The Possession of Mr Cave

by Matt Haig

  She offered a kind of limp smile. She was drunk, I realised. 'And what word is that? Useless?'

  'Listen, I need to speak to him. Do you know where he is?'

  She shrugged and looked around at all the other houses, even up at the sky.

  'Then can I speak to you?'

  The smile became a frown. 'Who are you? The police?'

  'No, no I'm not. I'm Terence. Terence Cave. Your son used to know mine. Reuben.'

  'Oh,' she said, in a hyperbolic gasp. 'Oh. That poor lad that –'

  'Yes,' I said, shielding myself from her boozy sympathy. 'That was him.'

  A group of young ruffians walked past kicking a football between them.

  'Go on then,' she said, leaving the door open for me to follow. 'So long as y'ain't a copper you can come in.'

  I walked into the narrow hallway and was loosely gestured through to the living room, which apart from the smell of cigarette smoke and the empty cereal bowl seemed unlived in. There was a crumpled carrier bag, as well, lying next to the chair, and some envelopes on the mantelpiece. Near those envelopes there were two small desolate pictures. A framed photograph of a boy who didn't look that much older than Denny, dressed in a soldier's uniform. And another, an older one, of a different man. A man with a dark moustache. He had his arm around a woman, sitting in another house.

  'What are you requiring with Dennis?' The question broke my thoughts, and I turned to her again, to those eyes that kept widening then narrowing again, as if trying to fix me in one spot.

  'It's quite a delicate issue, actually,' I said.

  'Fire ahead,' she said, miming a pistol with her fingers.

  'Well, the thing is, it's about my daughter. You see, I think she and Dennis might be forming some kind of a –'

  'You can sit down, you know,' she said. 'So long as you're delicate.' She laughed, and I had the feeling I was either being mocked or flirted with, but I was not sure which.

  'Thank you.' I placed myself down on the sofa, and felt myself weakening, losing my purpose.

  'Would you like a drink of tea?' She pronounced each word carefully, like a senile aristocrat.

  'No, I'm fine.'

  She went into the kitchen. 'I'm going to get myself a refreshing drink of Coke. My mouth gets very dry . . .'

  I heard her pouring out what sounded like two drinks, with a pause between, but she returned with only one.

  'Go on,' she said, and closed her eyes for a long sip.

  I looked at her and for a moment I forgot myself. The bare shoulder, the loose hair, the drunken smile. All these were weapons sent by an invisible enemy, working against what I'd come for. (Bryony, I must tell you never to confuse love with desire. There is the craving of the flesh and there is the craving of the heart, and to conflate the two is akin to mistaking a monkey for an eagle.)

  I closed my eyes, and gained focus. 'Denny was there the night Reuben, my son, died.'

  'Oh, it was well terrible what happened,' she said, in her true voice.

  'Did he tell you about it?'

  'No.' This disclosure was hardly a surprise. Indeed, it merely confirmed my worst suspicions. Your brother's death had evidently meant nothing to Denny. 'A copper came round to see him.'

  I nodded, and caught myself glancing at the small mole on her naked shoulder.

  'Your son and my daughter are seeing a lot of each other. Did you know about this?'

  She laughed, nervously. 'Poor gal.'

  'What do you –'

  I looked over at her mantelpiece. At the envelopes, coloured the dull brown of state authority. I saw her name, 'Lorraine Hart'. It came back to me. 'Denny 'Hammerblow' Hart'.

  Hart. Hart. Hart.

  And then I saw it.

  I looked again at the photo of the couple, sitting in a different house. The woman was her. Younger, happier, more sober, but definitely her. But it was the man's face that troubled me. The moustache. The warm, deceptive smile. Those eyes.

  'Where's his father?' I asked.

  She laughed at this. It was hard, drunken laughter. Laughter to cover the cracks of raw emotion.

  'His dad's away.'

  'Away?'

  'At Ranby.'

  The word was a slap in the face. 'At Ranby Prison?'

  She nodded, without shame. This was getting worse. I had the feeling of descent, as I sat there. The very real sensation of being lowered into an abyss.

