A Spot of Bother (15 page)

49

Obviously, it was
a surprise to find that one was insane. But what surprised George most was how painful it was.

It had never occurred to him before. His uncle, those unwashed people who shouted at buses, Alex Bamford that Christmas…
Crazy
was the word he had always used. As in
crazy paving,
or
crazy golf
. Everything jumbled and out of order and rather amusing.

It seemed less amusing now. Indeed, when he thought about his uncle stuck in St. Edward’s for ten years without a visit from his family, or that disheveled man who tap-danced for small change in Church Street, he could feel the corners of his eyes pricking.

If he were given the choice he would rather someone had broken his leg. You did not have to explain what was wrong with a broken leg. Nor were you expected to mend it by force of will.

The terror came and went in waves. When a wave washed over him he felt much as he did several years ago when he watched a small boy run into the road outside Jacksons, narrowly missing the hood of a braking car.

Between the waves he gathered his strength for the next one and tried desperately not to think about it in case this brought it on more quickly.

What he felt mostly was a relentless, grinding dread which rumbled and thundered and made the world dark, like those spaceships in science-fiction films whose battle-scorched fuselages slid onto the screen and kept on sliding onto the screen because they were, in fact, several thousand times larger than you expected when all you could see was the nose cone.

The idea of genuinely having cancer was beginning to seem almost a relief, the idea of going into hospital, having tubes put into his arm, being told what to do by doctors and nurses, no longer having to grapple with the problem of getting through the next five minutes.

He had given up trying to talk to Jean. She tried hard, but he seemed unable to make her understand.

It was not her fault. If someone had come to him with similar problems a year ago, he would have reacted in the same way.

Part of the problem was that Jean did not get depressed. She worried. She got angry. She got sad. And she felt all of these things more strongly than he ever did (when he cleared out the cellar, for example, and put that old birdhouse on the bonfire she actually punched him). But they always blew over in a day or two.

She kept him company, however, cooked his meals and washed his clothes and he was very thankful for all of these things.

He was also thankful for the codeine. The box was nearly full. Once he had shaken off the horror of waking up he could fix his mind on those two tablets at lunchtime knowing they would wrap him in a soft haze till he could open a bottle of wine at supper.

He had tried to spend that first night on the sofa, but it was uncomfortable and Jean was of the opinion that crazy behavior encouraged crazy ideas. So he relocated upstairs. In the event it was not as bad as he had expected, being in the bed where he had seen that thing happening. When one thought about it, bad things had happened pretty much everywhere: murders, rapes, fatal accidents. He knew, for example, that an elderly lady had burnt to death in the Farmers’ house in 1952, but it was not something you could sense when you went round there for drinks.

He soon realized that being upstairs had its benefits. One did not have to answer the door if one was in bed, there were no unexpected visitors and one could close the curtains without starting an argument. So he moved the television and the video player into the bedroom and battened down the hatches.

After a few days he girded his loins and ventured to the shop to rent some videos.

And if he woke at night and the Orcs with the boiled, skinless faces were waiting in their silent hundreds in the moonlit gardens he found that he could gain some temporary respite by going into the bathroom, wedging himself between the toilet and the bath and singing very quietly to himself the songs he remembered singing when he was a small child.

50

Katie and Jacob staggered
in through the door and dumped their bags.

Mum kissed them both and said, “Your father’s in bed. Bit under the weather.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I think it might be all in the mind.” She winced slightly when she said the words “all in the mind,” as if she had just opened a tub of something that had gone off.

“So, he’s not actually ill?” asked Katie.

“He has eczema.”

“Can I watch my
Bob the Builder
video?” asked Jacob.

“I’m sorry but Grandpa’s got the video player upstairs,” said Mum.

“You don’t have to go to bed because you’ve got eczema,” said Katie. She had that feeling she often got with her parents, that something was being kept from her, a feeling which only got more sinister as they aged.

“Can I watch my video with Grandpa?” asked Jacob, tugging at Katie’s trousers.

“Let me finish talking to Granny,” said Katie.

“He says he’s worried about dying,” said Mum, in a stage whisper.

“But I want to watch it now,” said Jacob.

“Two minutes,” said Katie.

“You know what he’s like,” said Mum. “I have no idea what is going through that head of his.”

