The Bellwether Revivals (22 page)

‘We’re just glad you’re back,’ Yin said. ‘You had us all worried.’

‘Yeah. It’s a celebration,’ Oscar said.

‘You’re too important to go stepping in the way of traffic,’ Marcus added. ‘Don’t do it again.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Theo, helping Iris onto the bed, twisting her legs around and propping them on a mass of pillows. Again, Iris rocked with the pain. Oscar, seeing her pain, felt it too. The others looked at her with faces of sympathy—all except Eden, who simply loitered near her bed, expressionless, saying nothing at all. He stood with his arms folded, his right hand fingering his weedy left bicep, as if practising a piano tune.

‘Come on, everybody—out.’ Theo clapped his hands together, shooing them back into the garden. He turned to his daughter. ‘You need to rest that leg awhile, okay? I’ll come back later with your tablets.’

‘You don’t need to fuss over me, I’m fine.’

‘Nonsense. I’ve taken the day off work.’

‘Oh, Dad, you needn’t have done that.’

‘Tough luck.’

‘Where did Mum go?’

‘She went back up to the house. Had to make a call.’

Iris threw her head back against the pillow and looked around the room. ‘It’s so lovely in here. The light is so gentle.’

‘As long as you’re comfortable.’

‘Thanks, everyone, for looking after me like this,’ Iris said. ‘I have such good friends. Come in and see me later? I want to hear all your news.’

Everybody started filing out, waving goodbye-for-now. Eden trailed slightly behind, hands deep in his pockets. Oscar could see him in the corner of his eye. ‘Wait, hang on, sweetheart!’ Iris called out.

Eden turned first. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh, no,’ Iris said, her voice softening, ‘sorry, I meant Oscar.’

There was a palpable silence in the room. Eden cleared his throat a little meekly and said: ‘Of course. Of course you did.’ He walked away, head lowered, and Oscar could smell the stale odour of his body as it passed by him in a gust. Jane went to catch him up, calling, ‘Eden, darling, slow down!’ The others followed. And soon it was just the two of them, alone in the great yawning space of the organ house.

Iris made sure the doors were closed before she took his hand and asked: ‘Is everything set?’

‘I did it this morning, first thing. Nobody saw me.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as I can be.’

‘So where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘The camera, dummy.’ Her eyes flicked from wall to wall.

‘Best you don’t know. Then you won’t give it away.’

‘Yes, okay, makes sense.’

‘I just need to show you how to work the microphone.’ He took the tiny device out of his pocket and instructed her how to switch it on. ‘Keep it inside your pillowcase, okay? It’ll pick everything up, though, so try to keep your head still. And the wire runs right along the skirting board, so don’t be too rough with it.’

She smiled wearily. ‘Wow. This is almost exciting.’

‘I wouldn’t think of it that way, if I were you.’ He kissed her lips—they were parched and briny. ‘Your dad’s right—you need to get some sleep.’

She closed her eyes. Cold daylight fell down through the glass ceiling. The helium balloons quivered with the gentle draught. ‘Do you think this’ll work?’

‘Probably not,’ he said, ‘but anything’s worth a try.’

The video played out now on the dusty TV screen in Herbert Crest’s bedroom. It was a black and white image, a little misty around the edges, the way silent movies tend to be, but the clarity of the picture was good enough: nothing out of focus, nothing too pixellated. After a minute of scratch and fuzz, the TV speakers jolted on and began to hum with the drawl of organ music. There was a surging quality to the sound—a flood of notes followed by a slow and searing drone, going back and forth, back and forth.

The camera didn’t move. It zoned in on one section of the organ house, where Iris lay half-under the covers on the four-poster bed, her left side exposed, her leg braced. In the near distance, there was the blur of a familiar shape—a shadow swaying in the chalky light, like the silhouette of a candle flame against the wall. It was Eden. He was sitting at the organ console with that unmistakably straight back of his, fingers sprawling across the keys at an urgent pace, then slowing. As he played, he stared straight ahead, never down at his hands. He tapped the sole of his left foot against the pedals, emphasising the rhythm. And as the music lurched on, it gathered force, until the passive tap of his foot became a stamp. Through all of this, Iris didn’t move a muscle in the bed. Her eyes
were closed. ‘It goes on like this for another twenty minutes,’ Oscar said. ‘I’ll wind it forward.’

‘No, hold on,’ Crest replied. ‘Leave it. Let it play out.’ He folded his arms, eyes trained on the television. They stayed there together in the shade of the bedroom, with the outside world closed off behind the curtains, until the music stopped. Eden twisted on the organ stool, turning his pale face towards the camera at last. Even from far away, there was that familiar buffed-apple sheen in his eyes.

