Half-Sick of Shadows (29 page)

Alf and I placed Father in a coffin on the floor. I heard a moan and looked towards its source. Mother stood at the open trapdoor, swaying at the top of the steps. Sophia steadied her. They descended, Sophia first, Mother behind her. Her hand rested on Sophia’s shoulder. Mother, stiff and slow, took ages to reach the coffin. When she did, she looked down on her husband and stared at him in a way I found difficult to read. She didn’t cry. Her face looked pained, but not with grief.

‘Should we wait for Gregory?’ she asked.

‘We don’t know when he’ll return,’ I said.

With a brush of a hand, Mother said, ‘Get on with it.’

I hadn’t planned any kind of ceremony, but at the last minute I thought there should be at least token formality. ‘Would you
like
me to read from the bible, the way Father used to do?’

‘Oh, good God, no,’ said Mother. ‘If I hear another word from that bloody bible I’ll scream.’

I admit to being taken aback.

‘Bury it with him,’ said Mother.

Sophia hurried up to Father’s bedroom and retrieved his bible, and it went into the coffin with him.

I cleared my throat. ‘I’ll say a few words.’ I didn’t know which words I would say, but I was sure a few would come to me: We loved him, or We admired him, or We’ll miss him. Lies. All lies. More appropriate would be, Good riddance. But I couldn’t say that. I cleared my throat and addressed the man in the coffin at my feet. ‘Father—’

Mother stamped a foot. ‘Oh, shut your mouth, Edward. Just nail on the frigging lid and be done with it.’

Later, when Mother had gone back to bed, Alf spoke with his hands, making solid shapes, less solid shapes, waves and chops. ‘Edward already knows about this, Sophia; we’ve discussed it at length at school.’ I couldn’t recall having discussed it at school. Certainly not at length. ‘Imagine that in a multiverse there’s one universe that’s really, really real. While there are no other universes that are really, really real, there are multitudinous other universes. They make up fifty point nought, nought one per cent of the rest of each matter-dominated multiverse.’

Sophia went to sleep with her eyes open.

‘And the other forty-nine point whatever per cent?’ I asked.

‘Dark matter, to you. But I don’t want to go into that. All the not really real universes in a multiverse are like orchards from which the very best can be picked and added to the really real universe.’

‘The very best of what?’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong; but didn’t I tell you last night?’

‘I don’t think so, Alf.’

‘The very best of just about everything that springs from chance
variation
, or, as it’s usually referred to, independent thought. Poetry, for example, as I explained to you this morning, or possibly yesterday. The poem in the book wasn’t created here, and doesn’t belong here. That I’ve lost it here is like having released an alien predator into an ecosystem. Art is the same. Imagine what would happen if you let Rolf Harris loose on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.’

I cringed.

‘My job is in the domain of arts and culture, Sophia. That’s where I do my picking. And what I’ve picked, I take to the really real universe, and I plant. And, by that means, the really real universe gets the best of everything.’

‘That’s unfair,’ said Sophia. ‘Poor people should get some too.’

I agreed with my sister. It sounded a tad tyrannical to me, a bit elitist. Alf’s multiverse of not quite really real universes ponged of slavery, exploitation and just plain unfairness. I rubbed my chin, thinking of a way to throw a spanner in the machine of his – admittedly interesting, at a certain level – imaginary construction. I was, however, spannerless. ‘Your really real universe is a bit like God’s Heaven, then.’

Alf: ‘Only if your religion’s polytheistic.’

Sophia: ‘Eh?’

Me: ‘How so?’

Alf: ‘The really real universe.’

Me: ‘Yes.’

Alf: ‘It isn’t singular. There are an infinite number of really real universes, each one with its corresponding multiverse of universes that aren’t really real.’

Sophia: ‘There’s infinite not really real multiverses too.’

Me: ‘Sophia!’

Alf: ‘She’s spot on.’

Sophia: ‘That’s a lot.’

Alf: ‘You have to take your socks and gloves off to count them.’

Sophia: ‘You’d need to be a cow.’

Me: A what?

Alf: Or an infinite number of armies of millipedes.

Sophia: How many are there in an infinite?

Me: Too many to count.

Sophia: Like the Manse wall to wall and floor to ceiling with Brussels sprouts … or frozen peas?

Alf: Oh, infinity is bigger than that.

Sophia: Two Manses full of frozen peas?

Me: About that.

Alf: Plus one.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ I said – wait a minute was something I tended to say twice, like a policeman saying two hellos when one would have sufficed. ‘What aspect of orchard-cultivated art and culture is it, then, that you’ve brought here, to this planet, in this universe, to plant? And have you planted it already? Hang on. I think I know the answer to my own question: the poem.’

‘Not the poem, no. The inspiration for the writing of the poem is what I’ve come to get. Alas, I haven’t planted anything. Nor shall I. Not here. Again, I must repeat, Edward: you haven’t been listening. This, you see, this planet on which you exist, is an orchard planet in an orchard universe.’

‘You mean, we’re not really real?’

‘I’ve told you that at least once already.’

‘That I’m not real.’

‘Not really. No. Sorry.’

‘Bummer! Tell me if I’ve got this right: there’s only one really real universe in each multiverse … and … therefore … apart from really real universes, nothing else is real.’

‘Almost correctish, after a fashion,’ said Alf. ‘Over and above really real universes there are really, really real universes, or, as you might think of them, extremely real universes. They only exist in extremely real multiverses, and they’re a bit out of my league. You’d have to ask an A-plus muse about those.’

‘An A-plus muse?’

‘I’m only an A.’

Despite the entertainment value of playing imagination games with Alf, the old brain began to hurt before long. The organ in my skull ruminated on my friend’s tall tale while I wasn’t paying attention, and towards the close of the imagination game I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. It doesn’t make sense. You’re saying that you’ve spent years here, child and youth, all for the sake of just one poem! Come on, Alf; it’s hardly worth the bother. One poem?’

‘One poem,’ he affirmed.

‘It must be a heck of an important poem.’

‘It is indeed an important poem. No canon is without it. But that’s not why I have pursued the inspiration for years.’

‘Why, then?’

‘I could say because that’s how long it takes. However, measurements of time are irrelevant. The higher reality exists unfettered by the limitations imposed by time. To keep it simple, you might say that time is where I come to do my day job. Unconstrained, both by time and by finitude, an infinite number of Alfs pursue an infinite number of poems in an infinite number of contexts in an infinite number of universes.’

I added, ‘In an infinite number of multiverses.’

‘Plus one.’

Sophia screamed and ran out of the room, waving her arms in the air and shouting, ‘My head’s exploding.’

In the living room, while rain tapped on the window and a log crackled on the fire, Alf recited some of his own poetry to Sophia. My twin was flattered into a state of pink-cheeked awe. I came in from the kitchen and gave Alf two plastic bags and two thick elastic bands. ‘They’re just what I’ve always wanted,’ he said.

‘You’ll need them on your feet when you cross the heath.’

‘To catch the train? Wouldn’t it be easier to return to Bruagh?’

‘Bruagh’s about the same distance away as the crow flies, but the crow doesn’t fly by the Road; it twists and turns for twice as far.’

The Road did twist and turn, but certainly not twice as far. I’d lied, and I think Alf knew it. Why I lied is complex. We had kissed. He loved Sophia. He couldn’t bring himself to kiss Sophia because he thought her too pure. My Sofia. To Alf, I represented her. Me: second best. Maybe I read the situation incorrectly, but there you go.

Hollow Heath could be dangerous. Perhaps I wished for Alf the same fate as the body in the bog.

Alf looked out of the window, past the garden, and over Hollow Heath to orange lights far away. ‘I’ll try the heath.’

We saw Alf to the front door, Sophia and I. The Manse would be quiet after his departure. Sophia would be sorry to see him go. Devastated, probably. I too would be sorry to see him go – although still I half willed him to slither into a sinking swamp in his plastic-clad feet – at least he would die with clean shoes.

‘I’m going to destroy our home, Alf,’ I told him at the open door, letting the Cold in. ‘You don’t need to be involved.’

‘I do,’ he said, looking at Sophia, not me. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Can I contact you by telephone, then, when I’ve had news of Edgar and I’m ready? We don’t have a telephone, but Maud has one in her shop in Bruagh. Or Farmer Barry …?’

‘I’ll contact you,’ said Alf.

‘But how will you know when …?’

‘I’ll know when.’

‘Oh, yeah, right, I forgot,’ I said. ‘You’ll jump forward and see the future, then jump back and, yes, that’s a handy trick.’

‘You don’t believe me,’ he said with a smile.

‘Believe you? Of course I believe you! You’re the most honest fellow I’ve ever met, and I doubt not a single word. Indeed, not a single syllable. Do I believe you? Absolutely!’

Said Sophia, reassuringly, ‘I believe you too.’

‘Bring back a nice painting to decorate a wall,’ I joked, ‘if
you
bump into Michelangelo. Or a ceiling; that would be good.’

He took my hand in what was, for him, an unusually strong grip. Oh, God, don’t kiss me again! Yes, please do! He didn’t. ‘Goodbye for now, Edward. This has been an incredibly profitable experience.’

‘Is that what it was? Was that what it is?’

He released my hand and took Sophia’s – much more gently.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

After Alf’s departure from the Manse, Mother’s memory deteriorated. She only remembered that Edgar was coming home when I reminded her – as I did almost daily. A letter from the institution, containing the date of Edgar’s release, might have been lost in transit. We had no plan for what to do, where to put him, or how to treat him. They say you can plan to succeed but you can’t succeed without a plan. I had a plan. It started and ended with attending Northern Island University. I had a sub-plan: to lose my virginity while there. While waiting for my plan to start, I walked to Maud’s shop each morning to see if the post van had left my exam results. If out of cigarettes, I bought a box and smoked one on the way home. Then, one day, my results arrived. Standing outside Maud’s in light drizzle, heart beating like a frantic woodpecker’s beak, I tore open the envelope.

I passed my exams, but my science grades were too weak for the science faculty. I no longer had to worry about mathematics turning my cerebral cortex to pulp. Someone else would have to come up with a unified theory of the physical universe. It was Humanities for me.

University drew near. I itched to get started. Preparatory books in a box, courtesy of Blinky Mulholland, arrived at Maud’s shop.

Then, disaster …

23

Oops!

‘I’ll save you!’ cried Edgar, and jumped off the bridge.

24

The Ballad of Edgar and Mrs Wipple

Mrs Wipple continues dressing hair for five years after her visit to my part of the world – the time she prepared my head for starting school. She gave up the mobile arm of her empire and bought a salon in a city – if one is to make a fortune hairdressing, one’s salon must be in a city because that’s where most people’s heads are. Soon she’d made enough money to retire and spend the rest of her days on luxury liners cruising the oceans and visiting exotic locations. On the day of Edgar’s return to the Manse, two bulging suitcases occupied Mrs Wipple’s boot as she drove south to an airport, where she would board a plane and fly to a cruise ship somewhere sunny and hot.

No one knows why Edgar did it. I suspect he did it because he relapsed into one of his boyhood personae, probably Superman, because of his proximity to home after such a long time far from it.

It’s reasonable to assume that he expected to soar, and my older brother must have been disappointed, to say the least, when he plummeted like the proverbial lead balloon. His fall, from leap to thud, lasted only a second. During that second, although he fell at speed, the world outside his eyeballs became infinite. Infinity penetrated the heartbeat and a half and Edgar’s fall lasted for ever.

In all his years of cloudy skies, he had never noticed anything
about
them other than that they were skies and they were cloudy. However, he noticed now, he ‘took note of’ how louring and splendid a cloudy sky could be. A cloudy sky was a universe of possibilities.

‘Oh,’ he uttered, as if, until then, he’d missed the point.

Although upside down, head closer to the macadam than his feet, Edgar’s brain interpreted everything as though it were the right way up. Everything would indeed have been the right way up had Edgar been the right way up too.

All this in the space of an oh.

At the same time as Edgar saw her face the right way up although her head was upside down, he saw big hair. He saw the awful, open-mouthed face of the motorist behind the wheel, the horrified eyes in her head. Behind Edgar’s oh, as behind a cloud, he had a thought: I know her from somewhere.

Midway through infinity – if infinity has a midway: epiphany!

It happened between the o and the h of the oh. Edgar realized that his error was momentous and irreversible. Meeting God should occur at a time of God’s choosing. They taught him that at the institution, subsequent to attempted suicide by overdosing on custard creams.

Endeavouring to fly like Superman had been, at best, a bad idea.