A Spot Of Bother

141

The image which stuck in Jamie’s mind was that of a tiramisu and its accompanying spoon tumbling in slow motion through the air at head height. His father and David Symmonds had fallen backward onto the table. The near side had collapsed and the far side had shot up like a seesaw, firing a variety of objects into the air (one of Katie’s friends was very proud of having caught a fork).

From this point on it felt more like a road accident. Everything very clear and detached and slow. No abdominal pain anymore. Just a series of tasks which had to be done to prevent further injury.

Ray bent down and began detaching Jamie’s father from David Symmonds. David Symmonds’s face was covered in blood. Jamie was rather impressed that a man of his father’s age was capable of doing that kind of damage.

Jamie and Tony looked at one another and made one of those instant, unspoken decisions and decided to go and help. They got to their feet and jumped across the table, which would have been rather Starsky and Hutch, except that Jamie got a buttered roll stuck to his trouser leg.

They reached the far side of the marquee together. Tony knelt down next to David because he’d done a first-aid course and because David seemed to have come off worst. Jamie went to talk to his father.

Just as he arrived Ray was saying, “What in God’s name did you do that for?” And his father was about to reply when Jamie’s brain shifted into warp speed and it dawned on him that no one knew why his father had done it. Only him and Katie, his mother and his father. And David, obviously. And Tony, because Jamie had been filling him in on all the gossip before lunch. And the reason his mother had run out of the marquee was because she thought everyone else was going to find out. Though if Jamie acted quickly they might be able to pass the incident off as drug-induced craziness. Because after that speech it was pretty clear to everyone that his father was not in his right mind.

So when his father said, “Because-” Jamie slapped a hand across his mouth to stop him saying anything else, and he might have done it a bit too hard because the smack sound was quite loud and Ray and his father both looked startled, but it stopped his father talking at least.

Jamie leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”

His father said, “Nnnnn.”

Jamie turned to Ray and said, “Take him indoors. Upstairs. The bedroom. Just…just keep him there, all right?”

Ray said, “Right you are,” as if Jamie had asked him to shift a sack of potatoes. He got Jamie’s father to his feet and began walking him out of the marquee.

Jamie went over to Tony.

David was saying, “The man’s a maniac.”

Jamie said, “I’m really sorry about that.” Then he turned to Tony and said, quietly, “Take him into the living room and call an ambulance.”

Tony said, “I don’t think he needs an ambulance.”

“Or a taxi or whatever. Just get him out of the house.”

“Oh, right, I see what you mean,” said Tony. He put his hand under David’s arm. “Come on, mate.”

Jamie stood up and turned round and realized that all of this had taken only a matter of seconds and the remaining guests were sitting stock-still and completely speechless, even Uncle Douglas, which was a first. And they were clearly expecting some kind of explanation or announcement, and Jamie was the person they were expecting it from, but he had to talk to his mother first, so he said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and ran out of the marquee and found her standing on the far side of the lawn being consoled by a woman he didn’t recognize, while Ray and Tony ushered his father and David into the house, both of them keeping a tight hold on their charges to prevent any of the three coming into contact with one another.

His mother was crying. The woman he didn’t recognize was hugging her.

Jamie said, “I need to talk to my mother on her own.”

The older woman said, “I’m Ursula. I’m a good friend.”

“Go back inside the marquee,” said Jamie. The woman did not move. “Sorry. That sounded rude. And I didn’t mean to be rude. But you really do have to go away quite quickly.”

The woman backed off, saying, “OK,” in that careful voice you use with psychopaths to keep them calm.

Jamie took hold of his mother’s arms and looked her in the face. “It’s going to be all right.”

“I can explain everything,” said his mother. She was still crying.

“You don’t need to,” said Jamie.

“No,” said his mother. “That man, the one your father hit-”

“I know,” said Jamie.

His mother paused briefly and then said, “Oh my God.”

Her legs went a little rubbery and Jamie had to hold her upright for a couple of seconds. “Mum…?”

She steadied herself with a hand on his arm. “How did you know?”

