A Spot Of Bother

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 me, 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.