A Spot of Bother (25 page)

80

George was lying
on the bed with his trousers off, having his dressing changed.

The practice nurse was rather attractive, if a little on the plump side. He had always liked women in uniforms. Samantha, that was her name. Cheerful, too, without being talkative.

In truth, he was going to miss these sessions when they came to an end in a couple of weeks’ time. It was like having one’s hair cut. Except that he always had his hair cut by an elderly Cypriot man and it was a lot less painful.

The nurse peeled back the large plaster over the wound. “OK, Mr. Hall. Time to grit your teeth.”

George took hold of the edges of the bed.

The nurse pulled the end of the bandage. The first couple of feet of pink ribbon came away smoothly. Then it snagged. George did anagrams of the word
bandage
in his head. The nurse gave a gentle yank and the remains of the bandage lifted free of the wound making him say something he would never normally say in front of a woman. “I’m sorry about that.”

“No apology needed.”

The nurse held the old dressing up. It looked like a large conker that had been soaked in blood and lemon curd. She dropped it into the little swing bin by the side of the bed. “Let’s get you a clean one.”

George lay back and closed his eyes.

He rather liked the pain now that he had got used to it. He knew what it was going to be like and how long it was going to last. And as it ebbed away his head felt unnaturally clear for five or ten minutes, as if his brain had been hosed clean.

From a nearby room he heard someone say, “Scoliosis of the spine.”

He was relieved about the wedding. It was sad for Katie. Or perhaps it was a relief for her, too. They had not been able to talk much during her visit. And to be honest they rarely talked about that kind of thing. Though Ray did seem a little strange at the hospital, which only served to confirm his uneasiness about the relationship.

Either way George was glad that the house was not going to be invaded by a marquee full of strangers. He was still feeling a little too fragile to relish the prospect of standing up and speechifying.

Jean seemed rather relieved, too.

Poor Jean. He really had put her through the wringer. She had not seemed like her usual self over the past few days. She was clearly still worried about him. Seeing that carpet every day probably did not help.

But he was out of the bedroom, they were having conversations, and he was able to do a few chores round the house. When he was a little fitter he would take her out for dinner. He had heard good reports about that new restaurant in Oundle. Excellent fish, apparently.

“There,” said Samantha, “that’s you done.”

“Thank you,” said George.

“Come on, let’s sit you up.”

He would buy Jean some flowers on the way home, something he had not done in a very long time. That would cheer her up.

Then he would ring the carpet fitters.

81

Jamie was waiting
for a prospective buyer in the Prince’s Avenue flat, the one where he’d met Tony for the first time.

The owners were moving to Kuala Lumpur. They were tidy and childless, thank goodness. No abstract expressionistic ballpoint pen on the skirting boards, no scree of toys on the dining-room floor (Shona was showing a couple round the Finchley four-bed when the woman twisted her ankle on a Power Ranger Dino Thunder Bike). Worked in the city and hardly touched the place from what he could see. You could have licked the cooker. IKEA furniture. Bland prints in brushed steel frames. Soulless but salable.

He walked into the kitchen, touched the paintwork with the tips of his fingers and remembered watching Tony with a brush in his hand, before they’d even talked, when he was still a beautiful stranger.

Jamie could see now, with absolute clarity, what he’d done.

He’d bided his time. He’d got away. He’d built a little world in which he felt safe. And it was orbiting far out, unconnected to anyone. It was cold and it was dark and he had no idea how to make it swing back toward the sun.

There’d been a moment, in Peterborough, shortly after Katie punched him, when he realized that he needed these people. Katie, Mum, Dad, Jacob. They drove him up the wall sometimes. But they’d been with him all the way. They were a part of him.

Now he’d lost Tony and he was drifting. He needed a place he could go when he was in trouble. He needed someone he could call in the small hours.

He’d fucked it up. Those horrible scenes in the dining room. His mother saying, “You know nothing.” She was right. They were strangers. He’d made them into strangers. Deliberately. What right did he have to tell them how they should run their lives? He had made damn sure they had no right to tell him how he should run his.

The bell rang.

Shit.

He took a deep breath, counted to ten, put his selling brain in and answered the door to a man with a very obvious toupee.

82

Katie had just finished
the washing up.

Jacob was in bed. And Ray was sitting at the kitchen table putting new batteries into the cordless phone. She turned round and leant against the sink, drying her hands on a tea towel.

Ray clicked the back of the phone into place. “We have to do something.”

