Page 29 of The Hippopotamus

  Michael nodded.

  “And the point is this. In spite of the pact of secrecy and silence, word of Davey’s powers did get out. How? I’ll tell you. Davey made damn sure word got out, that’s how. I had it in a letter from Jane re­cently. ‘When Davey first told me how he had healed Edward,’ she wrote. It wasn’t part of Davey’s plan that his magical gifts should go unrecognised. Jane told Patricia and Rebecca, they told Max and Mary and Oliver. Davey announced his status as healer and miracle worker to the whole bloody world.”

  “I think I’ll go now, if I may, please,” Simon said, half-rising from the table. He had been listening to all this with acute dismay and unease.

  “No, Simon . . . I beg of you,” Michael said. “I beg you, stay.”

  Simon dropped reluctantly back into his seat. Everyone was look­ing at him and he hated it.

  “So you are saying that it is really Simon who has done all this healing?” said Patricia. “He is the one who inherited his grandfather’s gifts?”

  “Certainly Simon has inherited Albert Bienenstock’s powers,” I said.

  “Simon. A healer . . .” said Michael, shaking his head.

  Simon himself sat there, simply squirming with embarrassment, poor lad.

  “Michael, can’t you see what I’ve been saying?” I said. “Your father wasn’t a healer. His powers were the powers of calm good nature, amiability, decency, selflessness, courage, modesty and sense. Prosaic you may think, but what is poetry if not the compres­sion of the prosaic? Such qualities as Albert Bienenstock possessed may have seemed as dull as coal, but taken all together, concentrated in one man, they refined themselves into a diamond. That is what Simon has inherited. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  It was not enough for them.

  “I’m sorry to go on about this,” said Patricia, “but you’re avoiding the obvious point, Ted. What about Jane and Lilac and Oliver and Clara?”

  “Exactly,” said Oliver. “If modesty and calm good nature can cure leukaemia and liver failure then I think the world should know about it, don’t you?”

  I poured myself another glass of wine. The stuff was going down me by the gallon and swishing in my belly. The wine, together with the unaccountable nervousness I was feeling and the adrenaline that was pumping around me, was starting to cause my guts to bubble and squelch with wind.

  “Davey really believed that he could cure sickness,” I said, sup­pressing a wet fart. “I think we can be sure of that. He concocted some weird fantasy about having to be pure in order to channel his mysterious power.”

  “Pure?” asked Michael.

  This was going to be extremely difficult.

  “I suspect he had discovered somehow, perhaps with wounded animals, that he could not always effect a cure with a laying-on of hands. He developed a bizarre theory. Pure and natural were the keywords. What he meant by them, God knows. Nothing more co­herent or convincing than what an advertising copy-writer means by them, I suppose. Davey decided that he had to be as pure and natural as an animal. Pure and natural as a ladybird, of course, not pure and natural as the ladybird’s cousin, the dung-beetle. Pure and natural as a gazelle, not pure and natural as the hyenas that bite into the ga­zelle’s eyeballs and feast on its intestines. His ideas of purity and naturalness seem to have more in common with a Victorian hymnbook for children than any real understanding of the physical world. All things bright and beautiful and no things dark and foul. But at the same time Davey was undergoing puberty, don’t forget, an event not covered by Victorian hymnbooks, an event as dark and foul as you could imagine. Davey happens to be a voraciously sensual child. Those of us around the table who are male can remember what our gonads and gametes were up to when we were fifteen, I’m sure. In my case they’re still up to it, but without the up-springing violence of old. Davey was mortified to discover one morning that he had suc­cumbed to a wet-dream. This presented him with a problem. Why had God and Nature packed his body with this nasty fluid? How could he remain a pure, pretty little buttercup while such a squirting horror dwelt within him? He reconciled it this way. Semen was a life-giving spirit, he knew that much. So long as he avoided the lustful outflow of this spirit, it would remain pure, would in fact be the pur­est, most potent essence imaginable. He decided that his semen . . . I hope you’re ready for this, Annie . . . was the ideal channel for his healing. When his cousin Jane arrived for her stay at Swafford he was presented with the ideal test-case for this belief. He persuaded Jane that the laying-on of hands would not be enough and that he needed to impregnate her with his spirit. It’s a technique many a leader of religious cults has found invaluable. In Davey’s case, desire and appe­tite were submerged and I am sure he sincerely believed that his only motivation was to heal and to help.”

  “Oh, Davey . . .” Annie whispered. She had been completely un­aware of this feature of her son’s mission and emission and I felt a bit of a pig letting her know so publicly.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you that it is highly probable he tried the same trick with Lilac,” I added.

  Jaws hit plates and Oliver started to throw mental daggers at me.

  “Only Oliver can tell you,” I said, feeling he deserved it, “what technique was employed in his case.”

  Heads swung towards him. Poor Oliver, not a good dissembler.

  “Look,” he said, licking his lips. “We all believed, didn’t we? Some of us still do. Everything Ted has said has been bigoted and circum­stantial. He hasn’t disproved a thing.”

  “You seduced my son?” said Michael.

  “No, bugger it, he seduced me! He told me . . . Jesus, it sounds absurd if put like that . . . Look, if you have to have it described in language that Wallace would understand, then yes, Davey fucked me up the arse. And I’m better, aren’t I? It was Davey, though. Simon hasn’t done a thing for me. I’ve barely spoken to the oaf all week. It’s Davey! Of course it’s Davey. Why the hell are you listening to this fat sod? What about Jane and Lilac?”

  Mary and Max exchanged horrified glances. They were thinking about Clara, poor dears.

  “I can explain about Lilac,” I said. “I’m afraid the whole episode was entirely my fault.”

  “Your fault?” Michael frowned.

  “Yes, it’s the stupidest thing on earth. I telephoned the vet, Nigel Ogden, this evening. I asked him to confirm that Lilac really had been suffering from ragwort poisoning. He said it was the only condition that could explain the depression, the bleeding from the mouth, the aimless circling, the leaning against the wall, the abdominal pain, the loss of appetite, the diarrhoea, the raging thirst, everything. But I had had an inspiration in my bath this evening, you see. Like Archimedes. I may not be a vet, but no one could deny that I am a drunkard. What if, I asked the vet, what if Lilac had been drunk? Really, really soused. Off her saddle and pissed out of her mane. Nigel thought about it for a bit and had to confess that he had never seen a horse drunk, but that he supposed the symptoms might be similar to those he witnessed. It would affect a horse badly, he imagined, since it is very difficult for them to vomit. It wouldn’t explain the bleeding from the mouth, however. But I had an answer to that, too. I won’t go into the reasons, but early in the morning on the second day of my stay here I dropped a full bottle of ten-year-old malt whisky into a bucket in the west park, where Lilac and her fellow four-footers have since been grazing.”

  “You did what?” gasped Patricia.

  “Yes, I know it sounds mad, but it seemed the right thing to do at the time. We can go into it later. The point is, this evening in the bath, the moment I remembered that incident, things clicked into place. I crept out before dinner to inspect this bucket. The bottle had cracked open and whisky had oozed out. There were blood marks on the cracked glass. Lilac, with irreproachable taste, must have discov­ered this unexpected treasure while out in the park the day before yesterday and licked and sucked and l
apped at it happily for most of the afternoon. Barley can never have been presented to her in so pleasurable a form. She didn’t get all of it, you’ll be pleased to know, just enough to give her a good time and a really vicious hangover. It truly is as simple as that.”

  They all stared at me in silence. Then Simon began to laugh.

  “Drunk!” he said. “So Lilac was drunk. Do you know I thought it couldn’t be ragwort! Alec and I spent a whole day checking the field, because it does grow round here. You have to check, you know. It’s no good using a weed-killer, because funnily enough they just make the plant more palatable to horses. Drunk!”

  Oliver banged the table. “All right!” he said, face whitened in anger. “That might be true. Might be. But . . .”

  “Clara,” interrupted Max heavily. “What about Clara? Are you saying that boy dared to . . .”

