The Bellwether Revivals (44 page)

Oscar stayed quiet.

‘It’s okay,’ Theo said, ‘you can talk now.’

Oscar took a steadying breath. ‘I don’t really know what you’re trying to tell me. But if you’re saying that Eden’s perfectly fine—that he doesn’t need help—well, I’m sorry, but I just can’t agree with that.’

‘No, I didn’t expect you to.’

‘Dr Crest wasn’t just a two-bit psychologist. He was an expert in his field. He practically defined the whole subject.’

‘And he said my son had a narcissistic personality?’

‘Yeah. He was sure of it.’

‘Oh, come on.’ Theo gave a dismissive laugh. ‘We’re human beings—we’re
all
narcissists. We’re all selfish. Just because somebody is extraordinary, or ambitious, or self-motivated, that doesn’t mean they have a disorder. It’s just human nature. Survival of the fittest.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because it’s true. I’ve read the diagnostic criteria for NPD, and yes, there are a few things you might level at Eden—need for admiration, a certain lack of empathy, okay, okay—but I just don’t recognise my son in most of them, I’m sorry.’

‘Mr Bellwether, I—’

‘Oh, call me Theo, will you?’

Oscar sighed. ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that—you’re a doctor.’

‘I’m a surgeon,’ Theo said, ‘but that’s beside the point. What I’m saying is, I know my son, and he’ll be fine. He’s just going through a bad phase right now, and the last thing he needs is for
some idiot shrink to go advertising his troubles to the world—worse, to go tarnishing my son’s reputation, and my own for that matter, with some glib diagnosis.’

‘Theo, with the greatest respect, I think you’re lying to yourself.’

‘Please don’t psychoanalyse me, Oscar.’

‘I’m not. I’m just saying maybe you can’t accept Eden’s ill because you think it’ll reflect badly on you somehow. And it doesn’t.’

‘Oh, so now
I’m
a narcissist. I see.’ Theo let out a whipcrack of a laugh. ‘I know my son, and I don’t believe he’s ill. Misguided? Yes, perhaps. A bit too big for his boots sometimes? Clearly. But he doesn’t need any kind of intervention from the psychiatric profession, I want us to be very clear on that. He just needs some stern words and a little tolerance.’

There was resoluteness in Theo’s eyes now, and Oscar knew that it wasn’t coming from a place of reason, but from somewhere deeper, more emotional. It was the kind of look his own father had never shown in public, or anywhere for that matter: sheer blind love for his son. ‘If you could just see him, Theo,’ he said. ‘If you could see the way he’s been behaving—’

‘I’ve seen the videos. I’ve been through all of this with Iris, I’m not going through it with you, too. I haven’t come here to argue with you.’

‘Did she tell you about Harvey Road?’

‘Yes.’

‘We had to sweep up the clavichord into cardboard boxes.’

‘I know.’

‘It took us all night to clean up Iris’s room. The birds might’ve gone but you can still smell them.’

‘Yes. Look, I know all that.’

‘It doesn’t bother you?’

Theo took a long breath in and a long breath out. ‘I don’t have time to get upset.’

‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen the state of the place. If you’d seen the look on Iris’s face when she opened the door.’

‘Don’t start telling me what I would and wouldn’t think. I won’t be lectured to. Eden’s clearly been acting very oddly, and he’s handled things badly. Nobody’s arguing with that. But my concern isn’t for the state of Harvey Road right now. It’s for my son’s future. He’s going to achieve big things in his life, we all know that, and he doesn’t need any setbacks. That’s why I’m here: to protect him from himself. And I think you know what I’m referring to.’ Theo leaned forwards, making a steeple with his fingers. ‘I need the tapes he gave you, Oscar.’

‘I don’t have them.’

‘Come on now. Marcus and Jane already gave me their copies. They were only too happy to help me. Why are you being so obtuse?’

‘I don’t have them.’

‘Oscar, I’m asking you nicely. Don’t make things difficult. It’s very important that you give me those tapes.’

‘They’re not here. I put them somewhere safe, like he told me to.’

‘Then we’ll drive there, wherever it is.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

‘That might be difficult.’

‘Just put your coat on and let’s go.’

