‘Dad? Is everything all right?’
‘Francois . . .’
Now his father’s voice broke, and to his shock he heard him crying: short gasps, high-pitched sobs. He walked down the corridor and out onto the fire escape. The night was black on this side of the building. There were no streets below, only an untidy patch of scrubland, a ditch and then, in the distance, some modern blocks of flats. Behind him he could still hear the babble from the exhibition.
‘Is Mum all right? Dad?’
He heard his words repeated to him Is Mum all right? Dad?, his voice distorted, so that he sounded plaintive, like a small boy.
‘It’s Ben. Francois, Ben’s dead.’
Then silence. He continued holding the handset to his ear. He stood on the platform that jutted out from the building, firmly anchored with concrete and steel posts; he would not plunge to the depths below. But his spirit had left his body and was watching him from above: in the midst of the dark, the light from his phone a pinprick in the blackness. Then the feeling passed, his spirit returned, he could feel his flesh and bones, a film of sweat making his palm slippery. His father was speaking again.
‘Your mother is lying down. She can’t speak. We’ve just been with the police. Ben is dead, Francois. And Clare too.’
‘God, how . . . ?’
‘She was with him in the car. It was an accident.’
For some reason, this was what made him jerk backwards. He had expected that his father would say: she has killed him. Why he felt that he would never understand, despite rehashing the exchange countless times over the following months.
He said, ‘I’ll catch a flight tomorrow. Don’t worry. I’ll be there.’
‘We can talk more when you’re here.’
When Lucie found him later, he was still gripping the railings. He told her, briefly, and then watched with a peculiar detached interest as she clapped her hand to her mouth. He was already feeling his spirit leave his body again, hardly hearing her voice, a hum in his head. He wanted to return to his flat, to be alone, but Lucie was already making excuses, leading him back to her car. They would drive to his flat and pack, but he would stay the night at hers, she insisted. She would drive him to the airport in the morning. The practicalities – booking a flight, leaving Lucie a short list of people she needed to contact in the morning to explain his absence for the near future – excused him from dwelling on the facts. When they finally turned in past midnight, there were only four hours to pass, as he lay on her bed – dreamless, sleepless – before they needed to get up again. She drove him to the airport and he caught a flight, during which the notes of a song played over and over in his head, drowning out the sounds of ordinary life around him. On the way to the airport he had said, you didn’t tell me about Josef. What happened? But she had shaken her head, then reached across and laid a hand on his. He glanced at her. She looked older somehow from the previous night: the lines extending from her nose to the corner of her lips seemed more defined. He lifted her hand to his lips, which made her smile – a small sad smile – then she drew it away and laid it on the steering wheel.
His parents had shrunk; Clare’s parents held pinched expressions. The police had no reason to involve themselves: an accident, and not uncommon on that particular curve in the road. The driver, Ben, might have been reaching for the radio, in a split-second might have strayed off the road. A sudden loss of control, an unusually steep verge: the car had been thrown into the air. Death would have been quick: this was the comfort the families could salvage from the tragedy. And the couple had died together. Neither would have to deal with bereavement, widow- or widower-hood. But no one voiced what they might have been thinking: it was also a complete erasure. With no grieving partner, the relationship, the romantic relationship, would be elided. Neither would visit the other’s grave, excavate memories, tell anecdotes. The privacy that every couple guarded would ensure that several events of import to the lovers would be buried alongside their bodies.
He stood behind his mother, ran his fingers back and forth over the headrest of the armchair in which she was sitting, stroking the coarse material as if a pet. The room was small, with windows that looked over the hospital car park. The grief room. On a low table, there were a set of leaflets, fanning out, with a telephone number. No need to feel alone – speak to someone about your loss. The parents communicated in low murmurs. It felt awkward for them all to be closeted together. Neither family had, in reality, drawn very close; there were no grandchildren to knit them together. And each would have heard one side of the sorry tale: the long period of waiting for a pregnancy to take, then the IVF cycles – two failures – followed by Clare’s elusive, lengthy illness. Only then had it been revealed to his parents that the extraordinary fatigue was a recurrence from her late teens. And over the years, each family tiptoed around discussions of Clare’s debilitated state. He knew his mother was mystified by how the condition had entrenched itself. Its provenance was perhaps less baffling: Ben and Clare had agonised over the absence of a much-desired pregnancy. And then the IVF, usually so successful, had also failed. It was as if science was giving its own verdict on their compatibility.
