A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [48]
You looked at someone’s life like that and you never saw what was missing.
She washed up her sandwich plate and stacked it in the rack. The house seemed suddenly rather drab. The scale round the base of the taps. The cracks in the soap. The sad cactus.
Perhaps she wanted too much. Perhaps everyone wanted too much these days. The washer-dryer. The bikini figure. The feelings you had when you were twenty-one.
She headed upstairs and, as she changed into her clothes, she could feel herself slipping back into her old self.
I want to go to bed with you at night and I want to wake up with you in the morning.
David didn’t understand. You could say no. But you couldn’t have that kind of conversation and pretend it never happened.
She missed George.
37
George read the Peter Ackroyd book over a long lunch in a crowded and slightly substandard pizzeria on Westgate.
He had always thought of solitary diners as sad. But now that he was the solitary diner, he felt rather superior. On account of the book, mostly. Learning something while everyone else was wasting time. Like working at night.
After lunch he took a walk. The city center was not the best place for sauntering and it seemed a little absurd to hail a taxi in order to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere, so he began walking through Eastfield toward the ring road.
He would have to collect the car sometime. At night perhaps, to minimize the chance of bumping into Jean. But was it his car? The last thing he wanted was an unseemly argument. Or worse, to be accused of theft. Perhaps, all in all, it might be better to buy a new car.
He was walking in the wrong direction. He should have walked west. But walking west would have taken him toward Jean. And he did not want to be taken toward Jean, however picturesque the countryside in her vicinity.
He crossed the ring road, skirted the industrial estates and found himself striding, at last, between green fields.
For a while he felt invigorated by the cold air and the open sky and it seemed that he was getting all the benefits of a stout walk along the Helford, but without Brian’s company and six hours on a train.
Then an elderly factory loomed into view on his left-hand side. Rusted chimneys. Box ducts. Stained hoppers. It was not a thing of beauty. Nor was the broken fridge dumped in the layby up ahead.
The grayness of the sky and the unrelenting flatness of the surrounding fields began to weigh on him.
He wanted to be working on the studio.
He realized that he would no longer be able to work on the studio.
He would have to embark on some other project. A smaller project. A cheaper project. Gliding came to mind unbidden and had to be rapidly chased away.
Chess. Jogging. Swimming. Charity work.
He could still draw, of course. And drawing could be done anywhere with little expense.
It occurred to him that Jean might want to leave the house. To live somewhere else. With David. In which case he would still be able to work on the studio.
And this was the cheering thought which enabled him to turn round and begin walking energetically back into town.
By the time he reached the center it was growing dark. But it did not yet seem late enough for him to return to the hotel and take dinner in the restaurant. Luckily, he was passing a cinema and realized that he had not watched a film on the big screen for a good many years.
Training Day seemed to be a sleazy police thriller. Spy Kids was clearly for younger viewers and A Beautiful Mind, he recalled, was about someone going insane and was therefore probably best avoided.
He bought a ticket for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The reviews had been favorable and he remembered enjoying the book at some time in the dim and distant past. He had his ticket clipped and found himself a seat in the center of the auditorium.
A teenage girl sitting with a group of