The Bellwether Revivals

by Benjamin Wood

  Oscar felt the strangest hint of sympathy now for Eden. It didn’t seem right for her to be talking this way, as if her brother were some rabid animal she was trying to snare. This feeling must have shown on his face, too, because she started to backtrack. ‘I don’t know, maybe I’m just being too sensitive about it, over-analysing things. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him at all.’ She leaned away. ‘Truth is, if you know my brother’s history, this sort of behaviour is quite normal. You get used to it after a while. He has very odd ways of showing his affection. When he took your hand like that? He wouldn’t do that to just anyone, you know. He thought he was helping you. I bet there’s hardly anything there now, right? Can I look?’ She reached across the table and put her hands on his, settling them. Her skin was soft but cold. She turned his left hand over and looked for a wound, grazing the space gently with her thumb. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see it had healed. ‘God, I wonder how he does it.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering the same thing.’

  ‘If I could just know how, I might understand why.’

  ‘You don’t seem very shocked.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s a magic trick, that’s all. I’m used to them by now.’

  ‘He’s done this kind of thing before?’

  ‘When we were younger. All the time.’ Their eyes fixed together for a second, and he could see the tiny bistro lights in her pupils. She said: ‘Oscar, I need your help with this. You’re the only one I can ask.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With my evidence gathering. I need to have proof of his behaviour. People need to start seeing how he really is.’

  ‘I don’t know, Iris.’

  She carried on, as if she hadn’t heard: ‘If I could just get him to put something down in writing. Give him your email address maybe …’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Why not? We’d only be doing it to help him.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to spy on him.’

  ‘No, no. It wouldn’t be as clandestine as all that. I’d just be giving him your email, that’s all.’ She made small circles on the tabletop with her finger. ‘He never writes to me, so all I have are my observations, and apparently they don’t count for much. But if I could just get some clear proof of the way his mind works, how he communicates with people. Then I could take it to a proper psychiatrist and get an opinion on it. Please. I can’t tell you how much of a help that would be.’

  She had never seemed so vulnerable before. She was asking him earnestly for his help—how could he refuse her? He told her his email address and she wrote it on her wrist with a biro.

  ‘I need you to print off copies of anything he writes to you,’ she said excitedly. There was a hopeful look on her face now, and a relief that was apparent in the loosening of her posture. ‘Don’t look so guilty about it. We’re only doing it to help him.’

  ‘I know, it’s just—I suppose it feels dishonest. What makes you think he’ll even write to me?’

  ‘Because I’ve told him he needs to apologise.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And once I tell him how your hand is, he won’t be able to resist. He’ll want to gloat about it.’ She shook her head. ‘That sounded cruel. I didn’t mean it that way. I only want to help him, that’s all. You’ve got to believe me when I say that.’

  ‘It’s okay. I believe you.’

  A splinter of sunlight broke through the window and focused in a narrow beam on the floor of the café; then, just as easily, the sun moved behind a cloud and the shaft of light disappeared. ‘You know, I thought about something the other night, after you left. I was thinking about the King’s choir. I go there to listen to them all the time, not just when Eden’s playing.’ She made a plinth with her fists and rested her chin on them, glancing up at him. From this angle, she was at her most beautiful, her face tapering into an elegant V. ‘Do you know what I think about when I hear that choir? Absolutely nothing. I don’t have a single thought in my head the whole time they’re singing. They just relax me so much, I feel as if I’m free. I stop thinking about all the bloody tests I’ve got to take, and all the things my father says I simply must achieve while I’m here. When that choir sings, I’m just a girl in a room, listening. And I don’t care what it is they’re singing about, it’s just nice to feel free for a while. Now—’ She sighed. ‘How much of that has to do with Johann Mattheson or Descartes or anything Eden says, who knows? Who cares? Mattheson’s just his latest obsession, that’s all. It used to be Plato, and Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin. Before that, it was somebody else. I’m bored of hearing about my brother’s fixations. But I know something for certain. That feeling I get when I listen to the King’s choir? I feel the same way whenever I’m with you, Oscar.’ She twisted the ends of her hair. ‘Somehow I feel like I could tell you anything.’

  His flat was cold, the bed unmade. She pulled a gold cigarette case from her coat pocket. ‘I’m going to smoke a little—you don’t mind, do you? It calms me down.’ She wandered around his room, ran her hands over the surfaces, picking up any possessions that caught her interest—a plastic snow-globe from Edinburgh, a squash ball, a postcard from Kew Gardens—considering them for a moment before replacing them exactly as she found them. As she lit a clove and took a long drag, she examined the books that were stacked up on his floor, studying their spines with a tightened expression. The more of them she saw, the wider the smile spread across her face. ‘How come you have so many copies of The Colossus?’ she asked. ‘It worries me, you liking Plath.’

  ‘You don’t like her?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? I adore her. But I’m a Cambridge girl with overbearing parents. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘I just like her point of view. The first time I read that collection, I had a borrowed copy. Then I saw it at a market stall and bought it. Then I saw it again and bought it. I couldn’t stop myself. I’m over it now.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re straight?’ she said. ‘Don’t give me that look—I’m just teasing.’ She tapped ash blithely on the carpet. ‘So what’s your favourite Plath poem?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course you know. Tell me.’

