The Possession of Mr Cave (13 page)

We waited hours, didn't we?

Hours spent staring up at the rolling news as you held your
wrist. Hours among the injury-prone inhabitants of our lower
society. Do you remember that drunk who sat opposite us,
the one with the smashed-up face, the one who kept asking
us if we had seen a chap called Melvyn? Eventually you were
called, by the undead administrator behind the desk. The
Indian doctor said you had a Colles' fracture and wrapped your
wrist in white cotton. I thought of Pablo Casals and the boulder
that had smashed his hand and stopped him playing. That was
what Reuben wanted, I realised. He had watched you at the
concert and grown jealous. Yes, I was convinced of it.

'My daughter plays the cello,' I said. 'Will she be able to
play again?'

'Oh yes, definitely,' said the doctor. 'A month or so and it
should be fine. It is quite a mild fracture.'

He smiled at you and you smiled back. He was young
and handsome, that doctor, and I sensed his interest and
gentle attention was not solely professional. 'It could have
been a lot worse,' he said, and I might have seen him give
you a wink.

A lot worse. The phrase was a warning, I realised that. The
doctor was merely a talking vessel, a messenger of fate. I had
to listen to him, despite his unsavoury attraction to my fifteen-year-
old daughter. I had to listen and act accordingly. You were
all I had left, a glowing candle of last hope, and I was prepared
to do anything – anything at all – to protect the flame.

Which all leads me to the following confession:

Higgins never ran away. I was never surprised that he did
not come home for his supper, or reappear in his basket the
following evening. When I told you and Cynthia that I hadn't
the faintest clue where he had got to I was lying. I knew
exactly where he was but concealed the knowledge from you
even as you began to cry.

I must confess your tears surprised me, you could have died
tripping over that cat. Still, I offered my reassurances that he
would return.

Now, my Petal, for the truth.

There was a woman from Knaresborough I discovered in
the telephone book. She offered her home to unwanted cats.
I phoned her up and travelled there while you were at school.
I locked 'Higgins' in his transparent travel basket and placed
him on the floor by the passenger seat so he couldn't see where
he was going.

I drove fast, feeling those large green eyes gazing up at me
the whole journey.

'I'm sorry, Higgins, if this is all a mistake, but you must
understand that I have to protect Bryony. I simply cannot
risk another incident. If something is . . . if there is . . . if
Reuben is . . .'

Your brother had wanted a dog, hadn't he? He had never
wanted a cat. 'Listen, all I'm saying is that –' A horn blasted
a warning somewhere behind and I looked out of the windscreen
to see a Japanese car sloping out onto the motorway.
I swerved into the middle lane and narrowly avoided clips
of my mangled corpse making the travel news.

I glanced again at the cat, to receive a look of malevolent
and all-knowing godliness that sent a shiver through me. I
said no more, fixed my eyes on the road ahead, and reached
Knaresborough as quickly as I could.

The cat lady was a balding, flush-cheeked widow named
Mrs Janice Cobb. Her meaty hand grasped his neck and
held him at face height. 'Oh yes, he looks the villain, doesn't
he?' she said, as she stared into his stretched-back eyes. And
then she repeated it, quieter, in parentheses. '(He looks the
villain.)'

Her house choked me with its dusty air and urinary odours.
I remember noticing, amid the thousand cats, some of the
most vulgar items of porcelain I had ever seen. Felines sculpted
in human poses, with top hats and bonnets. Higgins jumped
up to join them on the shelf.

'Down off there, (down off there,)' said Mrs Cobb, rather
sternly. She landed him on that wretched carpet and he stared
at me with incomprehension. He was back to Higgins again,
a cautious old he-cat, reluctant to make new friends. I felt
so cruel, leaving him there.

'Mrs Cobb,' I said, ready to change my mind.

'Yes? (Yes?)' A ginger mog was playing parrot on her shoulder.
'I love you too, Angus. Yes, Mummy loves you. (Mummy
loves you.)'

'Nothing,' I said. 'It was nothing.'

I closed my eyes and fought back my guilt.

'Goodbye, Higgins. Be good.'

It was that night when I experienced another blackout. I had
been unable to sleep. My mouth had been feeling inexplicably
dry, which had caused an annoying and rather compulsive
need to keep swallowing. On top of that, I kept seeing Denny's
brutish face exactly as it had been in the assembly hall. It
wouldn't go away. It was there, in my mind, complete with
those famished eyes.

I got out of bed, ran myself a glass of water, and then went
to the living room to find a book to read. I was about to pick
out Stevenson's
Kidnapped
, which I had devoured as a boy but
hadn't looked at since, when I caught sight of the family
albums. Replacement images, I thought, to help elbow Denny's
face back into the darkness.

I pulled one out and sat down, putting the glass on the
table. The very first image made me cry. It was your mother,
fresh out of hospital, with a baby in each arm. Her tired,
joyous smile cutting straight through time as she looked out
from the photograph.

'Oh, Helen, if only you were here.'