They watched as Eden stood up and walked out of the picture. A few seconds later, he came back into the frame, carrying a set of wooden ladders, and placed them at the side of the organ console, beneath the column of metal pipes that towered over it. Without a sound, he climbed the ladders. Only his legs remained in shot. He stayed there like that for a long moment; then finally he began to step down. Bit by bit, the top half of his body came back into the frame. He held something under his right arm: a bundle of fabric, bright white and limp.

‘What’s he got there?’ Crest asked.

‘Keep watching,’ Oscar told him.

Eden jumped the last rung of the ladder. Hurriedly, he carried the bundle over to Iris, who was still lying in the bed, unmoving. She seemed to be asleep. He loosened the brace around her leg. She didn’t even flinch. Then, carefully, delicately, Eden lay a white towel from the pile upon her broken bones. It looked heavy and sodden, and steam appeared to rise from it. He lay another one over her, then another, coating her whole leg in white. There were several of them lined up along her left side. Just above the knee, where Iris’s fracture was at its worst, he placed another, doubling up. He stretched his arms out in front of him, the heels of his hands pointed down at Iris’s leg. He lowered them until the flats of his palms were barely a centimetre above the towels and held them there, trembling. Minutes went by. Nobody moved. Then Eden simply walked away, towards the camera—he was so close
that his hip almost brushed the lens as he went by. Iris remained perfectly still on the bed—the only movement was the rise and fall of her ribs as she breathed. Oscar must have watched this video twenty times, but this was the first time he’d noticed the trails of tears on her cheeks, captured by the light.

With a dull flicker, the screen went blank. Crest kept staring at the TV set, though it was playing nothing but a flatline of grey. He scratched his scalp. ‘How many of these tapes do you have?’

‘This is only the first one. I’ve got twenty-odd more just like it.’

‘Are they all the same?’

‘Identical, more or less. Apart from the music—that’s the only thing that changes. He did the same thing every day for four weeks, but he played a different piece of music every time. Until she got better.’

‘In four weeks she recovered?’

‘She was on her feet by the new year. You’d have to see her to believe it.’

Crest sniffed. ‘Well, her leg couldn’t have been too badly broken—’

‘It was. I can show you the X-rays.’

‘X-rays can be deceptive.’

‘You’re right, it doesn’t make sense, I know it doesn’t. But what can I say? At the start of December, her leg was basically held together by screws and nails. The surgeon told us it would be at least six months before she could put any weight on it. By Christmas, she was up on her feet. Now it’s February and she’s walking around the place like nothing ever happened.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Crest said. He snapped his head away. He rubbed his jaw. He sighed. ‘How do I know you’re not playing me for a fool here? No offence, but I hardly know you. Why should I trust anything you’re telling me, just because you know Bram Paulsen? Hardly a ringing endorsement. No, no, this doesn’t change anything, not really.’

There were noises now in the hallway: the latch on the front
door snapping shut, a set of keys being dropped onto the telephone table. A deep, Caribbean voice called out: ‘Herbert, I’m back. Everything okay?’

‘I’m in the bedroom!’

After a moment, the nurse came to poke her head around the door. ‘Oh,’ she said, seeing Oscar was still there. ‘Didn’t mean to interrupt. Did you take your Dilantin?’

‘Yes, yes, stop fussing,’ Crest said.

‘Alright, I surrender. Just making sure.’ She closed the door.

Crest waited a second, listening to her disappearing footsteps. ‘Let’s not tell her I lied. One missed tablet won’t kill me.’ Then he turned his eyes again to the TV screen. ‘The thing with the towels—what was that?’

‘You really want to know?’

Crest nodded.

‘He wraps them around the pipes of the organ.’

‘When they’re wet?’

‘I think so.’

‘Huh.’

‘All I have to go by are the videos, and what Iris can remember.’

‘She doesn’t remember all of it?’

‘No, just little things. The before and after.’

‘Are you suggesting the towels absorb the music in some way?’

‘I’m not suggesting
anything
. I’m just telling you what I’ve seen.’

Crest began to bend his ankles up and down, as if he wanted to stride across the room but his body wouldn’t let him. ‘Normally, these people pretend they’re channelling some ancient spirit or other. They say their souls have been possessed by some religious character, always with a name like Jehosephat or Jeremiah, and they always happen to talk like Hannibal Lecter whenever they’re channelled. I’ve seen so many of these idiot charlatans, and they’re all the same.
This
guy, though—he’s not pretending to be channelling anything, is he?’

