The Furies: A Novel (21 page)

‘But Robert doesn’t want to leave Rankeillor.’

‘He just won’t see it. Rankeillor would be fine without him too. He’s not indispensable. Well, he is, but only to me.’

‘I don’t know. He’s the soul of the Unit. I know that sounds melodramatic.’

‘It certainly sounds like bad sci-fi,’ he said.

‘But I mean it. The Unit might not exist if Robert wasn’t there. He keeps it all going through force of will.’

‘I know, Alex. I really do. But using that willpower is eating him alive. Dealing with the children and the parents and the social workers and the police and the counsellors and the youth courts and all of it. It’s just too much for him now. You can see how exhausted he looks. He used to look like that by the final week or two of each term, but now it’s before he’s even halfway through.’

‘I don’t think he could bear to see it crumble without him, though.’

‘It doesn’t have to. He’s not the only person who could run it, is he?’

There was a creaking sound above us as Robert came back down the stairs, and Jeff broke off.

I stayed for crema catalana, but the atmosphere remained awkward, so as soon as Jeff suggested coffee I made an excuse about being tired, and left early. The rain had given up for the night, so I walked back instead of waiting for a bus. The Festival Theatre was still open, but the box office was closed. I’d try again in the morning. I was so preoccupied, thinking about Mel and Carly and the possibility of Robert retiring, that I was putting my key into the front door at New Skinner’s Close before I realised what Jeff had been suggesting.

3

They were down to four.

‘Where’s Ricky?’ I asked, though I knew what the answer would be.

No-one had said anything about him leaving when I was up in the staffroom at break. The basic skills teacher had lost her purse, and we had all tried to help her find it, before she’d had to cancel her credit cards when it became clear that it was gone for good. Even on the Unit, Ricky had been forgotten.

‘He’s not here any more,’ said Mel. ‘He’s been chucked out.’

‘He hasn’t,’ Jono snarled at her. ‘He didn’t get chucked out, Alex.’ He turned back to me.

‘No,’ Mel sighed. ‘He’s in a young offenders’ institution, so I suppose he’s just otherwise engaged, is he?’

‘His court date.’ I remembered Robert mentioning it the other night.

‘It’s only for a couple of months,’ Jono said. ‘He’ll come back.’ Even he didn’t believe it. Ricky’s chair was still in the middle of the front row, as though we could summon him back by refusing to admit he was gone.

‘I’m so sorry. Have you spoken to him? Is he OK?’

Jono shrugged. ‘He texted. Says it’s not as bad as last time.’

I nodded, not wanting to give away the fact that I didn’t know he’d been in an institution already.

‘Well, I think we should probably decide what we’re going to read next, shouldn’t we? Then when Ricky comes back, we can tell him about it, and he’ll catch up easily.’

Though Annika’s eyebrows shot up above her glasses and I could see she was considering telling me what a pointless delusion this was, she said nothing.

‘Is there a play any of you would particularly like to do next?’ Last time, I’d let Carly choose, so it was someone else’s turn.

‘What’s your favourite?’ Mel asked. I thought for a moment.

‘I like the
Oresteia
,’ I told her. ‘It’s about families – parents and children and how they cope with one another. And it’s about revenge and retribution.’

‘Is it good?’ asked Annika.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Take a look.’

I handed out copies. Mel had already turned it over and was scouring the back cover.

Jono began flipping through the pages. ‘Do you really want to read this? It’s gibberish.’

‘The choruses are difficult, that’s true. But the story is brilliant. We could just skip over the choruses, since they’re the hardest bits, and they don’t add much to the play.’

‘Good,’ said Mel. ‘I don’t like the chorus.’ She went rather pink as she said this.

‘Lots of people don’t,’ I reassured her. ‘If you were watching the play instead of reading it, the chorus would sing and dance and that would make it more exciting. But they are a bit much when we’re just reading it. So, let’s look at the first play of the trilogy –
Agamemnon
. What do you know about him?’

There was another silence.

‘He’s the king of the Greeks,’ said Mel.

Carly began ferreting about in a bilious pink pencil tin she’d pulled out of her bag.

‘Good, yes. Anyone else? He won the Trojan War: did you know that?’

