The Possession of Mr Cave (16 page)

George had just left when I saw Denny walk past the window.
He glanced inside but I made an overt show of not having
noticed, sinking my head deeper inside the
Antiques Trade
Gazette
.

Of course, the moment he had gone past I was off my stool
and heading out of the door, out into an evening of crisp
packets sliding along pavements, of empty sightseeing buses
wheezing their way towards the Minster, of deserted climbing
frames and Vikings in tattered raincoats, swigging back from
golden cans.

He wasn't there. I scanned across the park, towards Reuben's
lamp post and then down the length of the street, but there
was no sign of him.

Cool moist air filled my lungs as I looked around. Then I
realised something else was lacking from the picture: George.
He had left the shop only a moment before I had seen Denny.
If he was following his normal route home, he would have
only reached the fish-and-chip shop by that point. Maybe he
had gone inside to buy himself a cod supper.

I was about to step back inside the shop and check you were
still safely upstairs when I heard something. At first I thought
it was the hydraulic sigh of a slowing tour bus, although I
quickly realised it wasn't coming from the road. It came again,
this noise, though it was now accompanied by a kind of animal
whimper. A scraping backwards breath. Shock? Fear? Sudden
pain? I followed the sound and soon heard another. A cry, now
recognisably human, calling out for something, someone. My
mind sought to mend the mangled word but couldn't.

I kept running, to the passageway where the sound was
coming from, and found them there engaged in a thoroughly
one-sided physical struggle. George, the flabby giant who had
once nearly pushed me to the ground, getting severely beaten
by your boxer. His smashed glasses were on the ground, lying
near a puddle alongside his inhaler.

Now, as I write, I remember a moment of hesitation as I
stood there. Maybe I was wondering what, precisely, your
boy was capable of, trying to ascertain the nature of that
violence which so evidently resided within him. And it
troubles me, truly, to tell you that when I saw him there,
kicking an already well-battered George in the stomach, I
felt a brief flowering of relief. I cannot explain it. Or maybe
I can. You see, my concerns regarding your boy required this
confirmation, something this substantial, for me to act upon
them. It was as though the thousand doubts suddenly spoke
with a single voice, and the threat he posed to your personal
safety could no longer be ignored. How many times did I
let his foot meet George's stomach? Many enough for me to
realise that this wasn't going to end without an interruption.

Would Denny have killed him?

'Stop!'

His foot finished its final kick and he turned and he saw
me but I could not read his expression given that his face was
in shadow. I must tell you I had no fear of him, as I stood
there. Or rather, I had no fear of what his feet or fists could
do to me, or of the pain he could inflict upon my body. No,
the only fear I had was for yourself, as I knew your emotions
were so tangled up with this brutish rogue that any attempt
to extract you from him, or him from you, would be a task
fraught with danger.

Oh, why couldn't he just leave our lives? If only he had
never existed! If only he had been born something else! An
insect to be trod on, or a weed to be pulled out of the soil.
Would it have upset the world if he had never been? Would
there have been a space, a yawning lack, which you would
have wanted to fill?

He stayed looking at me, a suicidal street cat in the head-lights,
then he turned and fled away from the scene, down
the passageway, and out onto Swan Street. Once gone, I
moved over to George and crouched beside him. He was in
a truly horrendous state, coughing and whimpering as he
held his stomach.

'George? George? George? It's me. It's Mr Cave. George,
can you hear me?'

He opened his eyes, or as much of them as he could, and
the sight of me seemed to have the effect of another blow.

I gave him his glasses and his inhaler. 'George? Why did he
do this to you? George? We've got to get you to hospital. Can
you stand up? George?'

'I think so,' he said, in a pitiful voice.

I helped him to his feet and drew my mobile telephone
from my pocket to call for an ambulance. Even as I dialled
the thought nagged me that I must get back to you. You
were on your own, unguarded, with Denny on the loose.
'Could you put me through to the ambulance services please?
Hello? Yes, we need an ambulance as soon as possible. A
young man has –'

'No,' George said, raising his hand. 'Don't call them. Please,
Mr Cave, I'll be all right.'

I hesitated. There was something desperate about his expression.
A pleading I couldn't ignore. 'No, I'm sorry,' I told the
woman on the end of the line. 'We don't need an ambulance.'

I put the mobile telephone back in my pocket. George
shook his inhaler and sucked his medicine. A bruised and
breathless Goliath. I couldn't help but worry about what his
mother would think, when she found him like this.

'Come on,' I told him, realising he must have more information
to offer. 'Let's get you shipshape again, shall we?'

*

I offered to get him a cold flannel and some paracetamol.

'What, from upstairs?' he asked me, looking worriedly to
the ceiling.

'Yes,' I said.

'No. It's all right. I don't want them. I'm fine. I'm fine.'

'You don't look fine, George,' I told him.

He sighed. 'I'm all right.' He looked nervous. Understandable,
I suppose. Even so, it seemed most odd the way he kept looking
out into the hallway. The way he jerked every time he heard
a creak from upstairs.

