Precisely where George was, or what he was doing, it was hard to tell.
“You have no idea. No idea. Ray is kind. Ray is sweet. And you’re entitled to your own opinions. But if you try and stop this we’ll just do it ourselves, OK?”
She seemed to be staring at the ground. Surely George wasn’t lying down?
When he ran out of the room, Jean assumed he’d spilled custard on his trousers or smelt gas and Katie had simply jumped to conclusions. Which was par for the course. But clearly something more serious was happening, and it worried her.
“Well?” asked Katie from the far side of the glass.
There was no answer that Jean could hear.
“Jesus. I give in.”
Katie vanished from the window and there were footsteps down the side of the house. Jean whipped open the fridge door and grabbed a carton of milk. Katie burst through the door, hissed, “What is wrong with that man?” and strode down the hallway.
Jean replaced the milk and waited for George to reappear. When he didn’t, she put the kettle on and went outside.
He was sitting on the patio with his back against the wall and his fingers pressed to his eyes, looking for all the world like that Scottish man who drank cider and slept on the grass outside the magistrates court.
“George?” She bent down in front of him.
He took his hands away from his face. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Is something wrong?” asked Jean.
“I just…I was finding it hard to talk,” said George. “And Katie was shouting a lot.”
“Are you OK?”
“I don’t feel terribly well, to be honest,” said George.
“In what way?” She wondered if he had been crying but this seemed ridiculous.
“Having a bit of trouble breathing. Had to get myself some fresh air. Sorry.”
“This wasn’t about Ray, then?”
“Ray?” asked George.
He seemed to have forgotten who Ray was, and this was worrying, too.
“No,” said George. “It wasn’t about Ray.”
She touched his knee. It felt odd. George didn’t like sympathy. He liked Lemsip and a blanket and the room to himself. “How are you feeling now?”
“A little better. Talking to you.”
“We’ll ring the doctor and get you an appointment tomorrow,” said Jean.
“No, not the doctor,” said George, rather insistently.
“Don’t be silly, George.”
She held out her hand. He took it and slowly got to his feet. He was shaking. “Let’s get you inside.”
She felt uneasy. They had reached the age when things went wrong and didn’t always get better. Bob Green’s heart attack. Moira Palmer’s kidney. But at least George was letting her look after him, which made a change. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d walked arm in arm like this.
They stepped through the door and found Katie standing in the middle of the kitchen eating crumble from a bowl.
Jean said, “Your father’s not feeling very well.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed.
Jean continued: “This has nothing to do with you getting married to Ray.”
Katie looked at George and spoke through a mouthful of crumble. “Well, why didn’t you bloody say?”
Jean ushered George into the hallway.
He let go of her hand. “I’ll go and lie down upstairs, I think.”
The two women stood waiting for the dull click of the bedroom door above their heads. Then Katie dumped her empty bowl in the sink. “Thanks for letting me make a complete prat of myself.”
“I don’t think you need any help from me on that score.”
8
Being alone in a darkened room was not as comforting as George had hoped. He lay on the bed and watched a fly turn randomly in the speckled gray air. To his surprise he missed being shouted at by Katie. Ideally he would like to have done some shouting himself. It seemed like a therapeutic thing to do. But he had never been very good at shouting. Being on the receiving end was probably as close as he was going to get.
The fly came to rest on the tassels of the lampshade.
It was going to be all right. Jean was not going to make him go to the doctor. No one could make him do anything.
He only had to say the word doctor inside his head and he could smell rubber tubing and see that ghost-glow from X-rays on light boxes, the dark mass, doctors in beige side-rooms holding clipboards on their knees and being diplomatic.
He had to distract himself.
The eight American states beginning with the letter M.
Maine. Missouri. Maryland. That was the one everyone forgot. Montana. Mississippi. Or was that just a river?
The door opened.
“Can I come into your cave, Grandpa?”
Without waiting for a reply Jacob raced across the room, climbed onto the bed and stuck his legs under the duvet. “Then the big…the big…the big yellow monster-eating monster can’t get us.”
“I think you’re safe,” said George. “We don’t get many yellow monsters round this way.”
“It’s the yellow monster-eating monster,” said Jacob firmly.
“The yellow monster-eating monster,” said George.
“What’s a Heffalump?” asked Jacob.
“Well, a Heffalump doesn’t actually exist.”
“Is it furry?” asked Jacob.
“It doesn’t exist so…no, it isn’t furry.”
“Does it have wings?”
George had always felt uncomfortable around small children. He knew they were not very clever. That was the point. That was why they went to school. But they could smell fear. They looked you in the eye and asked you to be a bus conductor and it was hard to shake the suspicion that you were being asked to pass some fiendish test.
It did not matter when Jamie and Katie were young. Fathers were not meant to play peepbo or put their hands up a sock and be Mr. Snakey-Snake (Jacob and Jean were inordinately fond of Mr. Snakey-Snake). You built a tree house, administered justice and took control of the kite in strong winds. And that was it.
“Does it have a jet engine or a peller?” asked Jacob.
