‘He’s asleep, Danny, please don’t wake him…’
‘I’m not going to. It’s good that he sleeps during the day.’ He flicked ash into her teacup. Thoughtfully he said, ‘I think maybe he shouldn’t go to school any more. He should sleep during the day – then he’s not so tired at night. Yes. That’s the best way. Last night he was too tired to be any good.’ He got up suddenly and she wet herself; he only glanced at her. ‘I’ll go and look in on him. Make Ben and me something to eat, would you? I’m bloody starving.’
As she made toast from stale bread and spread it with jam, Joan put her head round the kitchen door and said, ‘Hiya, love. Everything all right?’ She came in and sat down. ‘I just popped in to see how that poor bairn is. His teacher brought him here then comes knocking on my door. I told her where you were. Did she find you all right? Nice kid, she was. Didn’t look more than a bairn herself.’
‘She found us all right.’
‘How is he then? He looked white as a ghost, poor mite.’
‘He’s fine. He’s upstairs asleep.’ She looked at her over her shoulder. ‘Danny’s checking on him.’
Joan snorted. ‘Is he? Well, at least it’s all quiet. At least he’d not braying him for daring to breathe.’
Annette put the knife down. She bowed her head and her tears splashed on to the jam jar. Joan said evenly, ‘Don’t take on, now. You don’t want the bairns to see you crying.’
They both turned towards the door as they heard Danny run down the stairs. Joan sat up straighter as if to make herself look more formidable. From the doorway Danny said, ‘Joan! To what do we owe the pleasure this fine evening?’
Her mouth turned down in contempt. Pointedly she said, ‘I’ve come to see how that lad of yours is. He looked dead poorly this afternoon.’
‘Well, I’ve just had a look at him and you’re right – he’s poorly. We’ll be keeping him in for a bit. Don’t want the other kids catching what he’s got.’
‘And what has he got?’
‘What did that doctor say, Annette? Mumps.’ Danny smirked. Leaning against the sink he picked up a piece of toast and studied Joan as he ate it. Taking another piece he said, ‘You know – you can always go up and check on him. But you know what mumps can do to lads, Joan, and you don’t want to carry that home to your Ray. You don’t want your Ray’s balls swelling up big as melons.’
Joan stood up. ‘You dirty bugger! You’re a filthy, nasty, dirty bugger.’
Danny laughed. ‘See you later, Joan. Close the door on your way out.’
When she’d gone Danny sat down at the table. ‘That should keep the old bag away. And the beauty of it is she’ll tell the whole fucking street to keep away, too – we shan’t be bothered by any nosey bastards.’
‘Is Mark all right?’
‘Speak up! You’re like a timid little mouse.’ He grinned. ‘Timid mouse, that’s you. Squeak, squeak, squeak. I might have to buy a mousetrap, eh?’
She cleared her throat. Louder she said, ‘Is Mark all right? He should have something to eat.’
‘No. No food. Not yet. Later, when he’s earned it. Go and call Ben in. He can have his tea then run down to the shop for some sweets. Bit of a treat for my lad.’
‘But Danny –’
He got up and stepped towards her, bringing his face up close to hers. ‘You want me to love Mark, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She bowed her head, terrified of the bright, intense look in his eyes.
He grasped her face, his thumb and fingers digging into her cheeks and distorting her mouth. Forcing her to look at him he said quietly, ‘I have to break him first, Annette. It will take time and I can’t have you interfering and spoiling all the effort I’m putting in.’ He let his hand fall away from her face and rested his forehead against hers. He sighed and his breath was warm and rank. ‘He’s like you. It drives me mad how he’s so like you! Why can’t you and him behave normally around me? What have I done to deserve to be treated like this?’ His voice had risen and he seemed to make a great effort to calm himself. Stepping away from her he said, ‘It’s no good getting angry. It has to be done, that’s all. He’s waiting for me now. Stay down here – make sure you and Ben stay down here.’
