Mark Haddon - The Red House

Gymnastic? What were you planning?

♦

What happened? Mum looked as if she had been standing in an inch of foamy water for the last thirty minutes. The same vacant expression she’d had all day.

I think there must be a leak somewhere .

Warm damp air, that flooded cellar smell. Alex splashed across the floor and turned the machine off. Wet clothing slumped and levelled in the glass porthole. At home she’d be shouting and swearing. Go and get yourself a cup of tea and I’ll sort this out, OK?

Thank you, Alex . She walked off into the kitchen, the damp slap of her shoes receding.

Christ . He squatted and ran his hand round the front hatch. Dry. Something at the back, then, or underneath. He heaved on the big white box, rocking it gently from side to side so that it boomed and scraped out of its recess. He peered into the dark between the side panel and the plastered wall. Darkness, two disconnected pipe ends, a broken circlip lying in the suds.

My God . Dad was standing in the doorway, like a bloody lemon as usual, letting someone else get their hands dirty. Washing machine broken?

No. It’s on fire . He wanted to go over and punch his father. But the china doll…Did Mum know? Was that why she was acting so strangely? She seemed so fragile. He shouldn’t do anything to upset her. He reached into the recess and picked up the circlip. Tendrils of black slime, the little metal ridges sheared smooth where it had come free. He stood up. You find a mop and clean this place up. I’m going out to the shed .

♦

The little fold where the curve of her bottom met the top of her thighs. He ran his hand down her back. The most adult activity, yet it made you feel like a child again, at home with your own nakedness, touching another person, skin to skin.

Something hovering that he could almost touch, some secret which had eluded him for a long time. But the warmth of her body under his hand, the quiet of this room, distant voices in the garden. He let it drift away.

♦

In the corner of the shed, a crumbling wooden workbench, toy piano in sun-bleached red plastic, fishing net, spark plugs, filthy webs over everything. He picked up a coil of rusty garden wire thin enough to cut with the kitchen scissors. Red electrical tape. He wiped the roll clean on the leg of his jeans. Three-inch nail. Use it like a tourniquet. He sat down on the roller, light-headed suddenly. He hated being trapped inside other people’s problems. He kept his life simple. Do your work, choose good friends and keep your promises. He didn’t deserve this crap. He’d been dreaming about Coed-y-Brenin for weeks, nothing to do but cycle and eat and sleep. It scared him now, something happening to Mum while he was away. The idea that he might not have a home to come back to.

Are you making something? It was Benjy.

Washing machine’s bust .

He’s being a man , said Daisy.

He didn’t want to be a man. He wanted to run away with them. But he couldn’t say it. This gulf between them, a sudden flash of what Dad might be going through, of what he might have been going through for years. Fear and disgust, thinking how similar they might be after all.

See you later, yeh? Daisy laughed. Send out the helicopter if we’re not back in two hours .

♦

Little princess . She really did believe it on some level, the old dream, not that her real parents would come to claim her one day, purring Bentley, chauffeur, paint like a mirror. Nothing that naïve, simply that they were out there somewhere. Because she looked at Mum’s brothers and the word uncle made her skin crawl. Three years since she last saw them. Never again, hopefully. Fat and badly dressed, smelling of cigarette smoke and fried food. That awful dog with the patch of hair shaved off and the stitches crusty with dried blood, sleeping on the sofa. At least Dad wanted to be rich. You looked at Grannie and Gramps and you saw where it came from, polish on the table every day, antimacassars and family photos and the row of china figurines. But she was Mum’s daughter, too. The fear that something genetic might rise and up and claim her if she wasn’t strong enough. That period when Mum was fucking everything in sight, echoes of that shitty estate, people with nothing to live for.

♦

It takes twenty-five minutes to attach one stupid bit of plastic to another but there’s no way Alex is going to ask Dad for help. The inane conversation behind him stops eventually, thank goodness. It’s great for a few days but I think I’d kill myself after a month in a place like this . Fuckwit. The splash of the mop and the scrape of the bucket, the rhythm just slow enough to show that he wasn’t putting any effort in. Will he make everything worse or better if he confronts Dad? He wants someone older and wiser to tell him what to do, but there is no one. He is out of the harbour mouth now and he can feel the long sway of the ocean proper. One more turn of the nail. He unrolls a length of electrical tape and bites it off with his teeth. Leaning into the recess he tapes the nail to the body of the pipe to keep his makeshift tourniquet tight. Round once, three, seven times. It’s not pretty but it looks serviceable. He stands up. Soiled wet elbows, soiled wet knees.

Done? His father opens the back door and pours another bucket of dirty water into the stone gutter.

Alex twists the big dial to Drain and restarts the machine. The drum turns over a few times, then picks up speed, juddering. He looks into the recess. The makeshift junction holds without leaking. Result.

As he’s leaving the room, Dominic touches his arm. Alex .

Alex fixes his attention on the light switch.

What’s the matter?

Alex steps back very slowly to disengage from his father’s touch. Like two spacecraft undocking. If he says anything now he will explode. He walks slowly towards the door.

Alex…?

♦

She didn’t know who she was any more, that was the truth of it. The newel post, her fairy-tale father, ‘My Funny Valentine’. She had given up trying to remember her own bedroom. It was like moving to the edge of a cliff and gazing down through miles of empty air. You thought you were anchored by the tick of the clock, the sound of your children in the garden, these hands gripping the arms of this chair. Reality. It meant nothing. It was the story that mattered, the story that held you together, the satisfaction of turning those pages, going back to favourite scenes over and over, a book at bedtime, the reassurance of it. Saying, This happened…Then that happened …Saying, This is me . But what is her story? Losing the plot . The deep truths hidden in the throwaway phrase. She was coming, wasn’t she? Karen was coming. Her vengeful little angel.

♦

Kick , says Daisy. Kick your legs right up . And he manages it, just, despite gymnastics totally not being his forte. She holds his ankles and yanks them higher to straighten his knees.

And the world is suddenly upside down, his face fat with blood, a delicious wobble in his arms. He’s like Atlas, carrying the planet on his upturned hands. And then he can’t hold it any longer. His arms give way and he crumples onto the grass, shrieking and laughing and rolling down the hill. But he lands on a stiff little thorn branch. Shit bugger bloody, shit bugger bloody .

Benjy…?

He gets to his feet and does a little anaesthetic dance. The pain is going down. But then he takes his hand away and sees the four red lines cut into the soft flesh of his underarm, tiny red drops blooming. He starts to cry and Daisy holds her arms open. Hey, Action Man . So he comes and slumps in between her legs and she hugs him.