The Bellwether Revivals (16 page)

‘So how come I’m getting the third degree?’

‘I’m just asking. I’m curious.’ Oscar removed the
New York Times
article from his pocket and showed it to Paulsen, who looked down at it, glasses slipping along his nose. ‘Could this be the same Herbert Crest?’

The old man glanced over it, then gave a short, dry laugh. ‘That’s his handiwork, alright. Where did you get it?’

‘From the internet.’

‘You’ve been checking up on him.’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Oscar put the article away. ‘Somebody happened to show it to me last night, and when I saw the name, I—well, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it had to be a coincidence, that it was some other Herbert Crest.’

Paulsen seemed dubious. ‘I’ve never really believed in coincidences,’ he said. ‘Everything happens for a reason. The older I get, the more I’m sure of it. What’s the date on that piece?’

‘1992.’

‘He’d have been living back in Connecticut then. I think he’s moved to Boston again now.’

‘Has he written other articles?’

‘Probably more than you could count. That’s how he makes his living.’

‘He’s a journalist?’

‘A psychologist. Writes books—great hulking things—that’s how he makes his money. He does news articles by way of promoting them. Help me up: I’ll show you.’

Oscar lifted him by the elbows. Dr Paulsen took a moment to regain his sense of gravity. They walked towards one of the immaculately ordered bookshelves. ‘I’ve only got a few of them. I must admit, I stopped collecting him a few years ago. He changed his publisher, and his books are quite hard to find over here, not to mention expensive. Take whichever one you like.’ He pointed to a selection of cloth-bound hardbacks of varying colours. ‘I’ve still got the dust jackets somewhere around here. I can show you his picture. Wait there.’ He went over to the drawers by his bed.

Oscar ran his fingers across the titles on the spines:
Selfhood in the Modern World
.
Engines of Grief
.
The Predatory Instinct. Solitude and the Self-Image
. His hand stopped on
The Girl With the God Complex
. He slid the book out slowly. It felt solid and compact in his hands. As he turned back the cover, the pages fell open at a dedication: ‘For Abraham’. He leafed backwards to the author’s biography:

‘Here we are now,’ Paulsen said, suddenly behind him. He was holding a fold of paper; the dreary morning light glinted against it. ‘Of course, he was much younger in this photo. What would he be here—forty, forty-one? Put on a little weight. Still beautiful, though. Look at those eyes.’ Paulsen showed him the grey-scale author photo on the dust jacket.

Herbert Crest stared back with remarkably clear eyes, as white and opaque as fondant icing. He had an amiable sort of face, broad and fleshy, with cheekbones like kneecaps, and straight dark hair that draped across his forehead in an effortless side parting. His face was clean shaven, his tie loosened. There was something almost apologetic about his pose: a half-hearted smile, one eyebrow cocked, a dimple forming at the side of his nose. It was a salesman’s face, the sort you could trust without ever knowing why. ‘I think I’ll just borrow this one for now.’

‘Okay, son. Whatever you want. But I’m keeping the dust cover.’

‘I’ll bring it back soon.’

‘No rush. Just know this—’ Paulsen turned away, heading back to his armchair. ‘If you have to come with me on Tuesday, then so be it. But you’re sitting at your own table and buying your own bloody scones. Are we clear?’

Oscar left the old man alone. He’d agreed to meet Iris that evening. She was in labs and rehearsals for most of the afternoon, and he had nothing better to do with the rest of his day off than to think about her, what she was doing, who she was talking to. The drizzle had stopped falling but the pavements were glazed with puddles and there was a closeness to the air—sometimes cold, sometimes warm. He walked to Jesus Green and sat on a damp bench under a beech tree, watching the grungy-looking kids in the skate park for a while, seeing the way they scratched up and down the halfpipe on skateboards and BMXs.

That morning, he had woken with Iris’s head upon his chest. Her hair was splayed out across her face and over his shoulder, rising and fluttering with each sleepy breath. The sun had not risen yet. He had lain there for a minute or so, just watching her. He knew that he loved her, but he wouldn’t say it until he was sure she felt the same—and he didn’t know if he’d ever be certain. She had stirred, making the faintest moan, drawing the tiny face of her wristwatch close to her eyes. ‘Oh, damn,’ she’d said, ‘my
parents will be up already. We’ve got to get moving.’ They’d dressed quickly in the darkness of the early morning, made the bed, and slipped quietly out of the rectory, careful not to be seen leaving together. Iris had slunk along the path like a cat burglar, around the side of the building to the organ house, and he had followed her, trying to keep silent. When she’d rapped her knuckles lightly on the door, it had edged backwards.

No place had ever overwhelmed Oscar quite as much as that organ house. One long and spacious room took up the entire building. It was dark and solemn as a cathedral, though he could imagine how it would flood with daylight once the sun was up. At the far end, pressed right up against the wall, there was a large and brilliant organ. Its console was made of five separate keyboards, tiered like a wedding cake and curved like an amphitheatre; it was built out of cherry wood in a boxy, uncomplicated fashion, and inlayed with ivory buttons and gilded switches. Above this console, a narrow formation of metal pipes was gathered into a wooden frame, aligned in a perfect regiment, like so many cigarettes packed into a case. The rest of the room seemed inconsequential: there was a four-poster bed, a wardrobe, and two identical couches facing each other across a sheepskin rug; there was an en-suite bathroom raised up on a platform with a standing bath, a shower, and a lavatory, all hidden discreetly by a bank of concertina screens. But there was no sign of Eden or Jane, and the main house was empty come breakfast time.