Their families were now negative mirror images of each other. In one, there were two sons, the younger now dead; in the other, two daughters, the younger now dead. Unlike his family however, where the two sons were unmistakeably siblings, Clare’s older sister bore little resemblance to his sister-in-law. With dark lanky hair and the fatigue of a mother-of-three etched on her face, Jane was bulky, unlike her tall, thin, Norse-goddess sister Clare. His eyes were drawn to her: she had an easy, slovenly sexiness. Pushing her hair back, she revealed an armpit which sprouted some dark hairs. Then she turned and caught his eye.
‘They’re wondering whether to have a joint funeral.’
‘It’s hard to think about that now,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you OK?’
Her eyes filled with sudden tears.
‘Not really,’ she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘It’s surreal. It just feels like it’s the most unexpected thing that could ever have happened to us.’
She wiped her nose, unselfconsciously, on the back of her hand.
‘I’ve always had imaginary nightmare scenarios, about being in a room like this, because of one of my parents or, God forbid, one of my children. But Clare? And not just her but Ben as well?’
He nodded but did not respond. What was he feeling? Grief ? He would not call it that, not yet. Rather, a disbelief. He was standing here with these people, with years ahead, acres of time, when there would be a different calibration to his life.
After the hospital, the families congregated again in the flat in the old schoolhouse near the river. The area had been disused but was now sought after. Across the road was an art gallery; the river was lined with cafés. The police locksmith had been called out, replaced the old lock and left a set of keys with a neighbour. The neighbour appeared on cue, with a grave face: such a tragedy. They all waited as Clare’s father turned the key in the lock, and then the men stood aside as if it were the women who would have the most courage for the first sight of the now abandoned home. They sat in the living room, speaking in whispers, each older couple sitting close, occupying a sofa each.
Above the mantelpiece hung his wedding present to the couple. Ben had instantly recognised the view, exclaimed with pleasure: a reminder of their holidays as children. Clare, he feared, had seen the present as more one-sided: a memory from which she was excluded. At one point, Jane moved to the kitchen, started boiling the kettle and opening cupboards, and he joined her. They produced six cups of tea, found a packet of biscuits which they laid on a plate. At another point, his mother rose to her feet and moved to the study that Ben and Clare had shared, a desk at either end. Through the door he saw her fingering the papers on Ben’s desk, looking at the stack of books on the floor next to it. He went to join her, and she turned and gave him a tired smile, then leaned against him, so that he put his a
rm around her, kissed her forehead.
‘There’ll be things in the fridge, Francois,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Things that will go off.’
‘I’ll have a look in a minute,’ he said.
‘It’s like time has stopped still, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘Whenever we visited, things looked more orderly, like they’d tidied up for us. But it really feels like we’re unexpected guests, doesn’t it. Like we’ve intruded on something.’
He could think of nothing to say, but tightened his hold of her. Later, as the parents continued to talk in quiet voices, making arrangements to keep in touch regarding the funeral, he found the books his brother had written on the shelf in the living room and slipped them into his bag before they all left the flat, closing the door after them.
8
THE decision was made to have a joint funeral, if for no other reason than that both families were based in or near London. Perhaps among a crowded church the stilted relationship between the families would also go unobserved; any uneasiness his parents felt – neither of their sons bestowing grandchildren on them – would be less patent. He returned to London with his parents on the train. His mother fussed about finding a table, so they traipsed through three carriages before they could settle into their seats. There were, after a few stops, not many people around them, only two young women with headphones. His mother closed her eyes and his father folded his arms. They stared out of the window. The countryside was green and gentle.
