The Insect Farm

by Stuart Prebble

  “Are you OK with that?” Harriet asked. She knew it was way out of character for me to be apparently unconcerned after a message such as the one we had just heard. Perhaps not even so much what he said, but the sound of uncertainty in his voice when he said it. It was a tone you could interpret whichever way suited you: as the kind of nervousness that some people have just because they are speaking on the telephone, or more serious concern disguised as reassurance. My mood and priorities dictated that I decided to infer the former. Obviously Harriet was not so sure. “He sounded a bit on edge, I thought. Like he didn’t want to worry you but he did want to worry you.”

  “I’m sure he’s OK. Roger has been away before, and he knows that if he wants to he can ask to come back.”

  “He hasn’t been away overnight since your parents died, has he?”

  “No, Harriet, he hasn’t. But he wanted to go, and it’s good for him. Why are you so keen for him to come back?”

  Now she looked surprised. “I’m not. Why would you say that? I am just worried about him; as you usually are. I can’t work out why you don’t seem so concerned as you usually would.”

  “Because you and I need to talk.”

  Speaking of moments, there are other moments when the die is cast in a particular direction, and then there is no going back. This was one of them. In those days the expression “we need to talk” did not have the connotations it has today; a euphemism for “I want to break up with you”. It meant what it said.

  One bottle between the two of us was always more than enough, but by now the second bottle of red wine was empty. Nonetheless I went to find another one and laboriously took out the cork while Harriet said nothing and waited for what was to follow. I imagine that at this point she must have known what was coming. Maybe it was a relief for her. Possibly she had spent many hours mentally rehearsing the scene that was about to unfold. A sort of calm settled over her, possibly one of resignation. She was sitting in a car on the roller-coaster and the ride was about to begin.

  “Roger has told me about you and Brendan.”

  Harriet looked at me, and for all the world it was impossible to read what was going on behind her eyes. I would have defied the greatest mind-reader to predict whether she was about to protest, to ask questions, to go crazy or to confess. Her gaze was steady, her eyelids hardly blinking, so that in the end it was I who had to look away. I poured more red wine into the glasses, took a long swallow and waited.

  “Has told you what?” Her voice was entirely impassive. Not angry, not indignant, not even especially curious. Just words. If there had been any going back, I might have gone back, but the wheels were turning, the car was rolling and it was bound to reach the end of its journey and land somewhere.

  “That when we were out busking in Covent Garden, I went to get the coffee while Martin and Jed went shopping. Roger came back to ask if you guys wanted anything else, and he saw the two of you kissing.” And all the time I was speaking, I was searching Harriet’s face for an instant-by-instant reaction to what I was saying. Was she surprised? Alarmed? Angry? I simply could not tell. As I looked at her I felt one of those surges of balance and consciousness which goes with inebriation; I had drunk far more wine than I usually would, and the effects were getting in the way. “And he thinks he also heard Brendan telling you that he loves you.”

  For a few more moments Harriet sat still, not looking undecided about how to act, but almost as though she was waiting in the wings. While she was undoubtedly calm, I sensed that perhaps her breathing was quickening, as though psyching herself up for the performance. Finally she stood away from the table and pushed back her chair. She picked up a box of matches from the table and lit three candles, then walked to the door and switched off the lights. Still looking at me, she returned to the table and held out her hand for me to take. I put my hand in hers, she took it, and then turned to guide me towards the sofa. Once there, still saying nothing, she indicated that I should sit at one end. I did so, seating myself on the edge, unable to feel sufficiently relaxed to sit back. She echoed me and perched on the edge of the cushion, perhaps two feet away from me. Now she was ready.

  “Jonathan,” she said, and all of this I can report with complete confidence as to its accuracy. I fear that nothing that was said will stop reverberating around my head until the day I die. “Jonathan. Do you know that I love you?”

  “I believe I do. Of course I do. What is your point?”

