The Bellwether Revivals

by Benjamin Wood

  TWO

  Empires of the Passions

  Oscar sat near the back of the concert hall. He could hear every small sound in the tight acoustics of the room—the drumming of people’s fingers on the armrests, coats being folded up, the stowing of wet umbrellas. Onstage, a grand piano was set up with its lid propped open, and rows of vacant chairs and music stands stood around it in a perfect arc. A single cello was laid out sideways on the maple floor.

  He browsed the concert programme and found Iris’s name amongst the list of players. It looked strange in print, asymmetrical, a short word followed by a longer one, like a lorry hauling its load across the motorway: Iris Bellwether. He liked the breathy sound of it, the way it left his tongue. Further down the schedule, it was printed again: ‘Iris Bellwether – Cello – Elégie (G. Fauré)’.

  People were slowly gathering in the hall, but there were plenty of empty seats around him. Reserved conversations pervaded the room, and spikes of laughter kept rising in the foyer. Suddenly, he felt an invasion of his space, a looming presence over his shoulder. The floor creaked behind him. Oscar turned to find a tall man removing his sodden overcoat, spreading it out to dry over the arms of two seats. He could only see the man’s back, but he knew right away that it was Eden. There was something familiar about the rangy, languid movements of his body, and the wreath of curls that gave his head an accidental roundness.

  When Oscar called out, Eden turned and dipped his head like a customer addressing a shoeshine. ‘Oh, hello there,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘Oscar.’

  ‘That’s right. I knew it began with an O, but I was thinking: Oliver? Owen? I knew it wasn’t Orville, at least—I deserve some credit for that. Anyway, it’s very good of you to come.’ He was dressed oddly, in the kind of outfit that seemed to have been assembled at short notice: a bright yellow turtleneck that was far too tight on the shoulders; pebbly black trousers, soaked at the ankles. He had a silver ear-stud that glimmered in the soft light. Sitting down, straight-backed, assured, he pinched at the crease in his slacks and surveyed the concert hall. ‘Not a bad turn-out for a rainy Sunday. She’ll be pleased. Have you seen her?’

  ‘No, but I’ve been keeping an eye out.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ Eden grinned.

  There was a small silence between them. A group of rain-spotted women headed up the aisle and took their seats. Eden flitted his eyes towards the ceiling and sniffed, as if noticing a bad smell. ‘Actually, I’m glad I’ve bumped into you. Will you be coming to the party later? Just a little after-show thing, at our place. All very low key.’ There was barely a chance to give an answer. ‘Iris was going to ask you but—well, I saw you first. Will you come?’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘We’ll share a cab. It’s still torrential out there.’ Eden leaned back and stretched, revealing two large sweat patches below his armpits. He looked at his watch. ‘They’re starting a bit late, aren’t they? Preening themselves, no doubt. Somebody needs to tell them hairspray won’t make them sound any better.’

  Somehow, Oscar couldn’t imagine Iris fussing over her hair backstage. She seemed to be the kind of girl who paid little attention to her appearance. Maybe she spent a few minutes perfecting her make-up in the mornings, just to present the illusion of effort, but she wasn’t the sort to keep an audience waiting for her nail varnish to dry.

  ‘You left quite an impression on her, you know,’ Eden said. ‘She likes you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Really.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘She’s not difficult to read. For the past few days it’s been Oscar this, Oscar that. That’s the thing about Iris—she doesn’t just get a bee in her bonnet, she gets an entire swarm. You could probably find honey in there if you cracked her open. I don’t see what all the fuss is about, personally.’

  Oscar smiled. ‘What’s she been saying about me?’

  ‘Oh, come on now,’ Eden said. ‘Let’s not be schoolgirls.’

  It was the first time that Oscar had been able to get a good look at him. He wasn’t at all like his sister. He had the narrow features of a field spaniel: a long, freckled nose; thin, almost invisible lips. And his eyes—there was something particularly striking about them. They had a noticeable glaze, like buffed apple-skin.