“Does what have a jet engine or a propeller?” asked George.
“Does this plane have a jet engine or a peller?”
“Well, I think you’re going to have to tell me.”
“What do you think?” asked Jacob.
“I think it probably has a propeller.”
“No. It has a jet engine.”
They lay on their backs, side by side, looking at the ceiling. The fly had gone. There was a faint whiff of wet nappy. Somewhere between chicken soup and boiled milk.
“Are we going to do sleeping now?” asked Jacob.
“To be honest, Jacob, I think I’d prefer to keep talking.”
“Do you like talking, Grandpa?”
“Sometimes,” said George. “A lot of the time I like just being quiet. But at this precise moment I think I prefer talking.”
“What’s ‘this price moment’?”
“This precise moment is now. Just after lunch. In the afternoon. On a Sunday.”
“Are you funny?” asked Jacob.
“I think the general opinion would be that I’m not funny.”
The door opened again and Ray’s head appeared.
“Sorry, George. The nipper slipped the leash.”
“That’s OK. We were talking, weren’t we, Jacob.”
It felt good squaring up to his prospective son-in-law in one of Ray’s acknowledged areas of expertise.
But then it was not so good because Ray came into the room and sat on the end of the bed. On his and Jean’s bed.
“Seems like you blokes have got the right idea. Keeping your heads down.”
Ray lay on the bed.
And this was where the children problem overlapped with the Ray problem. You got the impression, sometimes, that parts of his brain were actually missing, that he
could quite easily wander into the bathroom looking for a towel while you were on the toilet and have no clue as to why this might be inappropriate.
Jacob scrambled to his feet. “Let’s play ring-a-roses.”
And here it was. The test. You started a benign conversation about Heffalumps and before you knew it you had been shoehorned into some mortifying charade.
“OK,” said Ray getting onto his knees.
Sweet mother of God, thought George. Surely this wasn’t going to involve him?
“George?”
It was.
He got up onto his knees. Jacob took hold of his left hand and Ray took hold of his right. He hoped sincerely that Jean or Katie did not come into the room whilst this was taking place.
Jacob began bouncing up and down. “Ring-a-ring-a-roses…”
Ray joined in. “A pocket full of noses.”
George moved his shoulders up and down in time with the song.
“A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down.”
Jacob leapt into the air and fell shrieking onto the duvet with Ray. George, having given up hope of escaping with any dignity, slumped backward onto his pillow.
Jacob was laughing. Ray was laughing. And it occurred to George that if he could find the handle he might be able to open up the secret door and slide down that long chute all the way back to childhood and someone would take care of him and he would be safe.
“Again,” shouted Jacob, clambering to his feet. “Again, again, again, again, again…”
9
Jamie dunked his jacket onto the back of the chair, loosened his tie and, because no one was watching, did a little pirouette across the floor of the kitchen, ending up in front of the fridge. “Oh yes.”
He took out a bottle of Corona, closed the fridge, removed the Silk Cut from the drawer under the toaster, went through the French windows, sat on the bench and lit up.
It had been a good day. Contracts exchanged on the Miller house. And the Owens were going to bite. You could see it in their eyes. Well, you could see it in hers. And she quite clearly wore the trousers. Plus, Carl was still off work on account of his broken ankle, so Jamie had been dealing with the Cohens and very publicly not screwing it up. Unlike Carl.
The garden was looking great. No cat shit for starters. Maybe the lion dung pellets were working. It’d rained on the way home so the big pebbles were clean and dark and shiny. The chunky railway sleepers round the raised beds. Forsythia, bay, hosta. God knows why people planted grass. Wasn’t the point of having a garden to sit in it and do nothing?
He could hear the faint strains of reggae from a few gardens away. Loud enough for that lazy summer feeling. Not so loud you wanted them to turn it down.
He took a swig of lager.
A weird orange blister appeared on the gable of the house opposite. It turned slowly into a hot-air balloon and floated westward behind the branches of the cherry. A second balloon appeared, red this time, in the shape of a giant fire extinguisher. One by one the sky filled with balloons.
He blew out a little cloud of cigarette smoke and watched it drift sideways, keeping its shape until it spilled over the top of the barbecue.
Life was pretty much perfect. He had the house. He had the garden. Elderly lady in rude health to the left. Christians to the right (you could say what you liked about Christians, but they didn’t yodel during sex like the Germans who’d lived there before). Gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tony round three nights a week.
He took another drag on the cigarette.
There was birdsong, too, along with the reggae. He’d have recognized the species at ten. He had no idea now. Not that it mattered. It was a good noise. Natural. Soothing.
Tony would be here in half an hour. They’d go down to the Carpenters’ for something to eat. Pick up a DVD from Blockbuster on the way back. If Tony wasn’t too knackered, he might get a shag.
In a nearby garden a child kicked a football against a wall. Doink. Doink. Doink.
Everything seemed suspended in some kind of balance. Obviously someone would come along and fuck it up, because that’s what other people did. But for now…
He felt a little peckish and wondered whether there were any Pringles left. He stood up and went inside.
10
Katie sometimes wondered whether Mum chose her opinions just to wind her up.
Clearly she’d rather the wedding didn’t go ahead. But if it did she wanted it to be a grand and public celebration. Katie pointed out that it was a second wedding. Mum said they didn’t want to seem cheap. Katie said that some restaurants were very expensive indeed. Her mother suggested a church blessing. Katie asked why. Her mother said it would be nice. Katie pointed out that nice was not the point of religion. Her mother said she should arrange to have a dress made. Katie said she didn’t do frocks. Her mother told her not to be ridiculous. And Katie began to realize they should have tied the knot in Las Vegas and told everyone afterward.
The following day Katie was watching Brookside on telly while Ray and Jacob made some kind of rudimentary shelter out of two dining chairs and the picnic blanket. She asked what they were doing and Jacob said they were making a tent. “For the wedding.” And Katie thought, “Sod it.” She was getting married to Ray. Her parents were going to have a party. They were simply going to do these things simultaneously.
She rang her mother and suggested a compromise. Her mother got the marquee and the flowers and the cake. Katie got the civil ceremony, no blessing and a dress off-the-peg.
The following Saturday Ray and Jacob went to get a new exhaust fitted while Katie met Mona in town to buy an outfit before Mum changed her mind.
She bought herself a long silk strapless dress in sky blue from Whistles. You couldn’t run in it (Katie made a point of never buying anything you couldn’t run in) but if the register office caught fire she reckoned Ray could sling her over his shoulder. She bought a pair of suede shoes in a slightly darker blue with a bit of heel from a place on Oxford Street, and it was quite fun being girly for a few hours with Mona, who could do girly till the cows came home.
When she got home she did a twirl for the boys and Jacob said, “You look like a lady,” which was weird, but sweet.
She bent down and kissed him (bending down wasn’t particularly easy either). “We should get you a sailor suit to match.”
“Don’t be hard on the little chap,” said Ray.
Jacob gave her a serious look. “I want to wear my Bob the Builder T-shirt.”
“I’m not sure what Granny is going to think about that,” said Katie.
“But I want to wear my Bob the Builder T-shirt,” said Jacob.
They’d cross that bridge when they came to it.
11
George sat in the car outside the surgery, gripping the steering wheel like a man driving down a mountainside.
The lesion felt like a manhole cover of rotted meat under his shirt.
He could see the doctor, or he could drive away. He felt a little calmer just putting it like that. Option A or Option B.
If he saw the doctor he would be told the truth. He did not want to be told the truth, but the truth might not be as bad as he feared. The lesion might be benign or of a treatable size. Dr. Barghoutian, however, was only a GP. George might be referred to a specialist and have to live with the prospect of that meeting for a week, two weeks, a month (it was entirely possible that after seven days without eating or sleeping one went completely insane, in which case matters would be taken out of his hands).
If he drove away, Jean would ask him where he had been. The surgery would ring home to ask why he had missed the appointment. He might not get to the phone first. He would die of cancer. Jean would find out that he had not been to the doctor and be livid that he was dying of cancer and had done nothing about it.
Alternatively, if the lesion was benign or of a treatable size and he drove away, it might subsequently mutate into a malignant and untreatably large cancer and he might be told this
and have to live, for however brief a time, with the knowledge that he was dying as a direct result of his own cowardice.
When he finally got out of the car it was because he could no longer bear his own company in such a confined space.
The presence of other people in the surgery calmed him a little. He checked in and found himself a seat.
What could he say about Ray in his speech at the wedding reception? Now there was a puzzle he could get his teeth into.
Ray was good with children. Well, good with Jacob at any rate. He could fix things. Or thought he could. The mower had died a week after he tinkered with it. Either way it was not a sufficient recommendation for marriage. He had money. A sufficient recommendation, certainly, but one which you could add only as an amusing aside once you’d established that you liked the chap.
This was filling his head.
Ray was in love with Katie, and Katie was in love with him.
Was she? His daughter’s mind had always been a mystery to him. Not that she had any qualms about sharing her opinions. About the wallpaper in her bedroom. About men with hairy backs. But her opinions were so violent (could wallpaper matter that much?), so changeable and so clearly not part of a coherent worldview that he wondered, sometimes, during her teens especially, if there were something medically wrong.
No. He had got everything back to front. It was not the job of the bride’s father to like his prospective son-in-law (he could feel sanity returning even as he formed the thought). That was the job of the best man. In which respect, if Ray’s best man improved on the buffoon at her last wedding George’s relief might outweigh his misgiving about the marriage itself (“So I rang all Graham’s previous girlfriends to find out what Katie was in for. And this is what they said…”).
He looked up and saw a poster on the far wall. It consisted of two large photographs. The photograph on the left showed a patch of tanned skin and bore the words HOW DO YOU LIKE MY TAN? The picture on the right bore the words HOW DO YOU LIKE MY SKIN CANCER? and showed what looked like a large boil packed with cigarette ash.
He came very close to being sick and realized that he had steadied himself by gripping the shoulder of a tiny Indian woman to his right.