“Is Grandpa dying?” asked Jacob.

“Grandpa’s absolutely fine,” said Mum.

“Except he’s not,” replied Katie.

“I want a biscuit,” said Jacob.

“Well, it just so happens that I bought some Jaffa Cakes this morning,” said Mum to Jacob. “Isn’t that a coincidence.”

“Mum, you’re not listening to me,” said Katie.

“Can I have two?” said Jacob.

“You’re very cheeky this morning,” said Mum.

“Please can I have two biscuits?” said Jacob turning to Katie.

“Mum…” Katie caught herself. She didn’t want a row before she’d got her coat off. She wasn’t even sure precisely what she was angry about. “Look. You take Jacob off to the kitchen. Give him a biscuit. One biscuit. I’ll go up and talk to Dad.”

“OK,” said Mum in a cheery sing-song. “Do you want some orange juicy with that biscuit?”

“We went on a train,” said Jacob.

“Did you, now?” said Mum. “What kind of train was it?”

“It was a monster train.”

“Now that sounds like a very interesting kind of train. Do you mean it looked like a monster, or do you mean there were monsters on it?”

The two of them disappeared into the kitchen and Katie began walking upstairs.

It felt wrong, going to Dad’s bedside. Dad didn’t do illness. His own or other people’s. He did soldiering on and taking one’s mind off things. Dad having a breakdown was in the same category as Dad taking up hairdressing.

She knocked and went in.

He was lying in the center of the bed with the duvet pulled to his chin, like a frightened old lady in a fairy tale. He turned the television off almost immediately, but from what she could see he appeared to be watching…Was it really
Lethal Weapon
?

“Hullo, young lady.” He seemed smaller than she remembered. The pajamas didn’t help.

“Mum said you weren’t feeling very well.” She couldn’t work out where to put herself. Sitting on the bed was too intimate, standing was too medical and using the armchair would mean touching his discarded vest.

“Not very. No.”

They were silent for a few moments, both of them staring into the slatey green oblong of the TV screen with its skewed little bar of reflected window.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She couldn’t believe she was saying these words to Dad.

“Not really.”

She had never heard him sound so straightforward. She got the eerie sense that they were doing actual communication for the first time. It was like finding a new door in the living-room wall. It was not entirely pleasant.

“I’m afraid your mother doesn’t really understand,” said Dad.

Katie had no idea what to say.

“Not really her kind of thing.”

Christ. Parents were meant to sort this stuff out for themselves.

She didn’t want this on her plate. Not now. But he needed someone to talk to, and Mum was clearly not keen on the job. “What isn’t her kind of thing?”

He took a long, quiet breath. “I’m frightened.” He stared at the television.

“What of?”

“Of dying…I’m frightened of dying.”

“Is there something you’re not telling Mum?” She could see a stack of videos beside the bed.
Volcano, Independence Day, Godzilla, Conspiracy Theory…

“I think…” He paused and pursed his lips. “I think I have cancer.”

She felt giddy and a little faint. “Do you?”

“Dr. Barghoutian says it’s eczema.”

“And you don’t believe him.”

“No,” he said. “Yes.” He thought hard. “No. Not really.”

“Perhaps you should ask to see a specialist.”

Dad frowned. “I couldn’t do that.”

She nearly said,
Let me have a look,
but the idea was gross in too many ways. “Is this really about cancer? Or is it about something else?”

Dad scrubbed ineffectually at a little jam stain on the duvet. “I think I might be going insane.”

Downstairs Jacob was squealing as Mum chased him round the kitchen.

“Perhaps you should talk to someone.”

“Your mother thinks I’m being silly. Which I am of course.”

“Some kind of counselor,” said Katie.

Dad looked blank.

“I’m sure Dr. Barghoutian could refer you.”

Dad continued to look blank. She pictured him sitting in a little room with a box of tissues on the table and some bushy-tailed young man in a cardigan and she could see his point. But she didn’t want to be the only person on the receiving end of this. “You need help.”

There was a bang from the kitchen. Then a wail. Dad didn’t react to either noise.

Katie said, “I’ve got to go.”

He didn’t react to this either. He said very quietly, “I’ve wasted my life.”

She said, “You haven’t wasted your life,” in a voice she normally reserved for Jacob.

