The Possession of Mr Cave (8 page)

Eventually, I caught sight of you in your new clothes, alongside
Imogen and the rest of them.

I weighed my options. Go over and drag you out of there
and lose your trust for ever? No. I would wait and intervene
only if necessary. I would hang back out of sight, dissolve
among the smoke and noise and keep my distance.

Oh but it was hard, standing there, being jostled and groped
as I tried to keep my eyes on you. They stood on my feet,
they elbowed my ribs, they blew their multi-scented smoke
into my face.

I saw a tall boy lean over and whisper in your ear. It was
Mr Cadaverous. Uriah Heep. Other boys were with him,
and I recognised some of their faces from the day I'd followed
you into town. There was no sign of George Weeks, though.
His mother must have spoken to him, I decided, and I gained
a drop of satisfaction from the thought. The drop evaporated
when I saw Uriah's long skeletal hand upon your back,
sliding lower.

At that moment, someone spilt a drink down my shirt, a
purplish liquid in a beer glass that left a stain. I ignored the
sticky wetness against my skin and kept watching as the hand
tested its luck against your hip. To my amazement you offered
no resistance. Did you like him? I couldn't tell, but made no
hesitation when I saw him head to the toilets.

When I got there he was in one of the cubicles, struggling
with a catarrh problem. I waited, staring at myself in the
mirror. At the stain that was drying on my shirt, fading pink.
A stain that seemed to signify what I was, who I had become.
Terence. Latin root
terere
. To fade out, to use up, to rub away.
To disappear.

The slide of the weak metal lock, the shuffle of his feet. He
washed his hands at the sink, at first ignoring my presence.

I would talk to the boy. That was my plan. I would address
him politely, and present him with a lucid argument as to
why he should not continue in his efforts to seduce a fifteen-year-
old girl.

Then something changed.

I had the usual sensations. My brain tingled, my vision darkened
but then, suddenly, I wasn't there. I wasn't in my own mind.

Or, more accurately, I was thinking thoughts that had not
originated inside my own mind. You see, that was the first
time it happened. That was the first time I saw something,
a memory, that I myself (Terence Cave) had never experienced.
Suddenly I was riding a bicycle and I saw that boy's
face, his long cadaverous face, laughing at me, and I noticed
his bony hand was pointing in my direction as I pedalled.
Then I looked down, inside the memory, and saw that the
bicycle I was riding was the present I had bought Reuben
for his birthday a year ago that day. This was your brother's
bicycle that I had been riding. And this, I realise now, was
your brother's memory that I was reliving.

There was no further detail in the scene. There was the
laughing Uriah, and there was the bicycle that Reuben (I
myself) had been riding. All other details – weather, physical
landscape, people accompanying either one of us – were entirely
missing. Yet I must tell you that it was sharply believable.
Indeed, it was so sharply believable that the question of whether
or not I should have believed it did not emerge. The pain I
felt inside me was so real it had to have been lived.

But as I said, such rationality arrived afterwards. At that
moment I was so lost, so faded, so rubbed out, that anything
Terence Cave had planned to say or do to this boy was
completely irrelevant.

As Uriah posed in front of the mirror – changing the angle
of his face, sucking in his already sunken cheeks, pulling his
hair forward to cover one of those sleepy eyes – a strange force
rose within me. My fists clenched as I tried to control this
force. Yet I could no more steer it away than I could hold
back dark clouds arriving in an empty sky.

I trembled with it, tingled with it, became dizzy with it,
this relentless feeling of being pulled away from myself. And
then, instead of the slow descending gauze I had known
before, I suffered something more intense. A black flash – a
completely dark blank – that I now recognise as the eclipse
of my soul by another.

After that, there is the gap, the missing link.

I was there, staring at him in the mirror. And the next thing
I can remember his face was bleeding in front of me as I
pressed him by the throat into the wall.

