by Matt Haig
“Pul yourself together.”
She puts it back in the cupboard. Her arm touches the water heater, and she keeps it there. It is hot, but she wishes it was hotter stil . She wishes it was hot enough to scald and give her al the pain she needs to forget his beautiful, long-lost taste.
She pul s herself together and goes downstairs.
She watches through the wooden slats of the front window as a garbageman walks up her drive to take their rubbish away. Only he doesn’t. At least not straightaway. He opens up the lid of their bin, rips open one of the black bags, and rummages through it.
She sees a coworker say something to the man and he shuts the lid, rol s the bin to the lorry.
It rises, tips, empties.
The garbageman is looking at the house. He sees her, and his eyes don’t even flicker. He just stays, staring.
Helen steps back, away from the window, and is relieved a minute later when the lorry huffs its way further down the street.
Faust
They study German in a vast old room with a high ceiling, from which hang down eight strip lights. Two of these lights are in a flickering state of limbo between working and not working, which is doing nothing for Rowan’s head.
He sits there, sunk deep in his chair at the back of the class, listening to Mrs. Sieben read from Goethe’s Faust in her normal dramatic style.
“ ‘ Welch Schauspiel! ’ ” she says, with her fingers closed together, as if loving the taste of a meal she has made. “ ‘ Aber ach! ein Schauspiel nur! ’ ”
She looks up from her book to the scattering of blank seventeen-year-old faces.
“Schauspiel? Anyone?”
A play. Rowan knows the word but doesn’t put up his hand, as he never has the courage to voluntarily speak aloud in front of a whole class, especial y one which contains Eve Copeland.
“Anyone? Anyone?”
When Mrs. Sieben asks a question, she lifts her nose up, like a mouse sniffing for cheese.
Today though, she is going hungry.
“Break up the noun. Schau spiel. Show play. It’s a show. A play. Something on at the theater.
Goethe was attacking the falseness of the world. ‘What a show! But ach—alas—it is only a show!’
Goethe liked to say ‘ ach’ quite a lot,” she says, smiling. “He was Mister Alas.” She surveys the room, ominously, and her eyes meet Rowan’s at just the wrong moment. “Now then, let us have the help of our very own Mister Alas. Rowan, could you read the passage on the next page, page twenty-six, the one which starts with . . . let’s see . . .” She smiles, spotting something. “ ‘ Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust. ’ Two souls live—or inhabit, or dwell—alas! in my breast, or my heart . . . Go on, Herr Ach! What are you waiting for?”
Rowan sees the faces staring back at him. The whole class, craning their necks to witness the ridiculous sight of a young adult petrified by the thought of speaking aloud. Only Eve stays with her head down toward her book, in a possible attempt to al eviate his embarrassment. An embarrassment she has already witnessed before, last week in English class when he’d had to read Othel o’s lines to her Desdemona. (“L-l-let me see your eyes,” he’d mumbled into his Arden textbook. “L-l-look in my face.”)
“ ‘ Zwei Seelen,’ ” he says, and hears someone stifle a laugh. And then his voice is out there on its own, and for the first time today he actual y feels awake, but it is not a good sensation. It is the alertness of lion tamers and reluctant rock climbers, and he knows he hovers on the brink of catastrophe.
He steps between words with total fear, aware that his tongue could mispronounce anything at any moment. The pause between “meiner” and “Brust” lasts five seconds and several lifetimes, and his voice gets weaker on every word, flickering.
“ ‘ Ich bin der Geist der st-stets verneint,’ ” he reads. I am the spirit that always denies.
Even in his nervousness he feels a strange connection with the words, as though they don’t belong to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but to Rowan Radley.
I am the itch that is never scratched.
I am the itch that is never scratched.
I am the thirst that is never quenched.
I am the boy who never gets.
Why is he like this? What is he denying? What would make him strong enough to have confidence in his own voice?
Eve is holding a bal point, rol ing it between her fingers, looking down at it with concentration as though she is a gifted seer and the pen is something that could tel her the future. She is embarrassed for him, he senses, and the thought crucifies him. He glances at Mrs. Sieben, but her raised eyebrows tel him he has to go on, that his torture is not yet over.
