The Bellwether Revivals (15 page)

She spat out a dash of toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. ‘I knew you’d be mad at me.’

He threw the article against the wall and it rebounded into the bathtub. ‘I can’t believe you just stood there and let him put a nail through my hand.’

‘I know. It was stupid. But—’

‘But nothing. Stop defending him.’ He caught sight of his reflection in the darkened window and stepped away, recognising the buckled, angry face of his father. ‘I just want you to be honest with me, Iris. If you’re using me to get at your brother, if that’s all this relationship means to you, then we’d better end it now.’

She went quiet, pensive, dabbing her lips on the guest towel. ‘First of all, I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. It’s been, what, a month? We’ve slept together
once
. That doesn’t mean we’re in a relationship. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Well, maybe we should call it off, before things get too serious.’

‘I’m not saying I don’t
want
to be in a proper relationship with you. Oh, Oscar, you’re being unfair.’ She bent to retrieve the article from the bathtub, and started to unfold it. ‘You’ve no idea what it means to have a brother.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘A lot, actually. You don’t seem to realise how hard it is for me
to talk to anyone about this. Eden and I have always been so close; we’ve always relied on each other—for support, yes, but mostly for
company
. Can you imagine how big and scary a house like this feels to a little kid? Do you know how easy it is to be lonely around here? We needed each other when we were younger, if only to get through the summer holidays, but now we don’t need each other so much. He can see it, I can see it. It feels like the older I get, the less I want to be around him. That’s hard to come to terms with. But you seem to think I can just separate myself from him like
that
.’

The snap of her fingers echoed in the bathroom. She leaned her hip against the basin, studying herself in the mirror. ‘It’s not your fault, I know. You’re an only child and that’s just how it is. What’s strange is that all of my friends are only children, too—even my parents are only children. I don’t have anybody to talk to about this kind of thing. Not properly. How nice it’d be just to be able to compare stories. To know what’s normal and what isn’t.’ She began to smooth out the article against her stomach; the paper rustled softly. ‘But I don’t have anything to judge him by. I’ve got all of these memories and no way of knowing if they’re strange or ordinary.’

He took a breath, feeling his anger subsiding. She was a hard person to stay mad at. All it took was the sound of her sighing gently, the sight of her eyes welling with tears, and he would start to forget what had brought them to arguing.

‘What kind of memories?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know where to start. They all just blur into one. It’s funny—all of my memories of growing up here seem to be of the summertime. I only remember being with Eden in the school holidays, maybe the odd Christmas here and there. But it’s always sunny in my memories.’

She walked towards him, and he moved aside, letting her through into the bedroom. She folded the article in half and put it down on the bedside table. At the dresser, she took off her
necklace, her earrings, let down her hair and combed it with her fingers. ‘If I tell you this,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone.’

‘I promise.’

‘You can’t say a word to the others.’

‘I won’t. I swear.’

She sat on the edge of the bed and removed her shoes, stowing them away neatly. ‘He was always doing that kind of thing when we were little—hypnotism stuff, like he did with you. We’d be lying out on the grass in the back garden, and the sun would be burning down and the birds chirping away, and suddenly he’d touch my shoulder and say:
Want to play a game?
And I’d say okay. He’d tell me to sit up, close my eyes—and I would. I completely trusted him when we were that age. I looked up to him. He was so clever and talented, and funny … Anyway, he’d start to sing to me, this quiet, simple little tune, like some old-fashioned lullaby. I’d be squinting my eyes against the sunshine so all I would see was this orangey-red colour, and with the heat on my face and everything I’d start to feel light-headed. Then I’d hear Eden’s voice telling me to wake up. And when I’d look down, there’d be one of my mother’s big safety pins stuck through my leg—I mean, closed shut, pushed through the skin by my ankle, my shin, my calf. It varied, depending on his mood, I guess.’

‘You mean this happened a lot?’

‘All the time, when we were little.’ She got up, turning back the bedcovers. ‘Is that normal? I don’t even know any more.’

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘You mean brothers don’t hurt their sisters sometimes?’

‘No. Not just for the sake of it. That’s abuse.’

