The Bellwether Revivals (23 page)

She talked about her brother differently now—so lovingly and magnanimously. Gone were all the hopeless doubts of November. She was convinced by him. Conscripted. ‘He’s really
an extraordinary person, you know. There’s a selfish side to him, of course, but that’s true of anyone,’ she would say. Often, Oscar would catch her examining her leg like it was a prosthesis she was trying on for the day; or he would overhear her talking on the phone to her parents, saying: ‘You should really come down to King’s one night and hear him play. I think he misses seeing you in the crowd. Oh, alright, if you’re going to be pedantic, the
congregation
. Will you just come out one night? He wants you there, I can tell.’ Sometimes it took all of Oscar’s strength and resolve not to shake her by the shoulders. He wanted the old Iris back, the girl he’d known before the accident, who could finish a meal, and find time for him each night, and talk about her brother reasonably, without such blinkered sentimentality. Most of all, he wanted to remind her of the plan they’d made before Christmas.

Now they were both looking out from the steps of the library for somewhere to go. Across the street, the windows of the West Road Concert Hall were bright yellow, and beyond the surrounding trees, a private tennis court for the Fellows of Trinity College was bathed in the shimmer of lampposts.

Iris noticed the soft, inviting light hanging above the fence. ‘Let’s go in there,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll improvise.’ She strode off towards it, without looking back to see if he was following.

He could hardly believe that she was the same girl whose bedside he’d been tending just a few months ago. She walked with only the slightest trace of a limp on her left side. There was a bounce in her step, more poise and purpose. The scarring on her leg was still visible, but barely. He wanted nothing more than to get near enough to touch her again. She seemed to have been keeping him at arm’s length since coming back to Cambridge. If she took a shower before bed, she would dress herself in the bathroom and emerge in baggy, washed-out pyjamas, and sleep with
her back towards him. If he tried to kiss her neck, she would flinch, pull the covers around her. And if he ever tried to raise the subject of the plan they’d made, or mention the idea of meeting Herbert Crest, she’d divert the course of the conversation to something else: the follow-up appointments with her surgeon, the lymphocyte slides she was studying with her lab group, her exam timetable. It worried him.

The tennis court was coated in leaf skeletons. Iris went over to tighten the sagging net with the crank-handle. Then she hunched down on the service line, awaiting some invisible top-spin serve, twirling her make-believe racket in her hands. ‘Come on, Oscar,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you be Agassi.’ She lunged to the right, to the left, swatting the air with her fist to practise her imaginary strokes, making
pock
sounds with her lips. ‘When we were kids, Eden always wanted to be Ivan Lendl. We made our own grass court in the garden. He wasn’t very good, but he tried very hard, took it all very seriously. He’d come out wearing his tennis whites, sweatbands and all. I don’t know why anyone would want to be Ivan Lendl.’

Oscar let it go. He moved to the opposite side of the net.

‘Here comes my serve.’ She threw the invisible ball into the air and smashed it towards him. It bounced in, somewhere close to the tramlines, or so she claimed with a pointed finger. ‘Fifteen-love. Don’t be holding back on me now. I want to see your best groundstrokes.’ Her exhalations steamed.

He felt a little self-conscious, swiping at the air and pretending to follow the path of the ball, though he found himself anticipating her returns and considering his footwork. They back-and-forthed like this for several points. He assumed she’d grow bored soon enough. ‘Advantage Agassi,’ she called out. The faint moonlight settled on her face.

‘Shouldn’t you be taking it easy?’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘Dad says I’m okay to run on it.’ She swung her arm and hit another imaginary serve. He just stood there. ‘That was a let.’

‘Iris—you need to be careful.’

‘I’m fine. You heard what the doctor said—I’m the fastest healer on the planet. And if I break it again, so what?’ She hit another serve. ‘I’ll just get Eden to fix it for me.’

He folded his arms. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Hey, I thought you were Agassi, not McEnroe.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

‘What? About Eden?’

‘Forget it,’ he told her, and walked away. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Oscar—’

She came after him. He heard the shuffle of her steps over his shoulder as he reached the fence.

‘I was just kidding. God, you’re no fun lately—what’s the matter with you?’

He turned and looked at her sternly. ‘Me? There’s nothing up with
me
. It’s you, Iris. You’re practically another person. It’s like the last few months didn’t even happen.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, flitting her eyes away.