Chapter 20
Unable to sleep, Mark made tea, staring out of the kitchen window as he waited for the kettle to boil. He thought of Steven, the way the boy moved and talked and smiled. He looked like Danny as he remembered him on one rare Sunday in July when he had taken him to the park with fishing nets and jam jars to catch minnows.
Mark frowned, thinking that this memory must be one of his very earliest, but that even now it could be triggered by the muddy smell of still, weedy water. He could remember Danny’s arm around his waist as he crouched beside him, holding him steady as if afraid he might fall and drown. Danny’s face was on a level with his; he was smiling and showing him how to move the net slowly though the water. Sometimes he imagined he dreamed this. Danny was never good or kind or loving; Danny was always mad. But he remembered the captured minnows swimming round and round the jar that suddenly seemed too small and cruel. He remembered how Danny held the jar up to the sun and how the light dazzled. He remembered how he had begged him to pour the little fish back into the water so that they might be free again and that Danny had solemnly agreed, holding the jar high so that the minnows flipped and tumbled through the air like tiny performing dolphins before disappearing into the dark water. Danny had taken his hand and reassured him that the fish would survive the disturbance.
The kettle whistled and Mark made tea. He sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. He remembered he had told Susan about this fishing trip and that she had listened carefully, as she always did, storing his memories as a valuable resource to draw on later. She had been lying in his arms, her head resting on his chest, her fingers restlessly tracing circles on his groin. When he’d finished the story her hand became still. She’d craned her neck to look up at him.
‘This was before he began raping you,’ she said, his life more real to her than it was to him. He remembered the weight of her hand, its warmth, how her fingers curled into his pubic hair and pulled gently so that the pain was mild and tantalising. He’d lifted her hand away and held it tightly and she rested her head on his chest again. ‘Your heart’s beating too fast,’ she said.
She wore Youth Dew perfume, a rich, heavy scent that seemed to him to have nothing to do with youth and everything to do with age and experience and her peculiar decadence. When she left his bed her scent lingered so it seemed she was never entirely absent. Once he’d caught her scent on his telephone and he’d pressed the redial button. Ben’s voice answered, quick and impatient and breathless so that Mark knew he’d interrupted his brother screwing his wife. He’d wondered if she’d showered before climbing into her husband’s bed, and decided that she wouldn’t have. His sweat would remain on her skin, his come still inside her; she would relish the risk of being sniffed out – a small risk, she told him. They were brothers, they smelt the same, and the babies they might make would be too similar for it to matter. ‘I may even have twins,’ she said. ‘And one would be yours and the other Ben’s. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’
Mark drew deeply on his cigarette, holding in the smoke before exhaling. From the hallway Joy’s grandfather clock chimed midnight. The clock was worth a lot of money; on Simon’s death such valuable possessions would have to be re-valued so that the estate might be evenly distributed between his two sons. He wondered if he should concede his share to Nathan, as recompense for past sins, and imagined telling Ben how he didn’t need or want Simon’s money. How grand he would sound, how much like a wanker.
The afternoon Susan bought his book, after the wine bar, they had walked across the heath to his flat and she had linked her arm through his and talked about her childhood. She told him about her father – who was a gynaecologist too, who expected – no, demanded – her to be as successful as he was. She told him her father had
affairs and that her mother turned a blind eye to these women her father would be so in love with for a few charged months. She had followed her father once, to a café where he held hands with a woman across a table. She had thought how weak he looked, and vulnerable, how she could have destroyed him simply by walking into that café and saying hello, smiling, asking to be introduced. She wondered what had stopped her from shattering his conceit in such a way. Mark remembered turning to her as he opened the door to his flat and asking, ‘Pity, perhaps?’
Susan laughed. She frowned at him, her eyes puzzled, curious. ‘I think you must be a kind man, Mark.’
