Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

The man took a step backward. “They’re in cubicle 4. Look…it’s probably best if I slipped away. Now that you’re here to look after your mother.” The man was clasping his hands together like a vicar. There were ironed creases down the front of his canvas trousers.

Someone had tried to murder Jamie’s father.

The man continued: “Send her my very best wishes. And tell her I’m thinking of her.”

“OK.”

The man stood to one side and Jamie walked to cubicle 4. He paused outside the curtain and braced himself for what he was about to see.

When he pushed the curtain aside, however, his parents were laughing. Well, his mother was laughing and his father was looking amused. It was something he hadn’t seen in a long time.

His father had no visible wounds and when the two of them turned to look at Jamie he got the surreal impression that he was intruding on a rare romantic moment.

“Dad?” said Jamie.

“Hello, Jamie,” said his father.

“I’m sorry about the phone message,” said his mother. “Your father had an accident.”

“With a chisel,” his father explained.

“A chisel?” asked Jamie. Was the man in the waiting room a lunatic?

His father laughed gingerly. “I’m afraid I made rather a mess at home. Trying to clean up.”

“But everything’s all right now,” said his mother.

Jamie got the impression that he could apologize for intruding and walk away and no one would be offended or puzzled in the slightest. He asked his father how he was feeling.

“A little sore,” said his father.

Jamie couldn’t think of any reply to this, so he turned to his mother and said, “There was some guy in the waiting area. Told me he drove you here.”

He was going to explain about the best wishes but his mother shot to her feet with a startled look on her face and said, “Oh. Is he still there?”

“He was heading off. Now you didn’t need him anymore.”

“I’ll see if I can catch him,” she said, and disappeared toward the waiting area.

Jamie moved into the chair beside his father’s bed and as he sat down he remembered who David Symmonds was. And what Katie had said in her phone message. And the image came to mind of his mother sprinting through the waiting area, out of the hospital and into the passenger seat of a little red sports car, the door slamming, the engine being gunned and the pair of them vanishing in a cloud of exhaust.

So when his father said, “Actually, it wasn’t an accident,” Jamie thought his father was referring to the affair and came close to saying something very stupid indeed.

“I have cancer,” said his father.

“I’m sorry?” said Jamie because he really didn’t believe what he’d just heard.

“Or at least I did,” said his father.

“Cancer?” asked Jamie.

“Dr. Barghoutian said it was eczema,” continued his father. “But I wasn’t sure.”

Who was Dr. Barghoutian?

“So I cut it off,” said his father.

“With a chisel?” Jamie realized that Katie had been right. About everything. There was something seriously wrong with his father.

“No, with a pair of scissors.” His father seemed unfazed by what he was saying. “It seemed to make sense at the time.” His father paused. “In fact, to be honest, I didn’t manage to cut it off completely. Much more difficult than I’d imagined. Thought for a while they were going to stitch the damn thing back on. But it’s better to chuck it away and let the wound granulate from the bottom up, apparently. This nice young lady doctor explained. Indian, I think.” He paused again. “Probably best not to tell your mother.”

“OK,” said Jamie, not entirely sure what he was agreeing to.

“So,” said his father, “how are you?”

“I’m fine,” said Jamie.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

Then his father said, “I’ve been having a spot of bother recently.”

“Katie told me,” said Jamie.

“It’s all sorted out now, though.” His father’s eyes were starting to close. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to have a little nap. It’s been a tiring day.”

Jamie had a moment of panic when he thought his father might be dying unexpectedly in front of him. He had never seen someone dying and wasn’t sure of the signs. But when he examined his father’s face it looked exactly as it did when he was dozing on the sofa at home.

Within seconds his father was snoring.

Jamie took hold of his father’s hand. It seemed like the right thing to do. Then it felt like rather an odd thing to do, so he let it go again.

A woman was groaning in a nearby cubicle, as if she was in labor. Though surely that would happen somewhere else, wouldn’t it?

Which part of his body had his father tried to cut off?

Did it matter? There wasn’t going to be an answer to that question, which made it seem normal.

Jesus. It was his father who had done this. The alphabeticizer of books and winder-up of clocks.

Perhaps it was the beginning of dementia.

Jamie hoped to God his mother hadn’t done a runner. Or he and Katie might be left looking after their father as he began his slow descent toward a horrid little residential home somewhere.

It was an uncharitable thought.

He was trying very hard to give up uncharitable thoughts.

Perhaps that was what he needed. Something to come along and smash his life to pieces. Go back to the village. Look after his father. Learn to be properly human again. A sort of spiritual thing.

His mother reappeared with a swish of curtain. “Sorry about that. I just caught him as he was leaving. Someone from work. David. He gave me a lift.”

“Dad’s asleep,” said Jamie, though that was pretty obvious from the snoring.

Were she and that man having sex? It was a day of revelations.

His mother sat down.

Jamie took a deep breath. “Dad said he had cancer.”

“Oh, yes, that,” said his mother.

“So he didn’t have cancer?”

“Not according to Dr. Barghoutian.”

“Right.”

Jamie wanted to tell her about the scissors. But when he formed the sentence in his head it seemed too bizarre to say out loud. A sick daydream he would regret sharing quite so eagerly.

His mother said, “I’m sorry, I should have told you before you got here.”

Once again, Jamie was not entirely sure what she was referring to.

She said, “Your father has not been terribly well recently.”

“I know.”

“We’re hoping it will sort itself out in time,” said his mother.

So she wasn’t running away with the man. Not in the immediate future.

Jamie said, “God. Everything happens at once, doesn’t it.”

“Meaning?” His mother had a worried look on her face.

Jamie said, “What with the wedding being off and everything.”

His mother’s expression changed from one kind of worried to a different kind of worried and Jamie realized, instantly, that she didn’t know about the wedding being off, and that he’d fucked things up, and Katie was going to kill him, and his mother wasn’t going to be very chuffed either, and he really should have returned Katie’s call straightaway.

“What do you mean, the wedding’s off?” asked his mother.

“Well…” Jamie trod carefully. “She mentioned something on the phone…She left a message…I haven’t spoken to her since she left it…It is possible that some wires got crossed.”

His mother shook her head sadly and let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess that’s one less thing we have to worry about.”

Katie and Raycame back via the nursery.

Jacob was unnaturally interested in why the two of them were picking him up together. He could sense that something wasn’t right. But she successfully distracted him by saying they’d seen a grand piano hanging from the ceiling ( Concert for Anarchy, 1990, by Rebecca Horn; Christ, she could probably get a job at the place) and Jacob and Ray were soon talking about how Australia was upside down, but only sort of, and how cavemen came after dinosaurs but before horse-drawn carriages.