The Bellwether Revivals (39 page)

Crest went on: ‘He didn’t have to talk to me about it—usually he wouldn’t—but he did, and I knew it was a breakthrough. Then he asked me how I was doing and, well, I guess there was no reason to lie to him. But once he heard my news about the tumour, it was like he went right back to his old self. That’s classic NPD behaviour. He wasn’t upset about Iris being injured—he was upset for himself, because of how it made him look—and as soon as he heard my news, well, a light just switched on again. Started telling me how I had to come back for more treatments right away. I told him I’d think about it. He got pretty insistent, and I thought: this could be a chance to really help the kid, you know? I could really sit down with him and help him understand himself a little better. He said three weeks, come over in three weeks, and I agreed, with one condition: I get to meet his parents. He told me it could be arranged. That was the last I heard.’

‘It’s a relief to hear it from your side,’ Oscar said. ‘The way Eden told it, it was like you came begging for his help.’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything different. But you can tell your girlfriend I’m gonna see that he gets some help, okay? I’m gonna talk to some top-level psychiatrist friends of mine and see if they’ll take his case.’

‘That’s all she ever wanted.’ The day Iris had first asked for his help was a distant memory to Oscar now. Somehow they seemed further than ever from achieving what they’d set out to do. ‘She told me something yesterday. She’s been thinking about what you asked her, about a trigger moment.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Crest said. ‘She remember something?’

He told the old man Iris’s story about the summer day at the
Bellwether house with Eden and the dead blackbird. Crest didn’t interrupt, and he made Oscar wait for his response. He gave no suggestion that the memory was significant. All he said was: ‘Thanks for the info. You tell your girl to get well.’

Under the heading
VOLUNTARY
in the Festal Evensong programme were the words ‘
Toccata in B Minor
(Gigout), arrangement for chamber organ (E. Bellwether).’ There was no applause when Eden took his place at the modest-looking instrument at the far end of the chapel—the awkward etiquette of the occasion demanded it. He stretched his fingers, straightened out his back, and carefully set his hands upon the keys. The music came fast out of the pipes like greyhounds breaking the traps—a hard-sounding, impatient melody. Powerful chords blasted through the chapel, and layer upon layer of frenzied notes clambered for the ceiling. Half the congregation took the organ voluntary as their cue to leave, gathering their coats and heading for the exits, but the people who stayed behind kept their eyes trained on Eden. As his fingers sprawled across the keys, the music began to thicken. It flooded the cavernous building like a mist.

Oscar searched the last of the crowd, looking for the Bellwethers. It had been a long, dreary service, and Iris had given him the impression that her parents would be there. ‘If I can’t go
myself, I at least want to experience it vicariously,’ she’d told him. ‘God knows I can’t rely on my father to describe it. You’re the only person who understands why I love that choir so much.’ In fact, the choir was the only thing that had made the service bearable, until the moment Eden took to the organ.

Oscar tried to focus on the music and forget about who was making it. He tried to detach himself from everything and enjoy the sound. But he couldn’t. The more the music came surging towards him, the sadder he felt—because as surely as he could picture Eden as an organist at a magnificent cathedral like St Paul’s or Notre-Dame, he could also picture him as a patient in some white-walled psychiatric wing, playing silent toccatas on the windowsill.

After a while, Eden held down the final chord like he was damming some great power below his fingertips. He released the pressure with a flourish and the chapel fell silent. What was left of the congregation rose to its feet, applauding. Eden hardly smiled. He stepped away from the organ, gave the slightest of bows towards the pews, and walked along the aisle, into a private room near the choir stalls. The ovation subsided, and Oscar filed out with everybody else.

Rain was slanting steadily across the Front Court. People were sheltering in the vestibule, waiting for it to ease, but Oscar headed straight out into the downpour. His umbrella was cheap and water ran down onto his shoes. He was relieved that the others weren’t around to ask what he thought of the performance. If Jane had been there to tug at his sleeve and say, ‘Scale of one to ten: how good was Edie tonight?’ he would’ve had to admit what he’d left the chapel feeling—that, despite it all, Eden Bellwether was a genius.

He made it as far as King’s Parade before he noticed Mrs Bellwether on the roadside. All around her, the rain was tinged blue by the old-fashioned streetlamps. There was no way to get by without her seeing him, so he made a point of calling out to her.
She turned around, curious. ‘Oh, hello there. Theo’s just bringing the car. Can we give you a lift?’

