The Possession of Mr Cave

  A holiday. Even the word seemed preposterous. A dancing jester at a wake, handing out picture postcards. It prompted a fleeting blink of a memory. Heading south on a French motorway with you and Reuben asleep in the back, your bodies curved towards each other like closed brackets.

  'No, Cynthia, I don't think so,' I said, but all afternoon the idea grew and grew.

  Maybe it wasn't so preposterous after all. Maybe this was our opportunity to restore things. To pick up all the broken pieces and put things back the way they once were. Yes, this was the chance to heal our fractured souls.

  Ever since the funeral I had been aware of slight changes to your behaviour.

  Instead of the sombre strains of Pablo Casals, or your own cello, I would hear a different kind of music coming from your room. A violent and ugly kind of noise that I would ask you to turn down almost every evening.

  You rarely practised your cello, now. You still went to your lesson at the music college every week, but when I asked how it went I'd get shrugs or small hums in return. A friend I had never heard about – Imogen – suddenly became someone you had to call every evening. Your bedroom door would always be closed and I would sometimes stand there behind it, trying to work out if you were on your bed or at your computer. I noticed, once, when you stepped out, that you'd taken your poster of Pablo Casals down from the wall. The old cello maestro who had always been such an inspiration.

  It seemed incredible. I thought that man was your idol.

  You had adored his interpretation of Bach's cello suites. You had even ordered that old footage from the library. Pablo, aged ninety-four, conducting a special concert at the United Nations. The tiny old man, his time-creased face reflecting perfectly the strain and emotion of the orchestral movements until there seemed to be no difference between them, the man and the music, so that each refrain heard in that grand hall seemed to be a direct leaking of his soul.

  You had devoured his memoirs, and told me to read them too. The story I remember now was when he and a few companions walked up Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco. Pablo was in his eighties, and had felt very weak and tired that morning, but to the bemusement of his friends had insisted that he still wanted to climb the mountain. They agreed to go with him but then, during the descent, disaster struck. Do you remember that story?

  A large boulder had become dislodged further up the mountainside and was now hurtling towards them. The boulder missed all of his companions but, having seen it, Pablo froze. As it shot past, the giant rock managed to hit and smash Pablo's left hand, his fingering hand. His friends looked with horror at the mangled, blood-soaked fingers, but Pablo showed no sign of pain or fear. In fact, he was overwhelmed with a kind of relief, and thanked God he would never have to play the cello again.

  'A gift can also be a curse,' wrote the man who had felt enslaved by his art since he was a child. The man who had anxiety attacks before every single performance.

  This last fact that had always comforted you when playing in public. And so it made no sense, with the annual York Drama and Music Festival not too far away, that you would want to take down his poster. A trivial issue, I suppose, but one I viewed as symptomatic of a broader change.

  Maybe I should have been firmer with you then.

  Perhaps I shouldn't have let you shut yourself away. At the time, though, I imagined this was your way of grieving. In tribute to the life of your brother you were shrouding yourself in the same mystery.

  What I didn't realise was that this retreat would continue, that you would slip further and further away from me until the point at which I couldn't call you back.

  As I flicked through the travel section of the newspaper I saw it – a weak black-and-white photograph of the Colosseum. 'Price includes flights and six-night stay in the Hotel Raphael.'

  The city of faith and antiquity and perspective, the place people go to mourn and accept the transient nature of human life, where old temples and frescoes outlive us all. Such was my thinking.

  Oh, pity the folly of a desperate mind!

  Do you remember that sunny evening we walked to Cynthia's and I had to stop halfway down Winchelsea Avenue? You asked me what the matter was and I told you I didn't know, that I just felt a bit dizzy. It was the feeling I had experienced at the church, and when selling Reuben's bicycle. A darkening of vision accompanied by a kind of tingling towards the rear of my skull. Similar, I suppose, to pins and needles, only this felt warmer, as though tiny fires were raging through the dark spaces of my mind, generating sparks that wriggled and danced before losing their glow. And these fires were burning those parts of me that knew when and where I was, leaving me for a moment deprived of all identity.

