The Possession of Mr Cave

by Matt Haig

  I don't know if you had seen him. Had you? I spoke a word in Cynthia's ear and walked past those antique graves towards him.

  'May I ask what you are doing here?'

  He didn't say anything at first. He was wrestling with the sudden fury that was marked on his face.

  'Ah'm Denny,' he said, as if it should have signified something.

  'Denny?'

  'Ah were one of Reuben's mates.' There was a rough arrogance to the voice, something confrontational that seemed wholly inappropriate to the occasion.

  'He never mentioned you.'

  'Ah were there when he . . . You saw us.'

  'Yes, I saw you.' I bit back insults and accusations. It was not the time nor the place. 'Now, why are you here?'

  'The funeral.'

  'No. You weren't invited.'

  'Ah wanted to come.' His eyes pressed harder than his words.

  'Well, you came. And now you can go.'

  He looked past me, over my shoulder. I turned and saw you still struggling with the vicar.

  'Go,' I said. 'You're not welcome here. Leave us alone.'

  He nodded. A suspicion confirmed.

  'Right,' he said, through a tensed mouth. As he turned and walked away I had the most strange and unpleasant sensation. It was a feeling I can only describe to you as a desertion, some essential part of my soul being pulled away, leaving me for a moment uncertain of where I was. My vision darkened, my brain fuzzed with a strange energy, and I grasped the stone gatepost for support.

  My memory jumps at this point to inside the church. I remember the slow trudge behind the coffin. I remember the vicar's vague niceties. I can see Cynthia, up at the lectern, delivering the bit she had chosen from Corinthians with none of her normal theatrics. 'For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being . . .'

  Even more sharply, I remember myself looking out as I struggled to start the poem I had chosen. I saw so many faces, all wearing the compulsory expressions of grief. Teachers, customers, undertakers. And you among them, on the nearest pew, staring over at your brother's coffin. I looked down at the sheet in front of me, the sheet Cynthia had printed out so neatly from her machine.

  For a while I couldn't speak, I couldn't cry, I couldn't do anything. I just stood there.

  I made those poor people live lifetimes inside that minute. I could hardly breathe. Peter was already heading towards me, raising his eyebrows, when I finally pushed myself into it.

  'To sleep,' I said, the words echoing off the cold stone walls.

  'To sleep.'

  I kept saying it – 'To sleep' – turning the key to an engine in my mind. 'John Keats.'

  O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

  Shutting, with careful fingers and benign

  Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,

  Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;

  O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,

  In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,

  Or wait the 'Amen', ere thy poppy throws

  Around my bed its lulling charities;

  Then save me, or the passed day will shine

  Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;

  Save me from curious conscience, that still lords

  Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

  Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

  And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

  I sat back down. Peter concluded the service. I watched the feet of the pall-bearers as they turned down the aisle. The left shoes crossing the right. Four pairs of feet moving in perfect time, like the beginning of a macabre dance routine.

  My eyes slid up and reached one of the faces, trying to hide the strain it took to shoulder the coffin's weight, struck by a grief it didn't feel.

  I looked at you and told you, 'It's all right.'

  You said nothing.

  Outside, five minutes later, and soft rain pattered on the large black umbrella that I held to shelter you and your grandmother. After a week of silence, your tears came, bringing Cynthia's with them. Only my eyes remained dry, even though my heart must have wept. I'm sure it must have.

  I still hear Peter's voice.

  'We have entrusted our brother Reuben to God's mercy, and we now commit his body to the ground.' The pall-bearers lowered the coffin, releasing the black straps in steady motion. 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' The comfort of repetition, of ritual, did nothing to calm your sobs. 'In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' The coffin reached hard ground, settled, and was still. 'Who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever and ever.' And then at last there was the collective 'Amen', spoken so low it seemed to come from the earth that would bury him. The earth that made us believe he was gone.

  The police were going to do nothing to his friends.

  'He wasn't forced up there.'

  Such a primitive notion of force, and accident, and responsibility.

  I never told you this but I went to see them. The boys. They hung around the disused tennis courts, so, after I had dropped you at the stables, I went to voice my feelings.

  They were there. All except him, Denny.

  I pulled up to the kerb and wound down my window.

  'I hope you're happy,' I said, leaning out. 'I hope you had fun, watching him die. I hope you sleep the innocent sleep, knowing you are soaked in his blood.'

  They stood there, behind the crossed wire, like thugs in a Bernstein musical. The shaven-haired boy with the sharp eyes made a rude gesture, but said nothing.

  'Murderers,' I yelled, before screeching off.

  And I didn't leave it there. The next evening I yelled the same accusation. And the next, and the next, but I never saw him. I never saw Denny there. Indeed, by the fourth time, I couldn't see any of them. I was yelling into nothing, accusing the air. Guilt had made them evaporate, I told myself. My words had moved them on. The strange thing is I felt no satisfaction at this. My heart fell when I realised they weren't there, and my anger sank swiftly back to despair.

