The Possession of Mr Cave (7 page)

I woke with a jolt.

There was a noise, outside.

Or perhaps it wasn't a noise, perhaps it was another kind
of sensory intrusion, something less easy to explain.

Either way, I awoke, and felt the need to step out of bed
and part the curtains I never opened. At first I saw nothing.
But then, across the park, the street lamp flickered. My eyes
lowered their gaze and strained to see through the dark to
interpret the large shape in the distance.

I gasped.

There, precisely where Reuben had fallen, was something
else standing on the pavement. A horse, a chestnut Trakehner,
under the street lamp.

It was Turpin, staring (I imagined) straight at me.

I didn't dress. I didn't wake you. I simply put on my
slippers and my dressing gown and quietly locked you in
the house. The town was dead so nobody saw my strange
figure cross the park towards him, the horse that stood still
under that stuttering light as if he had something to tell
me.

When I reached the street he leaned his head away from
me and began to walk towards Micklegate. I followed, breaking
into a jog as I went under the Norman archway of Micklegate
Bar. A strange sensation of being watched as I came out the
other side, as if traitors' heads were still looking down from
their spikes. Richard, Duke of York, sneering at another mad
sight in the city of ghosts.

I picked up speed as your runaway horse began to canter,
but I lost a slipper. 'Turpin! Turpin! Wait! Come back!'

A night taxi smoothed in towards me, lowering its window.
'Y'all right, mate?' The overfed driver, his swollen face leaning
over an empty seat.

'Yes. No. My daughter's horse. I'm following my daughter's
horse. Do you see it? You just passed it.'

He frowned and glanced down. Finding some kind of
warning in my naked foot he drove away. As for myself, I
retrieved my slipper and kept up my pursuit, following
Turpin over the stagnant river and through the streets, losing
sight of him at each corner but following the clatter of his
hooves.

A lunatic tramp was in the market square. He had jumped
out from nowhere and his giant hands now wrestled with my
dressing gown. I tried to twist away and keep sight of the
horse, but I had lost him.

'Leave me alone,' I told the tramp, but he wouldn't. I pushed
him away, my hand pressing into his scarred and ancient face.
There was a brief tussle, concluding with him falling onto the
cobbled ground and crying out in pain.

I ran on, but it was no use. Your horse was nowhere. The
hooves had faded into silence. I wondered what, precisely, I
was doing. Even if I had caught up with Turpin, what could
I have done with a horse with no harness? I can only tell
you that I followed not out of thought but instinct, a decision
of the soul rather than the mind, as though I had little
choice.

Then I heard those iron-shod hooves again, trotting near
the Minster.

There was a growing tightness in my chest as I reached
the south transept of the church, its golden limestone rendered
pale under the floodlights. I stood still, caught my breath,
and admitted defeat. I strained to hear the horse but there
was nothing.

It was at this point that I heard Reuben behind me. He
was standing in the dark, rubbing his toothbrush against
his cheek, just like that day I had interrupted him in the
bathroom.

'Where's my horse?' he said, the violence against his own
face not causing any apparent pain.

'Reuben, I don't understand.'

'Petal wants a horse. Petal gets a horse.'

I wanted to see him more clearly, so I stepped closer. 'You
didn't want a horse.'

'I asked for a horse.' His voice soft and quiet, with only
the faintest trace of resentment.

'You were never interested in horses. I got you other things.
I bought you a bicycle.'

'You sold my bike. Where's my horse?'

'Reuben, please.'

'Horses aren't bikes.'

'Reuben?'

In the reflected light from the church I saw the blood on
his cheek shine black.

'I loved you, Reuben. I still love you.'

'Horses aren't bikes.'

'Oh, stop it, Reuben. Please.'

'You didn't love me.'

I thought of the horse that had nearly killed you. The horse
that had been there, precisely where Reuben was standing.

'It was you, wasn't it? You got inside Turpin.'

He said nothing, but kept on brushing his cheek.

'You're trying to get inside me, aren't you? Please, don't,
Reuben. Please.' I pleaded, I fell to my knees. I closed my
eyes, and prayed aloud: 'Reuben, please, please, I'm begging
you, don't hurt your sister.'

I rose to my slippered feet, scanned around the empty paving
stones. 'Reuben, where are you?'

I looked towards the Minster, a structure men devoted entire
working lives to make look this bold, this solid, this arrogant.

'Where is he?' I shouted up towards the church, towards
the Rose Window. 'Where is my son?'

A fleeing echo, and then nothing.

Just the true dead quiet of limestone and glass.

