Mel Gibson was hangingfrom a chain in a rudimentary shower and an Oriental man was torturing him with a pair of jump leads.

George was so engrossed that when he heard a knock on the door his first thought was that Katie had arranged an immediate visit from Dr. Barghoutian.

When the door opened, however, it was Jacob.

“I want to watch my video,” said Jacob.

George fumbled for the remote. “And what’s your video?”

Mel Gibson screamed, then vanished.

“Bob the Builder,” said Jacob.

“Right.” George suddenly remembered the last time Jacob had joined him in this room. “Is your daddy with you?”

“Which daddy?” asked Jacob.

George felt a little dizzy. “Is Graham here?” It seemed to be a day on which anything was possible.

“No. And Daddy Ray isn’t here. He went…He went away and he didn’t come back.”

“Right,” said George. He wondered what Jacob meant. It was probably best not to ask. “This video…”

“Can I watch it?”

“Yes. You can watch it,” said George.

Jacob ejected Lethal Weapon, inserted Bob the Builder and rewound it with the casual skill of a technician at mission control.

Which was how young people took over the world. All that fiddling with new technology. You woke up one day and realized your own skills were laughable. Woodwork. Mental arithmetic.

Jacob fast-forwarded through the adverts, stopped the tape and climbed onto the bed next to George. He smelt better this time, biscuity and sweet.

It occurred to George that Jacob wasn’t going to talk about panic attacks, or suggest counseling. And this was a reassuring thought.

Did they ever go insane, children? Properly insane, not just handicapped like the Henderson girl? He was unsure. Perhaps there was not enough brain to malfunction till they reached university.

Jacob was looking at him. “You have to press PLAY.”

“Sorry.” George pressed PLAY.

Cheery music began and the titles came up over a starlit model snowscape. Two plastic reindeer trotted off into the pine trees and a toy man roared into the shot on his motorized skidoo.

The motorized skidoo had a face.

Jacob stuck his thumb in his mouth and held on to George’s index finger with his free hand.

Tom, the aforesaid toy man, went into his polar field station and picked up the ringing phone. The screen split to show his brother, Bob, at the other end of the line, calling from a builder’s yard in England.

A steamroller, a digger and a crane were standing outside the office.

The steamroller, the digger and the crane had faces, too.

George cast his mind back to Dick Barton and the Goons, to Lord Snooty and Biffo the Bear. Over the intervening years everything seemed to have got louder and brighter and faster and simpler. In another fifty years children would have the attention spans of sparrows and no imagination whatsoever.

Bob was dancing round the builder’s yard, singing, “Tom’s coming for Christmas! Tom’s coming for Christmas…!”

Maybe George was fooling himself. Maybe old people always fooled themselves, pretending that the world was going to hell in a handcart because it was easier than admitting they were being left behind, that the future was pulling away from the beach, and they were standing on their little island bidding it good riddance, knowing in their hearts that there was nothing left for them to do but sit around on the shingle waiting for the big diseases to come out of the undergrowth.