He put the wet towels into the bath and swilled his mouth with a pea of toothpaste and a little cold water.
He packed the rucksack, then discovered that bending over was beyond him and was forced to lie on the carpet to tie his laces.
He considered remaking the bed, but hiding the stains seemed worse than leaving them visible. He did, however, take a moist lump of toilet paper to the blood on the wall outside the bathroom.
He would never be able to come to this hotel again.
He put on his jacket, checked that he hadn’t lost his wallet, then sat for a few minutes gathering his strength before hoisting his rucksack onto his back. It seemed to contain actual bricks and halfway to the lift he had to lean against the wall of the corridor and wait for the blood to return to his head.
In the foyer he was hailed by the man behind the desk with a cheery “Morning, Mr. Hall.” He kept walking. They had his credit card details. He did not want to tell them what he had done to the room, or avoid telling them what he had done to the room. He did not want to stand in front of the desk swaying a little with a mysterious head wound.
A porter opened the door, he stepped into the noise and glare of the morning and began walking.
The air seemed to be filled with smells designed specifically to test his stomach to its very limit: car fumes, cooked breakfasts, cigarette smoke, bleach…He breathed through his mouth.
He was going home. He needed to talk to someone. And Jean was the only person he could talk to. As for the scene in the bedroom, they could deal with that later.
Indeed, at this point in time, dealing with the scene in the bedroom seemed less of a problem than taking a bus. The five-minute walk to the station felt like crossing the Alps and when his bus arrived he was packed into a confined space with thirty unwashed people and shaken vigorously for twenty-five minutes.
Having disembarked in the village he sat for a few minutes on the bench by the bus stop to gather his wits and let the grinding throb in his head die down a little.
What was he going to say? Under normal circumstances he would never have confessed to Jean that he was going insane. But under normal circumstances he would not be going insane. Hopefully his bedraggled state would engender sympathy without his having to explain too much.
He got to his feet, lifted his rucksack, took a deep breath and walked toward the house.
When he stepped through the front door she was standing in the kitchen.
“George.”
He deposited his rucksack by the stairs and waited for her to come into the hall. He spoke very quietly in order to keep the pain to a minimum. “I think I may be going mad.”
“Where have you been?” Jean said this quite loudly. Or maybe it just sounded loud. “We’ve been worried sick.”
“I stayed in a hotel,” said George.
“A hotel?” said Jean. “But you look as if—”
“I was feeling…Well, as I was saying I think I might be—”
“What’s that on your head?” asked Jean.
“Where?”
“There.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that,” said Jean.
“I fell over and hit a door frame,” explained George.
“A door frame?”
“In the hotel.”
Jean asked whether he had been drinking.
“Yes. But not when I banged my head. I’m sorry. Could you talk a little more quietly?”
“Why on earth were you staying in a hotel?” said Jean.
It was not meant to be happening like this. He was the one who was graciously putting certain matters to one side. He was the one who deserved the benefit of the doubt.
His head hurt so much.
“Why didn’t you go to Cornwall?” said Jean. “Brian was ringing, wondering what had happened.”
“I need to sit down.” He made his way to the kitchen and found a chair which screeched horribly on the tiles. He sat and cradled his forehead.
Jean followed him. “Why didn’t you call me, George?”
“You were…” He nearly said it. Out of spite, mostly. Luckily he did not have the words. The sexual act was like going to the lavatory. It was not something one talked about, least of all in one’s own kitchen at nine-thirty in the morning.
And as he struggled and failed to find the words, the image came to mind again, that man’s scrotum, her sagging thighs, his buttocks, the warm air, the grunting. And he felt something like a blow to his belly, a deep, deep wrongness, partly fear, partly disgust, partly something way beyond either of these things, as disturbing as the sensation he might have felt if he looked out of the window and saw that the house was surrounded by ocean.
He did not want to find the words. If he described it to another human being he would never be free of the picture. And with this realization came a kind of release.
There was no need to describe it to another human being. He could forget about it. He could put it to the back of his mind. If it lay undisturbed for long enough it would fade and lose its power.
“George, what were you doing in a hotel?”
She was angry with him. She had been angry with him before. This was his old life. It felt comforting. It was something he could deal with.
“I’m frightened of dying.” There. He had said it.
“That’s absurd.”
“I know it’s absurd, but it’s true.” He felt a glow of a kind he never expected to feel, this morning of all mornings. He was talking to Jean more frankly than he had ever done.
“Why?” she asked. “You’re not dying.” She paused. “Are you?”
She was scared. Well, perhaps it was good for her to feel a little scared. He began to untuck his shirt, just as he had done in Dr. Barghoutian’s consulting room.
“George…?” She steadied herself with a hand on the back of the chair.
He lifted his vest and lowered the waistband of his trousers.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Eczema.”
“I don’t understand, George.”
“I think it’s cancer.”
“But it’s not cancer.”
