Lullaby

by Bernard Beckett

  PRAISE FOR BERNARD BECKETT AND GENESIS

  ‘Warning: This book may change your life!...the idea of everything will be thrown into doubt and profound uncertainty.’ Guardian

  ‘Sophisticated sci-fi that explores thorny issues in philosophy and science…Beckett presents a series of philosophical conundrums with lucid and penetrating intelligence, and weaves them into a bleak but compelling futuristic vision.’ Age

  ‘Beckett accelerates the pace and heightens the tension until his narrative reaches a conclusion so shocking, it’s like a blow to the head.’ Weekend Australian

  ‘Highly original...It gripped me like a vice.’ Jonathan Stroud

  ‘Anaximanda is a brilliant creation.’ New Zealand Books

  ‘This is a story rich in resonance and more than a few good plot twists.’ Courier-Mail

  ‘An intricate enquiry into the nature of human consciousness and artificial intelligence.’ Financial Times

  ‘Beckett raises enough philosophical questions to keep an intelligent reader thinking for weeks.’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘A thriller, with secrets uncovered and a brilliant twist. It’s a novel that will make clever teenagers cleverer still.’ Scotsman

  PRAISE FOR BERNARD BECKETT AND AUGUST

  ‘August is a remarkable novel, a powerful creation of an alternate universe…it shows Bernard Beckett at the height of his storytelling powers.’ Magpies

  ‘Stunning and beguiling…This is superb fiction—thoughtful, clear, well-written and engrossing… Beckett’s characterisation, as ever, is sharp…August is compelling, fascinating and very thought-provoking.’ Sunday Star Times

  ‘Enthralling…clever, compelling, at times edge-of-your-seat stuff…it is easy to stay absorbed until the last word.’ Courier-Mail

  ‘An intense, intelligent novel…If you want a cleverly written character narrative underpinned by serious theological considerations and a dystopian dysfunctional theocracy, August is the book for you.’ Listener

  ‘A compelling story about freedom, love and destiny… a fascinating exploration of what it means to have free will and to live fully in the moment.’ Herald Sun

  ‘Unlike any teen thriller I have ever read…Bernard Beckett has cleverly plotted his novel, and the moments in the car wreck made the book impossible to put down…full of unpredictable twists and turns. The underlying menace in August makes it a gripping read.’ Guardian

  ‘This is clever, provocative, intriguing stuff.’ Adelaide Advertiser

  OTHER TITLES BY BERNARD BECKETT

  Lester

  Red Cliff

  Jolt—finalist 2002 NZ Post Book Awards

  No Alarms

  Home Boys

  Malcolm and Juliet—winner 2007 NZ Post Book Award; winner 2005 Esther Glen Award

  Deep Fried (with Clare Knighton)—finalist NZ Post Book Awards

  Genesis—winner 2010 young adult category of the Prix Sorcières, France; winner 2007 Esther Glen Award; winner 2007 NZ Post Book Awards

  Falling for Science: Asking the Big Questions

  Acid Song

  August

  Bernard Beckett is a multi-award-winning author of books for adults and young adults and one of New Zealand’s most outstanding writers. He lives near Wellington with his wife and two sons.

  bernardbeckett.wordpress.com

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Bernard Beckett 2015

  The moral right of Bernard Beckett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company 2015

  Design by W. H. Chong

  Typeset by Text

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication

  Creator: Beckett, Bernard, 1968– author.

  Title: Lullaby / by Bernard Beckett.

  ISBN: 9781922182753 (paperback)

  9781925095678 (ebook)

  Target Audience: For young adults.

  Subjects: Suspense fiction.

  Twins—Fiction.

  Dewey Number: NZ823.2

  This book was started during my time as Writer in Residence at Victoria University. Thanks to Creative New Zealand and the International Institute of Modern Letters for their support.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  1

  I remember the machine by his bed. It made a sound like sighing. Numbers twitched, unable to settle. A jagged line sawed across the screen. At least it was something to look at. Something that wasn’t him. They’d brushed his hair, as if he were already dead. A song came into my head, I couldn’t chase it away. ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’. I pretended to smile, pretended to be brave. Twin brother in a coma, I mouthed, I know it’s serious. He would have laughed. He would have been better at this.

