Mark Haddon - The Red House

I’m not sure I want to hear this .

Daisy’s gay .

OK …said Louisa carefully. This was what scared her. How good Melissa was at keeping you on the back foot. The hoarder and user of secrets.

She tried to kiss me .

Melissa was too good a liar to risk inventing something as wild as this.

When we were out for a walk . She took the tea towel off the rail of the Aga and folded it neatly into a square one-eighth of its original size. I said it wasn’t really my thing .

It was a peace offering, something freshly killed brought back to the cave. Louisa didn’t want to be part of this, but it was too intriguing to drop. I thought she was a Christian .

I think she might be having a bit of trouble in that department .

Then Louisa put two and two together. The girls were friendly, then they weren’t friendly. Were you horrid to her about it?

I’m just worried about her, that’s all . Regaining her balance after being wrong-footed.

That wasn’t what I asked you .

Like I said, I told her I wasn’t into that kind of stuff .

Nor was that .

Why do you have to blame everything on me? Why is it always me who’s done something wrong? She spun and swept out of the kitchen.

Louisa would find a way of talking to Daisy tomorrow, apologise for whatever her daughter had done this time.

♦

So, tell me about the photos . Angela leant across the table and refilled Richard’s glass, the Cabernet Shiraz finally doing what the Nurofen had failed to do.

They’re Polaroids. Is that the word? The ones you had to shake .

Describe them to me . It sounds crazy. But this is her father.

OK. So …Richard rubs the corners of his mouth and looks over her head as if the pictures are hung, poster-sized, on the far wall. One must have been taken on holiday. He’s standing in front of a pillbox in the dunes. Normandy in 1968, I suspect, or possibly the Scilly Isles a couple of years later .

She is taken aback yet again by the clarity of her brother’s memory. But him, what does he look like?

He’s wearing one of those check shirts, thin brown stripes on a cream background . He’s enjoying this. You have thirty seconds to remember all the objects on the tray. His sleeves are rolled up, he’s smoking, he’s smoking in all three photos, actually. God knows how long he would have survived if the testicular cancer hadn’t got him .

His casualness grates, but she knows that they are navigating through strong currents and she must keep the tiller straight.

Number two. He’s leaning on the bonnet of the car, green Hillman Avenger, that long radiator grille with the square headlights at each end. Looks like he’s just polished it. I think there’s a shammy leather on the roof. He’s wearing a short-sleeved white shirt .

Tell me about him. Not his clothes but him .

There is something disturbing about her intensity. Do you really not remember?

Just tell me .

Thick black hair, sideburns, big man, big biceps . He doesn’t like this. It conjures his father a little too vividly. Rusted metal and sheer bulk and sea spray. Blood in his hair. He wonders whether it was not the gull, he wonders whether it was his father who hit him, whether he has misremembered. Why do you want to know so badly?

He’s my father . Wasn’t it obvious? If it was me who had the photographs and if you’d never seen them, wouldn’t you be curious?

No. I really don’t think I would .

Why not?

Because he was not a very nice man .

She shakes her head. Not disagreement, but disbelief.

Do you really not remember ?

She is trying to work out a solution which will allow them to disagree diplomatically. We all look back and see things differently . She says this quietly, amused almost, as if it is he who needs to be calmed down.

That’s true . He sits back and takes a sip of wine. He wants to let it go, send her the photographs, have done with it, but this is more than simply seeing things differently. Do you not remember him hitting us?

Everyone hit their kids back then . Though she is unsure precisely what Richard means by hitting .

I remember you being sick in the car. We were driving to Hunstanton one summer. You kept asking to pull over but he wouldn’t, as per usual. So you were sick and then he swerved into this gateway and took you out and put you over his knee and slapped your legs. He was so angry, he just kept on hitting you . The memory upsets him more than he expects.

Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to mess this up for me?

Because you are ill. The thought suddenly clear and sharp. He veers away. I think you were scared of him, too. And I think you’ve forgotten .

Dad was not a monster .

I’m not saying he was a monster .

Then what the hell are you saying?

I’m saying he got angry. I’m saying he didn’t care much about other people. I’m saying he didn’t know how to deal with children. And he scared me and I don’t particularly like looking at the photographs because it makes me remember what that felt like .

Is this what Mum told you? Is this her version?

I don’t remember Mum saying a single thing about him after he died. The grieving process, 1970 . He wonders if he should reach out and hold Angela’s hand but he is not very good at judging these things.

You and Mum , she says. You visited Dad in hospital, the day before he died. I wasn’t allowed to go. I hated you for that. I had this recurring dream in which you’d both killed him . She tries to make it sound like a joke but she can’t, because she still has the dream sometimes.

You didn’t want to go .

What?

Why on earth would you not be allowed to go?

Because that’s what Mum was like, because she enjoyed manipulating people, because she never wanted other people to be happy .

After he died, after she started drinking, when she realised she was pouring her life away, then she was difficult, then she enjoyed manipulating people . He pauses and readjusts his focus. I think it was the only power she had left .

Why wouldn’t I go to the hospital? He was my father .

He shrugs. He still can’t quite grasp why this is so important to her. I guess the extraordinary thing is that I wanted to go myself . He is looking for a way of saying this which isn’t accusatory. Why would anyone want to see their father dying. Me…? I don’t know. Maybe there was a doctor waiting to get out even then . He wonders, on some deep level, if he did indeed want his father to die, whether he went to make sure it was happening, to say good riddance, to be certain he wasn’t coming back.

Stop. Wait. This is too much .

Sorry . He holds up his hands.

She wants him to be wrong, but he’s not inventing it, is he? He has no axe to grind, and she has no story of her own to pit against his. She stands clumsily. I need to be on my own for a while .

Going upstairs her legs feel weak. Is Dominic still out on his walk? The room is empty. She sits on the edge of the bed. The blankness again. What year is this? That woman on the train, red string, liver-spotted hands. I can’t quite… Dad slapping her in the lay-by, a picture half forming on the wet grey surface of the shaken photo. If she has the past wrong, does she have the present wrong, too? Her father is vanishing again. The empty doorway. Stems and slime. Another figure materialising in the dark rectangle. Thickening in waves. A high buzzing sound. Karen. She has betrayed her, forgotten her, let her slip away. Rainbow-coloured windbreak, flicking the hair out of her eyes. She’s laughing and it is not a kind laugh. Her birthday. It’s tomorrow. In all the excitement over the photographs Angela had forgotten. She is going to be punished for this.