A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [56]
A porter opened the door, he stepped into the noise and glare of the morning and began walking.
The air seemed to be filled with smells designed specifically to test his stomach to its very limit: car fumes, cooked breakfasts, cigarette smoke, bleach…He breathed through his mouth.
He was going home. He needed to talk to someone. And Jean was the only person he could talk to. As for the scene in the bedroom, they could deal with that later.
Indeed, at this point in time, dealing with the scene in the bedroom seemed less of a problem than taking a bus. The five-minute walk to the station felt like crossing the Alps and when his bus arrived he was packed into a confined space with thirty unwashed people and shaken vigorously for twenty-five minutes.
Having disembarked in the village he sat for a few minutes on the bench by the bus stop to gather his wits and let the grinding throb in his head die down a little.
What was he going to say? Under normal circumstances he would never have confessed to Jean that he was going insane. But under normal circumstances he would not be going insane. Hopefully his bedraggled state would engender sympathy without his having to explain too much.
He got to his feet, lifted his rucksack, took a deep breath and walked toward the house.
When he stepped through the front door she was standing in the kitchen.
“George.”
He deposited his rucksack by the stairs and waited for her to come into the hall. He spoke very quietly in order to keep the pain to a minimum. “I think I may be going mad.”
“Where have you been?” Jean said this quite loudly. Or maybe it just sounded loud. “We’ve been worried sick.”
“I stayed in a hotel,” said George.
“A hotel?” said Jean. “But you look as if—”
“I was feeling…Well, as I was saying I think I might be—”
“What’s that on your head?” asked Jean.
“Where?”
“There.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that,” said Jean.
“I fell over and hit a door frame,” explained George.
“A door frame?”
“In the hotel.”
Jean asked whether he had been drinking.
“Yes. But not when I banged my head. I’m sorry. Could you talk a little more quietly?”
“Why on earth were you staying in a hotel?” said Jean.
It was not meant to be happening like this. He was the one who was graciously putting certain matters to one side. He was the one who deserved the benefit of the doubt.
His head hurt so much.
“Why didn’t you go to Cornwall?” said Jean. “Brian was ringing, wondering what had happened.”
“I need to sit down.” He made his way to the kitchen and found a chair which screeched horribly on the tiles. He sat and cradled his forehead.
Jean followed him. “Why didn’t you call me, George?”
“You were…” He nearly said it. Out of spite, mostly. Luckily he did not have the words. The sexual act was like going to the lavatory. It was not something one talked about, least of all in one’s own kitchen at nine-thirty in the morning.
And as he struggled and failed to find the words, the image came to mind again, that man’s scrotum, her sagging thighs, his buttocks, the warm air, the grunting. And he felt something like a blow to his belly, a deep, deep wrongness, partly fear, partly disgust, partly something way beyond either of these things, as disturbing as the sensation he might have felt if he looked out of the window and saw that the house was surrounded by ocean.
He did not want to find the words. If he described it to another human being he would never be free of the picture. And with this realization came a kind of release.
There was no need to describe it to another human being. He could forget about it. He could put it to the back of his mind. If it lay undisturbed for long enough it would fade and lose its power.
“George, what were you doing in a hotel?”
She was angry with him. She had