  ‘Probably “Full Fathom Five”.’

  ‘Huh,’ she replied, turning down the corners of her mouth. ‘Interesting.’ The smell of clove was strong now, sweet as molasses. ‘Do you write any poetry yourself?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to share any.’

  ‘You’d suppose right.’

  ‘One day,’ she said.

  Quick-stepping to his bedside drawers, she levered them open with her free hand, and when she found nothing worth mentioning, went to browse his CD collection, standing beside him at the cheap pine cabinet that housed his stereo. She was so close he could smell bergamot through the haze of cigarettes. ‘I don’t know why you were so downbeat about your flat. It’s perfectly lovely. A bit dusty, but nothing compared to my house. Those old tenements are impossible to keep clean.’

  ‘I thought you had a cleaner,’ he replied.

  She ignored him.

  He pushed Play on the stereo and the sound of the King’s College choir rose up in the room. Iris had brought along a copy of their latest CD. It was a good recording, but the choristers weren’t the same, and their voices weren’t as rich or resounding as they’d seemed that Wednesday night in the chapel when they’d first met. ‘People always look at the speakers,’ Iris said, musingly. ‘When the music’s on, we always look at the stereo or the speakers, like we’re trying to see the music coming out of it. What d’you think that means?’

  ‘It means we’re all stupid.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s rather sweet, too. Don’t you think? There’s something innocent about it, something childlike.’ She moved closer to him, twisting up the volume dial with one hand, placing the other against the small of his back ever so lightly. ‘Oh, wow, just listen to that.’ Sh
e turned her body a fraction, swaying towards him, blowing cigarette smoke behind her, eyes closed. The cheap cabinet rocked on its feet. He looked at the olive-green shadow on her eyelids: a forgiving colour, safe but indefinite. He was quivering, reluctant to make a wrong move. She opened her eyes, staring back at him. Then, without looking away, she reached into the back pocket of her jeans, drew out her cigarette case, and stubbed out her clove against it. She snapped the case shut and set it down on the cabinet. Grabbing at the collar of his shirt, she pulled him towards her.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he said, almost whispering.

  She nodded. Her hair collapsed across her face and he tucked it back behind her ear with his thumb. Their foreheads touched together, and they waited, as if listening to some silent countdown. They kissed—that first quick touching of lips, that toe-in-the-water kiss before the high dive. He smiled at her, and asked her one more time, ‘Are you sure?’ The voices of the choir cleaved through the dusty air of his flat, swarming around them like seagulls above a shipwreck. She pressed her body against him, and they fell back upon the bed.

  ‘If I wasn’t sure,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t be here.’

  In the Watford estate where Oscar grew up, the houses all looked the same. Square, innocuous brick-piles, clad in cheap grey stucco, with rectangular concrete driveways. If a new family moved into his estate and decided to update their property—to paint their front door a vivid orange, say—the effects would ripple through the community. Soon, every door in the estate would be daubed a vibrant colour, until the rows of nondescript houses had the palette of a child’s drawing. The only house that ever stayed the same was his own.

  This is what he was thinking about as he lay in bed next to Iris. They were naked below the duvet and she was sleeping on her side, facing away from him. He kissed her bare shoulder and put his hand across her stomach; she stirred, gripping his forearm, drawing him closer to her. She asked what was on his mind.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty. I knew what I was getting myself into.’

  He didn’t feel guilty, just unpractised. Only a few girls had stayed the night with him before, and they’d put their clothes back on right after and watched TV, gone into the bathroom to shower, or just fallen straight to sleep with their mascara streaking his linen. And he’d been left alone each time to listen to the night traffic halting at the junction outside his window. But Iris had not fallen asleep so quickly; it had taken her some time to gather her thoughts, lying breathless on her back, flattening the cover down over her breasts. The only thing she wanted, afterwards, was to talk.

  She’d told him about the country farmhouse in Grantchester, where her parents lived. It had once belonged to some rich South African who’d made his fortune from diamond mining in the 1850s. The man was a devout Christian, and he’d installed his own private chapel at the foot of the garden. It was only a small building—in her words, ‘about the size of a modest village hall’—but it had an adjoining rectory for the resident minister. When her parents bought the place, they converted the chapel and the rectory into guesthouses, restoring the old pipe organ so that Eden could practise on it whenever he was at home.

  Iris had explained all this to Oscar, slowly abrading the skin of his collarbone with her fingertips. He had listened with a sinking feeling as she’d talked about family barbecues by the river at sunset, marquee parties in the back garden, cherry blossoms and playrooms and moonlit punt rides, family holidays in Martha’s Vineyard and the Florida Keys, as if these were the obligatory details of an ordinary childhood. When he’d asked her what her parents did to afford all of this, she’d been only too happy to tell him. Her father was a paediatric surgeon who’d made ‘all kinds of sensible investments’ over the years. (‘He became a partner in a telesurgery company about ten years ago when nobody could even conceive of it catching on—I mean, who’d want a robot operating on their only child, right?—but now the technology’s booming and he’s got a share of all these patents everybody wants.’) Her mother’s family were wealthy, too—‘a line of investment bankers on my grandmother’s side’—and aside from being executrix of the Charles Staunton estate, her mother had a portfolio of companies for which she was either a board member or a silent partner. (‘I think most of them trade in precious metals. Silver. Platinum. Not so much gold these days. Palladium is the new gold, apparently—massively sought after in China.’)