‘No, I suppose not. He talks a lot about Johann Mattheson, that’s all.’

‘Mattheson, huh? That’s interesting.’ Crest went quiet again, scratching the same dry spot on his scalp. ‘Alright, so tell me this, kid—what’s in it for you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about here. Why should I help this guy? What are you getting out of it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Bull
shit
nothing. You want this guy out of the way. He’s making problems between you and this girl, right? This, what’s her name—Iris. That’s what your agenda is here. No need to be ashamed about it. I just want you to be upfront with me.’

When Oscar looked at Crest, he couldn’t help but think about what Dr Paulsen had said—about the two of them being alike, how they both thought about life the same way. He stared down at Crest’s gaunt face and those dark, swollen eyes that wrinkled at the corners, wondering if he was seeing a reflection of himself in another fifty years.

‘I’m here because, deep down, I know that Eden’s ill. And if everyone goes on allowing him to think he’s got some godly powers to heal the sick—even if he’s clever enough to make other people believe it too—something terrible’s going to happen. You’re right, I love his sister—and I don’t want to ever see her in pain again—but that’s not what this is about.’ He stopped, feeling the weight of Crest’s attention. ‘Because I’m also willing to accept that I might be wrong—that there’s the tiniest, remotest chance that Eden has some kind of power or understanding that nobody else has. And, knowing that, how can I not report it? Isn’t it my duty to tell somebody who might be able to figure it out one way or another, who might even stand to benefit from it himself? The way I see it, we have nothing to lose.’

‘We’re not the only ones to consider here,’ Crest said, steepling his fingers. ‘You’re not thinking about what might happen to the
kid when I prove he’s not so special after all. A realisation like that can tear someone apart. Look what happened to Jennifer Doe.’

‘Yeah, I’ve thought about that.’ Oscar turned off the television and pushed the button to eject the video. He waited, tapping the lid of the VCR.

‘It doesn’t concern you?’

‘Not when I remember she drowned a five-year-old.’

The video slid out of the machine with a robotic noise. Oscar already had his fingers on it, pulling it free, but Crest said: ‘Leave it.’ His voice was weary, sore-throated. ‘No promises.’

Oscar waited for Iris to finish her second cigarette on the steps of the University Library. It was past nine, but the building was still open, and there was a warm light behind the carousel doors. She was telling him things he’d long grown tired of hearing: how she would never be able to thank her brother enough for what he’d done but, oh, what a drag it was to be back on her feet again, how sometimes she wished she could’ve just stayed in bed all year. ‘I keep thinking back to being in the hospital,’ she said. ‘It was so lovely to be taken care of like that—all those doctors and nurses making sure I was okay, bringing me things. Nobody expected me to study when I was in there. My father didn’t even talk about coursework. All I was expected to do was watch the telly and read
Cosmo
. And I know that life can’t go on like that forever, but now we’re halfway through term and I’m feeling guilty about having one measly cigarette break, I just get this horrible urge.’

‘What kind of urge?’

‘I don’t know. To run out and break the other leg, I suppose.’

‘Don’t say things like that,’ Oscar said.

‘Alright, calm down, I was only kidding.’ She tossed her cigarette to the ground and trampled it. ‘I just wish I could spend the whole night with you instead of Moore and bloody Dalley.’

‘Who?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She looped her arm through his. ‘Can’t we just hide out here for a little bit? I don’t want to go back in there yet.’

The change in Iris was becoming more obvious and troubling to him. Now that she was back on her feet again, there was a general impatience about her. She was easily distracted, unable to settle, and smoking more cloves than usual—at least a pack a day. They could hardly get through a meal together without her telling him she needed to rush off somewhere. Back in January, they’d been midway through dinner at their favourite Algerian place and she’d told him she was so bored of the food that she never wanted to eat there ever again. Last weekend, on a perfectly nice February afternoon, they were having coffee in Market Square and she’d emptied out her cappuccino onto the ground and told him it was ‘an insult’, then gone into the café to demand a refund. When she’d moved back to Harvey Road for the start of the Lent term, he thought it would make things better, bring everything back to normal. He thought it would be easier for them to find time for each other without the constant commuting to Grantchester, but it had only become more difficult. Lately, they’d relied on these fleeting moments of togetherness between her study sessions and his shifts at work. ‘What can I say, sweetheart?’ she would tell him. ‘I’m playing catch-up with everything now. I’ve got to read seven chapters before my supervision tomorrow or it’s game over for me on the entire Tripos.’ But this wasn’t what troubled Oscar most. Even when they did find time to be together, the spectre of Eden was always looming over them.