A Spot of Bother

by Mark Haddon

  She didn’t even know if David was still in the house.

  If only she’d come to the realization yesterday, or last week, or last month. She could have told David. He wouldn’t have come to the wedding and none of this would have happened.

  How long had George known? Was it knowing that made him depressed? That dreadful thing he did to himself in the shower. Was it her fault?

  Perhaps her marriage was over, too.

  She walked along the landing and knocked on the bedroom door. There was a grunt from the far side.

  “George?”

  There was another grunt.

  She opened the door and stepped into the room. He was lying on the bed, half asleep.

  He said, “Oh, it’s you,” and levered himself slowly into a sitting position.

  She perched on the armchair. “George, look—”

  “I’m sorry,” said George. He was slurring his words slightly. “That was unforgivable. What I did in the marquee. To your…to your friend. To David. I really shouldn’t have done it.”

  “No,” said Jean, “I’m the one who…” She was finding it hard to talk.

  “I was frightened.” George didn’t seem to be listening. “Frightened of…To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I was frightened of. Getting old. Dying. Dying of cancer. Dying in general. Making the speech. Things became a little hazy. I rather forgot that everyone else was there.”

  “How long have you known?” asked Jean.

  “About what?”

  “About…” She couldn’t say it.

  “Oh, I see what you mean,” said George. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “I need to know.”

  George thought about this for some time. “The day I was meant to go to Cornwall.” He was swaying a little.

  “How?” asked Jean, puzzled.

  “I came back here. And saw you. In here. On the bed. Rather burned onto my retina. As they say.”

  Jean felt sick.

  “I really should have said something at the time. You know, got it off my chest.”

  “I’m sorry, George. I’m so sorry.”

  He put his hands on his knees to steady himself.

  She said, “What’s going to happen now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To us.”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” said George. “It’s not a situation I’ve been in very often.”

  Jean was not sure whether George meant this to be funny.

  They sat silently for a while.

  He had seen them naked.

  Making love.

  Having sex.

  It was like a hot coal inside her head, and it burned and scalded and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it because she couldn’t tell anyone. Not Katie. Not Ursula. She was simply going to have to live with it.

  Jamie knocked on the door. They had a short conversation with him and he went away again.

  She felt bad for not saying thank you. She could see now how good he had been, making that speech. She would have to tell him later.

  She looked at George. It was very hard to tell what he was thinking. Or whether he was thinking at all. He was still swaying slightly. He did not seem terribly well.

  “Perhaps I should get you a coffee,” said Jean. “Perhaps I should get us both a coffee.”

  “Yes, that sounds like a very good idea,” said George.

  She went and got two cups of coffee from a mercifully deserted kitchen.

  George emptied his cup in one long gulp.

  She needed to talk about David. She needed to explain that it was all over. She needed to explain why it had happened. But she was fairly sure that George didn’t want to talk about the subject.

  After a few minutes, he said, “The salmon was good, I thought.”

  “Yes,” said Jean, though she had trouble remembering what the salmon was like.

  “And Katie’s friends seemed like a nice bunch. I suspect I’ve met a few of them before, but I’m not terribly good at faces.”

  “They did seem nice,” said Jean.

  “Sad to see that young lady in the wheelchair,” said George. “She seemed very pretty. Dreadful shame.”

  “Yes,” said Jean.

  “Anyway,” said George. He got to his feet.

  Jean helped him.

  “Better get downstairs,” said George. “Can’t help. Us sitting up here. Probably creating a bit of an atmosphere.”

  “OK,” said Jean.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” said George. “Feeling a bit steadier now.” He paused at the door. “Why don’t you go down first. I need to visit the little boys’ room.” And he was gone.

  So Jean headed downstairs and went out to the marquee and George was right about the atmosphere because everyone seemed to have been waiting for her, which made her feel very uncomfortable. But Ursula came up and hugged her and Douglas and Maureen took her to a table and gave her a second coffee and more wine and a few minutes later George came down and sat at another table and Jean tried to concentrate on what Ursula and Douglas and Maureen were saying but it was quite hard. Because she felt as if she had just walked away from a burning building.

  She watched Jamie and Tony and all she could think was how much the world had changed. Her own father had slept with the woman next door for twenty years. Now her son was dancing with another man and she was the one whose life was falling apart.

  She felt like the man in that ghost story on the television, the one who didn’t realize he was dead.