‘No, it’s alright. I don’t live too far from here.’

‘Okay. Well, do keep dry.’ She turned away, seeing a spray of headlights in the distance, but when she realised they didn’t belong to Theo, she looked back at him, lifting her eyebrows. There was an awkward moment of quiet.

‘I didn’t see you in there,’ Oscar said. ‘Did you enjoy the service?’

‘No. I’m afraid I didn’t.’

‘Oh?’

‘Much too secular for my taste. It felt like a concert in there, not worship. When I go to church, I expect people to be reverent. But there was so much chattering I could hardly hear the lessons.’

‘Well, I’m not really qualified to judge any of that.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’ And she turned away again, staring down at the slick cobbles. ‘Eden was wonderful, of course. He plays so well.’

‘You didn’t want to stay and talk to him?’

‘He’s always so busy after a service. No point in waiting. And, oh, perhaps I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud, but a chapel is
really
no place for a standing ovation. I can’t understand how the vergers allow that kind of rowdiness. My old uncle Charles would’ve been appalled.’

Oscar didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry you didn’t have a good time.’

‘I’m sure I’ll get over it.’

They stood there quietly as two giggling women sharing a golf umbrella emerged from the Gatehouse, heading for Market Square. Then Mrs Bellwether looked his way again and said: ‘Do you mind if I ask you something, Oscar?’

‘Not at all.’

She waited, drawing in the corner of her mouth. ‘Would you
say that my son is liked by people? I don’t mean popular exactly, just, you know,
liked
.’

He wasn’t sure how to respond.

‘Oh, look,’ she went on briskly, ‘I know he has friends—but Jane, Marcus, Yin, they were raised in the same sort of environment. Prep school, boarding school, Cambridge. You know what I mean. Sometimes I wonder how the average person sees him. I wonder how he’s going to cope in the outside world. I look at other boys his age—boys like you—and I can’t see him ever fitting
in
.’

‘Everyone’s trying to fit in somewhere, Mrs Bellwether. Me included.’

‘Yes, well, I’m sure that’s the case. But sometimes I worry that it’s all been handed to him much too easily.’ She didn’t seem interested in his answer to her question any more. The tension was easing from her voice. ‘The only trouble he’s ever had was being born, and heaven knows he was a difficult birth. But all we’ve done since then is try to keep him comfortable. No stresses or struggles. We’ve sheltered him, indulged him. I don’t think he’s learned to cope with disappointment.’

She paused, switching her umbrella into her other hand. ‘Oh, I’m getting myself into bother here. I shouldn’t be saying any of this. You don’t want to hear it, I know. It’s just that everyone in my family went to boarding school, then Oxbridge, and there’s an assumption that it didn’t do any of us any harm. That we’re all somehow
better off
. But I wonder about that. I look at my son in there and I think, have I raised someone exceptional or someone abnormal?’

She let her words hang in the air. It occurred to Oscar that this was the first time he’d ever thought that Iris and her mother were similar. There was something about the way she looked as she waited under the streetlight: she had the same shallow slope to her face as Iris, the same straight hairline that bent when she frowned. But hers was a beauty that had aged into something
ordinary. ‘You know,’ he started to say, and she squared her eyes at him eagerly, ‘I’m not sure it’s possible to be exceptional without being a bit abnormal too. Goes with the territory.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I really don’t know why I brought it up.’ Right then, Theo’s Alfa Romeo rolled up to the kerb. The passenger door swung open. She collapsed her umbrella, calling: ‘Goodness, Theo, what kept you? My shoes are ruined.’

Iris was discharged from Madigan Hall on Easter Monday. She phoned Oscar from her parents’ house that afternoon, sounding less than enthusiastic about the prospect of spending the whole of the exam term in the company of her father. ‘You have to come over for dinner tonight,’ she said. ‘Dad’s roasting a lamb—he’s driving me spare. It’s supposed to be family only, but that means Eden will be coming and I don’t think I can face him on my own right now. Please tell me you can make it.’ He took the call in the front garden at Cedarbrook. Inside, the residents were tucking into their own lunch, and the smell of lamb and mint sauce had pervaded the corridors all morning, making him nauseous. But he told her he’d be there.

