Emily Winslow - The Whole World

Eventually, the band took a break. Someone put on a CD to keep the music going. I was tempted to slip out again-Gwen would give me hell anyway, why not earn it-but the song pulled me up short. I’d played it before.

When I’d swapped classical violin for fiddle music, in my Churchill days, Richard had been the only one in the family ever to come hear me play.

We played mostly for folk dance groups. Supporting dancers has a different feeling to it from playing concerts. There’s more obligation to fit in, and less obligation to impress. It suited me fine.

Alice, the first one, had played flute with us. During the two months she’d been with us I’d been going out with the sister of one of my fellow constables, but it was nothing serious. I wanted Alice. She liked me too. She was casual but kind of deep, with long skirts and long hair. It was the eighties but she was still flower-child-like, and so pretty that I couldn’t really think straight. We’d already messed about once, not a lot, just kissing this one time that had been cut short. She was finishing up her last year at the local polytechnic, which she chose over university because she said she wanted to play music, not study it. I never in all my life would have thought there was something in her for Richard, who’d just that past spring handed in his thesis and was already a Fellow. Never.

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.”