Such troubled nights weakened my resolve. I felt like Odysseus
crossing the River of Fear, too weak and confused to be fully
in control.

The rules I had given you gradually seemed harder to
enforce, as my worries grew about your brother's unseen intention.
Yet wasn't it precisely because of Reuben that I had to
keep you where I could see you? Even so, I couldn't help loosening
my grip.

You would nip out on errands that would take far longer
than required. You would test the phrase 'civilised volume' to
the limit. Imogen would walk out of your bedroom and I
would smell tobacco, but could never find any other evidence
that you smoked.

Of course, Cynthia was small help.

'You need to finish with these rules, Terence,' she said one
afternoon, as she sat in the shop polishing a tray.

'No, Cynthia, I don't. They are working perfectly well.'

She screwed up her nose, as though my words smelt as bad
as the ammonia that was filling the shop. 'Oh, Terence, you
don't believe that, do you?'

'With the greatest of respect, I really feel it is up to me and
me alone how I choose to deal with my daughter.'

Her nose took particular offence to the 'deal with' part of that,
if I remember correctly. 'And what would Helen think, I wonder?'

The Helen card, the ace in Cynthia's pack.

'Helen wanted me to protect her children,' I said. 'No matter
what, that is what she wanted. I've already failed half of that
task, I'm not going to lose Bryony as well.'

A long silence followed.

I was tired and emotional and sometimes I found that your
grandmother's manner, much like her use of ammonia, was a
little heavy-handed.

'It's her birthday coming up,' she said eventually.

I remembered Reuben talking about his bicycle the previous
night. 'I
know
it's her birthday coming up.'

By this point I had already asked you what you wanted
and you had shrugged a 'Nothing' in response. I think you
meant it, too. I think you wanted the whole day to drop off
the calendar.

It was always going to be a difficult occasion, I knew that.
The first birthday that wasn't a shared event. Yet I knew also
that it would be a good opportunity to try and put things
right again, between us both. A way of showing you that I
really did have your best interests at heart.

'Why don't you take her clothes shopping?' Cynthia asked,
as Higgins jumped onto her lap.

I winced. 'Shopping? I don't know. It could be a recipe
for disaster.'

Higgins' slow blue gaze echoed Cynthia's look of disappointment.

'Not if you
made the effort
, Terence,' she said, emphasising
the 'made the effort' part. 'It will be good. You won't have to
choose anything. I doubt your sartorial judgement will be in
high demand,' she added, with a sly look down at my beige,
cotton twill trousers. 'All you have to do is nod your head and
tell her she looks lovely.'

I had no alternative. I didn't have a clue what to buy you.
In previous years this had never been a problem. It had always
been so easy to know what to get, as there was always something
you had specifically wanted. A doll's house. A trip to
the ballet. A holiday to Catalonia, to see Pablo Casals' former
home.

A horse.

Now the things you wanted were hidden from view, part
of the mist that had gathered around your whole being the
evening Reuben died.

But this was it, I realised. An opportunity to clear the weather,
and bring back my blue-sky girl.

'All right,' I said. 'All right, Cynthia, we'll give it a go.'

And she smiled, and seemed proud, and I felt your mother's
own pride somewhere beyond, behind those dark painted lips
and eyes, and I felt stronger, just for that moment. A man repaired,
who could shield us from whatever Reuben had in store.

That night, with Cynthia's words still fresh in my ear, I cooked
you your favourite childhood meal – shepherd's pie followed
by apple charlotte.

'Bryony,' I called. '
Ma cherie! À table!
' You stayed in your
room. I wrestled to keep calm. 'Bryony, please, come into the
kitchen.'

Eventually you appeared, my starving waif. Your nostrils
visibly quivered at the smell, but you tried not to look anything
other than in a sulk. You sat down. Your lips were in a pout.
Your arms hung limply by your side, like oars in an abandoned
boat.

'Look.' I pulled the shepherd's pie from the oven.

'I'm not hungry,' you said.

I decided to defrost your mood by telling you about the
shopping trip I had planned.

Your pout twisted in consideration. 'What, I can buy any
clothes I want? Not long flowery dresses or polo necks or
anything? I can buy things I like?'

I extracted a reluctant 'Yes' from my mouth. 'Within reason.'

You seemed mildly impressed, perhaps wondering if this
was going to be part of a wider change, and sat down to
contemplate your shepherd's pie. Then, before you had taken
a mouthful, the telephone rang and you sprang up to answer.
Judging from your light tone I knew it must be Cynthia. You
chatted for a while, giggling occasionally.