I kept flicking, and saw all those pictures of you together.
The mother and her twins. On the last page there was one
of the four of us. Cynthia must have taken it. You and your
brother, side by side in your cots. If Reuben hadn't been
crying then you would have looked identical. Wrapped up
in your cream blankets like two butter beans. Your mother
and I leaning over, with happy and unknowing smiles.

I pulled out another album, which had a year's break halfway
through, the break caused by your mother's death. After she
had died I saw little in life I wanted to record or put down for
posterity. Eventually I got back on track, but never with the
same frequency as when you had been babies. I went through
the next album, and the next, and the next, going through
your life history in photographs. Your look of amazement at
the birthday cake Cynthia made you when you were four. Can
you remember it, with the toy horse and the stables made of
chocolate matchsticks? There was a picture of you with your
Handwerck doll, Angelica, cradled in your arms. Another had
you holding Cynthia's hand on the beach at Whitby. A long-forgotten
Sunday excursion. Gradually, as I kept flicking through
the pages, I noticed his gradual disappearance. As a toddler he
was often by your side, at the forefront of the shot, but as you
grew up and gained independence the bias towards you was
unmistakable. He would be caught, running in the background.
A distant, blue-duffel smudge. Or, later on, as you both passed
double figures, he wasn't there at all. It was always you playing
your recorder, or your violin, or your cello. Or at a horse event
leaning over Turpin as you successfully made it over a jump.
There was a couple of him looking miserable in the yard,
standing by his bicycle, but hardly anything more.

I found an old school photograph, loose amid the others.

You were ten years old, wearing a dress bought from a
hypermarket outside Aix-en-Provence the summer before.
It had a high collar, with navy and white vertical stripes.
Your hair was bobbed in the style of a Franciscan monk
from the Middle Ages, your unpierced earlobes peeping
out from underneath.

Your smile, your complexion (lily white except for the brush
of pink on your cheeks), the eyes that I translated as happy,
eager, unknowing. Sacred. The school photographer as Dutch
master. In that picture, against the anonymous grey-blue background,
you seemed outside of this world, somewhere special,
beyond touch.

One whole album was devoted to your appearance at a York
Drama and Music Festival. As I stared at a photograph of you
frowning thoughtfully as you studied the sheet music, I had
the most dreadful shock. It began to move. You, inside the
photograph, your hand moving the bow in those slow, considered
strokes.

'No,' I said. 'No, it's an illusion.'

Suddenly, inside the photograph, it was me. My side profile,
staring with devotion in that same assembly hall. I was looking
at myself from below, from Reuben's height in the next chair
along. Then those strange sensations again. The tingles in my
cerebellum. Those dancing sparks from invisible fires. I sipped
my water but it was too late. The black veil was falling over
my eyes and I could hardly see. Flies buzzed and crowded
nearer.

'Come on, Terence, you're stronger than him. Try to pull
yourself together.'

By the time I had finished the sentence I was in the park,
still in my pyjamas. There was a plastic bottle in my hand.
The ammonia bottle. Tipping it upside down I realised, to
my ascending dread, that it was already empty.

I stepped forward, one of my bare feet pressing down on a
twig. With the aid of the yellow glow from Reuben's distant
street lamp I saw a black shape, scorched into the grass.

The warmth of the ground reached me as I leaned in for a
closer inspection. An oval, rising to a thin point. Like a giant
teardrop. I caught the faintest smell of maple.

'Oh no,' I whispered, my words silent in the night wind.
'What have we done?'

I was cooking our porridge and listening to the radio when
you came into the kitchen, fiddling with your bandage. 'My
cello,' you said. 'It's not there.'

'What?'

You said it again, shaking it out of your mouth. 'My cello.
It's not there.'

'What do you mean it's not there?'

'It's not in my room. It's not anywhere.'

I tried my hardest not to cry. I couldn't believe it. Your
cello! I thought of the scorched black teardrop in the park,
and prayed you would never see it and make the connection.
What was happening? Why was he doing this? Why
did he want the treasured icons of the old you, the authentic
Bryony, to disappear?

'Oh,' I said, my voice sounding too frail, too weak, to
sound truly convincing. 'Oh, I don't know where it is.
How bizarre. We'll have to buy you a new one. I'll buy
you a new one. Don't worry, by the time your wrist gets
better we'll have got you a new one. A better one. A Strad.
We'll go to Manchester and you can choose whatever you
want.'

'I don't want a new one,' you said, as suspicion crept into
your voice. 'Where is it? It was in my room and now it's gone.
That's beyond bizarre.'

Indeed it was. But what else could I do? Blame it on
intruders, and risk getting the police involved?

'How would I have any idea where it is? Seriously, Bryony,
why would I have hidden your cello? I adore it when you play.'

I was staring down into the porridge, so I have no facial
expression of yours to try and recall. I imagine it as sitting
somewhere between fury and confusion.

You said no more. You walked out of the room and left me
standing there, stirring porridge that was already burnt, as a
man on the radio talked about the long slow death of the sun.