  The more that Iris had talked about her home and family, the more uncomfortable Oscar had felt beside her. His voice had softened with every interjection—’Oh, that’s really … that’s great, that must’ve been nice’—and he’d gone very quiet, so quiet that she’d fallen asleep. While he’d listened to her gentle snoring, his mind had drifted to his own family, his own childhood back in Watford. And he’d woken her before these thoughts made him too melancholy.

  ‘So what now?’ she asked, turning to face him, kissing him.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I suppose we just play it by ear.’

  ‘It feels strange. Sort of like we’re cheating.’

  ‘Cheating on who?’

  ‘Nobody. I’m just saying it feels that way.’ She sat up. ‘My father cheated on my mother a long time ago, before Eden and I were born. She told me about it once. I suppose that’s made me inclined to feel guilty about sex.’ Her leg slid over him. ‘What about your parents—are they still together?’

  He adjusted his head on the pillow. ‘Yeah, just about.’

  ‘You don’t talk about your family much, do you?’

  He stayed quiet.

  ‘How often do you see them?’

  ‘Every now and again.’

  ‘Well, when was the last time?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘God, I can’t imagine not knowing the last time I saw my parents.’

  He moved his arm away from her.

  She let a moment go by then said, inquiringly: ‘Are you ashamed of them or something?’

  ‘No. Of course I’m not.’

  ‘Well, I don’t understand …’

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what she wanted to know. His parents were uncomplicated people, but they were difficult to explain to somebody like Iris. She wouldn’t understand the smallness of their expectations, how all they’d ever wanted for him was to reach an age where he could look after himself—find a job, move out, work hard, get by, just like they did when they were seventeen—and maybe one day give them a grandchild they could boast about to the locals at the George and Dragon. How could he explain to her the helpless feeling of being told to skip an exam to finish off a plastering job with his father, or the ache of seeing his school reports used as scrap paper for takeaway orders? He was not ashamed of his parents, but he didn’t want to be like them. He was not ashamed of where he was from, but he didn’t want to go back there. These were the poles of his heart. He could no more explain them to Iris than he could resolve them.

  She got dressed in front of his mirrored wardrobe, fixing her bra nimbly, raking her fingers through her hair to straighten it. He stayed in bed, watching her. A grimy light pooled in the room and, outside, the moon was already a pale blur in the sky. He could make out the scrawl of his email address, still on her wrist. She put on her coat and retrieved her CD from the stereo. Looking down at him from the edge of the bed, she asked: ‘Will you let me know as soon as you hear from Eden? I can’t tell you how much better I feel, knowing there’s a plan in action.’ Her voice was heavy, serious. She squeezed his fingers and kissed him on the forehead. At the door, she heaved the straps of her cello case over both shoulders. ‘Be safe,’ she said, and walked out.

  He slept for a good few hours, and, when he woke, he found himself wanting to call his parents. It had been a long time, over six months, since he’d last spoken to them, and though he didn’t have much news to tell them
, he felt an urge to hear their voices again.

  His mother answered, adopting her best telephone manner. ‘How are you, son? Haven’t heard from you in ages.’ He filled her in on events at work, and she told him all about the goings-on in the estate, gossiping about people he used to know. His cousin Terry, she said, had been in a fight with a bouncer in town; he’d had seven stitches across his eyebrow. ‘I hope you’re staying out of trouble. I suppose there aren’t many fights to get into in your neck of the woods, eh? Not unless you’re scrapping with the toffs. I’ll put your father on.’

  There was a noise of someone jostling with the receiver, before he heard the gruff voice of his father: ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Oh. It’s you. Hi.’

  ‘How’s everything?’

  ‘Same as ever. You?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  He was long used to awkward gaps in conversation with his father. ‘Just thought I’d see how you were doing.’

  ‘Mm-hm.’ His father paused. ‘It’s always quiet this time of year. Not much doing.’

  ‘Things’ll pick up.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway. I think your mother wants another word.’ Oscar could hear the muted sound of his parents bickering, and the signature theme of the ITN news. His mother came back on to remind him to call more often, and to check in with his cousin Terry. ‘Better go, son,’ she said, ‘your father’s calling.’ And then the line went dead.

  There was no more sleep left in him, so he got up and turned on his computer. It was an old machine and took a while to grind through its gears. An email was waiting in his inbox. The subject line read: ‘Apology’.

  Dear Oscar,

  I’m terrible with computers, so I hope this message gets to you. I would genuinely like to thank you for giving me this chance to apologise for my behaviour the other night, and to explain myself—not many people would be so accommodating. Here is what I know my sister would like me to say: