A Spot of Bother

by Mark Haddon

  The growth on the tramp’s face. George was going to look like that. All over.

  The train pulled in.

  He picked up his rucksack and launched himself at the open door of the nearest carriage. If he could only get the journey started quickly enough he might be able to leave the rogue thoughts on the platform.

  He slumped into a seat. His heart was beating the way it would have beaten if he had run all the way from home. He was finding it very difficult to sit still. There was a woman in a mauve raincoat sitting opposite him. He was beyond caring what she thought.

  The train began to move.

  He looked out of the window and imagined himself flying a small aircraft parallel to the train, like he did when he was a boy, pulling back on the joystick to clear fences and bridges, swinging the plane left and right to swerve round sheds and telegraph poles.

  The train picked up speed. Over the river. Over the A605.

  He felt sick.

  He was in the upturned cabin of a sinking ship as it filled with water. The darkness was total. The door was now somewhere below him. It didn’t matter where. It led only to other places in which to die.

  He was kicking madly, trying to keep his head in the shrinking pyramid of stale air where the two walls met the ceiling.

  His mouth was going under.

  There was oily water in his windpipe.

  He put his head between his legs.

  He was going to throw up.

  He sat back.

  His body went cold and the blood drained from his head.

  He put his head between his legs again.

  He felt as if he were in a sauna.

  He sat up and opened the little window.

  The woman in the mauve raincoat glared.

  The scab would strangle him with evil slowness, a malign, crusted appendage feeding off his own body.

  “I peeked through the crack, looked at the track, the one going back…”

  Camp beds? Walks along the Helford? Pints round the fire with Brian? What in heaven’s name had he been thinking? It would be a living hell.

  He got out at Huntingdon, staggered to the nearest bench, sat down and reconstructed that morning’s Telegraph crossword in his head. Genuflect. Tankards. Horse brass…

  It was ebbing a little.

  He was dying of cancer. It was a horrible thought. But if he could just store it over there, in the Thoughts About Dying Of Cancer box, he might be OK.

  Gazelle. Miser. Paw-paw…

  He had to catch the next train home. Chat to Jean. Have a cup of tea. Put some music on. Loud. His own house. His own garden. Everything exactly where it was meant to be. No Brian. No tramps.

  There was a monitor to his right. He got gingerly to his feet and moved round to the front so that he could read it.

  Platform 2. Twelve minutes.

  He began walking toward the stairs.

  He would be home in an hour.

  31

  Jean dropped George off, got into the driving seat and drove back to the village.

  She hadn’t spent four days alone in her entire life. Yesterday she’d been looking forward to it. But now that it was happening she was frightened.

  She found herself calculating the precise number of hours she would be spending alone between working in Ottakar’s and going to St. John’s.

  On Sunday she would spend the evening with David. But Sunday evening suddenly seemed a long way away.

  It was at this point that she parked in front of the house, looked up and saw David himself standing on the path talking to Mrs. Walker from next door.

  What in heaven’s name was he doing? Mrs. Walker noticed when they started ordering orange juice from the milkman. God knows what the woman was thinking now.

  She got out of the car.

  “Ah, Jean. I’m in luck after all.” David smiled at her. “I didn’t know whether I’d catch George. I forgot my reading glasses when I came round for dinner.”

  Reading glasses? God, the man could lie for England. Jean wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or terrified. She looked at Mrs. Walker. The woman seemed smitten, if anything.

  “Mr. Symmonds and I were having a chat,” she said. “He told me George makes a very good risotto. I thought he was pulling my leg.”

  “Strange but true,” Jean said. “George does cook. About once every five years.” She turned to David. “He will be disappointed. I’ve just dropped him in town. He’s visiting his brother. In Cornwall.”

  “That is a shame,” said David.

  He seemed so relaxed that Jean began to wonder whether he really had forgotten a pair of reading glasses. “Well, you’d better come inside, I guess.”

  He turned to Mrs. Walker. “Good to meet you.”

  “You, too.”

  They went inside.

  “Sorry,” said David, “I got here a little early.”

  “Early?”

  “I thought you’d be back from the station. Bumping into the nosy neighbor wasn’t part of the plan.” He took his jacket off and hung it over a chair.

  “The plan? David, this is our home. You can’t just turn up here when you like.”

  “Listen.” He took her hand and led her toward the kitchen table. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.” He sat her down, took his reading glasses out of his jacket pocket and placed them on the table. “To wave at your neighbor when I leave.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “This?” He didn’t smile. “This is something I have never done before.”

  She felt suddenly very uncomfortable. She was itching to make tea, wash up, anything. But he’d taken her right hand and placed his other hand over it, as if he were picking up a tiny animal and didn’t want it to escape.

  “I need to say something. I need to say it face-to-face. And I need to say it when you have time to think about it.” He paused. “I’m an old man—”

  “You’re not old.”

  “Please, Jean, I’ve been practicing this for several weeks. Just let me get it out in one go without making a fool of myself.”

