A Spot of Bother

  She still couldn’t shake the idea that he was planning some kind of showdown, and as the tension rose during the afternoon she found herself toying with the idea of faking some kind of illness. When the doorbell finally rang just after half past seven she ran down the landing, trying to get to the door first and tripped on the loose carpet, twisting her ankle.

  By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, George was standing in the hallway wiping his hands on his stripy apron, and David was handing him a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers.

  David noticed her hobbling a little. “Are you OK?” Instinctively he moved to comfort her, then caught himself and stepped back.

  Jean put her hand on George’s arm and bent down to rub her ankle. It didn’t hurt a great deal, but she wanted to avoid David’s eye, and the fear that he might have given something away in that fraction of a second made her feel light-headed.

  “Is it bad?” asked George. Thankfully he seemed to have noticed nothing.

  “Not too bad,” said Jean.

  “You should sit down and put your foot up,” said David. “To prevent it swelling.” He took the flowers and wine back so that George could help her.

  “I’m still in the middle of cooking,” said George. “Why don’t I sit you two down with a glass of wine in the living room?”

  “No,” said Jean, a little too firmly. She paused to calm herself. “We’ll come into the kitchen with you.”

  George installed them at the table, pulled out a third chair for Jean’s ankle, which she didn’t really need, filled two wineglasses and returned to grating Parmesan.

  It was always going to be a strange occasion, whoever their guest was. George didn’t like other people in his kennel. So she assumed the conversation would be stilted. Whenever she dragged him along to parties she would invariably find him standing disconsolately in a circle of men, as they talked about rugby and tax returns, wearing a pained expression on his face, as if he was suffering from a headache. She hoped, at least, that David would be able to fill any silences.

  But to her surprise, it was George who did most of the talking. He seemed genuinely excited to have company. The two men congratulated themselves about the decline in Shepherds’ fortunes since their departure. They talked about trekking holidays in France. David talked about his gliding. George talked about his fear of flying. David suggested that learning to glide might cure the problem. George said that David clearly underestimated his fear of flying. David confessed to a snake phobia. George asked him to imagine an anaconda in his lap for a couple of hours. David laughed and said George had a point.

  Jean’s fear ebbed away and was replaced by something odder but equally uncomfortable. It was ridiculous but she didn’t want them to be getting on this well. George was warmer and funnier than he was when they were alone together. And David seemed more ordinary.

  Was this how they’d been at work? And if so, why had George not mentioned David once since leaving the company? She began to feel rather guilty for having painted David such a bleak picture of her home life.

  By the time they decamped to the dining room George and David seemed to have more in common with one another than she had with either of them. It was like being back at school again. Watching your best friend striking up a relationship with another child and being left out in the cold.

  She kept muscling into the conversation, trying to claw back some of that attention. But she kept getting it wrong. Sounding far too interested in Great Expectations when she’d only seen the TV series. Being too rude about George’s previous culinary disasters when the risotto was actually very good. It was tiring. And in the end it seemed easier to take a backseat, leave them to do the talking and give her opinion when asked.

  Only at one point did George seem lost for words. David was talking about Martin Donnelly’s wife having to go into hospital for tests. She turned round and saw George sitting with his head between his knees. Her first thought was that he’d poisoned everyone with his cooking and was about to vomit. But he sat back, wincing and rubbing his leg, apologized for the interruption, then headed off to do a circuit of the kitchen to ease a muscle spasm.

  By the end of the meal he’d drunk an entire bottle of red wine and turned into something of a comic.

  “At the risk of boring Jean with an old story, a couple of weeks later we got our photos back. Except they weren’t our photos. They were photos of some young man and his girlfriend. In the altogether. Jamie suggested we write ‘Do you want an enlargement?’ on the back before we returned them.”

  Over coffee David talked about Mina and the children, and as they stood on the steps watching him drive away on a little cloud of pink smoke, George said, “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?”

  “Of course not,” said Jean.

  She expected him to put an arm round her, at the very least. But he just clapped his hands together, said, “Right. Washing up,” and headed back inside as if this were simply the next part of the fun.

  26

  Katie had had a shitty week.

  The festival programs arrived on Monday and Patsy, who still couldn’t spell program, shocked everyone by knowing a fact, that the photo of Terry Jones on page seven was actually a photo of Terry Gilliam. Aidan bawled Katie out because admitting he’d cocked up wasn’t one of the skills he’d learnt on his MBA. She resigned. He refused to accept her resignation. And Patsy cried because people were shouting.

  Katie left early to pick up Jacob from nursery and Jackie said he’d bitten two other children. She took him to one side and gave him a lecture about being like the meanie crocodile in A Kiss Like This. But Jacob wasn’t doing recriminations that day. So she cut her losses and drove him home where she withheld his yogurt until they’d had a conversation about biting, which generated the same kind of frustration Dr. Benson probably felt when they were doing Kant at university.

  “It was my tractor,” said Jacob.

  “Actually it’s everyone’s tractor,” said Katie.

  “I was playing with it.”

  “And Ben shouldn’t have grabbed it from you. But that doesn’t give you the right to bite him.”

  “I was playing with it.”

  “If you’re playing with something and someone tries to grab it you have to shout and tell Jackie or Bella or Susie.”

  “You said it’s wrong to shout.”

  “It’s OK to shout if you’re really, really cross. But you’re not allowed to bite. Or to hit someone. Because you don’t want other people to bite you or hit you, do you?”

  “Ben bites people,” said Jacob.

  “But you don’t want to be like Ben.”

  “Can I have my yogurt now?”

  “Not until you understand that biting people is a bad thing to do.”

  “I understand,” said Jacob.

  “Saying you understand is not the same thing as understanding.”

  “But he tried to grab my tractor.”

  Ray came in at this point and made the technically correct suggestion that it was unhelpful to hug Jacob while she was telling him off, and she was able to demonstrate immediately a situation where you were allowed to shout at someone if you were really, really cross.

  Ray remained infuriatingly calm until Jacob told him not to make Mummy angry because “You’re not my real Daddy,” at which point he walked into the kitchen and snapped the breadboard into two pieces.

  Jacob fixed her with a thirty-five-year-old stare and said, tartly, “I’m going to eat my yogurt now,” then went off to consume it in front of Thomas the Tank Engine.

  The following morning she canceled her dentist’s appointment and spent her day off taking Jacob into the office where he acted like a demented chimp while she and Patsy inserted five thousand erratum slips. By lunchtime he’d taken the chain off Aidan’s bike, emptied a card index file and spilled hot chocolate into his shoes.

  Come Friday, for the first time in two years she was genuinely relieved when Graham arrived
to take him off her hands for forty-eight hours.

  Ray headed out to play five-a-side football on Saturday morning and she made the mistake of attempting to clean the house. She was manhandling the sofa to get at the fluff and slime and toy parts underneath when something tore in her lower back. Suddenly she was in a great deal of pain and walking like the butler in a vampire movie.

  Ray microwaved some supper and they attempted an orthopedic, low-impact shag but the ibuprofen seemed to have rendered her numb in all the unhelpful places.

  On Sunday she gave in and retired to the sofa, keeping the crap mother guilt at bay with Cary Grant videos.

  At six Graham turned up with Jacob.

  Ray was in the shower so she let them in herself and tottered back to the chair in the kitchen.

  Graham asked what was wrong but Jacob was too busy telling her what a wonderful time they’d had at the Natural History Museum.

  “And there were…there were skellingtons of elephants and rhinoceroses and…and…the dinosaurs were ghost dinosaurs.”

  “They were repainting one of the rooms,” said Graham. “Everything was under dust sheets.”

  “And Daddy said I could stay up late. And we had…we had…we had eggy. And toast. And I helped. And I gotted a chocolate stegosaurus. From the museum. And there was a dead squirrel. In Daddy’s…Daddy’s garden. It had worms. In its eyes.”

  Katie held her arms out. “Are you going to give your mummy a big hug?”

  But Jacob was in full flow. “And…and…and we went on a double-decker bus and I keeped the tickets.”

  Graham crouched down. “Hang on a tick, little man, I think your mummy’s hurt herself.” He put a finger to Jacob’s lips and turned to Katie. “Are you OK?”

  “Wrecked my back. Moving the sofa.”

  Graham gave Jacob a serious look. “You be good to your mummy, all right? Don’t go giving her the runaround. Promise?”

  Jacob looked at Katie. “Is your back not comfy?”

  “Not very. But a hug from my monkey boy would make it feel a lot better.”

  Jacob didn’t move.

  Graham got to his feet. “Well, it’s getting late.”

  Jacob began to wail, “I don’t want Daddy to go.”

  Graham ruffled his hair. “Sorry, Buster. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

  “Come on, Jacob.” Katie held her arms out again. “Let me give you a cuddle.”

  But Jacob was working himself up into a state of truly operatic despair, punching the air and kicking out at the nearest chair. “Not go. Not go.”

  Graham tried to hold him, if only to stop him hurting himself. “Hey, hey, hey…” Normally he would have left. They’d learnt the hard way. But normally she could have scooped Jacob into her arms and hung on to him while Graham beat a retreat.

  Jacob stamped his feet. “Nobody…Nobody listens…I want…I hate…”

  After three or four minutes Ray appeared in the doorway with a towel round his waist. She was past caring what he might say and how Graham might react. He walked over to Jacob, hoisted him over his shoulder and disappeared.

  There wasn’t time to react. They just stared at the empty door and listened to the screaming getting fainter as Ray and Jacob made their way upstairs.

  Graham got to his feet. She thought for a moment that he was going to make some caustic comment and she wasn’t sure she could handle that. But he said, “I’ll make some tea,” and it was the kindest thing he’d said to her in a long time.

  “Thanks.”

  He put the kettle on. “You’re giving me a weird look.”

  “The shirt. It’s the one I bought you for Christmas.”

  “Yeh. Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  “No. I wasn’t trying to…” She was crying.

  “Are you all right?” He reached out to touch her but stopped himself.

  “I’m fine. Sorry.”

  “Are things going OK?” asked Graham.

  “We’re getting married.” She was crying properly now. “Oh crap. I shouldn’t be…”

  He gave her a tissue. “That’s great news.”

  “I know.” She blew her nose messily. “And you? What about you?”

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  “Tell me,” said Katie.

  “I was seeing someone from work.” He took away her soggy tissue and gave her a fresh one. “It didn’t work out. I mean, she was great, but…She wore this swimming cap in the bath to keep her hair dry.”

  He took out some Fig Rolls and they talked about the safe stuff. Ray putting his foot in it with Jamie. Graham’s gran modeling for a knitwear catalog.

  After ten minutes he made his excuses. She was sad. It surprised her and he paused just long enough to suggest that he felt the same. There was a brief moment during which one of them might have said something inappropriate. He cut it short.

  “You look after yourself, OK?” He kissed her gently on the top of the head and left.

  She sat quietly for a few more minutes. Jacob had stopped crying. She realized she hadn’t felt the pain while she and Graham had been talking. It was back with a vengeance now. She swigged two more ibuprofen with a glass of water then shuffled upstairs. They were in Jacob’s room. She stopped outside and glanced round the door.

  Jacob was lying on the bed, facedown, looking at the wall. Ray was sitting next to him, patting his bottom and singing “Ten Green Bottles” very quietly and completely out of tune.

  Katie was crying again. And she didn’t want Jacob to see. Or Ray for that matter. So she turned and silently walked back down to the kitchen.

