The Bellwether Revivals (37 page)

It had happened in the summer holidays, a regular, grey afternoon. She’d been in her father’s office, playing around with one of his old stethoscopes. ‘I was listening to things with it. Not just my
own heartbeat and stuff. I mean the walls, the wardrobe,
everything
. When you’re little, the world seems so fascinating.’ And soon, she’d begun to hear a sound almost like wedding bells. It was Eden, practising his piano in the drawing room. ‘I tried to ignore it, but after a while it really started to annoy me, because I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. So I went in to tell him to shut up for a minute. There was a smell in the air, I remember, like a cake was baking, and my mother was pottering in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher or something. And I had the stethoscope around my neck like my dad used to wear it.’

When she’d got to the drawing room, she’d found Eden at the piano. ‘He was playing something slow, something gentle, and his eyes were shut. He didn’t see me come in. I seem to remember the French doors being wide open, and this cold draught against my feet. The curtains were all flapping against the windows. The whole room just felt weird.’ She’d got halfway towards Eden and stopped. ‘There was something on the piano lid. I didn’t know what at first, just a mound of something, black, kind of greasy, and it was only when I got right up to it that I knew what it was. It was this bird, a blackbird, just lying there on the piano lid, not moving. And I felt like I should scream, but I didn’t. The noise wouldn’t quite come out.’

Then she’d remembered the stethoscope around her neck. It had seemed like a chance to use it properly, on something real. She’d placed the chestpiece against the breast of the bird and listened. ‘Ugh, the smell of it, the feel of it—all oily and cool. I had to hold my head away from it, trying to hear its little heartbeat. But I couldn’t hear anything. Maybe the piano was too loud, or maybe I just wasn’t using the stethoscope right, I don’t know, but the thing seemed dead enough to me.’

Eden had stopped playing then, eyeing his sister across the piano lid. He’d told her not to touch the bird. ‘I asked him how the thing had got inside and he said he’d just found it on the front doorstep. It had flown into the glass. He goes,
Tell on me if you want
to
.
I don’t care
. He was very calm about it all, considering. Didn’t seem bothered that my mother was only in the next room. And he walked over and scooped the thing up in his hands. Its little head flopped down over his fingers. I said,
Okay, I won’t tell
, and he looked almost disappointed about it. He carried the bird over to the French doors—they were still open, and the cherry trees were all shaking about outside. I said he probably shouldn’t be holding it like that. It could have all kinds of diseases. But he didn’t seem to hear me. He stood there for a while, with that creepy-looking blackbird in his hands, just staring at the garden. Then my mother began to call us.’

At this point, Iris paused. She shook her head, remembering. ‘We were all supposed to be going off somewhere—a church event or something. She was shouting out to us,
Kids! Come on! I want you ready in ten minutes!
And she came through into the room, drying her hands on a tea-towel. Oh my God, the look on her face when she saw what Eden was doing. She was going,
Put that filthy creature down right this second!
And she started running over to him, but she must’ve caught her knee on a table or something, I don’t know, and the next minute she was all bent up, rubbing her kneecap. And the next thing—’ She trailed off, widening her eyes at Oscar. ‘Why are you’re looking at me like that? I swear to God, I’m not making this up. Honest, I’m not. You’ve got to believe me—’

‘I believe you,’ he told her. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘You’re going to think I’m imagining it.’

‘What happened, Iris?’

She took a breath. ‘The bird started moving again. It was making this little sound like
flupp-flupp, flupp-flupp
. Started twitching, squirming around in his hands, screeching—this horrible screeching—and he was struggling just to keep hold of it. His arms were juddering around, and then
—woosh
!—he just let the thing go, gave it a little throw upwards. And it flew. It went right out through the French doors, easy as that. I watched it go straight into the trees like nothing had even happened to it.’

‘What did your mum do?’

‘Nothing. That’s just it.’ Iris tried to shift herself closer to him, but the pain of moving caused her to wince. ‘I think she was just glad the bird was out of the house. She wasn’t even that angry with him. She told him to wash his hands with Fairy Liquid right away and not touch any of the furniture.’

‘She didn’t punish him or anything?’

‘Nope. She told me to get changed, and we all went off to the church thing with her, and nothing more was said about it. I bet if you asked her about it now, she wouldn’t even remember.’

Oscar let go of her hand, leaning away. ‘You just thought of all this today?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve sort of been sitting on it for a while. I know, I know—don’t start. I wanted to tell Herbert about it when he asked me at the hotel, but—oh, I’m so stupid. I felt so differently about things then. I thought everything would be okay.’

‘Well, you have to tell him now,’ he said.

‘You don’t think it’s too late?’

‘No. He needs to hear it.’

‘Then I’ll tell him.’ She tapped the telephone on the Pay-TV that hung over her bed on a mechanical arm. ‘Get him to call me. I won’t be holding back any more.’ She folded back the bedsheet, making a crease around her waist. ‘You know I don’t think he healed it, right? The blackbird, I mean.’

‘Good. I don’t either.’

‘It was probably stunned or something. Just happened to wake up at exactly the right time.’

‘That would make sense.’

‘But I don’t think my brother sees it that way. I think somehow he got the idea in his mind that he could do anything if he just willed it. God, if my mother had just said
something
to him …’ She levered herself upright, slowly, holding her hand against her breastbone. ‘You know, when I was little, I used to get this feeling all the time, right here, a kind of burn. I’d feel sick with it sometimes. The
doctor said I was just swallowing my food too fast. It went away over time. But with everything that’s been going on with Eden lately, it’s started again. And I think I finally understand what it is.’

‘What?’

‘It’s my heart trying to overrule my brain. It’s my heart saying
forget what’s reasonable and listen to me
. That’s how Eden always manages to get to me. He knows which voice I listen to most. Well, it can shout as loud as it wants from now on—I’m not going to let it win.’ She went quiet again and Oscar held her hand, soothing her. After a while, she pushed her tongue out as if there were a bad taste on it, and tried to douse it with water, but this didn’t sate her. She asked him to get her some juice.

He went down and bought her a few things from the gift shop: cartons of Ribena, a romance novel called
Sorrento Lust
he knew she’d find amusing, a pack of playing cards in case she got bored of studying and watching TV. All the time he was in there, he couldn’t get the image of Eden and the bird from his mind. He didn’t quite know if he believed the story or not. The only thing he knew for sure was that he’d never seen Iris like this before—so weary with regret, so unhappy with the world.

When he got back to her room, Marcus and Yin were there, setting up the ghetto blaster on the windowsill, and she was going through a stack of CDs they’d brought along. ‘We thought we’d rescue you from the hell of hospital radio,’ Yin was saying. ‘I was gonna make a mix tape, but I ran out of time. Oh hey, Oscar, how’s it going?’

‘Hi.’

‘We’re having a party in here. Grab a seat.’

They spent the rest of visiting hours listening to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach, while Marcus told them all about the intricacies of his exam timetable, and about some girl on the Trinity College hockey team whom Yin had kissed at the formal last week.

‘So what’s the deal with the leg?’ Yin said, changing the subject. ‘When are they letting you out of here?’

‘I’m not sure. A few weeks maybe.’

‘Yikes. That sucks. I thought you were a fast healer.’

‘Yeah,’ Iris said, ‘so did I.’

‘And they’re gonna let you take your exams if you’re not recovered?’

‘Might have to do them in a room by myself, but yeah, my father’s arranged it.’

‘Damn,’ Yin said, adding his usual guffaw. ‘There’s no escaping old Theo, is there?’

‘Never mind that,’ Iris said. ‘Tell me about this girl.’ Yin’s face and neck blotched red. ‘Do I know her?’

‘Nope.’

‘That’s why he likes her,’ Marcus said. ‘She’s an outsider, like Oscar.’

‘There’s a lot to be said for outsiders.’

‘Sure.’ Yin nodded. ‘If she fits in half as well as Oscar, I’ll be happy.’

Oscar had to admit he felt a certain pride welling in his chest, and he was going to say something about feeling honoured or even touched, but Marcus gave him a friendly slap between the shoulder blades before he could: ‘Oscar Lowe. We do hereby induct thee into the circle. Please accept this Ribena as a memento.’ Marcus reached for the carton on Iris’s table and pushed it into his hand. ‘Do you have a few words for the assembled media?’

‘Save it for the press conference,’ Yin said.

It brought a smile back to Iris’s face. When they left her bedside that evening, she seemed brighter, warning Yin not to get that poor young lady of his in trouble, and telling Marcus to shine his shoes next time he came to visit.

Oscar kissed her goodbye and she held onto his fingers. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘For being so good to me.’

‘Any time.’

‘Get a room, you two,’ said Marcus from the doorway.