“I’ll explain later,” said Jamie. “Luckily no one else knows.” He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this manly and competent. He had to move fast before the spell was broken. “We’re going back in. I’m going to make a speech.”

“A speech?” His mother looked petrified.

Jamie was a little nervous himself.

“A speech about what?” asked his mother.

“About Dad,” said Jamie. “Trust me.”

Thankfully his mother seemed incapable of disagreeing and when he put his arm around her shoulder and steered her back across the lawn she let herself be led.

They entered the canvas doorway, the conversation died away instantly and they moved slowly through a very pregnant silence back to their seats, their shoes clacking on the boarding beneath their feet.

Katie was holding Jacob on her lap. As Jamie and his mother reached the table, Jacob said, “Grandpa had a fight,” and over his shoulder Jamie heard someone suppress a panicky giggle.

Jamie stroked Jacob gently on the head, sat his mother down and turned to face everyone. Their number seemed to have doubled magically in the last few minutes. His mind went blank and he wondered if he was about to make an idiot of himself in much the same way that his father had done.

Then his brain came back online and he realized that after what his father had done, he could pretty much string two words together and everyone was going to be mightily relieved.

He said, “Sorry about all that. It wasn’t part of the plan.”

No one laughed. Understandably. He had to be a bit more serious.

“My father has not been terribly well recently. As you probably gathered.”

Was he going to have to mention the cancer? Yes, he was. There was no way round it.

“You’ll be relieved to hear that he doesn’t have cancer.”

This was trickier than he had expected. The atmosphere in the marquee was tangibly funereal. He glanced down at his mother. She was staring downward and trying to squeeze her napkin into as small a ball as possible in her lap.

“But he has been very depressed. And anxious. Particularly about the wedding. Particularly about making a speech at the wedding.”

He was hitting his stride now.

“He has a very nice doctor. His doctor gave him some Valium. He took rather a lot of it this morning. To help him relax. I think he probably overdid it.”

Again, no one laughed, but this time there was a kind of mumbled hum which felt promising.

“Hopefully he’s now upstairs in the house sleeping it off.”

And this was when Jamie realized he was going to have to deal not only with his father’s ill-judged speech but also with the fact that his father had head-butted his mother’s lover in front of everyone. Which was going to be a good deal more difficult. He paused. For rather a long time. And the atmosphere began to cool again.

“I have absolutely no idea why my father hit David Symmonds. To be honest I’m not entirely sure whether my father knew it was David Symmonds he was hitting.”

He felt like someone skiing downhill at a dangerously high speed through a forest of solid trees planted far too close to one another.

“They worked together at Shepherds some years ago. I don’t know if they’ve seen one another since. I guess the moral is that if you don’t get on with someone at work, then it’s probably not a good idea to invite them to your daughter’s wedding and take vast amounts of prescription drugs beforehand.”

At which point, thank God, the mumbled hum turned into actual laughter. From most of his audience at any rate (Eileen and Ronnie looked as if they had been freeze-dried). And Jamie realized he was finally reaching safer ground.

He turned to Katie and saw Jacob sitting on her lap with her arms round him, burying his head against her chest. Poor guy. He was going to need a pretty heavyweight debriefing when all this was over.

“But this is Katie and Ray’s special day,” said Jamie, raising his voice and trying to sound upbeat.

“Hear! Hear!” shouted Uncle Douglas, raising his glass.

And it was obvious from the rather startled reaction that many of the guests had forgotten that they were at a wedding.

“Unfortunately, the groom is looking after the father of the bride at the moment…”

Ray appeared in the doorway of the marquee.

“I tell a lie…”

All eyes swiveled toward Ray who stopped in his tracks and looked a little surprised to be the center of attention.

“So, on behalf of Katie and Ray, I think we should put the events of the last ten minutes behind us and help them celebrate their wedding. Katie and Ray…” He grabbed a half-full glass from the table in front of him. “Here’s wishing you a very happy day. And let’s hope the rest of your marriage is a little less eventful.”

