The Whole World (16 page)

He’d come to hear us out of kindness. This was the tune I played as a solo. Alice and James and Mick stepped down off the stage to give me space. James and Mick took off outside to smoke, but Alice stayed to listen. Richard stood next to her. She made him dance—he’s as bad as I am, but a more willing sport about it.

By the end of the number, she’d invited him to join us at the Folk Festival the next week. Later I asked him not to, so he didn’t. It was supposed to be a date.

The festival was loud and good. Everyone sweated in the heat. At the end of the first day I leaned up against her, with her back to a wall, but she said there were people around. So I asked her to come back to my flat. This is where everything went to a crazy place. This is where she told me, and I believe she thought she was being nice, that a week ago she would have gone with me in a minute. Apparently, I’m a really great person, and she would have been flattered for the chance to go home with me. That’s what she said. And I wanted to know what was wrong.

She said that she’d gone to Richard’s church, and she’d had this “experience,” and she was trying to figure out what it all meant. It had to have been just that past weekend. Just one Sunday. She was adamant that it wasn’t a Richard thing; it was, she said, something bigger than that. And then she said the usual about Jesus and God and it’s nothing I haven’t overheard for most of my life, starting when Richard read his first C. S. Lewis at age twelve. She said she was going to put things on hold for a while, while she figured out what she thought about all that. Meaning, I’m reading between the lines, that she wasn’t going to have sex with anyone for at least a while. Definitely not that night.

“All right,” I said. “We can just—” Meaning, I don’t know, just fool around. Something short of everything.

She cut me off. “It’s amazing,” she gushed. “It’s all—Jesus made us, and we’re all special, right? We’re
beautiful…
.” And the way she said “beautiful” cracked, and then she cried. “I’m beautiful,” she said between gulpy sobs. She said it like it was news.

She asked me if I wanted to come with her to church next week. I said no.

Ten months later they were married. Two years after that a teenager in the Bible study she ran smashed a brick into her skull. He was, he’d said, in love with her.

Alice survived, but she was different. Part of the front of her brain was broken.

By then I was married to Gwen, who was waddling in that pregnancy posture women get.

Richard stayed married to Alice for four more years. He didn’t complain. Her mind was changed and her manner was changed, but he remained steadfast to the new person inside her body. Then she wanted to marry someone she’d met at the rehabilitation clinic, who’d had a similar injury. So he granted her a divorce.

“Aw, you look sad.” Suddenly Carmen was next to me. Our sister. I didn’t feel like responding to that.

“Come on,” she said. “Have a little fun. Are you still jealous?”

I stopped myself from answering. Answering Carmen just leads to trouble, gives her stuff to analyse. “Get off it, Carmen,” I said.

She’s convinced that I haven’t “let go” of the first Alice, that I hold it against Richard for “stealing” her. Which is ridiculous, because Alice was never mine. Sure, I’d liked her, but we’d never been anything. We might have become something, but we hadn’t. So how could he steal? And this is Richard. That’s a commandment, one of ten. He doesn’t steal.

I suddenly noticed a difference in her. “What did you do that for?” I gestured at Carmen’s head. Her hair was back in some kind of lump on her head. It’s usually more like a bush around her face. She and Mother argue about it at every family gathering.

She rolled her eyes. “You only notice things that don’t matter.”

“No, really,” I said. I wasn’t going to let this go. “What made you give in?” I grinned. This was getting to her. This was older brother stuff. I could handle this.

“Do you want to know what got to me?” She poked my chest. “My respect for Richard’s happiness got to me. Accepting that this event is about him, not me, got to me. My desire for a conflict-free celebration, with Mum having no excuse for an argument, got to me. I wish that kind of thing would get to you.” Then she walked away.

All right. If she wanted to talk about that, we would talk about it. Walking away was no fair. I followed her.

“I’m going to the loo,” she insisted. There was one up here, but she took the stairs toward the ones in the corridor. Just to get away from me.

“Wait,” I said, following her to the narrow corridor.

She stopped so I could say something, but I froze up. “The thing is,” I stammered, “I don’t know what you think the problem is.”

She sighed with exaggerated patience. That sound was the background score of my entire childhood.

