by Julia Gray
The diary of Hobie Duvalle.
She’s quick; I’m slow. But we sit on the floor, our backs against the bed, and we read it all, together.
When we’ve finished, she leans her head back against the starched cream valance. ‘Oh, Hobie.’
There’s nothing else to say.
‘So that’s what he did,’ says Zara.
Rebecca is calling.
‘Zara! Where are you? Zara!’
When we reach the ground floor, Rebecca is standing with the phone in her hand, and a single tear, pear-shaped, like an earring, on one of her cheeks.
‘The clinic rang a while ago, when I was in the garden. I’ve just called them back.’
Zara gives a little gasp.
‘Hobie died,’ says Rebecca, holding out her arms. ‘At two o’clock this morning.’
HOBIE’S DIARY
Saturday 8th November 2008 (continued)
The total bore of a drinks party blathered on. My parents were handing out drinks while Zara passed round a plate of raw fennel and chive dip and quail’s eggs and celery salt. Sir and Lady Someone were milling around near the fireplace with two enormous Labradors that Mum clearly very much wished had stayed in the car. The random couple that live on the other side of the village were deep in conversation with Rebecca about whether she’d be able to work with their daughter. Clothilde and Anna were to-ing and fro-ing from the kitchen in neat square aprons. And then there were these people called the Braithwaites, who live nearby.
Of course, when the Braithwaites asked if they could bring their house guest, and my parents said yes, of course, how marvellous, they hadn’t known that the Braithwaites’ house guest was, well, none other than Robin Holloway. Otherwise known as …
Ben’s dad.
This was an Epic Fail.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Mum was saying. ‘We didn’t realise …’
I have to say Ben’s dad was pretty glib and slick, with his hair combed carefully over the bald bit and his jeans and pea-green jacket combo. He actually looked incredibly pleased to see Ben, striding over to him and giving him an awkward hug which Ben seemed quite happy about, even though he generally loathes physical contact.
‘Ben! This is such a surprise! Happy birthday for Wednesday, old boy. Have you been here all week?’
And he turned to Ben’s mother, who had gone purple with the effort of not freaking out, and kissed her on the cheek in much the same way as people kiss corpses in funeral parlours on TV shows.
‘Maud, you’re here too. How’ve you been?’
There was a rather elaborate antique Korean vase on the table next to Ben’s mother and I wondered if I should hurry over and rescue it before she threw it against the wall. But she didn’t break anything, just looked like her shoes were suddenly far too small for her feet and like she was having difficulty standing up in them. She began showing off about how well Ben had done in all his practice papers, and how hard he had worked. She took care to make it sound like Ben was a damn sight better at hard work than his dad was.
‘87%,’ she was saying, swigging rapidly from her champagne glass, ‘and that’s with no help at all. Isn’t that right, Jason?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Jason said, looking at his watch.
I couldn’t believe she was adding an extra 3% to Ben’s score. What a brazen liar!
My parents did a good job of getting more drinks down people as quickly as they could and everyone did a lot of very fast talking about how beautiful the garden was looking and how amazing the fireworks were going to be etc etc. I ate half a plate of smoked-salmon blinis and started on the bowl of Sevruga caviar before Anna wrestled it away from me and took it around the other guests.
‘You’ll spoil your dinner,’ she scolded.
Sir and Lady Someone and the Random Couple and the Braithwaites had some other dinner party to go to. Ben’s father stayed behind. Ben’s mother and father and Ben were all sitting in the big green armchairs and I realised I’d only ever seen them all together once, in that cafe off the Harrow Road. Mum and Dad tactfully bundled me and Zara off to the TV room.
‘When did Ben’s parents split up?’ asked Zara.
‘Over the summer. Not that it’s any of your concern,’ I told her.
‘Poor Ben. D’you think he’s OK? He doesn’t look great.’
Privately I agreed with Zara.
I left her in front of some ridiculous film about twins that are separated at birth and snuck back to the drawing room.
Voices were raised.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, turning up here?’ Ben’s mother was saying.
‘Maud, I honestly had no idea—’
‘Oh, I find that very hard to believe. You knew where we were going to be.’
‘I didn’t make the connection, I assure you.’
