‘I’m afraid not,’ said Dr Devine. ‘That’s not St Oswald’s policy. Now, if Benjamin were to sit the common exam—’
‘You mean he won’t get the scholarship?’ Her eyes were narrowed almost to slits.
Dr Devine gave a little shrug. ‘I’m afraid the decision isn’t mine. Perhaps he could try again next year.’
Ma started forward. ‘You don’t understand—’
But Dr Devine had had enough. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Winter,’ he said, heading for the infirmary door. ‘We can’t make exceptions for just one boy.’
She kept her calm until they got home. Then she unleashed her rage. First with the piece of electrical cord, then afterwards with her fists and feet, while Nigel and Brendan watched like caged monkeys from the upstairs landing, their faces pressed silently against the bars.
It wasn’t the first time she’d beaten him. She’d beaten them all at some time or another – mostly Nigel, but Benjamin too, and even stupid Brendan, who was too scared of everything to ever put a foot wrong – it was her way of keeping them under control.
But this time it was something else. She’d always thought him exceptional. Now, it seemed, he was
just one boy
. The knowledge must have come as a shock, a terrible disappointment to her. Well, that’s what
blueeyedboy
thinks now. In fact, he must have known even then that his mother was going insane.
‘You lying, malingering little
shit
!’
‘No, Ma, please,’ whimpered Ben, trying to shield his face with his arms.
‘You blew that exam on purpose, Ben! You let me down on purpose!’ She grabbed him with one hand by the hair and forced his arm away from his face in readiness for another blow.
He closed his eyes and reached for the words, the magic words to tame the beast. Then came inspiration –
‘Please. Ma. It’s not my fault. Please, Ma. I love you—’
She stopped. Fist raised like a gauntlet of gems, one eye levelled malignantly.
‘What did you say?’
‘I love you, Ma—’
Back then, when Ben had gained some ground, he needed to consolidate his position. He was already shaken, already in tears. It didn’t take much to summon the rest. And as he clung to her, snivelling, his brothers still watching from the top of the stairs, it struck him that he was good at this, that if he played his cards right, he might just survive. Everyone has an Achilles heel. Ben had just found his mother’s.
Then, from behind the bars of the staircase he saw Brendan’s eyes go wide. For a moment Brendan held his gaze, and he was suddenly convinced that Bren, who never read anything, had read his mind as easily as he might read a Ladybird book.
His brother looked away at once. But not before Ben had seen that look; that look of understanding. Was it really so obvious? Or had he just been wrong about Bren? For years he had simply dismissed him as a fat and useless waste of space. But how much did Benjamin really know about his backward brother? How much had he taken for granted? He wondered now if he’d made a mistake; if Bren wasn’t brighter than he’d thought. Bright enough to have seen through his act. Bright enough to present a threat –
He freed himself from Ma’s embrace. Bren was still waiting on the stairs, looking scared and stupid once more. But Benjamin knew he was faking it. Beneath that drab plumage his brother in brown was playing some deeper game of his own. He didn’t know what it was – not yet. But from that moment, Benjamin knew that one day he might have to deal with Bren –
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Albertine
:
Are you sure you know where you’re going with this?
blueeyedboy
:
Quite sure. Are you?
Albertine
:
I’m following you. I always have.
blueeyedboy
:
Ah! The snows of yesteryear . . .
8
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20.14 on Monday, February 11
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mendacious
Yes, that’s where it starts. With a little white lie. White, like the pretty snow. Snow White, like in the story – and who would think snow could be dangerous, that those little wet kisses from the sky could turn into something deadly?
It’s all about momentum, you see. Just as that one little, thoughtless lie took on a momentum of its own. A stone can set off an avalanche. A word can sometimes do the same. And a lie can become the avalanche, bringing down everything in its path, bludgeoning, roaring, smothering, reshaping the world in its wake, rewriting the course of our lives.
Emily was five and a half when her father first took her to the school where he taught. Until then it had been a mysterious place (remote and beguiling as all mythical places) which her parents sometimes discussed over the dinner-table. Not often, though: Catherine disliked what she called ‘Patrick’s shop-talk’ and frequently turned the conversation to other matters just as it became most interesting. Emily gathered that ‘school’ was a place where children came together – to learn, or so her father said, though Catherine seemed to disagree.
‘How many children?’
Buttons in a box; beans in a jar. ‘Hundreds.’
‘Children like me?’
‘No, Emily. Not like you. St Oswald’s School is just for boys.’
By now she was reading avidly. Braille books for children were hard to find, but her mother had created tactile books from felt and embroidery, and Daddy spent hours every day carefully transcribing stories – all typed in reverse, using the old embossing machine. Emily could already add and subtract as well as divide and multiply. She knew the history of the great artists; she had studied relief maps of the world and of the solar system. She knew the house inside and out. She knew about plants and animals from frequent visits to the children’s farm. She could play chess. She could play the piano, too – a pleasure she shared with her father – and her most precious hours were spent with him in his room, learning scales and chords and stretching her small hands in a vain effort to span an octave.
But of other children she knew very little. She heard their voices when she played in the park. She had once petted a baby, which smelt vaguely sour and felt like a sleeping cat. Her next-door neighbour was called Mrs Brannigan, and for some reason she was inferior – perhaps because she was Catholic; or perhaps because she rented her house, whilst theirs was bought and paid for. Mrs Brannigan had a daughter a little older than Emily, with whom she would have liked to play, but who spoke with such a strong accent that the first and only time they had spoken, Emily had not understood a word.
But Emily’s father worked in a place where there were hundreds of children, all learning maths and geography and French and Latin and art and history and music and science; as well as fighting in the yard, shouting, talking, making friends, chasing each other, eating dinners in a long room, playing cricket and tennis on the grass.
