The Bellwether Revivals

by Benjamin Wood

  It was late and no one had bothered to draw the curtains in the room, so even when Oscar had the temerity to turn his attention away, he could see Eden’s wiry reflection bouncing back at him in the panes of the French windows. Soon, Iris fell asleep on his shoulder. The others gazed at the floor politely. But Eden was still bounding along: ‘I hope you all noticed the scale. Quite deliberate. Mattheson said F sharp minor is the key that’s most characterised by sadness. It’s very different from any of the other minors. He said it’s a scale that has loneliness and individuality—and misanthropy. Ha! Isn’t that wonderful? F sharp minor is the misanthropic scale.’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly any wonder that we all liked it so much,’ Jane said, trying to interject. ‘We’re all misanthropes here.’ Her tone was pleading, as if she hoped she could make Eden aware of the rabid energy with which he’d been talking.

  ‘Yes, yes, alright, Jane, but it’s more significant than that. Why is everyone always trailing behind?’ Eden looked at them all, bug-eyed. ‘Dr Crest is the biggest misanthrope I know. If we weren’t speaking the same language, I couldn’t get through to him.’

  ‘Maybe you should could call it “Ode to Misanthropy”,’ said Marcus.

  Eden shook his head, bothered by the interruption. ‘It doesn’t have a title. And even if it did, it’s not an ode. I didn’t write it to glorify his name. I wrote it to help him. It’s a paean, that’s what it is. A paean in the truest sense of the word. Read your Iliad.’ He swallowed the dregs of his Pinot and shook the glass. ‘Do we have any more of this?’

  Oscar wanted to ask a question, but now that the whirlwind of Eden’s chatter had finally begun to die down, he was reluctant to voice it. He had never read The Iliad, and only knew a few things about Greek mythology. There was a book about it in Dr Paulsen’s room that he sometimes found himself thumbing through, drawn in by the weight of it. The paragraphs he’d read always troubled him; they seemed so epic and portentous—grave stories of punishments meted out by impatient immortals—and he could never read more than a few pages without shoving it back into the bookcase. Now he was too curious not to ask. ‘What do you mean, read your Iliad?’

  The question seemed to take Eden by surprise. His expression tightened. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never read Homer?’ He filled his glass from a fresh bottle. ‘Paean—actually, Paion, with an A-I-O—was the physician of the gods. He heals Ares and Hades when they get injured. It’s all there in Book Five. Don’t they cover the classics in state school? You’ll have to borrow my library card.’

  ‘Join the queue,’ Jane said.

  There was plenty of space for the six of them that week. The Bellwethers had nine bedrooms; most of them had not been used since Iris and Eden were children, though Mrs Bellwether had paid to have them redecorated only last summer. Each spare room bore the plain but expensive accoutrements of some interior designer’s choosing: a flotilla of Japanese tube-pillows was organised at the foot of every bed; Indian tapestries hung from the walls; the furniture was all hand-made—blocky, characterless revisions of long-ago styles. While Oscar stayed with Iris in the rectory, Eden and the others had the run of the house, treating their rooms like their personal suites at The Bellwether Hilton. They would traipse downstairs into the kitchen, half-dressed, to load plates with buttery toast and grapefruit halves, to go noisily about the cooking of fried eggs, bacon, and tomatoes while Oscar and Iris silently played cards or swapped sections of the newspaper at the breakfast counter.

  Oscar knew it would be difficult to spend a week in such close quarters, exposed to the realities of each other, to their everydayness. He found something unattractive about their lack of consideration for the Bellwethers’ home, the way that Marcus and Yin cavorted around the house like unchaperoned children at a caravan park, the way Eden sat with his dirty shoes upon the furniture and how Jane’s heels pressed little marks into the planks of the parquet floor. He tried to reason out their tactlessness as boarding school behaviour. Because they’d lived away most of their lives, they made the best of their days at home; they compensated for the discipline of the boarding house by loafing around in their own houses. Somehow, thinking about it this way made it easier to accept.

