A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [5]
“Right,” said George. “Right.”
He would have to make a speech at the reception, a speech that said nice things about Ray. Jamie would refuse to come to the wedding. Jean would refuse to allow Jamie to refuse to come to the wedding. Ray was going to be a member of the family. They would see him all the time. Until they died. Or emigrated.
What was Katie doing? You could not control children, he knew that. Making them eat vegetables was hard enough. But marrying Ray? She had a 2:1 in philosophy. And that chap who had climbed into her car in Leeds. She had given the police a part of his ear.
Jacob appeared in the doorway wielding a bread knife. “I’m an effelant and I’m going to catch the train and…and…and…and this is my tusks.”
Katie raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure that’s an entirely good idea.”
Jacob ran back into the kitchen squealing with joy. Katie stepped into the doorway after him. “Come here, monkey biscuits.”
And George was alone with Ray.
Ray’s brother was in jail.
Ray worked for an engineering company which made high-spec camshaft milling machines. George had absolutely no idea what these were.
“Well.”
“Well.”
Ray crossed his arms. “So, how’s the studio going?”
“Hasn’t fallen down yet.” George crossed his arms, realized that he was copying Ray and uncrossed them. “Not that there’s enough of it to fall down.”
They were silent for a very long time indeed. Ray rearranged three small pebbles on the flagstones with the toe of his right shoe. George’s stomach made an audible noise.
Ray said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
For a short, horrified moment George thought Ray might be telling the truth.
“My being divorced and everything.” He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “I’m a lucky guy, George. I know that. I’ll look after your daughter. You don’t need to worry on that score.”
“Good,” said George.
“We’d like to foot the bill,” said Ray, “unless you have any objections. I mean, you’ve already had to do it once.”
“No. You shouldn’t have to pay,” said George, glad to be able to pull rank a little. “Katie’s our daughter. We should make sure she’s sent off in style.” Sent off? It made Katie sound like a ship.
“Fair play to you,” said Ray.
It wasn’t simply that Ray was working class, or that he spoke with a rather strong northern accent. George was not a snob, and whatever his background, Ray had certainly made good, judging by the size of his car and Katie’s descriptions of their house.
The main problem, George felt, was Ray’s size. He looked like an ordinary person who had been magnified. He moved more slowly than other people, the way the larger animals in zoos did. Giraffes. Buffalo. He lowered his head to go through doorways and had what Jamie unkindly but accurately described as “strangler’s hands.”
During thirty-five years on the fringes of the manufacturing industry George had worked with manly men of all stripes. Big men, men who could open beer bottles with their teeth, men who had killed people during active military service, men who, in Ted Monk’s charming phrase, would shag anything that stood still for long enough. And though he had never felt entirely at home in their company, he had rarely felt cowed. But when Ray visited, he was reminded of being with his older brother’s friends when he was fourteen, the suspicion that there was a secret code of manhood to which he was not privy.
“Honeymoon?” asked George.
“Barcelona,” said Ray.
“Nice,” said George, who was briefly unable to remember which country Barcelona was in. “Very nice.”
“Hope so,” said Ray. “Should be a bit cooler that time of year.”
George asked how Ray’s work was going and Ray said they’d taken over a firm in Cardiff which made horizontal machining centers.
And it was all right. George could do the bluff repartee about cars and sport if pressed. But it was like being a sheep in the Nativity play. No amount of applause was going to make the job seem dignified or stop him wanting to run home to a book about fossils.
“They’ve got big clients in Germany. The company were trying to get me to shuttle