  My stomach flipped. Panic thudded my chest. 'Andrew Hart.'

  I whispered it aloud, and saw it in my mind, the way I had seen it at the time, in local-newspaper font. And those eyes I knew so much better than the face, staring out at me from that photograph. The name swirled around me. I needed to get out, I needed to get out of that vile little house. 'You were there, weren't you?' I asked her. 'In court.'

  Under the vodka-glaze there was no recognition.

  'You pathetic woman,' I shouted, and felt a brief but intense pain inside my head. 'You were there. In court.'

  Her smile died. 'Who are you? Here, don't talk to me like that, you nutbag. Gerrout me . . . house.'

  I stood up and spoke slowly. 'Tell your son to stay away from my daughter. Tell him not to come near her. Tell him –'

  Things began to grow dark. I was sliding again, away from myself, and another of Reuben's memories invaded my mind.

  I was with Denny, coming back to this house, and smelt the sick as soon as we were through the door.

  'Mam?' Denny called.

  We put down our bags and went into the main room.

  'Mam?'

  The radio was on, blaring out from the kitchen.

  'Mam?'

  She was lying on the sofa like something had flung her there. Denny shook her.

  'Mam, wake up, wake up.'

  He looked at the carrier bag where the sweet stench was coming from. There was some on the carpet, too, where she had missed. Two empty bottles of Imperial Vodka lay half covered under her denim jacket.

  'Mam, wake up!'

  Her eyes moved under their lids, unborn creatures about to hatch.

  There was nothing for a moment but the singing on the radio.

  If you get caught between the moon and New York City

  The best that you can do

  The best that you can do

  Is fall in love.

  And then she laughed and her eyes closed and Denny turned to me, to Reuben, and said, 'I'm sorry.'

  *

  'Tell him –' I couldn't finish my sentence. 'Get away,' I whispered. 'Reuben, get away.'

  Denny's mother looked at me with wide, sobered eyes. I turned round, and walked out of that place. I saw the ruffians kicking their football against the Volvo, and shooed them away, ignoring their wild shouts and gestures as I drove off.

  I was halfway back to the hospital when I saw him running, heading back to the estate. I had just turned the headlights on, and there he was, shining like a vision, pressing his sweat-glossed limbs forward up the hill. I pulled over, high on the pavement, and parked in his path.

  'Stop,' I told him, winding down the window. 'We need to talk. About Bryony.'

  He obeyed my command, his hands on his hips, and caught his breath. 'What?' he said. 'What do you want?'

  I had to be quick about my business, as I couldn't risk any interference from Reuben. I could still feel him, you see, rummaging through the infected house of my mind as he searched for a way to switch off the lights.

  I had a new plan. A new plan formed by the desperate knowledge I had just discovered.

  'I can give you three thousand pounds,' I told Denny. 'Three thousand pounds for you to leave her alone.'

  He looked at me with unbelieving eyes. 'What?'

  I reiterated, as I felt the tingles at the back of my brain. 'Three. Thousand. Pounds. If you never see her again. I can get you the money tomorrow.'

  He rubbed his hand through his damp black hair. 'Are you real?'

  'Yes,' I told him. 'I'm real.' And I was real. I was as real as th
e patched-up tarmac he stood on. I would have paid double that amount. I would have sold the shop and its contents. I would have sold my own kidneys for him to leave you alone.

  'You don't have a clue, do you?' he said, shaking his head with incredulity.

  'About what?'

  'I love her. I love her more than owt.'

  Reuben was leaving. There was no pain, no tingling of the cerebellum. I was clear, restored. My anger had a purity. It was all my own.

  'I know all about you, Denny Hart. I know all about your father. I know all about the poor girl whose life you ruined. The whole shoddy lot. Now, I am telling you to stay away from Bryony. I'm telling you to take the money and stay away.'

  He was still shaking his head as he whispered his torturous words. 'I love her and she loves me, do you get that?'

  A woman walked by in a wax jacket, dragged along by an eager springer spaniel. 'No, Barney, come on,' she said, as the dog leaned its nose towards Denny's salted skin.