‘Do you know how often you bring him up?’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Iris, you know who.’

‘Well, he
is
my brother. And he
did
fix my leg. I’m just proud of him, that’s all.’

‘You really believe he healed you.’

‘Of course. It’s my body, I should know.’ Her fingers groped for his arm. ‘Sweetheart, look at me. Look.’ She gestured to her legs, as if presenting a new pair of shoes, jumping on the spot, dancing around. ‘Look at what he did. How can I not believe him any more?’

‘It wasn’t him, Iris. It just seems that way. It’s a coincidence.’

‘Of course it was
him
. It had to be. I know I was sceptical about it before, but—’

‘Sceptical? Iris, you thought he was mentally ill. You begged me to help you prove it.’

‘Well,’ she said, and paused. ‘That was before.’

Oscar had seen her change of heart coming. It had been a gradual thing: an occasional compliment about Eden on the phone had turned into questions about the ethics of their plan each time Oscar had come to visit, and finally a lack of interest in seeing the videos, an unwillingness to even acknowledge them. Somewhere between the first towel Eden placed on her leg and the first free steps she took across the organ house floor, she had given herself the licence to trust her brother completely, after so many years of resentment and accusation. It had brought her a new kind of happiness, and sometimes Oscar felt guilty for trying to dismantle it. But he kept reminding himself of the conversation they’d had back in November, when she’d sat with him by Magdalene College and made her first appeal for help. How distressed she had seemed then, how close to breaking.

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. ‘Look, there’s something I need to tell you, Iris,’ he said, then waited, wondering if it was the right thing. ‘I know you said you didn’t want me to do it, but I went to see Herbert Crest last week.’

She stared back at him, deer-eyed. The slightest noise came from her mouth—a gentle wash of air. All she said was: ‘Oh.’

‘Don’t you want to know why?’

She shook her head.

‘We had a plan, Iris.’

She stayed quiet.

‘I know you feel differently now, but I’m trying to keep to that plan we made. We decided it together, didn’t we? We promised we wouldn’t back out. One of us has to see it through. I promised to help you with your brother, and that’s what I’m going to do. No matter what.’

She looked down at her leg as if it were some toddler who’d come clinging to her side, overhearing a conversation much too
adult for its ears. Her smooth, pallid kneecaps showed through the rips in her jeans. ‘Fine, if you want to get Crest involved, get him involved.’ He could tell from her tone that she wasn’t serious. ‘But he’s only going to find out what I found out. And he’s probably going to wish he hadn’t.’

‘You’re not mad about it?’

‘Your heart’s in the right place, I suppose.’ She removed the pack of cloves from her coat and shook the last one out, holding it tightly between her lips. The matchflame brightened her face. She took a long, laboured drag and blew the smoke out, slow and even. ‘Do you know how hard it is to sit in a library, learning about the clinical relevance of blah-blah-blah when you’ve seen what I’ve seen? I can’t care about what it says in textbooks any more—all that pointed, straight-down-the-middle science talk. It used to make complete sense to me. But now I can’t even get to the end of a chapter without thinking about my leg, and what Eden did. It makes a mockery out of everything I’ve ever held important. Those textbooks seem so out of step now, so conventional.’ She gave another limp shrug of her shoulders, peering up at him. ‘So, maybe you’re right. Maybe I
have
changed lately, I’ll admit it. But only because my whole world just feels so bloody different now. I don’t know how to go back to where I was from here.’

Oscar woke up alone at Harvey Road the next morning. Daylight was pressing on the windows and Iris had left her usual mess of clothes on her side of the bed. Downstairs, the clink of cutlery was rising from the kitchen. He got dressed and went to get himself something to eat. Eden was at the breakfast counter, slicing the top off a boiled egg with a steak knife. He must have heard Oscar’s footsteps in the doorway, because he didn’t look up from what he was doing, just said: ‘If you want anything for breakfast, tough—there’s nothing in. But I can offer you some orange juice. It might be a day or two past the sell-by.’ He shook his fingers,
wincing with the heat of the egg, and the severed top fell onto his plate.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Gone to class. Left the wolf alone with the lamb. Tut tut.’ Eden was still holding the knife, about an inch or so from his face. He twisted it around a few times, set it down beside his plate, then opened his book on the table and began reading.

