Jamie didn’t know what to say. Talking to Ray was hard enough in broad daylight. With no body language it was pretty much impossible.
“Actually,” said Ray, “it’s not really about Graham. Graham was just a…”
“Catalyst?” said Jamie, glad of a chance to make a contribution.
“A symptom,” said Ray, politely. “Katie doesn’t love me. I don’t think she ever has. But she’s trying really hard. Because she’s frightened I’m going to chuck her out of the house.”
“Uh-huh,” said Jamie.
“I’m not going to chuck her out of the house.”
“Thank you.” It sounded weird. But correcting it would have sounded weirder.
“But you don’t marry someone if you don’t love them, do you,” said Ray.
“No,” said Jamie, though people obviously did.
They sat for a while, listening to a distant train (how strange that you only ever heard them at night). It was oddly pleasant. What with Ray being a bit crestfallen. And Jamie not being able to see him. So Jamie said, “God, the famous Graham,” in a sort of speaking-out-loud way as if he was talking to a friend.
He could feel Ray flinch. Even in the dark.
“You’ve met him,” said Jamie. “You know what he’s like.”
“I try to keep a low profile,” said Ray.
Jamie sipped his coffee. “Well, obviously he’s incredibly good-looking.” This was probably not the right thing to say. “But that’s all he is. He’s boring. And shallow. And weak. And actually not very intelligent. Except you don’t really notice at first. Because he’s cute, and laid-back, and confident. So you kind of assume he’s got some grand plan.” He glanced back toward the house and noticed a broken pane in the kitchen window which had been neatly filled with a rectangle of wood. “He works for an insurance company…It’s not often that someone has a job that makes mine seem exciting.”
Jamie was rather enjoying talking to Ray in the dark like this. The strangeness, the secretness. The way it made things easier to say. So much so that Jamie let his guard down and found himself having a brief but very specific sexual fantasy about Ray and only realized what he was doing about three seconds in, which was like treading on a slug in the kitchen at night, because it was wrong in so many ways.
Ray said, “Your mum’s not too chuffed about having me in the family, is she.”
And Jamie thought, What the hell, and said, “Not much. But she thought the sun shone out of Graham’s arse. So she’s hardly the world’s best judge of character.” Was this wise? He could have done with seeing Ray’s face at this point. “Of course when Graham walked out on Katie and Jacob she decided he was a servant of Satan.”
Ray wasn’t saying anything.
A light went on upstairs and his mother appeared briefly at the bedroom window and glanced down into the dark garden. She looked small and sad.
Jamie said, “You hang on in there,” and realized he wanted Ray and Katie to stay together and wasn’t entirely sure why. Because he needed something to go right when everything else was going wrong? Or was he starting to like the man?
“Thanks, mate,” said Ray.
And Jamie paused and said, “Tony chucked me.” He wasn’t entirely sure why he said this either.
“And you want to get back together…”
Jamie tried to say yes but the thought of saying it made him feel slightly choked up and he didn’t feel close enough to Ray for that. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Your fault or his?”
Jamie decided to go for it. It was a kind of penance. Like diving into a cold pool. It would be character building. If he cried, sod it. He’d made a fool of himself enough times already this week. “I wanted to be with someone. And I wanted to stay single at the same time.”
“So you can, like, shag other blokes?”
“No, not even that.” Strangely, he didn’t feel like crying. Quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps it was the darkness, but it was easier talking about this to Ray than to anyone in his own family. Katie included. “I didn’t want to compromise. I didn’t want to share stuff. I didn’t want to have to make sacrifices. Which is stupid. I can see that now.” He paused. “You love someone, you’ve got to let something go.”
“Spot on,” said Ray.
“I fucked up,” said Jamie. “And I’m not sure how to mend it.”
“You hang on in there, too,” said Ray.
Jamie brushed an insect off his face.
“The stupid thing…” said Ray.
“What’s the stupid thing?” asked Jamie.
“I love her. She’s bloody hard work, but I love her. And I know I’m not very bright. And I know I do some moronic things. But I care about her. I really do.”
On cue, the kitchen door opened and Katie emerged carrying a plate.
“Where are you?” She walked gingerly onto the lawn and trod on something. “Shit.” She bent down to retrieve a dropped fork.
“We’re here,” said Jamie.
She made her way over. “There’s supper inside. Why don’t you two go and get something to eat and I’ll sit with Jacob.”
“You give me that,” said Ray. “I’ll stay out here.”
“All right,” said Katie. She sounded like she’d had enough disagreements for one day. She gave the plate to Ray. “Spaghetti Bolognese. You sure you don’t want a man portion?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Ray.
Katie got down onto her hands and knees and put her head inside the tent. She snuggled close to Jacob and kissed his cheek. “Sleep tight, banana.” Then she got up again and turned to Jamie. “Come on. We’d better go and keep Mum company.”
She headed back toward the house.
Jamie got to his feet. He put his hand on Ray’s shoulder and patted it gently. Ray didn’t react.
He walked over the damp grass toward the lit house.
75
Katie knew there was going to be a row over supper. She could feel it in the air. If things went particularly badly they could have an argument about her own wedding, Dad’s mental health and Mum’s lover all at the same time.
