he went round bursting them with furious vigour, sticking his forefinger straight into some, pinching others, squashing the last one against the wall with the palm of his hand, letting out the anger he couldn’t express.
Most times, after this ritual, he was released and at peace, and would retreat into a corner and sit staring into space or huddled up, rocking.
This time, however, he went over to the table, picked up the lighthouse, pulled it roughly apart into four or five pieces and threw them forcefully out of the wide-open window. Then he picked up the clock and with violence yanked the wires off, including the Mickey Mouse hands.
Malcolm was aghast. Docile Robin’s rage shouted out of his mute body. His strength was a revelation.
He took the clock in his hand and walked round the room smashing it against the wall at each step. Step, smash, step, smash, step, smash.
‘Stop him,’ Malcolm said in distress.
‘No… he’s talking,’ I said.
‘He’s not talking.’
‘He’s telling us…’
Robin reached the window and threw the mangled clock far and high into the garden. Then he started shouting, roaring without words, his voice rough from disuse and hoarse with the change taking place from boy into man. The sound seemed to excite him until his body was reverberating, pouring out sound, the dam of silence swept away. ‘Aaah… aaah… aaah…’ and then real words, ‘No… No… No… Serena… No… Serena… No… Serena… No…’ He shouted to the skies, to the fates, to the wicked unfairness of the fog in his brain. Shouted in fury and frenzy. ‘Serena… No… Serena… No…’ and on and on until it became mindless, without meaning, just words.
I stepped close beside him in the end and yelled in his ear, ‘Serena’s dead.’
He stopped shouting immediately. ‘Serena’s dead,’ I repeated. ‘Like the clock. Smashed. Finished. Dead.’
He turned and looked at me vaguely, his mouth open, no sound coming out, the sudden silence as unnerving as the shouting had been.
‘Serena-is-dead,’ I said, making each word separate, giving it weight.
‘He doesn’t understand,’ Malcolm said: and Robin went away and sat in a corner with his arms round his knees and his head down, and began rocking.
‘The nurses think he understands quite a lot,’ I said. ‘Whether he understands that Serena is dead, I don’t know. But at least we’ve tried to tell him.’ Robin went on rocking as if we weren’t there.
‘What does it matter?’ Malcolm said helplessly.
‘It matters because if he does understand, it may give him rest. I brought the lighthouse and the clock because I wondered if Robin remembered anything at all. I thought it worth trying… didn’t expect quite these results… but I think he smashed the clock Serena gave him because it reminded him of her, because she gave it to him and Peter shortly before the car crash. Somewhere in that woolly head, things sometimes connect.’
Malcolm nodded, puzzled and instinctively alarmed.
‘One could almost think it was that afternoon,’ I said, ‘seeing the twins happy at Quantum where she hungered to be, seeing you there with them, loving them; perhaps it was that afternoon which finally tipped her over into the insanity of trying to make her fantasy come true. It didn’t come true… you met Moira… but I’m certain she tried.’
Malcolm was staring, saying ‘No! Don’t say it! Don’t!’
I said it anyway, I think Robin saw the hit-and-run driver who forced their car off the road. In whatever mangled dreamlike way, heknows who it was. No Serena, no Serena, no… You heard him. I’ve thought ever since New York that it could possibly have happened that way. Serena’s obsession was full-blown a long time ago, long before she got rid of Moira. I think she killed Peter… and Coochie.’
Epilogue
We all went back to Quantum a year later for the Grand Reopening Ceremony, the house bedecked with garlands and champagne corks popping.
After much soul-searching, Malcolm had decided to rebuild. Without Quantum as its centre, the family would have fallen apart, and he didn’t want that to happen. When he told everyone of his intention, there was great communal relief, and he saw without question that it was the right thing to do.
The rancour level lessened dramatically after the arrival of the cheques and the production of his will for inspection, and I was suddenly not everyone’s villain, though still and forever Alicia’s. Malcolm, having deleted Serena by codicil, sent his will to the Central Probate Office for registration and let everyone know it.
Malcolm still felt that he had pampered and corrupted