The Flask (8 page)

Si would have preferred takeaway, I would have preferred takeaway, but we get rice and frozen vegetables and leftover (Zoe would say
pre-owned
) chicken. Instead of discussing the babies, we talk, or rather Gran talks, about adventures with vases and coal scuttles and garden sheds. I say nothing and Si doesn’t say much either.

“Hope it hasn’t been too dull for you,” Si says, as Gran’s car finally pulls out of the drive.

“Gran told me about Clem’s little dip,” I jump in straightaway with this, because part of me fears that Si will disappear under the car again. Or back to the hospital. Or just disappear plain and simple.

“Hmm?” says Si.

“Dip – in the night.”

“Oh. The murmur. Clem has a VSD, a ventricle septal defect – what they used to call a ‘hole in the heart’. So there was a bit of a dip in his breathing last night. Monitor went off. But lots of kids have holes like these apparently – and they can often spontaneously resolve. So we’re not worrying too much about that at the moment.”

“What time did the monitor go off?”

“I don’t know, somewhere round two o’clock, I think. Why?”

You look frozen, Jess. Come on now, back to bed, it’s gone two o’clock
.

“Are there explanations for everything, Si?” I ask then.

“You mean real ones, scientific ones?”

When I was about five, someone apparently asked me, in Mum’s hearing, what ‘Si’ was short for. And I didn’t reply
Simon
, I replied
science
. That became a family joke for a while, though I never found it very funny.

“Yes,” I say, even though it’s not really what I mean at all.

“There are explanations for everything we’ve been clever enough to work out so far,” Si says. “But there’s still a whole lot of stuff we don’t really understand still. Which is why people still believe in God.”

God again.

“Or gods,” he goes on.

I prepare myself for his Best Explaining Voice, though I only have myself to blame.

“Take Helios,” Si says. “The Greek sun god who was supposed to drag his four-horsed chariot across the sky each morning and with it the rising sun. Each night, the ancients believed he, rather conveniently, travelled back to the east in a golden cup ready to ride across the sky the following day. That story lasted pretty much until we discovered that actually it’s the earth’s rotation that causes night and day. After which, Helios was out of a job.”

This is quite interesting, and it’s also not nearly as involved as Si’s usual explanations, so I think he must be tired. In fact, when I actually look at him, he seems exhausted. So I hurry up, and I tell him about waking up at the exact moment that Clem’s heart was murmuring.

“Gran said it was just worry…” I start.

“Reasonable enough,” says Si. “Though you’d also have to consider simple coincidence.”

I consider it. If the flask is in some way connected to the twins, then how can it also be connected to this Rob person, or at least to the song Aunt Edie wrote for him? So maybe the howling and the waking up was just coincidence. But then again, coincidences don’t normally crush your heart up.

“Coincidence is a perfectly rational explanation,” says Si. “Not everything happens for a reason, you know.”

My face must not be liking this answer because he goes on. “Trouble is, human beings seem to be wired to believe just the opposite. We find it difficult to accept that things can be random. That stuff just happens.”

Stuff, I suppose, like Aunt Edie writing a really important song to someone I’ve never heard of. Just some random piece of nothing. And I’m just about to ask Si who this nothing, random Rob is, when I realise there is no way Si will know because Si and Edie – they’re not even part of the same family.

So instead I say, “I don’t think everything does come down to science.”

“What?” says Si.

“I mean,” I say, keeping calm enough to choose my example with care, “I mean, when you’re in a car, just driving along and suddenly you just feel there’s someone looking at you and you turn around, and there in the next car, there is, there’s someone staring at you. That’s not science, is it?”

“Sixth sense,” says Si. “That’s what that is.” He smiles. “Which is just another way of saying, we can’t explain it
yet
. Bit like Helios. Maybe in a hundred or two hundred years’ time – then we’ll have an explanation for car staring as well.”

It’s his smile, his smug smile, that makes me take the flask out and put it on the kitchen table.

“What would you say,” I ask and it all comes out in a rush, “if I told you that, when Clem’s heart was murmuring, this old bottle started pulsing, started howling, like some wolf, crying and howling and pushing black black stuff into my bedroom and it wasn’t a dream, it really wasn’t. And what if I told you that the flask can sing as well, that it can sing something bigger than God, bigger than planets and—”

“Jess, Jess, steady.” He puts his big bony arm around my shoulder. Then he says he’s sorry.