Oscar went to pour himself some orange juice. It smelled a little fermented, so he filled a glass with tap water instead and stood there drinking it.

‘Don’t you have work or something?’ Eden said, hardly lifting his eyes from the book.

‘Night shift.’

‘How awful.’

‘You get used to it.’

There was a sudden stirring from the washing machine. ‘Well, please don’t stick around for my benefit,’ Eden said, chewing. He turned a page and added, nonchalantly: ‘If you’re going to stay over again, do me the courtesy of keeping your mouth closed. I can hear you snoring from the next room.’

This is how Eden had started to talk lately. He would utter snide remarks to Oscar when they were alone together, making no eye contact, and sometimes his voice would sound almost threatening. The disquiet between them had only worsened over the Christmas break. Though Oscar had spent most of the holidays at Cedarbrook, racking up the hours at triple pay, he’d accepted the Bellwethers’ invitation to join them for lunch on Boxing Day. He’d expected it to be a grand occasion, all cravats and champagne and seafood canapés. He’d imagined a fleet of cars on the driveway, and an assembly of distant Bellwether relatives packed inside the house. But it had turned out to be a quiet affair: just him, Iris, Eden, and their parents, gathered around that too-large dining table. Oscar had taken his seat beside Iris, her crutches leaning on the chair next to her, and Eden sat across from them, supervising their behaviour.

Halfway through the meal, Theo asked Oscar if he had a favourite patient at Cedarbrook, someone to whom he might have given special attention. He qualified this by saying: ‘Everybody has favourites. It’s inevitable. When I was doing my first rotation at St Albans, there was an old dame called Mrs Garrett in the Renal Ward. She was always telling me how handsome I was and trying to get me to go out with her daughter. Anyway, I scrubbed in to observe her surgery and the poor woman died on the table—it was all very heartbreaking. For the rest of my rotation, I thought I was some sort of surgical Jonah. I was afraid to get close to patients after that. I got over it, of course, but I’ll always remember Mrs Garrett’s face.’

Oscar could have told Theo about Dr Paulsen, but he chose not to. His relationship with the old man was not something he wanted to discuss across the dinner table; it was not some inane topic that could be passed around like cranberry sauce for everyone to dip into. So he just said: ‘No, I don’t really have any favourites. I try to treat everyone the same.’

‘That’s admirable,’ Mrs Bellwether said.

‘Yes, very,’ Theo agreed.

At this point, Eden had pushed his plate away. ‘Oh, please. Of course you have a favourite.’ He eyeballed his parents. ‘His favourite is someone named Paulsen. Dr Abraham Paulsen, if I recall it correctly. Room 12, second floor. Isn’t that what you told me?’

That had left Oscar almost speechless. He removed his napkin from his knee and politely dabbed his lips. ‘I don’t remember telling you that.’

‘Oh, well, ignore me. Perhaps I got it wrong. Or perhaps you were a little, you know—’ Eden made a tipping motion with his hand, as if drinking from some miniature champagne flute. ‘In
vino veritas
and all that. There’s no need to lie about it.’

Iris weighed in: ‘Alright, Eden, I think you’ve made your point.’ She placed a hand on Oscar’s knee, beneath the frill of the
tablecloth. Her voice had an engaged sort of tone. If she was trying to take someone’s side by entering the conversation, Oscar wasn’t sure whose. She turned to look at her mother. ‘He wasn’t trying to lie. I’m sure he just didn’t want to discuss it, did you, Oscar?’

He didn’t know what to say. He’d expected her to defend him, not give some half-hearted apology for his presence. ‘I—’

‘A lie of omission is still a lie.’ Eden tilted back in his chair.

‘Stop badgering the boy and finish your lunch,’ Theo said, standing to retrieve the carafe of burgundy from the centre of the table. ‘I wish I’d never brought it up.’

Oscar had excused himself from the table and gone into the bathroom just to have some time alone. He had a seasick feeling in his bones, and it stayed with him long after Boxing Day. It was still there now, as he stood in the kitchen at Harvey Road, watching Eden spoon the whites of his eggs into a cereal bowl. There was a stale air coming in from the hallway and the washing machine was turning slowly. He drained his water and set the glass down on the counter. ‘Can you tell Iris I’ll call her later?’