Mark Haddon - The Red House

♦

Dominic and Benjy go outside and sit together on the rusted roller beside the woodshed and Benjy uses Dominic’s Leatherman to whittle a stick. The knife is unwieldy and Benjy is ham-fisted but it’s a good stick because Benjy is an expert in these matters (Dominic will let him have his own penknife next birthday), neither too green so that the shaft is whippy nor too rotten so the wood crumbles. Dominic lets him do it without offering to take over, because he’s not a bad father. Indeed he’s able to enter Benjy’s world in a way that no one else in the family can, perhaps because the adult world holds him in a weaker grip, perhaps because there is a part of him which has never really grown up. And now Benjy has finished making the sword, stripping the bark and sharpening the point. There you are . Dominic takes it. The naked wood is the colour of margarine and waxy under his fingers. It makes him think of woodlice and Play-Doh and paper planes. En garde . Benjy dies four times, Dominic five. Afterwards they lie on the damp grass looking at the featureless grey sky because this is how Benjy likes to talk sometimes. I’ve been thinking about Granny .

In what way have you been thinking about Granny?

Because you said it was a good thing she died .

She wasn’t really Granny any more, was she?

She called him the little boy , but he liked Mum explaining who he was each time. He also liked the photo of the cocker spaniel and the cogs of the carriage clock moving silently in their glass box and the biscuits the nurses brought round on a trolley at four o’clock. I see her at night sometimes .

You dream about her?

Yes, it was a dream, Benjy supposed. But she’s standing in my room .

Are you worried that she might not be dead?

Is that possible?

No, it’s not possible .

He thought about Mum and Dad dying and being looked after by strangers and it was like someone standing on his chest. He rubbed the cuff of Dad’s shirt but it wasn’t the special shirt. Then they heard Melissa shouting, Fuck off , which was the second rudest thing you could say, so it made him laugh and Dad got up and said, Hang on, Captain .

♦

Melissa patted the bench beside her.

Daisy sat, obediently. You were telling me about Michelle .

She’s a drama queen is what actually happened .

Daisy had accepted a glass of wine so as not to seem like a prude and the world was a little fuzzed already. But still .

We were at this party . It was a relief telling someone who would vanish in five days. Michelle disappears upstairs with this skanky guy none of us have seen before .

That kind of party had always scared Daisy, the smell on your clothes the next day and something else that couldn’t be washed off.

We go into the bedroom and she’s sucking this guy off . She paused to gauge Daisy’s reaction, but it was hard to read. He looks at us and smiles. You know, come in, why not, like he’s making a sandwich. I take a picture and Michelle doesn’t even notice because she’s, like, way too busy down there .

Daisy was thinking about the giant cockroach at Benjy’s animal party, how the hard little segments of its body glowed like burnished antique wood.

There’s some stupid argument a couple of days later and Cally grabs my phone and waves the picture in Michelle’s face. Michelle goes apeshit, punching Cally, pulling her hair. So it’s knives out and Cally sends the picture to Uncle Tom Cobley and all .

I’m not surprised she tried to kill herself . Daisy felt soiled just hearing the story.

Had Melissa heard right?

That was a really horrible thing to do .

Whoa there . Was this what she got in return for her friendship? She stood up. Well, you can fuck off, then, Miss Goody Two-Shoes . She flounced grandly towards the house.

Everything in the garden became suddenly vivid as if some general membrane had been peeled away. The bootscraper, the ivy. Then Dad rose from behind the wall. Trouble at mill?

Daisy felt as if she were broadcasting the story wordlessly. Like he’s making a sandwich.

He sat down and put his arm around her. Hey .

She’s a nasty person .

Read all about it , said Dad. Do we need to take retaliatory action?

No . She was returning slowly to herself. I think being Melissa is punishment enough .

♦

Benjy, you crouch down at the front , said Alex, like you’re holding the football .

Perhaps you should take the apron off , said Louisa, but Richard liked the idea of being a modern man. The all-round provider. Where’s Melissa?

Don’t worry , said Dominic. Alex can Photoshop her in later. Little square in the top right hand corner. Like the reserve goalkeeper .

Which was good, thought Alex, because then he would have to take a picture of her on her own and you couldn’t wank over a photo that contained your parents. Hold still .

♦

People assumed Melissa was vegetarian out of cussedness, or maybe as an outlet for the empathy she didn’t expend on human beings, but it was sloppy thinking she hated. She cared little for the suffering of cattle or sheep but why eat them and not dogs? It wasn’t so much a belief as the obvious thing to do. She hated injustice without feeling much sympathy for those who had been treated unjustly. She thought that all drugs should be legal and that giving money to charity was pointless. And she liked the fact that these opinions made her distinctive and intelligent. In many respects she was like her father. Not the dirt under his nails, not the prickly pride in his under-education but the way his sense of self depended so much on other people being in the wrong.

♦

Ian’s been offered four hundred thousand for the business , said Louisa.

So he’d be an idiot not to take it .

But what’s he going to do? She put the milk back in the fridge. He’s fifty-one. Too young to retire, too old to start all over again .

Richard quartered an onion and laid it between a parsnip and a sweet potato. They’d keep him on as manager, surely. Or would that be beneath his dignity?

Angela came in with a glass of wine and sat herself on the window seat. Am I interrupting?

Not at all , said Louisa. She hoisted a stack of white plates from the shelf. I’ll set the table .

Angela gathered herself. Look. About Juliette . She realised how rarely she apologised, for anything, to anyone. You were right, I did spend a lot of time at her house . She explained, about The Pineapple, about Oscar Peterson.

It doesn’t matter now. It’s water under the bridge .

She felt herself bridle. But it does matter . He wasn’t giving enough weight to this. I’m saying sorry .

He stood to attention, clicked his heels and dipped his head like a tin soldier. Then I forgive you . He leant his weight on to the flat of a knife blade and crushed three cloves of garlic. Besides, I couldn’t wait to get out of there myself. But this is good, though , said Richard, us talking about it, laying ghosts to rest and so forth .

Except she had never got out of there, had she, not the way he had got out. The ease with which he sailed through his A levels, the confidence with which he strode off into the world. Was it childish to resent someone for being blessed with such good fortune? At sixteen she’d felt so much more skilled at the task of being human than her gauche and solitary brother. Then suddenly…