  I thought I would have to tread carefully here.

  “You will be pleased to know that Davey did not attempt to do to Clara what he had done to Jane and Oliver and Lilac. He tried this afternoon to feed her some stuff to do with his spirit . . .” I thought that was near enough the truth to be acceptable, they could take the phrase as literally or metaphorically as they chose. “But Simon pre­vented him. What you thought you were doing sending that poor girl to Davey I have no idea.”

  “We wanted to do what was best,” said Mary helplessly. “It seemed the right thing.”

  “Look, far be it for me to lecture you both,” I said, “but Clara is the most downtrodden young thing I have ever seen in my life. You make it abundantly plain to everyone that you are ashamed of her, you tick her off in public for her awkwardness, which naturally makes it ten times as bad, and you give her, it seems to me, absolutely no indication whatsoever that you love her or enjoy her company.”

  “How dare you?” Max shouted across the table. “How bloody dare you?”

  “Oh be quiet, Max, he’s right and you know it,” said Mary. “Of course he’s right. Clara doesn’t match up to your idea of the perfect accessory and it maddens you.”

  Max thought about answering back, but the idea of a public row clearly didn’t square with his self-image, so he shrugged his shoulders and relapsed into silence.

  “Simon has worked a miracle on Clara this last week,” I said. “He’s had her helping in the stables, feeding the chicks, walking the pup­pies, swimming in the lake. He’s given her confidence and he’s shown her that he likes her for herself.”

  “No, really, I haven’t done anything . . .” Simon started to say.

  “She was very shaken by her experience with David this after­noon,” I went on. “She told me about it when I visited her in her bed­room just before dinner.”

  “My, we have been busy this evening, haven’t we?” said Oliver. “Quite the . . .”

  “What do you mean ‘her experience’ exactly?” Mary interrupted.

  “Well, as I say, Davey can be very intense in his manner. She was a little frightened by it all. As well as demeaned, I should imagine. You’ve sent her to doctors and shrinks and specialist summer-camps and religious retreats as though she were sicker and madder than a rabid dog. Now you instruct her to go into the woods with Davey to be healed like a leper. Simon happened to see them together and took Clara away. He told her that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. He told her that he adored her exactly the way she was and that if she dared change a thing about herself he would never forgive her. She worships Simon of course and for the first time in her life she felt loved, simply and properly loved. I think, as far as she is con­cerned, that is a miracle.”

  Mary looked across at Simon.

  “Look . . .” he said. Big tears had started to roll down his face. “Don’t be . . . don’t be angry with Davey. He never meant any harm. He was just trying to help. He’s not bad or anything. He’s just a bit confused, really.”

  Annie stroked his arm.

  Oliver was trembling now. “What is the matter with everyone?” he cried. “You haven’t explained the most important fact of all. Jane. You can’t, can you?”

  I raised my shoulders apologetically. “Remissions occur, Oliver,” I said.

  “Remissions occur! Loaves of bread will sometimes turn into fishes. Dead men will sometimes walk. Pigs have been known to fly. Balls to ‘remissions occur.’”

  “I can tell you all about Jane,” said Michael in a voice so heavy that we all turned to him. “Bex, I’m very sorry. That telephone call just now. Jane has died. At the hospital. In her sleep. I had to wait until I had heard what Ted was going to say.”

  I stared into my wineglass. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I had guessed that there was something wrong. When I thought of the over-bright phrases that ended her last letter to me. “Smile! We are loved. We are loved. Everything is going to be wonderful. Every­thing shines. Everything is as it could only be and must be.” Silly child.

  “Let’s go through,” said Anne. “I don’t think we want anything more to eat.”

  We rose from the table in silence and progressed to the drawing room. Michael comforted Rebecca, who sobbed into his shoulder, and I put an arm around Patricia.

  I felt curiously to blame, as though my breaking of Davey’s spell had been the cause of Jane’s death and the sudden misery in the household. We sat in a ring of sofas surrounding the large central ot­toman, which we all gazed at glumly to spare us the hardship of meeting one another’s eyes. With the wind whipping around the house and the rain batting the window panes, our huddled group re­sembled frightened cavemen staring into a fire.

