The Bellwether Revivals (17 page)

‘You can’t just go up to somebody at a book signing and ask him to psychoanalyse your friend.’

‘Who said anything about a book signing?’

‘Well, I just assumed—are you saying you
know
this Crest fellow?’

‘Not exactly. He’s more like a friend of a friend.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘Because I needed to find out if it was the same Herbert Crest. And now I know it is—’

‘Oh, for crying out loud, this is so typical.’ Iris took three large gulps of water as if to cool herself down. ‘Don’t you see what my brother’s up to? He’s playing with you, Oscar. He’s playing with us both. He must’ve found out your connection to this Crest fellow and he’s having some fun with us.’

‘I don’t see how he could know anything about it.’

She laughed. ‘That’s precisely the point. It’s how my brother gets his kicks. He likes to prove his intelligence, his power over people; he likes to astound you with things then pretend like they’re nothing, like it was barely an effort, when really—do you see what I’m talking about?’ She paused to catch her breath. ‘That’s why I know it’s more than just a simple diagnosis with him. Everything’s just one big game to my brother. He revels in the meddling. As soon as I get close to someone, he finds some way to drive a wedge between us. He’s done the same thing all my life.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, you don’t want to hear my stupid theories on it. Let’s just eat.’

‘Tell me.’

She set her cutlery down, folding her hands. ‘Because, deep down, he’s frightened of losing me—that’s why. Because if I ever get married and move away, he won’t be able have power over me any more. And that’s what he needs, to feel power over
everyone
. It’s what sustains him.’ She sighed. ‘It’s how he does it that’s so
frustrating. He manages to mess with my life so subtly that there’s no way of proving it, so when I tell my parents about it, it looks like I’m the one causing trouble, telling stories. But I’m not!’ She stared at Oscar, reaching across the table to take his hand. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should never have dragged you into this.’

‘Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.’

‘I know you can.’ She smiled. ‘That’s why I need you with me, every step. We can’t let my brother ruin this.’

‘We won’t.’

She leaned back. ‘You’re serious about me, aren’t you, Oscar? Please say that you are.’

She asked it so straightforwardly that he was numb for a moment. He had to move his eyes away. ‘I’m more serious about you than I’ve ever been about anyone,’ he said, keeping his voice steady, and when he looked up, he found her eyes were glazed with tears. She began to dab at them with the side of her finger. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to hear that,’ she said. ‘In my family, nobody ever says that kind of thing out loud.’

They held hands as they walked into town. The night was oddly warm and the streets were still wet with rain. They went through Parker’s Piece, straying from the footpath to take a shortcut across the grass. There was a muddy line in the turf, made by the feet of countless people who’d taken the same shortcut before them. A desire line. He’d learned the term from Dr Paulsen, who’d pointed out the worn grooves of wheelchair tracks in the Cedarbrook garden last year.

Iris seemed to like the phrase. ‘Eden says English is unromantic, but I think he’s wrong about that. We have so many beautiful words for ordinary things.’ She took deep breaths of fresh air, peering across the open park. ‘If I had to choose my favourite word in the English language—actually, my favourite thing in the world, full stop—do you know what it’d be?’

‘What?’

‘Petrichor. It’s the word for how the earth smells after rainfall.’

He kissed her on the cheek, walking on. ‘You’re too smart for me, miss.’

‘Don’t say that. You’re just as clever as I am.’ He felt her tugging at the bend of his arm. ‘You could be anything you wanted to be.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Lately it feels okay being who I am.’

She smiled and pulled him closer. ‘Well, that’s just fine with me, too.’

When they reached the coffee house by Emmanuel College, it was closed and shuttered over, so they headed straight back to Oscar’s flat. His room was dim and damp. He threw Crest’s book onto the bed and cleared away the dishes from the floor. Iris smoked a clove by the window while he lit some candles and put Nina Simone on the stereo. They lay down beside each other on the bed, listening to that deep, drawling voice, that frostbitten piano sound. Iris picked up
The Girl With the God Complex
and, without saying a word, she took her glasses from her pocket and began to read. He unbuttoned her blouse with one hand as she turned the pages, smoothing his fingers across her breast. They lay there together until he fell asleep. It was very late by the time he woke up again. The music had stopped but Iris was still reading in the sallow light with her blouse undone and her glasses at the tip of her nose, still cradled in the bend of his arm. ‘I like how this Crest fellow writes,’ she said. ‘You were right about him.’

