The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (25 page)

And then the dream is finished and I am happy.

233.
The next morning I had fried tomatoes for breakfast and a tin of green beans which Mother heated up in a saucepan.

In the middle of breakfast, Mr. Shears said, “OK. He can stay for a few days.”

And Mother said, “He can stay as long as he needs to stay.”

And Mr. Shears said, “This flat is hardly big enough for two people, let alone three.”

And Mother said, “He can understand what you're saying, you know.”

And Mr. Shears said, “What's he going to do? There's no school for him to go to. We've both got jobs. It's bloody ridiculous.”

And Mother said, “Roger. That's enough.”

Then she made me some Red Zinger herbal tea with sugar in it but I didn't like it, and she said, “You can stay for as long as you want to stay.”

And after Mr. Shears had gone to work she made a telephone call to the office and took what is called
Compassionate Leave,
which is when someone in your family dies or is ill.

Then she said we had to go and buy some clothes for me to wear and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a flannel. So we went out of the flat and we walked to the main road, which was Hill Lane, which was the A4088, and it was really crowded and we caught a number 266 bus to Brent Cross Shopping Centre. Except there were too many people in John Lewis and I was frightened and I lay down on the floor next to the wristwatches and I screamed and Mother had to take me home in a taxi.

Then she had to go back to the shopping center to buy me some clothes and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a flannel, so I stayed in the spare room while she was gone because I didn't want to be in the same room as Mr. Shears because I was frightened of him.

And when Mother got home she brought me a glass of strawberry milk shake and showed me my new pajamas, and the pattern on them was 5-pointed blue stars on a purple background like this

And I said, “I have to go back to Swindon.”

And Mother said, “Christopher, you've only just got here.”

And I said, “I have to go back because I have to sit my maths A level.”

And Mother said, “You're doing maths A level?”

And I said, “Yes. I'm taking it on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday next week.”

And Mother said, “God.”

And I said, “The Reverend Peters is going to be the invigilator.”

And Mother said, “I mean, that's really good.”

And I said, “I'm going to get an A grade. And that's why I have to go back to Swindon. Except I don't want to see Father. So I have to go to Swindon with you.”

Then Mother put her hands over her face and breathed out hard, and she said, “I don't know whether that's going to be possible.”

And I said, “But I have to go.”

And Mother said, “Let's talk about this some other time, OK?”

And I said, “OK. But I have to go to Swindon.”

And she said, “Christopher, please.”

And I drank some of my milk shake.

And later on, at 10:31 p.m. I went out onto the balcony to find out whether I could see any stars, but there weren't any because of all the clouds and what is called
light pollution,
which is light from streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and lights in buildings reflecting off tiny particles in the atmosphere and getting in the way of light from the stars. So I went back inside.

But I couldn't sleep. And I got out of bed at 2:07 a.m. and I felt scared of Mr. Shears so I went downstairs and out of the front door into Chapter Road. And there was no one in the street and it was quieter than it was during the day, even though you could hear traffic in the distance and sirens, so it made me feel calmer. And I walked down Chapter Road and looked at all the cars and the patterns the phone wires made against the orange clouds and the things that people had in their front gardens, like a gnome and a cooker and a tiny pond and a teddy bear.

Then I heard two people coming along the road, so I crouched down between the end of a skip and a Ford Transit van, and they were talking in a language that wasn't English, but they didn't see me. And there were two tiny brass cogs in the dirty water in the gutter by my feet, like cogs from a windup watch.

And I liked it between the skip and the Ford Transit van so I stayed there for a long time. And I looked out at the street. And the only colors you could see were orange and black and mixtures of orange and black. And you couldn't tell what colors the cars would be during the day.

And I wondered whether you could tessellate crosses, and I worked out that you could by imagining this picture in my head

And then I heard Mother's voice and she was shouting, “Christopher . . . ? Christopher . . . ?” and she was running down the road, so I came out from between the skip and the Ford Transit van and she ran up to me and said, “Jesus Christ,” and she stood in front of me and pointed her finger at my face and said, “If you ever do that again, I swear to God, Christopher, I love you, but . . . I don't know what I'll do.”

So she made me promise never to leave the flat on my own because it was dangerous and because you couldn't trust people in London because they were strangers. And the next day she had to go to the shops again and she made me promise not to answer the door if anyone rang the bell. And when she came back she brought some food pellets for Toby and three
Star Trek
videos and I watched them in the living room until Mr. Shears came home and then I went into the spare room again. And I wished that 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG, had a garden but it didn't.

And the day after that the office where Mother worked rang and told her she couldn't come back to work because they had got someone else to do her job for her, and she was really angry and she said that it was illegal and she was going to complain, but Mr. Shears said, “Don't be a bloody fool. It was a temporary job, for Christ's sake.”

And when Mother came into the spare room before I went to sleep I said, “I have to go to Swindon to take my A level.”

And she said, “Christopher, not now. I'm getting phone calls from your father threatening to take me to court. I'm getting it in the neck from Roger. It's not a good time.”

And I said, “But I have to go because it's been arranged and the Reverend Peters is going to invigilate.”

