The next few days passed in a blur of misery. Two barely said a word to him, and there were no sessions in the gym after class – Two went straight to the rec room and sat quietly with a book. He was his usual polite self when Alex spoke to him, but he didn’t initiate any conversations and cut them short when Alex started them.
At first, Alex was relieved the pressure had lifted, but he missed his friend, too. Two watched, smiling absently but refusing to join in, as Alex spent more time with the other indies. He messed around in B’s lessons, enjoying the sense of freedom, only to feel ashamed of himself when he saw Two’s expressionless gaze fixed on him. Still, he revelled in all his new spare time. He could watch the screen with the others in the evening, flick through books and magazines, and he found the pencils and pad the staff had given him for Christmas in his bedside drawer. He hadn’t had time to draw anything in ages, but now he did. He sketched his friends, the staff, even Belvedere itself, giving them all a little Alex spin.
Every night, he looked at Solange’s photo, feeling a twinge of guilt. One day, his time at Belvedere would come to an end, yethe was frittering away the only plan that might help him obtain justice for her.
“It’s just too hard, Solange,” he whispered to the photo. “You understand, don’t you?” He glanced at the picture of his father. Noah had always insisted his son work his way up from the factory floor before he could sit in the design studio.Alex hadn’t wanted to listen then, and he didn’t now. Had he ever had to work hard at anything? School and university had always come easy to him – even Neil had berated him for that. He had watched the amount of effort his mother and Charles had put into training for the Olympic gold medal – why did he think he should be exempt from sustaining that degree of effort to achieve a goal? Or maybe it was because his childhood had been swallowed up in that great endeavour that he resented any attempt by others to impose the same kind of order and discipline on him. He sighed. He kept asking himself who he was. Maybe it was time to ask himself who he wanted to be.
The following Sunday, he went to the gym when he knew Two would be performing his yoga practice. He sat and watched him silently until he finished, and then he approached him.
“Please, I know I screwed up, but I want to try again. I’ll work harder this time, I promise, and I’ll do everything you say.”
Two shook his head wearily. “No. Thank you, but no. I appreciate the apology, but this time, I think the effort must come from you.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“No, you’re here to hand your problem back to me. Then you can rail against me when you’re tired, frustrated, or find it too difficult. When you can’t find the right song to help you anchor, when you can’t find the discipline you need to concentrate on your breathing, and when you’d rather scream emotionally at everyone who’ll listen than empty your face and stay safe behind your mask. I’m not your whipping boy, Alex. This is your taskand yours alone. I’ve given you all the tools you need – it’s up to you now.”
He patted Alex gently on the arm and then left. Alex stared after him glumly. Catching sight of himself in the mirrored gym wall, he took in the dejected set of his shoulders and the stubborn line of his lips. His intelligent, quicksilver eyes always betrayed him, his expressive face showing every single emotion, especially if it was negative.
He’d never found an anchor song. Maybe that would help. He went to the music library and scrolled through it once more, but found that he’d listened to most of the songs already and none of them had worked.
Frustrated, he returned to the mat and decided to work in silence. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the mirror, he went through his meditation, his breathing exercises, and then his yoga poses, trying to keep his mind clear, his face empty.
The window was ajar, and from the floor below, he could hear the sounds of the church service that Belvedere held every Sunday. He’d rejected his father’s Floodite faith years ago, and Two had never shown any interest in attending the services, but Three was devout, and he and Four went every week. Five sometimes accompanied them, although more for something to do, Alex suspected, than because he was a believer. Some of the staff attended, too. It was a small affair, but they played taped music and said a few prayers.
Alex had never heard the service before, because he and Two had always played music during their Sunday-morning sessions. Now, familiar melodies from his youth drifted gently through the window. He hadn’t been a believer since he was eight years old, but his father had insisted on regular church attendance right up until his mother’s accident. After that, it had become a battle neither of them cared to fight.
Moving fluidly through the poses, he gazed at himself intently as he worked. If he messed up a pose, could he do so without reacting, without even a glimmer of a grimace? He tried to do every move without showing a trace of emotion. It took immense concentration, but the weeks of practice had helped him more than he thought.
He moved and held pose, moved and held… His body was supple and his breathing controlled, his face empty. He wasn’t here… he wasn’t Alex Lytton, he was a perfect servant, ready and willing to offer whatever his houder desired from him.
He came to with a start. What had just happened? One minute he’d been concentrating hard, and the next… Several minutes had passed, and he’d been in a state of such flow he’d barely noticed.
Somehow, it had all come together at the same time – the breathing, the movements, the impassive face… and it had felt effortless. Through the open window, he recognised the last few bars of St Francis’s prayer being sung by a female vocalist with a hauntingly beautiful voice.
Make me a channel of your peace,
Where there’s despair in life let me bring hope,
Where there is darkness only light,
And where there’s sadness ever joy.
He was familiar with the song from his youth but had never paid it much attention before. There was something about the slow, simple intonation and the even tone of the rhythm – there were no great changes in melody, nothing dramatic, nothing to jolt him out of his headspace. He asked the music system to find the song, then he closed the window and played it on constant repeat.
He listened carefully to the words, homing in on the meaning. One verse in particular resonated:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek,
So much to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul.
This, surely, was at the heart of his new persona as the perfect servant. He must expect nothing for himself and learn to give his service freely to others. It wasn’t enough to pretend; he must inhabit his servitude completely, so there were no gaps around the edges where Alex the servant ended and the real Alex began. He must strive to please, to want to serve, to give himself up to this great task. He must do all this not for himself but for Solange.
After an hour’s hard work, he stared at himself in the mirror, full of wonder. He could do this. It wasn’t easy, but he could take confidence from the fact that it was possible. And if he could manage it for an hour, then he could learn how to do it for every hour, every day. He just had to practise until he became perfect.
