A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [66]
Geoff could read him like a book. Perhaps every conversation came round to this subject eventually. “Andrew and I have a very nice life together. We love one another. We look after one another. We don’t have as much sex as we once did. To be honest, we don’t really have sex at all. But, without putting too fine a point on it, there are ways of dealing with that.”
“Does Andrew know?”
Geoff didn’t answer the question. “I’ll be there for him. Always. Until the end. That’s the thing he knows.”
An hour later Jamie lay on the pull-out bed, looking at the roll of carpet and the defunct skiing machine and the cello case and felt that rootless ache he always felt in business hotels and spare rooms, the smallness of your life when you took the props away.
It disturbed him, Geoff and Andrew. And he wasn’t sure why. Was it Geoff having sex with other men and Andrew knowing and not knowing? Was it the thought of Geoff watching his lover growing old? Was it because Jamie wanted the unconditional love they had? Or because that unconditional love seemed so unattractive?
The following week he spent three days running the interviews for the new secretary and sorting out all the attendant paperwork. He went to Johnny’s leaving do. He saw A Beautiful Mind with Charlie. He went swimming for the first time in two months. He ate a takeaway Chinese in the bath with The Dark Side of the Moon cranked up to nine downstairs. He read The Farewell Symphony and the fact that he finished it in three days almost made up for how fantastically depressing it was.
He needed someone.
Not for sex. Not yet. That came a couple of weeks later, in his experience. You started finding ugly guys attractive. Then you started finding straight guys attractive. Then you had to do something about it pretty quickly because by the time you started thinking you’d settle for sex with one of your female friends you were heading for a whole barrel-load of trouble.
He needed…The word companion always made him think of elderly playwrights in silk smoking jackets holed up in Italian coastal towns with their handsome secretaries. Like Geoff, but with more glamour.
He wanted…There was that feeling when you held someone, or when someone held you. The way your body relaxed. Like having a dog on your lap.
He needed to be close to someone. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted?
He was getting a bit old for the outdoor stuff and clubs always seemed to him like stag nights, with the hormones flowing in the opposite direction. Men doing what they’d done since they came down from the trees, gathering in herds to get drunk and talk bollocks, anything to avoid the nightmares of being serious or having nothing to do.
Besides, Jamie’s track record was not good. Simon the Catholic priest. Garry and his Nazi memorabilia. Christ, you’d think people would either confess these things up front or avoid mentioning them at all, instead of announcing them over breakfast.
Halfway round Tesco he put a tin of sweetened condensed milk into his basket but came to his senses at the checkout and quietly slid it to the side of the conveyor belt when no one was watching.
Back at home he was lying on the sofa toggling idly between Antiques Roadshow and something about the Great Wall of China when he realized that he could ring Ryan.
He went to get his address book.
54
At four o’clock the following day Katie made the mistake of saying to Jacob, “Well, buddy, half an hour and we’ll head back to London.”
Cue tears and high-volume wailing.
“I hate you.”
“Jacob…”
She tried talking him down but he was winding up for a big one. So she put him in the living room and closed the door and said he could come out when he’d calmed down.
Mum caved almost immediately and went in, saying, “Don’t be mean to him.” Two minutes later he was eating Maltesers in the kitchen.
What was it with grandparents? Thirty years ago it was smacking and bed with no tea. Now it was second helpings of pudding and toys on the dining table.