It was Theo who answered the door. Everything he had on was white—his trousers, his shirt, his shoes—apart from a red cooking apron, which was so shiny that it seemed to strobe when he moved. ‘Ah, Oscar, good,’ he said, ‘do you like your lamb pink or brown? Say brown and you’ll break my heart.’ He took Oscar’s umbrella before he had a chance to reply, dumping it into a large ceramic pot by the door. ‘Go on through, why don’t you? I’ve got to run upstairs quickly and change.’ He gestured to the blots of oil on his shirtsleeves. ‘Chef’s prerogative.’

Oscar found Iris reclining on the sofa in the drawing room, her leg braced in the foam and metal contraption she hated so much, elevated on a velvet cushion. She had on a pair of jogging bottoms with one leg snipped off above the knee, and a hooded varsity sweater. Eden wasn’t in the room, but Jane and Mrs Bellwether
were there, and he could see that a light was on in the organ house outside—a simple glow behind the misted-up glass of the French windows. ‘Hey, there you are—
finally
,’ Iris said. ‘I was starting to worry.’

‘Sorry. Held up at work.’

Mrs Bellwether opened her palm out towards the furniture. ‘Sit yourself down, Oscar. Can I get you something to drink?’

‘No thank you, Mrs Bellwether.’

‘Please. Call me Ruth.’ She smiled at him.

Jane waved hello. ‘Eden’s out in the O. H., in case you’re wondering.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Tinkering,’ she said. ‘Like always.’

He bent to kiss Iris on the cheek and took a seat beside her. Ruth picked up the conversation they’d been having when he came into the room—something about a certain style of property that you only ever saw in a certain region of France called the Auvergne, where she was taking a trip with Theo next week; they were going out there to look at some holiday houses.

Soon, Theo came bounding through the drawing room in a clean shirt, retying the cord of his apron. ‘Alright, I hope you’re all hungry.’ He went into the kitchen and they heard him opening and closing the oven. After a moment, he popped his head back around the door. ‘Another few minutes for the potatoes,’ he said. ‘How about some sherry to get things going?’ He brought out six little glasses on a silver tray and handed them out, one by one. ‘Where’s Eden? Will somebody bring him in, please? I want to make a toast.’

‘I’ll go,’ Jane said.

It was noticeably quieter in the room without Jane. Even when she wasn’t talking, she had a way of making noise, and now there was an unbearable hush amongst them. Theo sat down on the arm of the couch next to his wife. ‘So, Oscar, how’s that patient of yours doing? Dr Poulter, wasn’t it? Dr Pointer?’

‘Paulsen,’ he said.

‘That’s right. How’s the old fellow doing?’

‘Not good, actually.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘He had a stroke a few weeks ago. A bad one.’

Theo shook his head in consternation with the world. ‘I suppose it comes to us all in the end,’ he said, as if this platitude really got to the heart of the matter.

‘How old is he?’ Ruth asked.

‘Eighty-six.’

‘Hm,’ she said. ‘My father had his first stroke at fifty-seven. Terrible thing.’

There was a noise from the kitchen as Jane and Eden came in through the back door, arriving into the room with damp hair and shoulders dotted with rain.

‘Oh, good, we’re all here,’ Theo said. He dinged the sherry glass with his fingernail and stood up. ‘This is what you might call a multifarious toast, so I’ll try to keep to the bullet points, but I make no guarantees of brevity. You all know how much I like to make a speech.’

‘We do,’ Eden said. ‘So get on with it.’

‘First, I’d like to drink to Iris.’ He raised his glass by its spindly neck. ‘To her steady and
lasting
recovery.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Oscar said.

Eden shuffled his feet in the doorway.

‘Second of all, to Eden, who put on a heck of a show yesterday. It brought to mind that old Wordsworth poem—does anyone recall it?—
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
and so on and so on … It’s been a trying year so far, and, yes, we seem to have had a few setbacks lately, but I’d like to think we can have a successful exam term now to make up for it.’ Theo sipped at his sherry, and everyone presumed the toast was over, setting their glasses down. ‘Wait, wait, I’m not finished. Let’s not forget it’s Easter Monday. We must give our thanks to God, who gave His
only begotten son to die on the cross for our sins. May we live by the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ on this day and always, in his name and memory. Amen.’