by Helen Grant
“Morning,” he said as he came up behind me and kissed me on the side of the neck.
“I thought you were in a horrible mood until you got your morning cup of coffee,” I observed mildly.
“Generally I am, yes,” he said, his arms around me.
“So what’s different this morning?” I enquired.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I don’t know. Fine summer morning, I suppose.” But he kissed me again before he took the cup of coffee.
It was strange, that morning. Perhaps there is always a faint sense of unreality when we get something we have wanted for such a long time. I felt as though I could have leaned against the scuffed formica cabinets with my tea cup in my hands and watched James moving around the flat for hours. He was interested in everything: the view from the windows, the little stack of vinyl records and of course the books, which were everywhere – double stacked on the bookcase and piled up everywhere else. No booklover can ever visit another’s home without examining the bookshelves. He touched the battered spine of my copy of The Unrepentant Dead with his forefinger, but he didn’t comment.
Of course he looked at the photographs on the window sill too. There was one of me and Belle, our heads together, both holding up glasses of wine. There was one without any people in it at all, a photograph of the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye. And there was an old photo of Stephen. When he saw that one, James glanced at me, perhaps wondering whether it was an old boyfriend or something.
“That’s Stephen,” I said, with quiet reluctance. “My brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said James.
And I stared at him as the moments slid by, wondering whether to say: I don’t.
Chapter Twenty-One
The call came very early on a Sunday morning in the springtime. I was in my university room, face down in my pillow, sleeping off three quarters of a bottle of wine that Belle had made me drink the night before, on the basis that I needed to let my hair down some time. It took a few moments for the irritating riff of my mobile phone ringing to penetrate the heavy fog of sleep. Then I decided to ignore it; there was no good reason for anyone to be calling at that hour. The phone fell silent and I had just turned over in bed when it started up again. Wearily, I raised my head, my hair hanging over my face in tangled clumps, and fumbled for the phone on the desk adjacent to the bed. I flopped back onto the pillow, the phone to my ear, and said, “Yes?”
“Fenella?” It was my father, his tone terse.
“Dad?” I was conscious of a dull ache in my temples. I pressed the heel of my free hand to my forehead. “Is that you?”
“Yes.” There was the merest pause before he said, “Fenella, your brother’s gone.”
“Gone?” I repeated, stupidly. “Gone where?”
My father was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “You should come home immediately.”
I sat up in bed and the ache in my head briefly intensified into a throb. I couldn’t make sense of what my father was saying.
“It’s the middle of term, Dad. I can’t come home yet.” I began to grope around for my dressing gown, with some idea of getting up and making myself some tea. “And where has Stephen gone?”
“Your brother is dead.” There was a tightness in my father’s voice. He sounded angry, although whether with me or Stephen I could not tell. “Is that clear enough?”
Still I didn’t take it in – not really. I felt curiously numb. “Yes,” I said, and then, “No. How can he be – what’s happened?”
“We are trying to ascertain that,” said my father. Ascertain, he said, as though he were a spokesperson for an official enquiry. The formality of his words added to the sense of unreality; what he was saying had still not really sunk in. “You should come home,” he repeated. “If you need money for the train fare, we will reimburse you.”
“Dad?” I was fully awake now. “Can I speak to Mum?”
“Your mother isn’t able to speak to you at the moment,” said my father. There was a slight edge to his tone, as though the request had been unreasonable. “Will you come home today?”
“I suppose so,” I said into the phone. The logistical details of how I would do this crowded into my head, trying to push out the unwelcome information my father had delivered. I thought of buses, and train times, and packing. I did not want to accept the news about Stephen at its face value; it seemed impossible. Instead I said to myself that I would go home and get to the bottom of the matter. I would surely find out that there had been some mistake. I tried to recall the train timetable. Perhaps I might even be able to travel back again tonight, after I had seen my parents. “Yes,” I said.
After the call had ended, I got out of bed, dressed and set about packing a bag. I struggled to think what to take; my mind seemed to have lost focus. I picked up a rather heavy book I had been reading for my current assignment and for perhaps half a minute I just looked at it, unable to make a decision about whether to take it with me or not. In the end I put it into the bag, but after I had finished packing I changed my mind and took it out again.
I might be back tonight, I reminded myself. My hands trembled as I fastened the zip on the bag.
It was not until I was outside my room, locking the door, that I began to think of things I had forgotten to do. I had not eaten or drunk a thing since I got up – not so much as a glass of water. My mouth was dry and my head was still aching dully. Unless I had something it would undoubtedly get worse. I considered going back inside, but decided against it; I could buy something at the station or on the train, I supposed. More urgently, I needed to tell someone I was leaving. If I had to stay overnight, I would miss a seminar on Monday morning...
Dragging the bag behind me, I went up the corridor to Belle’s room and banged on the door.
“Go away,” said Belle in a muffled voice.
“Belle? It’s me, Fen.”
“Go away, Fen. I mean that nicely.”