She turned back a few chapters, locating a certain paragraph and tapping her finger on it:
‘Sometimes, NPD sufferers are trapped in an endless cycle of trying to prove their abilities,’
she read aloud.
‘They may set themselves extraordinary, impossible challenges to solve or overcome, only to battle with the feelings of failure and incompetence that these self-imposed challenges create
.… I’ve got to admit, it’s ringing a few too many bells.’ Finding her place again, she carried on reading, and soon she gave another hum of recognition.
‘Listen to this part:
In a family like Jennifer’s, where nobody talked about their pride or love for each other, the smallest compliment would seem to her like the loudest affirmation
. It’s like he’s been living in my house for years.’

Oscar wheeled Dr Paulsen across the car park. The Orchard was alive with midday shadows and he could see a glimmer of footprints in the dewy grass beyond the tea pavilion. Pale autumn sunlight slanted down through the apple trees and the birds were trilling in the hedges. Women sat alone under half-bare branches, sipping tea from dainty cups. Couples shared ploughman’s lunches across green patio tables. Young men lazed in deck chairs with their headphones on. ‘Just park me under that big one over there,’ Paulsen said, pointing to an apple tree that was taller and wider than the others. ‘We’re a little early. Here—’ The old man reached under the blanket on his lap, pulling out a twenty-pound note, ‘get me a scone with all the trimmings and an Assam, and whatever you want for yourself. Bring the tray over, then make yourself scarce. Understand?’

‘Where should I go?’

‘I don’t care. Just keep out of earshot. I don’t like airing my linen in public.’

Oscar bought the tea and scones from the pavilion and delivered them. Then he found a free table in a patch of grass that was
warm with sunshine. He sat in a deck chair, quietly drinking an Earl Grey, staring at the resilient green of the trees. It was the first time he’d ever been to The Orchard, though he’d heard so much about it from the old man. According to Paulsen, the greats of English literature had walked in the tall grass here—Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke; J. B. Priestley and E. M. Forster; John Betjeman and A. A. Milne. Oscar had always wanted to see it for himself, but he’d been too afraid of their shadows to visit alone. Now he was experiencing it for what it was—trees and grass, sky and mud, weeds and flowers—something beautiful and unruined. He wanted to come back here with Iris and lie with her under the same tree that Ted Hughes had once lain beneath with Sylvia Plath, dreaming up poems for each other. (Lately, he’d been trying to write something of his own. The title had come easily, and he’d sketched out a decent first line—
You are the first thing about the morning that I recognise
—but so far he hadn’t been able to think of anything good enough to follow it.)

He looked over at Dr Paulsen. The old man was sitting with his hands folded on the tabletop and every so often he would tilt his head, as if he’d caught sight of Herbert Crest approaching from some hidden aspect of the tea pavilion. Then he’d turn away again, feigning a new appetite for his uneaten scone.

Around half-past the hour, Oscar saw someone approach the old man’s table. For a long moment, Paulsen barely regarded the person in the baseball cap who was standing before him, but then the two men exchanged words—a few short sentences that sounded to Oscar like the distant rumble of a boat engine—and Dr Paulsen looked up, beaming. He opened out his arms and embraced the man, who stooped down, slapping two palms against his back. The man removed his cap, revealing a scalp as smooth and shiny as a cricket ball, and sat down at Paulsen’s table, gazing at him. It was Herbert Crest. He looked different from his picture on the book jacket. Now he was skinny and ghostly and
frail. From a distance, it seemed like the daylight was coming through his body, the way a torchbeam shines through dust.

The two men talked for a long time. Their conversation was broken only by frequent peals of Crest’s laughter, and Paulsen’s enthusiastic cackling. Oscar wondered what they were discussing, trying to imagine what these two fragile old things had once meant to each other. Neither man had seen the other in twenty years, but it seemed as if they were continuing a conversation they’d only started at breakfast. Their bodies had an easy, uncomplicated language.

Soon enough, Oscar found they were both looking back at him. Paulsen motioned with his hand—one glacial movement, inviting him over. The two men kept their eyes on him as he approached. ‘Herb wanted to meet you,’ Paulsen said.