'Do you know that boy?' I asked, keeping my rather uncertain
cards close to my chest.

He nodded, but couldn't look me in the eye. He began
fiddling with one of the art nouveau figures. The Girl with a
Tambourine.

'How?' I asked. 'How do you know him?'

He took a considerable time to answer, and kept turning
the figure in a clockwise motion.

'Everyone knows him. Denny Hart. He's a class-A scumbag.'
A certain anger rose into his voice, which seemed out of character,
belonging to the George I had seen in the field and not
this George. But again, given the context, I supposed it was
understandable.

Then, after an even longer time, he came out with it. 'He's
seeing Bryony.'

'Yes,' I said. 'I know. But I still don't get it. Why did he
do this to you?'

His mouth fell open. He seemed amazed that I could know
you were seeing this boy.

'How long have you known?'

'A while,' I said in a hushed tone. 'Now, George, please,
why did he do this to you?'

Again he turned away, and looked at the figurine. 'Because
I threatened to tell Bryony something. About something he
did to a girl in his class at school.'

'A girl?'

He nodded and touched the swollen eye behind his glasses.
'Alison Wingfield.'

The name was familiar. I had heard it before. Maybe Reuben
had talked about her. 'Alison Wingfield?'

'She was in my year. My dad taught her. That's how I found
out. You see, my dad was the only person she told.'

I thought of Mr Weeks, that bullish yeti of a man whom
Reuben had hated enough to miss his classes.

'Told what?'

'That he –' He moved his hand away from the figure. 'That
Denny raped her.'

Raped.
The word was so horrendous, so violent, it ravished
the whole room. Even the Tambourine Girl in his hand seemed
to have suddenly been ripped of her innocence. My doubts were
rendered useless. I was staring into George's bruised and swollen
face, a face which showed in itself what Denny was capable of.

'Didn't they report him to the police?'

'No. No, she didn't want to. Alison. She couldn't. Even
when she –'

'When she –?'

'Even when she found out she was pregnant.'

I felt weak. I hated what I was hearing and yet I could
believe every single word of it. It seemed to be a truth I
already knew, buried deep inside me but which had just been
unearthed again. My instincts had been correct. Denny had
malice within him. He was a beast. A predatory animal, a
subhuman who preyed on young girls and sought, through
his primitive appetite, to ruin their futures.

'Did she . . . did she have the baby?' I gagged on the question,
but got it out eventually.

'I think her parents made her, in the end.'

'Her parents?'

'Catholics. Strict, strict Catholics,' he said. I was sent back
to the Vatican, back to your naked shoulders under that
burning sun.

'So that's why that savage attacked you? In case you were
going to tell Bryony?'

George nodded.

I leaned in towards him. 'You must tell her.'

Fear filled his eyes. 'No. I can't . . . I . . .'

'It's all right, he won't hurt you. Trust me.'

He shook his head, and panic added weight to his breathing.
'I shouldn't have said anything, Mr Cave.'

'No, you should have, you should have. Please, George, you
have to tell her. You have to.'

He winced, either from the pain or the situation. And I
stood up and went into the hallway. 'Bryony? Bryony?' I
kept calling you, my voice loud enough to climb the stairs
but you didn't come. 'Bryony?' I shouted one final time and
waited a moment too long in that hallway.

I heard the bell in the shop and ran back inside. 'George?'

But, of course, he was gone.

Over our lamb cutlets I told you what I had to say. All those
impure, unsimple truths. What father would have done otherwise?
Of course, you didn't listen to me. Or you listened,
but not in the way I had foreseen. There was that slight
upward tug at the corner of your mouth as I told you about
George's pummelled face, and then the drop into rage as I
told you about Alison Wingfield. You thought I was saying
it all to hurt you. You ran through a whole century of dictators,
along with any other insults you could hurl at me.
You pushed your plate away and went to your room and I
followed you. You were so wild and violent I had to exercise
powers of restraint.

I told you a new rule, to replace all the others. You were
to have no time away from me, except at school. You would
be grounded for your own safety.

You screamed and raged and called me a something fascist
something psychopath and you shut the door in my face. I
left you alone. We had an hour before seeing Cynthia in the
hospital after her hernia operation, so I went to my room and
switched on the monitor.

I heard your furious breath. I heard your footsteps as
you tried to walk off your anger. I heard you collapse on
the bed. I heard you say something. Not on your mobile
telephone, but just out into your room. 'I love you. I love
you. I love . . .'

I began to question why he was staying back, in the wings
away from the main stage. Your brother, I mean. My mind
was fraught but it was itself. Perhaps he had gone away. Perhaps
there were no more memories he needed to implant in my
mind. Perhaps there were no more tasks he required of me.
My optimism, of course, was a little too rash.

Now I wonder how my life will affect your own. Have I
already set boundaries for you, with the things I have done?
Isn't that what a parent does? Don't they settle the realms
of experience their children will later inhabit? And don't the
children then live inside these realms as a foot lives inside
a shoe, stretching the leather but never truly breaking free?