  27

  Above all it seemed so profoundly unjust.

  George was not naïve. Bad things happened to good people. He knew that. And vice versa. But when the Benns were burgled by their daughter’s boyfriend, or when Brian’s first wife had to have her breast implants taken out, you couldn’t help thinking that some kind of rudimentary justice was being done.

  He knew men who had kept mistresses their entire married lives. He knew men who had gone bankrupt and registered the same company under a different name the following month. He knew a man who had broken his son’s leg with a spade. Why were they not going through this?

  He had spent thirty years making and installing playground equipment. Good playground equipment. Not as cheap as Wicksteed or Abbey Leisure, but better value.

  He had made mistakes. He should have sacked Alex Bamford when he found him half conscious on the floor of the office washroom. And he should have asked for written evidence of Jane Fuller’s back problems and not waited until she appeared in the local paper doing that fun run.

  He had made seventeen people redundant, but they got a decent settlement and as good a reference as he could write without perjuring himself. It was not heart surgery, but neither was it weapons manufacture. In a modest way he had increased the happiness of a small part of the human population.

  And now this had been dumped on his plate.

  Still, there was no point in complaining. He had spent his life solving problems. Now he had to solve another one.

  His mind was malfunctioning. He had to bring it under control. He had done it before. He had shared a house with his daughter for eighteen years without coming to blows, for starters. When his mother died he went back into the office the following morning to make sure the Glasgow deal did not fall through.

  He needed a strategy, just as he would if Jean had booked a holiday for two in Australia.

  He found himself a sheet of stiff, cream writing paper, drew up a list of rules, then hid it in the fireproof cash box at the back of the wardrobe with his birth certificate and the house deeds:

  1. Keep busy.

  2. Take long walks.

  3. Sleep well.

  4. Shower and change in the dark.

  5. Drink red wine.

  6. Think of something else.

  7. Talk.

  As for keeping busy, the wedding was a godsend. Last time round
he had left the organization to Jean. Now that he had time to spare he could keep himself occupied and earn brownie points into the bargain.

  Walking was a genuine delight. Especially the footpaths round Nassington and Fotheringay. It kept him fit and helped him sleep. True, there were difficult moments. One afternoon on the dam at the eastern end of Rutland Water, he heard an industrial siren go off, and images of refinery disasters and nuclear attack made him feel suddenly very far from civilization. But he was able to stride back to the car singing loudly to himself, then crank up Ella Live at Montreux to cheer himself on the journey home.

  Turning the lights off to shower and change was plain common sense. And with the exception of the evening when Jean had marched into the bathroom, flicked on the light and screamed when she found him toweling himself in the dark, it was easy enough to do.

  The red wine doubtless ran contrary to all medical advice but two or three glasses of that Ridgemont Cabernet did wonders for his mental equilibrium.

  Thinking of something else was the most difficult task on the list. He would be cutting his toenails, or oiling a pair of shears, and it would loom from the undertow like a dark silhouette in a shark movie. When he was in town it was possible to distract himself by glancing sideways at an attractive young lady and imagining her naked. But he encountered few attractive young ladies in the course of his average day. If he had been more brazen and lived alone he might have purchased pornographic magazines. But he was not brazen and Jean was a scrupulous cleaner of nooks. So he settled for the crossword.

  It was talking, however, which was the revelation. Little did he know that by sorting out the inside of his head he would add new life to his marriage. Not that it was dull or loveless. Far from it. They got on with one another a good deal better than many couples of their acquaintance who put up with a life of low-level sniping and bad-tempered silences simply because it was easier than separating. He and Jean bickered rarely, thanks largely to his own powers of self-restraint. But they did have silences.

  So it was a pleasant surprise to find that he could say what was on his mind and have Jean respond with often interesting comments. Indeed there were evenings when this kind of conversation gave him such profound relief that he felt as if he were falling in love with her all over again.