Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

Wendy Carpenter was in the middle of chemotherapy right now. And Kenneth had that lump taken out of his throat last August. Lord alone knows what they were thinking.

“I realized that I was going to die.”

Jean focused on the sugar bowl and tried to pretend she was in that nice hotel in Paris.

Jamie was watchinghis father weep in front of seventy people and experiencing something which felt very like appendicitis.

“Me. Jean. Alan. Barbara. Katie. Ray. We’re all going to die.” A glass rolled off a table and shattered somewhere toward the back of the marquee. “But we don’t want to admit it.”

Jamie glanced sideways. Tony was staring at his father. He looked as if he’d been electrocuted.

“We don’t realize how important it is. This…this place. Trees. People. Cakes. Then it’s taken away. And we realize our mistake. But it’s too late.”

In a nearby garden Eileen’s dog barked.

George had lostthe thread somewhat.

The dessert wine had not sharpened his mind. He had been a good deal more emotional than he had intended. He had mentioned the cancer, which was not festive. Was it possible that he had made a fool of himself?

It seemed best to round off his speech as quickly and elegantly as he could.

He turned to Katie and took her hand. Jacob was dozing on her lap, so the gesture was a little clumsier than he had planned. It would have to do.

“My lovely daughter. My lovely, lovely daughter.” What was he trying to say, precisely? “You and Ray and Jacob. Never. Never take one another for granted.”

That was better.

He let go of Katie’s hand and glanced round the marquee for one final time before taking his seat and caught sight of David Symmonds sitting in the far corner. The man had been facing the other way during the meal. Consequently George had been spared the sight of him while he was eating.

It occurred to George not only that he might have made a fool of himself but that he might have done this while David Symmonds was watching.

“Dad?” said Katie, touching his arm.

George was frozen halfway between sitting and standing.

The man looked so self-satisfied, so healthy, so bloody dapper.

The images started to come back. The ones he had tried not to picture for so long. The man’s saggy buttocks going up and down in the half-light of the bedroom. The sinews in his legs. That chickeny scrotum.

“Dad?” asked Katie.

George could bear it no longer.

Jean screamed. Partly becauseGeorge was climbing across the table. Partly because he’d knocked a pot of coffee over and the hot, brown liquid was running toward her. She leapt backward and someone else screamed. George jumped off the table and began walking down the marquee.

She turned to Ray. “For God’s sake, do something.”

Ray froze for a second, then got out of his seat and headed off after George.

He was too late.

Jean saw where George was going.

George stopped in frontof David.

It was very, very quiet in the marquee.

George took aim and swung his fist at David’s head. Unfortunately David’s head moved at the last minute, George missed his target and he was forced to grab hold of someone’s shoulder to prevent himself falling over.

Luckily, when David stood up in order to make his escape, his feet became entangled in his chair and he fell clumsily backward, his arms circling wildly as if he was trying to backstroke out of George’s reach across the tablecloth.

This gave George a second opportunity to punch him. But punching someone was considerably harder than it looked in films, and George had had very little practice in this department. Consequently his second punch hit David in the chest, which was not satisfying.

The chair was in the way. That was the problem. George kicked it to one side. He leant down, grabbed the lapels of David’s jacket and head-butted him.

After this it was hard to know quite who was hitting whom. But there was a lot of blood and George was fairly sure it belonged to David, so that was good.

The image which stuckin Jamie’s mind was that of a tiramisu and its accompanying spoon tumbling in slow motion through the air at head height. His father and David Symmonds had fallen backward onto the table. The near side had collapsed and the far side had shot up like a seesaw, firing a variety of objects into the air (one of Katie’s friends was very proud of having caught a fork).

From this point on it felt more like a road accident. Everything very clear and detached and slow. No abdominal pain anymore. Just a series of tasks which had to be done to prevent further injury.

Ray bent down and began detaching Jamie’s father from David Symmonds. David Symmonds’s face was covered in blood. Jamie was rather impressed that a man of his father’s age was capable of doing that kind of damage.

Jamie and Tony looked at one another and made one of those instant, unspoken decisions and decided to go and help. They got to their feet and jumped across the table, which would have been rather Starsky and Hutch, except that Jamie got a buttered roll stuck to his trouser leg.

They reached the far side of the marquee together. Tony knelt down next to David because he’d done a first-aid course and because David seemed to have come off worst. Jamie went to talk to his father.

Just as he arrived Ray was saying, “What in God’s name did you do that for?” And his father was about to reply when Jamie’s brain shifted into warp speed and it dawned on him that no one knew why his father had done it. Only him and Katie, his mother and his father. And David, obviously. And Tony, because Jamie had been filling him in on all the gossip before lunch. And the reason his mother had run out of the marquee was because she thought everyone else was going to find out. Though if Jamie acted quickly they might be able to pass the incident off as drug-induced craziness. Because after that speech it was pretty clear to everyone that his father was not in his right mind.

So when his father said, “Because-” Jamie slapped a hand across his mouth to stop him saying anything else, and he might have done it a bit too hard because the smack sound was quite loud and Ray and his father both looked startled, but it stopped his father talking at least.

Jamie leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”

His father said, “Nnnnn.”

Jamie turned to Ray and said, “Take him indoors. Upstairs. The bedroom. Just…just keep him there, all right?”

Ray said, “Right you are,” as if Jamie had asked him to shift a sack of potatoes. He got Jamie’s father to his feet and began walking him out of the marquee.

Jamie went over to Tony.

David was saying, “The man’s a maniac.”

Jamie said, “I’m really sorry about that.” Then he turned to Tony and said, quietly, “Take him into the living room and call an ambulance.”

Tony said, “I don’t think he needs an ambulance.”

“Or a taxi or whatever. Just get him out of the house.”

“Oh, right, I see what you mean,” said Tony. He put his hand under David’s arm. “Come on, mate.”

Jamie stood up and turned round and realized that all of this had taken only a matter of seconds and the remaining guests were sitting stock-still and completely speechless, even Uncle Douglas, which was a first. And they were clearly expecting some kind of explanation or announcement, and Jamie was the person they were expecting it from, but he had to talk to his mother first, so he said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and ran out of the marquee and found her standing on the far side of the lawn being consoled by a woman he didn’t recognize, while Ray and Tony ushered his father and David into the house, both of them keeping a tight hold on their charges to prevent any of the three coming into contact with one another.