Mark Haddon - The Red House

♦

Queen Guinevere lay idly in bed dreaming beautiful dreams. The sunny morning hours were slipping away, but she was so happy in dreamland that she did not remember that her little maid had called her long ago .

But the queen’s dreams came to an end at last, and all at once she remembered that this was the morning she had promised to go to the hunt with King Arthur .

♦

He walked to the edge of the car park to listen to Amy’s message. Dom. It’s me . She was crying. I’m really sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t ring but Andrew’s been taken into hospital with pneumonia and I’m frightened, Dom. If you get a chance, can you ring me, please?

Episode 39 of the Mother and Son show. He deleted the message. The truth was that she disgusted him, something moist and wretched about her, a child at forty-two. He couldn’t remember her once expressing real unadulterated joy, only that desperate hunger when they made love ( fill me up…push it right inside me… ) which was thrilling at first but which now sounded like a need to be crushed out or used up. If it wasn’t him it would be someone else. Deep down she wanted things to go wrong. If she was happy she would have to face up to all those things she hadn’t done, the law degree, the second child, New Zealand, those precious hypothetical ambitions stolen from her by a string of bad men. He loved his family. Why had he risked losing them for this?

He heard a rumbling clang and turned to see Mike’s Transit coming into the pub car park, the trailer bouncing and yawing behind it. He turned the phone off and slipped it into his back pocket.

♦

Angela assumed at first that her mother had started drinking again, the dirt and clutter, the mood swings, but there were no bottles and no alcohol on her breath. She might have realised earlier but their conversations had never been intimate and you didn’t ask someone to name their grandchildren or do their five times table as her GP finally did that freakish Saturday morning, the cloud so low and thick it felt like an eclipse. She expected him to set in train some boilerplate process, health visitor, social worker, nursing assistant, leading gradually towards residential care, but they stepped out into a biblical downpour with nothing more than an invitation to return when things got worse, and in two hours her mother’s terrified incomprehension had become a vicious anger at everyone who was trying to interfere in her life, Angela, the doctor, the neighbours.

She rang Richard who said there was nothing they could do. Something would happen, an accident, a stroke, something financial, something legal, and the decision would be taken out of their hands. She thought, You selfish bastard , but he was right. An icy pavement outside Sainsbury’s. Lucy at school said she should sue and Angela laughed and said, I should pay them . Hospital threw her mother completely. Who are all these people? Her mind held together only by the scaffolding of a familiar house and a routine she had followed for ten years. Two weeks later she was in Meadowfields. Beckett meets Bosch , said Dominic, and it was true, there really was screaming every time they visited. A couple of months later she was transferred to Acorn House. Grassy quadrangle, actual menu, two lounges, one without television. The previous occupant of her room had left a framed photograph of a cocker spaniel on the bedside table. Mum was insistent that it had been their dog which had recently passed away, though they had never had a dog and she was never quite able to remember its name.

♦

They crossed the little car park and began climbing the Cat’s Back, a rising ridge of grass and gorse and mud. Sweaty now, Melissa had tied her shirt and Puffa jacket around her waist and was walking in a blue vest, her freckled shoulders bare. Daisy was embarrassed to find herself in second place. You do secret sport, don’t you?

Hockey . Melissa’s enjoyment had caught her by surprise. Middle-aged people did this stuff, but she felt like a kid again. The mud, the effort, Daisy’s uncomplicated company, except that she’d never been that kid, had she, because Mum needed counselling if you spilt coffee on the carpet. Hence Dad fucking off, possibly.

The spine of the hill flattened out, the grass and mud giving way to a rough path weaving its way around little rocky outcrops, the slopes on both sides falling away so steeply that you could glance up and think for a moment that you were flying.

OK , said Melissa. This is as far as I’m going. End of argument .

They turned round, breathing heavily. All that wheeling space. The cars were Dinky Toys. Miniature sheep and miniature cows. There’s the house , said Daisy, pointing. She imagined opening the hinged front so you could rearrange the furniture and the model people.

You win , said Melissa. This is pretty cool .

♦

Angela sat in Shepherd’s eating a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce. She hadn’t pictured herself alone at a table when she was at the counter and only when she sat down did she see herself from the point of view of customers at the other tables. Discomfort eating. She’d bought Notes on a Scandal but it refused to hold her attention. There was an exhibition of framed watercolours hung around the room which looked as if they’d been done by a talented child, a poppy field, a lighthouse. It was her, wasn’t it, the person who couldn’t be alone, who married the first man who came along because they were scared of going back to an empty house. At home she moaned constantly about the chores she had to do because everyone else did them badly or not at all. For once I’d just like to put my feet up . But she was doing that right now and hated it. She looked up at the clock. Twelve minutes past two and sixteen seconds, and seventeen seconds, and eighteen seconds. She was in Maths with Mr Alnwick again, each minute a rock to be broken.

She picked up the bag of books she’d bought for Benjy, to replace that terrifying Two Worlds thing, and opened the Tintin .

Blue blistering barnacles…

What is it, Captain?

♦

We should be getting back . Melissa puts her hands on her knees, preparatory to standing.

Wait , says Daisy. She wants this moment to continue for ever. She turns and looks at Melissa. Those freckled shoulders, sweat cooling in the wind. She can see it all so clearly now and she is both surprised and relieved. Her whole life has been leading towards this moment. She has turned a final corner and seen her destination at long last. Is time slowing down or speeding up? She puts her hand on Melissa’s forearm. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes . Like being on a rollercoaster, no way of getting off now. She puts her other hand around the back of Melissa’s neck and pulls her close. The barn roars in the night. Daisy kisses her, pushing her tongue into her mouth, but something is wrong because Melissa is shoving her away and shouting, What the fuck…? She’s on her feet now. Get off me, you fucking dyke .

No , says Daisy. I didn’t mean…

What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

I only …Crashing back into the bright light and the hard edges of the day.

Just …Melissa takes four steps down the hill, backwards, keeping her eyes on Daisy, as if she is holding a gun. Just…stay the fuck away from me, OK? She rips the shirt from round her waist and fumbles it on, covering her flesh as quickly as she can, then the Puffa jacket. You’re weird and your clothes are shit and the only reason I was even spending time with you was because it is so fucking boring here . She turns and strides away till she is swallowed by the curve of the hill.