Peter considered this for some time.
‘I guess you’re right. That’s interesting. I’ve never looked at it like that before. I mean, obviously I know that if I behave in certain kinds of ways you won’t put up with it, but it hadn’t occurred to me before that I actually need that from you. You’re right, though, I do.’
‘Well, it’s the same with me. Remember how I used to fly into a tantrum sometimes, all those years ago, when things didn’t go as I wanted? You just wouldn’t play along with it, would you? You just ignored me completely till I pulled myself together. So I stopped, didn’t I? And a good job too. You helped me to grow up.’
‘I guess if I’d have been someone like Tim I would have run around in a panic, desperately trying to figure out what I had to do to placate you.’
‘Exactly. And if I’d been someone like Tim, I’d have done the same when you went into one of those week-long sulks you used to go in for.’
Peter nodded.
‘Tim can be very passive,’ he conceded. ‘He’s like that at work as well. Dick treated him appallingly in a meeting the other day. I mean really appallingly. We all looked round at Tim, waiting for him to react – I mean it’s not like Dick is even his boss or anything – but Tim didn’t say anything at all. Not a word. He just looked down at his hands, and kind of… swallowed.’
‘Swallowed? That’s interesting. I’ve seen him do that too.’
‘He always does it when Mary has a go at him. You remember that time at the Gibsons’ party, for instance? Okay, I take your point, it may well be his own fault, but all the same, she really did humiliate him, dressing him down like a naughty child in front of everyone. And he just swallowed.’
‘Yes, and remember when we went to Tenerife with them,’ Sue said, ‘and that guy in the market blatantly ripped him off. You wait for him to react, but he just—’
‘—swallows. You can see his Adam’s apple move. You can almost hear the gulp. Pathetic really.’
‘And he’s so big. That’s the weird part. The tallest man we know, the broadest across the shoulders, a great big guy. He’s like a bear that thinks it’s a mouse.’
Peter laughed. ‘I do like him, though, for some reason.’
‘I quite like him too, though I often want to pick him up and shake him. I guess there’s a reason he is as he is. I just don’t accept that Mary made him that way.’
She watched the faces on the TV screen.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘he’s absolutely full of rage.’
Peter looked round at her in surprise. ‘Who? Tim? Are you mixing him up with someone else? The man hasn’t got an angry bone in his body! That’s his whole problem, surely?’
‘I have this pain inside me,’ Tim said, running his hand through his sandy-coloured hair. ‘Well, it’s more like a pressure really. Like something inside me squirming around and pushing outwards. It’s probably stupid of me, but I can’t help worrying that it’s cancer or something like that. It feels a bit that way. It feels like some kind of alien force deep down in… well, I don’t know where exactly, but somewhere right deep down in the core of me.’
The doctor laughed.
‘Sounds like indigestion to me, Tim.’
He was a new doctor, fresh out of medical school, and he’d never met Tim before, but for some reason he thought it was okay to use the short form of Tim’s first name, and to talk to him as if he was a child.
Tim swallowed. ‘Well, I think I know what indigestion’s like, actually. You could be right, I suppose, but it doesn’t feel like that at all.’
‘I’m sure you’re fine.’ The doctor had already turned to his keyboard. ‘But I’ll refer you for some tests for your own peace of mind. And meanwhile I’ll prescribe you some antacid pills and we’ll see if they’re any help.’
It was growing inside him and it felt alive. It was as if there was a living animal trapped in there, struggling to free itself. And not just an animal, but a dangerous one, he was quite sure of that. He knew he must contain it, however difficult that might be.
‘The doctor said it was just indigestion,’ he told Mary as he came into the kitchen. ‘He’s given me some tablets for stomach acid.’
Little Sean was already at the table, waiting for his tea. He was five years old.
‘Well, I told you it was nothing, didn’t I?’ Mary said. ‘You don’t need a doctor, Tim, you really don’t, but if you carry on like this, you’re going to need a shrink.’
‘What’s a shrink?’ asked Sean.
‘Hello there, my little man,’ said Tim, kissing the boy’s head as he sat down at the table.
He loved his son with such intensity that sometimes it felt to him as if a dazzling light was blazing outwards from the little boy, almost too bright to look at.
‘A shrink is someone you go to when your suit’s too tight,’ Mary said.
She meant it to be a joke of course but, funnily enough, it wasn’t a bad description of what his symptoms actually felt like.
‘Really?’ Sean asked doubtfully.
‘Well, sort of,’ Tim said, ‘except that I feel like the suit.’
Sean looked worried.
‘No, not really, Sean,’ Tim told his son, squeezing his hand. ‘Your mum was only kidding. She means your dad is making a big fuss about nothing, and she’s probably right.’
He glanced at Mary, and she gave him a thin taut smile as she laid out the sausages and mash. Later he would read Sean his bedtime story and then the little boy, already half asleep, would reach up his arms and plant a soft wet kiss on his mouth.
‘Goodnight, my little man,’ Tim would say, as he tiptoed out, leaving his son to the protection of the plastic lion that always kept watch on his bedside table.
‘You’re quite right, of course,’ he said to Mary later, when they were lying in bed. ‘I must stop worrying about it so much.’
‘You really must,’ she said, turning the page of her book. ‘It’s one of those silly things that feed on themselves. You’re a bit prone to those, aren’t you? You’ve let this blow up out of all proportion.’
‘I have,’ he admitted. ‘I’m glad about the tests, though. Let’s hope when they come back, I’ll be able to lay the whole thing to rest.’
He glanced across at her. She looked very appealing with her low-cut nightdress showing a great deal of those shapely breasts that were beginning to swell and fill with pregnancy.
‘I don’t suppose you…?’
‘Not tonight, Tim. It’s been a long day, and I need to get some sleep.’
Tim nodded.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That’s absolutely fine. Only it’s been quite a while.’
Tim swallowed. Mary turned out the light.
Suddenly he saw the creature vividly in his mind. It was bloody and red, with fierce, burning eyes. He knew it would terrify Sean if he ever saw it. He knew it would tear their little home apart. So one thing at least was absolutely clear: whatever happened, whether the symptoms could be alleviated or not, he must keep that thing locked away inside himself, he must never never —
But now, lying there in the dark, Tim checked himself. These were mad thoughts, surely? Either this was an illness of some kind, like indigestion, or, more likely, it was something in his head, like that time he became convinced that there was a gas leak, even though Mary couldn’t smell anything, and even though the guy from the gas company came out twice and found no trace at all. An illness, or something in his head: it was one of those two. He must stop thinking of it as some kind of living thing.
‘He shouldn’t have spoken to me like that, though,’ he muttered, thinking about the young doctor and his patronising tone.