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.
“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 “
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