‘Ben and I have had enough of your assurances.’
Thrilled, I crept closer. Would she have a go at him with the fire irons? I couldn’t hear Ben. Was he still in there? Was he OK?
‘How is your fiancée then, Robin? Tired of her yet, are you?’
‘Maud, your tone is really trying. Marti is very well.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t contribute to the honeymoon fund.’
Gradually her voice was rising. She was using some impressive swearwords too.
‘You’re upsetting Ben, Maud.’
‘I’m not upsetting Ben. I’m not the one who pissed off and left us without even any way of paying for his bloody school fees—’
‘We can’t have this conversation now.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I told you, I—’
‘I think you’d better—’
‘Ben. Ben, are you OK?’
‘Oh my God, Ben!’
I was desperate to know what was happening. I was about to turn the handle when the doors opened and Ben’s dad came out, supporting Ben, who looked white and faint and shaky on his feet.
‘Ben’s had a bit of a dizzy spell,’ he said to me. ‘Best get him to bed.’
Ben’s mother grabbed hold of Ben and shoved his father aside, her eyes glinting like the Grand High Witch’s, and said she’d take him herself.
‘No,’ murmured Ben.
‘What did you say, darling?’
‘I just want Hobie to come with me.’
So I took Ben upstairs and helped him into bed and he was really hot and I thought he probably had a temperature and I said I’d go and get Clothilde to bring the medicine box and he said he just wanted to sleep for years and years.
‘Are you going to have supper with us?’
He rolled over into a ball.
‘Nah. My head really hurts.’
I thought for a minute and then dashed into his mother’s bathroom, which was closer than my parents’, and I opened all her sponge bags, hunting around for something that looked like it’d do for headaches. Ben’s mother had a lot of pills: green ones, white ones, packets and packets with foreign symbols on them, like Chinese or Japanese or something. Finally I seized a small brown bottle at random and raced back to Ben. The bottle was full of triangular pills the colour of satsumas and I gave Ben two with some water, getting him to sit up to swallow them.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘What are they?’
‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘They’re your mum’s.’
He lay back, his eyes closed. I watched him for a while.
Then I said, ‘Ben?’
‘Yeah.’
‘On Wednesday, when you made your wish …’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did you wish for?’
He pulled the duvet up over his face and fumbled with the switch of the bedside light, plunging the room into darkness. It was totally quiet.
Finally Ben said, ‘I wished my parents were dead.’
I went down to the kitchen. The trays were laden with silver forks and knives, ready to be taken into the dining room. Anna had wiped down the t
abletops and it was all gleaming like in a kitchen showroom and the smell of beef and wine and herbs was all warm and delicious like a perfect sunset. Two rectangular dishes of potato dauphi-noise were bubbling in the Aga. The casserole was simmering on the top, little ripples of dried juice cemented round the rim. I picked at some salad leaves and wondered what to do next.
‘Where are you off to, Hobie?’ asked Anna when she saw me putting on my scarf and coat. She was frying bacon and these little round mushrooms to add to the casserole.
‘Going to say goodbye to this tree in the forest,’ I told her truthfully.
‘Well, take a torch then. It’s pitch black out there.’
Mum and Dad were outside talking to the gardeners about the fireworks. I hoped they’d chosen properly spectacular ones, not just boring old Catherine wheels or whatever. I ducked through the door to the kitchen garden so that they wouldn’t see me. As I passed by the wall, I heard them talking.
‘How did he become like this?’ Mum was saying. ‘I feel utterly at a loss to explain it. You read the Ed Psych, didn’t you, Ike?’
‘Extraordinary academic potential, severely impaired by repressed anger and a total disengagement with his studies,’ Dad said, presumably quoting from Dr Idiot Tibbert. ‘It doesn’t even sound like our son.’
‘Is it something we’ve done?’