  I turned to see the house I had passed, number 17, and it looked as depressing as all the others on the street. I told myself to keep my head. It was only a dose of the shudders, I reasoned. A result of frayed nerves and poor sleep, nothing more. Although if you ever wondered why we never walked that way again, you have the reason.

  By the time we reached Cynthia's bungalow I was feeling much better, and quite hungry. Although of course one can never be quite hungry enough for one of Cynthia's curries.

  'It's an authentic Goan recipe,' she said, as it slopped onto our plates. 'I printed it out from the computer. It was meant to be mild but I'm worried I might have overdone it a little with the chilli.'

  'Oh, I'm sure it's fine,' I told her, as I tried to avert my eyes from the charcoal sketch of a nude on the table. We must have arrived before she had time to frame it. A study of creased female flesh from one of her life-drawing classes.

  'Mmm, it's lovely,' you said, enjoying your first mouthful. You actually sounded like you meant it.

  Cynthia smiled at you, and seemed for a moment mildly entranced. 'Oh good. Good. Not too hot?'

  'No,' you said, although within five minutes you were in the kitchen topping up your glass of water.

  'I've thought about what you said,' I told Cynthia, in a hushed tone, as you ran the tap. 'And I think you might be right. I'm going to book a holiday.'

  'Good, Terence. Good. Have you told Bryony?'

  'No,' I said. 'I'm going to keep it a surprise.'

  'Well, maybe you should consult her first.'

  I shook my head. 'She's always loved surp—'

  You were back, drinking from your glass, feeling our admiring eyes upon your neck. Two old ducks in awe of a swan.

  Somehow, we made it through the curry. A feat of endurance on all our parts I imagine, and Cynthia tried to humour us with some of her old am dram stories. 'It was on the opening night of The Glass Menagerie . . . Ray was in his toga . . . I was sitting in the green room . . . It was the third act . . . There I was, queen of the fairies . . . And someone broke wind in the audience . . . Oh, our faces!'

  And then she went quiet, keeping her dark lips in position even after her smile had died. For quite a while she stared into some indeterminate space between us, as the sadness shone in her eyes.

  'It was less than a year ago, wasn't it?' she said, after a while. 'When Reuben did his work experience at the theatre?'

  I tried to think. Yes. It must have been. You had spent a week at the music college, arranged weeks in advance, while Reuben was still unsorted right up to the last moment. If it wasn't for Cynthia having a word with David wotsit then he'd have been in all sorts of trouble at school.

  'Yes,' you said. 'It was a year ago.'

  Your grandmother gave a sad laugh. 'Poor boy. Having to do it the week of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Stuck outside looking after a donkey every day!'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Yes.'

  'Did you ever see it?' Cynthia asked me. 'You weren't there, were you? When he was struggling to push that bloody creature on the stage?'

  'No,' I said. 'No. I had a meeting, I think. A dealer. I can't remember.'

  You smiled a distant smile. 'I was there.'

  'Yes,' Cynthia nodded. 'Yes, you were. You were.' She saw you looking at her un
framed sketch and waited for the silence to run its course. 'Now, I must tell you what happened at life drawing . . .'

  Two days before the end of your term we sat upstairs, eating breakfast together. You were in the same uniform you had been in the previous morning, your hair in an identical style, yet as you sat there eating your limp cornflakes I couldn't help but notice that you looked transformed.

  'Dad? What's up? You're creeping me out.'

  I couldn't speak. I couldn't tell you that I was made numb, made petrified by your sudden beauty.

  Of course, you had always been a pleasure on the eye. I had never been able to ignore the way strangers had shied away from Reuben's frowning, birthmarked face to focus on yours. Nor had I been surprised when Mrs Weeks had wanted to paint your portrait. Yet rather than a source of pride, that morning I must confess your face triggered a startling fear.