  ‘Maybe you’d like some time alone with him,’ the doctor had said. I knew it would be like this, not knowing what to do or say, stranded. Watching his ventilator fog up every time he exhaled, humming some stupid song our grandfather used to sing.

  ‘Hi.’ She stood at the open door. ‘I’m Maggie.’

  ‘Rene,’ I said. ‘This is my brother.’ I pointed. ‘He’s pleased to meet you.’ Still trying to impress. How far gone do you have to be, before that stops?

  ‘I’m a psychologist here at the hospital, did the doctor explain?’

  I nodded.

  He’d talked, I’d listened. His words had been lost in the fog.

  ‘So, when you’re ready, there’ll be some questions we need to—’

  ‘I’m ready.’ Probably I shrugged. I don’t remember.

  Maggie held the door open.

  ‘Can’t we just do it here?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s best we go to my office.’

  Her voice was gentle. It wouldn’t last. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it must have hurt. I wondered if she really needed h
er glasses. She was watching, to see how I’d say goodbye. The interview had already started.

  I shuffled closer to the bed and took Theo’s hand in mine, tried to pretend the warmth of his flesh didn’t shock me. I leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead, whispered ‘Wish it was me.’ I didn’t mean it. I almost broke, but didn’t. Couldn’t.

  Maggie’s office was cool and sharp after the humidity of the ward. It suited her. Her blouse was off-white, her hair was as dark as her eyes. I looked at her elbows. The skin there droops as you age, there’s no way of hiding it. Theo told me that. Hers were tight, youthful. A small ear piece sat unobtrusive behind a stray strand of hair, filling her head with unseen voices. There was a framed diploma on her wall, telling the world she knew how young she looked, how unlikely. I was offended that they’d give me someone just starting out. When your world is falling apart, you want it to at least feel important.

  ‘I’d like to start by talking about your past.’

  Maggie’s chair had been pulled in front of her desk, angled to mine. If I’d stretched out my leg, it would have touched her knee. Her legs were crossed, one foot tucked behind the calf, the way boys can’t.

  ‘How far into the past?’ I asked her.

  ‘How about the beginning?’

  ‘I don’t remember the beginning. I think they had to pull us out. I imagine there was screaming.’

  I was nervous.

  ‘You don’t have to try to impress me.’

  Her words were carefully formed, every sound in its place, as if she had trained for the stage.

  ‘You know why we have to do this, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said.

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘It’s a big decision. You have to make sure I’ve thought it through.’

  That much I understood.

  ‘You understand the nature of your brother’s injuries?’

  ‘He’s fried.’ Covering up, the only way I knew how.

  ‘The electricity massively disrupted his brain function. It was thirty minutes before he got here.’

  ‘I know, I—’

  ‘His body, however…’

  She talked over me. She had a job to do, and only six hours to get it done. Any longer than that, and it wouldn’t matter what I decided.

  ‘His body, however, is entirely unaffected. Physically, he’s as healthy as you or I. But his brain—’

  ‘Is fried.’

  She unfolded her legs, brought her hands together on her lap, and looked at me.

  ‘I’ve read your manuscript. I know you’re clever. But I’m not your professor. I’m not your girlfriend. I’m not here to grade your wit. My job is to assess your state of mind. Why not help me?’

  Because I don’t know how, I thought. Because right now I feel more alone than I ever knew I could feel, and the only thing there is left to care about is this. But I don’t know what it is you’re looking for, and you’re not allowed to tell me, so I’m just trying not to say the wrong thing, and that means trying to avoid the questions you need me to answer. Because this is impossible.

  I shrugged. I think she understood.

  ‘People must have told you things, your parents for instance, about how they found it, having twins. You were their only children, is that right?’

  ‘There’d been an earlier pregnancy, I think.’ Talking about other people was easier. ‘Our mother had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Do you always do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say our mother, instead of my mother. Did you notice?’

  ‘Don’t tell me that,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t tell me when you’re working things out.’

  Her stare was unblinking. She would have been the most terrifying date. And men would have tried.

  ‘And after the miscarriage?’

