Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  “Turn around, Chapel,” he shouted one afternoon at cricket. “You can't hit a ball like that.”

  “I'm left-handed,” Arthur replied.

  “Nonsense. Only criminals are left-handed. We don't educate criminals here at St. Peter's.”

  When Bench noticed that the boy wrote with his left hand too, he issued a predictable directive: “Note Mr. Chapel's way of writing, boys,” he said. “Is this the correct way to write?”

  As a resounding no filled Arthur's ears, Bench patted his shoulder, confident that social humiliation would remedy the matter.

  A day later, when Arthur was still writing with his left hand, Bench decided that he was stupid. The master considered anybody who couldn't drop-kick a ball stupid; this included the majority of the faculty, intellectuals, writers, composers, poets, and musicians. Even the boy who could extemporize on Caesar's conquest of Gaul was no match, in his opinion, for a consummate football player. Mind and body together was one of his favorite phrases.

  “Go home, Arthur, and don't come back until you can write with the other hand!” he ordered.

  the next day, Tom noticed his son sitting about the house. “What are you doing here?”

  “I'm a criminal,” Arthur replied. He explained Mr. Bench's philosophy to his father and received, in return, a diatribe on the cruelty of schoolmasters. Tom told Arthur about Hammer Hall, Mr. Goodkind, and his riding crop. Then, provoked by these memories, he left Arthur in order to fire off a letter to the teacher.

  Dear Sir,

  Although darkness has been conquered by the electric light and we are blessed with inventions from the typewriter to the tea bag, some ignorant souls choose to live in the past.

  As a doctor, I consider left-handedness to be a natural facility and suggest you indulge in such superstitions at home rather than during working hours.

  Arthur shall continue to write with his left hand.

  T. Chapel (Dr.)

  This letter accompanied Arthur to school but never reached the master. Consumed with anxiety about the trouble it would cause, Arthur chewed up his father's riposte and blew the wad of pulp into a bed of rhododendrons. He had decided that his life was his alone and required no amendment.

  From that day forward, Arthur wrote with his right hand in Mr. Bench's class, not to please the man but to prove, again, that he could be anything to anyone.

  Thus, Mr. Bench claimed another victory for the right-handed world, while Tom claimed it by virtue of Mr. Bench's silence on the matter. At one of the football matches, Arthur observed his father's handshake with Mr. Bench: each man smiled with triumph at the other while the boy took silent tally of his deception.

  A month later, however, Arthur was in trouble again. His parents had received a letter:

  Dear Dr. and Mrs. Chapel,

  Arthur was caught playing the school's piano. This is strictly forbidden. It seems that the boy's rebellious streak is deeper than we had surmised. I must urge you to correct his trespasses.

  W. Bench

  The boy sat before his parents, his face buried in his hands. “You don't understand, I have to play it,” he explained, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “I had no idea that you liked to play the piano, my sweet,” said Lizzy.

  “Charity won't let me play at home.”

  “What do you mean, she won't let you?”

  “She'd murder me if I did” was the simple reply.

  “Please play something for me now, Arthur,” said Lizzy.

  Arthur sat at the piano and was about to play when the front door burst open. Charity and Iris had raced each other home. But the sight of Arthur at the piano, with their mother as audience, caused Charity's smile to vanish. “What's Arthur doing at the piano?” she cried. “He can't play anything!”

  “I can,” the boy replied. “I play at school.”

  Charity raised her eyebrows. “You don't have lessons.”

  “I'd like to hear him play, Charity,” said Lizzy.

  “Very well,” said Charity, flopping beside her mother on the sofa. “I'd like to hear him too.”

  “Go on, Arthur,” said Iris.

  “Yes, give us a treat, Arthur,” Charity added venomously.

  Nervously watching his sister, Arthur performed Minuet in G. It was a halting, studied performance that ended with the wrong chord. Charity laughed at his clumsiness and went into the kitchen. Lizzy, however, looked puzzled.

  “Do you remember Charity's Minuet in G?” she asked Tom.

  “Vaguely. It wasn't very good,” Tom whispered.

  Most of Charity's pieces were hammered indelibly into the family's collective memory. “Charity always misses the last chord too,” Lizzy remarked. “Arthur, how did you learn to play the piece?”

  “Copying Charity,” he replied cautiously.

  “Very good. I'm impressed,” said his mother faintly. In fact, she was shocked; now she wondered if she had been teaching the wrong child to play the piano.

  “It wasn't very good,” protested Iris. “He's much better than that, aren't you, Piglet? Go on, play something else you've heard.”

  Arthur played “Für Elise.” He had heard a boy perform it at school recently. He replicated it now with gentle ease.

  His parents shared a glance.

  “Would you like lessons, Arthur?” said Lizzy.

  Arthur nodded but qualified his reply by looking at his mother. “But not with you.” He looked towards the kitchen. “She'dmake it impossible.”

  “Very well,” said Lizzy. “I know of another teacher.”

  LIZZY WOULD HAVE taken Arthur to meet Madame Wardour, but she woke with a fever. It had been bothering her for weeks, rising and falling, and that morning she didn't have the energy to get out of bed. Before he left, she spoke to the boy softly, urging him to do his best. “I'm sorry, Arthur,” she added.

  “Sorry? Why?” he replied.

  “For not recognizing your talent. I should have been paying more attention to you,” she said.

  Arthur forgave her with a kiss on her hot cheek.

  TOM TOOK ARTHUR to the Wardours' house with its commanding view of Gantrytown. It had a conical slate roof with a copper weather vane of the moon in a quarter phase. Tom surveyed the Wardours' broad veranda with its cast-iron filigree. “It's the nicest house in town,” he murmured. “Pity your mother's ill. She'd love to see it.”

  A gaunt, white-haired man appeared through the stained-glass window; the robust Freemason who had humiliated Tom years before was almost as faded as a ghost now.

  “Yes?” said the man, recoiling slightly from the morning light. His hollow cheeks were white with stubble, and his eyebrows flared wildly off gaunt temples.

  “I'm Dr. Chapel. My son is here to meet Madame Wardour.”

  This time the old doctor showed no contempt; he led them from a dark hall lined with small framed sepia photographs into a sitting room. The house evoked a well-worn affluence—cracked Balinese carvings, an elephant's foot wastepaper basket, a ship sculpted from a yellowed ivory tusk, and a mirror scarred by curled silvering.

  Arthur, however, saw only magnificence. An ancient Siamese cat darted between his feet as he took three steps into the piano room, which was filled with sprays of cherry branches and Moorish tiles, and had a glass ceiling that suffused the space with a perpetually pink twilight. Where was the sultan? he wondered, for he truly expected to find a man topped in an immense turban smoking a hookah and flanked by concubines. Instead, the figure who emerged from behind a beaded curtain was a woman with cold blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and high cheekbones. Her gray hair was pinned up so tightly that her face seemed pulled awry. She folded her arms like an enormous hawk in repose.

  The doctor introduced himself and was rebuffed.

  “Je sais qui vous êtes,” she murmured. “The other doctor.”

  Tom tipped his head. “This is my son, Arthur.”

  The hawk turned to Arthur. “And you want to play the piano?”

  The
boy nodded.

  Her eyebrows rose. “When I ask a question, Arthur, I expect an answer.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  She directed him to sit at the piano and issued her next remark without looking at Tom. “I expected to see your wife.”

  “Unfortunately she's unwell. She teaches too.”

  “I know she does.” Madame Wardour sniffed. “Many of my less capable students have become hers”

  The barbed authority of his prospective teacher reminded Arthur of Mr. Bench; instinctively, he tucked his left hand safely out of her sight.

  “Dr. Chapel, your wife may accept every pupil who walks through her door, but I haven't the patience. If he or she has no talent, it's hardly worth the time, is it? Incidentally, I should make it clear that I shall charge for this lesson, whether or not I accept your son.”

  She sat Arthur before the piano while Tom took a seat and checked his watch, ready to whisk the boy out of the place as soon as the hour was over.

  “Now, Arthur,” murmured Madame Wardour, “have you had any lessons?”

  “No,” Arthur replied.

  “Can you read music?”

  “No.”

  She turned to Tom, but he fixed his eyes on the old cat, which pressed itself against his leg in a desperate plea for affection.

  “Very well,” she sighed. “Play the best thing you know.”

  Arthur chose one of Bach's preludes. It was a piece Charity had struggled with for months.

  As the boy started to play Tom recognized it. To his dismay, Arthur played it with the same wrong notes and uneven tempo.

  Arthur might as well have struck Madame Wardour with a hammer. She recoiled. “Who taught you this?”

  “Nobody. I copied my sister. That's how she plays it.”

  “There is a special place in the afterworld for a composer, Arthur,” said Madame Wardour. “It is a place where he is forced to hear the most wretched interpretations of his music. So, let us try to ease poor Monsieur Bach's pain, shall we? Play it again for me,” she asked, and issued a directive. Arthur was to play the piece as if it were a conversation between two voices.

  As Arthur played, Tom closed his eyes to listen. He was struck by how sad the melody became. If the voices were in the boy's head, then his spirit was melancholy indeed. He had glimpsed his son's loneliness.

  When he opened his eyes, Madame Wardour was standing by his chair.

  “I will see him twice a week,” she said.

  “Twice?”

  “He must learn to read music, and he has habits that must be broken.”

  “Twice a week? Is that essential?”

  “Imperative” Wardour replied. “He shows ability, but he can only play what he hears—a talented cripple. Of course, if you prefer that he play as badly as his sister, let him be. Waste his talent,” she sniffed. “It's up to you.”

  THE FEVER

  ON THE TRAM RIDE HOME, ARTHUR LOOKED EARNESTLY AT HIS father. “Did I play well?”

  Tom nodded. “Splendidly.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  His son's reply struck Tom to the heart. It made him feel unworthy. The child carried such dark sorrow within himself. How was it possible, in such a short, sheltered life, that Arthur could conjure such sadness out of the ether? What folly, then, are a parent's attempts to ensure a happy life for his child?

  Observing his father in a silent trance, Arthur wondered how a man could have so many things to think about on such a lovely evening. An overpowering scent of jasmine wafted into the tram car from one of the grander houses on Alderton Street. Palms and jacaranda trees floated past him. There was a languid mood among the passengers; the working week was over, and the sway of the vehicle acted like a narcotic.

  Against a golden mackerel sky, Tom and his son walked the quarter mile up their road, immersed in their own thoughts until they saw the girls standing in a row on the veranda. They stood stiffly—like Charity's old clothespin dolls—with clasped hands and immobile stares.

  When he saw their faces, Arthur fell behind his father.

  “Papa!” cried Margaret. “Her fever's worse, and she's delirious.”

  Leaving Arthur with the girls, Tom went into the house.

  “What's wrong with Mama?” the boy asked.

  Iris and Charity deferred to Margaret.

  “Nothing!” Her smile was lopsided and taut. “It's all right!”

  Charity suddenly burst into tears. As Margaret tried to console her, Arthur sought the truth from Iris.

  “She's very sick, Piglet,” said his sister, “with a fierce fever.”

  Only when he was alone with his wife did Tom let his panic show. Lizzy's hand felt as hot as the emanation from Todderman's furnace doors—an unnatural heat matched by eyes that showed no recognition, though they were open and animated. He feared that it was cerebral malaria, rare at such a high elevation as Gantrytown, but there had been a few cases.

  When he kissed her cheek, she spoke: “Such news, my love! Eve is here!”

  “What?”

  She spoke without looking at him. “I knew my letters were reaching her. Eve has come, Tom. She has forgiven me. She is in the spare room, putting her things away!”

  “Eve?” repeated Tom.

  “You must have seen her. She's wearing a beautiful green velvet dress, and she has not a single gray hair. Imagine! After all this time!”

  Tom squeezed her hand. “Lizzy. I took Arthur to his lesson. He played terribly well. The teacher has—”

  “Ah, there she is!” cried Lizzy, as a figure appeared at the door. “Eve!”

  Tom turned from his wife's feverish smile to the slender figure silhouetted in the doorway.

  “Eve!” cried Lizzy again.

  Margaret was about to correct her, but Tom raised his hand, advising silence.

  “Do you remember when we used to go shopping in the high street, Eve?” Lizzy cried.

  Margaret wilted, but her father nodded with a smile. “Do you remember, Eve?” he said, looking at her.

  “Yes,” replied Margaret. “Of course.”

  Smiling, Lizzy closed her eyes and sank into her pillow. “I must sleep now. So tired. Forgive me.”

  Tom drew up his wife's covers, and Margaret left the room.

  A SOMBER SILENCE settled over the household. Lizzy mistook Charity for one of her own childhood friends and Iris for her first piano teacher; each delusion seemed to reach further into her childhood and distance her more from her children.

  “She always thinks I'm her sister now,” Margaret lamented at dinner.

  “It will pass, Margaret,” Tom explained. “You are doing her a kindness by accepting it.”

  Iris looked disgusted. “By lying?”

  “It is not lying, Iris, to reassure your sick mother.”

  Arthur looked at his father. “She will get better, won't she?”

  They all turned to Tom. “Yes, Arthur, I believe she'll be fine,” he replied.

  Charity pushed aside her plate and pressed her hands together. “Shall we pray for her?”

  In other circumstances, such a demand would have provoked irritation in her sisters; the Chapels were not fervent believers, but now they were desperate. Tom put his hands together, as did Iris, Margaret, and Arthur.

  There was an uncommon silence at the table, and then, their faces cleared a little.

  Tom removed his untouched plate and, after scraping it in the kitchen, steadied himself by gripping the window frame. He wasn't sure if it had been kind to offer false hope to his children, but he felt empty of resource, powerless and bereft.

  THAT SATURDAY MORNING Lizzy died. Tom broke the news to his children one by one as they woke. Charity spent the day weeping; Iris was stoic but couldn't go nearer than the doorway of the bedroom where her mother lay. After she had shed some tears, Margaret pulled herself together and assured each sibling that Lizzy had gone to heaven and was looking down upon them at that moment; she reminded them to be brave and cheerful. To T
om's astonishment, this seemed to calm them.

  Only by the evening, after he had put Arthur to bed and the girls had retired, could Tom permit himself to grieve. He hid on the veranda in the dark and sobbed in anguished gasps. The night cooled; he saw his breaths billow before him and recalled the frost on the windows of his Vauxhall tenement and his mother's last moments. She had been in a hallucination of her own, speaking to him of her lost baby and cradling his bundled coat. He began to weep for her, for lost babies and parents, lost friends and lovers. What had his life been, after all, but a parade of lost loved ones?

  After a fresh bout of tears, Tom became aware that he was observed. He turned to see Iris standing at the door. She was an extraordinary sight—cheeks rouged, chalk white face, a garish smile, toreador's hat, and a brilliant scarlet robe emblazoned with a serpentine dragon and fringed with gold tassels, a gift from a Chinese patient. The robe dwarfed Iris, the hem curling in a shiny red puddle of silk at her feet.

  “Good heavens, Iris!” he gasped.

  “I mean to look shocking,” she said, approaching him. “I once read a story about a man who wanted to frighten death away from his house so he wore the loudest, most ridiculous clothing.” She gestured to her costume with a dramatic sweep. “Will this do?”

  “I believe so,” Tom replied.

  “Good,” she said. She smiled, kissed his cheek, turned with an elegant flourish, and walked back to her room.

  THE WAKE

  THERE WAS A ROOTLESS ASPECT AT THE GATHERING OF LIZZY'S former pupils, their parents, and the many patients who had been entranced by her singing in the early days of Tom's practice. Searching for evidence of the vivacious woman they knew, relative strangers wandered through the house, fingering the picture frames, the yellow Provence earthenware for which Lizzy had bartered piano lessons, the photographs of an Edinburgh schoolgirl, the dog-eared music, the collection of pencil stubs on the piano, the wide-brimmed straw hat with the black ribbon she'd worn on hot afternoons beneath the scorching African sun, and the white nurse's uniform. They pawed the odd objects she had collected on the kitchen shelf—seashells from Port Elizabeth, three shoe polish tins containing locks of her daughters' hair, a piece of dried moss from the Isle of Skye. But her verve, sense of humor, and straightforward manner couldn't be summed up by her possessions. So when Charity announced that she was going to perform one of her mother's favorite pieces, a Schubert impromptu, everybody gathered in the sitting room.