“You’ve always been jealous of Richard,” she said, stretching “always” out long and thin. “You don’t like when he gets anything.”

This wasn’t true. I shook my head. “We don’t want the same things, Carmen, so what exactly am I supposed to be jealous of?” Someone exited the ladies’ and we had to flatten against the wall to give her room to pass.

Carmen said it loud enough that the woman turned to look at me: “You both wanted Alice.”

“This is what I think about Alice,” I exploded, too loudly. So I lowered my voice. “The first one, all right? The first one. He ruined her. He made her into something different, and that difference led her into harm’s way. I know those kind of kids she was working with. She had no business trusting thugs like that. There’s no way she should have let herself alone with them, let her guard down. She trusted Richard and his ideas about how the world works. She sacrificed herself—that’s what I hold against him. He turned a vibrant person into a vulnerable person. Now she’s gone. Her body’s still alive, and someone lives there, but it isn’t her anymore. She’s gone. He didn’t take her away from me, Carmen. This isn’t about me. He took her away from the world. He took her away, full stop. Now she’s gone.”

Carmen smiled. She had a look of glory on her face. “That’s a breakthrough, Morris.” Then she hugged me.

“Christ, it’s not a breakthrough, Carmen. It’s just—the way things are.”

She released me and wagged a finger. She was still smiling when our mother emerged.

“Oh!” Mum said, flustered for a moment to be confronted right out of the toilet, as if she’d been caught coming out of a stranger’s hotel room. Her hands travelled over her dress, patting it to ensure everything was secure. “I despise public toilets,” she announced. Then, suddenly, “I’m glad you see I was right, Carmen. You look like an adult. A lovely adult.”

“Cheers, Mum,” said Carmen, smiling fake-brightly, and I had to give her credit for not saying more.

“Really,” I asked, after Mother had walked past, “why now? You’ve been defying her with your hair for a good thirty years. What makes this time different?”

“You don’t even notice, do you? This is hard on Richard. His friend is missing. You’re supposed to be finding him. He almost delayed the wedding, out of respect, but I persuaded him not to. You dredged the river, Morris…. He was a wreck.”

She expounded further but I’d stopped listening at “You’re supposed to be finding him.” I’d released Miranda Bailey that morning. A regular had been hauled in the night before with Nick’s credit card who swore he’d mugged Nick near East Road after Miranda was already back at her hotel. We were at a dead end.

“Would it be better if I hadn’t come? Do you think the trail’s going cold because I took a day off? Do you think finding someone is just a matter of persistence? Is that what you think? It’s not. Some people don’t get found. Some people …” I grappled for a metaphor my family would understand. “… Some people … there isn’t the data available. With incomplete data, the conclusions are necessarily conjecture….” I stopped because it was absurd.

“No one is blaming you,” she said in an awful, placating tone. But everyone was. I was.

The band was on again. Richard and Alice danced together, finally. Everyone else had joined in too. Gwen danced with Uncle Max. Her head swivelled. She was looking for me.

I pushed right through the swirling crowd. My shoulders and elbows made a way. I walked right through them up onto the stage.

The band stopped playing. The caller tried to usher me off, but I put up my hand. It wasn’t a threatening hand, more of a “calm down” hand. I don’t know if it was because I was the groom’s brother, or have that cop way about me, or because it was crazy and it’s best not to argue with crazy. I pointed to the fiddle. “Let me,” I said. The fiddle player didn’t move at first. Then he handed the instrument over. It felt like home picking it up. Almost home, because it wasn’t my fiddle, but it was good.

I hadn’t played in a long time. My group had broken up shortly after Alice had converted. The bass player moved, and what were Mick and I supposed to do, just the two of us? I’d got promoted and there was Gwen. I didn’t play anymore.

I faced the crowd but didn’t look at anybody. I was just into myself. The bow touched down on the string and I rode away with it. I pushed the instrument and it pushed back. That relationship, that push and response, is the whole thing. Sound doesn’t fly or leap; it can only bump, from something to something, from one air molecule to the next. That’s how it travels, by contact. That’s what I learned at uni. There’s no sound without relationship. There’s no sound without touch. Something has to touch something, even just a molecule of air, or else there’s no sound at all. That proves it: Sound doesn’t have to be music to be profound. But when it is music, this is it. This is the stuff. I didn’t even know who was looking or who cared. This was contact, this was action, this was making something happen. I might be alone and I might be stymied and I might be useless, but, by God, at the molecular level I was shaking the world.

Something else shook. The inside pocket of my suit jacket rumbled against my chest. God, not now. My mobile. Not, not, not now. I pushed again and again at the repetition leading toward the end. Not now, not now, I chanted in my head along with the persistent rhythm.

I brought it down to Earth when I was ready. I slowed it when it was time. Everything up till then had been wild and delicate and “How did he do that?” fast. But the end was something else, just the melody, nothing tricky. Three notes, the same three that had persistently underwritten the wildness before. One, two, three. Done.

The room didn’t have sound in it any longer. The phone in my pocket had stopped as well. All held still for a moment, all held blessedly still. Then—
crack!

Someone outside rammed the patio doors with his shoulder, and they flew back to smack against the wall. Everyone turned around to see. It was that boy, the tall boy, wet and shivering. He had Dora in his arms; she was wet too. She was soaked. It wasn’t raining, but it was cold. “She fell in the river,” he said. The whole crowd surged toward them and I pushed through them all.

I would have hauled her up in my arms, but the fiddle and bow were still in my hands. I stood useless for only a moment, but in that moment Gwen took charge: She sent someone for warm coats, someone for hot tea. Dora had to be breathing. She had to be. The river can be cold enough to give someone a heart attack. But the weather had been warm lately, warm and wet. It hadn’t been frosty. I’d only been joking about pushing Richard in. I’d never have done it. Jesus Christ. I’d never have done it.

Someone laid two coats over her, two big wool coats. I wanted to do something, but Gwen was already there, cradling her. Dora snuggled, and tugged at the wet hair sticking to her neck. It had fallen from some fancy style, and I think she was trying to put it back up. Or tear it all the way down. She was trying to fix herself. She suddenly reminded me of Alice, the first Alice, back at the Folk Festival. How is it that women don’t know how beautiful they are?

“Dora …” I said. Gwen looked at me, looked hard. This was a test of some kind. There was some right thing I could say that would make me a good husband, a good father. I didn’t know what it was. The fiddle was still in my hand.

I waited too long again. Gwen looked away, exasperated.

Mother pushed past me with the tea. Dora said, “It’s too hot.” Gwen told her it wasn’t and to just drink it. The boy was in the midst of his own family swarm. Alice, a doctor, had quickly checked him, and then came to Dora. She knelt in front of her.

There would be no breaking through this wall of women. And I still had the fiddle in my hand.

I returned it to the stage. Then I checked my phone messages.

Bloody hell. Nick Frey and a dead professor.

Richard knew. Somehow he knew.

“Duty calls,” I said lightly, snapping the phone shut.

I found where Gwen had put my coat. Richard didn’t say anything. But he knew. I could tell by the way he stuck to me.

“Please,” he said quietly.

I had no right to tell him, certainly not before telling the parents. Really, I shouldn’t tell anyone until I was certain for myself. Mistakes get made. There was no room for that here.

But he followed me outside. I asked him to tell Gwen I had to work. “And congratulations,” I said. He turned my intended handshake into a pleading grip.

“Please tell me,” he said.

I shook my head. “Can’t do that.” It took shaking my fingers to get the blood back. I repeated the message: “You know I can’t tell you.”

He didn’t fight. He only hoped.

That’s what really puts me over the edge with him. He doesn’t push for anything. He just—stands, and people join him. He’d take a beating if anyone ever bothered to hate him. He’d take it. He took what had happened to the first Alice. I couldn’t believe how he took it.

The boy who’d smashed her head had done a runner, and it took some doing to track him down. The sergeant who picked him up got cut. The boy had had a knife, a stupid small kitchen thing. A dull paring knife, probably from someone’s trash. The sergeant got cut but wrestled it off the kid and brought him in.

When I brought this news to Richard, brought it like a present, he pushed it back. This was one for our side, we’re the good guys, right? A sergeant had bled to bring the boy in, because justice matters. Because Alice mattered. A policeman had risked his life, a cop like me.