Mark Haddon - The Red House

Richard wonders if this is really happening, and is sufficiently compos mentis to know that his unsureness is not a good sign. Not quite on the Glasgow Coma Scale yet. Alex, is it? In a luminous yellow jacket like a security guard. Shorts and a woolly hat. Richard , says Alex, in a casual golf-club manner. Long time no see, a pint of the usual? and so forth. Richard says, I’m in a bit of a state . So Alex removes his luminous yellow jacket. Take this . But Richard’s hands are so numb that he can’t grip it well enough to get his arms into the sleeves. His teeth are chattering. His teeth haven’t chattered since school. Alex puts the woolly hat on his head. Cader Idris on the recorder. Frozen milk lifting the foil caps on the chunky bottles. Before Dad died. Here, let me help . He thinks of nurses helping elderly patients into cardigans. That girl in her wheelchair. Then the jacket is on and he realises he’s going to see Louisa soon and he understands now quite how frightened he was and it is possible that he is crying about this, though hopefully the rain will disguise the fact. Alex lifts Richard’s arm over his shoulder. Come on, keep it up, or it’s me who’ll freeze to death . Richard swings his good leg, hobbles, swings his good leg, hobbles. Alex is pushing him faster than he wants to go. It hurts a lot, but it’s a good thing, going faster. He remembers the conversation of last night. He will apologise later. A hot bath, he can have a hot bath, but, God almighty, this ankle. Thanks for this .

Just keep walking .

♦

Angela shuts the door and Daisy thinks of headmasters’ offices and doctors’ surgeries. They sit beside one another on the sofa looking into the empty stove. Daisy wishes it was lit but that’s Richard’s job. What’s the matter?

You have to promise…

I have to promise what? asks Angela.

She’s standing on the high board. One bounce and don’t look down. I tried to kiss Melissa .

Angela is genuinely unsure if she has heard correctly but knows that she cannot ask Daisy to repeat it.

For God’s sake, Mum, say something .

She shuffles through her memory of Melissa and Daisy in the dining room this morning. And I’m guessing Melissa wasn’t too keen on this .

I’m not being funny, Mum .

Neither am I . It feels like a TV drama. Are you saying you’re gay?

The words are thick in Daisy’s mouth. She cries into Mum’s shoulder. Angela can’t remember the last time she held Daisy like this. Mostly Daisy is relieved that Melissa no longer has the same leverage.

Have you told anyone else? She remembers Daisy abandoning her in the street the other day and feels as if she has won a competition to regain her daughter’s affection, beaten Melissa, beaten Dominic. She rubs her hand in a circle on Daisy’s back. Ten years vanish. Those nightmares. I don’t mind if you’re gay . She squeezes Daisy a little harder.

Daisy pulls back. I’m not gay, OK? Panic in her voice.

OK . Angela is treading carefully because this is veering rapidly away from the script.

I’m not gay, OK?

So you kissed Melissa because…? It sounds accusatory but she’s trying to understand. A click of the latch and Benjy is standing in the doorway. Later, yeh? He backs out. She turns to Daisy. Did you join the church because of this? Suddenly it all fits together.

That’s not why I joined the church . The old anger in her voice. Why the hell is Mum doing this now?

Sorry , says Angela. She holds Daisy’s hands. Again a flash of Karen, real and possible daughters, the Daisy that might have been if the church didn’t have its claws in her. She should say, I’ll help. I’ll stay out of the way. Just tell me what you want me to do . But why is it any different from her being in love with a violent boyfriend? There are so many ways of crushing a human being. Are you going to talk to someone at church?

Why would I talk to someone at church?

What would they say?

What has this got to do with anything?

Listen to me , says Angela.

Daisy puts her face in her hands.

I love you. Maybe you’re gay, maybe you’re not. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me. But you have surrounded yourself with people who…

Daisy takes her face out of her hands. No. Stop this. You’re not listening to me. This has got nothing to do with the church. This has got nothing to do with you and your prejudices . Where is this stuff coming from? She’s opened a bottle of something poisonous but it has no label and she can’t find a way of putting the top back on. I made a mistake. I made a stupid mistake . She stands up.

Daisy, wait, I’m sorry .

Just…fuck off, OK? And the door bangs behind her.

Angela sits for a whole minute. The lopsided tick of the grandfather clock. Then she kneels and opens the door of the stove, takes an old edition of the Daily Telegraph from the basket and starts making balls of paper to place in the bed of ash. She is standing on the far side of the room watching herself. She lays a little raft of kindling along the top of the crumpled paper and takes the matches from the mantelpiece. She’s screwed up, hasn’t she, yet again. This has got nothing to do with you . A door had opened and she’d slammed it shut. Christ. Alex and Richard. She checked her watch. What a mess of a day.

♦

Everyone else had left the dining room so Dominic and Louisa were alone. Angela was having the conversation with Daisy that he should have had. What did he feel? Thankful that it was now Angela’s problem? Aggrieved at his exclusion? Shame at his procrastination? Mostly a return of the torpor that had laid him low before Waterstone’s, the sense of life going on elsewhere, too fast, too complex, too demanding to grasp as it swung occasionally through his purview.

But what Louisa felt mostly was anger, anger at Richard who was meant to stop her feeling scared, anger at herself for being so self-centred, anger at the stupid timing, discovering how dependent she was precisely when she discovered how fallible he was. She thought about him not being there and she was terrified by what might happen to her.

The living-room door opened and banged shut. Louisa jumped, thinking it might be Richard, but it was Daisy and things had obviously not gone well. Louisa disappeared into herself again. Dominic got to his feet. I’ll be back . He left the room and suddenly there was no one and the house was silent and she imagined running after him and looking in one room after another and finding them all empty and shouting and no one replying, just the sound of the wind and the rain hammering on the windows.

♦

They were well down the road now, past the junction, only a few hundred metres to go. The rain was easing a little, but Richard was leaning on him heavily, his steps becoming less regular and more unsteady. They fell clumsily onto a verge and Alex had great difficulty getting him to his feet. The ends of his fingers were yellow. Richard? But Richard’s words were slurred and Alex was ashamed of having imagined him being dead and because this was really starting to freak him out. Come on. Bloody walk, OK? I can’t do this on my own .

♦

Angela was kneeling in front of the open stove cupping a lit match. Richard had made the fire every day so far and it was disturbing to find herself stepping into his empty place. The paper caught. She sat back and closed the squeaky metal door. I’ve just been talking to Daisy .