A Spot of Bother Read online

  “Sorry.” He got to his feet.

  What in the name of God were they doing putting up a poster like that, in here of all places? He aimed himself at the exit.

  “Mr. Hall?”

  He was halfway to the door when he heard the receptionist saying it again, more sternly this time. He turned round.

  “Dr. Barghoutian can see you now.”

  He was too weak to disobey and found himself walking down the corridor to where Dr. Barghoutian stood beside his open door, beaming.

  “George,” said Dr. Barghoutian.

  They shook hands.

  Dr. Barghoutian ushered George inside, closed the door behind him, sat down and reclined with the stub of a pencil jammed like a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right hand.

  “So, what can I do for you today?”

  There was a cheap plastic model of the Eiffel Tower on a shelf behind Dr. Barghoutian’s head and a framed photograph of his daughter on a swing.

  This was it.

  “I had a turn,” said George.

  “And what kind of turn are we talking about?”

  “At lunch. I was finding it very difficult to breathe. I knocked some things over. Rushing to get outside.”

  A turn. That was all it was. Why had he got himself so worked up?

  “Chest pain?” asked Dr. Barghoutian.

  “No.”

  “Fall over?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Barghoutian stared at him and nodded sagely. George did not feel good. It was like that scene near the end of the film, after the Russian assassin and the unexplained office fire and the member of Parliament with the penchant for prostitutes. And it all came down to this, some old Etonian in the library of a London club, who knew everything and could have people wiped out with a single phone call.

  “What was it that you were trying to get away from?” asked Dr. Barghoutian.

  George could think of no conceivable answer to this.

  “Were you frightened of something?”

  George nodded. He felt like a five-year-old boy.

  “And what were you frightened of?” asked Dr. Barghoutian.

  It was all right. It was good to be a five-year-old boy. Five-year-old boys were looked after. Dr. Barghoutian would look after him. All he had to do was hold back the tears.

  George lifted his shirt and unzipped his trousers.

  With infinite slowness Dr. Barghoutian retrieved his spectacles from the desk, put them on and leaned close to the lesion. “Very interesting.”

  Interesting? Jesus. He was going to die of cancer surrounded by medical students and visiting professors of dermatology.

  A year seemed to pass.

  Dr. Barghoutian removed his spectacles and leant back in his chair. “Discoid eczema, unless I’m very much mistaken. A week of steroid cream should sort that out.” He paused and tapped some imaginary ash from his pencil onto the carpet. “You can tuck yourself back in now.”

  George tucked his shirt back in and did up his trousers.

  “I’ll print you out a prescription.”

  Crossing the reception area he passed through a column of sunlight falling from a high window onto the flecked green carpet. A mother was breast-feeding a small baby. Beside her an elderly man with ruddy cheeks and Wellington boots leant on a walking stick and seemed to gaze, past the baby buggies and the dog-eared magazines, to the rolling fields where he had doubtless spent the greater part of his working life. A phone rang like church bells.

  He pushed open the glass double doors and reentered the day.

  There was birdsong. Actually, there was no birdsong but it seemed like a morning which deserved birdsong. Above his head, a jet was opening a white zip down the middle of a blue sky, ferrying men and women to Chicago and Sydney, to conferences and colleges, to family reunions and hotel rooms with plump towels and a view of the ocean.

  He paused on the step and breathed in the good smells of bonfire smoke and recent rain.

  Fifteen yards away, on the far side of a neatly trimmed, waist-high privet hedge, the Volkswagen Polo was waiting for him like a faithful dog.

  He was going home.

  12

  Jamie ate a seventh Pringle, put the tube back in the cupboard, went into the living room, slumped onto the sofa and pressed the button on the answerphone.

  “Jamie. Hello. It’s Mum. I thought I might catch you in. Oh well, never mind. I’m sure you’ve heard the news already, but Katie and Ray were round on Sunday and they’re getting married. Which was a bit of a surprise, as you can imagine. Your father’s still recovering. Anyway. Third weekend in September. We’re having the reception here. In the garden. Katie said you should bring someone. But we’ll be sending out proper invitations nearer the time. Anyway, it would be lovely to talk to you when you get the chance. Lots of love.”

