I followed his gaze over to the others. I scanned this second tribe. Boys with odd haircuts, dressed for the French Revolution. A rather rotund girl with a painted Pierrot tear on her cheek. T-shirts with macabre designs and Gothic fonts. The Remorse. The Pains of Sleep. The Cleopatras. Daughters of Albion. Instructions for My Funeral. Teenage Baudelaires, plugged into music machines or eating bagel sandwiches.
My heart fell as I spotted you, right at the very centre.
The boys buzzing around your beauty as I had feared. I saw one of them talking animatedly to you and Imogen.
He seemed older than the rest, rake-thin, dressed in tightest black, and despite the weather he was wearing a blood-red scarf. He had a long, pale, fleshless face with sleepy eyes. A cadaverous face, Dickens would have said. What was he saying to make you both laugh? I itched – no, burned – to know.
There was someone else, on the furthest fringe of that group. A boy I recognised but didn't know why. A tall, overweight boy trying loudly to fit in. He had blond hair with a pinkish fringe and wore thick-lens glasses. And then I realised. It was Mrs Weeks' son George.
Up until recently he had always accompanied his mother on her Saturday-morning visits. The reason it took so long to place him was that George Weeks had always struck me as a quiet, studious kind of child. For all his heft it had been easy to imagine him bullied, what with his bad breathing and shy manner. And having had his father teach at the school wouldn't have helped matters. I remember once trying to get Reuben to talk to him, as George was a year above him at St John's, but your brother slipped away and made an excuse, as was his fashion. (I remember the letter I had found in his schoolbag. Perhaps Reuben resisted George because he hated Mr Weeks. Or perhaps it was simply out of allegiance to his tribe. I don't know. I have no answers.)
I wondered if Mrs Weeks knew her son mixed in such circles. I wondered if she knew her asthmatic child was a smoker. I wondered what she would do if she did know these things.
Anyway, there he was, being loud and boisterous, trying like all the others to steal your attention. And there I was, peeping around the corner of Marks & Spencer, as invisible to both groups as the thousand shoppers and tourists that swarmed around.
It would have been a risk to move any closer so I had to stay there, unable to hear a word except for those of the African lady with the loudhailer, filling that carless street with the Book of Revelation.
'The kings of the earth, and the great men . . .' she raged with her fundamental anger, giving proof of nothing except its own doubt.
Denny's group began to laugh at the woman, and throw chips at her. All except Denny himself, whose dark, unreadable eyes were still staring at you.
'. . . and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains . . .'
I saw Denny walk away from his group, past the doors to the toilets and over towards you. The boy with the cadaverous face, the Uriah Heep face, turned and said something that Denny ignored. And then Denny spoke to you and you spoke back and I wished I could have read your lips, but all I had were the words of warning boomed angrily in my direction.
'. . . And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne . . .'
The words bulging her eyes, her eyes bulging her words.
'. . . and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?'
Uriah Heep pushed Denny away and Denny pushed him back, as the others tightened around them. Chips and insults flew through the air. Denny won the push and Uriah fell at your feet. I saw another of Denny's tribe wade in. It was the shaven-headed boy whom I had seen at the tennis courts, kicking Uriah in the stomach.
You looked at Imogen, scared, stranded in the middle of all this.
I had to do something.
I started walking, towards you, but things calmed.
Denny's tribe pulled the skinhead away as Denny himself disappeared out of the scene. Imogen helped Uriah to his feet.
I stood stuck to the ground as you walked away with your companions, to the rising cheer of Denny's friends. Any moment you were going to see me and I would have no excuse for leaving the shop. None that you would have believed. And, after Rome, I couldn't afford to push you further away. Inside the sun-red darkness of a blink I saw Reuben, crooked on the ground, and I took this as a final sign.
'God shall wipe all tears from their eyes.'
My watch told me it had been an hour. And enough of the old Terence was there to return me to the shop, to help Cynthia on this busy afternoon.
'Where on earth have you been?' she asked me, in a hiss quiet enough not to disturb the old couple having a browse around the furniture.