  From his early school reports it was clear that your brother was not going to be a high achiever in an academic sense. There were none of the 'outstandings' or 'exceptionals' that always rained down on you, never a 'pleasure to teach' or a 'joyous addition to the classroom'.

  Reuben had no interest in books in the way you had. For him, reading never rose above the level of a necessary chore. He enjoyed my night-time stories of Dick Turpin and all those other old rogues, as you both did, but once he had heard one story he wanted to hear it again and again, whereas you always craved tales you had never known before.

  I see him now, at the window, his finger making patterns in the condensation. 'A quiet boy.' 'Easily led.'

  Money, in this blind century, has become the measure of love. A crude outsider would tell me I exercised more care for you because, from the age of eleven, I paid for your schooling.

  Yet what could I do? I could only pay for one of you – should you have both suffered for the sake of equality? Was it my fault the Mount was a girls' school? Would it have been better to send Reuben, who had never shown any interest in his education? No, St John's was the obvious choice for him.

  Yet, of course, I must admit this was not the only extravagance I afforded you. After all, you wanted to ride, so I paid for a horse and for it to be at livery. You wanted to play music, and I paid for you to have violin and then cello lessons at the college. You wanted a cat, specifically a coffee-cream Birman, and I bought you Higgins.

  Yet you were actively interested in these things. They weren't acquired out of any fatherly overindulgence, or if they were I would gladly have shown the same indulgence to your brother if he had only requested such presents. Where were Reuben's interests? I never had any idea. He wanted a bicycle and the one I bought wasn't good enough. He wanted all this technological claptrap that he kn
ew I wouldn't allow before he asked. No, we must never forget it, your brother was not easy. Even in my grief I could not ignore this. Indeed, my grief required me to remember it very well, for I already knew how sentimentality can flood in and drown memories, leaving the true person beyond recall.

  I wanted to remember him as he was. I wanted to remember his incessant screams through the night as a baby, his later tantrums, his insatiable appetite for jellied sweets. I wanted to remember how cross he got when you used to read from the same picture book together. I wanted to remember the rows he had with you, even the one where he tore up your sheet music.

  I wanted to remember the way he used to sit and watch television, with his hand covering the birthmark on his face. I wanted to remember the cigarette incident, the shoplifting incident, the smashed vase incident. I wanted to remember the early Sunday mornings when you would both go with me to an antiques fair, and he would grumble all the way down the A1.

  Yet the memories of him were always hard to relive and restore. When I thought of him a thought of you would swiftly arrive in its place. When I tried to picture you as babies, as your mother last saw you, I wouldn't be able to see his screaming face. There was always just you, lying placid by his side, lost in your innocent unworded dreams. A dream yourself.

  Now, that first day I opened the shop after his funeral. Your first day back at the Mount. I kept myself busy polishing the ewers and tureens and all the other pieces of silverware. All day I was there in my white cotton gloves, filling the shop with the smell of polish, my curved reflection staring back with manic eyes.

  Customers came in and I scared them out of spending their money. I made mistakes. I gave people the wrong change. I dropped a Davenport jug. I was feeling dreadful.

  'Come on, Terence, pull your socks up,' said Cynthia, helping out behind the counter. 'You've got my granddaughter to feed.'

  I know I used to grumble to you about how she scared away the customers with her witch's nails and wardrobe and forthright manner, but really she was a great help.

  She tried to get things back, for your sake. For all our sakes. Not just helping with the shop but arranging things. I remember that first fortnight, how she bombarded us with events. They were something to hold on to, ledges in the cliff-face, and the calendar became full of them. Her writing took over July, August, September, bursting out of date boxes with its capital letters and excessive punctuation. Bryony's Cello Lesson! Harrogate Antiques Fair!! Knaresborough Horse Show!!!! Then there was her special meal she was already planning for no specified purpose. 'I'm inviting my old am dram friends,' she said. 'We're going to the Box Tree. It's got a Michelin star, apparently, and just had a refurbishment. You have to book months in advance, so if I want it for August I'm going to have to arrange it now. Do you both want to come?'

  You were on the sofa, in your jodhpurs, ready to go to the stables. 'Yes, I'll come,' you said, much to my relief.

  'Yes, Cynthia, of course,' I said, realising how important it seemed to her. 'I'd love to be there.'

  'Very good,' she said. 'I'll write it on the calendar.'

  You said little in the car, en route to the stables. I remember leaving you there, and feeling what I had felt at the funeral. That strange sensation of departing myself, a leaking out of my soul, complete with the darkening sense of vision. And then on my return, of course, I saw him. Denny. It was getting dark and so, when I turned towards the paddock and saw this sweating figure in running clothes, shining pale in the car headlights, I thought it might be a hallucination. I blinked him away but he was still there, staring straight at me.

  I got out and told him to leave. He walked away, giving me a look of steely resolution, before continuing his run. Then I called to you, do you remember? And we had that row as we walked Turpin back to his stable. Apparently you had no idea what he was doing there. Apparently you hated him just as much as I did. Apparently he'd never been to gawp at you before.

  You were perfectly convincing, and I was perfectly convinced, even if I had the sense that I had been woken up to something. There was so much that was precious in my life that I had been leaving open and undefended. 'I'm sorry, Petal,' I said. 'I shouldn't have raised my voice.' And you nodded and watched the houses slide past, perhaps wishing you were behind their square, golden windows, happily lost in another girl's Tuesday night.

  I remember trying to sort out your brother's belongings. I sat there, on his bed, and felt the foreignness of the room. Posters of films I had never heard of. Unfathomable technology I didn't even realise he owned. Magazines covered with women who didn't look like women, women who looked so inhuman they might have been designed by an Italian sports car manufacturer.

  I went through his school bag and found a letter he never gave me. It was from his headmaster, informing me that he had missed two of Mr Weeks' history lessons. The letter dated from March, before Mr Weeks had lost his job. I remembered him from the time he had come into the shop with his wife and his son George, to buy the pine mule chest. A tall yeti of a man who could have been quite a bully in the classroom, I imagined.

  It was strange, being in his room. Reuben's presence was so real, contained as it was in all those objects, those possessions that reminded me how little I had understood him. With Cynthia's help we eventually packed a lot of stuff away in the attic. You helped with some of it, didn't you?

  Though the thing I really need to tell you concerns his bicycle. As you know, I popped an advertisement in the window, offering it for twenty-five pounds. Within a day a woman had called and arranged to come in and buy it for her son. A Scottish lady with a long face that reminded me rather of the aboriginal statues on Easter Island.

  I was retrieving the bicycle from the shed when the darkness crowded around me and I again felt that peculiar sensation at the back of my brain. Only this time it was stronger. It was as though someone was turning a dial in my mind, sliding it across frequencies, trying to find a different station. The feeling was at its most intense as I patted the saddle and let the Scottish lady wheel the bicycle away from me. I stood there for a while, in this kind of vague trance, watching her roll it down the street. I stayed there until the bicycle disappeared, and the sensation stopped, leaving my mind restored to its comforting mode of sadness.

  *

  As your former hero Pablo Casals once put it, to be a musician is to recognise the soul that lives in objects. A soul that may be made most visible by a Steinway or a Stradivari, or may be most well expressed by a Bach or a Mozart, but that is always there, in every thing of substance.

  Of course, I am not a musician. I sell antiques, but the same knowledge applies. You sit all day in a shop, with the old clocks and the tables and the chairs, the plates and the bureaus, and you feel just like them. Just another object that has lived through events it could not change, crafted and transformed, forced to sit and wait in a kind of limbo, its fate as unknown as all the others'.

  A customer came in one afternoon – a bullish man of the Yorkshire mould. The sort of chap within whom arrogance and ignorance compete for top billing. He grumbled his way around from price tag to price tag, telling Cynthia and myself that he'd be very surprised if we'd get this much for an art nouveau figurine, or that much for a reading table.

  'Oh,' said Cynthia. 'But it's rosewood.'

  'Makes no difference,' the man said.

  'And it's early Georgian.'

  'Early Mesopotamian wouldn't justify that price.'

  By that point, I'd had enough.

  'There are two types of customer for antiques,' I told him. 'There are those who appreciate an object's soul, and understand that, truly, even the smallest items – the sauce ladles, the thimbles, the silver barrel nutmeg graters – can only ever be undervalued. These I would call the true aficionados, the people who appreciate all the lives that have grated with, or worn, or poured, or sat at, or cried near, or dreamed upon, or cried against, or fallen in love in the same room as such things. These are the people who like to
frequent an establishment such as Cave Antiques.'

  He stood there, mirroring Cynthia's widening mouth and eyes, as unlikely to interrupt as the figure in his hand. The Girl with a Tambourine, decorated in green and pink enamels. I had bought it originally as part of a pair. The other one had dropped and smashed when I had collided with the chest on my way to reach Reuben, the night he died.

  I continued: 'Whereas the other type, the type I might just see before me now, is the customer who sees an object as the sum of the materials with which it has been made. The customer who does not understand or acknowledge the hands that went into its making, or the centuries-long affection which various and long-dead owners have bestowed upon said item. No, these people are ignorant of such matters. They don't care for them. They see numbers where they should see beauty. They look at the face of a brass dial clock and see only the time.'

  The man stood there, almost as bemused as myself by this outburst. 'I was going to buy this for my wife's birthday,' he said, placing the art nouveau figure back where it came from. 'But with service like this I think I'll take my custom elsewhere.'

  After he left I had Cynthia to deal with. 'Terence, what on earth has got into you?'

  'Nothing,' I said. 'I just didn't like the way he was talking to you.'

  'Good God, Terence. I'm old and ugly enough to look after myself. We just lost a sale there.'

  'I know, I'm sorry. It wasn't about him. I'm sorry.'

  She sighed. 'You know what you need, don't you?'

  I shook my head.

  'You need to get away. You and Bryony. A holiday. I could look after the shop for a week.'