by Matt Haig
'George? . . . George? . . .' Her eyes, normally so precise, slipped away to stare at some vague point behind me. 'Mr Cave, I must apologise for my son's behaviour. I admit he has been acting strangely recently. The separation between his father and myself has not been particularly pleasant. George has suffered a great deal. I will talk to him, be sure of that.' This was delivered as if in a kind of trance, as though I were a hypnotist prying for details of her childhood. 'Goodbye, Mr Cave.'
She placed the brown paper parcel delicately in her basket and walked – or, as it seemed, floated – out of the shop. I saw her face through the glass as she stood on the pavement. She sniffed the air and seemed to give a tiny shake of the head, a gesture that made me think of Higgins flicking away water.
And then she was gone.
You obeyed my rules, but you still found ways to punish me. Silence, that was your first weapon during those early days. You would sit opposite me at the dining table, pushing your carrots around, and speak only when you saw fit.
I looked at you, my child, and wanted you to understand what I was trying to do. All I wanted, all I ever wanted, was to protect you from changing, from losing all that made you special. To protect you, in short, from turning into me.
'So then, how are your cello lessons coming along?' Blank stare.
'Turpin seemed a little stubborn today, when I picked you up. Was he difficult to ride?'
Indifferent sigh.
'Are you going to finish the rest of that?'
Poisoned glance.
And if you were selective about what came out of your mouth, you were also rather choosy about what went into it.
Up until Reuben's death I had been so proud that I had managed to raise a daughter who never bothered to check the calorie content of a raisin before she dropped it into her mouth. A girl with a healthy figure, who didn't aspire to be like the skeletal clothes horses and starving pit ponies of the magazines.
It had been a steady decline. A slowing down of your jaw as it chewed. A mild flinch of regret as you swallowed. A silent reading of ingredients and daily guidelines, assessing the numbers with the studious eyes of a stockbroker.
Once the rules were in place the decline steepened. And I was left wondering how we were going to find a way back up that slope. Yet every time I thought about reconciliation you did something to further my anger.
Angelica, for example.
Now, I understand what I said when I saw her face staring up at me from the kitchen bin but you must appreciate the shock it gave me.
To see an 1893 Heinrich Handwerck bisque doll's head detached from its body and lying on a bed of carrot shavings in a plastic bin liner would be quite a test for even the most hardened antique lover. Of course, I shouldn't have gone on about how much it had cost a decade before, or its current worth now. This wasn't truly the point.
The point was this: Angelica was a special part of your childhood. You had chosen her yourself, at Newark Antiques Fair. I had gladly risked a tantrum from Reuben and sacrificed the chance to buy a pair of second-period floral-encrusted Aberdeen jugs in order to see the smile on your face.
For years you mothered this doll – giving her a name, combing her hair, removing and reattaching her handwoven cape, talking to her as a living thing, nursing her on imaginary battlefields, reading her extracts from Black Beauty or Little Women.
I understood that these activities stopped a long time ago and it would be a very foolish parent who would want them to continue towards womanhood. Time, I know, is a rolling boulder we can't hold back. Yet are we really to aid that boulder in its destruction? I wasn't expecting you to still be playing with a doll in your teenage years, yet to discard such a valuable treasure, such a piece of your own past, was beyond my immediate comprehension.
'Bryony, I don't understand it. Why would you do such a thing?'
You didn't answer me.
'Are you trying to hurt me? Punish me for something?'
A word quivered your lips. 'Why?' you eventually said. 'Why? Why? Why on earth? Why?' It was as if you didn't know anything about it. As if you thought I was responsible.
'Is this about Reuben?' I asked, but got no further reply.
After you stormed upstairs I reached into the bin and held the pretty head in my trembling hand, as though it were Yorick's skull. Those large blue eyes seemed to acknowledge our sorry fates. Both of us, like the doll: broken, discarded, lost from their complementary parts. All the tragedy and violence of time, staring out from the palm of my hand.
I arrived late at the stables due to my desperate attempt to restore the doll, but gave up, unable to find the rest of her. You weren't there and I panicked. The sky didn't help. Purpleblack clouds pressed down onto a horizontal stretch of yellow, as though God's scarred palm was crushing the day.
I switched off the engine and climbed out of the car. I walked over to the gate. There was no sign of you. There were hoofprints heading out of the stables towards the road and I worried for a minute that you had gone out on a solitary hack, rather than staying within the fenced paddock as I had always instructed.
I opened the gate and stepped into the yard. It gave the eerie impression of a Nevada ghost town, for there wasn't a horse nor a human to be seen. Then I noticed something even more troubling. Turpin's stable door was wide open, with no Turpin visible inside. As I walked closer I heard a noise, a sobbing, and knew instantly it was you.
'Bryony?'
I ran into the stable and saw you sitting in the dark shade, on the hay, with that boy's arm around your shoulder.
'Get off her,' I said. 'Get off my daughter.'
Denny stood up. He was in his running clothes. 'She's upset. There were some trouble with the horse –'
'I can see that. Now go. Get out of here. Get out, get out, get out.'
He looked at you and you looked back with your damp red eyes. You gave the smallest of nods and he left.
'Where's Turpin?'
You said nothing. This in itself wasn't a surprise. After all, you'd hardly said a word since I had given you the rules. Yet, even so, I pressed for answers.
'What was that boy doing here?'
'He –' Your answer peeped outside, before cowering back in silence.
I looked around. 'Where's everyone gone?'
You stood up, trembling, and followed me back to the car. It was only later, when I received the phone call from the stable manager – what was her name, the speed-talking Irish one? Claire? – that I eventually heard the truth. How was I to know what had happened?
How was I to know that boy had sought so hard to become your hero that he had actually risked his life? But don't you think I wouldn't have confronted your bucking horse and carried your petrified self out of the stable? Of course I would have. Yet, I wasn't there and he was.
Everywhere you went, I had to watch you and guard you against the bleak curse that was still infecting our family.
*
I woke with a jolt.
There was a noise, outside.
Or perhaps it wasn't a noise, perhaps it was another kind of sensory intrusion, something less easy to explain.
Either way, I awoke, and felt the need to step out of bed and part the curtains I never opened. At first I saw nothing. But then, across the park, the street lamp flickered. My eyes lowered their gaze and strained to see through the dark to interpret the large shape in the distance.
I gasped.
There, precisely where Reuben had fallen, was something else standing on the pavement. A horse, a chestnut Trakehner, under the street lamp.
It was Turpin, staring (I imagined) straight at me.
I didn't dress. I didn't wake you. I simply put on my slippers and my dressing gown and quietly locked you in the house. The town was dead so nobody saw my strange figure cross the park towards him, the horse that stood still under that stuttering light as if he had something to tell me.
When I reached the street he leaned his head away from me and began to
walk towards Micklegate. I followed, breaking into a jog as I went under the Norman archway of Micklegate Bar. A strange sensation of being watched as I came out the other side, as if traitors' heads were still looking down from their spikes. Richard, Duke of York, sneering at another mad sight in the city of ghosts.
I picked up speed as your runaway horse began to canter, but I lost a slipper. 'Turpin! Turpin! Wait! Come back!'
A night taxi smoothed in towards me, lowering its window. 'Y'all right, mate?' The overfed driver, his swollen face leaning over an empty seat.
'Yes. No. My daughter's horse. I'm following my daughter's horse. Do you see it? You just passed it.'
He frowned and glanced down. Finding some kind of warning in my naked foot he drove away. As for myself, I retrieved my slipper and kept up my pursuit, following Turpin over the stagnant river and through the streets, losing sight of him at each corner but following the clatter of his hooves.
A lunatic tramp was in the market square. He had jumped out from nowhere and his giant hands now wrestled with my dressing gown. I tried to twist away and keep sight of the horse, but I had lost him.