“Sorry?”

“We’ve all been taken up, haven’t we, with the twins.”

“It’s not that!”

And I’m probably furious because I shouldn’t be talking to him about this sort of stuff. I should be talking to Zoe, my beautiful dancing, mirror-image friend Zoe. Only I’ve pushed her away, haven’t I? I’m all busy hating her and pushing her away when I’ve never needed her more than I do now. So it’s all my fault that I’m alone with Si and a flask that doesn’t make any sense.

Si picks up the bottle.

I wait for the whoosh, the breath and the butterfly beating under my hands. But nothing happens. The bottle, the flask, is still.

He turns it around in his hands.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he says. “Eighteenth century. Whisky flask, if I’m not mistaken. They’re called pumpkin seed flasks, I think, because of their shape.”

He is giving it a name, he’s describing it, making it just some stupid historical object.

“You don’t understand!” I shout.

“I’m a parent,” says Si. “That’s my job.”

“You’re not
my
parent,” I shout.

I have never said this to Si before.

Ever.

Si moves a little closer. “Jess,” he says. “Jess, it’s all right.”

But it isn’t.

The following morning, Paddy’s mother arrives in our drive at 10.30 a.m. Paddy’s sitting in the front seat of the car and Zoe’s in the back.

“Our big day at the Buddhist Centre with Onion Bhaji,” announces Paddy.

“Not onion bhaji,” said Mrs Paddy. “Lalitavajri.” Mrs Paddy has a name of her own – Sarah, I think – but everyone calls her Mrs Paddy because she just looks like a bigger, smilier version of Paddy himself. That big, round cheerful beach ball face.

I look at Paddy. He’s grinning. I don’t think he remembers anything that happened in the park. I don’t think he remembers that I would have liked to beat him to death. Zoe does remember. There’s something flickering and anxious about her.

“In you get,” says Mrs Paddy.

I get in. I’m carrying my clipboard and my Places of Worship questionnaire.

“Hi Jess,” says Zoe.

I look out of the window.

“As it’s Easter,” Mum said before she went into hospital, “I don’t know why you can’t visit a Christian place of worship.”

“It’s to broaden our minds,” I told her.

“Going in a Christian church would probably broaden most of your lot’s minds,” Si remarked.

The truth, which I didn’t tell them, is that we could have chosen a church or a temple or a mosque, for that matter. We probably would have chosen a church if Em or Alice had been part of our group. But, thanks to Zoe and the issue of the holiday dates, they got paired with Jack and we got Paddy.

“I vote for Buddhism,” Paddy said. “Father Neville knows a big fat zero about Buddhism, so I reckon we’ll be on safe ground whatever we write.”

“How’re things with the babies, Jess?” Mrs Paddy asks, as we head out of the close.

“Fine,” I say.

“And your mum?”

“Fine.”

“Well, give her my very best, won’t you?”

I say I will and then Mrs Paddy leaves the subject. Sometimes you have to be grateful for adults.

Zoe then asks Paddy if he’s seen some new film and it turns out he has, and she stops being anxious and flickering and starts one of those conversations that go: “Oh, my gosh, wasn’t it amazing when…”, “Yeah, but did you see – wow, I mean…” And they’re completely involved in the excitement of it all and I’m still staring out of the window. Which is, of course, entirely my own fault.

“You haven’t seen the film yet then, Jess?” says Mrs Paddy, picking up on my silence.

And I know the yet is just to let me off the hook, to make it clear that I’m not really some excluded saddo, it’s just that I haven’t seen the film yet.

“No,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Bit too much going on at your house probably,” says Mrs Paddy kindly.

Bit too much going on in my mind.

About a million years later we arrive at the Buddhist Centre.

“Do you know what this building used to be?” Mrs Paddy asks, as we draw up.

“No,” I say. Paddy and Zoe are still on the film.

“An old shoe factory,” says Mrs Paddy.

We tip out on to the street.

“I’ll be back for you in an hour,” says Mrs Paddy.