They drove silently along Queen’s Road, heading for Cedarbrook. The sky was dark and starless and streetlights flashed across the windscreen in a steady ticker-roll of blue. Operatic music played quietly on the stereo. Back in the flat, Oscar had felt certain about the idea, but now, as Theo steered the car through the gates and pulled up in the driveway, he didn’t feel so sure. And as he walked inside, flashing his ID badge at the duty nurse, his stomach felt loose and he was trembling a little. He went upstairs and strode by the snoring patients in their closed-off
rooms. Slowly turning the handle on Dr Paulsen’s door, he went inside and saw the old man sleeping on his back with his mouth half-open. He retrieved a carrier bag from the back of Paulsen’s wardrobe and found the tapes still inside, plus the original videos he’d shown Crest all those months ago in London.

Treading gently, he left Dr Paulsen sleeping, went back downstairs, waving at the duty nurse, and got back into Theo’s car. The engine was still running. He handed the carrier bag over.

‘Good,’ Theo said, eyeing the contents of the bag under the dashboard light as if there were used banknotes inside. ‘Thanks for making this easy. I might get some sleep tonight, after all.’ Theo put them on the back seat and reversed out of the gates.

It was only then that Oscar felt sure he’d done the right thing. He thought of the copies he’d posted to Herbert Crest, seeing a Jiffy envelope somewhere in his apartment, amid a pile of unopened condolence cards and health insurance policies. He knew he wasn’t betraying anyone.

Oscar couldn’t remember time ever passing as slowly as it did that fortnight in May. In the lead-up to their exams, Marcus, Yin, and Jane were just like all the other Cambridge students, sandbagging themselves inside their colleges to study, stopping only for sleep and food, coming out into the fresh air only to make it to the University Library before it closed. At night, the city felt empty and eerily quiet, but there was a strange kind of energy inside the boundaries of the colleges whenever he passed by, like secret meetings were taking place behind closed doors, operations being plotted by candlelight. He saw little of his friends in those two weeks, though he thought about them often as he worked his shifts at Cedarbrook, wondering how they were getting on and hoping they were thinking about him, too. His days at work were even more drawn out than usual: he would try not to count the hours, because measuring out his shifts only made the time pass more slowly. Tasks he thought would kill several minutes, like helping Mr Foy into his varicose vein stockings or segmenting grapefruits for the residents at breakfast, hardly seemed to take any time at all. He couldn’t even talk to Dr Paulsen any more. And when he got home,
there was nothing to do but sit around, watch TV, listen to the radio. He was too bored to clean the flat, too heavy-hearted to read a book, and this only made things worse, adding guilt to loneliness. For those two excruciating weeks, he felt alone again.

It seemed like forever since he’d last seen Iris. She spent her days studying at her parents’ house and, apart from an awkward telephone call every night (in which she was not quite herself, always making him feel like he’d phoned at the least convenient moment) they hardly spoke at all. Her leg was growing stronger and she was getting regular physio now, but she was still on her crutches and couldn’t drive herself to Cambridge even if she wanted to. ‘I can’t be putting myself in a cab just to give you something to do,’ was how she put it, ‘it’s going to be hard enough making it out there to sit my exams. With all the painkillers I’m taking, God knows what kind of gibberish I’ll end up writing. I need to use this time properly.’

With Eden still missing, she seemed more focused on her studies, and more determined than ever to prove herself to her parents. She talked about them a lot in their nightly conversations. ‘I think this is the longest stretch they’ve spent at home all year. My mother keeps bringing me cups of Darjeeling and telling me to eat, and Dad seems to be on the phone a lot, so if you can’t get through to me, that’s why.’

She said that her father had been talking to his credit card company to check if and where Eden had been spending his money. The account was in her father’s name, so they’d given him the information he asked for, but it wasn’t showing any activity. ‘He’s making a lot of calls to France, too. He thinks I can’t hear him down there in the study, using his French phrasebook from the seventies; it’s embarrassing. They’re about to exchange on that
gîte
of theirs by the sounds of it, so obviously nothing’s going to get in the way of the big retirement plans—massive shock. And yesterday, they were arguing about Eden. I don’t think I’ve ever heard them argue like that before.’