'Leave me alone,' I told the tramp, but he wouldn't. I pushed him away, my hand pressing into his scarred and ancient face. There was a brief tussle, concluding with him falling onto the cobbled ground and crying out in pain.
I ran on, but it was no use. Your horse was nowhere. The hooves had faded into silence. I wondered what, precisely, I was doing. Even if I had caught up with Turpin, what could I have done with a horse with no harness? I can only tell you that I followed not out of thought but instinct, a decision of the soul rather than the mind, as though I had little choice.
Then I heard those iron-shod hooves again, trotting near the Minster.
There was a growing tightness in my chest as I reached the south transept of the church, its golden limestone rendered pale under the floodlights. I stood still, caught my breath, and admitted defeat. I strained to hear the horse but there was nothing.
It was at this point that I heard Reuben behind me. He was standing in the dark, rubbing his toothbrush against his cheek, just like that day I had interrupted him in the bathroom.
'Where's my horse?' he said, the violence against his own face not causing any apparent pain.
'Reuben, I don't understand.'
'Petal wants a horse. Petal gets a horse.'
I wanted to see him more clearly, so I stepped closer. 'You didn't want a horse.'
'I asked for a horse.' His voice soft and quiet, with only the faintest trace of resentment.
'You were never interested in horses. I got you other things. I bought you a bicycle.'
'You sold my bike. Where's my horse?'
'Reuben, please.'
'Horses aren't bikes.'
'Reuben?'
In the reflected light from the church I saw the blood on his cheek shine black.
'I loved you, Reuben. I still love you.'
'Horses aren't bikes.'
'Oh, stop it, Reuben. Please.'
'You didn't love me.'
I thought of the horse that had nearly killed you. The horse that had been there, precisely where Reuben was standing.
'It was you, wasn't it? You got inside Turpin.'
He said nothing, but kept on brushing his cheek.
'You're trying to get inside me, aren't you? Please, don't, Reuben. Please.' I pleaded, I fell to my knees. I closed my eyes, and prayed aloud: 'Reuben, please, please, I'm begging you, don't hurt your sister.'
I rose to my slippered feet, scanned around the empty paving stones. 'Reuben, where are you?'
I looked towards the Minster, a structure men devoted entire working lives to make look this bold, this solid, this arrogant.
'Where is he?' I shouted up towards the church, towards the Rose Window. 'Where is my son?'
A fleeing echo, and then nothing.
Just the true dead quiet of limestone and glass.
Such troubled nights weakened my resolve. I felt like Odysseus crossing the River of Fear, too weak and confused to be fully in control.
The rules I had given you gradually seemed harder to enforce, as my worries grew about your brother's unseen intention. Yet wasn't it precisely because of Reuben that I had to keep you where I could see you? Even so, I couldn't help loosening my grip.
You would nip out on errands that would take far longer than required. You would test the phrase 'civilised volume' to the limit. Imogen would walk out of your bedroom and I would smell tobacco, but could never find any other evidence that you smoked.
Of course, Cynthia was small help.
'You need to finish with these rules, Terence,' she said one afternoon, as she sat in the shop polishing a tray.
'No, Cynthia, I don't. They are working perfectly well.'
She screwed up her nose, as though my words smelt as bad as the ammonia that was filling the shop. 'Oh, Terence, you don't believe that, do you?'
'With the greatest of respect, I really feel it is up to me and me alone how I choose to deal with my daughter.'
Her nose took particular offence to the 'deal with' part of that, if I remember correctly. 'And what would Helen think, I wonder?'
The Helen card, the ace in Cynthia's pack.
'Helen wanted me to protect her children,' I said. 'No matter what, that is what she wanted. I've already failed half of that task, I'm not going to lose Bryony as well.'
A long silence followed.
I was tired and emotional and sometimes I found that your grandmother's manner, much like her use of ammonia, was a little heavy-handed.
'It's her birthday coming up,' she said eventually.
I remembered Reuben talking about his bicycle the previous night. 'I know it's her birthday coming up.'
By this point I had already asked you what you wanted and you had shrugged a 'Nothing' in response. I think you meant it, too. I think you wanted the whole day to drop off the calendar.