  ‘She was told to wait,’ I said.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘The doctors. They said there was a chance of it happening again, if she didn’t get treatment.’

  ‘Treatment for what?’

  ‘That’s not the sort of thing you ask your mother.’

  ‘But she had the treatment?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘No, she took a risk. That’s how my story begins, eighteen years ago, my mother took a risk with our lives.’

  ‘That’s a bit a dramatic, isn’t it?’

  Maggie’s eyebrows arched. They were carefully shaped, but thick and strong. Another day, I might have thought about that long enough to like it. I looked out the window to the garden, and thought roses were a strange choice for a hospital. Fine in summer, but what about the rest of the year?

  ‘I want to see him again.’ My words caught me by surprise.

  If you cry, she’ll think you’re breaking up. She’ll tell them you’re not fit.

  If you don’t cry, she’ll think there’s something wrong with you.

  That’s the way I remember it starting, a game I couldn’t win—had to win. I had to make her believe I hadn’t gone out of my mind, and I couldn’t let her know why it mattered. Because only an incompetent mind would want what I wanted. That was the first problem. Second problem, I was exhausted: that part of me not numbed by shock was beginning to fracture. Even forming simple sentences took effort. But I was a long-distance runner. I knew how to guts it out, make it to the finish line.

  ‘You can see him any time you like,’ Maggie said. ‘But we’re on a deadline. You understand that?’

  ‘He’ll deteriorate,’ I said.

  She gave an approving smile, to show she’d noted the change in my language.

  ‘Yes, he will.’

  I thought then, I remember this so clearly, I thought, Theo would have liked you.

  ‘So, do you want to go back to him?’

  ‘No, we should keep talking.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Another smile. I was using them to keep score.

  ‘What was it like for your mother, having twins?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s not entirely true, is it?’ Maggie said.

  ‘I don’t remember what it was like early on. Nobody does.’

  ‘But she wrote it down for you. She kept a diary.’

  There was a time, we were maybe nine or ten, when Theo and I read from it every night. And another time, when neither of us could bear to look at it.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  Maggie swivelled back to her desk. The side of her thigh was split by the line of the quadriceps. I wondered what sport she played, for her legs to look that way. Racketball, I guessed: away from the sunlight, nowhere for her opponent to run. She peeled off a sheet and handed it to me.

  ‘You’ve been in my files.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s an invasion of—’

  ‘The law allo
ws it.’

  I knew, if I started to read, I’d end up crying.

  October 21

  Well, you’re eight months old now, and people keep telling me that very soon you’ll be sleeping through the night. I’m trying hard not to listen to them, because I’m pretty sure you’re not listening to them either. I lie to those people, so they don’t feel obliged to give me advice. I tell them that most nights you do six or seven hours. In truth, some nights, one of you does six or seven hours. Last night it was your brother’s turn. You woke five times. Twice to be fed, the other times because you can, I suppose, or because your stomach hurt, or your brain was fizzing or something—who knows what it’s like in there. I saw a woman yesterday, at the pool, whose little boy is only ten months old, and already walking. You’re still commando crawling, like you’re sure we’ve strung barbed wire across the room just above the level where your bum sticks up. If you could see yourself, you’d know your head is higher than your bottom, even with the nappies. It’s a big head. That might explain the way you move, holding it up must be difficult. Today you and your brother had your very first food fight. He won, by vomiting his carrot on your shoulder. Some day, when you’re old enough to read this, you’ll probably think he cheated. So do I.

  Tears plopped onto the text; one, two, three. I didn’t sniff, or look up.

  ‘It sounds like she enjoyed being a mother.’

  ‘How many of them have you read?’

  ‘It’s only an hour since I was notified. I’ve skimmed a few things, that’s all.’

  ‘She didn’t enjoy it,’ I said.

  ‘Did she tell you that?’

  ‘No. We didn’t talk about it. I think, by the time I was old enough to understand, the pain had mostly passed.’

  ‘What pain?’ Maggie asked.

  I looked up and felt the sting of my bloodshot eyes. ‘I don’t know. It just seems like she’s trying too hard to make it sound good. That she’s writing it the way she wishes it was. That’s just how it feels to me. But I’m not a psychologist.’