The Bellwether Revivals (47 page)

The summer was just getting started. Oscar stood in the dusty heat of his flat with a desk-fan blowing out lukewarm air, checking his dinner jacket in the mirror, redoing his bow tie. His shoes were shined and his hair newly cut, and he was wearing the expensive aftershave the shop-girl had persuaded him to buy yesterday with her clever saleswoman’s compliments. A bouquet of carnations was sitting in water on the nightstand; the card was already written. He couldn’t tell if he was sweating because of the mugginess of his room, or because he was nervous about the evening ahead. When he’d told one of the agency nurses at work that he was going to the ball at St John’s College, she’d been much more impressed than he expected. She said she’d never known anyone lucky enough to get a ticket. ‘I’ve heard they fill up all the punts with champagne bottles, and they put purple lilies in the water, and they have all the top DJs playing, and anyway—make sure you take plenty of photos. It’s gonna be like a fairytale.’

Around seven, there was a beep of a car horn outside. He looked down from his window to see a silver Mercedes by the pavement, engine running, and Yin standing there in a jet-black
dinner suit, beckoning him with big semaphore movements of his arms. He grabbed the flowers and went down to meet them.

Jane was in the back seat in a pink gown and long white evening gloves. A necklace with a single, clear diamond hung at her neck, and her hair was curled and waved, somehow darker. She was wearing more make-up than usual, concealing most of the freckles on her face, and it gave her a duller, flatter look—prettier maybe, but much less remarkable. ‘You look great, Jane,’ he said, seeing that she felt awkward in her formalwear. She smiled back at him, dim-eyed, distracted. There was something subdued about the way she spoke: ‘What are they, carnations?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She’ll love them.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely. Roses are so unoriginal. I always preferred tulips … Mind if I—?’ She motioned to the flowers. When he handed them over, she pressed her nose upon the petals daintily and took in their scent. She went very quiet then, as if remembering every flower she’d ever smelled in her lifetime, all the bouquets that had been delivered to her doorstep on special occasions.

Yin leaned over from the passenger side. ‘The black tie thing suits you, man. You look like a diplomat.’

‘Thanks. I’m not used to these starched collars.’

‘Ah, you won’t notice it after a while.’

‘Can we go now?’ Marcus said. He flicked on a right signal, eyeing the wing mirror for a gap in traffic. ‘I’m sweating like a boar and the roads are getting busy already.’ There were no objections. Marcus slid his window down to throw his chewing gum to the tarmac, and off they went along East Road.

It was cold with the air conditioning on, and there was a sullen atmosphere in the car once they started driving. As they left the city, heading for Grantchester, Oscar saw other groups in formalwear just like them, walking in the opposite direction—happy young faces, brighter for knowing that another long year was
behind them, for better or worse, and that the summer had finally arrived. But the end-of-term spirit seemed to have bypassed his friends entirely. Nobody talked for a long time, and the silence was uncomfortable. Jane quietly gazed at her shoes; Marcus concentrated on the road; Yin fidgeted with the lightswitch on the vanity mirror until Marcus told him to cut it out. The sun flared in the windscreen.

‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Jane spoke up at last. ‘I should be over there with Theo, not going to a stupid party. I should be doing something.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Marcus said. ‘This whole thing just feels—’

‘Hollow,’ said Yin.

‘Yeah. That’s it exactly.’

‘Nothing’s the same without Eden,’ Jane said. She leaned forward to tap Marcus on the shoulder. ‘Have you got your mobile switched on? Just in case.’

‘Yeah, yeah, relax.’

There’d been drips of positive news from Theo since he’d left for Hamburg at the end of May. The information was passed on by Ruth, then Iris, and by the time it reached Oscar, all traces of pessimism had been filtered out of it. He’d heard that Theo had begun a city-wide search, starting with St Michael’s church, where a chorister had recognised Eden’s face from the photograph he’d shown her—she said she might have seen him at an afternoon service. Next, a waitress in a café on the Reeperbahn had recognised the boy in the photograph, too, and said he might have been to eat there a couple of times. Then a taxi driver said he’d dropped someone who looked like Eden at the opera—he remembered, because the fare was only eight euros, and the boy had given him a twenty and walked away. That was the last anyone had heard. There’d been no more text messages, no more sightings, and Theo was getting tired of the hunt, but he wasn’t giving up until he’d exhausted all the options. He was still confident that he would
find his son amid the hustle and dirt of Hamburg, and everybody else was, too.