Oscar had driven back to Cambridge with Iris, wondering how he would ever be able to get used to the Bellwethers’ way of living. He’d got a bad feeling from that organ house—not the same fear that came over him whenever he passed by the old colleges, but something similar—an anxiety that came from not belonging there, from intruding on a private world.

Now, the kids in the skate park were dispersing in front of him, trundling off in separate directions with their boards under their arms. He leaned back against the bench, opened
The Girl With the
God Complex
, and read the preface. It engaged him more than he expected. There was something about Herbert Crest’s prose: it was plain and unfussy but wonderfully descriptive. He had that gift for making real lives seem cinematic. Oscar read chapter one, then chapter two, and before he knew it, he was halfway through the book and the evening was beginning to descend around him.

The book was made up of a single case study, that of an American teenager whom Crest called ‘Jennifer Doe’ (her real name could not be given). She had come to Crest’s attention when his psychiatrist friend in California, Dr Isaac Leibman, called to seek a second opinion on the diagnosis he had made. Leibman painted a troubling picture of Jennifer Doe: she was a girl with ‘severe delusions of her selfhood’, a girl who refused to acknowledge the authority of her own parents, her teachers, police officers, county judges, or the correctional officers at the juvenile facility where she had been incarcerated since the age of fourteen, after drowning her five-year-old brother in a public swimming pool. Dr Leibman said that the only reason Jennifer had ever given for murdering her brother was: ‘My sisters told me to.’ But Jennifer had no sisters. When Leibman asked if she could name them, Jennifer told him: ‘Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.’ These were names from Greek mythology, the names of The Fates. In the book, Crest wrote:

By the end of the book, Oscar felt he knew Herbert Crest like an old friend. He admired the kindness that was implicit in the long paragraphs of loving description, where Crest seemed to speak of Jennifer Doe affectionately, never judging her, always keeping his focus on what was rational and sensible, while allowing the fullness of Jennifer’s personality to shine through, paraphrasing her lengthy speeches and detailing her slightest behaviour. She was not just a patient, or a diagnosis, or a murderer to him, but a whole person. In the pages of the book, she was flawed, complicated, deluded, even dangerous, but she was also greatly human, and Oscar imagined it took a certain kind of mind to be able to capture a person so completely and so compassionately.

The book got under his skin. There were aspects of Jennifer Doe’s behaviour, certain things she said, that seemed unerringly familiar. Like the part when Crest asked her to explain how she could possibly know she was a messenger for The Fates, and she replied: ‘I could tell you, but you wouldn’t be able to understand it. You’ll figure out the answers for yourself one day. Just a matter of time.’ Eden had said something very similar to Iris once—Oscar was sure of it. There was also a moment when Jennifer Doe gave Crest a ‘long, mellifluous stare’, after she’d guessed the suits of five cards in a row from his pack: ‘That’s nothing, Dr Crest,’ she had told him. ‘You wouldn’t believe what else I can do.’ Hadn’t Eden written more or less the same thing in his email a few nights ago?

In chapter four, Crest explained Narcissistic Personality Disorder, outlining the diagnostic criteria he’d helped to develop for the American Psychiatric Association. With every new point in the list, Oscar felt his heart tightening:

Oscar could hardly wait to tell Iris about it at dinner. They met at an Algerian place on Mill Road, where a man sat at a flaming grill in the front window, gleefully turning kebabs. Their table was at the far end of the room, away from the smoke and the smell of burning coals. Iris took gentle sips of water as he told her about Herbert Crest’s book, and Jennifer Doe, and what he’d read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, how he thought it might be what Eden was suffering from. Her face held no expression as he talked, but occasionally she gave a quiet nod, or lifted her chin, or
mm-hmm
-ed in agreement. Finally, she said: ‘Oscar, this is all very sweet of you, but don’t you think I’ve already thought of it? I mean, I’ve read nearly everything there is to know about these kinds of personality disorders. But I’m not convinced that Eden has any of them in particular—not entirely convinced, anyway. He’s more complex than that.’

‘Yeah, I know, but once you read this, you might feel differently.’ He pushed the book across the table. She didn’t pick it up, just looked down at it, as if it were some fly that had landed on the tablecloth.

‘What’s the point?’ she said. ‘It’ll be another dead end. Sure, my brother’s losing it, but he doesn’t believe he’s some Greek God like this Jennifer girl you’re talking about.’

‘That’s not all it’s about, though. You should read it.’

‘Look, sweetheart, thanks for trying. I just don’t have time to waste on reading books I know aren’t going to help.’

They ate in silence for a while. The waiters seated a large party at a long table near the window, and the burr of chatter rose up in the room. Smoke continued to billow from the grill, steaming the windows. Oscar grew tired of listening to them. He leaned forward and said: ‘I don’t want to go on about it, but there’s a chance I might get to meet the guy who wrote that book on Tuesday. And I thought I could try to talk to him about Eden, not mentioning any names, of course. But, you know, maybe I could get his advice.’