The Bellwether Revivals (33 page)

‘No. I’m going inside. Get
off
me!’

Oscar was ready to put himself between them. But when Eden heard him calling out, ‘Iris, are you okay?’ and saw him running down the path, he let go of his sister’s elbow with an easy motion, like he was releasing a kite string.

‘Are you okay?’ Oscar said again, facing her.

She wouldn’t look at him. She smoothed out the twists in her cardigan. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’ There was an unusual flatness to her voice.

‘Was he hurting you?’

‘No. We were just talking.’

‘Sounded like shouting.’

‘Okay fine, we were arguing. We’re allowed to argue
sometimes
.’

‘What were you arguing about?’

‘Nothing. Just—’ She began to rub her arm where Eden had been holding her. ‘Just leave it, okay? I’m getting cold out here.’ And she went striding off, brushing his hand away as he tried to stop her.

‘Iris, wait.’

She kept going until the security light came on at the back of the house, and went into the kitchen.

Oscar turned to find Eden leaning against the wan bricks of the rectory. The light blinked off again, darkening the space between them. ‘She’s been ornamenting her cello parts all week,’ Eden said. ‘It was getting so bad it seemed almost like sabotage. But it’s okay, we’ve talked it through now. You can climb off that high horse you just rode in on.’

Oscar realised he was breathing heavily. Steam was rising from his mouth. ‘You were hurting her.’

‘Oh, please. I was barely even touching her. Why don’t you just go back inside and enjoy the fruits of my hospitality? There’s a good chap.’ Eden pushed himself away from the wall abruptly, and shuffled off, into the safety of the organ house. Oscar heard the cold slide of the bolt across the door. He looked back towards the kitchen. Iris was standing at the sink with both taps running. When he headed up to meet her, she moved into the drawing room to sit with the others, and for the rest of the evening, she avoided the subject.

In bed that night, she was quiet, distracted. She turned off the bedside lamp and rolled away from him. He could tell by the way her fingers kept tapping on the mattress that she was thinking about what had happened. But she refused to talk any more about it and he fell asleep an arm’s length from her.

She woke him a few hours later, kissing his neck. Her mood seemed brighter. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, and began to walk her fingers down his body, from his chest to his stomach. ‘We aren’t using the hours of two a.m. to four a.m. very effectively.’ She
moved lower. Her hand felt dry and hot around him. ‘I think there are better things to do than sleep, don’t you?’ And she ducked her head beneath the covers.

The next night, there were no hints of elaboration in her cello line. She played robotically, her back straight and her shoulders tight, and that was how it stayed for the rest of the week. The music seemed better because of it—more unified—but something else had been lost.

Through all of this, Herbert Crest showed few signs of improvement. He was still ashen-faced and walked away from the organ house each night with a heavy gait, crooked and unstable. He tired very easily and complained of the cold. His dizzy spells were just as frequent. He still got headaches. Sometimes, he would lose words or slur them: he’d mean to ask for a coaster for his glass but would struggle to remember what to call it; he’d mean to say ‘wonderful’ but it would come out as ‘wandffer’, and when these things happened, his eyes would glaze over with fear. Other times, he seemed perfectly tuned in. Though it was clearly an effort, he’d play old songs on the piano now and again, just a few bars to amuse himself. ‘I play worse than a horse,’ he’d say. Often, he’d wander through the house looking at family photographs in silver frames—’Your mother’s a good-looking woman, huh? Strong genes’—and each night, he’d wait in the drawing room for Andrea, reading the paper, quoting news stories that took his interest: a maths prize founded by the King of Norway, a new strain of flu that was taking over China. He still had the vocabulary of a debate team captain, and would point out grammatical errors in most of the articles (‘An apostrophe in “yours”—how do they get away with it?’). At the very least, his condition didn’t seem to be deteriorating; he was holding steady. The hair was even beginning to grow back on his head in thin, babyish tufts of blond and his eyebrows were fuller, darker. But every time Oscar asked if he was feeling better, he’d shake his head wryly and say: ‘No dice.’

