A Spot Of Bother

65

Katie and Ray were standing in front of a sculpture called Lightning with Stag in Its Glare. Basically, a girder sticking out of the wall with this jagged black metal spike dangling from it, and some pieces of junk on the floor nearby, which were meant to represent the stag and a goat and some “primitive creatures,” though they could have represented the Crucifixion or the recipe for Welsh rarebit from where Katie was standing.

The aluminum stag was originally made from an ironing board. She knew this because she’d read the little cardboard explanatory note in some detail. She’d read quite a lot of the little cardboard explanatory notes, and stared out of a lot of windows and imagined the possible private lives of many of their fellow visitors because Ray was spending a lot of time examining the art. And it was pissing her off.

She’d come here for all the wrong reasons. She’d wanted to be in her element, but she wasn’t. And she’d wanted him to be out of his element, but he wasn’t.

You could say what you liked about Ray but you could drop him in the middle of Turkmenistan and he’d be in the nearest village by nightfall eating horse and smoking whatever they smoked out there.

He was winning. And it wasn’t a competition. It was childish to think it was a competition. But he was still winning. And she was meant to be winning.

They finally reached the café.

He was holding a cube of sugar so that the bottom corner was just touching the surface of his tea and a brown tide line was slowly making its way up the cube. He was saying, “Obviously most of it’s rubbish. But…it’s like old churches and stuff. It makes you slow down and look…What’s up, kiddo?”

“Nothing.”

She could see now. The dustbin-throwing wasn’t the problem. It was the not winning.

She liked the fact that she was more intelligent than Ray. She liked the fact that she could speak French and he couldn’t. She liked the fact that she had opinions about factory farming and he didn’t.

But it counted for nothing. He was a better person than she was. In every way that mattered. Except the dustbin-throwing. And, in truth, she might have thrown a few dustbins in her time if she’d been a little stronger.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the big slope looking back down into the vast space of the turbine hall.

Ray said, “I know you’re trying really hard, love.”

Katie said nothing.

Ray said, “You don’t have to do this.” He paused. “You don’t have to marry me because of Jacob and the house and money and everything. I’m not going to throw you out onto the street. Whatever you want to do, I’ll try and make it work.”