She said that her mother wanted to involve the police, that she was starting to think Eden wasn’t going to come back at all. ‘I suppose technically he
is
a missing person by now, so she has a point. But Dad wouldn’t have it. He’s convinced he’s coming back. He said,
Can you imagine how that would look? Police cars in the driveway? No thank you
 … Still, my mother seems worried. It’s true what she says—a month is a long time, and he’d normally have been in touch by now. But I’m trying not to get caught in the middle of it. I’m trying to get my head down and study. I feel bad for saying this, but—’ She trailed off. ‘I feel awful for saying it, but I’m sort of glad my brother isn’t around at the moment. It’s taken the pressure off a little bit.’

Every day was another cross on the calendar.

On the morning of 23rd May, Iris had her first exam, and Oscar went to meet her later that afternoon at Jesus Green. He came straight from Cedarbook and was still in his uniform, and the sight of her there on the grass before him, the way her face brightened as he approached her, only made him more aware of how much he’d missed her. Her hair was longer, nearly back to blonde. She was happy and relaxed, lying on a plaid blanket that she’d spread across the grass, and it seemed as if the sun had come out just for her. ‘Ask me,’ she said, ‘ask me how it went.’

He lay down next to her, kissed her mouth softly. The ground was damp and spongy beneath the blanket. ‘How did it go?’

‘Wonderfully. If the next five go as well as that, I’ll be delirious.’

‘That’s great.’

‘We need to celebrate,’ she said.

‘Okay. Let’s do something tonight. Dinner?’

‘No, I can’t, I have to go back and study. Another test in the morning.’

‘Well, whenever you want then.’

It was the oddest feeling: when Eden wasn’t around, they were so much freer. They could make plans that didn’t revolve around him; they could do things on a whim, without any regard for
what a certain somebody might say about it. So then why did everything feel so uncomfortable? Why didn’t life seem the same without him? Somehow Eden’s absence had given him a greater presence. He was an unspoken word that underscored every conversation. A face that flickered behind every shopfront. A punter’s shadow gliding away along the Cam. And though Iris did her best to cover up the moments where she’d zone out as they were talking, though she busied herself with revision so Oscar wouldn’t think she’d fallen apart completely, he knew that she missed her brother. How could she not?

‘I was thinking we could go to the May Ball at St John’s,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a Japanese theme this year. It’ll give us a chance to dress up. Exams will be over by then—we can get Jane and Marcus and Yin to come, really let our hair down. It’ll be fun.’ Her words came out in monotone. She looked across the green, towards a group of shirtless men playing volleyball over a badminton net. ‘And besides, I’ve only ever been to the ball at King’s, which isn’t the same thing. I could never find anyone to take me. Eden always said the fancier parties were a big waste of effort.’

Oscar noticed the past tense. ‘Maybe he was right,’ he said.

‘Yes, but for once in my life, I’d like to find that out for myself.’

She lay on her back, brushing the hair out of her eyes. ‘My mother says you were talking to her after the Easter service. I don’t know what it was that you said to her, but you made some kind of impression. In a good way, I mean.’

‘I did?’

She nodded. ‘We had one of those difficult, silent dinners last night—the type you just want to crawl under the table and hide from. My dad wasn’t saying much, and everyone was messing with their food, not eating, and I suppose I must’ve looked depressed or something, because my mother put her fork down and said—I can’t do her voice—
So, darling, when are you next seeing Oscar?
Took me completely by surprise. She never asks me about you, not really. And I said, well, I don’t know, soon I hope, it’s
hard with my leg and everything, and she starts gathering the dishes up. Then—this is the best part—she says to me:
Well, I think you should make more of an effort
.
He’s good for you, that boy
. So there you go. Seal of approval. How do you do it, Oscar?’ She smiled at him. ‘How do you make people like you without even trying?’

‘Oh, there are plenty of people who don’t like me,’ he said.

‘That’s not true. Name one.’

‘Your brother for starters.’

‘No, you’re wrong about that. He liked you.’

There it was again, Oscar thought: the past tense. ‘How do you know?’

‘I just know.’

‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. You’re the only Bellwether I want to love me.’

She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed it, holding her lips there, warm and dry. He felt two long exhalations upon his skin before she released it. ‘I do love you,’ she said. ‘You’re the only good thing to come out of all this mess.’