“ ‘ Entbehren sollst du! ’ ” he says, in a voice which gives no sign of the exclamation mark. “
‘ Sollst entbehren! ’ ”
Mrs. Sieben stops him there. “Come on, say it with passion. These are passionate words. You understand them, don’t you, Rowan? Wel , come on. Say them louder.”
Al the faces are on him again. Even Eve’s, for a moment or two. They are enjoying this, the way people enjoy bul fights or cruel game shows. He is the bleeding skewered bul whose agony they want to sustain.
“ ‘ Entbehren sollst du! ’ ” he says again, louder but not loud enough.
“ ‘ Entbehren sollst du! ’ ” Mrs. Sieben implores. “Deny yourself! These are strong words, Rowan. They need a strong voice.” She is smiling, warmly.
What does she think she’s doing? he wonders. Character building?
“ ‘ Entbehren sollst du! ’ ”
“More. Mit gusto, come on!”
“ ‘ Entbehren sollst du! ’ ”
“Louder!”
His heart thunders. He reads the words he wil have to shout out loud to get Mrs. Sieben off his back.
Entbehren sollst du! Sollst entbehren!
Das ist der ewige Gesang.
He takes a deep breath, closes his almost tearful eyes, and hears his voice as loud as anything.
“Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends!”
Only when he’s finished does he realize he’s shouted this out in English. The stifled laughter now becomes ful -blown and people are col apsed over their desks in hysterics.
“What’s funny?” Eve asks Lorelei Andrews, crossly.
“Why are the Radleys so weird? ”
“He’s not weird.”
“No. That’s true. On Planet Freak he blends in supremely wel . But I was talking Earthwise.”
Rowan’s shame only deepens. He looks at Lorelei’s caramel tan and evil-Bambi eyes and imagines her spontaneous combustion.
“Wel translated, Rowan,” says Mrs. Sieben, squashing the laughter. Her smile is a kind one now. “I am impressed. I didn’t realize you could translate so accurately.”
Neither did I, thinks Rowan. But then he registers someone through the wire glass in the door.
Someone shooting down the corridor from another class. Clara, speeding toward the toilets, with a hand over her mouth.
Behind the Modesty Curtain
Peter’s fourteenth patient of the day is behind the modesty curtain, lowering his trousers and underwear. Peter tries not to think about what his job requires him to do during the next minute or so, as he tugs on the latex glove. He just sits there, trying to think of something that might scare Clara back onto meat.
Nerve damage?
Anemia?
There are quite a few legitimate health problems caused by a lack of B vitamins and iron.
There’s a risk they never used to face when the children were younger—the risk of second opinions from people like the school nurse Rowan decided to see about his skin rash who doubted it was photodermatosis. Is it worth it anymore? Is it worth all these lies? Is it worth making my children ill? The bitch of it is, my kids think I don’t care, but the truth is, I am not allowed to care—not in the way I want to.
“Fuck.” He mouths the word, sile
ntly. “Fuck. It.”
Of course, Peter has been a doctor long enough to realize that reassurance is itself a kind of medicine. He’s read many times about the reality of placebo effects and confidence tricks. He knows about the studies that show how oxazepam works better at treating anxiety if the tablet is green, and better for depression if yel ow.
So sometimes that’s how he justifies the lies to himself. He’s just coloring the truth like a pil .
But he finds it harder, with time.
As he sits and waits for the old man, a poster on his bul etin board stares out at him, as it always does.
A large red drop of blood, shaped like a tear.
Then in a bold, self-important National Health Service font the words: BE A HERO TODAY.
GIVE BLOOD.
The clock ticks.
There is a shuffle of clothes and the old man clears his throat. “That’s . . . I’m . . . you can . . .”
Peter slips behind the curtain, does what his job requires.
“Nothing too untoward there, Mr. Bamber. Just needs a bit of cream, that’s al .’