'Really?' you kept saying, as I strained to catch Cynthia's
weak murmur on the other end of the line.

'Da-ad,' you said, after five minutes or so. You hadn't
sounded this pleasant for weeks. 'Grandmother wants to know
if I can go to her house for my birthday. She says I'm allowed
to have some friends around.'

I struggled to hide my fury. How dare Cynthia undermine
my authority! Why hadn't she mentioned this alongside the
shopping suggestion? I grabbed the telephone. 'Cynthia?
What's this?'

She groaned, like a runner who had just realised she'd entered
a longer race. 'Now, listen to me, Terence, I thought it would
be nice for her to have a little party.'

'A party?' I spat the word. 'So I'm meant to sit there all
night listening to horrendous music?'

'No, Terence,' Cynthia told me firmly. 'You're not meant
to sit there all night doing anything. You're not invited. It's
girls only.'

As the conversation went on I could see your eyes pleading
with me, and your palms pressed together in prayer.

'Now, is she allowed to come?'

I thought of Rome and all those other times I had pushed
you further away from me.

'Yes,' I said, with slow solemnity. 'She's allowed.'

I placed the telephone down, and consoled myself with the
'girls only' part of Cynthia's plan. And at least you'd be under
Cynthia's roof, rather than in a country field.

My lenience had a reward: the hunger strike came to an
end. I watched with attentive glee as the minced beef and
mashed potato disappeared into your mouth, and enjoyed
my own meal so much more for knowing its taste was being
shared. Cynthia telephoned again, later, after we had finished
the apple charlotte.

'Well done, Terence,' she told me, and confirmed my hope.
'Helen would be proud of you.'

After the call I followed the tender sound of cello music
coming from your room, as you practised your piece for
the Drama and Music Festival. My head leaned against
your door, my eyes closed, and I lost myself in the divine
opening bars of Beethoven's
Pathétique
. The sound of love,
the sound of grief; the helpless, hopeful tears of the human
soul.

A love song was playing. A man was on a large video screen,
creasing his young face with forced emotion.

'That's the problem,' I told Cynthia, pointing up at this
unkempt crooner.

Cynthia gave me that look of stern confusion I was becoming
increasingly used to. 'What? Music?' She seemed appalled at
the suggestion.

'No. All this false love they're surrounded by. All this exaggerated
emotion. It makes everything so difficult for them.'

'For who?'

I gestured vaguely around me, at the young girls, flicking
their way through rails of boy-catching outfits. 'For children,'
I said. 'They are sold love as if it was another must-have purchase.
They're bombarded with all this fake feeling constantly nowadays.
They can't escape it. It's incessant. They are drowning in
it. It's precisely what D. H. Lawrence prophesied.'

Cynthia rolled her eyes. 'Oh yes, D. H. Lawrence. The great
moralist. Enlighten me, Terence, please. What did he say?'

'He said something about it. Oh, I can't remember.
Something about how it will drive people towards insanity.
They won't know how to feel any more. They'll have all this
counterfeit emotion and never know their own feelings.'

Cynthia closed her eyes and shook her head. 'Have you
listened to yourself, Terence?'

'D. H. Lawrence,' I said. 'Not me.'

'No. You, Terence. You.' I caught my own distorted reflection
in the ridiculous bangle she was wearing. 'But I know
what this is really all about.'

I sighed. 'Do you?'

The knowing raise of those thinned eyebrows. 'Yes, I do.
You're just worried. It's her birthday. Bryony's getting older
and you can't cope with it.'

'She's turning into someone else,' I said. 'It's like she's been
infected with all this modern rubbish she used to be immune
to. I want her to be immune again. It's unhealthy. She'll end
up doing things she'll regret, when she's older, when she knows
better, when she . . .'

Cynthia was staring over at a stand of accessories where an
array of belts were hanging down. On the top of the stand
was a row of hands. Mass-produced sculptures, cast in black
plastic, intended to hold jewellery. They made me think of
dead spirits reaching out to the living.

'Aren't those belts fabulous?' Cynthia said. 'I think I might
get one.'

'Cynthia, are you even lis—'

My words died. You stepped out of the changing rooms,
wearing a look I can only describe as Harlot Caught in a Cyclone.

'Oh, it looks great,' Cynthia said. 'Isn't it fun? Doesn't she
look great, Terence? Terence? Terence?'

A sharp elbow to my ribs.

'Yes,' I said. 'From the neck up.'

I caught a boy staring at you, behind his girlfriend's back.
A famished longing that sent a shot of fear through me.