And she said, “Look. It's only an exam. I can ring the school. We can get it postponed. You can take it some other time.”

And I said, “I can't take it another time. It's been arranged. And I've done lots of revision. And Mrs. Gascoyne said we could use a room at school.”

And Mother said, “Christopher, I am just about holding this together. But I am this close to losing it, all right? So just give me some—”

Then she stopped talking and she put her hand over her mouth and she stood up and went out of the room. And I started feeling a pain in my chest like I did on the underground because I thought I wasn't going to be able to go back to Swindon and take my A level.

And the next morning I looked out of the window in the dining room to count the cars in the street to see whether it was going to be a
Quite Good Day
or a
Good Day
or a
Super Good Day
or a
Black Day,
but it wasn't like being on the bus to school because you could look out of the window for as long as you wanted and see as many cars as you wanted, and I looked out of the window for three hours and I saw 5 red cars in a row and 4 yellow cars in a row, which meant it was both a
Good Day
and a
Black Day,
so the system didn't work anymore. But if I concentrated on counting the cars it stopped me from thinking about my A level and the pain in my chest.

And in the afternoon Mother took me to Hampstead Heath in a taxi and we sat on the top of a hill and looked at the planes coming into Heathrow Airport in the distance. And I had a red ice lolly from an ice cream van. And Mother said she had rung Mrs. Gascoyne and told her that I was going to take my maths A level next year, so I threw my red ice lolly away and I screamed for a long time and the pain in my chest hurt so much that it was hard to breathe and a man came up and asked if I was OK and Mother said, “Well, what does it look like to you?” and he went away.

And then I was tired from screaming and Mother took me back to the flat in another taxi and the next morning was Saturday and she told Mr. Shears to go out and get me some books about science and maths from the library, and they were called
100 Number Puzzles
and
The Origins of the Universe
and
Nuclear Power,
but they were for children and they were not very good so I didn't read them, and Mr. Shears said, “Well, it's nice to know my contribution is appreciated.”

And I hadn't eaten anything since I threw away the red ice lolly on Hampstead Heath, so Mother made me a chart with stars on it like when I was very small and she filled a measuring jug with Complan and strawberry flavoring and I got a bronze star for drinking 200 ml and a silver star for drinking 400 ml and a gold star for drinking 600 ml.

And when Mother and Mr. Shears argued I took the little radio from the kitchen and I went and sat in the spare room and I tuned it halfway between two stations so that all I could hear was white noise and I turned the volume up really loud and I held it against my ear and the sound filled my head and it hurt so that I couldn't feel any other sort of hurt, like the hurt in my chest, and I couldn't hear Mother and Mr. Shears arguing and I couldn't think about not doing my A level or the fact that there wasn't a garden at 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG, or the fact that I couldn't see the stars.

And then it was Monday. And it was very late at night and Mr. Shears came into my room and woke me up and he had been drinking beer because he smelled like Father did when he had been drinking beer with Rhodri. And he said, “You think you're so fucking clever, don't you. Don't you ever, ever think about other people for one second, eh? Well, I bet you're really pleased with yourself now, aren't you.”

And then Mother came in and pulled him out of the room and said, “Christopher, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry.”

The next morning, after Mr. Shears had gone to work, Mother packed lots of her clothes into two suitcases and told me to come downstairs and bring Toby and get into the car. And she put the suitcases into the boot and we drove off. But it was Mr. Shears's car and I said, “Are you stealing the car?”

And she said, “I'm just borrowing it.”

And I said, “Where are we going?”

And she said, “We're going home.”

And I said, “Do you mean home in Swindon?”

And she said, “Yes.”

And I said, “Is Father going to be there?”

And she said, “Please, Christopher. Don't give me any hassle right now, OK?”

And I said, “I don't want to be with Father.”

And she said, “Just . . . Just . . . It's going to be all right, Christopher, OK? It's going to be all right.”

And I said, “Are we going back to Swindon so I can do my maths A level?”

And Mother said, “What?”

And I said, “I'm meant to be doing my maths A level tomorrow.”

And Mother spoke very slowly and she said, “We are going back to Swindon because if we stay in London any longer . . . someone was going to get hurt. And I don't necessarily mean you.”

And I said, “What do you mean?”

And she said, “Now I need you to be quiet for a while.”

And I said, “How long do you want me to be quiet for?”

And she said, “Jesus.” And then she said, “Half an hour, Christopher. I need you to be quiet for half an hour.”

And we drove all the way to Swindon and it took 3 hours 12 minutes and we had to stop for petrol and Mother bought me a Milkybar but I didn't eat it. And we got caught in a long traffic jam which was caused by people slowing down to look at an accident on the other carriageway. And I tried to work out a formula to determine whether a traffic jam would be caused just by people slowing down and how this was influenced by (a) the density of traffic, and (b) the speed of the traffic, and (c) how quickly drivers braked when they saw the brake of the lights of the car in front coming on. But I was too tired because I hadn't slept the night before because I was thinking about not being able to do my maths A level. So I fell asleep.