  “Let me get to that. I want to explain everything to you. But first, let me ask you another question.”

  “Go ahead.” By now I was drinking the wine like it was water and the swerving of my vision felt undermining as I leant to put the glass on the table, and already it was a battle to remain in full control.

  “What is your favourite type of music?”

  “What?” I was as much confused as I was frustrated. “What’s this got to do with what I am asking you? Harriet? What the fuck?…”

  She reached across and put her hand on the side of my face, briefly caressing my cheek, as if to calm me.

  “Jonathan. Bear with me for just a moment. I am telling you everything. I just want to try to make you understand something first. The way that I understand it. What is your favourite type of music?”

  “You know the answer to that” – my impatience was mounting – “it’s the blues. Clapton. John Mayall. Peter Green. B.B. King. The stuff I always listen to. But what’s this got to do with what we’re talking about?…”

  “I know. You love the blues. You adore it, and you get enormous pleasure out of it. And if you could only listen to one kind of music for the whole of the rest of your life, that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? The blues.” I was still entirely dazed, but I nodded my agreement. She continued. “But you also like listening to opera, don’t you?”

  By now the messages being perceived by my ears were being distorted before they reached my brain, and I began to feel disorientated by the disconnect between what I thought we were talking about, and the words being exchanged. Perhaps the stress of what I had been through in recent weeks and the excess of alcohol were working strange tricks.

  “Yes, sometimes I do. I love the blues, but sometimes I like listening to opera. Please just tell me what is your point?”

  “And sometimes you like listening to jazz?”

  “Yes I do. I like blues most. But I also like opera and jazz. What of it?”

  “So let me ask you something else.” She seemed unconcerned by my increasing inability to remain in control. Perhaps it was not visible to her; I have no way to know. All I knew then was that my brain felt it was going into overload and was in danger of closing down at any moment. God help me if I didn’t bang my forearm against my head, just exactly as Roger used to do when something he was trying to compute just would not go into his brain. When I looked back at her, Harriet was still talking, although the movement of her mouth appeared not to match the sound coming out of it – like when the film slips away from the soundtrack.

  “Your first love is the blues. If you could only ever listen to one type of music for the whole of the rest of your life, this would be it. Right?” I must have nodded, because she continued as though I had acquiesced. “But it isn’t the only type of music you can ever hear, is it? There are other types. Not as fulfilling or transporting or wonderful to you, but still enjoyable for what they are.” I must have nodded again. “So let me ask you one more question, and then I will stop.” She paused, and in that moment I had a tiny flash of recall of a conversation which Harriet and I had maybe four or five years ago, on the night we had met. About music, and about drugs, and about lovemaking. Momentarily I struggled to remember more clearly, but she was continuing. “When you go to see and enjoy some jazz, do you feel any sense of betrayal of the music you like best? The blues?” She answered for me. “Of course you don’t. You don’t feel any sense of betrayal because listening to jazz has nothing to do with listening to the blues. They’re different exper
iences. You can enjoy one in one sort of way, but you would always go back to your greatest love.”

  I struggle to describe what was going on in my mind while Harriet was speaking these words. I guess the nearest way to characterize it is that I had some sort of brainstorm. It was as if I was sitting in a car when a stone hit the corner of the windscreen, and I could do nothing as it divided into a hundred thousand little cubes of glass, obscuring my vision and throwing me further and further into a panic. I was entering that same long black tunnel, one that now felt familiar to me, with no exits or junctions, but just a sensation of falling headlong. I felt my limbs go weak, floundering in mid-air. If there was any sound in my head, the nearest I can come to describing it is that it was a mix of shattering glass and a howling storm. Little things stick in my head about that moment. I’d been reaching for the bottle to top up our glasses and then froze. There had been some noise on the stairs, but all the time the tiny fraction of whatever was left of my powers of perception were trying to process Harriet’s words to me. A torrent of thoughts and images rained down, and suddenly the fragments of glass which had exploded in my head each echoed one of the nightmares of scenes I had imagined over recent weeks. Square, round, triangular shards of reflection, each one a picture of the woman I loved kissing, licking, sucking, making love with someone who was not me. And now – what was she saying? Was she saying what she seemed to be saying?

  I thought that my head would burst under the pressure of what was going on inside, and I was screaming from the pain of it. Not screaming like a man falling from a building, but the moment remains in my memory as an involuntary wail of agony, like the desolate cry from a mother whose child has died in her arms.

  Is it from actual recall or did I imagine an image of Roger’s face superimposed on one of the patterns of glass which shattered across my vision? One of my hands had gone to cover my face, maybe to hide the tears, or maybe to keep my brain from bursting through it, and the other was still around the neck of the bottle. Was there a second when I could have altered the chain of events which then unfolded? Or any time at all when I could have found a way to halt the roller-coaster at the top of the slope before it plummeted into free fall, left the rails and came crashing to the ground? All I can know for sure is that my next instance of consciousness was when I felt myself coming around, regaining a sense of place, my head still swimming.

  * * *

  I could not tell whether I had been out of my mind for a few seconds or several hours. My eyes hurt as though from some caustic substance, and I blinked several times and squeezed my eyelids tightly closed in an attempt to clear my vision. I could make out no sign of Harriet and no sound from anything around me. The candles had burnt down and out, and I was peering through semi-blackness. There was only the faintest of faint glows of yellow light from the streetlamps outside. I was half sitting, half lying on the floor, my head jammed up against the maroon leather sofa, and as I looked down at my hands I saw that the neck of the bottle was still within my grip, but that it ended with sharp jagged edges where the bottom had broken away.

  I looked down at my clothes and it was then that I first saw the dark stain. A deep coloured mark, feeling wet and sticky on my jeans. I touched it with the tips of my fingers and felt that it was warm and clammy. I looked again at the open palm of my hand and for a moment it appeared like an unfamiliar object, as though it was appended to someone else. Something alien – a “feeler” – and there came a further layer of confusion as I tried to decipher its shape and nature. My hand was covered in the same colour as my jeans. Deep red, an unmistakable colour, even for those unfamiliar with it. Primordial.

  I know that there were a few seconds where I assumed that I had cut my hands with the broken bottle, and I looked for the gash in my flesh but could see nothing through the congealing blood. I felt a sharp pain in my elbow as I moved, just as though I had been in one position for too long and had cramped. I held on to it with my hand and started to move to raise myself to my knees. Through the gloom I could just make out the shape of Olly the cat, apparently untroubled and fast asleep in another chair in the corner. The bedside clock, whose painful progress I had witnessed so closely just a few hours ago, was on our mantelpiece, and its luminous dials indicated two thirty. I must have been out of consciousness for at least two or three hours.

  With difficulty, gently unfolding the stiffness which had permeated my body, I raised myself to my feet and was immediately in danger of stumbling. My arms were stretched forward as I shuffled along, like a blind man wary of meeting a raised step. I edged towards the door to the hallway and it was then that I saw Roger’s coat hanging on the peg.

  I turned and tiptoed as lightly as I could down the corridor to my brother’s bedroom. The door was ajar, but it was too dark to see inside. I pushed it open gently, wishing only to see whether he was there. Even now I fully expected to find his room and bed empty. I went in and had to wait to allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom, but eventually, silhouetted against the streetlight outside which left a faint glow on the blinds, I felt that I could see the shape of Roger in his bed.

  “Roger.” I spoke loudly enough for him to hear if he was awake, but not so loudly as to wake him if asleep. I felt a sudden need to cough, which I suppressed, and swallowed hard as I looked around for the glass of water that I usually left beside his bed. I could not see it. There was no response from Roger and I stepped into the room and walked around the bed, just far enough to be able to get a glimpse of his face. The soft creaking sound from a loose floorboard made me pause, but after a few steps the light from the lamp outside fell onto his face, and I could see in his expression nothing to cause concern. Close up, I could tell that he was breathing deeply, apparently without a care.

  Now my concern shifted to Harriet. My mind was still swimming with momentary flashbacks of recalled images as I walked back down the corridor towards the living room. I felt I was wading through the shattered fragments that had exploded in my mind. I had come across no sign of her, and when my hands touched the walls inside the door, feeling for the switch, I found it and flicked it on. The electric light was dim, but instantly I could see that my fingers had left traces of blood on the wall. I looked again at my hands, turning them over to try to find the wound, but could not do so.

  My eyelids felt heavy and my head ached, but with difficulty I raised my eyes to scan the room. Immediately I saw her, and from that first moment I had no doubt. I have no idea why it should have been so. It was not that she was lying in a contorted shape; there was nothing obviously broken, no instant sign of violence or of flowing blood. There was just something in her stillness, the artificial stillness of her, which left no room for error. Harriet, my sweet Harriet, the first and last love of my short life, was lying on the floor in front of me, quite lifeless, her soul having fled from her body.

  There was a vacuum inside of me, as though someone had taken a suction pump and attached it to my body, dragging out the air and the blood and my organs and my muscles and my flesh. I felt a sudden weakness and thought I would faint; my skin was empty and unable to hold itself up.

  I fell to my knees and then shuffled across the floor towards the spot alongside the sofa where Harriet was lying. I realized that she was positioned only a few inches from where previously I had awoken, but her stillness had prevented me from seeing or feeling her.

  At first it was not even possible for me to make out which way she was facing; her long and curled brown hair was in disarray. For that moment, God help me, I had an image of her lying underneath me, when we were in the throes of our lovemaking and her hair was wild and uncontrolled, sometimes falling and flowing forward over her face as she was overcome by our passion. In that moment I would reach out for her, pushing her hair aside with my hands, gently, to be able to see her lovely face in her ecstasy and to be able to find her mouth and draw it towards me.

  In the stillness and unusual silence, my fingers lightly touched her face and pushed back th
e stray strands from her forehead. Mercifully her eyes were closed, and there was no indication on her face of the trauma which must have been her last moments. She did not look alarmed, or hurt, or in fear. She just looked like Harriet. My Harriet.

  In an instant I wondered how I knew that she was dead. For the first and only time I had a moment of hesitation. Could I be wrong? Was the blood from something else? But the idea was there and was gone just as quickly. It was her stillness that put the matter beyond doubt. No reaction to my hand on her face. No sign of life or breath.

  I sat on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, and lifted Harriet’s head onto my lap. I could feel the soft squelch from the area behind her ear where the bones had been shattered and the flesh was damp from oozing blood. With the tips of my fingers, I traced the contours of her lovely face, as so often I had done in life. Beginning at the top of her forehead, at the point of her widow’s peak, the end of my index finger traced down towards the bridge of her nose, along its length, onto that area above her mouth which I had so often kissed, and then all around the edges of her beautiful lips. Then around her tiny chin, small and shaped like a doll’s, and onto the nape of her neck, where I had pressed my face after we had made love and were falling asleep.

  No one who has not experienced it can ever understand the physical pain of such a moment. No poet, no novelist, no historian, no film-maker – no matter how erudite or eloquent or empathetic – can ever begin to convey the sense and depth of desolation and despair. There simply are no words, and every one of us, every member of the human species who has experienced that moment, knows that what I say here is true. Nothing I have known or read or seen or experienced before or since comes close. Thank God, because I would not know how to survive it twice.

  I think I may have passed out again, because I remember regaining my senses once more, and feeling a renewed sting of loss. I felt my head starting to spin and tried to recall how much wine I had drunk. It was a lot – far more than would have been safe and sensible – and I wondered whether the alcohol was having an anaesthetic effect on my pain. I shuddered at the terrible prospect of eventual sobriety.