“Dr. Barghoutian said it was eczema.”
“So why are you worried about it?”
“And there are these tiny red spots on my arm.”
The phone rang. Neither of them moved for a couple of seconds. Then Jean shot across the room at a surprising speed, saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll get it,” though George had shown no intention of moving anywhere.
She picked the phone up. “Hello…Yes. Hello…I can’t talk right now…No, nothing’s the matter…He’s here now…Yes. I’ll call you later.” She put the phone down. “That was…Jamie. I rang him last night. When I was wondering where you were.”
“Have you got any of those codeine tablets left?” George asked.
“I think so.”
“I have a very bad hangover.”
“George?”
“What?” he asked.
“Do you think it might be a good idea if you went to bed? See if you feel any better in a couple of hours.”
“Yes. Yes, that might be a very good idea.”
“Let’s get you upstairs,” said Jean.
“And the codeine. I think I really do need the codeine.”
“I’ll dig some out.”
“And maybe not the bed. Maybe I’ll just lie on the sofa.”
47
Ray didn’t turn up the following morning. Or the following evening. Katie was too cross to ring the office. Ray was the one who needed to make a peace offering.
But when he didn’t turn up the day after that she gave in and called, if only to put her mind at rest. He was in a meeting. She called an hour later. He was out of the office. She was asked if she wanted to leave a message but the things she wanted to say weren’t things she wanted to share with a secretary. She rang a third time, he was away from his desk and she began to wonder whether he’d left instructions th
at he didn’t want to talk to her. She didn’t ring again.
Besides, she was enjoying having the house to herself and she was in no mood to give it up before she had to.
On Thursday evening she and Jacob laid out the Brio train set on the living-room carpet. The bridge, the tunnel, the freight crane, the chunky track with its interlocking jigsaw ends. Jacob arranged a crocodile of trucks behind Thomas then crashed them into a landslide of Lego. Katie arranged the trees and the station and made a mountain backdrop from Jacob’s duvet.
She’d wanted a girl. It seemed ridiculous now. The idea that it mattered. Besides, she couldn’t quite picture herself kneeling on the carpet mustering enthusiasm for Barbie’s visit to the hair salon.
“Bash-crash. It chops the driver’s…it chops…it chops the driver’s arm off,” said Jacob. “Nee-naw, nee-naw, nee-naw…”
She knew nothing about petrol engines or outer space (Jacob wanted to be a racing driver when he grew up, preferably on Pluto), but in twelve years’ time she preferred the prospect of body odor and Death Metal to shopping expeditions and eating disorders.
After Jacob had gone to bed she made herself a gin and tonic and sort of looked at the latest Margaret Atwood without actually reading it.
They took up so much space. That was the problem with men. It wasn’t just the leg sprawl and the clumping down stairs. It was the constant demand for attention. Sit in a room with another woman and you could think. Men had that little flashing light on top of their heads. Hello. It’s me. I’m still here.
What if Ray never came back?
She seemed to be standing to one side, watching her life pan out. As if it was happening to someone else.
Perhaps it was age. At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.
Friday came and went with no sign of Ray.
Jacob said he wanted to go and see Granny, and it seemed as good a plan as any. She could put her feet up while Mum did a bit of child care. Dad and Jacob could do some man stuff at the aerodrome. Mum would ask about Ray but in Katie’s experience she never liked to spend long on the subject.
She rang home and Mum seemed unnaturally excited by the prospect. “Besides, we’ve got to make some decisions about the menu and the seating plan. We’ve only got six weeks to go.”
Katie’s heart sank.
At least Jacob would be happy.
48
Jean rang Brian. She said George hadn’t been feeling well and had come home. He asked whether it was serious. She said she thought not. And he was so relieved he didn’t ask any questions, for which she was very grateful indeed.
He’d been fast asleep on the sofa for the last five hours.
Was it serious? She had absolutely no idea what to think.
He’d turned up at nine thirty that morning with a gash on his head looking like he’d slept in a ditch.
She assumed something terrible had happened to him. But the only explanation he offered was that he’d stayed in a hotel. She asked why he hadn’t rung to stop her worrying but he wouldn’t answer. He’d obviously been drinking. She could smell the alcohol on him. She got quite cross at this point.
Then he said that he was dying and she realized he wasn’t well.
He explained that he had cancer. Except it wasn’t cancer. It was eczema. He insisted on showing her a rash on his hip. She actually started to wonder whether he was going mad.
She wanted to ring the doctor, but he was adamant that she do nothing of the kind. He explained that he had already been to the doctor. There was nothing more the doctor could say.
She rang Ottakar’s and the school office and said she’d be off work for a few days.
She rang David from the phone upstairs. He listened to the whole story and said, “Maybe it’s not so strange. Don’t you think about dying sometimes? Those nights when you wake up at three and can’t get back to sleep? And retiring does funny things to you. All that time on your hands…”
George began to stir round about teatime. She made him some cocoa and some toast and he seemed a little more human. She tried to get him to talk, but he made no more sense than he’d done first thing that morning. She could see that he found it painful discussing the subject so after a while she let it drop.
