A Spot of Bother

by Mark Haddon

  “A speech about what?” asked his mother.

  “About Dad,” said Jamie. “Trust me.”

  Thankfully his mother seemed incapable of disagreeing and when he put his arm around her shoulder and steered her back across the lawn she let herself be led.

  They entered the canvas doorway, the conversation died away instantly and they moved slowly through a very pregnant silence back to their seats, their shoes clacking on the boarding beneath their feet.

  Katie was holding Jacob on her lap. As Jamie and his mother reached the table, Jacob said, “Grandpa had a fight,” and over his shoulder Jamie heard someone suppress a panicky giggle.

  Jamie stroked Jacob gently on the head, sat his mother down and turned to face everyone. Their number seemed to have doubled magically in the last few minutes. His mind went blank and he wondered if he was about to make an idiot of himself in much the same way that his father had done.

  Then his brain came back online and he realized that after what his father had done, he could pretty much string two words together and everyone was going to be mightily relieved.

  He said, “Sorry about all that. It wasn’t part of the plan.”

  No one laughed. Understandably. He had to be a bit more serious.

  “My father has not been terribly well recently. As you probably gathered.”

  Was he going to have to mention the cancer? Yes, he was. There was no way round it.

  “You’ll be relieved to hear that he doesn’t have cancer.”

  This was trickier than he had expected. The atmosphere in the marquee was tangibly funereal. He glanced down at his mother. She was staring downward and trying to squeeze her napkin into as small a ball as possible in her lap.

  “But he has been very depressed. And anxious. Particularly about the wedding. Particularly about making a speech at the wedding.”

  He was hitting his stride now.

  “He has a very nice doctor. His doctor gave him some Valium. He took rather a lot of it this morning. To help him relax. I think he probably overdid it.”

  Again, no one laughed, but this time there was a kind of mumbled hum which felt promising.

  “Hopefully he’s now upstairs in the house sleeping it off.”

  And this was when Jamie realized he was going to have to deal not only with his father’s ill-judged speech but also with the fact that his father had head-butted his mother’s lover in front of everyone. Which was going to be a good deal more difficult. He paused. For rather a long time. And the atmosphere began to cool again.

  “I have absolutely no idea why my father hit David Symmonds. To be honest I’m not entirely sure whether my father knew it was David Symmonds he was hitting.”

  He felt like someone skiing downhill at a dangerously high speed through a forest of solid trees planted far too close to one another.

  “They worked together at Shepherds some years ago. I don’t know if they’ve seen one another since. I guess the moral is that if you don’t get on with someone at work, then it’s probably not a good idea to invite them to your daughter’s wedding and take vast amounts of prescription drugs beforehand.”

  At which point, thank God, the mumbled hum turned into actual laughter. From most of his audience at any rate (Eileen and Ronnie looked as if they had been freeze-dried). And Jamie realized he was finally reaching safer ground.

  He turned to Katie and saw Jacob sitting on her lap with her arms round him, burying his head against her chest. Poor guy. He was going to need a pretty heavyweight debriefing when all this was over.

  “But this is Katie and Ray’s special day,” said Jamie, raising his voice and trying to sound upbeat.

  “Hear! Hear!” shouted Uncle Douglas, raising his glass.

  And it was obvious from the rather startled reaction that many of the guests had forgotten that they were at a wedding.

  “Unfortunately, the groom is looking after the father of the bride at the moment…”

  Ray appeared in the doorway of the marquee.

  “I tell a lie…”

  All eyes swiveled toward Ray who stopped in his tracks and looked a little surprised to be the center of attention.

  “So, on behalf of Katie and Ray, I think we should put the events of the last ten minutes behind us and help them celebrate their wedding. Katie and Ray…” He grabbed a half-full glass from the table in front of him. “Here’s wishing you a very happy day. And let’s hope the rest of your marriage is a little less eventful.”