Everyone raised their glass and there was a bout of slightly confused cheering and Jamie sat down and everyone fell silent and Sarah started clapping, then everyone else started clapping and Jamie wasn’t quite sure whether it was for Katie and Ray or whether he was being congratulated for his performance, of which he was rather proud.

In fact, he was so swept up in the general sense of relief that he was surprised when he turned to his mother and found her still weeping.

She looked over at Katie and said, “I’m so, so sorry. It’s all my fault.” She wiped her eyes with a napkin and got to her feet and said, “I have to go and talk to your father,” and Katie said, “Are you sure…?” but she was gone.

And Ray materialized beside them and said, dryly, “I am really looking forward to going to Barcelona.”

And Jacob said, “Grandpa had a fight.”

And Ray said, “I know. I was there.”

And Katie said, “The man he hit. That was-”

“I know,” said Ray. “Your father explained. In some pretty graphic detail. That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to Barcelona. He’s having a little rest, incidentally. I don’t think he’s planning to come downstairs in a hurry.”

And Jamie suddenly realized the one blindingly obvious fact that had somehow escaped him up until now. That his father had known all along. About his mother and David Symmonds.

His head was spinning a little.

He turned to Katie. “So did Mum know that Dad knew that Mum and David Symmonds were…?”

“No,” said Katie, even more dryly than Ray. “Dad obviously chose our wedding day to break the happy news to her.”

“Christ,” said Jamie. “Why did they invite the guy?”

“That,” said Katie, “is one of several questions I’m planning to ask them later on. Assuming they haven’t killed each other.”

“Do you think we should…?” Jamie got out of his seat.

“No I don’t,” said Katie tartly. “They can sort this one out themselves.”

Ray walked over to check that his own parents had survived the ordeal and Tony appeared carrying an open bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. He sat himself down in Jean’s empty chair and said, to Katie, “This is the first wedding I’ve ever been to. And I have to say, they are a lot more entertaining than I realized.”

Which struck Jamie as pretty risky given Katie’s state of mind. But he clearly knew the terrain, perhaps on account of having Becky as a sister, because Katie removed the champagne bottle from Tony’s hand, took an almighty swig and said, “You know the best bit?”

“What?” said Tony.

“You being here.”

“You are very kind,” said Tony. “Though I didn’t expect my entrance to be upstaged quite so dramatically.”

“God,” said Katie, “I am in serious need of a disco.”

“A woman after my own heart,” said Tony.

“And David…?” said Jamie.

“Headed off to his car,” said Tony. “I think he wanted to avoid a second encounter. Which was probably wise, in the circumstances.”

At which point, a man carrying a large speaker bearing the words “Top Sounds” appeared like a rather overweight angel in the doorway of the marquee.

But Jamie was more worried about his father than Katie, and less keen to let his parents sort it out between themselves, so he made his excuses to Tony and slipped into the house, stopping en route to reassure several friends and relatives that his father was OK, and earnestly hoping that he was.

He knocked on his parents’ bedroom door. The faint voices went quiet on the far side. He waited then knocked again.

“Who is it?” said his father.

“It’s me. Jamie. I just wanted to check that you were all right.” There was a brief pause. Obviously they weren’t all right. It was a stupid thing to say. “It’s just that people are concerned. Naturally.”

“I’m afraid I made a terrible mess of everything,” said his father.

It was hard to know how to respond to this through a door.

“Will you tell Katie and Ray that I’m desperately sorry for causing them such embarrassment?” said his father.

“I will,” said Jamie.

There was a brief silence.

“Is David OK?” said his father.

“Yeh,” said Jamie. “He’s gone.”

“Good,” said his father.

Jamie realized that he hadn’t heard his mother speak yet. And it seemed very unlikely that something awful had happened to her, but he wanted to be absolutely sure this time. “Mum?”

There was no reply.

“Mum…?”

“I’m fine,” said his mother. There was a note of irritation in her voice, which was strangely reassuring.

