Mark Haddon - The Red House

Trade Descriptions Act and all that. I wouldn’t want you to think…It’s not a binding contract .

You’re exhausted . She put her arm around him. Let’s talk about this later, when you’re warm again .

♦

How extraordinary that it should happen so quickly. Like flipping a coin. Inexplicable that she had not known before. Had it been standing behind her all along like a pantomime villain, visible to everyone apart from her? What strangers we were to ourselves, changed in the twinkling of an eye. Jack, too, of course, she understood now, that sense of betrayal, stone circles at midsummer, all those signs that meant nothing till the sun poured into the burial chamber. Katy Perry, Maurice , that article in the Guardian magazine, Mulholland Drive . She wanted to be held by someone who had been here before. Lesbian. The word like some creature lifted from a rock pool, all pincers and liquids and strangeness. Melissa of all people. What a fool she’d been. The church. There wasn’t really an argument, was there? Meg, Anushka, Lesley, Tim. Fait accompli. And the walls came tumbling down . So who was she now? She sank down so that she was squashed into the nook beside the wardrobe. The safety of a tight space. She hadn’t done this since she was six, hiding from the monsters. She lifted Harry from the carpet and hugged him tight, rocking gently back and forth. Seedy passageways and sad hotels. Dogshit through the letter box.

Bizarre in a good way . No mariachi trumpets, no thunderbolt. But he just shrugged and accepted it. Mr Normal. What more did she want? When you get the chance to be saved, you have to take it . Silvered Bible flashing on the beach. How quickly she had found her faith. The twinkling of an eye. And now the footmen were turning back into mice and she was sitting in her sooty rags by the fire.

♦

Dominic stopped halfway up the stairs. He imagined Alex in hospital, imagined Benjy in hospital. Like a lump of meat he couldn’t swallow, finding it hard to breathe. His own fear of anything medical, just that blood pressure cuff at the doctor’s, the tear of the Velcro and that squeezy black bulb. Maybe she was moist and wretched, but when was the last time he had felt real joy? She’d wanted to move to New Zealand, but he could feel the same pull, clean air, blank slate. And how far had he got? Life is not a rehearsal . The irksome truth of barroom platitudes. He had to call her.

♦

Richard was falling asleep against her shoulder, twitching gently like a dog dreaming. What was it about this house? Throwing everyone out of kilter, her and Richard, Angela in the kitchen at night, Daisy and Melissa being enemies then friends then enemies again, her own stupid confession. That chill, maybe it was our own ghosts. Maybe that was why she hated old houses, because we all had past lives that rose up. As if you could wipe out history with downlighting and scatter cushions. You might have married the wrong person . Perhaps he could see what she had spent so long trying not to see, that she was still the girl with the second-hand shoes, hanging over that woozy drop at the Hanwell flat, scooters and discos and Penny flashing her knickers so they could steal packs of John Player Special from the corner shop. Working in a petrol station now, that weird chance encounter last time back. The fire was going out, but if she moved she might wake him and she was scared that this might be the last time she was able to hold him like this.

♦

They were having an improvised buffet lunch at the dining table when they heard footsteps on the stairs. Daisy paused in the doorway looking uneasy. It took Alex several seconds to remember because he’d helped dress a naked Richard five minutes ago, which had kind of taken up most of his short-term memory. He glanced across at Melissa. Fucking dyke . He decided to make this as obvious as he could. Daisy …He lifted his arm so that she walked over and stepped under it and let him squeeze her shoulders. He looked directly at Melissa and saw it in her eyes, she knew that he knew, Mum, too, a beaten look about her. And it was glorious and funny, seeing his parents and Melissa on the same team for once, at the other end of the pitch, several goals down. He turned to Daisy. What can I serve you from this fine spread?

But Daisy said, What on earth is that?

Tolliver , said Benjy, because the owl was sitting under its big dusty belljar in the centre of the table.

Cupboard under the stairs , said Dominic, trying to pull the family back together. Belongs to the owners .

The owners , said Daisy. She’d never thought about them, looking around as if she might be able to see them.

Alex did her a plate of cheese and oatcakes and assorted dips and they sat side by side eating, their radiant togetherness gradually driving everyone else out of the room apart from Benjy. Mum and Dad both touching Daisy on the shoulder as they exited, as if they were leaving a wake and she were the bereaved wife. Then they were gone and Benjy was building a model bridge out of hummus and carrots so Alex said, quietly, Are you going to get a girlfriend, then?

Alex. God. It’s not like buying a toaster .

My bad .

Girlfriend. The lurch of the world. She remembered a freezing January morning. Coming out of the Wheelan Centre. Smoky breath and mauve sky and the street lights going off. She and Lauren had held hands for ten, fifteen seconds, no more, then someone was walking towards them along the pavement and they’d let go. Like cuddling up when you were half asleep and pretending it never happened. Lauren. For now we see only as a reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face . It wasn’t simple, was it, or quick? The coin flipped, and flipped, and flipped.

Time speeding up now, Lauren answering a door in a street Daisy doesn’t recognise. Husband, two kids, the telly on in the background, face tired and lined but beautiful. We were at school together…? Are you sure …? Turning and running down the street in tears. And now she was crying for real and Alex rubbed her back and said, Come on, girl . Benjy looked up. Is Daisy OK? And Alex was genuinely unsure if she was crying because she was happy or sad. It was all getting a bit beyond him. So Benjy got off his bench and came round and sat on the other side of Daisy and wrapped his arms around her and said, Daisy sandwich , because that’s what they used to do with him when he was sad. They squeezed and let go.

Shit , said Daisy, wiping her eyes with an abandoned tea towel. Shitting shit .

♦

They play cards, they eat toast, they watch Monsters Inc . and Richard says, This is actually rather good , like the queen getting a mobile phone for Christmas, and everyone laughs because he has suddenly become more teasable. The chequered rug, perhaps, the fogginess in his voice, the way Louisa is nursing his foot. Though it is extraordinary, isn’t it? thinks Angela. She can remember the thrill of getting a colour television, she can remember when the Thunderbirds puppets were at the cutting edge of animation despite the fact that you could see the wires used to raise their eyebrows, whereas now…? You can’t tell the real dinosaurs from the animated ones , as someone said somewhere.

Melissa tries to ring civilisation but they’ve swung out of the signal’s orbit once again, so that when Angela challenges her to a game of Scrabble she is so spectacularly bored that she agrees and the two of them play as if it is a fight to the death. Orts. Beguine. P alanx for ninety-five. Benjy and Alex concoct a fantasy in which the ginger man and the girl with Charlie’s Angels hair are merely outer coverings for jelly-like aliens who feed on elderly people. Richard listens to Idomeneo (Colin Davis, Francisco Araiza, Barbara Hendricks…). Daisy looks at the pages of Dracula but the words just swim. Alex reads Andy McNab and Louisa reads Stephen Fry and Dominic goes away to start making supper and the rain stops and the world looks as if it has been serviced and mended and given back.