On Sunday night, as Eden’s organ melody was in full flow and the voices of the flock were falling away, Oscar watched the old man through the camera lens. There was something new about his expression, something not quite at ease. His breathing seemed quicker than usual and he was struggling to stay upright. The music went on—lilting and slowly coming to rest—but Crest only grew more agitated. The tuning fork began to wobble between his teeth. His whole head began to shake. And then his neck, his chest, his arms, his legs were shuddering. The tuning forks fell to the ground—an awkward music, like three bells clanging off-key—and then the old man began to rock in the chair, his entire body convulsing. He rocked so hard that its legs toppled over, and the chair hit the floor by Iris’s feet. She stood up instantly, casting aside her cello. Oscar dropped the camera. Yin, Marcus and Jane stopped singing. They gasped, frozen with panic, as Crest lay there, juddering on the planks like a grounded fish before them. ‘It’s his heart,’ Yin said. ‘Oh, Jesus fuck, it’s his heart.’ Crest was writhing so much that his feet came close to kicking over the oil lanterns before Iris pushed them a safe distance away. The room darkened, closed in on them. Time became heavy. And through it all, Eden carried on playing.

Oscar knew what he had to do. He could see the fear on the faces of the others, but he tried to keep himself calm. He got down on his haunches, turning Crest onto his side. ‘Give me your coat,’ he said to Marcus, and when Marcus didn’t move, he shouted it louder until he jolted into action, ripping off his coat as if it were on fire. Still the organ kept on playing. Eden hadn’t even turned around to see what all the noise was about.

Rolling up the coat and putting it under Crest’s head, Oscar tried his best to settle him. ‘Steady, Herbert, steady,’ he said. He waited for his convulsions to slow, and, soon enough, the old man’s body was at rest again. ‘He’ll be okay now.’ He almost had to shout it over the sound of the organ. ‘It was a seizure, that’s all. He’s had plenty of them before.’ Crest lay there, exhausted.

‘Thank God for you, Oscar,’ Jane said. ‘I was really panicking.’

‘Yeah,’ Marcus said. ‘Well done.’

‘Good job, man,’ Yin said, squeezing his shoulder.

Finally, the organ stopped; the last note choked in the rafters. Eden turned around on the stool. He didn’t seem shocked to see Crest on the floor. ‘What are you all doing?’ he said.

Nobody answered.

Oscar looked at Yin. ‘Can you help me carry him?’

‘Sure.’

‘We’ll put him in the rectory.’

‘On the bed?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Be careful,’ Iris said.

Eden stood over them. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘Oh, Edie, it was awful. He had a seizure,’ said Jane. ‘But he’s okay now. Oscar was amazing—so calm.’ She turned to look into Eden’s briny green eyes. ‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘No. I was—’ He trailed off. ‘I suppose I was somewhere else.’

Yin took the old man’s weight. Crest was limp as a puppet in his arms, feet dangling, heels clapping. At the exit, he stopped to allow Oscar to unlock the doors. He looked hard at Eden, his big chest heaving. ‘I warned you, man,’ Yin said. ‘I knew we were taking this too far.’

Eden wetted the corner of his mouth with his tongue and said nothing.

In the rectory, Yin laid Crest down on the mattress and stood at the foot of the bed, hands on his knees, catching his breath. He wanted to stay and help—’Maybe I can just wait with him, make sure he’s okay?’—but Oscar told him it would be better not to crowd him, so he went outside to join the others, looking in through the window.

Oscar drew up a chair by the old man’s bedside. He mopped his brow with a flannel, checked his pulse. Crest slept soundly on his side, breathing against the pillow. For a while, the only sound
was the singing of the crickets in the garden, but soon, the others began to congregate outside. They started to bicker. Their lean shadows stole in through the window and performed a weary pageant on the wall behind Crest’s head. He went over to shut the curtains and put some gentle music on the stereo to drown their voices out, but he could still hear the tenor of their argument.

‘It’s not
his
fault, Iggy. Why do you always have to blame him for everything?’

‘She’s right. We’re all in this together.’

‘I can’t believe you guys. How long have I been saying this was a bad idea, huh? All fucking week, I’ve been saying it.’

‘Yeah, yeah, change the record, will you?’

‘
Ssshhhh
. Keep your voices down.’

‘He can’t hear.’

‘Of course he can hear.’

‘Let’s go inside then.’

‘I want to stick around, make sure he’s okay.’

‘Oscar will find us if he needs us.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’

‘What’s
that
supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. I’m just saying—he looked upset.’

‘You mean angry?’

‘No. Just upset.’

‘He’ll get over it.’

‘
Sshhh
. You’re being loud.’

‘Alright. Fine. Let’s go in.’

Oscar heard the clamour of their footsteps as they all headed for the house.

