Chapter 13

Would she? Norah had evaded a clear answer as they raced along the motorway. What with the noise, and the speed, and the on-and-off darkness blurring the expression on one’s face, it had been easy. But it was different once they were back at the flat, where Alistair had dropped them before speeding off to enjoy the rest of the weekend on his own – or not on his own, who could tell? Fortunately, Diana did not seem to be bothered. Not at the moment, anyway; she was far too busy telephoning people with names like Jeremy and Adrian about her exciting new project.

Lying on her bed, racked with nerves, Norah struggled to make out, through the half-open door, exactly what these telephone calls were about; but although she could hear clearly enough the high-pitched excited tones of the speaker’s voice, the actual words were inaudible.

Was Diana, brazenly and selfishly, ignoring Norah’s wishes in the matter? Or had she genuinely supposed that Norah’s evasive murmur in the car had amounted to a tacit consent?

But what Diana might be thinking and believing was only half of the problem. The other half was Norah’s own uncertainty and doubt. Because what Diana had said was true – to be on television, expounding his bizarre views to millions, would indeed be an ego-boost to Christopher such as he hadn’t enjoyed for years – not since he had been the mathematical boy-wonder enjoying the amazed adulation of parents and teachers and (to a lesser extent) the reluctant admiration of his class-mates.

Was an ego-boost exactly what he needed? Might it, conceivably, sweep the delusions once and for all from his contorted mind? Was he, perhaps, just on the point of recovery anyway? They do say, don’t they, that no one ever does “recover” from schizophrenia – the most that can be hoped for is occasional remissions. On the other hand, there had never been any official diagnosis of schizophrenia in Christopher. On the contrary his father, an accredited expert on the subject had firmly and consistently denied that his son suffered from any mental illness at all.

Occasionally, over the dark and chequered years of Christopher’s worsening spells of distorted thinking and bizarre behaviour, Norah had tormented herself with doubts about her own sanity. Could Mervyn possibly be right in his insistence that it was her neurotic and abnormal behaviour that compelled Christopher to behave neurotically and abnormally in self-defence? These thoughts would creep upon her whenever her son was in a “good” mood for any length of time – when he was enjoying a remission would be another way of putting it. During these spells he would be well-behaved, even good company, and would keep out of trouble at school. But each time, just as Norah was beginning to relax her guard; to hope, cautiously, that this might be the beginning of permanent recovery – at just this point, when her vigilance began to lapse – some new and awful thing would happen: an unpredictable and totally bizarre delusion would suddenly obsess him, and drive him to terrifying lengths of – well – of madness. No other word for it.

Like this genetic engineering fantasy, which had so intrigued Diana. Knowing nothing whatever about genetic engineering except that it achieved top ratings on T.V. programmes – and, terrifyingly, this was all that she needed to know – she seemed quite oblivious to the fact that everything Christopher had been telling her was complete and total nonsense. Must be nonsense. Even in the most advanced genetic-engineering centres in the world, they had only managed so far to engineer tiny modifications in existing creatures; and now here was an eighteen-year-old boy, still at school, and with no access to any sort of appropriate equipment – here was this boy assuring Diana that he, single-handedly, had engineered all sorts of new and extraordinary creatures; and that, yes, he could produce them in front of the cameras when required.

Rationally, one might assume that he was pulling her leg; but, alas, he wasn’t. Norah was the only person in the world who could know for certain that he wasn’t, because she was the one who had been there when it all began.

It had been a few months ago; and, as commonly happened, there had been a spell of comparatively quiet and acceptable behaviour before this latest leap into the darkness that lurked always, waiting, somewhere inside his skull.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and Christopher for some reason – maybe a quite legitimate one, she couldn’t remember – was home from school. The two of them were in the sitting-room listening to a Mozart piano sonata on the radio. The piece had been a favourite of Christopher’s – he had even played it when he was younger and when all his talents, musical and mathematical, were at their height.

The third movement was just coming to an end when, without warning, Christopher sprang from his deep armchair, hurled himself upon the set and slammed off the music in mid-bar.

“How dare they!” he muttered, “That’s my frequency!” and he began, with urgent abandon, to switch from station to station, pausing nowhere. Broken sentences – half bars of music – snatches of foreign speech – unintelligible wails and bursts of laughter – a Shakespearian voice enunciating less than half a line from somewhere – at which, with an angry gesture, Christopher switched the thing off and turned on his mother.

“You heard that?” he challenged her. “All those channels – all those voices? All of them invisible, coming through the air – right? Yet everyone thinks they’re real, don’t they? Why are mine the only voices that no one believes are real? Listen …”

He sat absolutely still, his head tilted to one side, listening; and Norah found that she, too, was tilting her head on one side and listening. It seemed impossible not to do so. The intensity of a mad person’s certainty is irresistibly compelling.

How long did they sit like this? She heard a car passing and then another. She heard a garden gate squeak, she heard footsteps on the pavement. After a bit, she began to hear her own breathing, and then her own heart, thump, thump, thumping.