I found it difficult to answer. 'I had to . . . I went to . . . Bryony was . . .'
Cynthia closed her eyes and released an exasperated sigh. 'You didn't follow her, did you?'
The old couple glanced towards us, and made their silent decision to leave.
'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, I did. I followed her. But I'm back now, aren't I?'
'I don't know. Are you? Are you back, Terence?' The 'back' was given further emphasis with her ascending eyebrows.
'What is that supposed to mean?'
Cynthia inhaled, preparing for a verbal onslaught, but she changed her mind. Her tone softened. Her eyebrows lay back down. She stared over towards the spot where the old couple had been standing only moments before. 'Nothing, Terence. Nothing. I just think you might need someone to talk to.'
'Someone? What someone? About what?'
'A third party. A bereavement counsellor. Someone you don't know and can open up to. I found it so helpful, you know, when Helen . . . Knowing that I could go somewhere every Tuesday afternoon and sit and blubber away and make a show of myself.'
'No,' I said. The idea of sitting on a plastic chair in a room filled with mental-health leaflets and the smell of cheap instant coffee, talking to a total stranger about all this – well, it was abhorrent. 'No, I don't think so.'
She smiled, hopeful. 'Well, perhaps you should talk to me. Perhaps we should talk together. Perhaps it would do us both some good. It's not healthy, you know, to keep it all caged in. You can make a monster of your emotions by ignoring them. You need to open the doors every now and then. You need to let some air in.'
I sat down on the wooden stool, while Cynthia remained seated in the chair. 'Perhaps,' I said. And it was a faint but sincere perhaps. A soft echo of the old Terence, the Terence who knew what good advice was and how to take it.
'He was such a kind boy,' she said, the breadth of her smile increasing in line with the sadness in her eyes.
'Yes,' I said. 'He could be.'
She chuckled at something. 'I remember when he was at the bungalow and he said, "Grandma, why do you have all these twigs in vases?" And I gave him that book to look at. Andy Goldsworthy. Do you remember? He liked the ice sculptures. "Wow, that's well cool. How did he do that?" It's so strange, isn't it? It must have only been about two months ago. A Sunday. He still wanted a toffee after his meal though, didn't he? Oh no, he was never too old for a piece of Harrogate toffee!'
'No,' I said, struggling to remember that same Sunday. 'No, he wasn't.'
Cynthia filled the afternoon with anecdotes and stories from that finished and irretrievable world. I smiled and nodded and mumbled but had little to contribute. In truth, I was too busy thinking about you, and praying you would stay safe.
The prayer was rewarded. You returned at five to five, alone and intact, hating me no more and no less than when you had left.
'Your father and I have had a good chat, haven't we, Terence?' Cynthia told you, as you stood in the hallway.
'Yes,' I said. 'We have.'
Cynthia's widened eyes and nodding head gave my words an unwarranted endorsement.
You smiled, for your grandmother's benefit. 'Oh,' y
ou said. 'Right. Good.' No more than that, I think.
And you trod softly upstairs, away from us, while Cynthia's whisper tried its futile best. 'See, there's nothing to worry about. She'll be all right. She'll find her own way home. Now, come on, be a good boy, Terence. Why don't you make us a lovely pot of tea?'
*
If you had always been a dream of a child, then Reuben was the dark sleep I could never comprehend. I struggled to compete with Cynthia's anecdotes, partly because even while he was alive Reuben never let me in. I had to pick up whatever clues I could, fragments of evidence that never gave me the complete picture: the vague comments of teachers; the half-formed monosyllables that rumbled at the back of his throat; the sound of his feet walking across his bedroom; the friends he used to visit but never talked about. Yet there were occasions when I would gain a sharp glimpse into his state of mind. One incident, in particular, I remember very well. Now when was it?
You were practising for a school concert, so you still weren't home. That would make it a Wednesday, wouldn't it? Yes. And I'm reckoning it was about a week before you both turned fourteen. Yes, I'm sure it was. Anyway, the other details are much clearer.
I was in the shop, aware of Reuben's presence only as a series of sounds. The turn of his key, the slow clump of the back door as it closed behind him. I'm sure it was at this point I said, 'How was your day?' or something of equivalent non-significance. He didn't answer. Hardly unusual. He was probably lost in his own world. He might simply have been ignoring me. Whatever the reason, I thought nothing of it, as I was having a bit of a nightmare with the bureau I was trying to restore.
After however long, I heard feet leave his room and head for the bathroom, then the sound of running water from upstairs. He had the tap on at full blast.
I left the bureau and went upstairs. Pausing on the landing I heard something else, above the water.
Now, to describe it. The noise.
A kind of panting, I suppose. What sounded like fast and heavy breathing but accompanied by an occasional whimpering. In retrospect, I realise I should have opened the door sooner. But I didn't. This inaction, I hasten to add, was not due to any kind of parental lethargy but was rather a father's intuition. When a man happens to hear his adolescent son panting heavily in the bathroom it makes certain sense to hold back from intervention. So, I held back, and tried my very hardest not to think too much about it. You see, at that time I still believed there were some things that a parent shouldn't enquire about. I imagined I was protecting my son from his own shame.
It was only when his whimper became more pronounced that I decided to intervene. 'Reuben? What are you doing in there?'
He didn't hear me. Or, at any rate, he didn't answer. The water kept on, so I spoke a little louder. 'Reuben? Do you really need that much water?'
Now I was closer to the sound I realised it was one of pain and not pleasure.
He switched the tap off, and I heard his heavy breath.
'Dad,' he said. 'I'm just . . . I . . . I won't . . .'
Panic and pain competed in his voice. I tried the door. He hadn't locked it. Maybe he'd forgotten. Or maybe, subconsciously, he'd wanted this to happen. Maybe he wanted me to swing the door open and see what I saw, what I still see as vividly as if it was a second ago.
Your brother, in front of the mirror, turned towards me with wide-eyed dread. There was something in the basin, but I didn't notice that at first. What I noticed was the blood. It began in a deep shining scar by his left cheek.
'My God, Reuben, what have you done?'
He didn't answer. I think he was too ashamed, but the information I needed was in the basin. His toothbrush, cradled there, its bristles pink with diluted blood.
'You did this to yourself?'
I looked at the scar again and realised its purpose. He had been trying to rub off his birthmark. He had been standing there, all that time, brushing away at his own skin.
'Reuben,' I was speaking softer now. 'Reuben, why would you –'
The smack of shame, the pain, the leaking blood, were all working to weaken him. He turned pale and wilted sideways in a kind of half-faint. I moved fast, and held his body.
I saw to his wound. I pressed a plaster onto his face. I gave him a paracetamol.
'I don't want Bryony to know,' he said.
'I won't tell her,' I said. 'We'll just say you had an accident playing rugby.'
'I don't play rugby.'
'Football, then.'
(You never believed that, did you? At least now you know the lie wasn't Reuben's.)
I asked him, obviously, why he did it, but never heard an answer.
The standard parental condolences were offered and, in my arrogance, I believed they might have had some effect. In truth he probably just wanted to leave the bathroom, and the eyes of his prying father, as soon as he could.
I stayed there, and washed the last remnants of blood from the brush.
Even after it had all gone I kept the tap running, not caring a fig about the wasted water, and found a strange therapy in the sound of it blasting through the white bristles and down the drain.
*
Come on, Terence! Drag yourself out of the quicksand before you sink any deeper.
Right, the next incident: Cynthia's grand meal out.
Yes. You didn't go, do you remember?
'Bryony,' I called. 'Bryony, your grandmother's here. Are you ready?'
Cynthia was standing in front of the mirror, combing her hands through her freshly dyed black hair, and running through various thespian poses. 'Liz Taylor, eat your heart out,' she said.
I kept calling you. 'Bryony? Bryony?'
'Oh, Terence, hasn't she told you?'
'Told me?'
Cynthia pointed a black nail up towards your room. 'Other plans,' she whispered.
'What?'
'She phoned me an hour ago.'
'Phoned you?'
'On her mobile.'
'Phoned you on her mobile telephone? When?'
'I told you,' Cynthia said, exasperated. 'An hour ago.'
'Well, I'm afraid, Cynthia, you've been misinformed. She promised you she was coming and she's coming. Now, Bryony? Bryony?'
The taxi honked outside.
'Bryony? Bryony?'
Your voice, somewhere above: 'What?'
'Why did you tell your grandmother you weren't coming with us?'
'I'm going to Imogen's,' you said with cool defiance.
'Imogen's?'
At which point Cynthia's fingers played a quick four notes on my arm, her nails shining like onyx jewels.
'Apparently her friend's very upset,' she whispered. 'She's just split up with her boyfriend and wants to have a girls' night with Bryony. You know girls like sleepovers, don't you? Now, come on, Terence, don't make a big hoo-ha.'
I went upstairs and you handed me a piece of paper you had already prepared, complete with Imogen's address and telephone number. You assumed, no doubt, that I would do nothing with this information.
A third baritone blast of that taxi horn and Cynthia's voice: 'Come on, Terence. We'll be late.'
And me looking directly in your eyes saying: 'So, it's just going to be you and Imogen?'
Your eyes conjured their wide innocence. 'Uh-huh.'
'And how, may I ask, are you getting there?'
'Imogen knows a pimp who works this part of town and he's kindly offered me a lift,' you said, before puncturing your tease. 'Imogen's mum. She's picking me up.'
'All right,' I said, thinking of Cynthia. 'I trust you.'
Even if that had been true, I would have still spent the night in panic.
In the taxi, we passed an accident near the racecourse. A mangled car, high and hunched like an angry cat, nosed up with the barrier.
'Poor soul,' Cynthia said, as a raised shape in a blanket was pushed into an ambulance.
'Yes,' I said, and wished I had your grandmother's empathy. Wished I could feel for a faceless victim, rathe
r than my daughter, in the back of a stranger's car, driving to a house I had never seen.
At the Box Tree I smiled and nodded my way through the meal, giving myself indigestion as I wolfed down my grim-lipped turbot, listening to the tale of when Cynthia tripped over in a long-past production of The Tempest.
I hardly remember anything about those people.
Her old am dram friends.
Well, no, I can remember one or two. I can remember Ray. An infuriating man with a face like a toby jug who found great sport in vulgarising my name: 'So, Terry . . . is that right, Tel? . . . pass the wine, would you, Tezzer?'
He kept on testing me with quotations, as his wife cringed and shrank by his side.
'"He who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy,"' he said, as he leaned back in his chair and stared at the wine list. 'Dr Johnson, in case you didn't know. Are you a brandy man, Telly?'
'No,' I told him. 'No spirits for me.'
He stroked his preposterous chin and looked at me in a rather smug fashion. 'Didn't think so,' he said.
I believe it was at this point Cynthia started talking rather loudly about her life-drawing classes.
'Would you ever take your clothes off, Tel?' asked the toby jug. 'For art's sake, I mean.'
'No. Would you?'
'Well, if old Ollie Reed saw no shame in it I don't see why I should,' he said.
A man next to me came to my rescue. That homosexual chap. Snowy-haired, canary-sweatered, facially reminiscent of a neatly groomed camel. I think you've met him before. You saw his Widow Twanky in the Aladdin pantomime years ago. Michael. Is that what they call him?
'Oh, Ray, I don't know,' he said. 'Aren't you more Ollie Hardy than Ollie Reed?'
The table burst into wild guffaws and the toby jug threw a stern glance at his giggling wife.
Later, Michael's sombre voice in my ear: 'Cynthia has told me everything. I'm so sorry. It must have been impossible for you. I met him at the theatre once. He was on work experience, wasn't he? Having trouble with that damn donkey.'
'Yes . . . yes . . . ,' I said, staring down at the fish skeleton on my plate. All the time, in my mind: where were you? What were you doing? Were you in the car yet? Were you strapped in? Were you going where you said you were going? And I felt rather ill with it. With all those people between us. All those people occupying the physical space between you and me. All those personalities. All those narratives we had no part of, who wouldn't care if you stopped existing. 'You'll have to excuse me . . .'