He stared down at the old man, placed his hand against his forehead. It was clammy and cold and smooth as glass. ‘This is what happens when you stop taking your medication,’ he said.

By the time Andrea came to pick him up, Crest was awake and back on his feet, though he moved with tiny, uncertain steps and seemed reluctant to talk, or just too tired. He mumbled his gratitude
to Oscar for taking care of him, straightening out his collar, pulling on his baseball cap in front of the dressing table mirror and reshaping the peak. He was still groggy and could hardly muster the energy to walk up to the house, so Oscar took him around the side way, through the big iron gate that swung back, pleasingly heavy, ducking under the trellis arches, veined with ivy. When he saw Andrea ahead of them, parked up like always in the same little spot behind Jane’s Land Rover, Crest stopped walking. He held a knotty finger to his lips and said: ‘Let’s keep this little incident between us, okay?’ The words came out of his throat with a kind of resignation, like they would be the last words he ever got to speak.

Cedarbrook was typically quiet when Oscar arrived on Monday morning, an hour early for his shift. The lobby was empty as always, and the lights had yet to be switched on at the nurses’ station. A cleaner’s cart stood at the foot of the stairs and a short, broad-shouldered Filipina woman he’d never seen before was dousing the seat of the stairlift with disinfectant spray. The place was still half-asleep: thirty-four beds were still thick with dreams. In the dim light of the staff room, he made himself a coffee, browsed the front and back pages of the paper so he’d have something to discuss with Deeraj and the other nurses later. Then he went to find Jean in her office, to hand in the time sheets she’d been asking him for since the start of the month. She had her own little room marked
MATRON
, between the kitchen and the parlour, and he knew she’d be there sitting at her desk with her portable TV on as always, watching a repeat of some American sitcom with the volume down low and laughing her dockyard laugh.

It was when he got to the parlour that he saw Dr Paulsen. He was sitting dull-eyed in a wingback near the window. A plate of scrambled eggs was set on the tray-table in front of him and he
was peering down at it vacantly, turning his plastic spoon around in his right hand. The features of his face were drawn to the left as if they were caught on a fishhook. There was an atlas of foodstains on the front of his pyjama top. He looked like he’d been sitting there for hours.

‘You’re down early, aren’t you?’ Oscar called out, but the old man didn’t move a muscle. ‘Dr Paulsen?’

Slow as the winching of a crane, Paulsen moved his right eye to look up at him. His body stayed rigid, apart from the spoon he kept turning around in his dry fingers—flick, flick, flick.

‘Dr Paulsen, are you alright?’

Flick, flick, flick.

The eggs were cold to the touch. When Oscar went to move the plate, the old man didn’t try to stop him, and after it was taken away, he just gazed down at the space where it used to be, probing the corner of his mouth with his tongue. ‘I’m going to get you some more, okay?’ Oscar said. ‘I’m going to get you some more.’ A numb feeling was starting to gather in his feet. He felt something clutching at his heart, trying to drown it, like the way his cousin Terry used to duck his head under the water at the swimming pool to time how long he could hold his breath.

Flick, flick, flick.

‘Just wait there. I’ll be back.’

Jean was sitting at her desk just like he knew she would be. The clock in the corner of her TV screen read 7:06. ‘Hello, lovey,’ she said. ‘Can’t pay you any extra for being early, you know.’

His voice was steady, even. ‘Is everything okay with Dr Paulsen? I just saw him in the parlour.’

‘Right.
Him
. He’s in a bad way, I’m afraid. Been leaving you messages all week. Haven’t you been home?’

‘No. I’ve been—I went on holiday.’

‘Anywhere nice?’

He looked back at her blankly.

She gestured at the empty chair in front of her and he sat down.
‘Well, sorry, it’s not good news.’ With her eyes on the television, she talked him through the whole thing very matter-of-factly. Late on Wednesday night, she said, Dr Paulsen had had another stroke. ‘It was a big ’un, too. Not a TIA, a proper ischaemic.’ She smiled at the TV. Canned laughter filled the room. She clicked it off and turned to look at him, putting on a serious face, assuming a proper tone. ‘Doctor reckons he had a full-on thrombosis in his brain. That’s why his left side’s a bit, you know, tensed up. He should be alright in a few months, but who knows? Hard to know anything for sure when it comes to strokes.’ She tilted her head, reached out her hand. ‘Aw, lovey, I know you two are close. I
did
leave messages for you. But there’s nothing you could’ve done about it, even if you’d been here.’