  Someone had overfilled the cup. You were never meant to look quite this way. Oh certainly, your mother had been a gorgeous creature in her youth, yet her beauty was an acquired taste. Like Bow porcelain. Or art nouveau. When I first met her she required a certain Byronic imagination to render her wholly perfect. Those slight, asymmetric flaws were part of her charm.

  What troubled me was the obvious nature of your loveliness. In that tiny last skip from girlhood to womanhood, in that most subtle overnight alteration, you had bloomed from a limber elf-child into a Juliet, a Dido, a Venus. My fear was about the impact this beauty would have on the male population. After all, boys don't acquire such taste. It is there from the start, formed in the bliss of their womb-warmed dreams, their sole incentive for being born.

  I knew that this spelt trouble. I knew that you would soon be inspiring the wrong kind of attention. Boys would buzz around you and I feared you would enjoy that buzz, welcome it, walk like a novice beekeeper straight into it, unaware of any potential sting.

  'Dad. Stop staring. It's impolite.'

  Tell me, how do you respond? 'My daughter, my darling Petal, you must never leave the house again.'

  No.

  'Your eyes,' I said. 'Have you done something to them? Are you wearing make-up?'

  'A bit.'

  'For school?'

  'You can wear make-up to school now, Dad. It's not 1932.

  It's not a nunnery.'

  'Green eyeshadow?'

  'It's two days before the holidays. Nobody cares.'

  I knew I shouldn't have been overly concerned. After all, there were only girls at school. But what about afterwards? What about your walk home? You must surely have crossed paths with the lowly specimens from St John's. In my mind I saw you laughing. In my mind I saw an anonymous boy's anonymous arm around your shoulder, steering you down a leafy, houseless path. And then the vision became less anonymous. It became him. It became that boy, Denny.

  'I will drive you to school. And I'll pick you up.'

  'Dad, why? You haven't driven me to school since I was twelve. It's only up the road.'

  'I worry about you, that's all. Please, let me drive you.

  And let me pick you up. Cynthia will be here to look after the shop. Please.'

  I squeezed so much into that final 'please' that a flash of your old self returned. You probably realised I was thinking about Reuben, that I was feeling guilty for letting him slip beyond my radar so many times.

  You shrugged. 'Do whatever you like.'

  In the car I told you about Rome.

  'Rome?' You said it as though it were the name of a former friend who had let you down.

  'I booked it last week.'

  'Why didn't you tell me?' I could feel the blast of your stare, even as I kept my eyes on the road.

  'Well, I thought it would be a rather jolly surprise.'

  'I'm meant to be going out with Imogen next Monday.'

  'Going out?'

  'I mean, going around. To see her.'

  'Well, can't it wait? I'm sure she'll still be visible the following Monday.'

  'When do we come back?'

  'On the thirtieth, so the world won't end. And anyway, you always told me you wanted to go to Rome. You've wanted to sit on the Spanish Steps since you were ten. Since Roman Holiday. Or have you changed?'

  You scowled. 'What does that mean?'

  'It means: have you changed?'

  'Since I was ten?'

  'No. Since . . . never mind.'

  Two boys crossed at the lights, nudging and staring, making wild simian noises at the sight of you. You scrunched your nose in disgust but I detected the smile. Embarrassed, flattered.

  'You still want to see the Sistine Chapel, don't you?'

  You shrugged. 'I suppose.'

  'And Petal, I couldn't help noticing, why have you taken the poster down from your room?'

  'What poster?'

  'The Pablo Casals poster. I thought he was your hero.'

  Another shrug. 'It gives me the creeps.'

  'What?'

  'At night. I feel like he's looking at me. I feel his eyes staring at me.'

  It felt like blasphemy. Those harmless eyes of that former ambassador for peace, those eyes that had to be closed every time he played to a public audience. My anger was tempered by a guilty memory of me standing in your doorway, watching you sleep.

  'Well, I don't see why you couldn't have put it on the opposite wall,' I said.

  'What's the big deal?' Your voice was fading now, the anger at a dull pitch, as though a part of you was already beyond the school gates, inside the day you had to live.