The old man pul s up his pants and his trousers and seems on the verge of tears. Peter peels off his glove and places it careful y in the smal bin designed for the purpose. The lid clicks shut.
“Oh good,” Mr. Bamber says. “That’s good.”
Peter looks at the old man’s face. The liver spots, the lines, the unruly hairs, the slightly milky eyes. For a moment, Peter is so repulsed by his own self-shortened future he can hardly speak.
He turns away and spies another poster on his wal . One Elaine must have put there. A picture of a mosquito and a warning to vacationers about malaria.
ONE BITE IS ALL IT TAKES.
He almost bursts into tears.
Something Evil
Clara’s palms are slick with sweat.
She feels like something terrible is inside her. Some poison that needs to be expel ed from her body. Something living there. Something evil, taking over.
Some girls enter the toilets and someone tries the door to her stal . Clara stays stil and tries to breathe through her nausea but she can’t stop the sickness from rising through her at rapid speed.
What’s happening to me?
She throws up again and hears voices outside.
“Okay, Miss Bulimia, your lunch must be up by now.” A pause. Then: “Oh, that smel s so rank.”
She recognizes the voice as that of Lorelei Andrews.
There is a faint knocking on the stal door. Then Lorelei’s voice again, but softer. “Are you okay in there?”
Clara pauses. “Yes,” she says.
“Clara? Is that you?”
Clara says nothing. Lorelei and someone else giggle.
Clara waits for them to leave and then flushes away the vomit. Outside in the corridor, Rowan is leaning against the ceramic wal tiles. She is pleased to see his face, the only one she could real y deal with right now.
“I saw you running down the corridor. Are you okay?”
Toby Felt walks by at this precise moment, prodding the tennis racquet into Rowan’s back as he does so. “I know you’re struggling for some action, slo-mo, but she’s your sister. That’s just wrong.”
Rowan has nothing to say, or nothing he is courageous enough to say out loud.
“He’s such an idiot,” says Clara, weakly. “I don’t know what Eve sees in him.”
Clara sees this upsets her brother and wishes she hadn’t said anything.
“I thought you said she didn’t like him,” he says.
“Wel , I thought she didn’t. I thought as a person in possession of a ful y functional brain she wouldn’t like him, but, wel , she might, I think.”
Rowan struggles to feign indifference. “Oh, I’m not bothered real y. She can like who she wants.
That’s what democracy is al about.”
The bel goes.
“Just try to forget about her,” advises Clara as they walk toward their next lesson. “If you want me to stop being friends with her, then I wil .”
Rowan sighs. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not seven. Look, I only mildly fancied her, that’s al . It was nothing.”
Then Eve creeps up behind them. “What was nothing?”
“Nothing,” says Clara, knowing her brother wil be too nervous to speak.
“Nothing was nothing. That’s a very nihilistic thought.”
Clara shrugs. “Inherited habit.”
Inevitably, if you have abstained all your life, you don’t truly know what you are missing. But the thirst is still there, deep down, underlying everything.
The Abstainer’s Handbook (second edition), p. 120
A Thai Green Leaf Salad with Marinated Chicken
and a Chili and Lime Dressing
“Nice jewelry,” Peter finds himself having to say to Lorna, after staring for too long at her neck.
Fortunately, Lorna smiles appreciatively and touches the simple white beads. “Oh, Mark bought this for me years ago. At a market in St. Lucia. On our honeymoon.”
This seems to be news to Mark, who only now seems to notice she is wearing a necklace of any description. “Did I? Can’t remember that.”
Lorna seems hurt. “Yes,” she says, mournful y. “You did.”
Peter tries to focus elsewhere. He watches his wife take off the plastic wrap from Lorna’s appetizer, then looks at Mark sipping his sauvignon blanc with such showy indifference you’d think he grew up on a vineyard.
“So, has Toby gone off to this party then?” asks Helen. “Clara’s gone, even though she’s feeling a bit sick.”