  Everyone raised their glass and there was a bout of slightly confused cheering and Jamie sat down and everyone fell silent and Sarah started clapping, then everyone else started clapping and Jamie wasn’t quite sure whether it was for Katie and Ray or whether he was being congratulated for his performance, of which he was rather proud.

  In fact, he was so swept up in the general sense of relief that he was surprised when he turned to his mother and found her still weeping.

  She looked over at Katie and said, “I’m so, so sorry. It’s all my fault.” She wiped her eyes with a napkin and got to her feet and said, “I have to go and talk to your father,” and Katie said, “Are you sure…?” but she was gone.

  And Ray materialized beside them and said, dryly, “I am really looking forward to going to Barcelona.”

  And Jacob said, “Grandpa had a fight.”

  And Ray said, “I know. I was there.”

  And Katie said, “The man he hit. That was—”

  “I know,” said Ray. “Your father explained. In some pretty graphic detail. That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to Barcelona. He’s having a little rest, incidentally. I don’t think he’s planning to come downstairs in a hurry.”

  And Jamie suddenly realized the one blindingly obvious fact that had somehow escaped him up until now. That his father had known all along. About his mother and David Symmonds.

  His head was spinning a little.

  He turned to Katie. “So did Mum know that Dad knew that Mum and David Symmonds were…?”

  “No,” said Katie, even more dryly than Ray. “Dad obviously chose our wedding day to break the happy news to her.”

  “Christ,” said Jamie. “Why did they invite the guy?”

  “That,” said Katie, “is one of several questions I’m planning to ask them later on. Assuming they haven’t killed each other.”

  “Do you think we should…?” Jamie got out of his seat.

  “No I don’t,” said Katie tartly. “They can sort this one out themselves.”

  Ray walked over to check that his own parents had survived the ordeal and Tony appeared carrying an open bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. He sat himself down in Jean’s empty chair and said, to Katie, “This is the first wedding I’ve ever been to. And I have to say, they are a lot more entertaining than I realized.”

  Which struck Jamie as pretty risky given Katie’s state of mind. But he clearly knew the terrain, perhaps on account of having Becky as a sister, because Katie removed the champagne bottle from Tony’s hand, took an almighty swig and said, “You know the best bit?”

  “What?” said Tony.

  “You being here.”

  “You are very kind,” said Tony. “Though I didn’t expect my entrance to be upstaged quite so dramatically.”

  “God,” said Katie, “I am in serious need of a disco.”

  “A woman after my own heart,” said Tony.

  “And David…?” said Jamie.

  “Headed off to his car,” said Tony. “I think he wanted to avoid a second encounter. Which was probably wise, in the circumstances.”

  At which point, a man carrying a large speaker bearing the words “Top Sounds” appeared like a rather overweight angel in the doorway of the marquee.

  But Jamie was more worried about his father than Katie, and less keen to let his parents sort it out between themselves, so he made his excuses to Tony and slipped into the house, stopping en route to reassure several friends and relatives that his
father was OK, and earnestly hoping that he was.

  He knocked on his parents’ bedroom door. The faint voices went quiet on the far side. He waited then knocked again.

  “Who is it?” said his father.

  “It’s me. Jamie. I just wanted to check that you were all right.” There was a brief pause. Obviously they weren’t all right. It was a stupid thing to say. “It’s just that people are concerned. Naturally.”

  “I’m afraid I made a terrible mess of everything,” said his father.

  It was hard to know how to respond to this through a door.

  “Will you tell Katie and Ray that I’m desperately sorry for causing them such embarrassment?” said his father.

  “I will,” said Jamie.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Is David OK?” said his father.

  “Yeh,” said Jamie. “He’s gone.”

  “Good,” said his father.

  Jamie realized that he hadn’t heard his mother speak yet. And it seemed very unlikely that something awful had happened to her, but he wanted to be absolutely sure this time. “Mum?”

  There was no reply.

  “Mum…?”

  “I’m fine,” said his mother. There was a note of irritation in her voice, which was strangely reassuring.