  Married? Jamie felt a little wobbly. He replayed the message in case he’d heard it wrong. He hadn’t.

  God, his sister had done some stupid things in her time but this took the biscuit. Ray was meant to be a stage. Katie spoke French. Ray read biographies of sports personalities. Buy him a few pints and he’d probably start sounding off about “our colored brethren.”

  They’d been living together for what…? six months?

  He listened to the message for a third time, then went into the kitchen and got a choc-ice from the freezer.

  It shouldn’t have pissed him off. He hardly saw Katie these days. And when he did she had Ray in tow. What difference did it make if they were married? A bit of paper, that was all.

  So why did he feel churned up about it?

  There was a bloody cat in the garden. He picked up a piece of gravel from the step, took aim and missed.

  Fuck. There was ice cream on his shirt from the recoil.

  He dabbed it off with a wet sponge.

  Hearing the news secondhand. That’s what pissed him off. Katie hadn’t dared tell him. She knew what he’d say. Or what he’d think. So she’d given the job to Mum.

  It was the other-people thing in a nutshell. Coming along and fucking things up. You were driving through Streatham minding your own business and they plowed into your passenger door while talking on their mobile. You went away to Edinburgh for a long weekend and they nicked your laptop and shat on the sofa.

  He looked outside. The bloody cat was back. He put the choc-ice down and threw another piece of gravel, harder this time. It glanced off one of the sleepers, flew over the end wall into the adjoining garden and hit some invisible object with a loud crack.

  He shut the French windows, picked up the choc-ice and stepped out of sight.

  Two years ago Katie wouldn’t have given Ray the time of day.

  She was exhausted. That was the problem. She wasn’t thinking straight. Looking after Jacob on six hours sleep a night in that craphole of a flat for two years. Then Ray pitches up with the money and the big house and the flash car.

  He had to call her. He put the choc-ice on the windowsill.

  Perhaps it was Ray who’d told their parents. That was a definite possibility. And very Ray. Marching in with his size fourteen boots. Then getting shit from Katie on the way home for stealing her thunder.

  He dialed. The phone rang at the far end.

  The phone was picked up, Jamie realized it might be Ray and very nearly dropped the receiver. “Shit.”

  “Hullo?” It was Katie.

  “Thank God,” said Jamie. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I mean, it’s Jamie.”

  “Jamie, hi.”

  “Mum just told me the news.” He tried to sound breezy and unconcerned, but he was still jumpy on account of the Ray panic.

  “Yeh, we only decided to announce it on the way to Peterborough. Then we got back and Jacob was being rather high maintenance. I was going to ring you tonight.”

  “So…congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” said Katie.

  Then there was an uncomfortable pause. He wanted Katie to say Help m
e, Jamie, I’m making a terrible mistake, which she obviously wasn’t going to do. And he wanted to say What the fuck are you doing? But if he did that she’d never speak to him again.

  He asked how Jacob was doing and Katie talked about him drawing a rhinoceros at nursery and doing a poo in the bath, so he changed the subject and said, “Tony’s getting an invite, then?”

  “Of course.”

  And it suddenly sank in. The joint invitation. No bloody way was he taking Tony to Peterborough.

  After putting the phone down he picked up the choc-ice, wiped the brown dribble off the windowsill and walked back into the kitchen to make some tea.

  Tony in Peterborough. Jesus. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Mum and Dad pretending Tony was one of Jamie’s colleagues in case the neighbors found out. Or their being painfully groovy about it.

  The most likely combination, of course, was Mum being painfully groovy and Dad pretending Tony was one of Jamie’s colleagues. And Mum being angry with Dad for pretending Tony was one of Jamie’s colleagues. And Dad being angry with Mum for being painfully groovy.