I leaned against the door with my shoulder. Trying to think of the right words to persuade Belle to open it felt like an exhausting prospect. “Please,” I said into the wooden panels.
I thought perhaps she had gone back to sleep, but then I heard her undoing the lock from the inside and I stepped back from the door. Belle looked out, her unmade-up face pale and her hair sticking up.
“What the fuck, Fen? It must be, like, seven o’clock in the morning.”
“I have to go home, Belle. Can you tell Dr. Edwards?”
Belle stared at me. “Why? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “My dad phoned and said Stephen’s gone, and he said I have to go home right away. Can you tell Dr. Edwards, in case I’m not back tomorrow morning?”
I waited for Belle to say yes, so I could set off for the station. But she kept looking at me, and then she said, “Your brother Stephen? What do you mean, gone?”
“Dad says he’s dead.” It made me feel strange to say that: weirdly lightheaded and disconnected. “I don’t think he can be, though,” I said. “I’m going home to sort it out. Will you tell her that’s where I’ve gone?”
“Of course,” said Belle. “But Fen–”
I had already turned to go, but she caught hold of my arm. “Wait a minute. Your dad phoned you and said your brother was – that he was dead? And he told you to come home? How are you going to do that? Are your parents driving up to get you?”
I shook my head. “Dad said to get the train.” I looked away, up the corridor. “I should get going.”
“Fen, how far away do your parents live? An hour’s drive? An hour and a half? Why the fuck aren’t they coming to get you?”
I could hear the anger in Belle’s voice, but I couldn’t deal with it. It was too much, on top of everything else. At last I felt the pricking of tears in my eyes.
I tried to pull my arm away, but Belle
wasn’t letting go. She stepped right out into the corridor.
“Fen, come in for a minute.”
“The train,” I said miserably.
“You can get the next one. I’m going to get dressed and then I’m coming with you, okay? At least as far as the station. I’ll come on the train too, if I can afford it. You shouldn’t be going off on your own.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue. I let her lead me into her room, where I stood with my bag, waiting for her to be ready, until she told me tartly that I was making the place look untidy. Then I sat on the battered armchair, bolt upright, until she was dressed. I kept fidgeting while I was waiting, as though it made a difference how quickly I got to the railway station; as though if I managed to get home fast enough some evil spell would be broken and my father would say, Why did you come home, Fen? Your brother is perfectly fine.
There was no bus due, so Belle walked to the station with me. When she got there, she made me sit on a bench while she went off to buy tickets. She came back scowling – “it’s exorbitant” – and it wasn’t until I was on the train on my own, rattling through the countryside, that I realised she hadn’t asked me for the money back. She’d paid for my ticket, which was why she hadn’t been able to come any further with me. I was glad, though, even in my numb state of misery, because I couldn’t face showing Belle my parents.
So I went home, and when I walked up to the house it was like sinking to the bottom of a dark ocean. The pressure on my chest was so great that I felt as though I was going to suffocate. In books, haunted houses are grand and sinister affairs with Gothic turrets and grinning gargoyles. This was just an ordinary suburban house.
Still there was something draggingly awful about walking up the garden path towards the dowdy green front door. Once inside, my family would swallow me again, and what had happened to Stephen would become real.
I rang the bell and the door opened instantly. My father must have been standing right behind it, although he hadn’t opened it until I rang. He stood there for a moment, looking at me, and there was something faintly challenging in his expression, as though he was wondering why I was there. Then he stood back to let me inside. I only glanced at his face once. It told me all I needed to know. He hadn’t changed. Stephen, my brother, was dead, but my father had not changed.
Of course, I didn’t go back to the university that evening, nor the next day. I stayed until the funeral, which was a functional affair at a local crematorium. There were too few of us, in a large room decorated in pale cream and pine wood, as though having light colours and a bland atmosphere would deny the grim reality and somehow make the dear departed less dead. The eulogy was given by the headmaster of Stephen’s old school, who was also a friend of my father’s. It was delivered carefully but was strangely dispassionate, as though he had plundered Stephen’s CV for the content. None of the family wept. My parents were as grim and silent as statues, and I had cried so much in the previous days, in the solitude of my old bedroom, that I felt hollowed out. The only person who sobbed aloud was Stephen’s godmother, and when she did so, I sensed my mother’s head turning like a pitiless searchlight of disapproval. I don’t remember much of the wake. I stayed that night at my parents’, and the next morning I went back to university.
Travelling back on the train did not make me feel any better. I did not feel as though I was escaping from the oppressive environment of my parents’ house to a welcome sanctuary; I felt like a dumb beast transported from one pen to another, the shadow of the killing bolt always hanging over it. I wondered if that was how Stephen had felt: corralled. Trapped.
His death was not intentional. That was the conclusion that was meant to make the family feel better, as though we were still living in the days when suicides were buried at a crossroads or on the north side of the churchyard and a death not being suicide was somehow supposed to be a good thing. It didn’t help me at all. My brother was gone – out of my life, out of his own life.
