The Furies: A Novel (17 page)

Carly was still worrying that Alex would notice us, but she was too far away, unless she had binoculars. Then Carly looked really worried, and I said there was no way that Alex had binoculars because who has binoculars for Christ’s sake? Bird-watchers and stalkers and that’s it. We sat there for ages. And it must be the most boring bit of the park. There’s loads of playing fields – all flat and empty. No-one was playing football on Friday, though. You couldn’t blame them, either. It started to drizzle, and then sleet.

In the end I walked round the side of the building so I could try and see what Alex was doing. It took me a while to make her out, but there she was, sitting at a table. I think it’s another café, this glass-sided box. It’s much bigger than the one by the toilets, though. She sat there with a cup for an hour. I walked back round to Carly and told her Alex was just sitting in this place on her own. She didn’t believe me, so I made her come with me to look. We went back to the bench in the end, and an hour after Alex had walked in, pretty much exactly, she walked out again.

She didn’t go back the way she’d come, though. She carried on down past the playing fields, and eventually she reaches a bridge over a tiny lake. There are these weird whirlpool things in the water, I don’t know what they are. Drains or something, I guess. It looks like sea monsters from above, anyway. Loads of fancy ducks, too. Not just the regular kind. Different-coloured ones. Ones with brown hair. Well, with brown feathers that look like hair in a quiff. Pretty cute. And loads of swans.

Then the park runs out, and she walks along this little road that curves right back round until she’s at the bottom of the park again. Then she walks along the park road, and then back onto the main road and all the way to King’s Cross. She gets back on the train at half past five, and that’s her whole trip.

It was fucking bizarre. She sits on a train for four and a half hours, and then walks miles to sit in a café on her own for an hour, and then goes all the way home again. Carly reckons she was waiting for someone who didn’t show up. Actually, Carly really thinks that this is where Alex and Luke used to come every Friday for romantic afternoons in the park. And she thinks Alex is coming back to re-live them on her own.

But then her next favourite idea is that Alex was waiting for someone – a man – who she likes. I said, didn’t it look kind of bad that he didn’t show up? Catch me waiting an hour for some no-show. But Carly thinks he got stuck somewhere and that he rang Alex and said sorry and that when she got back to Edinburgh he’d probably sent her flowers.

But I don’t think she looked like she was waiting. I watched her for about thirty minutes, and she didn’t check her watch, or look at her phone or do anything people usually do when they’re waiting for someone. She just sat there, dead-eyed, like when she was on the train. I don’t know what she was doing, but I don’t think she was there to meet somebody. She goes there because she needs something, but whatever it is, it doesn’t work. Actually, it makes her emptier, like she’s hungry and eating cotton wool, expecting to feel full. Does that even make sense?

5

‘So, what? Alcestis dies, but then she comes back from the dead?’ Ricky hadn’t managed to read to the end of
Alcestis
and was piecing it together from the others’ descriptions.

‘Yup,’ said Jono. ‘Hercules turns up and mugs Death to get her back.’

Ricky looked mutely at me. I nodded. That summed things up pretty well.

‘So they bury her? Alcestis? Because she’s dead?’

‘Yes,’ I told him.

‘And then Death comes to get her, and he’s like a person?’

‘Pluto, the god of the dead, yes.’

‘And Hercules is who?’

‘He’s a superhero,’ said Annika. ‘But he doesn’t have a cape.’

‘He sort of does, actually,’ said Mel.

We all turned to her.

‘Does he really?’ I felt guilty. My students shouldn’t know more about a subject than I did.

‘Yes. It’s like a lion skin or something. It’s in pictures of him, on Greek vases and things.’

‘You’re absolutely right. Well done. You know, we should go to the Museum of Scotland one day and look at the Greek pots they have there.’

‘Lame.’ I should have known Annika wouldn’t be keen.

‘So, he’s a superhero?’ Ricky was still waiting to hear the end of the story.

‘Yeah. He hides behind a tombstone and then jumps out and chokes Pluto till he gives in and lets Alcestis come back to be alive again.’ So Jono had read the whole play. It wasn’t just Mel who was interested in this stuff.

‘Oh. OK.’ Ricky nodded.

‘Do you think it’s a good ending to the play?’ I asked Jono, since he’d had more time to think about it than Ricky.

‘Kind of.’

‘You’d like it better if she stayed dead?’

‘No,’ said Carly.

‘Yes.’ Jono and Mel disagreed.

‘Why?’

‘It’s cheap,’ Mel said. ‘If someone kills themselves to save someone else, and then they come back a few pages later, it spoils it.’

‘It reduces the value of her sacrifice, you mean?’

‘Yes. What’s the point in dying for someone if they get you back again? And anyway, she might not have wanted to come back.’

‘You think she’d rather be dead?’ I asked. ‘Even after the big speech she gives before she dies about her children and how they’ll grow up without a mother?’

‘Yes,’ Jono agreed. ‘Maybe. I mean, she might not want to go back to Admetus. He was happy enough for her to die in his place, wasn’t he? She might prefer someone else now.’

‘And no-one asks her, do they?’ Mel added. ‘She makes this big sacrifice, and everyone’s talking about how amazing she is and how sad it is that she’s died. And then Hercules decides that because the servants are sad about her dying, and because Admetus is miserable, that it’s the right thing to go and get her back. Which is fine and everything, but no-one asks if it’s what she wants. They just sort of assume it is, don’t they? Because that’s what they would want if they’d sacrificed themselves – to be alive again. But they weren’t the kind of people who’d be prepared to die for someone else, so they aren’t the same kind of person as she is. They don’t know what she would want. Hercules gets her back to make his friend feel better. But no-one asks Alcestis.’

I was impressed, and a little smug. She was learning a lot from me, I thought.

‘You’re completely right, Mel. Alcestis is treated like an object, isn’t she, in this part of the play? Hercules goes to get her back, as though she were a glove that Admetus had dropped or something. What do you notice about her when she returns?’

They all looked at each other, clearly hoping one of the others knew.

‘She gives that great speech in the first half of the play, doesn’t she? And then what does she say when she comes back?’

‘Nothing,’ said Annika, skimming through the pages to check. ‘She doesn’t say anything at all.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Mel. ‘Hercules says it’s some religious thing – that she can’t talk till she’s been back for three days or something?’

‘That’s right. She’s still sacred to the gods of the underworld. There has to be a ritual of some kind to allow her to re-enter our world fully, and that takes a few days. Till then, she can’t speak. So why does Euripides say this, about the ritual?’ I asked them all.

‘So we never know what Alcestis thought about what happened to her?’ guessed Mel.

‘Yes, exactly. So we’re left to decide for ourselves how she must have felt, and whether she was happy with it or not.’

‘I think she’d have preferred to stay dead,’ Mel said.

‘Of course she wouldn’t.’ We all jumped. I’d seen temper from a lot of the Rankeillor kids, but never from Carly. Her face had flushed a dark pink, clashing with the amethyst purple she’d put on her eyes. She was driving her green nails into the palms of her hands, trying not to cry. ‘Everyone wants to be alive instead of dead. Everyone.’ The tears were coming anyway, falling in dirty indigo streams down her cheeks. ‘Who wouldn’t rather be with their friends instead of lying in the ground? All this stuff you’re saying,’ she looked around at us, ‘it’s complete rubbish.’

‘Really? You’re doing this now?’ Annika asked. ‘Are you going to storm out and slam the door like he does?’ She jerked her head at Jono, but since he’d turned the other way to look at Carly, he didn’t notice.

‘Thank you, Annika. Ever helpful. Carly, are you alright? I’m sure none of us meant to upset you.’

She nodded and snuffled, and dug in her pockets to find a tissue.

‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this play at all. I think it’s horrible.’

‘OK. Would you like to talk about that, or would you prefer to take a few minutes on your own? Or something else?’ I was running out of ideas.

‘I’ll take a minute, thank you.’

She got up and walked to the other end of the classroom. The younger kids used it as a performing space every day, but this group hardly ever left their chairs: adolescence had made their bones and muscles ache (what my mother used to call ‘growing pains’), and they were happiest sitting down. But she walked to the back window and stood looking out over the yard. She’d have been happier out there, I guessed, but she’d have to go up a floor and then down the steel steps outside. There was no access from the basement, except through an alarmed fire door.

