Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

She manhandled a thrashing Jacob into the car and Hey presto, as soon as he knew resistance was futile he slumped backward, silent and exhausted.

Two and a half hours later they pulled up outside the house. The hall light was on and the curtains were closed. Ray was there. Or had been.

Jacob was in a coma, so she lifted him out of his seat and carried him to the front door. The hallway was silent. She hefted him upstairs and laid him down on his bed. Maybe he’d sleep through. If Ray was lurking she didn’t want an argument while ministering to a waking child. She slipped his shoes and trousers off and put the duvet over him.

She heard a noise and went back downstairs.

Ray appeared in the hallway carrying the blue holdall and Jacob’s Spider-Man rucksack from the car. He paused, briefly, looked up, said, “Sorry,” then took everything through to the kitchen.

He meant it. She could see. There was something broken about him. She realized how rarely she ever heard someone say sorry and mean it.

She followed him and sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“I shouldn’t have done that.” He was nudging a ballpoint pen round in little circles with his finger. “Running off. It was stupid. You should be able to go out for coffee with who you like. It’s none of my business.”

“It is your business,” said Katie. “And I would have told you-”

“But I would have been jealous. I know. Look…I’m not blaming you for anything…”

Her anger had vanished. She realized that he was more honest and more self-aware than any member of her own family. How had she not seen this before?

She touched his hand. He didn’t respond.

“You said you couldn’t marry someone who treated you like that.”

“I was angry,” said Katie.

“Yeh, but you were right,” said Ray. “You can’t marry someone who treats you like that.”

“Ray-”

“Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last few days.” He paused, briefly. “You shouldn’t be marrying me.”

She tried to interrupt but he held up his hand.

“I’m not the right person for you. Your parents don’t like me. Your brother doesn’t like me-”

“They don’t know you.” Those three days alone in the house she’d been glad of the space and the quiet. Now she could see him walking out for a second time and it terrified her. “Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with them.”

He narrowed his eyes a little while she was talking, letting it wash over him like the pain from a headache. “I’m not as clever as you. I’m not good with people. We don’t like the same music. We don’t like the same books. We don’t like the same films.”

It was true. But it was all wrong.

“You get angry and I don’t know what to say. And, sure, we get along OK. And I like looking after Jacob. But…I don’t know…In a year’s time, in two years’ time, in three years’ time-”

“Ray, this is ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked directly at her. “You don’t really love me, do you?”

Katie said nothing.

He carried on looking at her. “Go on, say it. Say, ‘I love you.’”

She couldn’t do it.

“You see, I love you. And that’s the problem.”

The central heating clicked on.

Ray got to his feet. “I need to go to bed.”

“It’s only eight o’clock.”

“I haven’t slept for the past few days. Not properly…Sorry.”

He went upstairs.

She looked around the room. For the first time since she and Jacob had moved in she could see it for what it was. Someone else’s kitchen with a few of their belongings pasted onto it. The microwave. The enamel bread bin. Jacob’s alphabet train.

Ray was right. She couldn’t say it. She hadn’t said it for a long time now.

Except that it was wrong, putting it like that.

There was an answer, somewhere. An answer to everything Ray had said which didn’t make her feel selfish and stupid and mean-spirited. It was out there. If only she could see it.

She took hold of the ballpoint pen Ray had been playing with and lined it up with the grain of the tabletop. Maybe if she could place it with absolute accuracy her life wouldn’t fall apart.

She had to do something. But what? Unpack the bags? Eat supper? It all seemed suddenly pointless.

She went to the sideboard. Three plane tickets for Barcelona were sitting in the toast rack. She opened the drawer and took out the invitations and the envelopes, the guest list and the list of presents. She took out the photocopied maps and hotel recommendations and the books of stamps. She carried it all to the table. She wrote names at the top of all the invitations and put them into the envelopes with the folded sheets of A4. She sealed them and stamped them and arranged them in three neat white pagodas.

When they were done she grabbed the house keys and took the envelopes to the end of the road and posted them, not knowing whether she was trying to make everything come out right by positive thinking, or whether she was punishing herself for not loving Ray enough.

Jean booked an appointmentand drove George to the surgery after school.

It was not something she was looking forward to. But Katie was right. It was best to take the bull by the horns.

In the event he proved surprisingly malleable.

She put him through his paces in the car. He was to tell Dr. Barghoutian the truth. None of this nonsense about sunstroke or coming over light-headed. He was not to leave until Dr. Barghoutian had promised to do something. And he was to tell her afterward exactly what Dr. Barghoutian had said.

She reminded him that Katie’s wedding was coming up and that if he wasn’t there to give his daughter away and make a speech then he was going to have some explaining to do.

He seemed to enjoy the bullying in some perverse way and promised to do everything she asked.

They sat next to one another in the waiting room. She tried to chat. About the Indian architect who had moved in across the road. About cutting the wisteria down before it got under the roof. But he was more interested in an elderly copy of OK magazine.

When his name was called she patted him gently on the leg to wish him luck. He made his way across the room, stooping a little and keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the carpet.

She tried a bit of her P. D. James but couldn’t get into it. She’d never liked doctors’ waiting rooms. Everyone always looked so shabby. As if they hadn’t been taking enough care of themselves, which they probably hadn’t. Hospitals weren’t so bad. So long as they were clean. White paint and clean lines. People being properly ill.

She couldn’t leave George. What she felt was irrelevant. She had to think about George. She had to think about Katie. She had to think about Jamie.

Yet when she imagined not leaving him, when she imagined saying no to David, it was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel going out.

She picked up George’s OK magazine and read about the Queen Mother’s hundredth birthday.

Ten minutes later George emerged.

“Well?” she asked.

“Can we go to the car?”

They went to the car.

Dr. Barghoutian had given him a prescription for antidepressants and booked him in to see the clinical psychologist the following week. Whatever the two of them had talked about it had clearly exhausted him. She decided not to pry.

They went to the chemist’s. He didn’t want to go inside, mumbling something she couldn’t quite catch about “books on diseases,” so she went in herself and picked up some brussels and carrots from the grocer’s next door while they were doing the prescription.