Peter remembers Clara coming up to him an hour ago, while he was checking emails. She’d asked him if it was okay if she went out, and he’d said yes abstractedly, without real y connecting to what she was saying, and then Helen had glanced scornful y at him when he went downstairs but had said nothing as she prepared the pork casserole. Maybe she was having her dig now.
And maybe she was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have said yes, but he is not Helen. He can’t always be on the bal .
“No idea,” says Mark. And then to Lorna: “Has he?”
Lorna nods, seems awkward talking about her stepson. “Yes, I think so, not that he ever tel s us where he’s going.” She swings the attention back to her salad, which Helen has just served. “Here it is. A Thai green leaf salad with marinated chicken and a chili and lime dressing.”
Peter hears this but no alarm bel s. And Helen has already taken a mouthful, so he thinks it should be al right.
He pokes his fork through some of the chicken and dressed watercress and puts it in his mouth.
Within less than a second he is choking.
“Oh God,” he says.
Helen knows it too but hasn’t been able to warn him. She has managed, somehow, to swal ow it down and is now swil ing white wine around her mouth to rinse out the taste.
Lorna is very worried. “Is something wrong? Is it too hot?”
He hadn’t smel ed it. The odor must have been lost amid the chili and everything else, but the pungent, foul taste is so strong on his tongue that he is choking before it even reaches his throat.
He stands up, his hand over his mouth, and turns away from them.
“Christ, Lorna,” says Mark, aggression hardening his voice. “What have you done to the man?”
“Garlic!” Peter can’t help but cry, between chokes, as if cursing the name of an undefeated enemy. “Garlic! How much is in it?” He rubs his finger over his tongue, trying to rub the wretchedness off. Then he remembers his wine. He grabs his glass. Glugging back, and through the blur of his watery eyes, he sees Lorna looking forlorn as she stares at the remains of her the blur of his watery eyes, he sees Lorna looking forlorn as she stares at the remains of her offending starter in its bowl.
“There’s some in the dressing, and a bit in the marinade. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you—”
Practiced, casual, Helen is quick on the vol ey: “Pete
r’s a bit al ergic to garlic. He’l survive, I’m sure. He’s like that with shal ots too.”
“Oh,” says Lorna, genuinely perplexed. ‘That’s strange. It’s such a useful antioxidant.’
Peter picks up his napkin and coughs into the white fabric. He keeps the last of the wine in his mouth, swil ing it around like mouthwash. Eventual y he swal ows that too.
“So sorry,” he says, placing the empty glass on the table. ‘Real y. I’m so sorry.’
His wife looks at him with a mix of sympathy and disapproval, as she pops a dressing-free green leaf into her mouth.
Copeland
“Are you going away this year?” Helen asks her guests.
Mark nods. “Probably. Sardinia maybe.”
“The Costa Smeralda,” adds Lorna, gazing at Peter and circling a finger around the edge of her wine glass.
“Oh, Sardinia!” Helen says, as a rare happiness rushes through her. “Sardinia is beautiful. We flew there for a night once, didn’t we, Peter?”
Her guests look confused. “A night?” asks Mark, almost with suspicion. “What, you just spent a night there?”
Helen realizes her mistake. “I meant we flew there at night,” she says, as her husband raises his eyebrows in a let’s-see-how-you-get-out-of-this-one fashion. “It was beautiful, flying into Cagliari . .
. with al the lights and everything. Of course, we stayed there for a week. I mean, we’re into short-stay, but going there and back in one night would be pushing it!”
She laughs, slightly too hard, then stands up to bring in the next course. A garlicless pork casserole, which she vows she wil eat without making any unnecessary faux pas.
I should talk about the book I’m reading, Helen thinks to herself. That should be safe. After all, we never had a wild night flying to Mao’s China.
But she doesn’t have to worry about what to say, as Mark spends the whole of the main course boring everyone about property.
“I bought it at the bottom of the market, so it was a win-win for me,” he says, of a place he’s bought on Lowfield Close. Then he leans over the table as if about to reveal the secrets of the Holy Grail. “The trouble with buying to rent is that you can choose your properties but you can’t always choose your tenants.”