The Bellwether Revivals (11 page)

He slept for a good few hours, and, when he woke, he found himself wanting to call his parents. It had been a long time, over six months, since he’d last spoken to them, and though he didn’t have much news to tell them, he felt an urge to hear their voices again.

His mother answered, adopting her best telephone manner. ‘How are you, son? Haven’t heard from you in ages.’ He filled her in on events at work, and she told him all about the goings-on in the estate, gossiping about people he used to know. His cousin Terry, she said, had been in a fight with a bouncer in town; he’d had seven stitches across his eyebrow. ‘I hope you’re staying out of trouble. I suppose there aren’t many fights to get into in your neck of the woods, eh? Not unless you’re scrapping with the toffs. I’ll put your father on.’

There was a noise of someone jostling with the receiver, before he heard the gruff voice of his father: ‘Yeah.’

‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Oh. It’s you. Hi.’

‘How’s everything?’

‘Same as ever. You?’

‘Fine.’

‘Uh-huh.’

He was long used to awkward gaps in conversation with his father. ‘Just thought I’d see how you were doing.’

‘Mm-hm.’ His father paused. ‘It’s always quiet this time of year. Not much doing.’

‘Things’ll pick up.’

‘Yeah. Anyway. I think your mother wants another word.’ Oscar could hear the muted sound of his parents bickering, and the signature theme of the ITN news. His mother came back on to remind him to call more often, and to check in with his cousin Terry. ‘Better go, son,’ she said, ‘your father’s calling.’ And then the line went dead.

There was no more sleep left in him, so he got up and turned on
his computer. It was an old machine and took a while to grind through its gears. An email was waiting in his inbox. The subject line read: ‘Apology’.

Oscar watched the dark, distant meadows of Grantchester become a colourless blur in the passenger window. The dim headlights of Iris’s Saab shone down on the gravel, presenting only a narrow band of the road ahead, and it seemed as if the night was being projected on the windscreen—a corner of the world, right there, for them only. As he finished reading Eden’s email aloud to her, keeping his voice steady, Iris barely looked beyond the steering column to see what was approaching; she just turned the wheel left and right, and the road seemed to follow her. ‘And that’s
everything
he wrote? There wasn’t some PS you didn’t read?’

He folded up the printout. ‘See for yourself.’ He reached into the footwell behind Iris’s seat and slipped the email into her bag. ‘He’s on to you.’

‘On to
us
.’

‘Right.’

‘I can’t believe he said you needed his approval. Who does he think he is?’

‘I know.’

‘He’s so unbelievably arrogant. And what he said about me
falling in love
and
rugby types
—I don’t go for rugby types! I mean, really, that’s just plain devious. To presume that just because we’ve been—’ She broke off. Her mouth closed abruptly. The car slowed and she steered into a clearing, flanked by tall evergreens. ‘I should never have let you agree to this. Eden is one thing, I can handle him—but my parents? God, you’ll never want to see me again after this.’

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘It’s too soon for you to be meeting my parents. They’re the kind of people who scar you if you don’t know them very well. I hadn’t planned for this.’

‘Well, if I don’t make an effort with Eden, I won’t get him to open up to me. And isn’t that what you want? He might be less guarded tonight.’ He put his hand on her knee and she looked at him, soothed. ‘Compared to mine, your parents will seem like John and Yoko.’

She laughed, as if a bug had caught in the back of her throat. Then her face turned solemn. The light of the road flickered on her taut skin. ‘You don’t have to put yourself through this—not for me. Not if you don’t want to.’

He didn’t answer, and she seemed to accept this as a resignation. But his silence was for something else. There was another reason that he’d agreed to go to the dinner—something in that email, one simple line that rattled him every time he read it:
There’s a depth to you that isn’t clear from the surface
. He’d imagined that Dr Paulsen might offer a compliment like this one day, perhaps when they were discussing a book of poetry or going through the Review section of the newspaper together. But the words had come from Eden, and part of Oscar wanted to find out if they were genuine.

‘I should warn you about a few things,’ Iris said. ‘Shoes off at the door. If they offer you wine, don’t ask for white—they’ll think you’re a philistine. If my father offers you brandy after dinner, that’s a good sign, but you should politely say no,
because it’s oh-so-expensive and he secretly hates wasting it on people.’ She paused. ‘Call my mother Mrs Bellwether—my parents don’t shirk pleasantries. Shake my dad’s hand firmly but not too firmly and make sure your palm isn’t sweaty. He thinks you can tell everything about a man by his handshake. What else …? Yes, right, this is very important. I don’t smoke. Never have, never will. Got it?’ He nodded back at her. Loose gravel snapped against the body of the Saab. She peered at him from the corner of her eye. ‘You look very handsome in that suit, by the way, or did I tell you that already?’

‘Actually, you didn’t. But I’m glad you like it.’ It was the only suit he owned, plain navy, single-breasted. He’d worn it to his interview at Cedarbrook three years ago, and to his grandfather’s funeral last February; it was a fraction tight across the chest now, but he could leave it unbuttoned. ‘And you look stunning, as always.’

She was wearing a long leather overcoat the colour of butter-cream, with saucerlike buttons done up to the top. Her hair was raked back and she had on tiny earrings, two little beads of gold. She was driving in stocking feet because she couldn’t work the pedals with her heels on. ‘I haven’t even shown you my dress yet.’

‘I don’t need to see it. I know how you’ll look.’

‘Don’t. You’re getting me all flushed.’

