The Bellwether Revivals (12 page)

‘Yes, sweetheart, except you’re failing to grasp the most important part,’ Eden was saying to Jane, who now looked perplexed. ‘The only way that man can truly have free will is if the soul is a separate entity. Otherwise, we’re all just products of our neurons, of chemical processes that we’re not in control of. Let me explain it simply.’ He paused. ‘If I want to move my glass to my mouth to drink, I can do so, but I haven’t
chosen
to do so—the thought is just
a chemical function. It’s an event that my brain has conspired to create, because it likes the taste of sherry. Whereas, if a man has a mind, a soul that’s distinct from the body,
he
is the engine of his own actions; he determines when his hand moves towards the sherry glass. You see?’ Jane creased up her face. ‘Okay. Imagine a man in a coma. He wants to move, but his body just won’t respond—yes? Well, there are people who have such a conception of their own free will that they can recover from those kinds of accidents; they can make use of what bodily functions they have left. They blink, they sniff, they twitch their noses to communicate their will. The soul awakens the body.’

‘Son, I’m not sure you’ve quite reasoned this one out,’ Theo said, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘To say that thought is solely a chemical function shows an ignorance of basic human neurology.’

Iris kissed her mother. ‘Hello, Mum.’

‘Hello, darling. You look pretty.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And this must be Oscar.’ She didn’t stand to greet him, just shook his hand limply, bowing her head. ‘What an interesting suit.’

‘Thank you,’ Oscar said.

Eden paused his discussion to acknowledge their arrival, gently raising his chin—no word of hello. Oscar couldn’t help but feel nervous seeing him again, hearing that haughty, persuasive voice. He sat down with Iris on the settee, a good few feet away from Eden. Jane waved at them and smiled.

‘Look, I’m not saying the Cartesian view is without its flaws,’ Eden said, narrowing his eyes at his father. ‘But perhaps if you hadn’t had the notion of dualism completely quarried out of you at medical school—’

‘Tss! It has nothing to do with medical school. It’s about seeing more logic in another viewpoint.’

‘Like what, Mr B?’ Jane asked, and Eden gave an audible huff.

Theo canted his head. ‘Well, you don’t have to be a dualist to believe in the human soul. A soul is an holistic entity, the way I see it—the mind and the body together. Let’s take that man in the coma: he’s unable to function, not because his body is broken, but because part of his brain is broken. Neurologically, he’s lost certain capacities, and therefore his wholeness as a person has been compromised. His free will has been corrupted. Temporarily, he’s an empty vessel, because his brain is no longer working in combination with his other facets.’

‘So the man may as well be dead—right?’ Yin asked.

‘No, he’s just … out of alignment. Compromised. Temporarily, perhaps terminally.’

‘I really don’t get it,’ Jane said. ‘I can’t ever keep up with these discussions.’

‘I’m saying that the brain has the ability to right itself, given time, like an upturned canoe. And as long as the man’s other facets remain uncompromised—namely, that he is still breathing on his own—his soul can be fully restored.’

‘But what happens to his soul in the time that his brain isn’t working and he’s compromised, as you put it?’ Marcus asked. ‘Does it just cease to exist?’

Theo thought about this for a second. ‘No, no, his soul still exists, just not cohesively. The same way the picture on a jigsaw is still a complete picture, even when the pieces are lying in the box unassembled.’

‘I can’t stand jigsaws,’ Jane said. ‘The final picture is never worth the effort.’ Oscar thought of Dr Paulsen turning his nose up at the puzzles in the store cupboard.

‘You can always rely on Jane to get to the meat of the issue,’ Mrs Bellwether said. She gave a girlish chuckle.

Marcus crossed his arms. ‘Do you want to know the annoying thing about this argument? There’s no way to prove who’s right. It sort of makes me want to slip into a coma myself.’

Theo laughed. ‘Right!’

‘I mean, all of this posturing over what we are, why we exist, it’s so frustratingly unknowable. Sometimes I wonder why people bother. The answers will come when we die.’

‘But what if they don’t?’ Oscar said. Everybody looked at him. He felt he’d spoken out of turn. It was the first time he’d experienced a gathering like this: people who weren’t afraid to think, express, debate. He’d grown up believing that to reveal your intelligence was to show your weakness to others. It was better to do your homework the night before school, because if it was done on the schoolbus in front of other boys they’d goad and tease and shout—’Swot! Suck!’—and the girls would think you were soft. It was right not to talk about the complex affairs of the world over the dinner table with your family, but to talk instead of sport and weather and television programmes, because nobody liked to think of heavy things as they were eating. This is what he’d been raised to think.

‘Well, go on,’ Theo said. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Oscar began tentatively: ‘I just mean to say that it’s only religious people who believe they’re going to be given answers when they die, that there’s some sort of place, like Heaven’s Gate, where you queue up for a final verdict from St Peter. But really—’ He cleared his throat. ‘What if it’s like the Buddhists say, and we’re reincarnated into another form? Or what if we just die and that’s it—nothing else? Then we’ll just go from one state to another without ever knowing why we existed. That would be the biggest joke of all.’

When he finished speaking, there was silence in the room. He felt Iris’s hand sliding over his, and the squeeze of her fingers. Marcus and Yin looked away. Theo was thoughtful, dazed. Mrs Bellwether sipped at her sherry.

Then Eden said: ‘I forgot to mention that Oscar is an atheist. It completely slipped my mind.’

‘Are you really, Oscar?’ Mrs Bellwether said, apparently shocked.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t believe in
any
kind of higher being whatsoever?’

‘No.’

‘No grand scheme for our lives?’

‘No.’

‘
Well
,’ she said. ‘I feel sorry for you, Oscar, if that’s the case.’

‘It’s alright, Ruth,’ Theo said. He stared at Oscar with an unswerving focus. ‘Everyone is entitled to a belief system. We respect the views of others in this house, don’t we?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Does it concern you that Oscar is an atheist, Mother?’ Iris asked.

Mrs Bellwether gave a tight little shake of her head.

‘We should remember our Thomas Aquinas,’ Eden said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Eden stared back at Iris, blankly. ‘For those with faith, no explanation is necessary. For those without, no explanation is possible.’

‘Yes, God has a plan for all of us, I’m sure,’ Mrs Bellwether added.

‘Mum, that’s
so
condescending.’

‘What your mother means,’ Theo said, ‘is that she doesn’t think of Oscar any differently just because he doesn’t believe in God. Because she knows the Lord believes in
him
, and that’s all that really matters.’

‘Oh, please.’ Iris gave a scornful laugh. ‘I don’t know how you can sit there decrying Eden’s ideas about the soul one minute, and then come over all pious on Oscar. It’s total hypocrisy.’ She moved her body closer to Oscar on the couch—stiff, resolute.

Theo set his sherry glass down on the side table. ‘It’s nothing of the sort. Just because I don’t believe in Descartes’s idea of the soul, it doesn’t mean I can’t believe in the soul itself, or in God, for that matter. How many doctors do you think go to church every Sunday morning?’

‘They’re all hypocrites too.’

‘Iris!’ Mrs Bellwether said. ‘Where is this coming from?’

Theo waved his hand at his wife to quiet her. ‘There was a recent study in America. Seventy-odd per cent of doctors said they believed in God. Ninety-odd per cent said they regularly went to church.’

‘Don’t go quoting random statistics at me,’ Iris said. She leaned back against the cushions. ‘Statistics prove nothing in this case.’

‘Look,’ Theo knuckled his beard, widening his stance, ‘a man can belong to science
and
to God, darling. They don’t make such awkward bedfellows. Ask Francis Bacon, ask Isaac Newton, Faraday, Boyle. Even Einstein believed in God.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find he did.’

Eden spoke up: ‘Actually, he’s right. Einstein agreed with Spinoza’s idea of God. He said God reveals himself in the harmony of what exists. That the universe without a creator is an impossible premise.’

‘There you go, son, I knew I’d taught you
something
sensible.’

Marcus leaned forward, pleased with himself: ‘Science without religion is lame, but religion without science is blind. I believe that’s what Einstein said. Or maybe it’s the other way round …’

‘Oh, listen to you all, quoting famous men,’ Mrs Bellwether said. ‘And here I was wondering where those school fees were going.’

‘I’ll memorise some quotes for next time, too—make myself look more intelligent,’ Jane said, and let out a high laugh that nobody else participated in.

‘Iris, my darling, you’re going to find this out for yourself one day. Medicine is not a godless pursuit.’ Theo’s voice was softer now, more fatherly, but it reminded Oscar of the tone in which Eden sometimes spoke—lofty, self-congratulatory. ‘When you do your first residency and come to deal with life and death on a regular basis, you’ll find yourself reaching out for God. I’m certain
you will. Why? Because it’s in your nature, much as you rail against it. You should be more like your brother. He might have misguided ideas about life, but at least he’s smart enough to appreciate the fundamentals. He knows better than to question the values of his parents.’

‘
What?
’

A bell sounded at the far end of the room. Another woman in a black uniform retracted two sliding doors, revealing a large mahogany table set with white linen and silverware. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the first course is ready to be served.’

‘Oh, thank heavens for that,’ Eden said. ‘I could eat a pony.’ He jumped up from the chaise, Jane following at his heels. Everyone filed into the dining room. When Oscar passed by on the way to his seat, Eden touched his shoulder, whispering: ‘Thanks for coming. Isn’t this a blast?’

Oscar was relieved that Iris’s place setting was next to his. They sat across from Eden and Jane, while the Bellwethers took either end of the table. Marcus and Yin filled the space that was left. They were wearing different shades of tweed but with the same broad pattern; when they sat down, Theo referred to them as ‘Holmes and Watson’, and the two of them remained unusually subdued for the rest of the evening. (Oscar noticed that Marcus and Yin weren’t quite themselves around Theo. They seemed scared to say anything he might disagree with. And they were always so eager to impress Mrs Bellwether by complimenting her home, her furniture, her crystal. All evening, they were an awkward double act: Marcus would say something toadying, like, ‘You’ve got such an eye for these things, Mrs B,’ and Yin would follow up with the same few words of agreement: ‘Oh, yeah, totally.’)

The caterers served up a starter of goat’s cheese with a rocket salad. Oscar understood about the cutlery—the working from the outside in. He knew about holding a wine glass by the stem. But what he didn’t understand were the other etiquettes of formal
dining—when it was appropriate to speak, and to whom, and of what. He was so worried that he might embarrass himself that he said almost nothing until the main course was served: a loin of beef with organic vegetables and tiny horseradish potatoes, with a wine that Theo took great pleasure in announcing as ‘a deft little Barbaresco’. It had been a long time since Oscar had eaten so well. He was used to the meals at Cedarbrook, where the flavour of everything was boiled out and there was a taste of communality to it, of food left waiting in great metal vats.

‘So, Oscar,’ Mrs Bellwether said, ‘why don’t you tell us something about yourself. We know you’re an atheist, but that can’t be the sum total of you.’

‘Well, what would you like to know, Mrs Bellwether?’

She smiled. ‘Iris has said you’re not at Cambridge. I presume you have a profession of some kind.’

‘I work at a nursing home—Cedarbrook.’

‘That place with the wisteria,’ Eden added.

‘Ah, yes.’ Mrs Bellwether chewed her beef for a moment. ‘So you’re a nurse?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Surely one’s either a nurse or not a nurse.’

‘I’m a kind of nurse. A care assistant. I’m unqualified.’

‘I hope you don’t mean you’re unqualified for the position itself,’ Theo said.

Oscar just smiled.

‘Well, I think it’s very selfless of you to do a job like that. Very noble. You might even say
Christian
.’ Mrs Bellwether paused. ‘You’re helping people every day. Like my husband. Did you know he was a surgeon?’

‘Yes. Iris told me.’

‘I don’t practise any more,’ Theo said. ‘I retired young. These days I’m more involved with the training side of things.’

‘He teaches surgeons to become better surgeons,’ Mrs Bellwether said.

‘Getting into the robotic surgery game before anyone was taking it seriously—that was my biggest achievement. People laughed at me at the time, but they’re not laughing now.’

‘So, not meaning to be crude about it,’ Jane said, ‘but do you have to, you know,
clean up
all the old people?’

‘She means do you have to wipe their dirty bottoms,’ Eden added.

Oscar expected an outcry from Mrs Bellwether, but it never came. She simply looked down at her plate. Theo said: ‘Eden, come on now.
Dinner table
.’

There was a pause. The room’s eyes fell on Oscar. He set his knife and fork down across his plate. ‘Yes, actually, that’s exactly what it means. That’s what caring is—helping people when they’re helpless.’

‘But doesn’t that make you feel—’ Jane checked herself. ‘I don’t know—undignified? To have to do that. To wipe up after them.’