  Without warning, the house lights dimmed and Oscar’s heart began to rabbit in his chest. One by one, the chamber group took to the stage, Iris at the back, head lowered coyly into the hot light bearing down from the gantry. They positioned themselves accordingly—string section, woodwind section—settling into their chairs, giving momentary plucks and blows to check their tuning.

  Oscar felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. ‘Is it true you work at Cedarbrook?’ Eden said, leaning in close. His tone was friendly but probing; his breath smelled vaguely of alcohol.

  Oscar nodded.

  ‘You’ve no idea how wonderful that is,’ Eden said. ‘It’s such a treat to be able to speak to a regular person.’ The hall doors closed behind them. A murmur of expectation bulged in the auditorium. ‘Let’s sit down at the party later. Just you and me. I bet you could tell me all kinds of things.’

  Oscar wondered what he could possibly teach someone like Eden. He could tell him how to make sure an old man took his pills, or how to change a colostomy bag, or how to lift an old lady from a chair without straining his back. But he doubted if Eden had the stomach for this kind of education.

  Onstage, Iris was poised behind her cello, ready with her bow. ‘God, just look at her,’ Eden said, pointing. ‘She’s a lost little lamb up there. The way she sits behind that thing, it’s no wonder she can’t get an even vibrato. I mean, sit up straight, girl.’ His outstretched arm was a blur in the corner of Oscar’s eye. ‘But I suppose you’ve got to hand it to her; she’s the prettiest thing in the room. Almost makes you feel bad for the others.’

  The first notes of the clarinet were throaty and faltering. Eden heaved out a long breath, leaning back into the darkness.

  Rain was thrashing outside, ricocheting against the roof of the taxi. Eden squeezed into the space beside Oscar and closed the door. He was prolonging the speech he’d started as the cab pulled up, though Iris didn’t seem to be listening: ‘And I know I said this last time, but your Elégie is definitely improving. You’re getting it right in the middle section now. You really were like a young Eva Janzer tonight. Not that I’m old enough to have seen Eva Janzer alive but, you know, I’m extrapolating …’ The cab moved slowly away from the concert hall, heading towards Silver Street. ‘When are you going to ditch the rest of them? That group makes you look so amateurish.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Soon maybe. I haven’t decided.’

  She leaned her head against the misty windowpane. Oscar could feel the press of her hip against his thigh. She seemed tired, bothered. Her skin was mottled pink and her hair slightly frizzed by the rain. She looked at him. ‘What do you think, Oscar? How did I sound tonight? Be honest.’

  Oscar was still thinking about her fingers, how they slid so effortlessly across the strings, how every note she played—whether it was deep down in the bassiest reaches of the instrument, or right at the very limits of the fingerboard—was crisp and true. He was remembering the shy, hesitant way she held herself on the stage, how she sat crooked over the neck of her instrument. But he found it very hard to come up with an answer to her question—how had she sounded tonight?—because, as he’d sat there listening, he’d been unable to concentrate on anything but Eden, sniffing and exhaling behind him. He’d focused on Eden’s presence so much that the group’s music had become a thick cloud of notes, an incessant blur. During her solo, he’d watched her right arm sweeping the bow, but for a good few moments he couldn’t make out the melody. It was as if he was seeing her on 8mm film, with no sound but the steady clicking of the cinema projector, a noise so constant and inscrutable that it may as well have been silen
ce.

  There was no way he could explain all of this to her. ‘Your brother’s right,’ he said instead. ‘You were incredible. I can’t believe you’d even think about giving it up.’

  ‘Not the cello full stop,’ she replied. ‘I could never give that up. Just the chamber group.’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought you sounded good together.’

  ‘Well, my father says it’s getting in the way of my studies. Something has to go and the chamber group’s top of the pile.’ She sighed. ‘Nearly a year I’ve been playing with these people, and we’re still not getting any better. It’s hard to see the point any more.’ Her expression turned thoughtful. ‘Maybe there’s no use in it anyway. Performing in public, I mean.’

  ‘How come?’

  The cab slowed, and she checked the position of her cello case in the passenger seat. ‘It’s like Eden keeps telling me: why bother getting up there and playing if you can’t really make them feel anything?’

  ‘I felt it,’ Oscar said. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’

  ‘You’re just being kind.’