He led her through to his kitchen. He made her coffee and toast thick with blueberry jam because she hadn’t eaten and this, she said, was what she craved: sweetness. Watching him as he took butter from the fridge, she said, ‘Ben told me that when you were children your nightmares were so bad that he would get up and go into your room and stand over your bed, willing to you to wake up. He wouldn’t touch you, he said. He couldn’t bring himself to, not even to shake your dreams away.’
He couldn’t believe that Ben had told her this. Ben had no interest in telling tales from the past, especially tales about him. But he remembered Ben in striped pyjamas, a white-faced, angry little boy, standing by his bed, his fists clenched at his sides. Spreading the butter on the warm toast, he had looked up to find her watching him intently. She’d smiled, as though this might encourage a response from him.
‘All children have bad dreams,’ he said.
She’d nodded. ‘Of course.’
The first time he’d kissed her he had tasted blueberry jam.
The first time he’d kissed her he had thought that perhaps that was all it would be, a kiss, something to feel a little guilty about for as long as he remembered. But she had stepped back from him and placed her hand lightly over his heart. ‘It wasn’t pity I felt for Daddy. I’d like you to know me better than that.’
Months later, Susan knelt beside him on his bed, the super king-sized bed, big enough for a second man, a third – if only he could bring himself to redraw the line. She leaned forward and her small, pointed breasts hung down and reminded him of the teats on the statue of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. She had kissed him only to sit back on her heels and regard him quizzically. ‘What would you say if I told you I would rather be with you than Ben?’
‘I would say leave him, I’ll marry you –’
‘And he would never speak to you again. You would have no one but me.’
‘You would be enough.’
‘Simon would hate you.’
‘Leave Ben.’ He’d sat up, animated by the sudden possibility that she might be his alone. ‘Leave him. Why should he have everything?’
She’d smiled, reaching out to brush his hair away from his eyes. ‘I’m teasing. How could I leave Ben for you?’
He must have opened his mouth to speak because she’d pressed her finger to his lips. ‘You know you’re not your brother. You know that. How could you possibly take his place? Be realistic, my darling.’
She got up and he watched as she picked up her panties and bra from the floor and began to dress. She rolled on stockings, clipped them onto her suspender belt with deft grace, stepped into her skirt and smoothed it over her hips. Spreading her fingers across her flat belly she caught his eye and smiled. ‘I hope he’s your baby. That would be an interesting combination – your genes brought up by Ben.’
Dressed, she bent over the bed and kissed his mouth. ‘I’ll let you know the results of the pregnancy test tomorrow.’
The next day Ben rang and told him his good news and there was a note of astonishment in his voice, a rare betrayal of emotion as he said, ‘We’re both very pleased, of course.’
Mark remembered how he had congratulated his brother, stiffly, formally. It was all Ben expected of him, this coldness; it didn’t give anything away.
Sitting at Simon’s kitchen table, Mark crushed out his cigarette. He thought of Ben walking behind Susan’s coffin, how his brother had held onto Simon’s arm as though he might fall without his support. Walking a few steps behind them, he had wondered at his own ability to keep upright and not collapse beneath his weight of shame and guilt and grief.
He thought of Steven and his little girl who was almost the same age as his child, Susan’s child, if she had lived. He had no doubt that Susan’s baby had been his. And Susan would have left Ben to be with him and they would have brought up their baby together. She couldn’t have gone on hurting him.
Susan said once, ‘I wish you didn’t exist. Because even if you were ugly and wicked I would still have slept with you because you are his brother and yet Danny chose you. I need to understand that.’
He had pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. ‘I love you. That’s all that matters to me –’
‘How can you love me?’ Pushing him away she said, ‘Shouldn’t you hate me for hurting your brother so badly?’
‘He doesn’t know about us!’
‘He knows. He just can’t bring himself to believe it.’
And months later, in the Natural History Museum, Simon had said, ‘How could she behave so wickedly?’
The Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton had loomed over them. He had planned to write a novel about the nineteenth century bone hunters. The bones in Simon’s study had always held a fascination for him, although he pretended that they didn’t. He could have gone to the museum alone, but Simon insisted on talking and he couldn’t have the conversation Simon wanted to have in his flat, the air would have become too tainted. He had betrayed his brother – best to get the recriminations out of the way in this neutral place; besides, he had felt as though he was about to be flayed and so it had seemed fitting to be amongst the bones.
