A Spot Of Bother

95

George realized that Dr. Barghoutian was not so stupid after all.

The Valium was good. The Valium was very good indeed. He went downstairs, got himself a mug of tea and played a couple of card games with Jacob.

After Katie went into town he squeezed round the back of the marquee for a look at the studio and realized that, with the end of the garden blocked off, the studio had become a secret place of the kind that children loved and which, to be quite honest, he still rather enjoyed himself. He pulled out the folding chair and sat down for a very pleasurable ten minutes until one of the workmen slipped round the other side of the marquee and began urinating into a flower bed. George decided that coughing to make his presence known was politer than watching someone urinate in silence, so he coughed and the man apologized and vanished, but George felt that his secret space had been violated somewhat and returned to the house.

He went inside and made himself a ham-and-tomato sandwich and washed it down with milk.

The only problem with Valium was that it did not encourage rational thought. It was only after supper, when the effects of the two pills he had taken during the afternoon began to wear off, that he did the maths. There were only ten pills in the bottle to start with. If he were to carry on taking them at this rate he would run out before the wedding had begun.

It began to dawn on him that although Dr. Barghoutian was wise, he had not been generous.

He was going to have to stop taking the pills now. And he was going to have to avoid taking any tomorrow.

The label on the little brown bottle cautioned against drinking alcohol while taking them. Bugger that. When he sat down after his speech, he was going to drain the first glass which came to hand. If he passed swiftly into a coma, that was fine by him.

The difficulty was getting to Saturday.

He could feel it coming in, even now, as he sat on the sofa with Jacques Loussier playing on the stereo and The Daily Telegraph folded on his lap, the way they saw that storm coming off the sea at St. Ives a few years ago, a gray wall of thickened light half a mile out, the water dark beneath it, everyone just standing and watching, not realizing how fast it was moving until it was too late, then running and yelling as the hail came up the beach horizontally like gunfire.

His body was starting to rev and churn, all the dials moving steadily toward the red. The fear was coming back. He wanted to scratch his hip. But if there was any cancer left the last thing he wanted was to disturb it.

It was very tempting to take more Valium.

God almighty. You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.

He got up and walked into the hallway. There was some wine left from supper. He’d finish the bottle then take a couple of codeine.

When he entered the kitchen, however, the lights were off, the door to the garden was open and Katie was standing on the threshold watching the driving rain, drinking the remains of the wine straight from the bottle.

“Don’t drink that,” said George, rather more loudly than he intended.

“Sorry,” said Katie. “I thought you were in bed. Anyway, I was planning to finish it. So you won’t have to share my bacteria.”

George could think of no way of saying, “Give me the bottle,” without seeming deranged.

Katie drank the wine. “God, I love the rain.”

George stood looking at her. She swigged more wine. After a little while she turned round and saw that he was standing looking at her. He realized that he was acting a little oddly. But he needed company.

“Scrabble,” he said.

“What?” asked Katie.

“I was wondering whether you wanted a game of Scrabble.” Where had that come from?

Katie wiggled her head slowly from side to side, weighing up the idea. “OK.”

“Great,” said George. “You go and get the box from the cupboard. I’ve just got to go and get some codeine. For a headache.”

George was halfway up the stairs when he recalled the last game of Scrabble they had played. It had ground to a halt during a very heated debate over George’s entirely legal use of the word zho, a cross between a cow and a yak.

Oh well, it would keep his mind occupied.