Читать книгу William’s Progress - Matt Rudd - Страница 57

I have made an executive decision. We are leaving. We are leaving one day early from the holiday we started two days late. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about offending the friendly farmer. I am tired. I am damp. Most of Jacob’s clothes, the ones I dropped in a muddy puddle, are still not properly dry. The bloody goddam barn owl was at it again last night with his infernal hooting, so much so that I woke Isabel to complain. She then had the temerity to shout at me because I’d woken her up.

When she had finished shouting at me, she listened to the barn owl and then said, ‘Wow, it is a barn owl. You’re right. How amazing,’ and immediately went back to sleep, content that our annual subscription to the Barn Owl Conservation Society was money well spent.

I went downstairs to make a Lemsip and, because I’d forgotten to turn the bedside clock off first, fused the lights. I then stepped in the three-foot-deep puddle on my way to the shed. I then locked myself out. I then threw stones at the bedroom window, but Isabel didn’t hear me because she presumably had the pillow back on her head and it had begun to rain noisily on the tin roof.

She noticed when the last stone I threw broke the window. And that was when we had the argument that ended in my executive decision. It began like any normal middle-of-the-night, exhausted-parent shouting match, only with one of us standing outside getting wetter and wetter, and the other one shouting through a nice new hole in the window. But like a migraine, it developed into something darker, something more poisonous and unshiftable. It became one of those arguments in which horrible lurking disputes that were supposed to be long ago forgiven and forgotten rise to the surface.

‘You’re always negative.’

‘No, I am bloody not.’

‘You were negative when we lived in Finsbury Park.’

‘That’s because it was dangerous. And our neighbours were crazy. And that man with a knife tried to kill me.’

‘A boy who said he had a knife said he might try to kill you. That’s not the same thing.’

‘It is in this day and age.’

‘You’re negative about living outside London.’

‘That’s not true. I love it. I love our suburban existence with our curtain-twitching neighbours, our soon-to-be-ruined bathroom and the relentless commute.’

‘You see, that’s just it. Relentless commute? You told me the last time we were arguing that the commute was the only time you could sit quietly without being ordered around by me or that work-experience girl who is now your boss. You’re negative about everything, even the things you are positive about.’

‘I am not.’

‘You were even negative about our wedding.’

‘Let’s not go there again. I wasn’t negative. I was emotional. It’s not the same thing. The fact that Alex tutted all the way through it was a bit of a dampener. Especially after he turned up with all those horses. You’d think he wouldn’t have bother—’

‘If we are going to survive this whole parenting thing – and we probably should, don’t you think, for Jacob’s sake at the very least – then you are going to have to get a grip.’

‘I have got a grip. You are the one who thought it was a good idea to go on holiday to a bog in February.’

‘Is everything all right?’ It was the chipper farmer, peering out of his probably properly insulated window across the yard.

‘Yes, everything’s fine. Just another power cut. Sorry to disturb,’ I replied, pausing only for the slightest second to marvel at how, even in this terrible crisis, I am still so English that I will apologise to the person largely responsible for it. Would I apologise to a tailgater if he crashed into the back of our car? Would I apologise if someone spilled my pint? Would I apologise to a hoodie for getting his knife covered in my blood? Probably.

‘Can we continue this discussion inside, dearest? I am now soaking wet and I have bronchitis.’

She let me in. How kind. ‘Where were we?’ One thing you become quite good at as a parent is continuing conversations over many interruptions. It works particularly well with arguments.

‘This bog. February.’

‘Oh, yes. Right. Well, I have two things to say: one, we’re never coming to Devon again; two, we’re going home tomorrow. How’s that for negative?’

In the cold light of day, we packed in silence. I thanked the farmer for a lovely stay, apologised for breaking the window and offered him £20 to cover it, which he accepted. I then spent the whole return journey furious with myself for paying someone £20 because their dodgy electrics trapped me outside in the rain at 4 a.m. when I already had early-stage triple pneumonia. The whole journey, that is, minus the time spent driving at ninety-eight miles an hour to a service station because we mistimed Jacob’s feeds again and even the prospect of another speeding ticket won’t make me put up with that screaming a second longer than I have to. And minus the time spent queuing outside the only baby-changing facility on the whole M4. And minus the time spent queuing outside the same baby-changing facility again because Jacob always likes to poo twice when he knows there’s a queue for the changing facilities.