A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [124]
“Give me a minute.” She pulled the rest of her clothes on and kissed George and said, “It’s going to be all right. I promise.”
Then she went to look after the rest of her family.
109
Jamie got out of bed and wandered into the loo.
There were knitted baby blue covers on the spare loo rolls and a set of hand-painted wall plates from the Costa Brava.
He’d woken up several times during the night, disturbed by a series of dreams in which he failed to stop grisly things happening to his father. In one of them Jamie looked down from an upstairs window to see his father, shrunk to about half his normal size and bleeding heavily, being dragged up the garden by a wolf. Consequently Jamie was rather tired and when he imagined the kind of breakfast that might be waiting for him downstairs (warm bacon with little knuckles of white gristle, stewy tea with full-fat milk…) it seemed more than he could bear.
He’d sleep on the sofa at his parents’ house tonight. Or in the marquee.
He packed his bags, checked the coast was clear, then tiptoed down the stairs. He was opening the door when the portly man-woman loomed out of the kitchen doorway, saying, “Would you like some breakfast?” and Jamie just ran.
110
Katie was lying in a deck chair on the roof terrace. She was looking down over Barcelona. But the terrace was the terrace outside their room in that hotel in San Gimignano. And she could see the ocean which you couldn’t in San Gimignano. The air smelt of something halfway between sun lotion and really good vanilla custard. Jacob was asleep, or staying with Mum and Dad in England, or just generally absent in a way that didn’t make her anxious. And actually it was a hammock not a deck chair.
Then Ray trod on the Playmobil knight and yelled, and Jacob yelled because Ray had broken the Playmobil knight and Katie was awake and she was getting married today and it was probably a moment you had to stop and savor, but savoring wasn’t really possible because by the time she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face the caterers were downstairs wondering how much of the kitchen they could colonize, so she had to jump-start Mum, and then Jacob was upset because Ronnie had finished the Bran Flakes and instead of apologizing or offering to go out and get some more from the village shop he was giving Jacob a sermonette on not always being able to have what you want, though the problem had been caused by Ronnie doing precisely that. Then Ed turned up and trod in the monumental pile of crap their bloody dog had left in the middle of the path and it was clearly going to carry on in this fashion pretty much till the end of the day.
111
Jamie drove away so fast he produced a tire squeal exiting the cul-de-sac.
He carried on feeling embarrassed by his behavior till he reached the main road when he slowed down and reminded himself that it was a genuinely crap bed-and-breakfast, that the owner was rude as well as strange (female to male transsexual was Jamie’s bet, but it wouldn’t be a very big bet), and Jamie was only staying there because he’d been ignominiously turfed out of his own bedroom (he had forgotten to pay, hadn’t he; sod it, he’d sort that out later). So he stopped feeling ashamed and felt indignant, which was healthier.
Then he imagined telling Katie the whole story (complete with the knitted loo roll covers and tire squeals) and wondering aloud precisely which guidebooks his mother had consulted in the library, and the indignation turned into amusement, which was healthier still.
By the time he pulled up outside his parents’ house he was feeling rather pleased with himself. Running away was not something he did. He tidied hotel rooms and sat through bad films and occasionally pretended to other people that Tony was just a very good friend. Which wasn’t good for the soul.
He used to hate it when Tony complained in restaurants or held Jamie’s hand ostentatiously in public places. But now Tony wasn’t around Jamie could see how important it was.