Mark Haddon - The Red House

He arranged the crushed garlic. I should have visited Mum more. I realise that . How long was it since he’d used that word? Jennifer never liked me having a family. I don’t think that’s a revelation, is it? I didn’t really understand what family meant till I met Louisa. Even Melissa. Because that’s part of the package, isn’t it? You have to work at these things .

But she wasn’t really listening, because underneath it all ran the fear that it had nothing to do with good fortune, that he had earned this, and she resented him because she could have done it, too, if she’d applied herself properly, become a lawyer, moved to Canada, run a business, and what she saw when she looked at Richard was not his success but her own failure.

♦

Benjy is playing with his GoGos at the far end of the dining table, arranging them in colour-coded ranks. Gold, silver, red, orange, yellow. They have official names like Pop and Kimy and Kichi which you can look up on the website but Benjy and Pavel have given them names like Spotty Lizard and Pooper and Custard-Dog. They play a flicking game with them, like marbles, but when he’s on his own Benjy likes to arrange them in battle array.

Angela, Dominic and Daisy like them because they’re rather beautiful en masse and, refreshingly, not weapons, but when Louisa steps into the dining room laden with plates she feels only mild annoyance. She hasn’t really talked to Benjy yet this holiday and the guilty truth is that she doesn’t like him much. Clothes that don’t hang quite right, stained more often than not, flopping constantly as if he is operated by remote control by a person some considerable distance away. Benjy…?

♦

Louisa works for Mann Digital in Leith. They do flatbed scanning, big photographic prints, light boxes, Giclée editions, some editing and restoration. She loves the cleanness and the precision of it, the ozone in the air, the buzz and shunt of the big Epsons, the guillotine, the hot roller, the papers, Folex, Somerset, Hahnemühle. Mann is Ian Mann who hung on to her during what they called her difficult period because she’d manned the bridge during his considerably more difficult period the previous year. She started on reception, learnt how to do the accounts and now did most of the Photoshopping because the boys were just techies, really. Years back she’d started an art degree at Manchester but she hadn’t slept with another woman or been permanently stoned or proud enough of the working-class roots which she was trying to escape, frankly, and while her draughtsmanship was near-perfect the bottom was falling out of the painting and drawing market so she left halfway through the second year. Plus she had some real money because living in a shared house with a dirty fridge and peeling wallpaper held no romance and in truth she had felt uneasy with the idea of being an artist in the first place. Her father said going to university was getting above yourself and she hated him for it, not least because he was throwing her own suspicions back at her. And if Angela and Dominic assumed she didn’t have a job and spent her days, what? shopping? at the gym? then it was an impression she was happy to give because it might not be art, as such, but it was creative and it was hers and it was precious and she didn’t want it picked over by other people.

♦

When Melissa came into the dining room Mum was laying the table while the little boy loaded half a million plastic creatures into a rucksack.

You and Daisy seem to be getting along pretty well .

Melissa was going to duck the question and head into the kitchen but Angela was sitting on the window seat looking kind of intense so she did a comedy pirouette and leant against the radiator warming her hands. She felt like an idiot. Yeh, she’s OK . If only they hadn’t made such a Royal bloody Command Performance of marching into the dining room together.

She seems like a really genuine person .

Melissa examined the pattern of cracks in the flagstones because, much as it hurt to admit it, Daisy was right. They knew Michelle was crazy and perhaps she had meant to kill herself, and there was no one she could say this to. It was dawning on her, like the clouds parting and the angels singing and a great load of shit pouring down, that she didn’t actually have any real friends. Cally was probably stitching her up right now, and she could see Alicia and Megan laughing like a pair of fucking witches. She pushed herself upright and marched into the kitchen through the cloud of serious adult vibe and opened the fridge door. Medical necessity .

Are you OK? Richard was wearing oven gloves like a big pair of woolly handcuffs.

Hook Norton. Organic Fucking Dandelion. I’m right as rain, Richard . She grabbed an Old Speckled Hen, stood up, shut the fridge door, twizzled, clinked Angela’s wine glass with the beer bottle. Cheers, my dear . And exited.

♦

There were two shelves of books to the right of the chimney breast in the living room, so dulled by time and sunlight that most eyes slid over them as smoothly as they slid over the floral curtains and the walnut side table. Some were doubtless holiday reading left behind by the owners and their paying guests ( A Sparrow Falls by Wilbur Smith, Secrets of the Night by Una-Mary Parker), some appeared to be gifts which had been banished to the second home ( Debrett’s Cookbook, Fifty of the Finest Drinking Games ), some must surely have been bought for amusement only ( Confessions of a Driving Instructor by Timothy Lea, How to Be Outrageously Successful with Women by John Mack Carter and Lois Wyse), while other tattered paperbacks bore glorious noir covers that no one had seen for years ( Fatal Step by Wade Miller, Plot it Yourself by Rex Stout). Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey and Wittgenstein’s On Certainty , however, had clearly slipped through some breach in the fabric of the universe and now sat waiting patiently for rescue.

♦

When you are speaking to an older person , said Alex, show that you are very alert and are paying due attention to what is being said to you .

What’s this? Dominic opened the fizzy water.

Pictorial Knowledge .

Benjy, mate, this is you , said Alex. To loll awkwardly, ask for sentences to be repeated, be inattentive and uninterested is sheer bad manners .

Can you clear some space, please? Richard bore the chicken aloft.

That looks delicious . Dominic rubbed his hands.

Broadly speaking we should take a bath every day whenever that is possible .

Alex…

In the absence of a bath, a quick sponge down and then a brisk rub with a rough towel does a great deal of good .

Daisy , said Richard, are you going to say grace?

It’s all right, I don’t have to .

Go on , said Richard, I’m getting rather fond of it .

Melissa looked at the chicken with disdain.

Dominic said, Worry not, it was smothered with a silk pillow after a long, fruitful and contented life .

It’s OK , said Benjy, because chickens aren’t very intelligent .

Some people aren’t very intelligent and we don’t eat them , said Melissa.

Mentally Handicapped Person Pie , said Benjy.

That is not funny , said Angela.

It is a bit funny , said Alex.

Richard returned with the roasted vegetables, borne similarly aloft.

I think it’s an amazing vocation, being a teacher , said Louisa.

Vocation, thought Angela. Maybe that was what she’d lost.