  Jamie was about to say that if they needed anything…Then he wondered what “anything” could possibly be (wine? wedding cake?) and decided to end the conversation. “I’m going back downstairs now.”

  There was no reply.

  So he went back downstairs and out across the lawn, reassuring more people about his father’s health as he did so. The disco had begun and he slipped into the marquee and sat himself down beside Tony who was chatting about lath-and-plaster ceilings with Ed.

  Ed slipped away and Jamie took a cigarette from the packet in front of Tony and lit it and Tony poured him a glass of dessert wine and the two of them watched Uncle Douglas dancing like a wounded ox, and the music was good because it filled all those little gaps during which people were tempted to wonder about the implications of what had happened earlier, though if you knew precisely what had happened earlier you did have to try not to listen to the lyrics too hard (“Groovy Kind of Love,” “Congratulations,” “Stand by Your Man”).

  For the last two weeks he’d been desperate to talk to Tony. Now, sitting next to him was enough, touching, breathing the same air. Last time they’d been together they seemed like two separate people. Somehow, in the interim they’d become a…what? a couple? The word seemed wrong now that he was finally on the receiving end.

  Maybe it was good to be something you didn’t know the name for.

  They talked to Mona about the perils of shagging one’s boss (which she had done, inadvisedly). They talked to Ray’s parents who were weirdly unperturbed by the unorthodox nature of the reception (Ray’s brother was in prison, apparently, which Katie had failed to mention, and Barbara’s ex-husband was once discovered by the police sleeping in a skip). They talked to Craig, Jenny’s gay caregiver, who was technically not meant to be talking to people on his own account while he was on duty but, sod it, Jenny was pissed and getting along famously with the spectacularly boring guy from Ray’s office.

  Half an hour or so later his mother came into the marquee. And it was a bit like the Queen coming into the room, everyone suddenly stopping dancing, going quiet and panicking slightly about how they were meant to behave. Except that the man from Top Sounds didn’t know what had happened earlier so Kylie Minogue carried on singing “Locomotion” very loudly.

  Jamie was going to jump out of his seat and run over and save her from all this unwanted attention, but Ursula (who had been doing a surprisingly athletic Locomotion with a group of Katie and Ray’s friends) went over and hugged her and Jamie didn’t want to trump her a second time. And within a few seconds Douglas and Maureen had joined her and his mother was soon sitting at a corner table being taken care of.

  Consequently when his father entered the marquee a few minutes later he created slightly less of a stir. Again, Jamie wondered whether he should go and look after him. But his father headed straight to Katie and Ray and presumably made some kind of direct apology for his earlier behavior which must have gone down reasonably well because the encounter ended in a hug, after which his father was similarly led to a table by Ed with whom he seemed to strike up a firm intergenerational friendship (Jamie later found out that Ed had suffered a breakdown some years earlier and not left the house for several months). And it was a bit odd, his parents sitting at different tables. But it would have been odder to see them standing together, which they’d never done at any kind of gathering, so Jamie decided to postpone worrying about them till the following day.

  And when Jamie and Tony stepped outside a little while later, the light was fading and someone had lit multicolored flares on bamboo canes around the lawn which was rather magical. And the day finally felt as if it had been mended as well as it could be mended.

  They played hide-and-seek with Jacob and found Judy looking miserable in the kitchen because Kenneth was comatose in the downstairs loo. So they found a screwdriver and undid the lock and arranged him in the recovery position on the sofa in the living room with a blanket over him and a bucket on the carpet nearby, before dragging Judy back outside and onto the dance floor.

  And then it was Jacob’s bedtime, so Jamie read him Pumpkin Soup and Curious George Takes a Train and came downstairs and danced with Tony, and Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” came on and Jamie laughed and Tony asked why and Jamie just pulled him close and snogged him in the middle of the dance floor for the whole three minutes and three whole minutes of Tony’s cock pressed against him was more than he could actually bear and he was drunk enough by now, so he pulled Tony upstairs and told him not to make any noise or he’d kill him and they went into his old bedroom and Tony fucked him in full view of Big Giraffe and the boxed set of Doctor Dolittle.