I will answer this with a brief word about that earliest of
the three unnatural deaths. I must, before I get to my ending,
tell you a little of my beginning. I must, in short, say something
about my mother.

She was a milliner, at the highest end of the scale. She had a
shop in Piccadilly. Gardenia Hats. To you she is no more than
the picture in the living room. You would think it had been
taken in the thirties, judging from the dress but of course it
was much later. She lived inside the past, the time of her own
childhood, when hats were still the height of fashion. That
picture tells a lot. The Greta Garbo mask that couldn't quite
conceal the anxious, too-human face behind. Her own mother
had built the business up in the twenties and thirties, selling
cloche hats to the flapper girls, dressing the heads of Mrs
Simpson and Lady Mountbatten. It was left to her daughter
to try and keep the business fires burning and to broaden the
range with fedoras and other such styles.

She gradually sank into debt, a lot of debt, and the woman
behind the mask became increasingly desperate. She ended up
killing herself, in 1960, after guzzling a whole jar of barbiturates.
The poor woman was found in the flat above her shop,
dribbling blue foam over the stubborn numbers of her account
book.

*

Picture me.

The little boy in the room of hats, calling out to whatever
can hear. His mother's head, not dozing on her desk; her open
eyes not seeing him or the numbers in the book she was
frowning over only this morning. The book that is open now,
a useless pillow, collecting whatever leaks from her mouth.

Hear that scream becoming a word. 'Mother.'

She does not answer him. Her arms hang limp by her side.

'Mother!'

His first word is now his only word, the only one that
matters.

He is shaking her now, and he finds her body does not
move the way he is used to. The way bodies should. His scream
dies, unanswered, melts into tears, but the man on the wireless
doesn't even pretend to understand.

Is it an earthquake or simply a shock?
Is it the good turtle soup or merely the mock?
Is it a cocktail, this feeling of joy?
Or is what I feel the real McCoy?

The smiling voice quivers over the airwaves from another
world, a voice that cannot see the woman or the boy or the
wide-brimmed hats in torn-out advertisements and articles.

He tries to push her back in her chair, the rag-doll mother,
this heavy and stringless puppet, but the weight is too much.
She falls onto him, and then off him, her cheek skimming his
shoulder.

Unnaturally, she hangs. She should be in pain, he wants
her to be in pain, but she is not. It is not.

The scream is a howl now. A howl that, when the upstairs
tenant Mr Steer arrives into the scene, will eventually be
reduced to a heavy sob. For days, for weeks, for months, the
boy will weep, and soon the sound of his own weeping will
become a kind of comfort to him, the only continuity from
the life in the city and the life on the Dorset farm of his adoptive
parents. A new life of big skies and dung-scented air and
clouts around the head from the only father he will know.

I used to blame myself for my mother's demise. I used to
remember her telling me she hated me and that she wished
I'd never been born. These memories are unreliable. The
first one I can trust is the first one I have proof of. The
one that is contained inside all the others, like the smallest
Russian doll. Something I kept with me no matter how
far away I got from that shop, and that home, in Piccadilly.
After all, this memory had left traces. A body, an empty
jar of pills, a throat that had screamed itself into laryngitis.

There was no note, though. There was no written explanation
for what she did or why she did it. None of the usual
suicide etiquette – 'this is not your fault', 'I am so sorry for',
'please find it in your heart to' – no, none of that. Later on,
I wanted something I could hold in my hands, something I
could read that would help me resolve my feelings towards
this woman who was her own murderer, but there was nothing.
All I had was that one simple fact.

The numbers in her account book provided her with a
better argument for death than her three-year-old son had
done for life.

For years, I had tried to rationalise it. My mother's suicide
was not my fault. I was three years old. She was a grown
woman who should have given up the business. It wasn't my
fault a second world war had bombed the glamour out of the
world years before.

No, not my fault. And, if I had been a rational creature,
such reassurances might just have worked. Rational creatures?
There are no rational creatures. Machines are rational, because
they cannot love. And love, no matter what the brain scientists
tell us, is not mechanical.

I felt an absence, a literal feeling, as real as the phantom
limb of an amputee. You lose an arm but you can still feel
the clenching of your fist. Doctors know the symptom as
the 'phantom limb'. It can recur indefinitely for the rest
of a life, the feeling that the arm is still part of you despite
the knowledge it has gone. You get used to something
being there, something you almost take for granted, that
has been by your side, and you can never fully adjust to
its absence. All my life, it's been there. An invisible
clenching, trying to grip something I couldn't. In the
process I surrounded myself with objects that belonged to
the past in the vain hope I could try and reach back through
time, or at least weigh it down, and stop its dread march
forward.

It was too much, I realise that. And that clenched grip on
the past became tighter still when I lost your own mother,
and then Reuben.

All I can hope is that as my grip is released you will be able,
one day, to run freer than I ever managed, and leave the unsatisfied
ghosts of family to their own eternal regrets.