A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [24]
The human mind was not designed for sunbathing and light novels. Not on consecutive days at any rate. The human mind was designed for doing stuff. Making spears, hunting antelope…
The Dordogne in 1984 was the nadir. Diarrhea, moths like flying hamsters, the blowtorch heat. Awake at three in the morning on a damp and lumpy mattress. Then the storm. Like someone hammering sheets of tin. Lightning so bright it came through the pillow. In the morning sixty, seventy dead frogs turning slowly in the pool. And at the far end something larger and furrier, a cat perhaps, or the Franzettis’ dog, which Katie was poking with a snorkel.
He needed a drink. He walked back across the lawn and was removing his dirty boots when he saw Jamie in the kitchen, dumping his bag and putting the kettle on.
He stopped and watched, the way he might stop and watch if there was a deer in the garden, which there was occasionally.
Jamie was a bit of a secretive creature himself. Not that he hid things. But he was reserved. Rather old-fashioned now that George came to think about it. Different clothes and hairstyle and you could see him lighting a cigarette in a Berlin alleyway, or obscured by steam on a station platform.
Unlike Katie, who didn’t know the meaning of the word reserved. The only person he knew who could bring up the subject of menstruation over lunch. And you still knew she was hiding things, things that were going to be dropped on you at random intervals. Like the wedding. Next week she would doubtless announce that she was pregnant.
Dear God. The wedding. Jamie must have come about the wedding.
He could do it. If Jamie wanted a double bed he would say the spare room was being used by someone else, and book him into an upmarket bed-and-breakfast somewhere. Just so long as George didn’t have to use the word boyfriend.
He came round from his reverie and realized that Jamie was waving from inside the kitchen and looking a little troubled by George’s lack of response.
He waved back, removed his other boot and went inside.
“What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“Oh, just popping in,” said Jamie.
“Your mother didn’t mention anything.”
“I didn’t ring.”
“Never mind. I’m sure she can stretch lunch to three.”
“It’s OK. I wasn’t planning on staying. Tea?” asked Jamie.
“Thank you.” George got the digestives out while Jamie put a bag into a second mug.
“So. This wedding,” said Jamie.
“What about it?” asked George, trying to sound as if the subject had not yet occurred to him.
“What do you think?”
“I think…” George sat down and adjusted the chair so that it was precisely the right distance from the table. “I think you should bring someone.”
There. That sounded pretty neutral as far as he could tell.
“No, Dad,” said Jamie, wearily. “I mean Katie and Ray. What do you think about them getting married?”
It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time.
“Well?” Jamie asked again.
“To be honest, I’m trying to maintain a Buddhist detachment about the whole thing to stop it taking ten years off my life.”
“But she’s serious, yeh?”
“Your sister is serious about everything. Whether she’ll be serious about it in a fortnight’s time is anyone’s guess.”
“But what did she say?”
“Just that they were getting married. Your mother can fill you in on the emotional side of things. I’m afraid I was stuck talking to Ray.”
Jamie put a mug of tea down in front of George and raised his eyebrows. “Bet that was a white-knuckle thrill ride.”
And there it was, that little door, opening briefly.
They had never done the father-son stuff. A couple of Saturday afternoons at Silverstone racetrack. Putting up the garden shed together. That was about it.
On the other hand, he saw friends doing the father-son stuff and as far as he could see it amounted to little more than sitting in adjacent seats