A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [65]
“He’s in the middle of having a nervous breakdown.”
“He’s certainly not very well.”
“He can’t leave the bedroom.”
“Actually, he does come down occasionally,” said Mum. “To make tea and go to the video shop.”
Katie said, quietly but firmly, “You can’t leave Dad. Not at the moment. Not while he’s like this.”
Katie had never stood up for Dad before. She felt oddly noble and grown up, putting her prejudices to one side.
“I’m not planning to leave your father,” said Mum. “I just wanted…I just wanted to tell you.” She leaned over and took Katie’s hand for a few moments. “Thank you. I feel better for having got it off my chest.”
They sat in silence. The orange light flickered under the plastic coals and Katie heard a distant burst of Hollywood gunfire from upstairs.
Mum eased herself off the sofa. “I’d better go and see if he needs anything.”
Katie sat for several minutes, staring at the foxhunting print on the far wall. The storm over the hill. The lopsided farm dog. The fallen rider who, she could see now, was about to be crushed by the hooves of the horses jumping the hedge behind him.
She’d seen it every day for eighteen years and never really looked at it.
She poured herself another glass of wine.
The frightening thing was how alike they were. She and Mum. Putting the thing with David to one side for the moment. Putting the thing with Ray to one side for the moment.
Mum was in love.
She replayed the words in her head and knew that she should feel moved. But what did she feel? Only sadness for that fallen rider whose approaching death she’d never seen before.
She was crying.
God, she missed Ray.
53
The following weekend Jamie went to Bristol to stay with Geoff and Andrew. Something else he was able to do now he was single again. He and Geoff had seen each other pretty much every month since college. Then Jamie made the mistake of bringing Tony along.
God, the last visit would be burnt into his memory forever. Andrew talking about imaginary numbers and Tony assuming it was some kind of intellectual one-upmanship. Despite Andrew being an actual maths lecturer. Tony getting his own back with the KY toothpaste story and some rather theatrical belching. So that Jamie had to send flowers and a long letter when they got back to London.
Geoff had put on a bit of weight since their last meeting, and he’d gone back to wearing glasses. He looked like the wise owl in a children’s story. He had a new job, too, doing the finances for a software firm that did something utterly incomprehensible. He and Andrew had moved into a rather grand house in Clifton and adopted a Highland terrier called Jock who clambered into Jamie’s lap as they sat in the garden drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.
Then Andrew arrived, and Jamie was shocked. The age difference had never seemed relevant. Andrew had always been the leaner, fitter man. But he looked old now. It wasn’t just the stick. You could break an ankle at eighteen. It was the way he moved. As if he expected to fall.
He shook Jamie’s hand. “Sorry I’m late. Got held up in some stupid committee. You’re looking well.”
“Thank you,” said Jamie, wanting to return the compliment but not being able to.
Jamie and Geoff cycled to a postcard pub in the country while Andrew and Jock took the car.
It seemed sad, at first, the way Geoff’s life was being narrowed by Andrew’s illness. But Geoff seemed as devoted as he’d ever been, and eager to do anything to help Andrew. And this made Jamie sad in a different way.
He simply didn’t understand. Because he could suddenly see Tony’s point. Andrew was a generous man. But he didn’t do small talk and he didn’t ask questions. When the conversation moved out of his sphere he switched off and waited for it to move back.
Andrew retired to bed early and Jamie and Geoff sat in the garden finishing off a bottle of wine.
Jamie talked about Katie and Ray and tried to explain why the relationship made him uneasy. The way Ray cramped her style. The gulf between them. And only when he was doing this did he realize