Halfway through the spaghetti Bolognese Mum said she sincerely hoped Dad wouldn’t be having any more silly accidents. There was a slightly hunted look on her face and it seemed pretty obvious to Katie that she knew the chisel story was bollocks but wanted to make sure neither of them did. There was one of those uneasy silences where you can hear everyone chewing and the scrape of cutlery and Jamie saved the situation by saying, “And if he does, let’s hope he does it in the garden,” which allowed them to defuse the tension with a bit of forced laughter.
They were clearing the plates when Mum dropped the big one. “So, is there going to be a wedding or not?”
Katie gritted her teeth. “I just don’t know, OK?”
“Well, we’re going to have to know pretty soon. I mean it’s all very well us being sympathetic, but I’ve got to make some rather difficult phone calls and I’d rather not leave them any longer than I have to.”
Katie put her hands flat on the table to calm herself. “What do you want me to say? I don’t know. Things are difficult at the moment.”
Jamie paused in the doorway with the plates.
“Well, do you love him or not?” asked Mum.
And that was when Katie really lost it. “What the hell do you know about love?”
Mum looked as if she’d been slapped.
Jamie said, “Hang on. Hang on. Let’s not have a shouting match. Please.”
“Butt out,” said Katie.
Jean sat back in her chair and closed her eyes and said, “Well, if you’re feeling like that then I think it’s safe to assume that there’s going to be no wedding.”
Jamie’s hands were actually shaking. He put the plates back down on the table. “Katie. Mum. Can we just leave this, OK? I think we’ve all been through enough already.”
“What the fuck has this got to do with you?” said Katie, and she knew it was chi
ldish and spiteful but she needed sympathy, not a bloody lecture.
Then Jamie lost it, too, which she hadn’t seen in a very long time.
“It’s got everything to do with me. You’re my sister. And you’re my mother. And the two of you are screwing everything up.”
“Jamie…” said Mum, as if he was six.
Jamie ignored her and turned to Katie. “I’ve spent the last twenty minutes sitting outside with Ray and he’s a really nice guy and he’s busting a gut to make it easy for you.”
Katie said, “Well, you’ve changed your tune.”
“Shut up and listen,” said Jamie. “He’s putting up with all this crap. And he’s giving you a place to live for as long as you like even though you don’t love him, because he cares for you and he cares for Jacob. He drives up here and sits in the garden because he’s perfectly aware that Mum and Dad don’t like him—”
“I never said that,” countered Mum weakly.
“And I’ve sat with Dad today and talked to him and there is something seriously wrong with him and he didn’t have an accident with a stupid fucking chisel. He was chopping himself up with a pair of scissors and you’re hoping it’ll all blow over. Well, it’s not going to blow over. He needs someone to listen to him or he’s going to stick his head in the oven and we’re all going to end up feeling like shit because we pretended there was nothing wrong.”
Katie was so stunned by Jamie’s sudden character change that she didn’t hear what he was saying. No one spoke for a couple of seconds and then Mum started to cry very quietly.
Jamie said, “I’m going to take some pudding into the garden,” and walked out, leaving the plates on the table.
76
Jean went upstairs and lay down on the bed and cried until she had run out of tears.
She felt desperately lonely.
Because of Jamie, mostly. Katie she could understand. Katie was going through a difficult time. And Katie argued with everyone, about everything. But what had come over Jamie? Did he have any idea of what she had been through today?
She no longer understood the men in her family.
She sat up and blew her nose on a tissue from the box on the bedside table.
Though, to be frank, she wasn’t sure that she ever had.
She remembered Jamie at five. Going off to his room “to be private.” Even now they would be talking sometimes and it was like talking to someone in Spain. You got the basics. The time of day. Directions to the beach. But there was a whole level you were missing because you didn’t speak the language properly.
And it might have been all right if she could just give him a cuddle sometimes. But he wasn’t the cuddling sort. No more than George was.
She walked over to the window and pulled the curtains back and looked down into the darkened garden. There was a tent somewhere in the shadows under the trees at the far end.
The idea of swapping places with Ray seemed suddenly very attractive, being down there in a sleeping bag with Jacob.
Away from the house. Away from her family. Away from everything.
77
When George came round they’d gone. Jean, Katie, Jamie, Jacob, Ray. He was rather relieved, to be honest. He was exceedingly tired, and his family could be hard work. Especially en masse.
He was beginning to think that he could do with a spot of reading, and wondering how he might be able to get his hands on a decent magazine, when the curtains were opened by a large man in a battered canvas jacket. He was entirely bald and carrying a clipboard.
“Mr. Hall?” He rotated a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles up onto his very shiny head.
“Yes.”
“Joel Forman. Psychiatrist.”
“I thought you chaps went home at five o’clock,” said George.
“That would be lovely, wouldn’t it.” He flicked through some papers on the clipboard. “Sadly, people only get crazier as the day wears on, in my experience. Self-medication, usually. Though I’m sure that doesn’t apply to you.”