  He didn’t even want to think about Ray’s friends. He’d known enough Rays in college. Eight pints and they were that close to lynching the nearest homosexual for sport. Apart from the closet case. There was always a closet case. And sooner or later they got paralytic and sidled up to you in the bar and told you everything, then got shirty when you wouldn’t take them up to your room and give them a hand job.

  He wondered what Jeff Weller was doing these days. A sexless marriage in Saffron Walden, probably, with some back copies of Zipper hidden behind the hot water tank.

  Jamie had spent a great deal of time and energy arranging his life precisely as he wanted. Work. Home. Family. Friends. Tony. Exercise. Relaxation. Some compartments you could mix. Katie and Tony. Friends and exercise. But the compartments were there for a reason. It was like a zoo. You could mix chimpanzees and parrots. But take the cages away altogether and you had a bloodbath on your hands.

  He wouldn’t tell Tony about the invitation. That was the answer. It was simple.

  He looked down at the stub of choc-ice. What was he doing? He’d bought them to console himself after the binoculars argument. He should have chucked them the next day.

  He pushed the choc-ice into the bin, retrieved the other four from the freezer and shoved them in afterward.

  He stuck Born to Run on the CD player and made a pot of tea. He washed up and cleaned the draining board. He poured a mug of tea, added some semi-skimmed milk and wrote a check for the gas bill.

  Bruce Springsteen was sounding particularly smug this evening. Jamie ejected him and read the Telegraph.

  Just after eight, Tony turned up in a jovial mood, loped into the hall, bit the back of Jamie’s neck, threw himself lengthways on the sofa and began rolling a cigarette.

  Jamie wondered, sometimes, if Tony had been a dog in a previous life and not quite made the transition properly. The appetite. The energy. The lack of social graces. The obsession with smells (Tony would put his nose into Jamie’s hair and inhale and say, “Ooh, where have you been?”).

  Jamie slid an ashtray down to Tony’s end of the coffee table and sat down. He lifted Tony’s legs into his lap and began unlacing his boots.

  He wanted to strangle Tony sometimes. The poor house-training mostly. Then he’d catch sight of him across a room and see those long legs and that brawny, farm-boy amble and feel exactly what he felt that first time. Something in the pit of his stomach, almost painful, the need to be held by this man. And no one else made him feel like that.

  “Nice day at the office?” asked Tony.

  “It was, actually.”

  “So why the Mr. Glum vibes?”

  “What Mr. Glum vibes?” asked Jamie.

  “The fish mouth, the crinkly forehead.”

  Jamie slumped backward into the sofa and closed his eyes. “You remember Ray…”

  “Ray…?”

  “Katie’s boyfriend, Ray.”

  “Yu-huh.”

  “She’s marrying him.”

  “OK.” Tony lit his cigarette. A little strand of burning tobacco fell onto his jeans and went out. “We bundle her into a car and take her to a safe house somewhere in Gloucestershire—”

  “Tony…” said Jamie.

  “What?”

  “Let’s try it again, all right?”

  Tony held his hands up in mock-surrender. “Sorry.”

  “Katie is marrying Ray,” said Jamie.

  “Which is not good.”

  “No.”

  “So you’re going to try and stop her,” said Tony.

  “She’s not in love with him,” said Jamie. “She just wants someone with a steady job and a big house who can help look after Jacob.”

  “There are worse reasons for marrying someone.”

  “You’d hate him,” said Jamie.

  “So?” asked Tony.

  “She’s my sister.”

  “And you’re going to…what?” asked Tony.

  “God knows.”

  “This is her life, Jamie. You can’t fight off Anne Bancroft with a crucifix and drag her onto the nearest bus.”

  “I’m not trying to stop her.” Jamie was starting to regret this topic of conversation. Tony didn’t know Katie. He’d never met Ray. In truth, Jamie just wanted him to say, You’re absolutely right. But Tony had never said that, to anyone, about anything. Not even when drunk. Especially not when drunk. “It’s her business. Obviously. It’s just—”

  “She’s an adult,” said Tony. “She has the right to screw things up.”