There was a sudden flood of sound as the door opened and
someone walked in. For a moment, I did nothing. I just kept
the boy fixed against the wall. The door closed, and as
Cleopatra's death cry faded I heard something new. A fuzzy,
crackling sound. Radio static. Then a large and ominous shape
entered my peripheral vision.

'What the ————— is this?'

It was him. The boulder-headed heavy on the door.

I was grabbed and pulled away, seeing the crack I must have
caused in the mirror before being dragged past all the sweating
bodies and thrust out of the nearest fire exit.

'I think I've lost a button,' I can remember saying, before
being kicked in the back and laid low on the damp concrete.
Four more kicks to my soft flesh and he was gone, and I was
gone too, aware of nothing but the pain and the nausea, and
the air that had been sucked out of the world at that moment.

'Reuben,' I gasped, to my face's black shape in a puddle.
'It was you, wasn't it?'

And in the city's quiet grumble I heard a confirmation.

Water dripped into the puddle from a gutter high above. The
dripping brought another memory to my foggy mind, this
time my own.

When you were six I took you both to the Dropping Well
at Knaresborough. Do you remember? That incredible place
where water continually drops down from a high rock, turning
all beneath it to stone.

Fragile and human things made tough. Made eternal. Of
course, science stole most of the magic for me. The water is
rich in calcium bicarbonate and has a calcifying effect on the
objects it touches.

Calcium carbonate.

This is the reason why people used to flock with their tea
towels and wellington boots and teddy bears and leave them
there to hang like washing, knowing that in a year or so they
would be permanent memorials of their former selves.

'Daddy, if I stand under the water will I turn into a statue?'
I remember the look on your elfin face as you asked the question.
A look that mixed a certain thrill of excitement with a
terrible fear.

It comes to me, that conversation, perfectly formed.

'You'd have to stand there for a rather long time,' I told you.

'How long?'

'At least a year,' I said. 'But you'd have to stay very still.'

'How still?'

'Like this,' said Reuben, demonstrating.

'What is it like to be a statue?' you asked.

'I don't know,' I said. 'I've never been one.'

You frowned, as you considered. 'If I had an itch I couldn't
scratch it?'

'No.'

'I couldn't go to the toilet?'

'No.'

'I want to leave something.' It was your brother, melting
out of his statue pose to interrupt your train of thought.

'You've got nothing to leave,' I said. 'We should have brought
something.'

By this point I'm sure Reuben had already taken off his
wristband. The red-and-white towelling one he treasured so
much. 'I could leave this.'

I'm pretty sure I objected, but eventually gave in, donating
the requisite pound coin to Knaresborough tourist board and
pegging Reuben's wristband to the rope. Of course, I had to
peg it up there myself because the rope was high, but Reuben
stayed next to me while I did it. I remember having trouble
with the clothes peg. The water fell with quite a force, and
the wristband was too small and thick to clip in place with
any kind of ease.

It was next to a sandal. I remember that. A proper object,
I thought. Something that they would keep hanging for years.

'Come on, Dad,' he said, in that insistent voice. 'What are
you waiting for?'

All the time I was struggling with the wristband my trousers
were getting soaked. At first I thought it was just the water
bouncing off the stone, but then I glanced down and saw
Reuben with his arm outstretched, an upward palm blocking
the water's descent, splashing all three of us.

'It's on my dress,' you said.

'Reuben,' I snapped. My voice loud, above the water. Even
on the best days he had a habit for mischief. 'Don't do that.'

The hand dropped back by his side and he watched in
silence as I finally managed to attach the wristband in place.
We stood back and looked at it. It was the smallest and most
pathetic of all the objects. Drenched out of shape with water,
it was hard to imagine that one day it would be as solid as
the petrified rope it hung from.

By this time, Reuben was more interested in his hand.

'I can't move my fingers,' he told me. He sounded convinced.
'They're turning to stone.'

He had quite an imagination when he was younger. Can
you remember how he used to walk around with an invisible
dog at one point? He wanted a real one, of course, but
that was unfeasible. Cats are so much easier. I've never been
very compatible with dogs, have I?