Iris seemed a lot more upbeat about the situation, knowing that somebody was out there looking for her brother, and now the exams were over she’d started to ease off on the cigarettes. She was easier to talk to on the phone. Her laughter had returned.

Oscar had gone with her to a violin recital at West Road last week, and she’d spent the night at his flat afterwards; for the first time in months, they’d slept together and woken up in the same bed. On Wednesday evening, they’d had dinner with her mother in the vast, echoing dining room at the Bellwether house, and they’d stayed up late watching movies while Iris talked over every scene, telling him how much she was looking forward to the year ahead. She was excited about spending the summer in Grantchester and doing nothing but reading and swimming and playing cello in the garden, and she was thinking of taking a trip with him somewhere once her leg was better (maybe Paris—‘clichéd but romantic,’ she said; or maybe Reykjavik, because she’d always wanted to splash around in the geysers). She couldn’t wait to move into halls in September and be a regular student for a while.

The first thing she was looking forward to was the ball at St John’s. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to just let my hair down, and
breathe
for a while,’ she’d whispered into his ear. ‘I know I should be thinking of my brother and everything, and I feel guilty for being excited about a silly party, but I just feel like I need something to celebrate that’s
mine
. Does that make sense? I miss Eden, I do, but I want to have at least one memory of Cambridge that’s all mine.’

She’d already imagined how the night was going to go. ‘I was thinking you could pick me up, all handsome in your dinner suit, and we’ll have Marcus park somewhere close, so I don’t have to stumble around too much, looking like an invalid. As soon as we get inside, I thought we’d have champagne—three or four glasses before the dancing starts, at least, though I’m thinking the music
will already be playing when we arrive—that old-fashioned Cole Porter-type music, probably; trumpets and clarinets and oboes and a proper jazz singer. Then you can ask me to dance and of course I’ll accept, and you can waltz me around the ballroom as long as you want, all night if you want to. We should probably sit down for a bit then, I suppose. Rest my leg. Mingle. Be sociable. And then afterwards, leg permitting, we’ve got to walk barefoot on the college lawn. I’ve always wanted to do that.’ Her voice had sounded so breezy; her face had been alight. ‘I bought this incredible white dress—you’re not allowed to see it yet, but it fits me like a dream—and my mother’s helping me decorate my crutches with this fabric she got in India. I’m aiming for convalescent chic.’

Now, Oscar could just make out the verge of the Bellwethers’ driveway in the distance: that familiar regiment of pine trees that led up to the house, nestled beyond the main stretch of road. How he’d come to love this place, and how well he’d come to know the journey. He almost knew it better than the route to his parents’ estate. He seemed to walk these roads in his sleep.

Jane was still wordless beside him. She was twisting at her bracelet and keeping her eyes on the accelerating world outside the window. The sun was hanging in the sky, grapefruit red, and the distant fields were spotted with grazing livestock. It was strange to see her so quiet, so removed. Usually, when she couldn’t find a way into a conversation, she’d start one of her own. But her lips were tightly closed and she didn’t seem the least bit interested in talking. Her mind was in another country.

Marcus and Yin discussed their summer plans: ‘Are you going back to the States?’ ‘Probably. Haven’t seen my folks all year. They’re renting a place in Santa Barbara over August.’ ‘Jealous.’ ‘Come if you want.’ ‘I’d love to but—’ Oscar had already tuned out by the time they turned into the Bellwethers’ driveway. He was thinking of Iris, wondering what she was going to look like in her dress, imagining the bare slope of her shoulders. He would kiss her the moment he saw her.

The tyres shuddered on the gravel, and suddenly the house appeared before them, a great surfacing block of white that grew bigger and wider as they approached. In the sunlight, it seemed almost waxen, the glass atrium glinting like a telescope lens. Birds darted from the trees in the garden; they seemed to head straight for the atrium, mistaking the perfect glass for air, only to pull up at the last second, using the updraft to steer themselves away. All it would take was one small miscalculation, he thought, just one rotation of their wings too many and they would stun themselves and fall to the ground.

Marcus parked by the garage and switched off the engine. He leaned into the back seat. ‘It doesn’t take four of us to knock for her,’ he said, looking at Oscar.

‘Don’t be such a misery,’ Jane said. ‘We’ll
all
go.’

‘But it’s so lovely and cool in here …’

Jane clicked open her door. ‘Shut up. You’re coming.’

Yin had one foot out of the car already, and when Marcus saw they were all leaving him, he quickly unlatched his seat belt and got out. They stood around the car, adjusting again to the heat. A humid air pushed at them from all sides. Oscar checked his reflection in the tinted window, dabbing his face with his handkerchief. The flower-stems dripped on his shoelaces. They trudged towards the house, labouring up the front steps.

Before he rang the doorbell, Oscar got their attention. ‘Listen, everyone, I know you’re not in the mood for a celebration right now, but can we at least pretend to have fun tonight, for Iris’s sake? She’s been looking forward to it.’

Yin pushed his hands into his pockets and nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘I can manage that,’ said Marcus.

Jane put on a silly, ventriloquist’s grin. ‘Shiny happy people,’ she said through her teeth.

He rang the bell and waited. When there was no reply, he rang again. They all shuffled their feet, shrugging at each other. ‘Ring it again,’ Yin said. ‘They’re probably upstairs.’

‘This house is just too massive,’ Jane said, ‘it’s no wonder they can’t hear anything.’

Oscar pushed the bell a few more times.

They waited.

No answer.

Yin stepped forward and pushed the button—five urgent trills. ‘This is ridiculous. It’s too hot for this.’ Still, nobody came to the door.

Oscar put his face to the glass, blanking out the sunshine with his hands, and peered into the empty atrium. The ceiling fan was spinning slowly on the landing. ‘You see anybody in there?’ Marcus asked.

‘No.’

But right then Oscar saw something that brought a tight feeling to his chest, as if a fist was closing around his heart. There, at the back of the room, a white dress was hanging from the highest baluster, wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic. With every rotation of the ceiling fan, the tails of the plastic quivered and shone, and the longer he looked at it, the more the fabric of the dress seemed so intensely white—it stood out in the bareness of the atrium like a flag of surrender. He pulled his eyes away.

Jane noticed the worry in his face. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Her dress is there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Typical. She’s not even dressed yet!’ Marcus said.

Jane pushed past him to look through the window. ‘He’s right. She hasn’t even taken it out of the wrapper. We
did
say seven thirty, didn’t we?’

‘Yeah.’

Yin sniffed. ‘So what now?’

‘I’ll call her,’ Oscar said. He got out his mobile and dialled Iris’s number. No signal; it went straight to voicemail. He called the landline. They could hear it ringing out in the atrium, could see
the green light pulsing on the telephone table, but nobody answered. ‘I guess we should try the back way,’ Yin said.

They went down the steps, heading for the side gate. The others walked with casual, trundling strides, but there was an urgency now in Oscar’s step—something wasn’t right. He could feel it.

The side gate was locked. Marcus tried to reach through the iron rails to unlatch it, but he couldn’t quite stretch far enough.

‘Alright, stand back,’ Yin said. ‘Let me get a decent run at it.’ He gave himself a good run-up and hurled himself towards the gate; he leaped out with his front foot and landed it halfway, pushing himself upwards, clutching at the brickwork. He hauled himself over the wall and dropped down on the other side. His suit was streaked with dirt and he spent a moment patting himself clean before he unbolted the gate.

They made their way through the garden, winding along the landscaped path, under the hang of weeping willows and past rockeries of hibiscus and roses and lavender. The decking at the back of the rectory was dark with the shadows of elms and cherry trees, but the lawns seemed impossibly green, and the sprinklers were giving out a fine and gentle spray. As they neared the back of the main house, Oscar noticed a curtain billowing. One of the French doors was wide open. Yin saw it too: ‘Hey, I guess we’re in luck.’ Oscar led the way up to the patio, around the swing-seat and the folded-up sunlounger, to the open door. He knocked on the glass, calling out for Iris and Ruth as he went inside, hoping to hear their soft, friendly voices coming back at him.