‘Well, I think that’s a rather strong word for it. There was nothing malicious about it. I never felt so, anyway. And it’s not like I could go to some therapist and say
my big brother hurt me
, because he didn’t hurt me. I never felt a thing. Not once. But I’d look down and see a bit of blood and start crying my eyes out all the same. I’d
run off somewhere and he’d come to find me. I could be hiding under the bed, in my mother’s wardrobe, in the attic. He’d always find me. And then he’d tell me it was okay, that I shouldn’t worry, because he was going to heal the cut for me, no problem. He’d make me swear not to tell our parents. Then he’d place his fingers over the cut and hold onto it really tightly, staring into my eyes. And I’d feel a kind of warmth. It was nice. And somehow—don’t ask me how—he’d make it disappear. The next morning, it’d be gone completely. Just like he did with your hand the other night.’ She looked at him tenderly. The lamplight made her eyes seem tired, older. ‘That’s why I don’t need you to be angry with me about all this, Oscar. Just understand that the other night was hard for me, too. It was like being a little girl all over again. For the first time, I was watching the same magic trick happen to somebody else, and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘What else did he do to you?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter now.’

‘Yes it does. I need to know.’

‘It was always just stupid, silly stuff like that. There was nothing sexual about it, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Well, good.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at the carpet. ‘It was just stupid kids’ stuff.’

‘Like?’

‘Like, I don’t know. Like, he would pretend he could predict things that were going to happen, future events. Just mundane things, nothing big. Or he’d pretend that he could hear the voices of people in houses as we passed by in the car. Sometimes, we’d be driving somewhere and he’d say into my ear:
The man doesn’t want to put the house on the market, but the woman is insisting
. And then, the following week, there’d be a For Sale sign on the lawn. Or sometimes, he’d just be sitting there in the drawing room and he’d say:
Mum will come home later with nine cans of lentil soup and a jar of gooseberry jam
. And she
would
. Or he’d say:
Tomorrow, the
Canadian dollar will come down by point three five
. And you’d look in the newspaper the next day and it had come down against the yen by exactly that amount. I don’t know how he did it—I still don’t know to this day—I wish I did. He was full of tricks like that.’

‘He probably just read your mother’s shopping list. Or he must’ve seen a property ad in the paper, or, I don’t know, made a lucky guess.’

‘Probably,’ Iris said. ‘And when we were little, those things didn’t bother me so much. I could bear them. But now he’s started doing this stuff all over again, and I can’t keep pretending it’s okay.’ She got up, turning her back on him. Casually, she unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head, standing there before him in her underwear. He thought it was the most elegant she had looked all evening.

‘Do you know what he said to me yesterday? He told me he could make you agree to this dinner. That it would be so simple. All he’d have to do was utter the magic words.’

‘Did he now.’

‘He said you wouldn’t be able to resist.’

‘He’s so conceited.’

‘Yes. I told him so. He just laughed.’

‘So what were these magic words of his?’

‘Something about your depth of character. I mean, can you believe the nerve of him?’

Oscar stayed quiet, hoping the disappointment—the shame—wouldn’t show on his face. He watched Iris removing her underwear without a single thought as to his presence. She stood naked in front of him, fluffing her pillow, then slid under the duvet. She sat up against the headboard, flattening the cover across her stomach. ‘Look at you, over there in your suit. You look so handsome. Come to bed. I can’t spend any more time worrying about my brother tonight. You’re right. I’ve wasted enough time caring about him for one day. That little speech he gave about
Schumann—how he went mad and threw himself in the river—that was all for our benefit, you know. He was toying with us.’

‘Yeah, I’m starting to see that.’

Oscar removed his suit jacket and threw it onto the floor. He went to sit on the bed, removing his shirt. As he kicked off his shoes, he felt her hands upon his back. She was kneeling behind him now, massaging him. He felt her lips on the back of his neck. ‘I know we’ve only slept with each other once,’ she said, ‘but I think we can add to that tally before the night is out.’ Her voice was soft. ‘I want us to be together a long time, Oscar.’