“Certainly not,” said George. “Though I’ve been taking some antidepressants.” He decided not to mention the codeine and the whiskey.
“What flavor?”
“Flavor?”
“What are they called?”
“Lustral,” said George. “They make me feel absolutely terrible, to be honest.”
Dr. Forman was one of those men who did humor without smiling. He looked like a villain from a James Bond film. It was disconcerting.
“Weeping, sleeplessness and anxiety,” said Dr. Forman. “Always makes me laugh when I read that under possible side effects. I’d chuck them, frankly.”
“OK,” said George.
“You were doing some amateur surgery, I hear.”
George explained, slowly and carefully, in a measured voice with a little self-deprecating humor thrown in, how he had ended up in hospital.
“Scissors. The practical approach,” said Dr. Forman. “And how are you now?”
“I feel better than I have done in quite a long time,” said George.
“Good,” said Dr. Forman. “But you’ll still be seeing the psychologist at your GP’s surgery, won’t you.” This was not phrased as a question.
“I will.”
“Good,” said Dr. Forman again, jabbing the paper on the clipboard with the end of his pen in a little rounding-off flourish. “Good.”
George relaxed a little. His examination was over, and unless he was very much mistaken, he had passed. “Only a week ago I was thinking I could do with a stay in some kind of institution. Rest from the world. That kind of thing.”
Dr. Forman did not react at first and George wondered whether he had given away a piece of information which was going to change Dr. Forman’s assessment. Like reversing over the examiner’s foot after a driving test.
Dr. Forman put the clipboard back under his arm. “I’d stay away from psychiatric hospitals if I were you.” He clicked his heels together. It was part changing of the guard, part Wizard of Oz. George wondered if Dr. Forman was himself a little unhinged. “Talk to your psychologist. Eat properly. Get to bed early. Do some regular exercise.”
“Which reminds me,” said George. “Do you know where I can get hold of something to read?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Dr. Forman, and before George could specify the kind of reading material he might like, the psychiatrist had shaken George’s hand and vanished through the curtain.
Half an hour later a porter came to take him to a ward. George felt a little insulted by the wheelchair until he attempted to stand. It wasn’t pain per se, but the sensation of something being very wrong in his abdominal region and the suspicion that if he stood up his insides might exit through the hole he had made earlier in the day. When he sat down again, sweat was pouring from his face and arms.
“You going to behave now?” said the porter.
Two nurses appeared and he was hoisted into the chair.
He was wheeled to an empty bed on an open ward. A tiny leathery Oriental man was sleeping in the bed to his left in a cat’s cradle of tubes and wires. To his right a teenage boy was listening to music through headphones. His leg was in traction and he had brought most of his possessions into hospital: a stack of CDs, a camera, a bottle of HP Sauce, a small robot, some books, a large inflatable hammer…
George lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. He would have given anything for a cup of tea and a biscuit.
He was on the verge of catching the attention of the teenage boy to find out whether there was any conceivable overlap in their literary tastes when Dr. Forman materialized at the foot of the bed. He handed George two paperbacks and said, “Leave them with the nurses when you’ve finished, OK? Or I will hunt you down like a dog.” He gave a brief smile then turned and walked away, exchanging a few words with one of the nurses in a language which was neither English nor any other language that George recognized.
George turned the books over. Treason’s Harbour and The
Nutmeg of Consolation, by Patrick O’Brian.
The aptness of the choice was almost creepy. George had read Master and Commander last year and had been meaning to try some of the others. He wondered whether he might have said something while unconscious.
He read eighty or so pages of Treason’s Harbour, ate a limp institutional supper of beef stew, boiled vegetables, peaches and custard, then slipped into a dreamless sleep, interrupted only by a long and complex visit to the toilet at 3:00 a.m.
In the morning he was given a bowl of cornflakes, a mug of tea and a brief lecture about wound care. The charge nurse asked whether he possessed a ground-floor toilet and a wife who could move him around the house. He was presented with a wheelchair, told to return it when he could walk unaided, and given his demob papers.
He rang Jean and said he could come home. She seemed under-whelmed by the news, and he felt a little tetchy about this until he remembered what he had done to the carpet.
He asked if she could bring some clothes.
She said they would try to pick him up as soon as possible.
He sat back and read another seventy pages of Treason’s Harbour.
Captain Aubrey was writing a letter home about Byrne’s lucky snuffbox when George looked up and saw Ray walking down the ward. His first thought was that something dreadful had happened to the rest of his family. And, indeed, Ray’s usual hail-fellow-well-met demeanor had given way to something rather dour.
“George.”
“Ray.”
“Is everything all right?” asked George.
Ray dumped a holdall on the bed. “Your clothes.”
“I’m just surprised to see you, that’s all. I mean, as opposed to Jean. Or Jamie. I don’t mean to be rude. I just feel a little embarrassed that they’ve made you do this.” He tried to sit up. It hurt. A lot.
Ray offered his hand and gently pulled George upright so that he was sitting on the side of the bed.
“Everything is all right, isn’t it?” said George.
Ray let out a world-weary sigh. “All right?” he said. “I wouldn’t go that far. A bloody mess. That’s probably nearer the mark.”