Ahead of them, the Bellwether house came into view. Oscar had to take a breath. It stood, wide and tall and flawlessly white, nestled in an acreage of countryside so verdant that it could almost be seen in the dark—not in clear detail, but simply as a presence, as a sway of grass beyond his sight, a motion of branches, a shimmer of water far away. Fallow farmland lay behind the canopy of the firs and pines that edged the driveway, and as the car surged forwards, the trees flashed by him like some flipbook animation.

He had never seen a house so well designed before. It was
grand but not imposing, expensive but not tasteless, homely yet palatial. It was hinged at the middle by a large glass atrium, and the upstairs windows were set with cast-iron balconies, overlooking the immaculate lawns of the front garden and the straight line of the driveway. There was a circular fountain in the approach, babbling gently, and Iris brought the car around it in a slow turn, tyres crunching on the shingle. She stopped at the face of a double garage. The doors lifted automatically and she parked up beside two other cars: a Land Rover and a silver Alfa Romeo. He guessed that the Bellwethers’ garage had about the same square-footage as his parents’ terrace. It was as neat and organised as a show-home, all polished concrete and halogen bulbs. He could only imagine the amount of material his father could hoard in a place like this: enough timber cut-offs, aluminium joists, and salvaged kitchen cabinets to last a lifetime.

‘We’ll go in the front way,’ Iris said, ‘otherwise I’d have to take you through the kitchen and, God knows, my mother wouldn’t want you to see the caterers at work—spoils the illusion.’ Iris had a key, but she didn’t use it. Instead, she rang the bell and stood waiting with Oscar, holding his hand lightly. After a moment, the door was pulled back by a woman in a black uniform. She nodded and smiled, but said nothing, extending her palm to the atrium.

They went inside and the woman took their coats. Iris had on a filmy dress with a floral pattern that hung loosely from the ridges of her shoulders, and the fine bones of her clavicle stood out in the serene light. She was beautiful, Oscar thought, but not quite herself. He noticed the chandelier above them—an arrangement of icicle crystals, hanging together to form an abstract shape, like an elaborate baby mobile. A magnificent wooden staircase peeled downwards from the second storey, ending at the great woven tapestry under their feet.

‘Iggy, is that you out there?’ came a voice from an adjoining room.

‘Yes, Dad,’ Iris called back, ‘we’re
both
here.’

Her father emerged into the atrium, clutching a tiny glass of sherry. He was a lot shorter than Oscar had imagined. A horseshoe of grey hair was set around his bald crown and a few straggly wisps were jutting out where a fringe should be. His beard was ghost-white and neatly trimmed. He went straight to his daughter and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. Then he stood back, awaiting an introduction. Oscar dried his hand against the lining of his pocket.

‘Oh, right. Oscar Lowe, Theo Bellwether. And vice versa.’ Iris grinned, and gestured towards Oscar like he was the newest Bentley on the forecourt.

Her father held out his broad palm. ‘Hello there. So glad you could come.’ They shook hands thoroughly. ‘Can I get you both an aperitif?’ Theo lifted his glass and studied it under the light. ‘I must say, the sherry’s somewhat
overtly
dry tonight. I prefer something with a lighter touch, but still—can I?’

‘No, Dad, I’m driving.’

Theo flicked his eyes to Oscar expectantly.

‘No thank you, Mr Bellwether.’

‘I suppose I’m a bad salesman. Come inside, the pair of you. Everyone’s here already. We’ve been having an impossible discussion with Eden. You can both weigh in.’

Iris raised her eyes. ‘Oh, that’ll make a nice change.’

‘I’m afraid my son is quite unstoppable when he gets the wind in his sails,’ Theo said, walking across the atrium, his back towards the pair of them. ‘I keep telling him he should join the Debating Society but with all the other things he’s got going on, he just doesn’t have the time. Still, he’s inherited his father’s flair for the dialectical.’ He led them into an expensively arranged sitting room. It was decorated with matching cream settees and footstools, bespoke wall cabinets that held crystalware and ornamental plates, towering shelves that housed a vast collection of hardbacks, thick textbooks, innumerable encyclopaedias. The Bellwethers’ collection made Dr Paulsen’s seem like a book-stand
at a jumble sale. Oscar wondered how many of them had actually been read.

The room was edged with a moody light, and angled lamps were glimmering softly above the paintings on the walls. ‘My wife would want me to point out the pictures,’ Theo said, stopping to check his watch, which he wore with the face on the underside of his wrist. ‘They’re new. She’s been collecting this young artist lately. Candice Feldman—have you heard of her?’

‘No,’ Iris said.

‘Me neither,’ said Oscar, studying them from afar. They were abstracts: splotches of iridescent oils on newsprint, hung in clean white frames.

‘Oh, well, I’m sure you will have in a year or two. Come, sit.’ He motioned towards the settees.

Eden was leading a discussion from one side of a chaise longue, with Jane sitting blank-faced beside him. Marcus and Yin had an armchair each, and both were wearing tweed, as if they’d arrived from a clay-pigeon shoot. A blonde woman in a plain red dress was perching on the lip of the settee—Mrs Bellwether. She bore no obvious resemblance to her daughter, other than her shade of blonde and a general air of calmness and contemplation. She was wearing a silver necklace with a locket, which seemed slightly faded, perhaps antique. They were all holding their sherry glasses the same way, with one hand pinching at the neck of the crystal, the other cupped underneath the base. It reminded Oscar of the way his father used his free hand as an ashtray when he smoked indoors.