‘This
is
her room, idiot,’ Yin said.

They gave Oscar a lift back home. With the calm lights of Madigan Hall growing distant in the wing mirror, he began to realise just how exhausted he was. His neck felt tense, his mind was leaden. He listened to Yin and Marcus bickering about the best route to take to Cambridge, and shut his eyes, resting his head upon the shuddering window. He thought about his parents arguing: his father flailing the map around, his mother saying,
Slow down, slow down
. It was getting on for five months now since he’d spoken to them.

He had the strangest, most conflicted feelings going home that night. It was hard to reconcile where he was now with where he’d come from. Was it really so wrong that he preferred the leather upholstery of Yin’s BMW to the scratchy seats in his father’s van? Did it matter that he liked the peaceful aria that was on the stereo more than the David Bowie song he’d heard on the cab ride over? And what if he
didn’t
want to be a care assistant his whole life—did that really make him so high and mighty?

He would call his parents when he got home—that’s what he would do. He would ask his father how everything was going with the business: was he picking up enough work lately? How was his back these days? Was the van still holding out? And, yes, he would tell his mother about Iris, and say he was in love with her. It was not such a daunting thing any more, to let them know he’d found someone.

‘Oscar, hey, Oscar—you hear me back there?’ Yin was calling now from the driver’s seat.

He hadn’t been listening to their conversation; it had been nothing but a dull burr in the background. ‘Huh?’

‘I was just saying, don’t you think there’s something wrong about putting him through it again?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about.’

‘Herbert Crest,’ Marcus said. ‘We thought you knew about it.’

‘He’s coming back,’ Yin said, making a turn.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Eden did. Just this morning.’ Yin sniffed. ‘Sorry, man, I really thought you knew. I gotta say, I don’t feel so great about it. I told him I’d think it over, but the way I’m feeling, he’ll have to find someone else. Are you gonna go?’

There was no reason for Yin to lie to him. It had been a few days since he’d heard from Crest, after all, and he didn’t want to start refuting things that might have been true. So he said, ‘I didn’t think Herbert had spoken to anyone about it. When did you see Eden, anyway?’

‘We had a study date today,’ Marcus said. ‘At the UL.’

‘Did he mention when he might be visiting his sister?’

Yin and Marcus looked at each other.

‘No,’ Marcus said. ‘He’s been in a bad mood lately.’

Yin puffed out a raft of air. If he could have held his hands up in surrender, he probably would have, but he kept them both planted on the steering wheel, turning right. ‘I did talk to him about it, but hey, I can’t force the guy. He hates hospitals. They creep him out or something. I think it’s like a phobia.’

‘Nosocomephobia,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s a real condition. My grandmother had it.’

‘Well, whatever,’ Yin went on, ‘you know the old guy better than we do, Oscar. I’m not sure I want to get involved with it. Not after last time.’

‘You’re just being a sissy,’ Marcus said.

‘It’s about
graduating
, dickhead. I don’t have the time to spend another week out at that house.’

‘Admit it. You’re scared,’ Marcus said.

‘Hey, the guy had a seizure last time. I’m not putting myself through that again, and I don’t think he should put himself through it either. You know what I’m saying, don’t you, Oscar?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘completely.’ He could feel his heart quickening. All he wanted was to get home and dial Crest’s number.

Yin turned his eyes to Marcus. ‘See. I told you he’d be on my side.’

‘Well, I think it’s unfair to Crest if we don’t go back,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s obviously helping his pain.’

Oscar kept quiet. When they reached the traffic lights on East Road, just fifty or so yards from his flat, he told Yin to stop and let him out. ‘No problem, man. Are you sure I can’t drop you at the door?’

‘Here’s fine. Thanks for the lift.’

It was only a short walk to his building, and he took deep breaths to settle his stomach. The air was warm and fragrant with freshly trimmed hedges, the pavements dry and cool. He crossed the road without having to check for oncoming traffic. Everywhere was so still that, when he reached the walk-up to his flat and saw a movement of shadows under the porchlight, it startled him. Somebody was waiting by the doorway, leaning a bony shoulder against the bricks. And with every step he took towards the flat, it became clearer and clearer who it was: the rangy build of him, the way the flaps of his cardigan hung down like badly measured curtains, the pearly glimmer of his eyes. He was holding a carrier bag, bulky and sagging with the weight of its contents. ‘Hello, Oscar. I was just about to give up on you.’