The Furies: A Novel (6 page)

‘Yes, I did. I came here in 2002, and I graduated five years ago. Then I did some postgraduate studying for a couple of years here and in London.’

She counted back. ‘So you left college in 2008?’

‘That’s right.’ In another world, I wanted to say.

‘Was Robert a good teacher?’ asked Mel.

‘Of course he was. He knows everything about acting and performance, because he used to be an actor.’

‘Didn’t you want to be an actor, miss?’

‘No, I suppose I didn’t, Carly. I’m not very comfortable in another person’s skin – does that make sense?’

She looked at me, and I wondered if she might point out that I didn’t look very comfortable in my own, either. But she thought for a moment and nodded. ‘So why did you leave Edinburgh then?’

‘Well, I suppose I wanted to go back to London.’

‘Is that where your family is?’

‘It’s near where my mother is, yes.’ I realised that I had fallen into another trap that we’d discussed when we were training – if you don’t give kids enough to do, their curiosity turns inevitably onto you. When I was at school, I remember, we were so fixated on a glamorous French teacher that we spent months trying to find out her first name. The Rankeillor kids were a lot more ambitious.

‘And what about your dad?’ she asked.

‘My dad died a few years ago.’

‘I’m sorry, miss.’ Carly flushed.

‘That’s OK.’

‘Doesn’t your mum miss you, though?’ She pressed on.

‘I don’t know.’ I could feel sweat starting to prickle on the back of my neck. I needed to move her back into safer territory.

‘You should ring her, miss. Tell her how you’re getting on.’ She nodded at me encouragingly, like you might do to a dog.

‘Thank you, Carly. I’m sure she’d agree with you. Shall we get back to Oedipus and his mum?’

‘OK,’ she said, happily. She only needed a small fix to sustain her.

‘First of all, you should know where this story happens. It’s in a city called Thebes.’

‘And when is this?’ asked Annika. She pulled off her glasses and cleaned them with the hem of her t-shirt, before returning them to her perfect nose.

‘Half twelve,’ Jono snapped.

She sighed loudly, and began to rearrange the pens and books on her desk into ever more perfect straight lines. ‘I mean what year or what century or whatever. Obviously.’

‘It’s the Bronze Age,’ I said.

‘And when’s that?’ she asked, just before I realised I didn’t entirely know.

‘Are there dinosaurs?’ Ricky asked.

‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Jono twitched, like he was trying to shake the words out of his head.

‘I was just asking.’

‘No, it’s later than dinosaurs,’ I told him. ‘Sophocles is writing in the fifth century BC, two and a half thousand years ago. And the time when this play is set is the mythic past to him, right? Like Robin Hood, or…’ I saw Jono’s eyebrows contract. ‘Or maybe William Wallace would be to us. So this play is set in the past, and it’s set in Thebes, which is where Oedipus was born. His father, Laius, and his mother, Jocasta, were delighted to have a baby son. But then they were told that Oedipus had this terrible fate predicted for him.’

‘Who by?’ asked Annika.

I couldn’t remember. ‘An oracle,’ I said, hoping this was true.

‘What’s an oracle?’ she said.

I was definitely going to need to do more reading before their next class. ‘It’s like a horoscope,’ I said. ‘And it predicts that he’ll commit two terrible crimes.’

‘He’ll kill his dad and shag his mum?’

‘Exactly, Jono. And, as you might expect, his parents didn’t want that to happen on several counts. So they tried to get around it. When Oedipus was still a baby, they sent him away with a servant who’d been ordered to leave him out on a hillside to die.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Carly, her pale red hair swinging as she also started tipping back in her chair. I could feel my jaw tense as I waited for the chair legs to come back to the floor. It was like watching a glass that someone had left balanced on the edge of a table, waiting for it to crash to the ground. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

‘It is now, yes. So don’t get any ideas. But no, it wasn’t then. Besides, Laius was the king of Thebes, and Jocasta was the queen, so they could pretty much do what they wanted. And that isn’t all. Do you know what Oedipus means?’

They all shook their heads.

‘It means swollen foot. Because his feet were pinned together when he was taken out to the mountainside, so he wouldn’t be able to move.’

‘Jesus,’ said Jono. ‘How did they do that?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. I suppose the pins must have gone through the soft part of his feet.’

‘That’s horrible.’ Carly looked appalled.

‘Yes. But the servant who was sent to abandon him there couldn’t bring himself to leave a baby to die like that, so he gave him to a kindly shepherd instead.’

‘He wasn’t a paedophile, was he, miss?’ asked Ricky.

‘Not in Sophocles’ version, no. Or in any other version,’ I added, seeing his mouth begin to form another question. I wished he had a jumper or something. Pale red hairs were standing up on his bare arms.

‘The kindly shepherd and his wife took the child to Corinth, which is another town in Greece. It’s the skinny bit in the middle between the north, where Athens is, and the south, in case you’ve been to Greece.’

‘I’ve been to Chios,’ said Mel. ‘I went with my dad two years ago.’

‘Well, maybe if he takes you again, you could go to the mainland, instead of one of the islands. Or as well, if he’s feeling generous.’

She smiled at me. ‘Maybe I’ll ask him,’ she said, nodding.

‘Now, the king and queen of Corinth didn’t have any children, and they really wanted one. So they adopted this baby that the shepherd had brought to their city. But they never told him he was adopted. So when Oedipus grew up and heard rumours about his fate – that he was going to kill his father and marry his mother – he was horrified. He loved the people he thought were his parents and didn’t want to harm them in any way. He wanted to protect them, so he ran away from Corinth. Which way do you think he headed?’

‘Where you said the play was set,’ said Jono. He was biting the skin next to his thumb nail until a tiny globe of blood appeared and he stopped, apparently satisfied.

‘Thebes?’ asked Mel.

‘Exactly. And on his way there, at a crossroads, he was pushed aside by a rude old man and his servants. The rude old man hit Oedipus with his stick. In anger, Oedipus struck him back and killed him. He killed all but one of the servants, too. Five or six of them, I think.’

‘How did the other one escape?’ said Ricky. He was drawing a brontosaurus, grazing next to a caveman. At least I wasn’t supposed to be teaching him history.

‘He ran away. He turns up later, as the only witness to the fight that killed Laius. But that’s not till later. This is still all the background stuff which has happened before the action of the play starts.’

‘We’re not even at the beginning yet?’ Carly sounded faintly panicked.

‘Remember what I said about difficult and boring?’ Jono muttered.

‘When Oedipus got to Thebes, he found them living under the curse of the Sphinx.’

‘Like in Egypt?’ Mel asked. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there.’

‘Exactly like in Egypt, except this Sphinx isn’t made of stone. It’s real.’

‘It isn’t real.’ Jono rolled his eyes, as though he had to deal with this kind of nonsense every day. Looking at Ricky’s dinosaur, I guessed he might.

‘In the world of the play, the Sphinx is real. Like a dragon might be real in a story, right? Or a unicorn?’

He shrugged. Or perhaps his hunched shoulders just rebelled sometimes of their own accord.

‘Now, the Sphinx had set a riddle, and no-one could pass her until he could answer it. The riddle was this: what has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?’

‘And what’s the answer?’ Annika asked. She was holding a pen poised above her notebook, midway between chewing it and writing with it. I realised she might be taking notes.

‘Maybe you could try and work it out,’ I suggested.

‘Nothing has a different number of legs at different times of the day,’ she said, tapping the end of her pen quickly and softly on her book.

‘OK, I’ll give you a clue. The morning in the riddle means when something is young. The evening is when that thing is old.’

All five of them stared at me.

‘None of you can guess? OK, well the answer is a person. We all used four limbs to get around as babies, when we could only crawl, right? Then we learned to walk and so we’re on two legs for most of our lives. Then when we get old, we might need a walking stick, right? So we become three-legged in the end. Kind of.’

‘And Oedipus worked that out?’ Jono snorted.

‘He did. And the people of Thebes were so glad that they let him marry the queen, who had been recently widowed. Guess who her husband had been.’

‘The old man at the crossroads?’ asked Mel.

‘Exactly right.’

She smiled again.

‘So Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother. And when they find out what they’ve done, Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus puts his eyes out with her brooch pins.’

‘Brooch pins? What the fuck?’

‘People did wear jewellery in the ancient world, Jono.’

‘They didn’t use it to stab themselves in the eye, though. Did they?’ he said.

‘Well, Oedipus does. And I think there’s another play where someone gets stabbed in the eye with brooch pins, now you mention it.’

‘But that’s not fair,’ Carly said. ‘Oedipus didn’t mean to marry his mother.’

‘You think something’s only a crime if you mean to do it?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Well, what about a car accident?’ I asked them. ‘If you ran someone over but didn’t mean to, they’d still be dead.’

‘But he didn’t know she was his mum.’ Carly wasn’t persuaded. ‘And she thought he was just some guy.’

‘If someone’s told you you’re going to marry your son, wouldn’t you avoid men young enough to be your son?’

‘But she thought her son was dead,’ said Mel.

‘That’s true. And maybe she had no choice?’ I suggested. ‘If she was fated to marry her son, and even sending him away to die on a hillside wasn’t enough to change that fate, maybe nothing could, and she had no free will at all.’

‘That’s really fucking bleak,’ said Jono, leaning onto the arm of his chair, which gave a quiet creak.

‘But no-one would believe that,’ said Annika.

‘Really? Do you read your horoscope?’ I asked her.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, frowning. Annika saw potential tricks and humiliations everywhere.

‘Then aren’t you agreeing to a world where your destiny for that day or week or whatever is dictated by your birthday?’

She shrugged.

‘So that’s what I want you all to think about before I see you again. Free will, and how much of it you think you have. Do you believe in destiny? Or do you think what happens in your life is entirely up to you? Try to read the first act of the play, or some of it at least. Then write me a side of paper.’

They groaned as they put their things into their bags and headed out, but they had all stayed to the end. Maybe Robert had been right, I thought. Maybe I would be alright at this. Maybe I would even like it.

4

DD,

Everything’s changed, after Annika made her big scene last week. I don’t like her at all, most of the time. She’s such a bitch, and no-one ever calls her on it except Jono and me. Last week, when she stormed out of our first lesson with Alex, she called her a cunt. As she was leaving, I mean. She was walking right past her desk when she said it, and it was loud enough for me to hear even though she was facing away from me. Alex didn’t react at all, though. She just sat there like she couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

By the time we were out of the classroom, Annika had gone, left the Unit, I mean. I wanted to go after her and talk to her, because it just isn’t OK to speak to someone like that on their first day. But Carly wouldn’t let me, so we wrote an anonymous note and left it in Robert’s pigeonhole. I wonder if Alex noticed how much nicer Annika was being today? She doesn’t want to get kicked out of Rankeillor any more than the rest of us do, even though she’s always saying she does. She says she hates her mum and she doesn’t care what happens, but I bet that’s not really true.

Still, Annika being a bitch paid off in some ways. I’ve been at Rankeillor for three months now, and all we’ve done is basic skills and key skills and the rest of it has all been music therapy, art therapy, personal development, anger management. It’s been bothering me – aren’t we going to be behind when we go back to proper school, or to college or whatever? But now we’re reading a play by Sophocles, who I hadn’t even heard of last week. Alex wants us to think about whether we have a destiny. So is it my destiny that I can’t hear? Or can I just not hear?

Since I’ve decided I might want to be a journalist, I’ve been reading more blogs and stuff. And here’s what I’ve noticed: they’re all about the writer. I mean, they seem to be about something else – something the writer is, or likes, or cares about – but those are just ways for the writers to talk about themselves. It’s a bit fake, I think. I’m not going to pretend I’m talking about something else when I’m talking about me. I’ll just talk about me when I want to.

So here are ten things you might not know about being deaf:

1) I can’t hear you if we’re outside and there is a lot of traffic. The traffic is always louder than your voice, and because it’s lower-pitched, I can hear it more easily than I can hear your voice.

2) I can’t hear you if you don’t enunciate properly. Mumbling at a deaf person is really fucking rude.

3) I can’t always hear you if you don’t face me. I know it’s weird talking to a deaf person, because hearing people look at your eyes, while deaf people mostly look at your mouth. But if you look away, I can’t read your lips, and even though I have hearing aids, I lip-read too. My audiologist says that everyone lip-reads a bit, even people with perfect hearing, but most people don’t realise they’re doing it.