  'You don't love her,' I said, when the dog-walker had passed. 'You have no understanding of love. Love is a blessing of the mind, not a craving of the body. How old are you?'

  'Fifteen.'

  'Exactly. Fifteen. In a month you won't feel anything for her. You'll have moved on. She is a vulnerable girl. She has lost her twin brother and she looks for anything . . . anyone . . . to fill that gap. You just happened to come along and occupy a certain space. She'll move on, even if you don't. She'll leave you soon enough. You might as well take my offer.'

  He frowned, drawing his eyes and nose and mouth closer together, like rallied troops. I thought, for a moment, he was going to drag me out of the car-window and pummel my flesh.

  'Reuben were right about you,' he said.

  'What?' I said. 'What did you say? How dare you bring Reuben into this. If it wasn't for you, Reuben would still be alive and you'd have to search the canalways of Britain to find a bargepole long enough for Bryony to touch you with. You destroyed his life, and I'm not going to let you destroy hers as well. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you.'

  He looked down at his sweat-soaked T-shirt, and the body it clung to. A flicker of doubt passed over his primitive face. For a moment, at least, he knew I was right. He knew you were a million miles above him. He knew he deserved your love no more than a raven deserved to pluck a star from the sky.

  The moment passed. 'You don't get it. I love her. We was made for each other.'

  'And what cheap –'

  A sudden sensation of dizziness, coupled by the usual tingles, the buzzing, the flies, caused my sentence to disappear inside a fog of unknowing. Reuben was back, stronger, trying to blank me out.

  Denny had no idea what was happening and kept wading through his own delusions. 'I can look after her. After I finish school I'm going to get a job. I can make her happy. I know it. I've got it planned. I can –'

  'No,' I said, fighting Reuben as much as Denny's words. 'No. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You'll leave her. You'll take the money and you'll leave her or I'll make her leave you. That's the proposition. Do you understand me, you ignorant –'

  Denny had shaken his head and was already jogging away, taking the road with him. Everything retreated as the darkness tried to press in. I blinked it away, held it back, as the boy jogged on.

  'I can do it,' I called after him, as he climbed that slow slope. 'I can make her leave you. It will be easy. You just watch. She will know who you are, Dennis Hart.'

  We were driving back on that same stretch of road. The grandeur it always held seemed suddenly lost, as though it were a mere replica, a movie set. You were in the back, as was your custom these days, gazing out at a pavement Denny had passed over only thirty minutes before.

  I told you – slowly, clearly, with careful spacing – the truth I had discovered that evening. Of course, I didn't tell you precisely how I had uncovered that information, as that was something you didn't need to know. What you needed to know was what I gave you. Who he was. His point of origin. The rotten tree that dropped the rotten apple. The father whose eyes had pierced my nightmares for nearly fifteen years.

  'So, do you understand me? Do you hear what I am saying? Andrew Hart was the man who killed your mother. Do I need to tell you anything else about that boy for you to see sense?'

  You said nothing. I watched the shadows pass your face as you kept staring. Not a flicker. Not a frown. Your thoughts were a buried book I had forgotten how to unearth.

  We arrived home.

  You went upstairs.

  You tapped away on a computer I wished I'd never bought and I stood there, in the living room, aware of that yanking absence that seemed to be shared by the old furniture, and by your smiling portrait on the wall. I longed for the cat to rub its head against my legs. I longed to hear your cello. I longed to see Reuben – the real, living Reuben – slouched on the sofa. I longed for your mother to tell me it was going to be all right. I craved a thousand things I couldn't bring back and stood there as the room tilted and the present moment, like the memory itself, faded away.

  All evening I listened, all evening I stayed there with that blasted thing against my ear, waiting for you to call him. You never did. Nor did you telephone Imogen, as you had always done before whenever I aggravated you. In fact, you never spoke a word. No, you spoke one word. 'God.' The one we are always left with, when all the others have run out.

  There was nothing else, just your angry breath, and I grew tired. I lay back against the bed and placed the speaker beside me on the pillow as my eyes grew heavy.

  'Dad?' It was the quietest voice I had ever heard, coming out of the speaker. He said something else, something I couldn't quite comprehend. Let me? Help me? Set me?

