A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [35]
Only at one point did George seem lost for words. David was talking about Martin Donnelly’s wife having to go into hospital for tests. She turned round and saw George sitting with his head between his knees. Her first thought was that he’d poisoned everyone with his cooking and was about to vomit. But he sat back, wincing and rubbing his leg, apologized for the interruption, then headed off to do a circuit of the kitchen to ease a muscle spasm.
By the end of the meal he’d drunk an entire bottle of red wine and turned into something of a comic.
“At the risk of boring Jean with an old story, a couple of weeks later we got our photos back. Except they weren’t our photos. They were photos of some young man and his girlfriend. In the altogether. Jamie suggested we write ‘Do you want an enlargement?’ on the back before we returned them.”
Over coffee David talked about Mina and the children, and as they stood on the steps watching him drive away on a little cloud of pink smoke, George said, “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?”
“Of course not,” said Jean.
She expected him to put an arm round her, at the very least. But he just clapped his hands together, said, “Right. Washing up,” and headed back inside as if this were simply the next part of the fun.
26
Katie had had a shitty week.
The festival programs arrived on Monday and Patsy, who still couldn’t spell program, shocked everyone by knowing a fact, that the photo of Terry Jones on page seven was actually a photo of Terry Gilliam. Aidan bawled Katie out because admitting he’d cocked up wasn’t one of the skills he’d learnt on his MBA. She resigned. He refused to accept her resignation. And Patsy cried because people were shouting.
Katie left early to pick up Jacob from nursery and Jackie said he’d bitten two other children. She took him to one side and gave him a lecture about being like the meanie crocodile in A Kiss Like This. But Jacob wasn’t doing recriminations that day. So she cut her losses and drove him home where she withheld his yogurt until they’d had a conversation about biting, which generated the same kind of frustration Dr. Benson probably felt when they were doing Kant at university.
“It was my tractor,” said Jacob.
“Actually it’s everyone’s tractor,” said Katie.
“I was playing with it.”
“And Ben shouldn’t have grabbed it from you. But that doesn’t give you the right to bite him.”
“I was playing with it.”
“If you’re playing with something and someone tries to grab it you have to shout and tell Jackie or Bella or Susie.”
“You said it’s wrong to shout.”
“It’s OK to shout if you’re really, really cross. But you’re not allowed to bite. Or to hit someone. Because you don’t want other people to bite you or hit you, do you?”
“Ben bites people,” said Jacob.
“But you don’t want to be like Ben.”
“Can I have my yogurt now?”
“Not until you understand that biting people is a bad thing to do.”
“I understand,” said Jacob.
“Saying you understand is not the same thing as understanding.”
“But he tried to grab my tractor.”
Ray came in at this point and made the technically correct suggestion that it was unhelpful to hug Jacob while she was telling him off, and she was able to demonstrate immediately a situation where you were allowed to shout at someone if you were really, really cross.
Ray remained infuriatingly calm until Jacob told him not to make Mummy angry because “You’re not my real Daddy,” at which point he walked into the kitchen and snapped the breadboard into two pieces.
Jacob fixed her with a thirty-five-year-old stare and said, tartly, “I’m going to eat my yogurt now,” then went off to consume it in front of Thomas the