  142

  Katie was relieved that Jacob was sitting in her lap when it happened.

  Ray, Jamie and Tony seemed to be handling everything and all she had to do was to hug Jacob and hope that he wasn’t too upset by what he was witnessing.

  In the event, he seemed strangely unshocked. He’d never seen two adults fighting in real life. Apparently, Grandpa and that man were being like Power Rangers. Though Katie had trouble remembering actual blood in a Power Rangers video and Dad hadn’t done a somersault or a karate kick.

  If Jacob had not been sitting in her lap she had no idea what she would have done. Clearly Dad was suffering horribly, and clearly they should have taken a lot more notice of his doing a runner and taking Valium. On the other hand, you’d think you could wait till the end of lunch then take someone out into the street to thump them, instead of fucking up your daughter’s wedding reception, however bad you were feeling.

  And clearly Mum was horrified to find out that Dad knew about David Symmonds. But why in God’s name had she invited the guy to the wedding in the first place?

  All in all, Katie was grateful she didn’t have to work out what she felt about all these things while she was comforting either of her parents, or she might have gone a bit Power Ranger herself.

  It was Jamie who saved the day (Man of the Match, as Ray quite rightly said). She had absolutely no idea what he was going to say when he stood up to give his speech (Jamie later confessed that he had no idea either) and she was nervous, though not as nervous as Mum who managed to actually tear her woven napkin while Jamie was talking, obviously convinced that he was about to explain to everyone precisely why Dad had done what he’d done.

  But the workplace-argument story was a stroke of genius. Indeed, people were so keen on the idea that later in the evening Katie was given several entirely different explanations as to why Dad had a grudge against his former colleague. According to Mona, David had spread rumors to prevent him getting the job of managing director. According to Uncle Douglas, David was an alcoholic. Ka
tie decided not to disagree. Doubtless by the end of the evening he would have murdered one of their factory workers and buried the body in nearby woodland.

  She did sound off a bit to Ray about her parents’ behavior, which was not helpful. But he just laughed at her and wrapped his arms around her and said, “Can we try and have a fun time in spite of your family?”

  As a gesture of goodwill, it being their wedding, she decided to admit that he was right. Not out loud, obviously. But by not answering back.

  He suggested that she get drunk instead, which turned out to be a rather good idea, because when Dad reappeared and came over to apologize she was almost past remembering what had happened earlier, let alone caring, and she was able to give him a hug, which was probably the most diplomatic of all outcomes.

  Come eleven o’clock they were sitting in a little circle at the edge of the lawn. Her, Ray, Jamie, Tony, Sarah, Mona. They were talking about Ray’s brother being in prison. And Jamie complained that he hadn’t been told this thrilling information earlier. So Ray gave him a slightly parental look on account of this not really being a subject for amusing gossip, and told everyone about the drugs and the stolen cars and the money and the time and the heartbreak his parents had expended trying to get him back onto the straight and narrow.

  Sarah said, “Bloody Nora.”

  And Ray said, “Eventually you realize that other people’s problems are other people’s problems.”

  Katie wrapped her arms around him drunkenly and said, “You’re not just a pretty face, are you.”

  “Pretty?” said Tony. “I’m not sure I’d go that far. Rugged, maybe. Butch definitely.”

  Ray had downed enough beer by this stage to take it as a compliment.

  And Katie was rather sad they weren’t taking Jamie and Tony with them to Barcelona.

  143

  Jean paused halfway up the stairs and held on to the banisters. She felt woozy, like she did at the top of tall buildings sometimes.

  Everything was suddenly very clear.

  Her relationship with David was over. When George hit him, it was George she was worried about. That he had gone mad. That he was making a fool of himself in front of everyone they knew.