A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [123]
His father spent the rest of the evening in the bedroom.
After Jacob finally went to bed Jamie put his feet up in front of Mission: Impossible (there was a stockpile of action videos under the television for some unaccountable reason).
Halfway through the film Jamie paused the tape and went to pee and check up on his father. His father was not in the bedroom. Or the bathroom. His father was not in any of the rooms, upstairs or downstairs. Jamie went back and checked in cupboards and under beds, petrified that his father had done something stupid.
He was on the verge of ringing the police when he glanced into the darkened garden and saw his father standing in the center of the lawn. He opened the door and stepped outside. His father was swaying a little.
Jamie walked over and stood beside him. “How’s things?”
His father looked up at the sky. “Incredible to think it’s all going to end.”
He’d been drinking. Jamie could smell it. Wine? Whiskey? It was hard to tell.
“Music. Books. Science. Everyone talks about progress, but…” His father was still looking upward.
Jamie put a hand on his father’s arm to prevent him toppling backward.
“A few million years and all this will be a big empty rock. No evidence we even existed. No one to even notice that there’s no evidence. No one looking for evidence. Just…space. And some other big rocks. Whirling around.”
Jamie hadn’t heard someone talk like this since getting massively stoned with Scunny in college. “Perhaps we should get you back inside.”
“Don’t know whether it’s terrifying or reassuring,” said his father. “You know, everyone being forgotten. You. Me. Hitler. Mozart. Your mother.” He looked down and rubbed his hands. “What’s the time, by the way?”
Jamie checked his watch. “Ten twenty.”
“Better head back inside.”
Jamie guided his father gently toward the light of the kitchen door.
He paused on the threshold and turned to Jamie. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“For listening. Don’t think I could cope otherwise.”
“You’re welcome,” said Jamie, locking the door as his father made his way toward the stairs.
When everyone returned home, Jamie took Ray aside and said his father was looking a little wobbly. He asked if Ray could keep a weather eye open overnight and not mention anything to Katie. Ray said it would be no problem.
Then he got into his car and drove to the bed-and-breakfast in Yarwell, where the locked door was answered by a large, caftaned person of indeterminate gender who was rather tetchy about Jamie not having rung to say he would be arriving so late.
108
The following morning Jean woke up, did her ablutions and pottered back to the bedroom.
George was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing the hangdog expression he’d been wearing for the last few days. She did her best to ignore him. If she said anything she was going to lose her temper.
Maybe she was insensitive, maybe she was old-fashioned, but it seemed to her that there was nothing so burdensome you couldn’t put it aside for the day of your daughter’s wedding.
She was stepping into her slip when he said, “I’m sorry,” and she turned round and she could see that he really meant it.
“I’m so sorry, Jean.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. That it was all right? Because it wasn’t all right. She could see that.
She sat down and took his hand and held it. Maybe that was all you could do.
She remembered the children, when they were little, teaching them to say sorry when they’d hit each other or broken something. And it was just a word to them. A way of papering over the cracks. Then you heard someone say sorry properly and you realized how powerful it was. The magic word that opened the door of the cave.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“I don’t think there is anything you can do,” said George.
She sat beside him on the bed and put her arms around him. He didn’t move.
She said, “We’ll get you through this.”
Seconds