  She’d never seen him looking nervous before. “Sorry.”

  “When you get to my age you don’t get second chances. OK, maybe you do get second chances. Maybe this is my second chance. But…” He looked down at their hands. “I love you. I want to live with you. You make me very happy. And I know it’s selfish. But I want more. I want to go to bed with you at night and I want to wake up with you in the morning. Please, let me finish. This is easy for me. I live on my own. I don’t have to take other people into consideration. I can do what I want. But it’s different for you. I know. I respect George. I like George. But I’ve heard you talk about him and I’ve seen the two of you together and…You’re probably going to say no. And if you did I’d understand. But if I never asked I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”

  She was shaking.

  “Please. Just think about it. If you said yes I would do everything in my power to make it as painless and easy as possible for you…But if it’s impossible, I’ll pretend that this conversation never happened. The last thing I want to do is to frighten you away.” He looked up and met her eyes again. “Tell me I haven’t just messed everything up.”

  She put her hand on top of his hand, so that their four hands made a little stack on the table. “You know…”

  “What?” He looked genuinely troubled.

  “That is the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  He breathed out. “You don’t have to give me an answer now.”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Just think about it.”

  “I’m going to have trouble thinking about anything else.” She laughed a little. “You’re smiling. You haven’t smiled since you came through the door.”

  “Relief.” He squeezed her hand.

  She pushed the chair back, walked round the table, sat on his lap and kissed him.

  32

  Katie a
nd Graham didn’t talk about Ray. They didn’t even talk about the wedding. They talked about Bridget Jones and the petrol tanker hanging off the Westway on the TV news that morning and the truly bizarre hair of the woman in the far corner of the café.

  It was exactly what Katie needed. Like putting on an old jumper. The good fit. The comforting smell.

  She’d just asked the waitress for the bill, however, when she looked up and saw Ray coming into the café and walking toward them. For half a second she wondered whether there had been some kind of emergency. Then she saw the look on his face and she was livid.

  Ray stopped beside the table and looked down at Graham.

  “What’s this about?” Katie asked.

  Ray said nothing.

  Graham calmly put seven pound coins on the little stainless steel dish and slid his arms into his jacket. “I’d better be going.” He stood up. “Thanks for the chat.”

  “I’m really sorry about this.” She turned to Ray. “For God’s sake, Ray. Grow up.”

  For one horrible moment she thought Ray was going to hit Graham. But he didn’t. He just watched as Graham walked slowly to the door.

  “Well, that was charming, Ray. Just charming. How old are you?”

  Ray stared at her.

  “Are you going to say anything, or are you just going to stand there with that moronic look on your face?”

  Ray turned and walked out of the café.

  The waitress returned to pick up the little stainless steel dish and Ray appeared on the pavement outside the window. He lifted a wastebin over his head, roared like a deranged vagrant then hurled it down the pavement.

  33

  By the time George got home he was feeling a good deal calmer.

  The car was parked outside. Consequently he was surprised and a little disappointed to find the house empty. On the other hand, being in his own hallway was a comfort. The pig-shaped notepad on the phone table. The faint scent of toast. That piney stuff Jean used to clean the carpets. He put his rucksack down and walked into the kitchen.

  He was putting the kettle on when he noticed that one of the chairs was lying on the floor. He bent down and set it back on its feet.

  He found himself thinking briefly of ghost ships, everything precisely as it was when disaster struck, half-eaten meals, unfinished diary entries.

  Then he stopped himself. It was just a chair. He filled the kettle, plugged it in, placed his hands flat on the Formica work surface, exhaled slowly and let the crazy thoughts slip away.

  And this was when he heard the noise, from somewhere above his head, like someone moving heavy furniture. He assumed it was Jean at first. But it was a sound he had never heard in the house before, a rhythmic bumping, almost mechanical.

  He very nearly called out. Then he decided not to. He wanted to know what was happening before he announced his presence. He might need the element of surprise.

  He walked into the hallway and began climbing the stairs. When he reached the top he realized that the noise was coming from one of the bedrooms.

  He walked down the landing. The door of Katie’s old room was closed, but his and Jean’s door was standing slightly ajar. This was where the noise was coming from.

  Glancing down he saw the four large marble eggs in the fruit bowl on the chest. He took the black one and cradled it in his hand. It wasn’t much of a weapon but it was extremely dense and he felt safer holding it. He tossed it a couple of times, letting it fall heavily back into the palm of his hand.

  It was highly possible that he was about to confront a drug addict rifling through their drawers. He should have been scared, but the morning’s activities seemed to have emptied that particular tank.

  He stepped up to the door and pushed it gently open.

  Two people were having sexual intercourse on the bed.

  He had never seen two people having sexual intercourse before, not in real life. It did not look attractive. His first impulse was to step swiftly away to save embarrassment. Then he remembered that it was his room. And his bed.

