A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [122]
Ray didn’t say anything.
“So…?” asked Katie.
Ray held up his finger, meaning Wait, or Be quiet. And this was odd, too.
“OK,” said Katie.
Ray looked toward the window, so Katie looked toward the window, and Ray said, “Five, four, three, two, one,” and absolutely nothing happened for a few seconds, and Ray said, “Shit,” quietly and then fireworks erupted from the field next to the restaurant, fizzy white snakes, purple sea urchins, yellow starbursts, weeping willows of incandescent green light. And those whumps like someone hitting cardboard boxes with a golf club that took her straight back to bonfires and baked potatoes in silver foil and the smell of sparkler smoke.
Everyone in the restaurant was watching, and each explosion was followed by a little ooh or aah from somewhere in the room, and Katie said, “So this is…”
“Yup.”
“Jesus, Ray, this is amazing.”
“You’re welcome,” said Ray, who wasn’t watching the fireworks at all, but watching her face watching the fireworks. “It was either this or Chanel No. 5. I thought you’d prefer this.”
106
Jean seldom saw Douglas and Maureen. Partly because they lived in Dundee. And partly because…well, to be frank, because Douglas was a bit like Ray. Only more so. He ran a haulage company for starters. One of those large men who are excessively proud of having no airs and graces.
Her opinion of people like Ray, however, had shifted over the preceding twenty-four hours, and she was rather enjoying Douglas’s company tonight.
She’d already had a couple of glasses of wine when Maureen asked what was wrong with George, so she thought To hell with it and told them he was suffering from stress.
To which Maureen replied, “Doug went through that a couple of years ago.”
Douglas finished his prawn cocktail and lit a cigarette and put his arm round Maureen and let her talk for him.
“Had a blackout driving the transit just north of Edinburgh. Came round scraping down the crash barrier on the central reservation doing seventy. Brain scans. Blood tests. Doctor said it was tension.”
“So we sold one of the artics and buggered off to Portugal for three weeks,” said Douglas. “Left Simon to run the office. Knowing when to let go of the reins. That’s the thing.”
Jean was going to say, “I didn’t know.” But they knew she didn’t know. And they all knew why. Because she’d never been interested. And she felt bad about this. She said, “I’m really sorry. I should have asked you to stay at the house.”
“With Eileen?” asked Maureen, raising her eyebrows.
“Instead,” said Jean.
“I hope she’s not bringing that bloody dog to the wedding,” said Douglas, and they all laughed.
And Jean wondered briefly whether she could tell them about the scissors, before deciding that was taking things a bit far.
107
Jamie had never babysat before. Not properly.
He’d looked after Jacob a couple of times when he was tiny. For an hour or two. While he was asleep, mostly. He’d even changed a nappy. It didn’t actually need changing. He’d got the smells wrong and when he took it off it was empty. He just couldn’t bring himself to reattach something containing urine.
But he was not going to be babysitting again. Not until Jacob was twelve at least.
This realization came to him fairly rapidly when Jacob called him into the bathroom, having finished his poo, and Jamie watched him slide off the toilet seat a little too early, dragging the final section across the seat and leaving it hanging from the rim like a wet chocolate stalactite.
Not baby poo. But actual human feces. With a hint of dog.
Jamie armed himself with a rudimentary oven glove of toilet paper and held his nose.
And obviously there were worse jobs in the world (rat catcher, astronaut…) but Jamie had never realized quite how far down the table parenting came.
Jacob was inordinately proud of his achievement, and the rest of the evening’s activities (scrambled egg on toast, Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, a very, very soapy bath) were punctuated by Jacob retelling his toilet adventure on at least twenty occasions.
Jamie never did