She told him to stay where he was and got him his favorite books and music. He seemed tired, mostly. An hour or so later she made their supper and brought it through so they could eat it together on the coffee table in front of the television. He ate everything and asked for another codeine and they watched a David Attenborough program about monkeys.
Her panic began to recede.
It was like turning the clock back thirty years. Jamie with his glandular fever. Katie with her broken ankle. Tomato soup and toast soldiers. Watching Crown Court together. Doctor Dolittle and The Swiss Family Robinson.
The next day George announced that he was going to retire to the bedroom. He took the television upstairs and installed himself in bed, and to tell the truth Jean was a bit sad.
She popped in every half an hour or so to check that he was OK, but he seemed quite self-sufficient. Which was one of the things that she’d always admired about him. He never moaned about being ill. Never thought he should be the center of attention. Just retreated to his basket, like a poorly dog, and curled up until he was ready to chase sticks again.
By the evening he told her that he would be fine on his own so she went into town the following morning and sold books for four hours and met Ursula for lunch. She started telling her what was happening, then realized that she couldn’t really explain without talking about the cancer and the eczema and the fear of dying and the alcohol and cut on the head, and she didn’t want to make him seem crazy, so she said he’d canceled the Cornwall trip on account of a nasty tummy bug, and Ursula told her all about the joys of staying in Dublin with your daughter and her four children while her builder husband was ripping out the bathroom.
49
Obviously, it was a surprise to find that one was insane. But what surprised George most was how painful it was.
It had never occurred to him before. His uncle, those unwashed people who shouted at buses, Alex Bamford that Christmas…Crazy was the word he had always used. As in crazy paving, or crazy golf. Everything jumbled and out of order and rather amusing.
It seemed less amusing now. Indeed, when he thought about his uncle stuck in St. Edward’s for ten years without a visit from his family, or that disheveled man who tap-danced for small change in Church Street, he could feel the corners of his eyes pricking.
If he were given the choice he would rather someone had broken his leg. You did not have to explain what was wrong with a broken leg. Nor were you expected to mend it by force of will.
The terror came and went in waves. When a wave washed over him he felt much as he did several years ago when he watched a small boy run into the road outside Jacksons, narrowly missing the hood of a braking car.
Between the waves he gathered his strength for the next one and tried desperately not to think about it in case this brought it on more quickly.
What he felt mostly was a relentless, grinding dread which rumbled and thundered and made the world dark, like those spaceships in science-fiction films whose battle-scorched fuselages slid onto the screen and kept on sliding onto the screen because they were, in fact, several thousand times larger than you expected when all you could see was the nose cone.
The idea of genuinely having cancer was beginning to seem almost a relief, the idea of going into hospital, having tubes put into his arm, being told what to do by doctors and nurses, no longer having to grapple with the problem of getting through the next five minutes.
He had given up trying to talk to Jean. She tried hard, but he seemed unable to make her understand.
It was not her fault. If someone had
come to him with similar problems a year ago, he would have reacted in the same way.
Part of the problem was that Jean did not get depressed. She worried. She got angry. She got sad. And she felt all of these things more strongly than he ever did (when he cleared out the cellar, for example, and put that old birdhouse on the bonfire she actually punched him). But they always blew over in a day or two.
She kept him company, however, cooked his meals and washed his clothes and he was very thankful for all of these things.
He was also thankful for the codeine. The box was nearly full. Once he had shaken off the horror of waking up he could fix his mind on those two tablets at lunchtime knowing they would wrap him in a soft haze till he could open a bottle of wine at supper.
He had tried to spend that first night on the sofa, but it was uncomfortable and Jean was of the opinion that crazy behavior encouraged crazy ideas. So he relocated upstairs. In the event it was not as bad as he had expected, being in the bed where he had seen that thing happening. When one thought about it, bad things had happened pretty much everywhere: murders, rapes, fatal accidents. He knew, for example, that an elderly lady had burnt to death in the Farmers’ house in 1952, but it was not something you could sense when you went round there for drinks.
He soon realized that being upstairs had its benefits. One did not have to answer the door if one was in bed, there were no unexpected visitors and one could close the curtains without starting an argument. So he moved the television and the video player into the bedroom and battened down the hatches.
After a few days he girded his loins and ventured to the shop to rent some videos.
And if he woke at night and the Orcs with the boiled, skinless faces were waiting in their silent hundreds in the moonlit gardens he found that he could gain some temporary respite by going into the bathroom, wedging himself between the toilet and the bath and singing very quietly to himself the songs he remembered singing when he was a small child.
50
Katie and Jacob staggered in through the door and dumped their bags.
Mum kissed them both and said, “Your father’s in bed. Bit under the weather.”