In the shadow of the great skeleton, Simon had become silent, words failing him. They had watched a group of children being shown around the exhibits by their teacher. Unable to help himself, Mark had said, ‘I wanted children.’
‘So why sleep with your brother’s wife? Why not live your life decently, find a decent woman?’ Simon had sighed. ‘I suppose you have a raft of excuses you could use to keep yourself afloat.’ Looking at him coldly, he’d said, ‘But that’s all they are, Mark, excuses. Take responsibility. Don’t make me lose patience with you.’
In Simon’s kitchen, Mark got up from the table and washed his cup under the running tap. Tomorrow he would sit by his father’s sick bed and watch him fade. He thought about the bone novel he had neglected to write and knew that he wouldn’t write it now. After Simon’s death he would take the bones from his study and bury them and that would be the end of it, and the beginning of responsibility.
He thought of Steven and his heart ached, and he knew that he was as far from taking responsibility as ever.
Chapter 21
I saw Ben outside theatre. He was in his scrubs and he looked dead beat, although he smiled at me as though I was some long-lost pal and took me to one side. He said, ‘How are you?’ A nurse passed by and he looked at her fleetingly. He seemed to wait until she was out of earshot before saying quietly, ‘I need to talk to you.’
I told him about the old hospice garden and we arranged to meet there. I was early. I sat on the grass and the sun shone down on me, and the birds flew in and out of the over-grown hedges and there was a scent of lilac just come into bloom. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun’s warmth and tried not to think of anything, just like Carl tried to teach me. ‘Stay in the moment,’ he’d say. I never could.
I felt Ben’s shadow fall across me and opened my eyes, shielding them from the sun with my hand. ‘I’ve brought you a sandwich,’ he said. ‘Roast ham.’
He sat on the grass beside me. Looking around he said, ‘So, you found a secret garden?’
‘I don’t know if it’s a secret.’
He held out the sandwich in its plastic triangle. ‘I bought a cheese and pickle, too. Which would you prefer?’
‘Ham,’ I said. I felt shy of him, awkward like I wasn’t inside my own skin. We both broke into the sandwiches and ate in silence, although I imagined he could hear my jaw working, my chewing and swallowing so that the bread seemed to turn to cardboard and the meat to gristle in my mouth. I tossed the crusts to the starlings hopping nearby; they came closer timidly, only to fight over the scraps of bread.
Ben handed me a bottle of water from the carrier bag the sandwiches came in. He said, ‘It’s a lovely day. Too nice to be inside.’ He laughed, and I realised he felt awkward too. Looking at the scrapping birds he said, ‘Dad was always saying that – too nice to be moping around the house. He’d turf us out, set up a game of cricket in the garden or organise some long, dull walk.’ Plucking at the grass he said, ‘I’m afraid he’s very poorly. I’m afraid he might die.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looked at me. ‘He’s had a long life. A good, interesting, long life. He’s eighty-five. I hope I live so long, so well.’ After a moment he said, ‘How’s Danny?’
‘Same, a bit worse maybe.’
‘I’ll try and see him. It’s finding the time – I never seem to have enough time.’
‘We could go now.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not now. I need to talk myself into it.’
I nodded. ‘He asks after you.’
‘Yeah?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Tell him next time you see him…well, tell him I’ll try to pop in…’
We drank our water and all the time I could sense his agitation. I remembered what Carl used to say about waiting calmly, allowing the other person to take their time in saying whatever they had to say. So I waited and at last he said, ‘You’re an easy person to be with. I didn’t expect you to be so easy to like.’
I tried smiling at him. ‘My mam would say that’s a backhanded compliment.’
‘Is it? Perhaps. The trouble is that when I look at you I see Danny as he was when I was a child. I was scared of him.’
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