  Neither of them said anything for a few moments.

  “So, am I invited?” Tony blew a little plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

  Jamie paused a fraction of a second too long before answering, and Tony did that suspicious thing with his eyebrows. So Jamie had to change tactics on the hoof. “I’m sincerely hoping it’s not going to happen.”

  “But if it does?”

  There was no point fighting over this. Not now. When Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door Tony invited them in for tea. Jamie took a deep breath. “Mum did mention bringing someone.”

  “Someone?” said Tony. “Charming.”

  “You don’t actually want to come, do you?”

  “Why not?” asked Tony.

  “Ray’s engineering colleagues, my mother fussing over you—”

  “You’re not listening to what I’m saying, are you.” Tony took hold of Jamie’s chin and squished it, the way aunts did when you were a kid. “I would like. To come. To your sister’s wedding. With you.”

  A police car tore past the end of the cul-de-sac with its siren going. Tony was still holding Jamie’s chin. Jamie said, “Let’s talk about it later, OK?”

  Tony tightened his grip, pulled Jamie toward him and sniffed. “What have you been eating?”

  “Choc-ice.”

  “God. This thing really has depressed you, hasn’t it.”

  “I threw the rest away,” said Jamie.

  Tony stubbed out his cigarette. “Go and get me one. I haven’t had a choc-ice since…God, Brighton in about 1987.”

  Jamie went into the kitchen, retrieved one of the choc-ices from the bin, rinsed the ketchup from the wrapper and took it back through to the living room.

  If his luck was in, Katie would throw a toaster at Ray before September and there wouldn’t be a wedding.

  13

  George spread a generous helping of steroid cream onto the eczema, changed into his building clothes, then went downstairs where he bumped into Jean returning laden from Sainsbury’s.

  “How was the doctor?”

  “Fine.”

  “So…?” asked Jean.

  George decided that it was simpler to lie. “Heat stroke, probably. Dehydration. Working out there in the sun without a hat. Not drinking enough water.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Indeed,” said George.

/>   “I rang Jamie.”

  “And?”

  “Wasn’t in,” said Jean. “I left a message. Said we’d be sending him an invite. I told him he could bring someone if he wanted.”

  “Excellent.”

  Jean paused. “Are you all right, George?”

  “I am, actually.” He kissed her and headed off to the garden.

  He scraped the contents of the bucket into the miniskip, hosed it out, made some fresh mortar and began laying bricks. Another couple of courses and he could think about cementing the door frame into place.

  He didn’t have a problem with homosexuality per se. Men having sex with men. One could imagine, if one was in the business of imagining such things, that there were situations where it might happen, situations in which chaps were denied the normal outlets. Military camps. Long sea voyages. One didn’t want to dwell on the plumbing but one could almost see it as a sporting activity. Letting off steam. High spirits. Handshake and a hot shower afterward.

  It was the thought of men purchasing furniture together which disturbed him. Men snuggling. More disconcerting, somehow, than shenanigans in public toilets. It gave him the unpleasant feeling that there was a weakness in the very fabric of the world. Like seeing a man hit a woman in the street. Or suddenly not being able to remember the bedroom you had as a child.

  Still, things changed. Mobile phones. Thai restaurants. You had to remain elastic or you turned into an angry fossil railing at litter. Besides, Jamie was a sensible young man and if he brought someone along he was bound to be another very sensible young man.

  What Ray would make of it Lord only knew.

  Interesting. That was what it would be.

  He laid another brick.

  “Unless I’m very much mistaken,” Dr. Barghoutian had said.

  Just covering himself, no doubt.

  14

  Jean undressed while David was showering and slipped into the dressing gown he’d left out for her. She wandered over to the bay window and sat on the arm of the chair.

  It made her feel attractive. Just being in this room. The cream walls. The wooden floor. The big fish print in the metal frame. It was like one of those rooms you saw in magazines which made you think about living a different life.