As we walked back over to you, passing objects further
and further transformed, he ran through the advantages a
stone fist could bring.

'I could punch through walls. I could put my hand in fire.
I could . . .'

We visited the museum. Do you remember?

We saw a tiny stone shoe that had once been worn by
Queen Mary. A lace parasol that still looked delicate despite
the effects of the calcite water. Crystallised teddy bears and
cardigans. A hardened ribbon. Oh, and that top hat. You
must remember the top hat. I tried it on and nearly sank
into the floor. You bent double in hysterics, while Reuben
was still soliloquising about his hand.

He came over to show us his rigid fingers splayed like a
starfish. 'Look, it doesn't move. My hand doesn't move. I can't
move my fingers.'

You tried to bend them, and got worried when you couldn't.
'Stop it, Reuben, you're scaring me.'

'He's only pretending.'

'I'm not,' insisted Reuben. 'My hand is turning into stone.'

You began to cry. No, not cry. You made the face that always
came before tears. I told Reuben off and he showed you his
hand was not turning into anything.

After that, we continued with our afternoon. You learned
all about Mother Shipton and found something new to be
scared of – the old hag prophet who had predicted the Fire
of London, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Siege of
York and the date of her death. We'd signed up for a tour
of her cave next to the Dropping Well and you clung onto
my hand for dear life.

The tears that had readied themselves earlier finally ran
down your face. We made our apologies and left, dragging
Reuben with us. Out of the cave, past the Dropping Well,
and along the bank of the river.

'I'm a statue,' Reuben said, in that repetitive way he had. He
was getting jealous, I think, of the attention I was giving you.

'I'm a statue. I'm a statue. I'm a statue.'

'Statues don't talk,' I said.

'I'm a half-statue. My mouth didn't touch the . . .'

It faded, as I crouched there over that puddle at the back
of the nightclub. And it fades now, as I try to bring it back.
I can't hear him. I can hear the water but I can't hear him.

*

On with it. Terence, charge forth. No more digressions. On
with that horrendous night in that vile city of beasts.

Eventually, I pushed myself off the ground, away from
the puddle and the memories it contained. As I hobbled
my aching body towards the car, I wondered if I had broken
a rib. The pain in my chest was certainly at an intense pitch.

They laughed at me, all those young drunks. All those
apes in striped shirts and miniskirts staggering out of Latin-titled
wine bars. I reached the car, and checked my face in
the rear-view mirror. The faintest of grazes next to my eye,
where I had scraped it against the concrete. A piece of grit,
still pressed in my cheek.

There I sat, the faded Terence, my hands trembling on
the wheel.

An oriental man was selling flashing bracelets and artificial
roses on the main road. People squeezed his face and kissed
his cheeks but didn't buy his neon jewellery.

Another man, toothless, strummed his guitar at the passing
hordes, running behind them like a puppy seeking love.

And then I saw him. The injured Uriah, walking out of the
Cockpit with another boy. No. Other boys, plural. Two or
three other boys. They are blanks now, if they weren't then.
But I can still see Uriah's face, and those long fingers testing
the wound on his forehead. A wave of guilt as I realised what
my hands had done.

I sank down in my seat and opened the window slightly,
so I could catch their voices.

'The old ——— thought I was into Bryony,' I heard him say.

'Aren't you, squire?' asked one of the blanks.

'Would make no difference if I was, now she's only into
that lowlife. That Danny or Donny or . . .'

'Denny,' I whispered, to myself, as their voices faded.

I waited two hours before I saw you, and lurked safely
behind as we headed out of that beastly city towards York.

What does it make you feel, to know I was there, without
your knowledge? Your guardian angel, trying his best to ward
off the corruptive forces of the night. It makes you hate me
even more, doesn't it?

Oh please, Bryony, please don't hate me.

