The Possession of Mr Cave. Matt Haig
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had. The rest of the world could have slipped out of space and time and I wouldn’t have noticed. The only thing that mattered was concealed behind that door, 305, and I was about to go back down to the reception desk and get the man to give me the key when I heard something. You. Your feet padding across the carpet. ‘Bryony?’ The door opened and you were there, rubbing the dreams out of your eyes.
Had you been asleep, or were you just pretending? Was that delay in answering a part of the act? Were you aware that I was aware? Oh, the heavy weight of trivial questions!
‘Dad?’
I can tell you, in all honesty, that I have never felt so much love for you as I did inside that moment. To see you standing there, alive and intact, was all I had wanted. And there you were, in that baggy Picasso-print T-shirt, yawning like a baby. I know this must be hard for you to believe, given how things progressed, but I swear it is true. I wanted to hug you, I wanted to thank you for being such a miracle, but then I said it.
‘Where were you?’ and I kept saying it, the question backing you into the room. ‘Where did you go?’ My head was heating up, the mental bonfires raging away at my being, and the sunlit room was sliding into shade. I felt something rising within me. A violent force that weakened me, causing me to lose control.
‘Nowhere. I’ve been here. I’ve just woken up.’ Your lies, your lies, your lies. ‘What are you on about? You’re mad. I’ve been here. I’ve been asleep.’
I caught it, on your breath, something corrupt beneath the toothpaste. ‘You smell of smoke. And drink.’ Then you laughed. You shouldn’t have laughed, Bryony. And you said a profanity, which I will euphemistically put as ‘go away’, the word I cannot write so ugly and vile in your mouth that when I did it, when I struck your face, I wasn’t really striking your face but the word on your tongue, this alien thing that had got inside you, this new presence that wanted boys and didn’t want your father. And the fuzziness cleared, along with the dark, as though the outside force that had been pressing in suddenly fled like a villain. And I know this was it, I know this was the pivotal moment when the wind swerved in our story, and even now I can still hear your sobs and see your hand on your reddening cheek and I said it then and I’ll still say it now, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,’ but I know these words are worthless healers and cannot restore a single thing.
Oh, this is useless. I should stop right now. What is the point? I can see that look of sickened disdain on your face. If only I could put my soul into these words, if only I could make you feel precisely what I felt, then you would see the truth.
I suppose I expect too much. Every writer, every artist since the first cave painters has been trying to find a way to articulate their experience and are we any closer to seeing ourselves as we truly are? No. The distance we have to travel is exactly the same as it always was. So how can I expect to do what no writer has ever managed?
People say that humans are the superior species on this planet because we have minds that are conscious of their own existence, and therefore we have the capacity to create a culture, to create an art. I look at sheep, at peace on the moors, and wonder exactly how much of a delusion are our arrogant souls prepared to share?
There may be no bovid equivalent of a Michelangelo but there is no need for one. They accept their existence in a way we never will. They do not try to build artistic mirrors – books, paintings, orchestral symphonies – by which to capture and reflect their own nature. Even if they could, they wouldn’t. They have that understanding in-built. All these human things, all these arts, these religions, these sciences, what are they really but ways of trying to make up that difference? If we could accept like animals then there would be no Sistine Ceiling, no Madame Bovary, no Fantasy and Fugue. Out of our mistakes, out of our pain, arrives everything we love in this world. All that humans create serves solely to lessen the terror of existence. The terror that Beethoven and Keats and Van Gogh and every supreme artist has ever felt, the collective terror of a humanity that still stumbles around, looking at dark and untrustworthy shadows rather than true reflections.
If we found a perfect art, a perfect mirror to reflect our plight, one which helped us see ourselves from every angle, then it would mean the end of all creative endeavour. Art would have killed itself. Or it would live on in the way it lives in horses and cats and sheep. The art of living, and letting live, that our human souls have yet to learn.
It was a week after Rome that I first met Imogen. I say ‘met’ although I realise this is somewhat of an overstatement. It would be more accurate to say that I spotted her in various locations around my house, the way a birdwatcher might spot a chaffinch in his garden. Every time I got closer, trying to identify her chief characteristics, you both immediately took flight.
Now I was close-up, I didn’t like what I saw. What had happened to your other friends? What had happened to Holly, for instance? I used to enjoy hearing your mini string section when you practised together. Or what about that girl from the stables? Abigail, was it? That good old-fashioned hearty girl, who loved looking around the shop. I always thought she was lovely.
These were studious, freshly aired girls. The type of friends that justified your school fees.
Imogen was something different. How different, I couldn’t quite tell, but I needed to find out.
‘You must be Imogen,’ I said, to the face behind the fringe, when I cornered you both on the stairs.
‘I must,’ she told the carpet, and then you gave me that unforgiving stare you had recently cultivated, as if I had violated some secret pact simply by identifying your friend.
Did she know about what had happened in Rome? I have no idea what you had told her about me or what you said to each other in your room. Your music drowned out your voices, and that was probably its point.
Did you ever read the book on philosophy I bought you for your birthday? If you did you might remember the section on Plato’s cave. Well, let me tell you that to be a parent is to be permanently confined to that cave, forever trying to understand shadows on the wall. Shadows that only half make sense, and may be easily and disastrously misunderstood. You can never understand what really goes on in the world your child keeps from view. The reports you hear from her mouth are the shadows against the rocks, shadows that can’t be interpreted without stepping outside, into the light.
‘Terence?’ Cynthia was calling me from the shop. ‘Terence? Terence?’
You see, that is what I had decided to do. Ever since Rome I had decided to stop trusting your mouth and start trusting my eyes.
‘We’re going out,’ you told me, that Wednesday afternoon.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘May I ask where?’
‘Terence?’ called Cynthia, her voice rising now to a theatrical pitch.
‘In a minute,’ I called back. Then softer to you: ‘Where?’
‘Around the shops’, you said, in the minimalist fashion I was becoming used to.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Fine.’
You expected more, I could see that. Some kind of obstruction. But I gave you nothing.
‘We’ll be back,’ you said. ‘Later.’
‘What time?’ you expected. But I gave you: ‘Fine.’
The defiance that had creased your forehead softened into blank confusion.
‘Okay,’ you said, almost as a question. ‘See you . . . later.’
‘All right. See you later. And see you too, Imogen.’
You left and I watched you walk out of the back door, into that fearful day.
I ran into the shop.
‘Cynthia, can you look after everything here for a bit? I won’t be long.’
Your grandmother gave me one of her unforgiving looks. That tight, crinkled mouth offset with those tough eyes that once had her cast as Hedda Gabler.