The double doors to the centre open on to a small porch with hooks for coats and racks for shoes. Beyond this the ground floor is divided into an open-plan office, a library, a tiny kitchen and a reception area with comfy chairs and cushions and rugs which looks like someone’s sitting room. We all hesitate long enough in the porch for someone to ask us our business and suggest we remove our shoes.

“We’ve come to see,” Paddy pauses, “Lalitavajri.”

“Ah, that’s me.” A small, smiling woman with oceans of curly orange hair rises from one of the comfy chairs. “You must be Maxim.”

Paddy nods. “And this is Zoe, and Jess.”

“Welcome,” says Lalitavajri. “You’re all very welcome.” Her orange curls bob as she talks. “Shall we go to the Shrine Room then?”

We follow her up three flights of stairs, passing a number of small rooms and shut doors, so the Shrine Room is a surprise. It runs the full length of the building, a spacious airy room with a huge skylight beyond which frothy white clouds scud across the sky. At the far end of the room, where the altar would be in a church, there’s a golden screen painted with the image of the Buddha, and arranged simply on the floor in front of him, are some candles and vases of flowers. The flowers don’t look shop bought, they look like they’ve been cut from people’s gardens. There are a couple of branches, heavy with pink cherry blossom, some hyacinths in a jam jar and a vase with some tall bell-shaped flowers I don’t know the name of. There are also three bendy stems of eucalyptus.

Yes, eucalyptus.

Si would probably say it’s just a coincidence that some of the fragrant, oily leaves that Aunt Edie pressed for me to smell, are here in this room where I’ve only come because Zoe wanted to do the project with Paddy and Paddy thinks our RE teacher is a goon, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels that this room is welcoming me. And then I think a bit more about coincidences. Was it a coincidence that instead of getting Aunt Edie’s piano I got the bureau and inside the bureau was the flask? And was it a coincidence that I found that flask? Or was that to do with my real father, whose slide rule wouldn’t fit? And was it a coincidence that Gran gave me that slide rule in the first place? How far can you trace back these so-called coincidences? All the things that might have happened but didn’t because you made this choice, not that one. All the coincidences that have led me into this room with the eucalyptus. And then I wish I’d brought the flask with me, instead of leaving it behind in my bedroom, thinking that this project was just some homework thing and not part of my real life. Maybe the flask would have had something to say about the eucalyptus.

“Now,” says Lalitavajri, “how do you want to do this?”

“We’ve got a questionnaire,” says Paddy, waving it as though it’s a map of the known universe.

Lalitavajri sits down on a mat beside a golden gong and invites us to sit beside her.

“Fire away,” she says.

“What drew you personally to Buddhism?” reads Paddy solemnly.

“Ah, that’s easy,” says Lalitavajri. “A world where kindness and generosity have the highest value.”

And straightaway I feel bad, because here I am sitting cross-legged in this beautiful Shrine Room and a large part of me is still bearing a grudge against Zoe. And Paddy for that matter. And Si who calls himself my father, but is actually only the babies’ father. And the babies themselves for being so dangerously muddled up together. And, actually, against myself. I’m bearing a grudge against myself for being so stupid and never letting go, and…

“And what for you is the most important belief in Buddhism?” asks Zoe.

“That we can change,” says Lalitavajri. “That each one of us can be the most compassionate person we can be.”

This hits me like a thrown stone. Or maybe it’s not Lalitavajri’s words, maybe it’s Zoe’s glance that hits me. I’m not looking at Zoe, but she’s looking at me. She’s giving me one of those totally non-scientific stares, which bangs right into the heart of things.

The heart of me.

“Now,” says Lalitavajri, “do you want to know about the statues?”

According to Paddy’s list, we do. Also on his list are pujas, gongs and drums.

“And what’s that?” asks Paddy.

“Incense,” says Lalitavajri. “We use incense because it smells beautiful and, most importantly, it blows in all directions, like a smile. If you smile at someone they feel happy and then they smile at someone else. Incense passes on like this.”

Paddy smirks, but Lalitavajri smiles and Zoe smiles back. Quite a shy smile for someone so big and so bold and actually – now I look at her – so beautiful. I don’t know if I’m smiling, but I really hope I am.