‘He’s been singing your praises all afternoon,’ said Herbert Crest, getting up slowly. His voice was thin and rusty, and he spoke with the rolling, curling vowels of a Kennedy. There was a bony fragility to his handshake. ‘Anyone who can impress Bram Paulsen is somebody I need to meet.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ Oscar said.

‘To meet me, or to look after this old guy?’

‘Both.’

Crest grinned. Now that he was closer, Oscar could see the scar on the top of his bald head—a long, straight, fleshy seam.

‘Oscar’s quite a fan of yours,’ Paulsen said. ‘Could hardly shut up about your book in the car.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Girl With the God Complex.’

‘Ah. You liked it, huh?’

‘Very much.’

Crest lowered himself into the deck chair. ‘I always thought it was my best. Sold worse than any of them, though. Funny how that works.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Not that book sales have ever bothered me.’

Oscar took a seat beside him. ‘I loved the way you wrote about that girl. It was like you really felt something for her.’

‘Kind of you to say.’

‘I wondered what became of her.’

‘The girl?’ Crest wet his lips with a slither of his tongue. ‘Y’know, she almost got better there for a while.’ He darted his eyes towards the sky. ‘She died, though, couple years after the book came out. Angela. That was her real name.’

‘Oh.’

Crest rubbed at the dry stubble on his cheek. ‘Cut her wrists up pretty bad, so they told me. I guess she couldn’t stand living with us mortals any longer.’ He tried to laugh, but it sounded weak and insincere.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Oscar said.

‘Not as sorry as I was, believe me. But, hey, what can you do? What can any of us do? Death is part of life and all that crap.’ Crest gave Dr Paulsen a warm smile. ‘Y’know, I tried to get the publisher to reissue that book, but they wouldn’t touch it. So I told them where to go. Ha. I guess that’s why the big boys won’t publish me any more—I’m too much of a hot head. Bram can testify to that.’

Paulsen blinked.

‘It’s too late to change me.’

‘Are you still writing?’ Oscar asked.

‘I’m working on a book right now, as it happens. It’s kind of why I’m here.’ Crest went quiet. ‘Listen, would you mind getting me some water? I’m dry as a sandbox and I’ve got a long ride home.’

‘Yes, some water would be nice,’ Paulsen said. He gave Oscar a heavy look. It was an expression he recognised, one that said: Take the hint.

Oscar bought a bottle of Perrier from the tea pavilion. A couple of women were holding a conference about what kind of cake was best, coffee or carrot, and whose turn it was to pay. They
side-stepped along with their tray, slowing the line. When he arrived back at the table, Herbert Crest was gone.

‘He had to rush off,’ Paulsen said. ‘A call came through.’

‘Oh. Damn.’

‘You don’t have to pretend you’re sad about it.’

‘No, I’m—there was something else I wanted to ask him, that’s all.’

‘Just be glad you got to meet him. I wasn’t planning on introducing you two, but he spotted you right away. The first thing he said when he sat down was: “I know that’s your nurse over there, Bram, you can’t fool me. I’ve got mine waiting in the car!” He always could see right through me, the bastard. God, I love him.’

Oscar wheeled the old man back through the trees, across the pebbles of the car park. The sunlight was fading but there was a pleasant smell in the air of some distant bonfire. He heaved Paulsen into the passenger seat of the minibus, then folded up the wheelchair and put it in the boot. As he started the engine, the old man thanked him. ‘You made it very easy for me today, Oscar. I won’t forget it. That boy Deeraj wouldn’t have left me alone for a second with his fussing and hovering. But not you. You’re a good lad. I almost felt alive again today.’

The old man barely said another word on the drive back to Cambridge. He just gazed out of the passenger side, at the rolling smudge of the hard shoulder, the steel girders, the combed rows of farmland. It was early evening and the sky had grown purple. The tyres droned on the carriageway tarmac.

As they neared the edge of the city, Oscar couldn’t hold from speaking any longer. He knew that Dr Paulsen had no wife, no children, no remaining family. Not a single person had ever come to visit him at Cedarbrook the whole time he had known him. Herbert Crest, he realised, was the only person the old man had left in the world. ‘Tell me to butt out if you want, but I’ve got to ask—’