I’d heard all the details now. Stephen had been working for his Finals – working flat out nearly every hour he was awake. His marks at university had always been good – excellent, even – but still he kept pushing himself, harder and harder, as though a moment with his attention elsewhere would lead to certain disaster in the exam hall. His friends barely saw him outside the classroom or the library. At some point, applying himself for long hours was not enough. Perhaps he became too exhausted to concentrate. He began to self-medicate, using a prescription drug with a stimulating effect. Where he got it from was a question yet to be answered. Eventually he took too much of it, or had an adverse reaction to it. He died there in his student room, with his books piled up around him, probably on the Friday afternoon or early evening. The cleaner had knocked and emptied his bin for him that morning, and Stephen had seemed tired and groggy but most certainly alive. Nobody saw him after that. On Saturday night, a couple of his friends had decided to make him come out for a break. After knocking for a long time with no reply, one of them had helped the other to climb up and look through the little semi-circular window over the door. Stephen was slumped on the floor between the desk and the bed, dead.
All through that train journey back, I kept thinking about it – about Stephen in his student room. I’d visited him several times so I knew it well. There was a big sash window behind the desk, and outside there was a cherry tree. As the train sped through the countryside, I saw trees in blossom everywhere, and I knew the tree outside Stephen’s window would have been like that too, a mass of pink petals. Had he noticed it? When we were both little, he had loved playing in the garden. Sometimes he didn’t really even play; he just lay there, looking at the plants growing up all around him and the clouds scudding across the sky. I wondered if he had ever looked up from his interminable studies and looked at the cherry tree in all its spring glory. I hoped he had. I thought some mention had been made of the curtains in his room, whether they had been open or closed when his body was found, but I couldn’t remember which it was. I wanted them to have been open. I wanted the tree to have been the last thing he saw – not another dry page of a law book.
When I got off the train it was early afternoon. The station was quiet. There was no bus waiting, and I had no Belle to walk with me this time; I hadn’t even texted to let her know I’d be back. I set off slowly. At the other end of my walk there was a stack of law books waiting for me too. Of course there was; my parents wouldn’t have countenanced supporting me through any other kind of degree, and it had seemed worth it just to get away from home. Now, I saw it differently. I saw that there would never be affection and approval; there would simply be more and more pressure, until one day I was flattened by it, squashed out of shape like one of those artefacts you see in a museum, once graceful but now crushed by the tons of earth lying above it, the dead weight of centuries bearing down on it.
The corridor was deserted when I got back to my room. I unlocked the door and when I opened it there was a sour smell in the air. Something had been rotting while I was away – a plate unseen behind a curtain, or scraps of food in the unemptied bin. I left the bag just inside the door, which I closed behind me, sealing myself in with the odour of hopelessness. For a while I just stood there, in the middle of the room, looking at the stacks of books and papers on my desk. In a couple of years they might have been replaced by the very same titles Stephen had been reading – the ones he had died amongst. Something broke inside me. I saw the trap, I felt its jaws closing on me, and like an animal I would have gnawed off my own limb to escape.
The building was old and there was a fireplace in the room, although the chimney was long blocked up. I took a stack of books from the desk and piled them into the grate. One slid off the pile; I put it back on. I fetched the rest and piled them up too. They wouldn’t all fit; I had to stack some of them on the tiles in front of the fireplace. I fetched the pages of the essay I had been working on, now a week overdue for sub
mission, screwed them into balls and stuffed them in between the books. When everything was there, I found the box of matches I used to light joss sticks. This was strictly forbidden and I could only ever put them by the open window, in case they set the fire alarm off. Now I didn’t care about that. I didn’t even think about it. I struck a match and set it to one of the essay pages. It flared satisfactorily and a faint singed smell arose from the volume above it. I struck another match, and another: it is harder to get a stack of books burning properly than you would think. When they simply smouldered, I rummaged amongst my toiletries until I found a bottle of nail polish remover, poured it onto the books and threw a new match onto it. This time the fire ignited with a whoomph, so that I stepped back hastily, and a moment later the fire alarm went off.
I could feel the warmth on my face now, and smoke started to fill the room. The stink of incinerated legal knowledge filled my nostrils. I began to cough, and then I couldn’t stop coughing. There were footsteps in the corridor outside, and then someone banged on the door. Even over the sound of the fire alarm I heard someone yelling.
“Fen? Fen!”
I opened my mouth to reply but all I managed was a croak before I was seized with another fit of coughing.
The door opened; I had forgotten to lock it when I came in.
“Shit,” said someone. It was Alice, the girl who had the room next to mine. She only hesitated for an instant, then she stepped into the room and grabbed my arm. By the time she had dragged me out into the corridor, she was coughing too. The door swung closed, shutting out the flames. “What the fuck?” she said.
One of the accommodation staff members, clad in a high-vis vest, came striding towards us.
“Out,” he said, tersely.
Alice pointed at the door of my room. “It’s in there,” she said. “It’s like a bonfire.”
“Okay,” he said. “Don’t open it again. You two, get downstairs to the assembly point.”