She said, “I know,” and it felt good, finally, to talk about the subject instead of sniping about nursery runs and the lack of tea bags.

Ray said, “I don’t mind how we work this out.” He tilted his chair backward and slotted the phone into its cradle. “Just so long as it doesn’t involve going anywhere near your family.”

For a fraction of a second she wondered whether she ought to be offended. But she couldn’t because Ray was right, their behavior had been abysmal. Then it struck her as actually quite funny and she realized she was laughing. “I’m so sorry about putting you through all of that.”

“It was…educational,” said Ray.

She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was amused or not so she stopped laughing.

“Told your dad he seemed like the sanest person in the whole family.” Ray stood one of the old batteries on its end. “Put the wind up him a bit.” He stood the other battery on its end next to the first. “I hope he’s OK.”

“Fingers crossed.”

“Jamie’s a decent bloke,” said Ray.

“Yeh.”

“We had a good talk. In the garden.”

“About?” asked Katie.

“Me and you. Him and Tony.”

“Uh-huh.” It seemed a bit risky to ask for details.

“I always thought, you know, being gay, he would be weirder.”

“Probably best not to say that to Jamie.”

Ray looked up at her. “I might be stupid. But I’m not that stupid.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Come here, you,” said Ray. He pushed his chair back.

She went and sat on his lap and he put his arms round her and that was it. Like the world flipping inside out.

This was where she was meant to be.

She could feel every muscle in her body relaxing. She touched his face. “I’ve been so horrible to you.”

“You’ve been appalling,” said Ray. “But I still love you.”

“Just hold me.”

He pulled her close and she buried her face in his shoulder and cried.

“It’s OK,” said Ray, rubbing her back gently. “It’s OK.”

How had she been so blind? He’d seen her family at their worst and taken it all with good grace. Even with the wedding canceled.

But he hadn’t changed. He was the same person he’d been all along. The kindest, most dependable, most honorable person in her life.

This was her family. Ray and Jacob.

She felt stupid and relieved and guilty and happy and sad and slightly wobbly on account of feeling so many things at the same time. “I love you.”

“It’s all right,” said Ray. “You don’t have to say it.”

“No. I mean it. I really do.”

“Let’s not say anything for a bit, OK? It gets too complicated when we argue.”

“I’m not arguing,” said Katie.

He lifted her head and put a finger on her lips to stop her speaking and kissed her. It was the first time they had kissed properly in weeks.

He led her upstairs and they made love until Jacob had a nightmare about an angry blue dog and they had to stop rather quickly.

83

When Jamie got home
from work he rang Tony. No answer. He rang Tony’s mobile and left a message asking him to ring back.

He cleaned the kitchen and ate supper in front of a film about a giant alligator in a lake in Maine. Tony didn’t ring back.

He rang Tony’s flat early the following morning. No answer. He rang Tony’s mobile at lunchtime and left another message, keeping it as simple and straightforward as possible.

He went swimming after work to stop himself waiting for the return call. He did sixty lengths and came out feeling exhausted and relaxed for five whole minutes.

He tried ringing the flat again when he got home but to no avail.

He was tempted to go round and knock on the door. But he was beginning to think Tony was avoiding him and he didn’t want another scene.

It wasn’t sadness. Or not like any sadness he’d felt before. It was as if someone had died. It was just a thing to be lived with in the hope that it would get slowly less painful.

He kept ringing, every morning and every night. But he no longer expected an answer. It was a ritual. Something that gave shape to the day.

He’d retreated to a small room somewhere deep inside his head, running on autopilot. Getting up. Going to work. Coming home.

He imagined stepping into the road without looking and being hit by a car and not feeling any pain, any surprise, not feeling anything really, just a kind of detached interest at what was happening to this person who wasn’t really him anymore.

The following day he got a surprise phone call from Ian and agreed to go out for a drink. They’d met ten years back on a beach in Cornwall and realized they lived four streets away from each other back in London. Training to be a vet. Poor bloke came out at twenty-five, tested positive after four years of monogamy, went into a tailspin and started committing a slow expensive suicide with cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine and chaotic sex till he lost a foot in a motorbike accident, spent a month in hospital and disappeared to Australia.

Jamie had got a postcard of a wombat a few months later saying things were looking up, then nothing for two years. Now he was back.

He’d be having a crappier time than Jamie. Or he’d be bearing up stoically. Either way, a couple of hours in his company promised to make Jamie’s troubles seem manageable in comparison.