  She went over and apologized to Katie and Ray. She thanked Jamie for his speech. She apologized to Jacob, who didn’t really understand why she was apologizing. She danced with Douglas. And she managed a quiet talk with Ursula on her own.

  The pain subsided as the evening wore on and the alcohol did its work and shortly after midnight, as the guests were thinning out, she realized that George had disappeared. So she said her various good nights and made her way upstairs and found George fast asleep in bed.

  She tried to talk to him but he was dead to the world. She wondered whether she was allowed to sleep in the same bed. But there was nowhere else to sleep. So she undressed and put on her nightie and cleaned her teeth and slipped into bed beside him.

  She stared at the ceiling and cried a little, quietly so as not to wake George.

  She lost track of time. The disco stopped. The voices died away. She heard footsteps coming and going on the stairs. Then silence.

  She looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was half past one.

  She got up, put on her slippers and dressing gown and went downstairs. The house was empty. It smelled of cigarette smoke and stale wine and beer and cooked fish. She unlocked the kitchen door and walked into the garden, thinking she would stand under the night sky and clear her head a little. But it was colder than she’d expected. It was starting to rain again and there were no stars.

  She came back inside, went upstairs and got into bed and lay there until sleep finally found her.

  144

  George woke from a long, deep and dreamless sleep, feeling contented and relaxed. He lay for a few moments looking up at the ceiling. There was a faint crack in the plaster round the light fitting which looked like a little map of Italy. He needed to go to the toilet. He swung his legs out of bed, put on his slippers and left the room with a spring in his step.

  Halfway down the landing, however, he remembered what had happened the day before. This made him feel sick, and he was forced to hang on to the banister for a few seconds while he recovered his composure.

  He went back into the bedroom to talk to Jean. But she was still deeply asleep, with her face turned to the wall, snoring quietly. He realized that it was going to be a difficult day for her and it seemed best that she did not begin it by being forcibly woken. He returned to the corridor and closed the door quietly behind him.

  He could smell toast and bacon and coffee and some other less pleasant odors. Several ci
garette ends were floating in a half-full coffee cup on the windowsill. Now that he thought about it, he was a little punch-drunk. It might have been the aftereffects of the Valium and the alcohol.

  He had to speak to Katie.

  He went to the bathroom to relieve himself, then headed downstairs.

  The first person he saw through the doorway of the kitchen, however, was not Katie but Tony. This threw him somewhat. He had forgotten about Tony.

  Tony was constructing a rudimentary dog sculpture from pieces of toast for Jacob’s entertainment. Had he and Jamie spent the night in the house? It was not important right now, George realized that. And he was in no position to lecture anyone about morality. But his mind felt small and the question clogged it up somewhat.

  When he entered the kitchen the conversation stopped and everyone turned to look at him. Katie, Ray, Jamie, Tony, Jacob. He had planned to take Katie quietly to one side. Clearly this was not going to be possible.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Jamie.

  “George,” said Ray.

  They sounded rather stiff.

  He girded his loins. “Katie. Ray. I want to apologize for my actions yesterday. I’m ashamed of myself and it should not have happened.” No one spoke. “If there is anything that I can do to make amends…”

  Everyone was looking at Katie. George noticed that she was holding a bread knife.

  Ray said, “You’re not planning to stab your father, are you?”

  No one laughed.

  Katie looked down at the knife. “Oh, sorry. No.”

  She put the knife down and there was an awkward silence.

  Then Tony got out of his chair and pulled it back so that George could sit down and folded a tea towel over his arm, waiter-style, and said, “We have fresh coffee, tea, orange juice, wholemeal toast, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs…”

  George wondered whether it was some kind of homosexual joke, but none of the others were laughing so he took the offer at face value, sat down, thanked Tony and said that he would like some black coffee and scrambled eggs if that was not too much trouble.

  “I’ve got a dog made of toast,” said Jacob.

  Slowly, the conversation began again. Tony told a story about how he had fallen off his moped in Crete. Ray explained how he had organized the firework display for Katie. Jacob announced that his toast-dog was called Toasty, then bit his head off and laughed like a drain.

  After twenty minutes or so the men headed off to pack bags and George found himself alone with his daughter.

  Katie tapped her forehead and asked how he was doing “up there.” He tapped his forehead and said he was doing rather well “up there.” He explained that the events of the previous day had blown the cobwebs away. Obviously there were some problems he would still have to deal with, but the panic had subsided. He was suffering from eczema. He could see that now.