‘I’d like to go to school,’ she said.
‘You wouldn’t.’ That was Catherine, with the warning note in her voice. ‘Patrick, stop talking shop. You know how it upsets her.’
‘It doesn’t upset me. I’d like to go.’
‘Perhaps I could take her with me one day. Just to see—’
‘
Patrick!
’
‘Sorry. Just – you know. There’s the Christmas concert next month, love. In the school chapel. I’m conducting. She likes—’
‘Patrick, I’m not listening!’
‘She likes music, Catherine. Let me take her. Just this once.’
And so, just once, Emily went. Perhaps because of Daddy; but mostly because Feather was in favour of the plan. Feather was a staunch believer in the healing powers of music; besides, she had recently read Gide’s
La Symphonie Pastorale
, and felt that a concert might boost Emily’s flagging colour therapy.
But Catherine didn’t like the idea. I think now that part of it was guilt; the same guilt that had pushed her to remove all traces of Daddy’s passion for music from the house. The piano was an exception; even so, it had been relegated to a spare room, where it sat amongst boxes of forgotten papers and old clothes, where Emily was not supposed to venture. But Feather’s enthusiasm tipped the balance, and on the evening of the concert they all walked down towards St Oswald’s, Catherine smelling of turpentine and rose (
a pink smell
, she tells Emily,
pretty pink roses
), Feather talking high and very fast, and Emily’s father guiding her gently by the shoulder, taking care not to let her slip in the wet December snow.
‘OK?’ he whispered, as they neared the place.
‘Mm-mm.’
She had been disappointed to hear that the concert was not to take place in the school itself. She would have liked to see Daddy’s place of work; to have entered the classrooms with their wooden desks, smelt the chalk and the polish; heard the echo of their footsteps against the wooden floors. Later, she was allowed those things. But this event was to take place in the nearby chapel, with the St Oswald’s choristers, and her father
conducting
, which she understood to mean guiding, somehow; showing the singers the way.
It was a cold, damp evening that smelt of smoke. From the road came the sounds of cars and bicycle bells and people talking, muffled almost to nothing in the foggy air. In spite of her winter coat she was cold; her thin-soled shoes squelching against the gravel path, and droplets of moisture in her hair. Fog makes the outside feel smaller, somehow; just as the wind expands the world, making the trees rustle and soar. That evening Emily felt very small, squashed down almost to nothing by the dead air. From time to time someone passed her – she felt the swish of a lady’s dress, or it might have been a Master’s gown – and heard a snatch of conversation before they were once more swept away.
‘Won’t it be crowded, Patrick? Emily doesn’t like crowds.’ That was Catherine again, her voice tight as the bodice of Emily’s best party dress, which was pretty (and pink) and which had been brought from storage for one last outing before she outgrew it completely.
‘It’s fine. You’ve got front-row seats.’
As a matter of fact Emily didn’t mind crowds. It was the
noise
she didn’t like: those flat and blurry voices that confused everything and turned everything around. She took hold of her father’s hand, rather tightly, and squeezed. A single pump meant
I love you
. A double-pump,
I love you, too
. Another of their small secrets, like the fact that she could almost span an octave if she bounced her hand over the keys, and play the lead line of
Für Elise
while her father played the chords.
It was cool inside the chapel. Emily’s family didn’t attend church – though their neighbour, Mrs Brannigan, did – and she had been inside St Mary’s once, just to hear the echo. St Oswald’s Chapel sounded like that; their steps
slap-slapped
on the hard, smooth floor, and all the sounds in the place seemed to go
up
, like people climbing an echoey staircase and talking as they went.
Daddy told her later that it was because the ceiling was so high, but at the time she imagined that the choir would be sitting above her, like angels. There was a scent, too; something like Feather’s patchouli, but stronger and smokier.
‘That’s incense,’ said her father. ‘They burn it in the sanctuary.’
Sanctuary
. He’d explained that word. A place to go where you can be safe. Incense and Clan tobacco and angels’ voices. Sanctuary.
There was movement all around them now. People were talking, but in lower voices than usual, as if they were afraid of the echoes. As Daddy went to join the choristers and Catherine described the organ and pews and windows for her, Emily heard
wishwishwish
from all around the hall, then a series of settling-down noises, then a hush as the choir began to sing.
It was as if something had broken open inside her.
This
, and not the piece of clay, is Emily’s first memory: sitting in St Oswald’s Chapel with the tears running down her face and into her smiling mouth, and the music, the lovely music, surging all around her.
Oh, it was not the first time that she had ever heard music; but the homely
rinkety-plink
of their old piano, or the tinny transistors of the kitchen radio, could not convey more than a particle of this. She had no name for what she could hear, no terms with which to describe this new experience. It was, quite simply, an awakening.
Later her mother tried to embellish the tale, as if it needed embellishment. She herself had never really enjoyed religious music – Christmas carols least of all, with their simple tunes and mawkish lyrics. Something by Mozart would have been much more suitable, with its implication of like calling to like, though the legend has a dozen variations – from Mozart to Mahler and even to the inevitable Berlioz – as if the complexity of the music had any bearing on the sounds themselves, or the sensations they evoked.
In fact the piece was nothing more than a four-part a cappella version of an old Christmas carol.
In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
But there is something unique about boys’ voices; a tremulous quality, not entirely comfortable, perpetually on the brink of losing pitch. It is a sound that combines an almost inhuman sweetness of tone with a raw edge that is nearly painful.
She listened in silence for the first few bars, unsure of what she was hearing. Then the voices rose again: