The Furies: A Novel (8 page)

‘Where would you prefer to live?’ I asked her.

‘Back in Stockholm,’ she replied instantly, as though she was in a perpetual state of readiness to answer this question. ‘We lived there till I was twelve. It’s so much better than Edinburgh.’

‘Why did you move here?’ Even though she was permanently hostile, I didn’t want to give up on the idea of having any kind of civil relationship with her.

‘My dad works for an oil company. He was transferred to Aberdeen, so my mum decided we had to move there with him.’

‘Aberdeen,’ said Carly. ‘Can you imagine?’

‘I don’t have to imagine,’ she snapped. ‘We lived there for six months before my mum couldn’t stand it and we moved here.’

‘Do you still see your dad at weekends, then?’ I asked her.

‘We could see him as often if we were in Sweden. He’d have to take one extra flight each way. He’s just being selfish.’

‘Well, I hope you can visit Stockholm soon, at least,’ I said.

She shrugged, immune to ingratiation.

‘Ricky isn’t lucky either,’ said Carly. ‘He didn’t choose to be living with his grandparents, did he? No-one would. You’d rather live with your parents, even if they’re intensely annoying, like mine. But that’s still where he is.’

‘Do you think that’s why he hasn’t come in today?’ I asked.

It was Jono who replied, without looking up from his desk. He was fiddling with something shiny and black. I couldn’t tell if it was a phone or a console. ‘He comes in when he feels like it. They’re old. They don’t really notice what he does.’

‘And some people don’t even get that,’ Mel added. ‘My brother was three when he died. He wasn’t being punished for being bad, he just got ill and then he died.’

The room fell silent. Even Jono stopped fidgeting. All I could hear were the distant sirens from the main road.

‘Are you OK talking about this?’ I asked her.

She gave a small smile. ‘I wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise. Anyway, it was ten years ago. Nearly eleven, actually. I got measles at school. Or maybe Jamie caught them at nursery. I can’t remember who got sick first. We were both ill at the same time, anyway, and I was only five. But we both got really bad, and had to go to hospital. Jamie died, and I went deaf. But I didn’t mind that so much, once my ears stopped hurting. That bit was terrible.’

‘I didn’t think you could die of the measles,’ Annika said. Her usual fuck-you tone was missing.

‘You can’t if you’ve been vaccinated,’ Mel explained. ‘You have the MMR jab when you’re little, and then if you do catch measles or whatever, you don’t get it so badly. But me and Jamie hadn’t been vaccinated. My mum blamed my dad for that. He thought the injection was dangerous. She said he talked her out of us having it. She’s never forgiven him. That’s why they got divorced.’

Carly was watching her friend intently. Her left arm was hovering, ready to hug.

‘God, Mel, that is awful,’ said Jono, turning back to look at her. ‘I didn’t know you went deaf, I thought you were born that way.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I could hear fine till the measles. That’s why I can talk properly now.’

And it was true: she didn’t sound deaf. At least, not to me. Her consonants had a slight thickening to them, which people might easily attribute to a cold, if they didn’t notice her hearing aids. And since she had shoulder-length blonde hair which fell into layered waves over her ears, her tiny hearing aids were easily missed. I didn’t even realise they were hearing aids when I first saw them: they were so small and silver, I thought they were ear buds.

‘So, what do you think about your destiny, Mel? Do you think you were fated to be deaf?’

‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not, like, politically deaf. Deaf with a capital D, I mean. Some deaf people are really hard core. But I don’t want to be part of Deaf culture, do I?’

‘Don’t you?’ I asked. ‘Why not?’

‘They only hang out with other deaf people and only talk with sign language and stuff. I want to live like the rest of you, but I have to do it with hearing aids. It’s not terrible. It’s not like missing a leg or something. I don’t really think about what it would be like to hear properly. I can’t remember what that felt like, to be honest. So I don’t know. Maybe I was destined for deafness, and that’s why I’m not upset by it.’

‘And do you think your brother was destined to die?’ Annika leaned forward past Carly so she could see Mel more clearly.

I flinched, but Mel’s expression didn’t change at all.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems kind of a waste, doesn’t it? Being born just to get to three and then die. People kept telling us we should be glad of the time we had with him, like he’d just wandered off to the shops or something. Got a better offer than hanging out with us losers. Or they went all Goddy about it. I remember one card my mum got after the funeral, from complete strangers. I guess they’d read about it in the paper. It was quite a big story, you know? A boy dying of measles. It was the first time it had happened for a while, I think. And the card had a cherub on it – a little fat baby with gold wings. I remember it really well. They wanted her to think that Jamie was like that now. Not dead, just feathery and fat. But who the fuck really believes in angels? I was five and even I could tell the difference between what you get on Christmas cards and my kid brother. Jamie wasn’t even chubby.’

Carly reached over and squeezed Mel’s hand, just like Robert had done to me a few days earlier.

‘Thanks for talking to us about that, Mel,’ I said. ‘I hope it wasn’t too upsetting for you, but you have brought an incredible perspective to the discussion.’ I sounded so condescending, I could have slapped myself. But the other three began to clap, and she looked genuinely pleased.

‘For next time, I’d like you to read the second half of the play, please,’ I said. ‘I want us to look at what kind of person Oedipus is, and what makes him the play’s hero. Think about how he behaves, and if you would do things differently. I want you to think about how angry he is. And I also want you to think about whether it’s better to know something or whether ignorance is bliss. OK? Thanks again, Mel especially. I’ll see you next week.’

DD,

Today is the first time I have ever talked about Jamie. Well, that’s not quite true. I told Carly about him before, way back when we were at Bruntsfield High. Before we got kicked out, I mean. And sometimes I talk about him with my mum. I don’t bring him up if she doesn’t, though, as it’s guaranteed to make her start crying, and that can go on for hours.

The strange thing is, I had literally no idea I was going to mention him until his name came out of my mouth. I haven’t thought about him in ages. I never say this to my mum (because of the crying thing), but I don’t really remember him. I remember the idea of him, if that makes sense. I remember having a kid brother. I remember that he used to scream a lot. I remember him saying my name, eventually, after I spent ages teaching him. I remember him screeching when he first had the measles and me telling him to shut up because my ears hurt. And that’s it. It was too long ago, and I was too little. Almost everything I remember about him is noise, and that’s the opposite of what I remember about people now.

I remember what came after Jamie much better than I remember Jamie: the fighting and the crying. Not the funeral, because I didn’t go to it. I suppose I was still in hospital, learning how to be deaf. That’s not as easy as I make it look. You’ve got to get the right hearing aids that don’t blare what Doctor Meikle calls ambient noise right into the middle of your head. You’ve got to adjust them when you go from one place to another, so you can still hear people talking even if they’re to one side of you. You’ve got to find ones that fit and aren’t massive and, more importantly, aren’t that disgusting fleshy colour like old ladies’ tights. You’ve got to wear your hair long and forwards, so that people talk to you like a person. You’ve got to learn to lip-read.

My mum just came barging in. Why she can’t knock, like normal people, I have no idea. She said she did. But people say that kind of thing all the time when you’re deaf. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? She’s going on about the music I’m playing. She says it’s because the neighbours have complained, but I bet it’s just because she doesn’t like it. Can’t I hear them, she said, banging on the walls. I told her of course I can’t, I’m fucking deaf. And if the bass isn’t turned right up, I can’t hear that either. Jesus. I told her I’d turn it off, if it was upsetting everyone so much. She said, you don’t have to do that, just turn it down a bit. I swear to God, sometimes, there is literally no point talking to her at all.

So, here are two things I have noticed. One is that we all talk a lot more now Alex is our whatever she is. Teacher? Therapist? Responsible adult? Especially me. I don’t think I have ever said as much since I got to Rankeillor as I did today. Which is OK. The second thing is that Alex doesn’t come in on Fridays. I thought she just didn’t have our group that day, but she isn’t there at all. Does she just not feel like working five days a week? Or does she have another job to go to? Miss Allen used to be there on Fridays, though, so something’s changed.

And before I sign off for today, I said I’d come up with a tenth fact about being deaf. So here it is: I have to watch TV with the subtitles on, because the sound mix of pretty much every programme and film is so fucking bad. If I turned my aids up high enough to hear people talking, I’d be almost bleeding from the ears when something blows up, or a plane takes off, or the music kicks in. It’s the same at the cinema. I have to go to screenings with subtitles, because the sound at the top end is way too loud. And the surround sound they have at some cinemas is even worse. My hearing aids don’t work very well when noise comes from lots of different directions at once. It’s like they’re not expecting it. I don’t ever watch the news. If you want to know why, turn the sound off, and put the subtitles on. It’s literally gibberish half the time.

The next time I saw that group I wasn’t feeling well at all. I’d made my first trip back to London the previous Friday. Wait a minute, the lawyers will say. You said before that you didn’t want to be in London. That you were hoping never to go back there again. It’s in our notes. That’s what you said. So, Miss Morris, why did you return to London only a couple of weeks after you’d left the city, of your own volition? I don’t know if they’ll use words like volition, obviously. But my guess is that they will. I’d almost be disappointed if they didn’t. There’s really no point going into Law if you aren’t going to say ‘volition’ from time to time.

And as with everything else, I’ll have to tell them the truth. Though it will be hard to explain in a way that makes sense to anyone else. Once a fortnight, or sometimes once a week, depending on how much money I had going spare and how much I needed to do it, I would sit on a train for four and a half hours to go somewhere I didn’t want to be. I never contacted any of my friends in the city, nor my mother in the suburbs. I never spent the night; I always caught the five-thirty train back. Why that one? Because the six o’clock is the last train, and it’s always too busy. So the five thirty is better.

And what did I do when I got to London? Went for a walk. Always the same route, always the same time, then back onto the train and back to Edinburgh. I realise that at no point in this process do I think of, or describe, either London or Edinburgh as home. I spent three hours in London each time, and then left. And if they ask me why I did this every week, or every fortnight, I will have no better answer than this: because I had to.

5

‘Hello there.’ Three of them came in and sat in their usual seats. Ricky had barely sat down before he restarted his campaign to colour in the cover of every book he owned. This time, Annika and Carly were missing. ‘Where are the others?’

‘I don’t know about Annika, but Carly has the flu. She’ll be off for a couple of days,’ said Mel, quickly.

‘You look tired, miss,’ said Jono. ‘No offence.’

‘I feel tired, so none taken. I have a headache, truthfully.’

He frowned, then began rootling through his blue school bag, producing three small brown bottles of prescription medicines.

‘Do I want to know where you got these from?’ I asked.

‘The doctor.’ He shrugged. ‘Two painkillers, one anti-anxiety. What d’you fancy?’ He waved the bottles at me.

‘I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t have all those with you,’ I said. ‘And why did anyone prescribe you Valium?’

‘Nerves,’ he said.

‘Is that right? Is it your name on that bottle?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, pocketing it. ‘Would you prefer codeine?’

‘Thank you, but I think I have some aspirin somewhere.’ I hunted through my own bag until I found a battered cardboard packet, crushed at one end. I dug around for a bottle of water and took two pills, wincing at the acrid taste. ‘Well, even though we’re missing the other two, I think we’d better get back to Oedipus.’

‘He probably had a headache, too. What with the eye-gouging,’ Jono said. Was it possible he was trying to be nice? Jono’s moods were spoken of in hushed tones by the other staff, since you could never predict them. Mostly, I found him sullen, but every now and then I saw a glimpse of someone funny, engaged, almost kind. Then he would clam up again and the sulkiness returned.

‘You’re right, of course. Nothing like the pain of another to distract us from our own ills. But what I really wanted to discuss was whether Oedipus is better off at the end of the play or at the beginning.’

‘At the beginning,’ said Ricky. ‘At the end he hasn’t got any eyes, miss.’ I wondered how much of the book he’d read, or whether he’d just asked Jono what happened. But then, if even one of them was reading even a few pages of Sophocles, Robert would be pleased. So perhaps I should be too.

‘But at the beginning,’ said Mel, ‘Thebes has the plague, doesn’t it? And the plague is a punishment for the city because Oedipus is the king. But he doesn’t know that. So he’s got all the bad news to come, hasn’t he? There’s no way he could just not find out. He has to deal with the plague, and that means finding out what he’s done – all the stuff you told us about before.’