A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [30]
He tried moving back to the armchair, for propriety’s sake if nothing else, but he couldn’t do it, as if the terrifying thoughts now haunting him were borne on some ferocious wind which was partly blocked by the furniture.
He continued to rock back and forth and resigned himself to keeping the mooing at as low a volume as possible.
24
Jamie parked round the corner from Katie’s house and composed himself.
You never did escape, of course.
School might have been shit, but at least it was simple. If you could remember your nine times table, steer clear of Greg Pattershall and draw cartoons of Mrs. Cox with fangs and bat wings you pretty much had it sorted.
None of which got you very far at thirty-three.
What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older.
You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone’s feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people’s shit. At nine or ninety.
He met Daniel at college. And at first it was a relief to find someone who wasn’t shagging everything in sight now they were away from home. Then, when the thrill of having a steady boyfriend faded, he realized he was living with a bird-watching Black Sabbath fan and the horrifying thought occurred to him that he might be cut from the same cloth, that even being a sexual pariah in the eyes of the good burghers of Peterborough had failed to make him interesting or cool.
He’d tried celibacy. The only problem was the lack of sex. After a couple of months you’d settle for anything and find yourself being sucked off behind a large shrub at the top of the heath, which was fine until you came, and the fairy dust evaporated and you realized Prince Charming had a lisp and a weird mole on his ear. And there were Sunday evenings when reading a book was like pulling teeth, so you ate a tin of sweetened condensed milk with a spoon in front of French and Saunders and something toxic seeped under the sash windows and you began to wonder what in God’s name the point of it all was.
He didn’t want much. Companionship. Shared interests. A bit of space.
The problem was that no one else knew what they wanted.
He’d managed three half-decent relationships since Daniel. But something always changed after six months, after a year. They wanted more. Or less. Nicholas thought they should spice up their love life by sleeping with other people. Steven thought he should move in. With his cats. And Olly slid into a deep depression after his father died so that Jamie turned from a partner into some kind of social worker.
Fast-forward six years and he and Shona were in the pub after work when she said that she was going to try and fix him up with a cute builder who was decorating the Prince’s Avenue flats. But she was drunk and Jamie couldn’t imagine how Shona, of all people, had correctly ascertained the sexual orientation of a working-class person. So he forgot about the conversation completely until they were over in Muswell Hill, and Jamie was doing a walk-through, zapping the interior measurements and having a vague sexual fantasy about the guy painting the kitchen when Shona came in and said, “Tony, this is Jamie. Jamie, this is Tony,” and Tony turned round and smiled and Jamie realized that Shona was, in truth, a wiser old bird than he’d given her credit for.
She slipped away and he and Tony talked about property development and cycling and Tunisia, with a glancing reference to the ponds on the heath to make absolutely sure they were singing from the same hymn sheet and Tony pulled a printed business card from his back pocket and said, “If you ever need anything…” which Jamie did, very much.
He waited a couple of nights so as not to seem desperate, then met him for a drink in Highgate. Tony told a story about bathing naked with friends off Studland and how they had to empty wastebins and turn