Mark Haddon - The Red House

I used to act , said Daisy. As in, you know, drama, plays…And when I was someone else, then I knew who I was . She’d never said this before.

You should act now .

What?

It’s an exercise we did at school. You pretend to be someone else for the whole day. Blind person, deaf person, someone with a limp, someone who can’t speak English . In truth she had never really stopped playing the game.

So what would I be?

Melissa smiled. I think you should be a real bitch .

Was it possible to be someone else? The forest, that faerie magic. My mistress with a monster is in love.

♦

She would never be unfaithful to him. Foolish, perhaps, misguided, but never unfaithful, never dishonest. How odd that her revelation should make Richard certain of this. She wanted people to be happy. Was that the problem, pleasing other men, doling out her favours so prodigally? He wondered if he was simply the first half-decent man who had come along. He was disturbed, too, by the thought that these men had been, what? more adventurous? rougher? more masculine? and that she accepted his shortcomings in return for his reliability, his respectability, his money.

Jennifer’s affair had precipitated the end of their marriage, not because of the betrayal or her failure to hide it, but because he cared so little. He couldn’t imagine her giving herself or being taken. He thought of her as passionate at first. He had never quite known what women wanted, and he was both aroused and relieved to find someone who was so explicit about her needs, but there was always something mechanical about their coupling and he came to realise that the passion was at root an anger whose source he never fathomed.

Did the drinking excuse Louisa’s behaviour or compound it? Perhaps everyone possessed a darker self kept at bay by circumstance. Who knows what life his mother might have led if his father hadn’t died so unexpectedly? Airport novels shelved according to their height. The green melamine bowls.

They had crossed the top of the dyke and were walking into a chill wind rising out of the valley. He zipped the front of his orange waterproof. Misty rain, wisps of cloud trailing up the valley like ragged white curtains.

♦

They’d reached the gravel track above the house. You OK? Dominic was calling. I’m fine . Angela paused before heaving herself over the stile. She needed a hot bath and Savlon and the sheepskin slippers she hadn’t packed. She looked up. English Oak. Quercus robur . She’d done a biology degree in a previous life. Pedunculate, not sessile, because of the stalks under the acorns. She parcelled the knowledge and gifted it to children who forgot it straight after their exams. Or before. Mitochondria and ribosomes, the carbon cycle, Banting and Best. Nature with a capital N. How strange that she disliked it en masse. Walks on the heath and the occasional safari park with Benjy. Penguins and fruit bats. That was her limit, really. She’d been passionate once, collecting moths with a torch and a muslin net. Blair’s Shoulder-knot, Magpie, Goat, Codling. It all faded. Hard to feel passionate about anything now. She thought about her mother. It was physiological, of course. Myelin breakdown, neural tangles. But you couldn’t help wonder. Being bored of life, wanting to let go.

Something moved in the distance. Was it…? She had to stop this. If she talked to someone, maybe. A ticking clock and a box of tissues on the pine coffee table. She’d never asked Richard about Jennifer, why they were together, why they weren’t any more. Dominic was right. She thought of herself as someone who cared, but she spent all of that concern at school. She put her foot on the little wooden step and lifted her aching leg.

♦

We push an introductory needle into the femoral artery .

Is that in the groin? asked Benjy.

It is indeed . Richard reached over and picked up the jigsaw piece with the picture of the man being hanged. Bingo . He handed it to Angela.

Louisa was watching from the window seat. He wasn’t even thinking about it, was he? At least Craig blew up and cleared the air. Had she made a monumental mistake? The degrees, the books, the music.

This , said Melissa, staring at the jigsaw, must surely be the most boring activity in the universe . But the edge was gone.

I think I’ll save jigsaws until I’m in an old people’s home , said Daisy. The two girls. Their little freemasonry.

I’ll be in there soon enough , said Angela. Sherry at five and drama students coming in to do hits from the seventies . Except there wouldn’t be sherry, would there, given that Richard wouldn’t be paying this time round. Some council place. Dettol and the TV at Guantánamo volume.

Melissa found the man playing the lute.

X-rays are pretty harmless , said Richard. Pilot. That’s the job to avoid. Lots of breast cancer among female cabin crew .

Is this subject entirely appropriate? said Angela.

Alex came and sat beside Louisa. There . He handed her a glass of wine. He was flirting, wasn’t he? She hotched a centimetre closer so that their shoulders were touching. Richard glanced over. She clinked Alex’s glass. Cheers .

♦

Dominic sliced the florets off the head of broccoli and placed them in the steamer then opened the oven briefly to check on the sweet potatoes. How odd that it was such a manly profession now. Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay. I wouldn’t give that risotto to my fucking dog . He folded back the waxed wrapper, sliced a little pyramid of butter from the corner of the block and dropped it into the pan. Exile on Main Street in the background. Best double album in the history of popular music. Unless Blonde on Blonde was a double. Maybe second best, then. Recorded in that château the Gestapo had used. ‘Tumbling Dice’. Keith Richards falling asleep with a syringe still stuck in his arse. All corporate hospitality now and VW sponsorship deals. Bob Dylan doing adverts for ladies’ underwear. He dropped the sliced onion into the fizzy butter. He’d been vegetarian himself when he was a student. Animal fats in everything before BSE. Biscuits, ice cream. Shopping down the kosher aisle in the Stamford Hill Safeway with the Hasidic housewives and their fifties wigs. He washed the spinach in the colander and pressed it onto the onion. How odd to feel this contentment at the expense of Angela’s failings. He was going to end the Amy thing when he got home. Couldn’t see the point now. It was all about self-worth, wasn’t it, trying to make himself feel better. He didn’t need it any longer. The spinach darkened and shrank. Karen, the daughter he never had, blessing him from beyond the grave. Pint of full-fat in the microwave. But this thing with Daisy and Melissa. I kind of like her, actually . Unquote. That clumsy teenage eyes-down embarrassment he hadn’t seen for so long. He’d help Angela get back on track, make the family work again, be a real father. He poured a little cone of flour onto the buttery spinach and stirred it in. He could take some private pupils again. Earn a little extra money. That honeyed scent of the sweet potatoes roasting. Everything was going to be all right. Physical Graffiti . That was a double album, too, wasn’t it? Maybe Exile was third best.

♦

Look . Melissa paused and glanced both ways down the landing. She lifted her skirt and pulled down her knickers and there it was, a little bluebird on her buttock where the tan faded to moony white. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes . Daisy wanted to say something complimentary but it seemed indecent. Did it hurt? Melissa was letting her look for too long and Daisy was finding it hard to turn away. He was cute so I didn’t mind too much . She pulled her knickers up. If you tell anyone …But why would she? It felt like her own transgression, not Melissa’s.