‘No,’ Dad was saying. ‘I’m sure we couldn’t have done anything differently. For Christ’s sake, the kid has everything he’s ever wanted …’
Their voices faded as I moved away. I stormed across the yard, feeling the bite of the cold, and then across the paddock and up into the woods, running the torch like a searchlight over the ground. I could feel tears burning in my mouth, and they weren’t tears for me this time. They were for Ben. Because Ben is really cool and it isn’t his fault that he’s got no money and lives in a rubbish house and has this total freak of a crazy mother and this stupid father that isn’t even around. And then I started feeling sad for me too, because at least Ben is going to pass all his exams whereas I’m going to fail miserably even with all the help I’ve been getting, and I’ll probably never be allowed to play Rugby or be in a play ever again, and one day they’ll find out about the roof and stop me going up there, just like they stop me doing everything that I really enjoy.
An owl hooted above me as I crashed through the trees, flicking the beam of my torch this way and that. I imagined Loki, God of mischief, running alongside me, chanting words of encouragement. Where the hell was Yggdrasil? I stumbled to and fro between the trees, looking for something familiar. In my head I heard Ben’s muffled growl of a voice. I wished my parents were dead.
The mushrooms were still clustered at the foot of the tree, glowing white in the torchlight.
‘Bǫðvar úlfr brandi tekr,’ I muttered under my breath, and as I said the words it really felt like the trees were saying them with me. ‘Bǫðvar úlfr brandi tekr. Wolf of combat takes up blade.’ Like the whole forest was alive with the sound of whispers. And I realised that I was crying, really properly crying.
I crouched down. I grabbed a handful of mushrooms. They came away from the ground quite easily, along with some old leaves and bits of grass and twigs. I stuffed them in my pocket and went back to the house.
As I strode away I knew that an army of Berserks was marching in the shadows behind me.
The kitchen was deserted when I got back. Quickly, not bothering to look for a chopping board, I chucked the mushrooms onto the worktop and scrabbled about for a sharp knife. When I looked at them in the bright light though, I realised that they were too pale, not cooked-looking enough, to not be noticed if I dropped them into the casserole. Damn it! I seized the handful, trying not to drop clods of earth on the floor, and scanned the kitchen for something else to put them in.
And then I saw the big shiny saucepan that held the mulled wine for people to drink during the fireworks. It was chock full of orange peel and cinnamon sticks and whatnot and it’d be dark anyway, when people drank it. Perfect, perfect, perfect. I attacked the mushrooms with a bread-knife, just enough for them to crumble into pieces, and even though there were still a few leaves and things I gathered up the whole lot and stirred them hastily into the mulled wine. Then I put the lid back on and slipped out of the kitchen. I even remembered to wash the knife.
It was just like the goodie bags, just like the Great Steak Heist, only better. I always get this massive rush of excitement when I’ve done something amusing. A bit like Fenrir when he bit off Tyr’s hand. I can imagine him, lurching around in his chains, jaws poised, paws scraping at the ground. Waiting for the world to end.
I was surprised, when we went into dinner, to see that Rebecca and Jason were staying after all. Apparently her car wouldn’t start, or something. For a moment I panicked. Then I remembered that Rebecca didn’t drink alcohol, so that was OK. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Rebecca.
Sunday 9th November
Shit.
After Ragnarok
By Ben Holloway
29-10-2008
Only Yggdrasil remained, sheltering a handful of men and women beneath its branches.
One day the world would be born again, with a new race of men and a reborn sun.
One day Baldr would return from the dead, to rule over his new kingdom.
BEN
ONE MONTH LATER
We come to the churchyard in the late afternoon. Butterflies cycle lazily above the honeysuckle. The air is still: so still you can almost feel the currents, the tiny ripples as they pass. A crow alights on a headstone, its eyes bright and beckoning. Then, with a rustle of wings, it circles away into the distance.
I have measured out my life in graveyards, in shadows and dark places, I think. But my nightwalking days – or, I guess, nights – are over now. Since Hobie’s memorial service a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t set foot in a graveyard. I went to the London ceremony – an enormous, catered affair in a church in South Kensington – where I saw all the old teachers from Cottesmore House, and all the kids from 8 Upper too, which was sort of weird. Frodo made a speech. All I could think about was how I wished Hobie had been there, to draw something unmentionable on the back of Frodo’s impeccably cut suit. Solomon came with me, and so did my parents, and we all sat together, which felt strange, but also comforting. My parents, it seems, are spending more time together now. I’m glad. She is angry, and he is weak, but – like the armchairs in Battersea and Kensal Rise – they are better as a pair.
The actual funeral was a small, family-only occasion, here in the village. Here in this church. It’s a polite, pebble-grey shoebox of a church. I can’t imagine Elsie’s hats fitting inside it. It must have been very sad – but, perhaps, with a hint of relief as well. There was very little chance, you see, of Hobie ever waking up – or, if he had, of waking up OK.
Some of the graves are marked with wreaths and flowers. Others are sunken into the grass, untended and unknown. Our shoes, crunching on the gravel, are the loudest sounds. Zara’s trainers are tied with pink laces. She hasn’t worn a lot of black. I have, but then I always do.
Around the back of the church we walk, and here the graves are beautifully kept, clear of weeds and invading creepers. We come to a great, glorious slab of marble, inlaid with gold, four cherubs carved into the corners. In Memoriam: Hobart Duvalle, it says. 1836–1890. A memorial for the original Hobart Duvalle, who died in America, I imagine. His wife, Mary, his son, Alfred Ebenezer, and his three daughters have adjoining stones.
Then a raised, scrubbed plinth, a solemn cross mounted at the head. Hobart Duvalle II of this parish is buried here, it says. 1922–2006. May he rest in peace. Hobie’s grandfather, sponsor of Latin, lover of polished shoes on Monday mornings. His wife, Henrietta, is etched politely beneath this, in a smaller, feminine font.
The grave we come to now is white and clean and untarnished by weathering. A curly-headed angel rises from its curved top. The prim bronze lettering comes into focus, and I
think for a strange moment of Star Wars and how the writing floats up the screen at the beginning of each film, that essential paragraph you need to read in order for the rest of it to make sense.
Hobart James Duvalle III
14th July 1996 – 10th June 2012
Taken from us too soon.
Rest in Peace.
So we know, me and Zara, what Hobie did.
He took a handful of mushrooms from the base of Yggdrasil, chopped them up, considered putting them in the casserole, and then put them instead in the mulled wine. We know from the diary, and from the diary only, because all the cups and glasses, the plates and cookware and serving dishes, had been washed up and put away long before the police arrived, after Jason was found on the Sunday morning. No traces of poisonous mushrooms were found, or noted, or remarked upon, and – most important of all – no one saw him do it. But we cannot imagine that Hobie was lying. I don’t think there’s a single thing in his diary that he didn’t mean to say. He knew the mushrooms could be poisonous, or, perhaps, that they might be hallucinogenic – that they could send the consumer into a ‘psycho Berserk state’. If the latter, it would have been an excellent practical joke – or so Hobie might have thought. If the former though … it was no joke. He wanted someone to die.
He listened to me, when, hidden under a mound of duvet, I said the words: ‘I wished my parents were dead.’
If only I hadn’t said it. But I did. It took me a long time to stop blaming myself for that. In the end it was Zara who persuaded me, saying that there is a big difference between thinking something bad and deciding, in some hot-headed moment, to act on that thought. So often that was the line that Hobie couldn’t see. No one knew that better than Zara. If Hobie really did want to kill someone, it wasn’t because of me. Or at least, that’s what I’m trying to believe. I suppose I will never know. All we know for certain is that Jason drank a cup of mulled wine, and, later, died.
So many things remained unanswered. Why was it only Jason who was affected? That was the first question. We wondered if he perhaps he was the only person to drink the mulled wine. It occurred to me to ask Dad: he is generally an expert on alcoholic beverages, and with his author’s attention to specific detail he seemed to remember more than anyone else who was there. I did ask him, and he confirmed that the Duvalles had served, along with an excellent Margaux at dinner, several bottles of Louis Roederer champagne, before dinner and also later, during the fireworks. No one in their right mind, asserted Dad, would have opted for mulled wine when there was premium champagne on tap. But he called me back, an hour or two afterwards, to tell me that in actual fact he had drunk a glass or two of mulled wine, and ‘it wasn’t too bad’. Had he felt unwell, or sick at all, the next day? Well, yes, said Dad. But he generally did, in the mornings. Perhaps Jason drank much more of the wine than Dad did. Perhaps he just happened to swallow a mushroom, or part of one, while Dad did not.