The Possession of Mr Cave (12 page)

I closed my eyes and I saw this boy. He pressed a bottle into
my chest. 'There you go, Tea-stain, take a sup on that.'

'I'm all right,' I said. 'I don't want a drink.'

We were in a living room with toys on the floor. We were
in school uniform. It was daylight outside. There were other
boys there too, laughing, and I felt their laughter as bats flapping
around my head.

'Drink it.'

'No, not that 'un,' another boy said. The small boy who
had been with Denny and Aaron the night Reuben died. The
one who vomited on the pavement. 'Me mam will kill me.'

'Shut up, Cam,' Aaron said, then to me: 'Drink it.'

His hard eyes offered no alternative so I took the bottle and
read the label. Hierbas Ibicencas. A cheap liquor picked up as
a souvenir from a package holiday, no doubt.

Within the dark green glass there was a cutting from a
plant which had spikes for leaves. I drank it back, and kept
going. It tasted foul. Rough and hot and ancient, liquid
amber drawn from the belly of the earth. I wanted it to stop.
My novice tongue couldn't cope with this. Yet I was aware
of my audience, aware that this was one of those times when
I could prove myself to my tribe. When I could belong.

The drink burned my chest but I kept on, forcing the gulps,
as some of the other boys did drum rolls on the furniture.
There was a rising cheer, from everyone apart from Aaron,
and the noise was inseparable from the taste and the heat I
felt as it went down. And then it was over and the room spun
round and I saw the other boys. I saw their faces. Gargoyles
and comedy masks, nudging laughter out of the others.

The laughter was aimed at me. At Reuben.

He leaned in. Aaron Tully.

'Tea-stain's going to throw up. Must have seen himself in
the mirror. The ugly ——.' He walked his fingers across my
cheek, towards the mark. 'Let's go to Australia.'

The laughter increased and I saw Denny. The only one not
laughing. He faded away, erased from the scene, as I sat down
on a chair.

Someone was hammering out random noise on a keyboard.
A cheap child's toy.

'That noise,' I mumbled (as he must have also mumbled),
'is me.'

The burning laughter kept on, and I closed my eyes and
lost myself in the loud and accidental notes of our existence.

*

We humans love to believe the thoughts inside our heads are
collected as if in some deep and private well, each equipped
with only one bucket, and from which we alone are allowed
to drink. We go through our life and watch experience rain
into our well, and we keep lowering the bucket every day safe
in the knowledge that the water we drink from is protected
by a circular wall of stone. We understand that the same light
or dark clouds may rain into others, but we like to think that
the water running into ours is our own private supply.

But do you ever think, as Tristram Shandy did, that your
mind is full of borrowed thoughts?

Do you feel ideas and images leaking in from other places?

Well, yes, I know you do. Or, at least, know you did. Back
in those halcyon days, when you used to talk to me in a decent
manner, when you used to always go on about peculiar coincidences.
The unusual word that you would say two seconds
before it was spoken on the radio. The times you thought
about Cynthia just as she telephoned.

Now, imagine these little glimpses became panoramic views.
Imagine you could feel another's pain as you feel your own.
Then, take the next little step and imagine that you found
yourself with knowledge you didn't want, knowledge so
complete it gave you snatches of another's experience wrapped
inside your present. Imagine if there were times when the false
barriers we build between one another – even those between
life and death – were suddenly washed away and there, in the
merging of eternal souls, we could remember things we never
knew, and feel a pain we could never have felt.

Oh, Bryony, I swear it was his memories, inside me. All of
them. Aaron Tully. Mr Weeks. Uriah Heep. I could not have
imagined these things. They were there, washing in to the
well, every time he entered. I struggled to remember him and
so he was punishing me, filling those vacant spaces with the
footage of his experience. Adjusting the levels. Realigning the
balance. Preparing for the final flood.

You had gone to school.