I can neither live nor die with your hatred. Please, you must
understand I had no realisation of what I was doing, or that
he was still there, still lurking at a further distance, disapproving
of the love that dictated my every move.

Cynthia was unapologetic, to say the least. Indeed, she was
furious with me when I told her that I had followed you into
Leeds. Obviously I didn't tell her everything, yet even with a
partial account she was quick on the offensive.

You were still asleep, with Imogen, in Cynthia's spare
bedroom. It was about eight in the morning and we – your
grandmother and I – were sat at that ghastly table of hers,
watched by all her theatre posters and Klimt reproductions
and her own charcoal sketches. The whole bungalow was a
mess, even by her own standards. She had evidently been
acquiring more twigs and popping them into vases, clogging
up the hallway. The fruit bowl was a mouldering still life of
black bananas and blue-tinged clementines, while the arts
supplement of the
Telegraph
was doubling as a table mat.

She was eating her breakfast and taking her hawthorn and
echinacea and her daily meadow of supplements, all the little
bottles and packets scattered out on the table. I sipped the
coffee she had made me, and tried to ignore the throbbing
pain of all those unseen bruises.

'I'm sorry, Cynthia,' I said, 'but I'm not letting you off
the hook.'

She was quick on the volley. 'It's not your hook,' she said,
before washing down her last tablet with a swig of grapefruit
juice. 'It's my hook, and you couldn't free yourself if
you tried.'

We had an argument in whispers. I remember she came
out with some of the psychobabble she had picked up from
her years as a child therapist. She quoted Jung at me, as her
daughter once had. Some tosh about internal dangers manifesting
themselves as outward signs.

'And besides,' she said, 'it was a night for under eighteen-year-
olds.'

That is when I learned I was not the only adult you were
lying to. 'I can assure you, it was not for under eighteen-year-olds,'
I said. 'I saw the people going into that place. Some of
them must have been thirty.'

Cynthia scowled. 'Are you sure, Terence?'

'I'm absolutely certain. This was no children's party.'

'Well, I'll have a talk to her,' she said. 'When she wakes up.'

'No,' I said. 'No. Don't. She can't know I was there. Please,
Cynthia. You mustn't tell her I . . .'

She was ahead of me. 'No, I don't suppose we can. But,
Terence, you must stop doing this. You must stop stalking
your own daughter. There are some things a parent is just
not meant to know.'

I rubbed my eyes and made a false promise of my own. 'All
right, I'll stop. I'll stay wrapped inside my ignorance. I'll believe
her lies and do nothing.' I stared up at the wall, at Klimt's
lavishly decorated lovers, locked in their eternal embrace, and
wondered what he could mean to you. This Denny.

'Terence, are you all right?' Cynthia asked after a considerable
pause.

'I don't know. I mean yes. Yes, I'm all right.'

'You don't look yourself,' she told me.

'Well,' I said, trying not to think of the blackout I
had experienced, or the violence I had inflicted, 'I am myself.'

Her eyes assessed me sharply, as though I was a counterfeit.
A replica Terence.

'Did you sleep?'

'I managed two hours,' I said, although it hadn't even been
that.

'How are you going to handle a Saturday in the shop on
only two hours' sleep?'

'I don't know,' I said.

'I can help you this afternoon, but I've got a hospital appointment
this morning.'

'Hospital?'

She stared mournfully at the mini metropolis of pill jars
and bottles. 'It's nothing. It's just a routine check-up. A stomach
thing. It's nothing.'

'All right,' I said, and I left it at that.

It was at this point, if I remember rightly, that you emerged
from the spare bedroom, pale-faced and wild-haired, to head
to the toilet.

'Bryony?' I called. And then, sharper: 'Bryony?'

You looked at me from the hallway. You gave a glance of
tired recognition, and disappeared inside the bathroom.

'Bryony?'

Cynthia tutted and scowled and sent me a stormy 'Terence'
from across the table.

'What?' I asked.

'Ease off,' she told me, and repeated it with pressing eyes.
'
Ease off
. '