  'Reuben?' I asked, but I was dropping now, deeper, deeper, into the dark.

  I was inside your room, by your bed, but I had no recollection of either how I came to be there or how long I had been standing. My eyes were fully adjusted to the dark, to the infinite degrees of shade dictated by the soft golden light beyond the curtain. Light that stretched across the park to reach you. His light.

  It was the sound of my own breathing that had restored me to myself. That faint nasal whistle indicative of my sinus trouble. I hadn't woken you, though. You lay there, lost in unknowing sleep, your neck exposed above the sheets and blanket, your head arched back, sideways on the pillow, looking so proud, so defiant, ruling the empire of your dreams.

  My heart galloped. What was I doing there? Had I sleepwalked, or had it been him? I did not and could not know. Yet on the furthest fringe of my own awareness, at the precise moment of restoration, I had the last effects of the feeling that had sent my heart into this ridiculous frenzy. A strange unnameable emotion with the blinding intensity of love and hate but that was in fact neither, or was such a confusion of the two that it couldn't be labelled strictly as one or the other. The emotion seemed intricately associated with the sight of your neck, of its slender form gaining shape in the darkness. My swan. My poor, darling swan.

  That Keatsian urge. That urge of artists and restorers of old furniture. That contradictory instinct, that chisel-and-thread impulse to break and repair.

  Creations and destroyings all at once,

  Fill'd the hollows of my brain.

  The feeling retreated fast, like the tide of an unplugged ocean, and I couldn't assess it further.

  *

  I was in the shop the next morning when I received the call. 'Ah've changed me mind,' he said. 'Ah'll take the money. Ah'll leave her alone.'

  I stared at the receiver, then pressed it harder into my ear. An old lady left the shop, with the Worcester teapot she had bought. 'Do you mean it?' I asked him.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'Three thousand pounds. But now. Ah want it today. Ah'll meet you. At eleven.'

  I felt no happiness at that moment. You must know that. It gave me no satisfaction to discover that this boy who ruled your heart would walk away from you for the price of a longcase clock. It did, however, conf
irm my suspicions.

  That my reading of Denny had been more accurate than your own was now beyond doubt. You had been won over by the incident at the stables, and the framed photograph of your brother, and whatever else he had used to get close to you. You may well have seen him as rather exotic, this semi-literate street-fighter from the wrong part of town, who so obviously met with your father's disapproval. I knew, through even my darkest fears, that your yearning for this boy wasn't a physical one. I knew you weren't a Jezebel or a Lilith or a Herodias, whatever your wardrobe suddenly insisted. I knew that. Your love, built on the foundations of your vulnerable mind, was a confusion of pity and mild admiration, an unfortunate result of all that was good and charitable within your nature. Yet his love? What was that but an animal craving, an exchangeable thing, easily sold? The proof was finally there.

  We set a place. I emptied the till and went to the bank to suck my accounts dry. We met on a bench by the river, like the double-crossing spies we were, and I gave him an envelope full of fifty-pound notes. He was in his school uniform, or a loose interpretation of it, and I began to worry how this might look to a passing stranger. There was no one, though. It was just us.

  'If you see her again I'll tell her about this, you do understand, don't you? You must end it now. No more contact. Nothing. Like I said.'

  I remember him looking at me. Oh yes, I see his face. Those eyes sporting the same incomprehensible pride as the lion beside his slaughter. I'm sure I saw the fleeting trace of a smile as he felt the envelope.

  'Yeah,' he said.

  'So, that's it, then? That's the end?'

  He nodded, and looked out at the brown water of the Ouse, a mere metre below flood level. 'The end. Yeah. The end.'

  An hour after I had handed Denny that swollen envelope I again closed the shop and drove to your school. A rather foolish thing to do, given that Friday lunch hour was one of the busiest times of the week in terms of customers, but Cynthia was still in the hospital wasn't she, so there was no one to man the fort. And I wanted to know if you were going to leave the premises. I needed to know if you were going to meet Denny, and to see if Denny would stand by his lucrative promise.