  Oscar had already reorganised his shifts at Cedarbrook, giving himself the entire week off, and he tried to think of it as a holiday. In fact, the slackness of the days at the Bellwether house, the languid trawl of the clouds across the Grantchester sky, made him feel as if he was on holiday, staying over at some expensive private resort where everything was free, and there was no mobile phone reception, and even the sun rose brightly every day, giving the air an illusion of summer.

  As he lay in bed with Iris that first Tuesday morning, she suggested they could use the coming days to be tourists—to visit the cathedral at Ely, to see a play or an exhibition in London, to drive to the Norfolk coast. They weren’t unappealing ideas, but he told her he’d rather stay exactly where he was. He hoped that a week at the Bellwether house would give them a chance to spend some real time together, to finally settle in one place. He wanted to spend long hours in bed with her in the quiet of the rectory, with the batteries taken out of the clock and the curtains drawn. Maybe they could spread out on a blanket somewhere in the meadow-lands across the river, in the high grass where nobody could see them, and let the time roll slowly by.

  She didn’t argue. ‘I know, you’re right, you’re right,’ she said, sliding a hand across his stomach. ‘But it’s not going to be easy. If we hide in our room all day, the others will come calling sooner or later. Do you know how quickly Marcus and Jane get bored? It won’t take long for them to dig up a croquet set or get the barbecue going. They’ll be wanting to swim in the river, especially now it’s getting a bit warmer.’

  ‘Well, let’s just make the most of it, that’s all I’m saying.’

  She got up, pulling on a T-shirt. ‘Yin will eat everything in sight. He’s got a killer whale’s appetite. We might have a full fridge now, but leave that lot unsupervised for too long and we’ll be boiling nettles by tomorrow, I guarantee it.’ She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. A while later, she came out, wrapped in a powder-blue dressing gown, drying her hair with a towel.

  He made her sit down beside him on the bed. ‘Promise me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That no matter how things with Crest and your brother turn out, or how many times the others come banging on our door this week, we’ll find a few hours to be alone every day.’

  She stopped towelling the ends of her hair and looked at him, smiling. ‘Easy,’ she said, and kissed the tip of his nose. ‘I promise.’

  He reached through the folds of her gown and ran his fingers along the inside of her thigh. ‘Don’t get dressed yet.’

  Herbert Crest had checked into the Crowne Plaza in the city and didn’t arrive at the house until seven each evening. So they spent the afternoons the way young people are entitled to spend lazy spring days: drinking beer and sangria and endless cups of coffee, playing badminton on the back lawn until the grass wore down under their trainers, barbecuing steaks and peppers and burgers in the intermittent sunshine, dozing in patio chairs on the porch behind the rectory with their jumpers on, listening to Yin’s mix tapes through a ghetto blaster. It almost felt like summer. The air was mild, and a drowsy daylight survived until five or six, and though dark clouds loomed above the rooftops sometimes, they only ever spat a gentle, lukewarm rain.

  For Oscar, the afternoons were for sprawling with Iris on the riverbank, under the shade of the elms and willows, holding hands and peering up at the branches as they moved against the breeze. The afternoons were for finding a cool, dim room upstairs in the house, removing Iris’s clothes and kissing her bare skin until the sound of some searching, beckoning voice came slicing through the hallway, and the slap of feet on the stairs made her turn away and scramble to pull on her skirt. The afternoons were for Jane and Iris to make daisy-chain jewellery, lying frontways with t
heir legs kicking out from under their dresses, and for the boys to accept them when they were done, wearing them as proudly as diamonds until they wilted and broke apart. The afternoons were for group photographs, posed on the rectory porch, all smiles and bunny-ears and arms around each other’s shoulders; as well as quickly taken snapshots for which nobody was prepared, shut-eyed and funny-faced. The afternoons were for sitting in silence around the big wide patio table, reading books they found in the house; other times they were for contagious laughter, the sharing of jokes, silly ideas, idle thoughts; to speculate, to ruminate, to reminisce. Most of all, the afternoons were for the simple enjoyment of being together.

  The longer he stayed in the tranquillity of the Bellwether house, the more Oscar understood the need the wealthy had for distance, for acreage. There was something to be said for being so removed from civilisation—the rest of the world became an afterthought. There was nobody here but the Bellwethers and the flock. Nothing could disturb them. They’d all turned off their mobiles, tired of struggling for reception, but a call would come through on the landline every now and then from Barcelona. Oscar would hear Iris talking to her parents, assuring them that nothing had gone up in flames. ‘Did you want to speak to Eden?’ she’d ask, each time. ‘Well, alright, I’ll tell him you rang.’

  Most days, Eden wouldn’t get out of bed until past eleven, and after spending an hour with everyone at lunch, he would go off into the organ house alone; ‘to think,’ he said, or sometimes, ‘to get my head in the right place’. They would hear him tuning the organ and testing the registration for the better part of the afternoon, while they got on with the task of enjoying themselves. Usually, he would emerge around two or three o’clock, and insist that everyone join him in taking a ride along the Cam in the family punt. He’d pack a picnic basket in the kitchen, fill it with cheese and fruit and a few bottles of wine, and carry it down to the riverbank. Oscar would help him drag the punt out of the bulrushes and they’d load the provisions together. He found he liked Eden at these moments; there was something friendly about the way he’d take the ghetto blaster and ask, ‘What do you think will do the trick today, Oscar? I’ve got Schubert, Mahler; I’ve got Brahms and Liszt. You choose.’

  All of Eden’s pretensions seemed to abandon him the instant he got on that boat and took the pole. ‘All aboard, all aboard,’ he would call to them in a sea captain’s voice, and they’d climb in one by one, with Eden helping them down, steadying the boat against the bank. He was a graceful punter and would glide them along the river with effortless pushes of the wooden pole. In fact, his skill for punting was the only thing he didn’t brag about. ‘Oh, it’s not difficult,’ he told them once, ‘it’s a priori.’ After a while, he’d give in to Marcus’s constant pleas for a turn at the pole, and they’d switch places. The ride would become turbulent as Marcus staggered around on the till, wetting their heads with drips of silty water each time he made a manoeuvre. Eden would lie back then, with his feet upon the treads and his head against the lip of the boat. He’d run his hands through the tall grass on the bank as they limped along the river, or conduct the up-and-down music bleating from the ghetto blaster with two pointed fingers, eyes closed.

  It was only during their first punt ride together on Tuesday afternoon that they talked about Herbert Crest. For the rest of the week, they used their excursions on the boat to get merrily drunk and tell stories about their school days. It was Yin who brought up the subject. Eden was standing high up on the till, punting like a master, his stringy silhouette bearing down over them. They were drifting along soundlessly when Yin said: ‘So how come we gotta do this seven nights in a row? Seems a little excessive.’

  Eden lifted the pole out of the water, holding it across his body like a tightrope walker. ‘I’ve explained that already, Yinny. You should’ve listened.’

  ‘I listened. Just didn’t really understand it.’

  ‘We’re relieving his pain,’ Jane said.

  Yin squeezed the bulb of his nose. ‘Sure, okay, it’s just—he seems like a pretty nice old man to me, and I don’t know, I feel like maybe we’re taking things a little far. I don’t see how this is gonna help him.’

  ‘We’re taking it as far as the situation requires,’ Eden said.

  ‘I just think we might be subjecting this poor old guy to a bunch of stress he doesn’t need. I don’t want his heart to pack up or something. You see what I’m saying?’ Yin’s cheeks were flushed a shade of red. He kept pulling on his nose as if it was itchy. ‘It was different when we were just goofing around with Oscar—he’s young and healthy—but I don’t see what good can come from hypnotising this guy. It’s fun and all, but I feel bad about it.’

  Everyone kept their eyes on the water. Eden just carried on punting them along. The pole made gentle splashes as it broke the surface. Finally, he said: ‘Don’t you trust me after all these years, Yinny?’

  ‘Sure, but—’

  ‘He wouldn’t do anything dangerous,’ Marcus said.

  Eden nodded. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Yeah, look, I know you explained it already,’ Yin went on, ‘but I’m just not comfortable with it. I feel like we’re taking advantage of the guy, that’s all.’

  ‘Herbert knows what he’s getting himself into, don’t worry,’ Oscar said, feeling moved to speak up on Crest’s behalf. But he was glad that someone had found the courage to question Eden. It was the first real murmur of defiance he’d heard amongst the flock.