  ‘It’s basic musica theorica,’ Eden interrupted. He twisted round as much as his seat belt would allow. ‘She’s explaining it badly, that’s all.’

  ‘How am I supposed to explain it?’

  ‘Well, I usually start with Pythagoras.’

  ‘The triangle chap,’ Iris said brightly, though Oscar didn’t need telling. ‘Except triangles weren’t his whole shtick. He had this theory about the planets, too—the Music of the Spheres.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Oscar said, ‘I’ve read about that.’ He’d come across it in one of Dr Paulsen’s history books, when he’d been reading about Alexander the Great. This had led him to Aristotle, then to Plato, and then to Pythagoras. He remembered the premise, but it was a little blurry in his mind—a mathematical theory about the configuration of the planets, how they’re supposed to sound distinctive notes as they move around the sun, creating one giant harmony. He’d found the whole idea appealing, if a little contrived.

  Eden seemed impressed that he’d heard of the theory. ‘I’m not sure what it says about our college when a humble nurse knows more about the ancient Greeks than you do, Iris.’

  ‘Eden!’ she snapped back at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s an awful thing to say.’ She turned to Oscar, shaking her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t take him anywhere.’

  Oscar half-smiled. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘What are you apologising for?’ Eden rolled his eyes, thinking, as if he were hearing the minutes of their conversation being read back to him by a courtroom stenographer. ‘Oh, right, yes, okay. Perhaps a little condescending.’ He peered at Oscar vaguely. ‘Sorry, I can’t stop myself sometimes. No hard feelings, eh?’

  ‘No hard feelings.’ Oscar caught the sympathetic eyes of the taxi driver in the rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t know why you’re so hung up about me being a nurse,’ he said, to nobody in particular. ‘It’s not all that interesting.’

  ‘Well, that’s because you don’t see the kinds of advantages it gives you,’ Eden said. ‘It’s natural. A rocket scientist would tell you the same thing—nothing very interesting, nothing to make a fuss about. But that’s not how it really is. I bet there are all kinds of things about Cedarbrook that would fascinate someone on the outside.’ He turned to face the road. The taxi’s wipers were frantically disseminating the rain, brakelights fuzzing in the windscreen. ‘Let’s hope Jane’s got a good fire going or it’ll be freezing when we get there. Nothing spoils the mood of a party like a bitter cold.’

  ‘Didn’t you leave a note?’ Iris said.

  ‘Yes, but you know Jane. She’s so dozy sometimes it’s a wonder she can turn the lights on.’

  Iris laughed, touching Oscar gently on the arm. ‘That’s his girlfriend,’ she said. ‘He’s not being cruel. She really is away with the fairies most of the time.’

  ‘In any case,’ Eden said, ‘we’re celebrating tonight. Farewell to the chamber group, and good riddance.’

  ‘I told you, I still haven’t decided about that. You can throw as many goodbye parties as you want, it’s not going to influence my decision.’

  Eden bent forward, grinning. ‘Oh, come on, Iggy. Wise up. When I think of all the effort you put into these things, it makes me so—I was going to say angry, but that’s not the right word. I’m not angry; I’m embarrassed. There are so many better uses for a talent like yours.’

  ‘Right,’ Oscar said. ‘She should perform solo.’

  ‘No, it’s more fundamental than that. Her whole philosophy on music is completely misguided. It’s just—wrong,’ Eden said, his voice growing louder.

  Oscar was a little stunned. ‘I’m not sure I get what you’re saying.’

  ‘We’re not having this discussion again,’ Iris said. She glared at her brother. ‘I’m warning you.’

  It didn’t stop Eden from continuing his point. ‘I’ll try and put it more simply,’ he said, smirking. ‘My sister is what we music scholars like to call a Cognitivist. Broadly speaking, that means she has some very cold-hearted ideas about how music works. She’s an intelligent girl, but wrong about so many things on so many levels.’

  ‘We disagree, okay? Let’s just leave it at that.’