“Your mother doesn’t love me. I spent thirty years doing a job that meant nothing to me. And now…” He was crying. “It hurts so much.”

“Dad, please.”

“There are these little red spots on my arm,” said Dad.

“What?”

“I can’t even bring myself to look at them.”

“Dad, listen.” She put her hands to the side of her head to help her concentrate. “You’re anxious. You’re depressed. You’re…whatever. It’s got nothing to do with Mum. It’s got nothing to do with your job. It’s happening inside your head.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dad. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Christ, Dad. You’ve got a nice house. You’ve got money. You’ve got a car. You’ve got someone to look after you…” She was angry. It was the anger she’d been saving for Ray. But she couldn’t really do anything about it, not now the lid was off. “You haven’t wasted your life. That’s bollocks.”

She hadn’t said
bollocks
to Dad for ten years. She needed to get out of the room before things really started to go downhill.

“Sometimes I can’t breathe.” He made no attempt to wipe the tears from his face. “I start sweating, and I know something dreadful is about to happen, but I have no idea what it is.”

Then she remembered. That lunchtime. Him running out and sitting on the patio.

Downstairs Jacob had stopped wailing.

“It’s called a panic attack,” she said. “Everyone has them. OK, maybe not everyone. But lots of people. You’re not strange. Or special. Or different.” She was slightly alarmed by the tone of her own voice. “There are drugs. There are ways of sorting these things out. You have to go and see someone. This is not just about you. You have to do something. You have to stop being selfish.”

She seemed to have veered off course somewhere in the middle there.

He said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“There’s no maybe about it.” She waited for her pulse to slow a little. “I’ll talk to Mum. I’ll get her to sort something out.”

“Right.”

It was the patio all over again. It frightened her, the way he soaked it all up and didn’t answer back. It made her think of those old men shuffling round hospitals with five o’clock shadow and bags of urine on wheelie stands. She said, “I’m going downstairs now.”

“OK.”

For a brief moment she thought about hugging him. But they’d done enough new things for one morning. “Can I get you a coffee?”

“It’s all right. I’ve got a flask up here.”

She said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” in a wholly inappropriate comedy Scots accent, out of relief mostly. Then she closed the door behind her.

When she reached the kitchen, Jacob was sitting on Mum’s knee, being fed chocolate ice cream from the tub. As an anesthetic, no doubt. On top of the chocolate biscuit, presumably.

Mum looked up and said, in a jaunty voice, “So, how did your father seem to you?”

The ability of old people to utterly fail to communicate with one another never failed to astonish her. “He needs to see someone.”

“Try telling that to him.”

“I did,” said Katie.

“I got a bump,” said Jacob.

She bent down and cuddled him. There was ice cream in his eyebrows.

“Well, as you doubtless found out,” said Mum, “trying to get your father to do anything is pointless.”

Jacob wriggled free and began trawling through his Batman rucksack.

“Don’t talk about it,” said Katie, “just do it. Talk to Dr. Barghoutian. Drive Dad to the surgery. Get Dr. Barghoutian to come here. Whatever.”

She could see Mum bridling. She could also see Jacob marching toward the hallway with
A Christmas to Remember
in his sticky paws. “Where are you going, monkey nuts?”

“I’m going to watch
Bob the Builder
with Grandpa.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Jacob looked crestfallen.

Perhaps she should let him go. Dad was depressed. He wasn’t eating lightbulbs. The distraction might even be welcome. “Go on then. But be nice to him. He’s feeling very tired.”

“OK,” said Jacob.

“And Jacob?”

“What?”

“Don’t ask him if he’s dying.”

“Why not?” asked Jacob.

“It’s rude.”

“OK.” Jacob toddled off.

She waited, then turned to Mum. “I’m serious. About Dad.” She waited for her to say
Look here, young lady…
but she didn’t. “He’s suffering from depression.”

“I realized that,” said Mum, tartly.

“I’m just saying…” Katie paused and lowered her voice. She needed to win this argument. “Please. Take him to the doctor. Or get the doctor to come here. Or go to the surgery yourself. This is not going to go away on its own. We’ve got the wedding coming up and…”

Mum sighed and shook her head. “You’re right. We don’t want him making a fool of himself in front of everyone, do we.”