‘With a horse?’ asked Jono.

‘That’s right. They snuck the warriors into Troy inside a wooden horse. That’s how the city falls, in the end.’

Carly had found what she wanted in her case, and was using it to file her nails carefully. Her emery board appeared to have at least six different surfaces. I wondered if nails could ever really achieve so many distinct levels of disrepair. She looked up and saw my face. ‘I can concentrate on both, Alex. Honest.’

‘Do you know what he does when he’s won the war? Jono, you must have fought plenty of wars on your Xbox – what does a general do when he wins the war?’

‘Kills everyone,’ he said. ‘Rapes the women first.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Or after.’

‘Gross,’ said Carly, admiring an index finger before she started on her thumb.

‘Agreed. It is pretty much what Agamemnon does, though. He picks one woman to be his slave, and takes her home with him. Her name is Cassandra. Does that name mean anything to anyone?’ They all looked blank. ‘Cassandra rebuffed the attentions of the god Apollo, so he cursed her.’

‘She did what to him?’

‘Turned him down, Jono. Sorry to disappoint. Apollo cursed her to see the future but never to be believed.’

‘How did that work, then?’ he asked.

‘Well, she could always foretell terrible events, but she could never warn people. Doesn’t that sound like a terrible curse?’

‘Wait.’ Annika was frowning. ‘Wouldn’t people start to notice that she was right all the time? I mean, if she kept telling someone they were going to get run over, and then they got run over, people would remember that she kept going on about it. Wouldn’t they?’

‘I’m not sure how it worked, but I suppose people misremembered what she’d said, or forgot it altogether. It’s a pretty grisly fate for her, don’t you think? She would have known that Troy would fall, she would have known that her family would be killed, she would have known that she herself would become a slave of the man who had destroyed her city and caused the death of her loved ones. And she couldn’t tell anyone. Or she could, but they would just think she was mad.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Carly, pausing her manicure. ‘She must have been so lonely.’

‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘It’s hard to imagine something more isolating than being surrounded by people who won’t listen to you. And then she’s captured by Agamemnon, who takes her back to where he’s from. A city called Argos.’

‘Like the shop?’

‘Exactly like the shop, Jono, but only in its spelling. In all other regards, not like the shop. And waiting for him in Argos is Clytemnestra, his wife.’

‘She’s going to be pissed about him bringing Cassandra home with him,’ he said. ‘If my dad fucked off for… How long did you say the Trojan War took?’

‘Ten years.’ Mel answered before I could.

‘If my dad fucked off for ten years and then came home with another woman, my mum would go spare,’ he said.

‘Would you blame her?’ I asked him.

He grinned. ‘Nope.’

‘Well, Clytemnestra feels much the same. And she already hates him – long before he gets home with his girlfriend in tow – because before he left, he killed her daughter Iphigenia.’

‘Do you make these names up?’ he asked.

‘Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had two daughters, Iphigenia and Electra, and one son, Orestes. But Agamemnon offended the gods, and he had to appease them before he could sail to Troy. So he agreed to sacrifice Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis.’

‘And then he did it? Honestly?’ Mel looked appalled. ‘His own daughter?’

‘I’m afraid he did. He felt like he didn’t have a choice. He slit her throat.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Carly. She always put her hand on her heart when she was shocked. It was a curious, old-fashioned gesture. I wondered if she’d picked it up from her mother.

‘That’s parents for you.’ Annika shrugged. ‘They’re selfish.’

‘Is that what you feel?’ I asked her. As the words left my mouth, I wished I’d said ‘think’ instead. I didn’t want her to start yelling about how boring she found everyone’s feelings. To my surprise, she answered the question.

‘Of course it is. My parents have dragged me from one country to another, and from one city to another, without thinking about it from my perspective at all. Not once. They didn’t think about the friends I was leaving behind in Stockholm, they didn’t ask themselves if it was disruptive to my education to change languages midway through, and they didn’t ask me – ever – what I wanted. What word would you use to describe that kind of behaviour, Alex? Other than selfish?’ She had picked up her pencil as she was speaking, and was tapping it against her notebook.