The shop hadn't opened but I was sitting at the counter with
some benzene, a clean rag and a dismantled late-Victorian
bracket clock. Halfway through cleaning one of the wheels I
sensed a presence outside and looked up to see the gargantuan
figure of George Weeks behind the glass, his pale face looking
in with an intense expression I couldn't quite interpret. How
long had he been there? I had no idea, as I had been fully
absorbed with the clock for at least ten minutes, but once I
had seen him I left it and went over to open the door.

'Hello,' he said, in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere
further away than his mouth.

He was smartly dressed, with his neat hair and chequered
shirt and his tie, and he quietly apologised for being early. I
beckoned him inside, and he listened mutely as I ran through
everything.

I concluded by showing him the auction catalogues behind
the counter. 'Now, George, do you have anything you want
to ask me?'

He nodded and pointed over to the wooden case that housed
the percussion pistol. 'What's in there?'

'Oh,' I said. 'Just some old . . . bits and pieces. Sewing things.
To help me repair upholstery . . . fabrics . . .'

'Can I look?'

'No,' I said, the word stopping his hand as it reached forward.
'No, George, you can't.'

I was already thinking this was a mistake. The whole thing.
I should never have agreed to this. If only Cynthia hadn't gone
and acquired herself a hernia. If only Mrs Weeks hadn't had
such an effect on me.

In my mind I rehearsed the conversation I would have
with his mother ('Mrs Weeks, I truly feel George's talents
would be better suited elsewhere'). However, I have to say
that these early doubts were slowly erased through the day.
Indeed, George showed himself to be a highly interested and
capable young man. He handled the till well, proved to have
his mother's knowledge on a range of customer-initiated
subjects (Royal Worcester, the correct application of French
polish, how to identify calf leather) and he even helped clean
and repair the bracket clock I had been occupied with that
morning.

True, his manner was somewhat awkward, and his heavy
breathing certainly disconcerted Higgins, but our takings were
up and this was surely a happy omen. Indeed, even his
awkwardness began to grow on me. I interpreted his long
silences and shifting glances as signs of embarrassment.
Symptoms of the shame he felt over his previous behaviour,
when he had tripped me over in the field. I even had the
confidence to leave him on his own in the shop for twenty
minutes while I fetched you from school.

'I can't wait for you to meet my new assistant,' I said, as you
pressed your head against the car window.

'Who is it?' you said, with only the most lethargic interest.

'You'll see.'

You kept on looking out at the streets and traffic sliding by
and said nothing else.

It was becoming clearer to you, wasn't it? Your disdain for
me was growing with your affection for Denny. This disdain
and this affection were twin forces, which could neither be
quenched nor intensified in isolation. That blasted boy had
devoted three minutes of his existence to protecting you, that
evening in the stables, and that had swung it for you hadn't
it? Three minutes! I had spent your entire life, an entire
fifteen years, devoted solely to that same task and yet I still
couldn't measure up. What did that say about me? Or about
you? I had no idea.

'It isn't real, you know,' I told you, as we waited at the
crossroads. 'What you are feeling. For him. That boy.' I felt
your suspicious eyes and decided to tread more carefully. I
couldn't let you know I had overheard your conversation
with Imogen, or seen you at Clifford's Tower. 'That boy who
came around to see you, I only got rid of him to make things
simpler. He's clearly got it into his head that he stands a
chance with you and I believe it's best we nip it in the bud
right now. Don't you, Bryony?'

And then out I stepped into more dangerous territory again.
'It will pass far sooner than you realise. It will only be a few
days without seeing him and you will come to your senses
and, once you have, you will apologise. And you will thank
me for looking after you.'

You closed your eyes, determined not to take my bait. I
tried to change the subject, asking how you were feeling about
the festival, but you ignored me. Maybe you were feeling
worried about the cello lesson you had missed. I didn't know.
Even the sight of George Weeks himself, back at the shop,
produced no visible response out of you.

'Hello, Bryony,' he said, as he smoothed the back of his
hair with his hand.

'Bryony, say hello,' I said.

I am trying to remember your reaction. To try and detect
something in your face that may have gone unnoticed at the
time. You didn't say anything. I can remember that much. You
ignored us both and headed upstairs to practise your cello and
make up for that lost lesson.

I might have grumbled to George about you.

A mistake, I realise, and one more for which I must say sorry.

Over the years I have developed a keen eye for differentiating
between a counterfeit and the genuine article. When visiting
furniture dealers I have learned to identify artificial finishes
that only simulate age. I can detect a genuine patina, with a
deep and attractive sheen on the wood, as easily as I can spot
a silver mark on a piece of cutlery.

Just looking at and touching an item enables me to authenticate
it. Sometimes all the validating signs can be there and
you know there is something wrong, as though the object
leaks an invisible shame that only those who have known and
loved the genuine equivalents can detect.

Oh how I wish I had this gift with people!

How I wish I could look into someone's eyes, unblinded
by my thousand prejudices, and assess the nature of their soul.
If only I could have been able to know where the truth lay
in all of those things.

You see, my fatal flaw has not simply been that I have
allowed my soul to lose strength and weaken, and become
at times wholly possessed. That is just an element of this
tragedy. Indeed, the possession has only in part been an
external one. The other curse has been spawned by my very
own nature, and this curse has been with me for as long
as I can remember.

To be succinct about it, I have never quite known how to
trust myself, and this tends to thwart and twist my relations
with others. Even Reuben's attacks upon me seem wholly
seeded within the fertile soils of my own flawed being. Had
I not always transferred my own guilt regarding your mother's
demise (a guilt which leapt out of that prior, more unjustified
sense of responsibility regarding my own mother's suicide)
onto your brother? Hadn't I, myself, been the source of everything?

Wasn't I always liable to take truths as untruths, to mistake
an Iago for a loyal Horatio?

Wasn't this how everything became so distorted? How my
own will to protect became as dangerous as his will to harm?

Wasn't it, ultimately, the same thing? Hadn't it all been
fathered by the same unbalanced love. Yes. I can answer it
now. Yes, it was. It was.

Oh, Bryony, it was.

You stood in front of us, all our old and expectant faces that
were waiting for you to break the silence.

'Look at her, Terence,' Cynthia whispered. 'Isn't she magnificent?'

As you stood there I began to worry that nerves would get
the better of you, that you would cower under the pressure
of the audience. The audience who watched, who waited, who
shifted uncomfortably as the pause stretched further.

You glanced at your grandmother. Cynthia tried to hide the
discomfort she was feeling with her hernia and reassured you
with her warm, dark-lipped smile.

You closed your eyes, like Pablo Casals always had during
his performances, and began to play. I closed my eyes too, in
order to feel the same darkness, to feel what you were feeling.
And in that voluntary darkness I heard the opening bars and
imagined the music becoming an invisible fortress around you,
something that protected you from the audience and from
your own fears, giving you the confidence you needed.

What were they hearing, these people? Was it the waking
into despair Beethoven intended or simply the soothing satisfaction
gained from watching a fifteen-year-old girl playing
classical music?

Someone walked into the hall, and stood at the back. I let
the light back in, and you did too. I turned to see his boxer's
face. And the dark eyes of a very hungry little boy admiring
a feast too rich for his appetite. You fixed your gaze on him
and he smiled and scratched his brow.

I felt such hatred for him then, and wished I could stop
the messages you carried to him with your music. His presence
was a curse that tarnished the whole thing for me. Indeed,
I was relieved when it was over and the applause rained down
on you and we were able to take you away from those hungry
eyes. Back home, oblivious to the danger that lay waiting.

As I write this all down I notice strange recurrences, echoes
and symmetries. For instance, your accident on the stairs. An
accident that so vividly recalled that last image of your mother
lying on the shop floor. An accident I was convinced was not
an accident at all.

Now, you may well have believed it was a coincidence
that the evening of your cello concert was also the evening
Higgins turned on you, but I had an altogether different
understanding.

Of course, I appreciate the changeable nature of our feline
friends. Indeed, I had always admired T. S. Eliot's suggestion
that we should give our cats three different names, yet even
you must admit that Higgins had rarely been anything other
than a Higgins. He wasn't like our long-lost Matilda who, for
every minute she would spend as Matilda, would have two
more as a Queen of Sheba or a Mad Bertha. As you know,
Higgins was never like that. We knew when he was hungry,
certainly, but for the most part he had an even and gentle
temperament, and kept himself to himself. This made his
sudden transformation all the more curious.

I came into the living room and knew something was wrong.

'Bryony, what's the matter?'

You were wincing, holding your hands. I saw the blood,
rolling like a tear towards your thumb. 'Higgins scratched me.'

The culprit sat there, fatly contented, making no attempt
to disappear from the scene. 'Come on,' I said to you. 'Let's
go to the bathroom. You need a plaster and some antiseptic.'

I dressed your wound. A drop of blood fell into the stain
your brother had made in the carpet, when he had sought to
erode his birthmark with the bristles of his toothbrush. (There,
you see: another echo.)

'Thank you,' you said, as I gently pressed the plaster in
place.

These moments of tenderness were fading out, like fruits
out of season, and I knew they were to be cherished.

'I don't know what's got into that cat,' I said, although I
already had my theories.

Of course, it was the incident a mere ten minutes later
that really sounded the alarm bells. Your desperate cry
reached me while I was on the telephone, having a late
conversation with a furniture supplier. The moment I heard
it I stood up and ran and saw you lying at the bottom of
the stairs. Your mother and Reuben had died like this, I thought.
Died suddenly, falling. And now it was your turn. There was
a pattern to it, an inevitability, that made me think the worst.

At first you were silent, and didn't move. The terror must
have leaked into my voice. 'Bryony?'

You lifted your head, saw me standing high above you, and
began to whimper in pain.

'My poor girl,' I said. 'My poor darling Petal.'

I ran down to you. I helped you sit up. I kissed your forehead.

'Can you stand up?'

In your shock you were a child again. 'I don't know,' you said.

'Let's try. There. See. You're all right, you're all right.'

'My wrist,' you said. 'It's killing.'

'I think we should take you to the hospital.'

In the car you told me what had happened. You had been
running down to get yourself a drink, a fruit juice, and you
had tripped over Higgins. He had shot out from nowhere and
caught your foot. You were worried you might have hurt him
too but, as you spoke, I had other concerns.

Was it possible that something had taken hold of Higgins?
A malevolent visitation? No, it was not possible. And yet, hadn't
such a thing happened to me? And hadn't it happened to Turpin,
also? If your brother was trying to hurt you he knew he would
have had to fight hard against my love, so maybe he sought
softer targets to attack you directly. Quiet, peaceful animal souls,
open and undefended.

I know what you are thinking.

I had lost hold of all rationality.

Well, yes, you are right. Yet I must tell you I had lost faith
in rationality the day I stared out of that upstairs window and
saw your brother hanging from that godforsaken lamp post,
waiting to drop.

No, long before. Study history and you will see there is
nothing rational in this world. Every civilisation, from those
of the ancients to our own, has sought ways of explaining our
existence. Gods have come and gone, beliefs and ideologies
have been fought on blood-drenched battlefields, and we are
still trapped inside the same mysterious lives. All of us, like
Socrates, know nothing except the fact of our ignorance. I
could have been hallucinating that night I had followed Turpin
and found Reuben's ghost. I could have imagined your brother
had found a way inside my mind, at that Cockpit. But who
could tell me for certain? What do we have to trust but our
own minds? There is no truth in this world, Bryony, only
interpretation. We still do not know where precisely our souls
exist, when we have gone, and so we know nothing. Such
were my rambling thoughts in that old rambling Volvo,
thoughts broken by your nervous command. 'Dad? Slow down.
We're here. Accident and Emergency.'