'Oh, don't listen to your father,' she told you, as if you ever
would.

You disappeared back into the changing rooms and reemerged
to test Cynthia's opinion on a variety of combinations.
Striped harlot. Knitted harlot. Polka-dotted harlot. I sat there
and grumbled my fatherly way through each and every one of
them. No. There was one I liked, wasn't there? The jeans with
the green sweater. That was quite an easy combination to approve,
given that it covered all the parts it should have, and didn't
advertise your flesh like a pig's carcass in a butcher's window.

'Oh yes,' I said. 'That's more like it.' The kiss of death of
course. You screwed up your nose and disappeared, re-emerging
as Dracula's bride.

Still, it was a good afternoon.

We got along, with the aid of my credit card and Cynthia's
warm witchcraft. We went for a drink and some walnut loaf
at Betty's Tea Rooms, do you remember? You seemed happy,
between the distant stares, to be with me. Out in town, on
public view, with your father. Rome, it seemed, was forgotten.
And so was the embarrassment I had caused in the field. We
didn't speak of it. We let Cynthia lead the conversation, a
narrow and happy path with the right kind of scenery. Reuben
stayed in the bushes, even though we could feel him, ready
to pounce on us at any moment.

'So,' Cynthia said to you, as a gleaming black talon addressed
the crumb on her lip, 'are you looking forward to tonight?'

And she winked. Yes, she did. She winked. That saucy,
theatrical descent of the eyelid closing me out of existence.

'Yes,' you said, smiling smirkishly. 'Yes. I am.'

Oh yes, that evening. Your birthday. It comes to me. The
whole hideous shape of it perfectly intact. Except, of course,
that one missing link.

I had dropped you off at Cynthia's and then loitered nearby,
parked high on a kerb. My plan was to sit there a while, and
see who had been invited. I saw Imogen arrive, dressed like
a Victorian strumpet, but was relieved to see she had no boys
in tow.

I was on the cusp of leaving when I saw it. The taxi. I sat
there, watching, as it pulled up, gasped in unheard terror as
it honked its horn and you and Imogen ran out, giggling, and
climbed in the back.

Before I had fully appreciated the situation it was driving
away. What could I do? There was no point rushing in and
reprimanding Cynthia. My priority was to follow you, and
make sure you were safe.

My first instinct was to speed ahead and overtake the taxi,
forcing it to stop. But I remembered the way everything had
deteriorated the last time I had embarrassed you in front of
your friends. And what would have happened? You would
have given me a boxful of lies and then sought even harder
to defy me. No. I had to follow you. I had to find out all the
answers for myself, and punish you later.

Yellow hovered through the foggy air. A kind of alien sickness
spreading from the street lamps to infect the whole night. It
made it no easier to see the car in front, transporting my
daughter at speeds she wasn't made to travel at, but I held
onto the chase, ignoring limits of speed and recklessness as I
sped through the jaundiced vapours.

The taxi slid into the left lane and turned off at the next
junction. I turned too, recklessly close. One twist of your neck
and you might have seen the familiar headlights gleaming
through the fog. To my infinite horror I realised we were heading
towards Leeds, a city that cared as much for my daughter's
well-being as a flame cares for the well-being of a moth.

I felt sick with anxiety. Where were you going at this time
on a Friday night? The fog thinned out, and I slowed down
to create more distance between the two cars.

All around me, the horror continued.

There are still Enlightenment thinkers among us who grasp
at the idea of Progress as stubbornly as a three-year-old holds
onto a forbidden toy. The idea that society is at its most
advanced is a preposterous one. Scientific progress – yes, maybe,
perhaps. But moral progress? Aesthetic progress? Social
progress? These latter-day Diderots should ride their gilded
carriages into the heart of the English city centre on a Friday
night and measure how far the humans have come. Oh, what
advancement they will find! Look, there's Progress throwing a
bottle across the street! Look, there's Progress showing the
world the dark crevasse of its backside!

I stayed two cars behind, safely invisible, as the Victorian
architecture loomed above the street lamps and bar fronts,
dissolving like an irrelevant memory into the night.

Your taxi eventually halted under a railway bridge where a
queue of strange-haired boys (I saw only boys) waited to enter
a door in the wall with the word COCKPIT hanging over it,
a word which conjured all manner of connotations in my
fevered mind.

'Cynthia,' I muttered to the empty car. 'You foolish, foolish
woman.'

I parked next to a loading bay for a pizza parlour and waited,
eyed with humorous curiosity by an underage chef on a cigarette
break.