I saw the trap too late. Answer her truthfully and she could go home and tell her mother that I’d said she was a selfish bitch. Placate her and she would almost certainly erupt in fury. The other three sat in silence, waiting to see how I would get out of it. And for the first time, I found that I really wanted to win one of these battles with Annika. Not because I didn’t want to lose face, again, but because I wanted her to get something out of my lessons. Just once.

‘I suppose your father might feel that he needs to go where the work is,’ I suggested. ‘And that’s something they could have tried to discuss with you. I’m sure they must know that they’ve disrupted your schooling, so I suppose what I’m hoping is that they did that because they felt they didn’t have much of a choice, rather than because they didn’t care about you, which I’m sure they do.’

‘My mother does,’ she said. ‘I have no idea if my father cares about anyone at all except himself.’

‘But your father must care about both of you, mustn’t he?’ I asked her. ‘Or he could have just left you in Stockholm and moved to Scotland on his own. Agamemnon kills one daughter then leaves the other behind with her baby brother. They don’t see him for ten whole years – that’s a lifetime for a child. Would you really have preferred to know your father didn’t want to be with you at all?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’ She looked up at me as she thought about it, then gave a brisk shake of her head. I felt an unexpected rush of pride. This was the first time she’d spoken to me about anything she cared about without shouting or being sarcastic. It was the longest conversation we’d ever shared.

‘Agamemnon sounds like a massive prick,’ said Jono.

All three girls smiled.

‘No wonder Clytemnestra hates him,’ said Mel.

‘Hate is the very word. She’s spent the whole ten years that he’s been away plotting her revenge. Firstly, she starts having an affair with a man Agamemnon hates. Then when Agamemnon finally returns from Troy – with Cassandra, remember – she pretends that she is delighted to see him home at last.’

‘So she lies to him?’ Jono asked.

‘She gives it everything. She says that he must come inside for a bath, and she welcomes Cassandra to the house as well.’

‘But Cassandra must be able to tell that she’s lying?’ Mel said. ‘If she can predict the future?’

‘She can, of course. You’ll see when you read it: Cassandra is completely fixated on the idea that she’s about to be murdered by Clytemnestra, this terrifying woman pretending to be the perfect hostess. Cassandra is predicting her own death, in bloody detail, and no-one is paying her the slightest bit of attention. She’s trying to tell everyone that she’s walking into a slaughterhouse, and she might as well be mute.’

‘That’s so horrible,’ said Carly, and she shrugged her shoulders in a tiny shudder.

‘Yes, it is. But Agamemnon doesn’t pick up on any of it, obviously. He’s so pompous and stupid that he buys into the idea that his wife would have got over her dead daughter, and would be over the moon to see him home with a pretty young girl. She really sucks up to him.’

‘Steady,’ said Jono.

I raised my eyebrows, and caught sight of the clock on the back wall. They seemed to be enjoying discussing this play, maybe we could go one step further.

‘OK, well we still have some time before the end of the lesson. Why don’t we start reading it together now? Jono, you’d better be Agamemnon, since you’re the only man left. Who wants to be Clytemnestra?’

I was thinking about the wrong character, of course. As always, I was looking the wrong way.

DD,

No-one would believe what I’ve found out. No-one. And I can’t tell anyone, because Carly’s being weird. She’s been funny ever since that session on Alcestis when she went mental. Now when I try to talk to her about Alex and Fridays and stuff, she doesn’t want to know. She says she’s ‘lost interest’ in it.

And she’s being really quiet in lessons. I wondered if she was upset about Ricky going. But it’s not like they were close or anything. She hardly spoke to him outside of Alex’s room. When I went to the toilet yesterday, I came back into the classroom and Carly was talking to Jono. When she saw me, she shut up like a fucking clam. And Jono went bright red. He did that thing where his body crunches together, like he’s trying to take up less space. Fat chance.

But they weren’t talking about me. You can tell from someone’s body language if you’ve caught them talking about you, or if they’re talking about something else that they just don’t want you to hear. I can, anyway. People turn away from you when they’re talking about you. But when they just don’t want you to know what they’re saying, they can’t help looking at you, to check you’re out of earshot. So they must have been talking about Ricky, because what else would they have been talking about? I’ll work it out. I just haven’t yet.