  But Eden ignored her. ‘She thinks that the sadness we feel when we listen to a sad piece of music—let’s say Mahler’s Ninth—isn’t real sadness at all. To her, it’s some nameless sensation, a general feeling of having been moved by the beauty of the music. She doesn’t think composers know how to arouse our emotions, or manipulate our feelings through the placement of the notes. According to her, when Mahler brings us out of that fourth movement—poof!—we all cry tears of generality. Are you following this?’

  Oscar nodded, though he was still perhaps a page or two behind.

  Eden began to laugh. ‘At least, that’s how she used to think, before I started to show her the light. She may have changed her mind in the last couple of hours.’

  ‘I don’t know what I think,’ Iris said, folding her arms.

  ‘Now there’s a cop-out for you.’

  ‘Shut up, Eden.’

  ‘She’ll figure it out for herself one of these days. It’s just a matter of time.’

  Oscar watched the two of them like a spectator at a tennis match, his eyes moving from Iris to Eden and back again. He was beginning to understand that this kind of dispute was somehow unexceptional to them, just another quarrel in a lifetime of disagreements.

  The taxi stopped at a red light on Hills Road. Iris gazed out of the window, irritated. ‘Did you ever stop to think that I could be right about this?’ she said. ‘That maybe I’m the one who’s got it figured out and it’s you and all your Emotivist friends who’ve been stumbling in the dark?’ Her voice was dry and pleading. ‘You’re not always right about everything, you know. Why can’t you let me have an opinion without trying to convert me to your way of thinking? And—’ she breathed, calming herself down, ‘—and how did we get back onto this stupid bloody subject anyway?’

  Nobody answered. The cab moved away from the junction.

  It was then that she placed her palm on Oscar’s knee. Her hand was warm, so light he could barely feel it. She left it there for a long moment, not even looking at him. Then she pulled it back again, absently, and tucked it underneath her leg. ‘It’s not like any of this pontificating makes a difference to me. If I leave the chamber group, it won’t be for any deep philosophical reason. It’ll be because I’m tired of it. Same reason I dropped all the other groups I was in. Same reason I dropped my first boyfriend and the lacrosse team at boarding school.’

  Oscar was still learning how to be around the two of them, but he felt so at ease in their company—more alive somehow. They were the kind of sophisticated people his father never let him be friends with when he was younger—‘the high and mighty crowd,’ his father called them, the ones who lived in the detached houses out in Cassiobur
y. Oscar would see them in the wing mirror of his father’s van, wandering home from the grammar school in their smart black blazers; the kids whose parents his father built extensions for, but with whom he was too proud to share a cup of tea after a day’s work, fearing their good crockery and their vast, expensive kitchens. Now here Oscar was, holding his own amongst the same type of people. He felt a similar contentment in the presence of Iris and Eden as he did with Dr Paulsen, as if they had reset the clocks so he could live an hour ahead of the person he used to be.

  It was nearly ten thirty when their taxi pulled up outside a three-storey tenement on Harvey Road. A light was on in the front window, venting through the collar of the drawn curtains. The rain had stopped and the taxi motor hummed in the soundless night. Eden paid the driver with a twenty and told him to keep the change. There was something about the thoughtless, distracted way he handed over the money that made the gesture seem patronising, like he was unaware of the note in his hand, uninterested in its value—just a boy buying rides with fairground currency.

  They got out and Eden took his bike from the boot, locking it by the wall. Oscar helped Iris carry her cello case up the steps to the front of the house. There was a round blue plaque beside the entrance that said:

  Sir Charles Staunton

  1852–1924

  Composer – Organist – Conductor

  Professor of Music

  Cambridge University

  Lived here 1884–1893

  ‘This used to be our great uncle’s house,’ Eden said. ‘My parents seem to think we got our musical genes from him, but I prefer to think I’m less predictable than all that. I play his stuff sometimes at the chapel, though. You ever hear the King’s choir sing Night Motets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you should. The man had a gift for choral music.’

  In the hallway, Oscar took off his shoes and stacked them on the pile with the others. There was a giant mahogany coat-stand behind the door, laden with damp umbrellas and waxed jackets that smelled of upturned soil. The party was already underway, beating in the room beside them. He could hear the steady thump of the stereo behind the wall.