Oh yes, something else. Mrs Weeks came into the shop, with
the apparent purpose of enquiring after George's performance
the previous Thursday. She looked immaculate, as always.
Neat, tucked-in, straight-bobbed, but there was something
troubled about her. She nodded and twitched and clung to
her wicker basket as I gave her the report. I told her that he
had proved himself, despite my doubts, to be a remarkably
competent assistant, one well informed on a range of appropriate
subjects.

'You have worked a miracle, Mrs Weeks,' I concluded. 'You
have restored the old George rather perfectly. Tell me, what's
your secret?'

She kept on nodding, into the silence, as though I was still
talking. Her eyes were staring in my direction but seemed to
be looking through me, rather than at me, as though there was
another Terence she was listening to, a metre behind this one.

'Someone attacked Stuart,' she said.

'Stuart?'

She closed her eyes and swallowed. 'George's father. He was
walking home. It was outside his new place. Someone attacked
him, from out of nowhere.'

A fear ran through me. I remembered seeing Mr Weeks and
the tourists on their way to Clifford's Tower. I remembered
his angry voice in my ear and his unmoving mouth, concealed
in his beard, as I had stood inside that doorway.

'Oh,' I said, in a fragile voice. 'Oh . . . how terrible. I . . .
he . . . is he all . . .'

'Yes. He was unconscious for hours, and we spent a most
dreadful night, but he is all right. The doctors say he is very
fortunate to have made such a recovery after such a nasty injury.'

I wondered why she had decided to come out of her way
to tell me this information. (Of course, antique sellers are third
only to priests and psychotherapists as useful listeners. I believe
it has to do with the shop itself, and all those old items that
have silently witnessed so much over the centuries. Yet Mrs
Weeks was not the type to burden you with her problems for
no reason, no matter how tempted she may have been. She
normally held onto them with the same tight grip as she now
held onto her basket.)

The thought worried me, and pushed me towards a question.
'Who on earth would do such a thing? Have the police
caught whoever did this?'

Mrs Weeks gave a quick shake of her head and I felt a relief
I tried to ignore. 'No. He didn't see anything. The police say
it's very unlikely that they'll be able to find the attacker. Given
the time and place and the fact there were no witnesses, and
no camera footage. Oh, Mr Cave, I feel so responsible.'

Her words echoed my fears. 'Responsible?'

She took a deep breath, a sigh in reverse, before trying to
shed her guilt. 'You see, he had wanted to stay with us but I
had insisted, for George's sake mainly, that he rethink his decision
and leave. If he had been on his way back to us it would
never have happened.'

'Oh, I see,' I said. 'Right. Well, don't be too severe on yourself.
You couldn't have known what was going to happen,
could you? The main thing is that he is going to be all right,
isn't it? Mrs Weeks?'

Her face crumpled in front of me, like a fast-ageing fruit,
and before I knew it she was sobbing.

'Oh, Mrs Weeks, Mrs Weeks, Mrs Weeks . . .' I came out
from behind my counter and held her in my arms, the wicker
basket positioned awkwardly between us.

'I feel so ridiculous,' she said, between sobs. 'After all, you've
been through so much worse this year.'

I looked over her shoulder at Cynthia's window display.
At the tableau of nude figurines on the dressing table and
I felt a sudden sense of shame. Alongside the sympathy I
was feeling for this poor woman, I was also experiencing
something else.

Oh, it is so strange. I can express to you all manner of dreadful
deeds yet when it comes to that yearning emotion I felt as a
result of this encounter, I feel the urge to flee from any honest
account. But I know I must be honest about it. I must. I must
tell you that as well as a father I was a man like many others, a
man who knew that the still shores of his romantic self were
susceptible to waves of longing at any moment.

I kissed her forehead. I felt her small body against mine,
and the life that beat inside. I could smell the floral scent of
her shampoo, and see the blurred blonde curve of her head
below me. She clung tight to my body, as if it were a raft
in the sea.

'The separation has been so terribly hard,' she said.

'Don't worry,' I said. 'It's all right. Time will smooth things out.'

I stood there, in the precise spot your mother had died, and
held this other woman in my arms. I made reassurances only
a father and husband is entitled to make.

I stroked her back, my soothing hand appreciating the
divine softness of her cashmere sweater. 'Things will get
better,' I said, feeling the lie's sweet comfort. 'Things always
get better.'

'I'm such a fool,' she sniffed, and dabbed away her tears with
a brilliant white handkerchief. 'What must you be thinking?'

'I'm not thinking anything,' I told her.

But what was I thinking? Could it have been that the desire
to protect is the desire to possess? That the desire to hold is
the desire to press close? That the desire to love is the desire
to destroy? Amid these musings a bus rolled past the window.
A double-decker advertisement for a Parisian perfume.

'
Ange ou Démon
?' asked the vampiric model, staring out
into the day-lit world.

'
Les deux sont la même chose
,' came my silent response, as I
kept stroking Mrs Weeks out of tears.