  ‘He’s got a brain tumour,’ Yin said. ‘How much can he really be in control of his mind right now?’

  Marcus dismissed this idea. ‘We’re relieving his pain. It’s good for him. It can only be helping him, not making him worse. Hypnosis never hurt anyone. We’re doing him a favour, the way I see it.’

  Oscar might have told them everything at that moment, but he kept his mouth shut, for Crest’s sake, and remembered the feeling that had kept him awake last night: that vague inkling of doubt that had stayed with him after Eden’s paean.

  Yin shook his head. ‘We’ve pulled a few stunts in our time, Edie, but this seems pretty crazy.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way. I see it as progress.’

  Oscar couldn’t help peering at the wide stance of Eden’s deck shoes on the till. They didn’t have a single drip of water on them.

  Yin folded his arms and stared out beyond the high bank, where the distant steeple of a church was needling the orange-purple sky. Everything went very quiet. Eden turned the boat around. As they headed back towards the house, he said: ‘You know, Yinny, I don’t see what you’re so bothered about. In your country, people do this all the time.’

  Yin’s back was turned and his arms were still folded across his chest; he didn’t seem to be in much of a mood for talking. They drifted a few yards downriver, then Yin said: ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I’m talking about the good old U-S-of-A,’ Eden said, cheerily. ‘That great country of yours. I love it over there. Do you know I’ve been to nearly every State?’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve only told me about a million times. So what?’

  ‘Well, have I told you what happened the first time I went there?’

  Yin shrugged. ‘Maybe. I can’t remember.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell the Disneyworld story, are you?’ Iris asked.

  ‘No, no, that’s old news.’ Eden punted on. ‘I was going to tell them about the time we went to that church in Florida.’

  ‘I don’t remember any church,’ Iris said.

  ‘You were only five.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway—’ Eden pushed the shirtsleeves up on his forearms. He looked blankly at the clouds. ‘It was my mother’s idea to go there. She must have been getting one of her migraines after walking around Epcot all week, all that muggy weather they have over there. So she took us into this Pentecostal church that someone had told her about. It was near Tampa, one of those giant barn-like places. You know the kind
I mean?’

  Yin nodded.

  ‘Well, there were already hundreds of people in there when we arrived. It was sweltering hot inside, too—Florida in the summer, no air conditioning. Horrible. The shirt was sticking to my back. Anyway, there was a big banner above the altar—actually, it was more like a Broadway stage than an altar—but that’s beside the point. This banner was enormous, and I can remember it clear as anything. It said: “Salvation and Revival Week with Pastor John Hoolihan. Come for Your Deliverance!” I remember feeling so excited. It was like being at a concert. Everyone was chattering, waiting for the pastor to come out. And after a few minutes, a choir came running in through the doors, and an organist started to play up above us. The music was only basic, but the sound was incredible, and the congregation went mad for it. People were flailing their hands about, speaking in tongues. Total gibberish. And then—boom!—pyrotechnics are going off and golden tickertape’s shooting out everywhere. Next thing, this preacher runs up onto the stage. He’s got this terrible spray-on tan, and white teeth—I mean, ridiculously white. Straight away, he starts proclaiming the wonders of the Lord Jesus Christ, shouting and screaming and praising his name, and the people are chanting back: Amen, Amen to that! Meanwhile, the organ’s still playing, and the choir’s still singing hallelujahs.’

  ‘I really don’t remember any of this,’ Iris said. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Oh, you were there too. Somewhere. Maybe you stayed in the car, I don’t know.’ Eden ducked to avoid an overhang of hedgerows, steering them around it. ‘Anyway, after a few minutes, the preacher calls up a little boy from the crowd and pushes a microphone into his face. And the boy—he’s not much older than me, maybe seven or eight—starts saying how he’s had a sore throat for months, asking if Jesus can make it go away. So the preacher just laughs and goes, Of course he can, son. You were born with the love of Jesus in your heart! Of course Jesus will cleanse him of his sins and take away that sore throat. No problem. So he puts his hand on the boy’s head and pushes it backwards and the choir’s still singing hallelujah, hallelujah. The boy’s just completely bewildered by the whole thing. He’s got this anguished look on his face. But suddenly his legs start to go.’