  'There's no "big deal." Anyway, I think Rome will be the perfect tonic, for both of us. Don't you?'

  You never answered. I pulled up by a lamp post, you stepped out of the car and I fought to let you go, for you to leave that sanctuary and get sucked in, like a weak molecule, towards that swarm of girls making their way to the school entrance.

  'Bye, Bryony. Be careful.'

  And then I stayed there a second longer, gripping the steering wheel as though it was the last solid thing in the world, and found the courage needed to ignore the black flies and Reuben's whisper in my ear – 'Look, Dad, I'm getting stronger' – and drive home.

  Every life, as with every story, has its various turning points. Often they are clearly marked as such. The symptoms of dizzy nausea that signify first love. A wedding. A graduation. A sudden windfall. The death of those we need so much we take them for granted.

  At other times the turning point is less clear. Something shifts, and we may sense it shifting, but the cause is as invisible to us as a swerve in the wind.

  Do you remember how hot Rome was? Do you remember that argument we had in the queue to get into St Peter's? That Vatican policewoman had handed you a paper cape, so God wouldn't take offence at your naked shoulders.

  You'd accepted it with a smile, of course, as you hadn't changed so much as to be impolite to strangers. But the moment she was gone you said, in a quietly forceful tone: 'I'm not wearing it.'

  'I don't think you have a choice.'

  A year, or even three months before and that would have been enough. You would have put the cape on and smiled at how silly you looked and forgotten all about it once you were inside the basilica. We would have wandered around with pilgrims and other tourists – some caped, like yourself – and marvelled together at Michelangelo's dome and all the other Renaissance treasures contained inside.

  But no, you were adamant. 'I'm not wearing it,' you kept saying. 'I'm not wearing a lime-green cape. I'll look like a tent.'

  Never in your fourteen years on the planet had I seen such a look of resolution on your face.

  'Bryony,' I said, 'don't be ridiculous. No one's going to care what you look like.'

  'I'm not Catholic,' you said.

  I drew attention to a Japanese woman, in front in the queue, putting her cape on without complaint.

  'I doubt she's Catholic. Now come on, don't be childish.'

  Don't be childish. Ironic, of course. If you had been six or seven, then you would have
wanted to wear the thing. If you had been eight or ten or even twelve then none of God's police officers would have found your bare shoulders guilty of any offence.

  I can see your face. Too childish and too grown-up all at once, still saying it like a mantra, mumbled through your lips: 'I'm not wearing it, I'm not wearing it . . .'

  People were looking at us now. More people than would have ever looked if you'd have worn the cape. Among the gazers were two American boys, who I surmised were about three years older than you. They had no parents with them, and I suppose you had noticed them too. Maybe this was why you didn't want to wear the cape. They were laughing, anyway, and their laughter flushed your cheeks. I turned and stared at them, for your sake, but they didn't notice me. They just carried on in hysterics: their long, clumsy limbs falling on and around each other, like reincarnated puppies.

  One last time, your voice in a whisper: 'Please, Dad. Don't make me wear the cape.'

  I turned back to your face, half in my shadow, and in a moment of weakness I decided not to argue.

  'I can wait for you there on the step,' you said, answering my unvoiced question.

  I think this was the moment I told you about Florence Nightingale's experience of St Peter's. Of course, when you were younger the Lady of the Lamp had been one of your heroines, and you had even turned your room into a Crimean battlefield, dressing the wounds of Angelica and all your other dolls. But when I told you that no event in Florence's life had ever matched her first visit to St Peter's you were unmoved, and by this point we were close to the entrance.

  'I'll be over there,' you said, handing me the cape.

  Before I knew it you were walking off, assuming it had been agreed. By this point I was being motioned through a metal detector by a surly, and armed, member of God's constabulary. I suppose I could have still followed you, and made even more of a scene, but I somehow managed to assure myself you would be all right.

  I think I imagined that you would sit there and brood about how foolish you had been to neglect such a chance of enriching your mind. I thought of it as a kind of lesson, something that would highlight the mistake in your behaviour and correct it.