  She paused and rubbed his arm and looked suddenly rather serious. George was worried that she was going to start talking about Jean and David Symmonds. He did not want to talk about Jean and David Symmonds. He would be more than happy to avoid talking about the subject for the rest of his life.

  He took Katie’s hand and squeezed it briefly. “Come on. You’d better get your stuff together.”

  “Yes,” said Katie. “You’re probably right.”

  “You go,” said George. “I’ll do the washing up.”

  Half an hour later Jean finally woke. She seemed bruised and exhausted, like someone recovering from a hospital operation. She said very little. He asked if she was OK. She said that she was. He decided not to interrogate her any further.

  Mid-morning they gathered in the front hall to say their goodbyes. Katie, Ray and Jacob were heading off to Heathrow and Jamie and Tony were driving back to London. It was a slightly somber occasion, and the house seemed unnaturally silent when they had gone.

  Thankfully the caterers came to retrieve their equipment ten minutes later, followed by Mrs. Jackson and a young woman with an earring in her lip, who set about cleaning the house.

  When the living room had been vacuumed, he and Jean retired to the sofa with a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches while the kitchen was scoured. George apologized once more for his behavior, and Jean informed him that she would not be seeing David again.

  George said, “Thank you.” It seemed like the gracious thing to say.

  Jean started to cry. George was not sure how to deal with this. He put his hand on her arm. It seemed to have no effect whatsoever, so he took it away again.

  He said, “I’m not going to leave you.”

  Jean blew her nose on a tissue.

  “And I’m not going to ask you to leave,” George added, so that she knew precisely where she stood.

  It was a ridiculous idea in any case. What would he do if he moved out? Or if Jean moved out? He was too old to begin a new life. They both were.

  “Good,” said Jean.

  He offered her another sandwich.

  The tent was taken down during the afternoon and George was able to do a couple of hours’ work on the studio before supper. He realized that he was going to be disappointed when the building was finished. Obviously, he would then have a place in which he could draw and paint. But he would need other projects to fill his time, and if his encounter with the rubber plant was anything to go by, it would be several months before drawing and painting became wholly fulfilling.

  He could start swimming at the local pool a couple of times a week. That seemed like a sensible idea. It would keep him fit and help him sleep.

  Now that he came to think of it, perhaps Jean would like to join him. It might help cheer her up a little. She had always been rather fond of pools on family holidays. Obviously it had been a good few years now, and she might feel self-conscious about wearing a swimming costume in public. Women, he knew, worried about these things more than men. But he would run the idea past her and see what she thought.

  Or a long weekend in Bruges. That was another possibility. He had read something about it in the newspaper recently. It was in Belgium, if his memory served him correctly, which meant that they could get there without leaving the ground.

  He shivered. It was cold and getting dark. So he packed the building materials neatly away and headed back into the house. He changed into clean clothes and came back down to the kitchen.

  Jean was preparing lasagna. He made himself a mug of coffee, sat at the table and began browsing through the TV Guide.

  “Could you give me the aluminum saucepan from the drawer?” asked Jean.

  George leant backward, retrieved the saucepan and handed it to her. As he did so, he caught a faint whiff of that flowery perfume Jean used. Or perhaps it was the orange shampoo from Sainsbury’s. It was quite pleasant.

  She thanked him and he glanced down at the TV Guide. He found himself looking at a photograph of two young women who were joined at the head. It was not a pleasant picture and it did not make him feel very good. He began reading. The women were going to be featured in a documentary on Channel Four. The documentary would end with footage of an operation in which they were surgically separated. The operation was risky, apparently, and one or both of the girls might die as a result. The article did not reveal the outcome of the operation.

  The kitchen floor tilted very slightly.

  “What would you like with your lasagna?” asked Jean. “Peas or broccoli?”

  “Sorry?” said George.

  “Peas or broccoli?” asked Jean.

  “Broccoli,” said George. “And perhaps we should open a bottle of wine.”

  “Broccoli and wine it is,” said Jean.

  George looked down at the TV Guide.

  It was time to stop all this nonsense.

  He turned the page and stood up to find a corkscrew.

  Also by Mark Haddon

  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

  The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea: Poems

  FIRST
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, AUGUST 2007

  Copyright © 2006 by Mark Haddon

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Haddon, Mark.

  A Spot of Bother / Mark Haddon.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Middle-aged men—Fiction. 2. Mortality—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PR6058.A2666 2006

  823'.914—dc22

  2006016578

  www.vintagebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-38769-1

  v3.0