Mark Haddon - The Red House

How sad they must be, those only children. Growing up in a house of adults, outnumbered, outgunned, none of that unbridled silliness, no jokes that can be repeated a hundred times, no one to sing with, no one to fight with, no one to be the prince, to be the slave. But siblings can be cruel, and companionship refused is worse than loneliness, and you could cast your eye over any playground and not tell who comes from a brood of seven or one. But later, when parents fall from grace and become ordinary messed-up human beings and turn slowly from carers into people who must be cared for in their turn, who then will share those growing frustrations and pore over the million petty details of that long-shared soap opera that means nothing to others? And when they are finally gone, who will turn to you and say, Yes, I remember the red rocking horse…Yes, I remember the imaginary bed under the hawthorn tree .

♦

A torrent after winter rains but quiet now, central shallows and the banks hidden under chestnut, hazel and sycamore. Pontfaen. The salmon catch a fraction of what it once was (a fifty-one-pounder at Bigsweir in ’62 but less than a thousand every season now). Otters and pine martens. Pipistrelle and noctule bats sleeping in ancient beeches. Cabalva Stud (Cabalva Sorcerer, 1995, £ 3,000, honest, eager to please, big scopy jump). The ghosts of Bill Clinton and Queen Noor. Flat stones down the centre of the river so that if the level were just right you could skip across the water like Puck (Richard and Dominic run aground twice). The Black Mountains a smoky blue in the day’s haze. Rhydspence. A moss-greened hull upended against a tiny shed. The five arches of the toll bridge at Whitney-on-Wye. White railings at the top, twice washed away and rebuilt. 10 pfor motorbikes, 50 pfor cars. Inexplicably, the sound of a flute from somewhere nearby. The Church of Saints Peter and Paul. The Boat Inn. Scampi, shepherd’s pie…

♦

Dominic looked at the map. There was a road half a mile away. It seemed impossible. The swill and chatter of water, those little birds darting in and out of the greenery overhanging the banks. How many more worlds were hiding round the corner and over the hill? He remembered the big ash on the wasteground behind the junior school, climbing up into that plump crook where the trunk split, sitting there for hours with a Wagon Wheel and a Fanta, the world going about its business below.

Up at the prow Richard had fallen into a steady rhythm that calmed him somewhat, bears in cages and so forth, though people lived entire lives with this level of anxiety, not even pathological, just part of the human condition. Alex was up ahead quite clearly revelling in his superior maritime skills. Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song…With falling oars they kept the time …Of course the one thing he missed since marrying Louisa was that solitary hour each day, a place of comfort and safety in which he returned to himself, Monteverdi or Bach in the background usually, turning over the day’s events in his mind, or more often thinking absolutely nothing. He wished he had kept the flat or bought himself a smaller one nearer the hospital, though the former would have been wasteful and the latter an insult to Louisa. Nor would she have understood. She liked company, she liked noise, she liked knowing someone else was in the house. He turned and smiled at her and she returned something that was neither quite a smile nor a scowl.

Louisa turned to Dominic. My go .

The boat swayed precipitously as they swapped positions. She sat on the little bench in the bow. This was more like it. Bows and arrows and dens and scrumping, the childhood she once dreamt of having, like Richard’s childhood, except not like Richard’s because his childhood wasn’t like that, was it, as she regularly had to remind herself. Incidentally…

What? said Dominic.

Last night . She wouldn’t mention the cereal or the sleepwalking or the turning out of the kitchen light. She said something about Karen. A baby called Karen. Your daughter . Was baby the right word? Was daughter the right word?

She’s having a rather difficult time , said Dominic.

But this was eighteen years ago .

I’m afraid so .

Something dismissive about his tone, and for the first time since they had arrived she felt a kind of sisterhood with Angela. Men are from Mars. All that stuff. She’d come on holiday expecting to be a spectator, to cook and help out and be good company while Richard got to know his family. But they were her family too, weren’t they, in the same way that Melissa was his family. Somehow she had never seen it this way.

There’s a dead fish , shouted Benjy excitedly. They waited and, sure enough, it floated past, huge and silvered, milky eye skyward.

Overhearing their conversation, Richard realised too late why Angela had asked him about stillborn children. He felt bad for not having pressed her further, and with this guilt came a longing for that armchair, the solitude, the empty mind.

♦

What Angela finds is not My Name Is David or The Log of the Ark but The Knights of King Arthur , a book her mother had been given when she was a child and which she in turn gave to Angela when Angela was eight or nine. The memory is so strong that when she finds the words To Kathleen from Pam, Christmas 1941 written in crabbed fountain pen on the endpaper she feels a sense of real grievance and trespass. 40 p. She’ll buy it and read it as a kind of penance.

♦

Scampi, shepherd’s pie, a stuffed pike in a glass case, polished copper bedwarmers.

You should try it sometime , said Alex. Waking up under canvas .

If you built a log fire and gave me a bottle of whisky, maybe , said Louisa. And some very thick socks .

So , said Dominic, where would we end up if we just carried on paddling?

Hospital , said Alex.

Richard could see that he was flirting with Louisa, but he had no idea how to stop it without causing grave offence, possibly to everyone around the table. He held up a spoonful of crumble. This is surprisingly good . His marriage to Jennifer had been a contract with explicit and renegotiable terms. He was belatedly realising how uncommon this was. There was an art to marriage, which depended not just on skills and rules but something more nebulous. That image of the gull and his father laughing. Why did it trouble him so much?

♦

The path was not as clear on the ground as it was on the map, the mud was surprisingly deep in places and Melissa wasn’t really getting into the countryside thing after all. I am going to get an apartment in Chelsea and the only time I am ever going to look at a field is from the window of a fucking plane .

They crossed the little stream and worked their way up the hill and were nearly at the road when Melissa slipped and spun and landed on her arse with such perfect comedy timing that Daisy laughed out loud. She offered Melissa her hand but Melissa grabbed it and yanked and Daisy yelped and found herself lying on her back next to Melissa staring into a canopy of horse chestnut leaves with damp seeping into her knickers. She imagined grabbing Melissa and rolling over, wrestling, like she might have done with Benjy.

Sod this for a game of soldiers. I’m heading back .

Ten more minutes . Daisy got to her feet. We’re nearly there .

I need a hot shower .

Come on , said Daisy, you can cope with a wet arse . She began walking up to the fence and when she opened the gate onto the road she turned briefly and saw that Melissa was following and it gave her a pleasure she hadn’t felt all week.