‘What just happened?’ Jono muttered to Mel.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, eyes wide, shoulders high. The picture of innocence.

Whenever I went into the staffroom, I was reassured by tales from the other teachers and therapists on the Unit that they too saw spontaneous combustions and meltdowns virtually every day. Arguments, fights and tears were part of the currency of Rankeillor. It happened more often with the newest arrivals, who were still bruised from their old schools and were more likely to lash out at each other and the staff. But every class at Rankeillor had the potential to explode with no warning whatsoever. And the anger or hurt or frustration which spurted from a child was contagious: there were whole days sometimes on the Unit when no-one ever settled because one kid had had a tantrum and then it spread round the building. The walls and floors were thick, yet still the students often seemed to sense when things were awry.

Policemen and doctors will tell you they know when it’s a full moon, because the A&E units fill up more quickly than on other nights of the month. Sometimes I would think the same was true at Rankeillor: there was a trigger of some kind – invisible to adults but perfectly tangible to the kids – which would make them all go nuts for a day or two each month; or week, if we were really unlucky. You looked for patterns, but you could never find one. Perhaps there were just too many contributing factors – the lessons, the weather, their families, stuff going on outside of school. I never came close to predicting the days when it would all cave in around me. Usually they kicked off when one kid insulted another. But that day, when Carly burst into tears, was the only time I ever saw it happen because of a play.

Mel shrugged. I decided to try and keep them focussed on their work, but we avoided further discussion of the ending, in the hope that we wouldn’t upset Carly further. So I asked them about host–guest relationships in the ancient Greek world, and how things differed now, assuming that no-one could take offence at something so dry. When the bell rang, I walked over to Carly to ask if she was OK.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she said. ‘Except my make-up looks revolting now. Do you mind if I stay here and fix it? I won’t be long.’

‘No, of course not. I’m sorry we made you feel bad, Carly.’

‘I know,’ she said, through a tight smile. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

I left her to repair her face in private. Mel was hovering on the stairs, waiting for her.

‘Go back in, if you want, Mel. I’m sure Carly won’t mind.’

‘Are you alright?’ she asked, looking me square in the mouth, as she always did when she was concentrating on what you said to her.

‘Of course. Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’ I gave her a smile to match Carly’s. And because of the way the lesson ended, it was the next day before I noticed that something had gone missing from the classroom.

DD,

Fuck, what a day. I swear to God, if I’d known how today was going to pan out, I would have just pretended to be ill this morning and stayed at home. Seriously. It was our last day on Alcestis, and I honestly thought it was going to be fun. We all had stuff to say about it, and then everything went wrong.

Firstly, Ricky hadn’t read it. Alex never tells him off for not doing homework, but you can see that she’s disappointed when he’s done fuck all. I can see, anyway, even if no-one else can. It’s only about twenty pages, for Christ’s sake, why can’t he just read it? I know he’s a slow reader and all that, but even so. So, firstly, Alex is upset about that.

And then Jono of all people, like a fucking hero, steps up. He’s read it and he understands it and he’s thought about it and all that, and Alex looks really chuffed. It’s such a relief to see her again, instead of zombie-Alex. And I’m joining in and it’s all going really well and we’re having one of these lessons that Annika meant when she asked if we could learn proper stuff this term.

We’re asking questions and Alex is coming back to life and it’s all really fucking good. And then suddenly Carly wigs out. Literally the last person you’d expect to go off on one. She hadn’t said a word to me about not liking the play before today. Just nothing. And then she feels the need to tell the world, especially Alex. She gets caught up in this problem she has about us discussing whether it’s definitely better to be alive instead of dead, or whether it might not be. We’re all talking about it, really talking about something and working out what we think. And out of nowhere Carly goes nuts and bursts into tears. Anyone would think she’s the one with the dead brother.

Except she isn’t. She’s an only child, she’s got two parents, she’s got two grannies and two grandpas. She’s never seen anyone she cares about die. She’s only ever seen a couple of people get hurt, even, and one of those was me and I’m fine now, so that can’t be it. But she’s not putting it on. So she yells at Alex and you can see, anyone could see, that Alex is horrified. Carly seems to have forgotten completely that it was her who wanted to do this play rather than another one, and now she’s gone ballistic because she doesn’t like it.