Jamie was about to say that if they needed anything…Then he wondered what “anything” could possibly be (wine? wedding cake?) and decided to end the conversation. “I’m going back downstairs now.”

There was no reply.

So he went back downstairs and out across the lawn, reassuring more people about his father’s health as he did so. The disco had begun and he slipped into the marquee and sat himself down beside Tony who was chatting about lath-and-plaster ceilings with Ed.

Ed slipped away and Jamie took a cigarette from the packet in front of Tony and lit it and Tony poured him a glass of dessert wine and the two of them watched Uncle Douglas dancing like a wounded ox, and the music was good because it filled all those little gaps during which people were tempted to wonder about the implications of what had happened earlier, though if you knew precisely what had happened earlier you did have to try not to listen to the lyrics too hard (“Groovy Kind of Love,” “Congratulations,” “Stand by Your Man”).

For the last two weeks he’d been desperate to talk to Tony. Now, sitting next to him was enough, touching, breathing the same air. Last time they’d been together they seemed like two separate people. Somehow, in the interim they’d become a…what? a couple? The word seemed wrong now that he was finally on the receiving end.

Maybe it was good to be something you didn’t know the name for.

They talked to Mona about the perils of shagging one’s boss (which she had done, inadvisedly). They talked to Ray’s parents who were weirdly unperturbed by the unorthodox nature of the reception (Ray’s brother was in prison, apparently, which Katie had failed to mention, and Barbara’s ex-husband was once discovered by the police sleeping in a skip). They talked to Craig, Jenny’s gay caregiver, who was technically not meant to be talking to people on his own account while he was on duty but, sod it, Jenny was pissed and getting along famously with the spectacularly boring guy from Ray’s office.

Half an hour or so later his mother came into the marquee. And it was a bit like the Queen coming into the room, everyone suddenly stopping dancing, going quiet and panicking slightly about how they were meant to behave. Except that the man from Top Sounds didn’t know what had happened earlier so Kylie Minogue carried on singing “Locomotion” very loudly.

Jamie was going to jump out of his seat and run over and save her from all this unwanted attention, but Ursula (who had been doing a surprisingly athletic Locomotion with a group of Katie and Ray’s friends) went over and hugged her and Jamie didn’t want to trump her a second time. And within a few seconds Douglas and Maureen had joined her and his mother was soon sitting at a corner table being taken care of.

Consequently when his father entered the marquee a few minutes later he created slightly less of a stir. Again, Jamie wondered whether he should go and look after him. But his father headed straight to Katie and Ray and presumably made some kind of direct apology for his earlier behavior which must have gone down reasonably well because the encounter ended in a hug, after which his father was similarly led to a table by Ed with whom he seemed to strike up a firm intergenerational friendship (Jamie later found out that Ed had suffered a breakdown some years earlier and not left the house for several months). And it was a bit odd, his parents sitting at different tables. But it would have been odder to see them standing together, which they’d never done at any kind of gathering, so Jamie decided to postpone worrying about them till the following day.

And when Jamie and Tony stepped outside a little while later, the light was fading and someone had lit multicolored flares on bamboo canes around the lawn which was rather magical. And the day finally felt as if it had been mended as well as it could be mended.

They played hide-and-seek with Jacob and found Judy looking miserable in the kitchen because Kenneth was comatose in the downstairs loo. So they found a screwdriver and undid the lock and arranged him in the recovery position on the sofa in the living room with a blanket over him and a bucket on the carpet nearby, before dragging Judy back outside and onto the dance floor.

And then it was Jacob’s bedtime, so Jamie read him Pumpkin Soup and Curious George Takes a Train and came downstairs and danced with Tony, and Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” came on and Jamie laughed and Tony asked why and Jamie just pulled him close and snogged him in the middle of the dance floor for the whole three minutes and three whole minutes of Tony’s cock pressed against him was more than he could actually bear and he was drunk enough by now, so he pulled Tony upstairs and told him not to make any noise or he’d kill him and they went into his old bedroom and Tony fucked him in full view of Big Giraffe and the boxed set of Doctor Dolittle.