He turned and took her in his arms, leaning her back against the mattress, feeling the coldness of her stomach against his, the give of her breasts against his chest, the scissors of her legs around his waist. He kissed her hard—so hard he could feel her teeth through her lips—and their tongues touched, wet and heavy, sweet with cognac and toothpaste. She stared right into his eyes as if to focus him, as if to bring their minds together as well as their bodies. She rocked with the pressure of him, and he felt taken by her, seized by the very warmth of her. And the heat of her quickening breath against his ear as he pushed himself inside her was like sunlight burning through a window, magnified and startling. He had to turn his head away. As he did, he saw the article on the nightstand, and his eyes fell on three words he had somehow missed before. They stared back at him: black, static, incontestable. She clawed at his back trying to recapture his attention. ‘What, sweetheart? What is it?’ He rolled away, breathless, three words resounding in his head:

‘… by
HERBERT CREST
’

Dr Paulsen was sitting in his usual armchair by the window, staring out across the grounds of Cedarbrook. A magazine was spread over his lap. It was late in the morning and the sky outside was dreary as newsprint; there was a fine, almost invisible spray of rain in the air that clung to Oscar’s face like a fever-sweat. His steps were heavy, purposeful, and as he made his way into the old man’s room, the floorboards groaned underneath the carpet in the usual places. Paulsen heard the sound and craned his neck to say: ‘I told you—smoked fish is not a breakfast item. Do I look like a sea lion? I want boiled eggs or nothing at all.’ When he saw it was Oscar, he removed his glasses, polished them swiftly with his sleeve, and put them back on. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, son, I thought you were Deeraj. He’s been trying to force kippers on me all morning. What are you doing here on your day off?’ He closed his magazine and gestured to the empty chair across from him.

Oscar sat. ‘Is the library open? I need to make a return.’ He lifted up
The Passions of the Soul
.

Paulsen took it and held it lightly, as if it were made of some explosive material. ‘Took you long enough.’

‘I’ve been a bit busy lately.’

‘I see.’ The old man smirked. ‘Back on, is it?’

‘What?’

‘With the King’s girl. You’ve a terrible poker face.’ Paulsen leafed through the pages and studied the binding. ‘No coffee stains, no muddy fingerprints, no cracks in the spine. I’ve taught you well.’ He set the book down on his lap. ‘So tell me: what did you make of Mr Descartes?’

‘I didn’t agree with a lot of it, but I liked it. It was original, at least.’

‘Well, you’re certainly right about that. Bearing in mind the context of the times he was living in. To say the soul is more or less located in the pineal gland—he could’ve been hanged for heresy.’

‘I like how he identifies all the emotions, sort of like a periodic table.’

‘Yes, that’s a good way of looking at it.’

‘It’s clever. Not easy to read, but it definitely made me think.’

‘That’s all we can ask for from philosophy, wouldn’t you say? If you come to it looking for definite answers, you’re going to be disappointed.’

Oscar leaned back. He took a moment to stare out at the Cedarbrook grounds. In the rainy front yard, three gardeners in blue overalls were raking up leaves and turning the soil in the lawn borders. Cars zipped by on Queen’s Road, one after another, and the speed of them seemed at odds with the torpor of life inside Cedarbrook: the one-step-at-a-time along the corridors, the spoon-by-spooning of mealtimes; food that took all morning to cook and to serve, only to be taken away cold, unfinished, an hour later. Inside the wisteria-coated walls of this building, time was a slow and ponderous engine. It was one of the things Oscar liked most about the place.

He looked at the old man earnestly. ‘Can I ask you something, Dr Paulsen?’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘You might not want to talk about it.’

‘Try me.’

He edged forward. ‘This old friend of yours, Herbert Crest—’

‘Herbert?’ Paulsen’s eyes widened. ‘What about him?’

‘I don’t suppose you know what he does for a living.’

The old man lifted his chin. ‘Has that staff nurse put you up to this?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. I’m just curious.’

‘You can’t stop me going to meet him,’ Paulsen said. ‘I’ll break out of the window if I have to.’

‘No, I know. Don’t worry about that.’