It was always going to be a difficult occasion, I knew that. The first birthday that wasn't a shared event. Yet I knew also that it would be a good opportunity to try and put things right again, between us both. A way of showing you that I really did have your best interests at heart.
'Why don't you take her clothes shopping?' Cynthia asked, as Higgins jumped onto her lap.
I winced. 'Shopping? I don't know. It could be a recipe for disaster.'
Higgins' slow blue gaze echoed Cynthia's look of disappointment.
'Not if you made the effort, Terence,' she said, emphasising the 'made the effort' part. 'It will be good. You won't have to choose anything. I doubt your sartorial judgement will be in high demand,' she added, with a sly look down at my beige, cotton twill trousers. 'All you have to do is nod your head and tell her she looks lovely.'
I had no alternative. I didn't have a clue what to buy you. In previous years this had never been a problem. It had always been so easy to know what to get, as there was always something you had specifically wanted. A doll's house. A trip to the ballet. A holiday to Catalonia, to see Pablo Casals' former home.
A horse.
Now the things you wanted were hidden from view, part of the mist that had gathered around your whole being the evening Reuben died.
But this was it, I realised. An opportunity to clear the weather, and bring back my blue-sky girl.
'All right,' I said. 'All right, Cynthia, we'll give it a go.'
And she smiled, and seemed proud, and I felt your mother's own pride somewhere beyond, behind those dark painted lips and eyes, and I felt stronger, just for that moment. A man repaired, who could shield us from whatever Reuben had in store.
That night, with Cynthia's words still fresh in my ear, I cooked you your favourite childhood meal – shepherd's pie followed by apple charlotte.
'Bryony,' I called. 'Ma cherie! À table! ' You stayed in your room. I wrestled to keep calm. 'Bryony, please, come into the kitchen.'
Eventually you appeared, my starving
waif. Your nostrils visibly quivered at the smell, but you tried not to look anything other than in a sulk. You sat down. Your lips were in a pout. Your arms hung limply by your side, like oars in an abandoned boat.
'Look.' I pulled the shepherd's pie from the oven.
'I'm not hungry,' you said.
I decided to defrost your mood by telling you about the shopping trip I had planned.
Your pout twisted in consideration. 'What, I can buy any clothes I want? Not long flowery dresses or polo necks or anything? I can buy things I like?'
I extracted a reluctant 'Yes' from my mouth. 'Within reason.'
You seemed mildly impressed, perhaps wondering if this was going to be part of a wider change, and sat down to contemplate your shepherd's pie. Then, before you had taken a mouthful, the telephone rang and you sprang up to answer. Judging from your light tone I knew it must be Cynthia. You chatted for a while, giggling occasionally.
'Really?' you kept saying, as I strained to catch Cynthia's weak murmur on the other end of the line.
'Da-ad,' you said, after five minutes or so. You hadn't sounded this pleasant for weeks. 'Grandmother wants to know if I can go to her house for my birthday. She says I'm allowed to have some friends around.'
I struggled to hide my fury. How dare Cynthia undermine my authority! Why hadn't she mentioned this alongside the shopping suggestion? I grabbed the telephone. 'Cynthia? What's this?'
She groaned, like a runner who had just realised she'd entered a longer race. 'Now, listen to me, Terence, I thought it would be nice for her to have a little party.'
'A party?' I spat the word. 'So I'm meant to sit there all night listening to horrendous music?'
'No, Terence,' Cynthia told me firmly. 'You're not meant to sit there all night doing anything. You're not invited. It's girls only.'
As the conversation went on I could see your eyes pleading with me, and your palms pressed together in prayer.
'Now, is she allowed to come?'
I thought of Rome and all those other times I had pushed you further away from me.
'Yes,' I said, with slow solemnity. 'She's allowed.'
I placed the telephone down, and consoled myself with the 'girls only' part of Cynthia's plan. And at least you'd be under Cynthia's roof, rather than in a country field.