“How do you think your shrine reflects the Buddhist faith?” reads Paddy.

“Can I ask you first how the Shrine Room strikes you?” Lalitavajri asks.

“Well, it’s kind of big,” says Paddy. “And empty, you know, compared with a church.”

“And peaceful,” I say. I’m still looking at Zoe. “Somewhere you can think.”

And now Zoe feels my look and she lifts her eyes to me, all hesitant and hopeful at the same time.

“I like that,” says Lalitavajri. “Western life is so busy we need a space to be peaceful. Buddhists choose for their shrines whatever’s beautiful and makes them happy.”

My gaze moves, it finds the eucalyptus branches and therefore, Aunt Edie.

“Is that what the flowers are for?” I ask. “Beauty?”

“Yes,” says Lalitavajri. “And they also symbolise impermanence. Nothing lives for ever. All things die.”

Aunt Edie again.

And also Zoe. My friendship with her. Am I going to let that die?

No.

Never.

“What do Buddhists believe happens after you die?” I ask.

Paddy looks confused. This question is not on our sheet.

“We believe in rebirth,” says Lalitavajri. “After you die you go into a state of life between life, which we call
bardo
, like night is the bardo between two days, or a dream is a bardo between two wakings.”

“A join?” I say. “Do you mean a join?”

“I’m not sure about that,” says Lalitavajri. “But your body falls away and your consciousness remains.”

“And what happens to that consciousness?”

“It remains until it is attracted to a man and a woman having sex,” says Lalitavajri, “then it goes into the soul and enters the baby.”

At the word
sex
Paddy sniggers.

But Lalitavajri just goes on: “This is why babies arrive with personalities already formed.”

And I’m still thinking about the bardo which (whatever Lalitavajri says) does sound like a Buddhist version of a join, and about the knotted threads of friendship and about how a consciousness might remain when Paddy says, “Do you mean souls hang about, you know, like ghosts, they haunt you?”

“Not haunt, no. Although Buddhism does stretch the Western idea of the rational. Like some Buddhists have claimed to be able to walk through walls.”

“Walk through walls!”

“I don’t disbelieve this,” says Lalitavajri. “Just as you can have déjà vu about someone coming into a room and then they come into a room.”

Or you can have someone look at you and feel that look.

“Ghosts and the supernatural,” Lalitavajri continues, “are much more real for people in the East.”

And for me. And for the flask.

Paddy is scribbling in his notebook.

“Well, is that it?” asks Lalitavajri.

“Yes,” says Zoe. “Thanks. Except – what does your name mean, Lalitavajri?”

“When you’re ordained you are given a new name by the person who ordains you,” says Lalitavajri. “You don’t know your name until this moment. You are named either for things you have achieved or for the potential seen in you.
Lalita
means
she
who plays
and
vajri
means
diamond thunderbolt
. The diamond thunderbolt represents reality, the truth and unstoppable energy.”

“Wow,” says Paddy, looking up from his notes. “So if I was a Buddhist I could get called Supreme Striker, or something?”

“Well, maybe not something so…” Lalitavajri pauses, “… specific.”

“You could be called Paddy though,” says Zoe and laughs. But she’s not laughing at him, she’s just laughing because everything suddenly feels relaxed, easy.

“Sorry?” says Lalitavajri.

“They call me Paddy,” says Paddy. “Because…” He looks at Zoe. “Why do people call me Paddy?”

And Zoe laughs some more and Paddy grins in his Happy-to-Be-the-Centre-of-Attention way, and I feel a strange warmth wash through me, which takes in, without judgment, Zoe and Paddy and Aunt Edie and the supernatural and ghosts and souls.

“Well, I need to prepare now,” says Lalitavajri. “I have to lead a meditation in a minute. Although, you’d be welcome to stay if you’d like. A meditation would give you a very good idea of Buddhist practice.”

Paddy’s face suggests that the last thing in the world he’d like to do is stay for a Buddhist meditation.

“No,” he says. “Thanks. I think my mum will be back for us any minute now.”

“Well, another time,” says Lalitavajri. “I’m here every Tuesday if you want to change your mind.”

And I think, yes... I’m going to come back here.

And I’m going to bring the flask.