  “She had a relapse this morning,” Michael said at last. “She thought it must be a mistake. Kept telling the doctors that she was fine and that she had to travel to Norfolk. She died at ten minutes to eight this evening.”

  Ten to eight. Exactly the moment the memory of the whisky bot­tle in the bucket popped into my head. Oh, be quiet, Ted, I said to myself. Get a grip, man.

  “And all the time,” said Michael. “All the time, she thought she was well. Never said goodbye because she thought she was cured.”

  “But me!” said Oliver, unable to suppress it for any longer. “What about me? I’m cured, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, Oliver,” I said. “Did you really throw those pills away?”

  “I don’t need them. I don’t need any fucking pills. Can’t you under­stand that?”

  “Then why were you shouting in agony in your bedroom this eve­ning?”

  “I wasn’t shouting in agony, I was . . .”

  Poor old bugger.

  “I was groaning in agony,” he said at last, with an attempt at dig­nity. “There’s a big difference.”

  “I’ll send someone out to Norwich to get some more pills,” said Michael.

  “It’s only angina,” Oliver said. “If I stick enough vodka down me to deaden the pain, it can wait till morning.”

  Annie slipped out of the room and Oliver looked up at me with reddened eyes.

  “Why, Ted? Why did you have to spoil it all? It could have been true. Why couldn’t you let it be true?”

  “Oh, Oliver, I don’t know. You’re the priest, not me. Isn’t it some­thing to do with letting man get on with things on his own?”

  “But it was such a beautiful idea. It gave us hope.”

  “Don’t imagine,” I said, “that just because you can’t be cured by the laying-on of hands or the injection of holy semen that life and the world are therefore hopeless. If you want to talk about the Operation of Grace, why not talk about Simon?”

  “Oh, please . . .” Simon stood up. “Uncle Ted, I’d much rather you stopped talking about me like that. Please.”

  I waved a hand at him.

  “I’m sorry, old darling. It’s been very fraught for you. The more one ages, you will find, the less afraid of sentimental language one becomes. Didn’t
mean to embarrass you.”

  “I have to walk Soda now,” he said, backing out of the room.

  “Good idea.”

  He stopped in the doorway.

  “Um, Aunt Rebecca. I’m very sorry about Jane. You have my . . . you know. Deepest . . .”

  He turned to go but his path was blocked by Annie.

  “Simon!” she said with alarm. “Davey isn’t in his room.”

  III

  Mary Clifford’s first thought was for her daughter.

  “What about Clara?” she wailed.

  Fatuous woman. As though Davey might have kidnapped her or eloped to Gretna Green with the helpless creature lashed to his sad­dlebow and struggling to be free. I doubted he wanted to see her or her big buck teeth ever again in his life.

  “Clara is in bed, fast asleep,” said Annie.

  “Tedward,” said Michael. “That noise we heard outside the din­ing-room door . . .”

  The same unwelcome thought had crossed my mind. If David had been listening to my pompous and pitiless analysis of his disordered psyche, then the Lord alone knew how he would react. Such a clumsy arse I am, such a hopelessly clumsy arse.

  “Oh hell,” I said. “He can’t have gone out on a night like this. He can’t have done. Not in his condition.”

  “Condition?” Annie grabbed my arm. “What do you mean condi­tion?”

  “Look, there’s no time to explain,” I said. “Davey injured himself this afternoon. He’s perfectly all right, but he should be in bed.”

  “Dad, why don’t you and Mum and Mary and Rebecca and Pa­tricia search the house?” said Simon. “I’ll get Soda and the rest of us can take a look outside.”

  Simon took Max and me through to the boot room, where he is­sued us with Wellington boots, waxed jackets and torches.

  Armed with these, we trooped down into the kitchens and out of the back door, past the astonished kitchen staff. I, as back marker, was the member of the party detained by Podmore.

  “Is anything wrong, Mr. Wallace?”