Cities try to shame us into action, as they know stillness is
the preserve of the destitute, the dangerous, the dead. But
there was no point rushing. I wanted to stay where I was until
you were inside that place, that unknown Hell I was soon to
enter. After all, I had to stay hidden from you and then find
out how best to protect you. I had to know what this night
would consist of, without my interference, if I was ever to
steer you back onto the right course.

A group of women passed the car wearing angel wings
and advertising their bad diets with the most ill-advised attire.
They eviscerated a love song at high volume, a communal
mating call uglier than any in nature, and blew me kisses.
One held a large inflatable phallus and waved it in front of
the car window.

I closed my eyes, and tried to fight him back, as the singing
faded away into traffic. Then, taking a large deep breath of
that sealed and untainted air, I went out, into the night, to
watch my dear sweet lamb dance among the wolves.

The man at the door stared down at me from his giant boulder
of a head.

'No, fella,' he said, 'Don't think so.'

I begged his pardon.

'Saint your scene.'

And which scene was it? I wondered. The pivotal turning
point in Act Two, where a twist of fortunes is followed by the
increasingly rapid descent towards tragedy?

'I have money,' I said. 'And I am more than prepared to
pay the full cost of entry into your establishment.'

The boulder ignored me, looking behind and tilting left. A
signal for the two young droogs next in the queue to enter
the doorway. Meanwhile, my unstoppable mouth continued
to plead with this rock-head, this St Peter on protein shakes.

'Listen, are you planning to let me pass, because I must
inform you I have no intention of leaving.'

To which he responded with a most creative turn of phrase:
'—— off, you ———— before I —— your face.'

I inhaled his words with dignity. 'Right, I see. Well, dear
man, let me put it like this. You have just allowed a girl who
is three years under the required age to enter your establishment.
I know this because she happens to be my daughter.
Now, as keeper of the gates, you have two choices. Either you
persist in your present and rather offensive strategy and suffer
the unfortunate consequences. Or you allow me to go inside
and retrieve her. In which case I shall not be contacting your
employer, or my close friends at the council.'

His eyes contemplated the parallel universe, devoid of councils
and employers, where he was now merrily engaged in
stamping my head into the tarmac.

'——,' he said, but let me through all the same.

A 'band' was 'onstage' playing 'music'. I saw a crudely designed
banner indicating they were called the Cleopatras, which was
strange as there were four Antonys to only one, impossibly
angry Ptolemy Queen.

Did you know this band? Were you a fan? Was that why
you were there?

It was like walking into a panic attack. No, that makes it
sound too cosy. It was like walking into someone else's panic
attack, someone I didn't know and didn't want to. Someone
closing their eyes on a railway platform at a quarter past
midnight, debating whether to end it all under the next freight
train that passes through. (I once heard a Radio 4 nitwit say
that if Beethoven were alive today he would be playing lead
guitar in a rock band. No. He would be sitting on that railway
platform, breathing into a brown paper bag as he prayed for
the train that would finish him.)

I searched for you amid the groundlings, amid the jumping
bodies that reached hungrily for the stage. The idea of you
there, among these sun-shirking opium eaters, filled me with
the same terror I had found when searching for you in Rome,
a sense that I was losing you to evil forces of the night. Darkness
and devils.

Cleopatra screamed as I pushed my way through. I turned
to the stage and saw her wrestling with the microphone as
though it were an asp, ready to sink its poison into her chest.

'Excuse me,' I said, but of course I had no voice. The music
had stolen it. Indeed, that was probably what it was there for,
to steal voices, to give flesh an easy triumph over conversation.

Yes. Bodies, bodies, bodies. The whole place was congested
with them. That was all they were to me. Just bodies. What
else could I see them as? What type of personality could have
existed inside that place? The noise made thought and conversation
impossible.

'Is there no way out of the mind?' asked the poet.

Yes, you go where youth goes. To the 'Cockpit' on the dying
hours of a Friday. There you will find five hundred rocking
heads becoming no more or less than the limbs below them.

Oh, Bryony, don't frown.

Please, don't shake your head in disgust.

I am ignorant in these matters. You think that, don't you?

You think I have no understanding of what it means to be
young. To want to abandon yourself entirely and dissolve inside
a moment. To desire feeling instead of thought. Oh yes, I
know to you I have always been there, as parents always have.
I might as well have been erected by the Druids.

A standing stone, from the time before time.

You never looked into my eyes and saw the long-haired
youth who had once slugged back a glass of absinthe midway
through a reading of Keats' 'Hyperion' at the Young Restorers'
Poetry Club.

*