  He was about to ask the two of them loudly what in God’s name they thought they were playing at when he noticed that they were old people. Then the woman made the noise he had heard from downstairs. And it wasn’t just a woman. It was Jean.

  The man was raping her.

  He raised the fist containing the marble egg and stepped forward again, but she said, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” and he could see now that the naked man between her legs was David Symmonds.

  Without warning the house tilted to one side. He stepped backward and put his hand on the door frame to prevent himself falling over.

  Time passed. Precisely how much time passed it was difficult to say. Something between five seconds and two minutes.

  He did not feel very well.

  He pulled the door back to its original position and steadied himself on the banisters. He silently repositioned the marble egg in the bowl and waited for the house to return to its normal angle, like a big ship in a long swell.

  When it had done so he made his way down the stairs, picked up his rucksack, stepped through the front door and pulled it shut behind him.

  There was a sound in his head like the sound he might have heard if he were lying on a railway line and an express train were passing over him.

  He began walking. Walking was good. Walking cleared the head.

  A blue station wagon drove past.

  This time it was the pavement which was tilting to one side. He came to a halt, bent over and was sick at the foot of a lamppost.

  Maintaining his position to avoid messing his trousers, he fished an elderly tissue from his pocket and wiped his mouth. It seemed wrong, somehow, to dump the tissue in the street and he was about to put it back in his pocket when the weight of his rucksack shifted unexpectedly, he put his hand out to grab the lamppost, missed and rolled into a hedge.

  He was buying a cottage pie and a fruit salad in Knutsford Services on the M6 when he was woken by the sound of a dog barking and opened his eyes to find himself staring at a large area of overcast sky fringed by leaves and twigs.

  He gazed at the overcast sky for a while.

  There was a strong smell of vomit.

  It became slowly clear that he was lying in a hedge. There was a rucksack on his back. He remembered now. He had been sick in the street and his wife was having sexual intercourse with another man a couple of hundred yards away.

  He did not want to be seen lying in a hedge.

  It took him several seconds to remember precisely how one commanded one’s limbs. When he did, he removed a branch from his hair, slipped his arms free of the rucksack and got gingerly to his feet.

  A woman was standing on the far side of the street watching him with mild interest, as if he were an animal in a safari park. He counted to five, took a deep breath and hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulders.

  He took a tentative step.

  He took another, slightly less tentative step.

  He could do it.

  He began walking toward the main road.

  34

  Katie was going to have to apologize on Monday.

  She was standing in the middle of Toddler One with Jacob swinging on her scarf while Ellen tried to tell her about World Awareness Day the following week. But there was so much Ray-related crap in Katie’s head that she wasn’t taking anything in. And the picture that kept coming to mind was one from that zombie film, Ellen’s head being hacked off with a plank and the blood squirting out of her severed neck.

  When they got onto the bus she tried to put Ray out of her head by asking Jacob what he’d been doing at nursery. But he was too tired to talk. He stuck a thumb into his mouth and slid a hand inside her jacket to massage the fleecy lining.

  The bus driver was trying to break some kind of land speed record. It was raining and she could smell the sweat of the woman sitting to her right.

  She wanted to break something. Or hurt someone.

  She put
her arm round Jacob and tried to absorb some of his calm.

  Jesus, she could have taken Graham to the nearest hotel and shagged the living daylights out of him, for all the shit she was getting.

  The bus stopped. Violently.

  They got off. As they did so Katie told the bus driver he was a nob-head. Unfortunately Jacob was picking up an interesting piece of mud at the time so Katie tripped over him, which diminished the effect somewhat.

  When they opened the front door Ray was already there. She could tell. The hall lights were off but there was something sullen and crackly in the air, like going into a cave and knowing the ogre was round the corner chewing on a shinbone.

  They went into the kitchen. Ray was sitting at the table.

  Jacob said, “We went on the bus. Mummy said a rude word. To the driver.”

  Ray didn’t reply.

  She bent down and spoke to Jacob. “You go upstairs and play for a bit, OK? Ray and I need to talk.”

  “I want to play down here.”

  “You can come down and play in a little while,” said Katie. “Why don’t you get your Playmobil truck out, eh?” She needed him to be helpful in the next five seconds or a gasket was going to pop.

  “Don’t want to,” said Jacob. “It’s boring.”

  “I’m serious. You go upstairs now. I’ll be up soon. Here, let me take your coat off.”

  “Want my coat on. Want a monster drink.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jacob,” yelled Katie. “Get upstairs. Now.”

  For a moment she thought Ray was going to do his famous manly diplomatic routine and persuade Jacob to go quietly upstairs by using mind power and she was going to go apoplectic at the sheer bloody hypocrisy of it all. But Jacob just stamped his feet and said, “I hate you,” and huffed off with the hood of his coat still up, like a very angry gnome.

  She turned to Ray, “We were having a cup of coffee together. He’s the father of my child. I wanted a chat. And if you think I’m going to marry anyone who treats me the way you treated me today then you’ve got another think coming.”