Jamie arrived late and was relieved to find he’d got there first. He was in the process of buying himself a lager, however, when a lean, tanned man in a tight black T-shirt with no discernible limp said, “Jamie,” and wrapped him in a bear hug.

And for fifteen or twenty minutes it all went swimmingly. It was good to hear how Ian had turned everything round. And his stories about bizarre horse diseases and big spiders were genuinely funny. Then Jamie explained about Tony, and Ian brought up the subject of Jesus, which didn’t happen in bars very often. He wasn’t completely whacko about it. Made it sound more like an amazing new diet. But coupled with the new body it was unnerving. And when Ian headed off for a pee, Jamie found himself staring at two men on the far side of the bar, one dressed as a devil (red velour catsuit, horns, trident), one as an angel (wings, white vest, puffball skirt), who were doubtless en route to a fancy dress party with the cowboy at the bar (chaps, spurs), but it made Jamie feel as if he’d taken some ill-advised drug, or that everyone else had. And he realized that he was meant to be at home here, but he wasn’t.

Then Ian came back to the table and sensed Jamie’s unease and changed the subject to his own rather active love life which seemed contrary to most of the teachings of Christianity insofar as Jamie understood them. Jamie was beginning to suffer that befuddled incomprehension old people felt when you told them about the Internet and he wondered whether he’d just failed to keep up with what had been happening in churches recently.

He went home, after a slightly uneasy parting with Ian during which he promised to think seriously about the possibility of coming to an evangelical meeting in Kings Cross, and Ian gave him another bear hug which Jamie now realized was a Christian hug, not a real one.

Several hours later he had a dream in which he was chasing Tony through an endless series of interconnecting rooms, some from his old school, some from properties he’d sold over the past few years, and he was shouting but Tony couldn’t hear him and Jamie couldn’t run because of the tiny creatures on the floors, like baby birds with human faces, which mewed and squealed when he trod on them.

When he finally woke at seven he found himself going straight to the phone to ring Tony. He caught himself just in time.

He was going to sort this out. He’d go round to Tony’s flat after work. Say his piece. Give him shit for not answering the phone. Find out if he’d moved. Whatever. Just put an end to all this waiting.

84

David was having
a new boiler installed, so Jean was sitting with him in the garden of the Fox and Hounds. The idea made her nervous at first, but David was right. The place was empty and they were yards from the car if they needed to slip away.

She was drinking a gin and tonic, which she didn’t normally do on her way home from the school. If George asked questions she could always blame Ursula. She needed some Dutch courage. Her life was an unholy mess at the moment and she had to make it simpler.

She said, “I’m not sure how long we can carry on doing this.”

“You mean you want to stop?” asked David.

“Maybe. Yes.” It sounded so harsh now she was saying it out loud. “Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“What’s changed?”

“George,” she said. “George being ill.” Wasn’t it obvious?

“And that’s all?” asked David.

He seemed untroubled, and she was beginning to find his confidence annoying. How could he sail through all this? “It’s not a small thing, David.”

He took her hand.

She said, “It feels different now. It feels wrong.”

He said, “You haven’t changed. I haven’t changed.”

It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.

He said, “I’m not trying to bully you.”

“I know.” But she wasn’t sure about this.

“If you were ill, if you were seriously ill, I would still love you. If I was seriously ill, I hope you’d still love me.” He looked into her eyes. For the first time he looked sad and this put her at ease. “I love you, Jean. It’s not just words. I mean it. I’ll wait if I have to. I’ll put up with things. Because that’s what love means. And I know George is ill. And I know it makes your life difficult. But it’s something we have to live with and sort out. And I don’t know how we’ll do it, but we will.”

She found herself laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“Me,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. And it’s infuriating. But you’re still right.”

He squeezed her hand.

They sat in silence for a few moments. David fished something from his shandy and a large agricultural vehicle rumbled by on the far side of the hedge.

“I feel dreadful,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“The wedding.”

He looked relieved.

“I was so thrown by what was happening to George that I…Katie must be having a dreadful time. Planning to get married. Then canceling the wedding. The two of them living together. I should have been sympathetic. But we just argued.”

“You had enough on your plate.”

“I know, but…”

“At the least the wedding’s off,” said David.

It seemed like a callous thing to say. “But it’s so sad.”

“Not as sad as getting married to someone you don’t love,” said David.