‘Do you remember when your Aunt Bea invited us to her fiftieth birthday celebration?’ His father was speaking quietly, almost to himself. ‘For some reason, we were held up just outside Bulawayo and we ended up waiting an hour nearly. As we sat there, this family went by, a family like ours. A man, his wife and their two boys. They were carrying bags of something on their heads, flour or maize-meal or something. And as we watched, the woman stumbled and fell. She fell flat, she must have tripped over something, but she was thrown headlong, her bundle went flying. Do you know,’ now his father turned his eyes to his, ‘I had never ever seen any of those women that I had seen all my days, all through my life, I’d never seen any of them fall or falter? I’d imagined them to be invincible.’
His heart was heavy when he regarded his father: the familiar strong jaw and brush of hair, but the shoulders looking less square, more bent.
He spoke: ‘Was the woman all right?’
His father made a face.
‘I would have thought the man would help his wife to her feet. I saw his lips moving, but he didn’t offer a hand to lift her up. Perhaps his bundle was so heavy he didn’t dare set it down. She picked herself up, the woman, dusted down her skirts, then retrieved her bundle, arranged it back on her head.’ He smiled at his son. ‘And they carried on walking, and I never saw them again.’
Beside him his mother whimpered, as if she were having a bad dream.
‘Your mother,’ his father said. ‘I’m not sure how she will bear this . . .’
‘I’ll stay around, Dad. For as long as you need me.’
It was the first time he had stayed alone with his parents for many years. And just as he had found part of himself in Ben’s flat, he found himself facing his painting in his parents’ living room. The scene depicted the river that ran near to where he had spent his honeymoon: in Xai Xai, up the coast from Maputo, in a small beach hut, where he and Paula had made love and been bitten by mosquitoes with equal frequency and ferocity. The decision to stay in that beach hut had scandalised Paula’s parents, who had imagined that their daughter would spend her honeymoon in Europe or at least at a resort in Mauritius: more befitting a Portuguese heiress. He stared at the image; the women in the river returned his gaze. Years ago, he thought. The man who had painted these strokes was now seventeen years older, and yet the women looked as fresh and luscious as when they had first appeared under his brush.
Over the days that followed, his parents kept him gentle company. For a large part of the day each retreated into their own space: his father to his writing shed, his mother to her kitchen. He found a route that suited for his morning run, a field where he could do his sit-ups, with a football goalpost for his pull-ups. The rest of the day was spent doing odd jobs for his mother, who appeared to have an unwarranted concern about every fused lightbulb, squeaky door, every crack in the wall or loose floorboard in the house. The spare room needed a fresh coat of paint; the loft needed reorganising. The funeral loomed. Neither family was religious, but Clare’s family had decided that the funeral should be held in the church in the village near Brighton where she had grown up.
A humid day, with a light drizzle; the church was full. Lucie flew in, held his hand during the service. But he found himself watching Jane, in the pew across from him, wearing a not unattractive but too-short dress, which exposed a series of light-blue veins on the backs of her thighs. She stood next to her husband, who had his arm around his wife’s shoulder; in each hand she held a child. The third was nowhere to be seen, deemed, perhaps, too young for the solemnity of the affair. Clare’s mother sniffed discreetly into a handkerchief, once turning to a grandchild and patting their head and then catching the living daughter’s eye to exchange a glance. Beside him his own mother stood ramrod straight; his father beside her, his hands crossed in front. Was it easier? Having grandchildren? Knowing that your genetic material would extend to the next generation? He tried to focus, so that he could revisit the years he had shared with Ben, arrange them into some kind of chronology. But his thoughts were scattered, and he felt a mounting tiredness, almost boredom. What he craved most was to be alone, back in his flat in Lisbon.
After the service, he and his father stood together in the churchyard, while his mother and Lucie left with a cousin. A man close to his father’s age approached them.
‘Mr Martin? I’m Michael Walther,’ then he looked around, ‘my wife has just stepped out. I’ll introduce you in a moment. My condolences.’
‘Thanks for coming.’
‘I’m not sure you remember, but we met several times in Harare. I was at the German Consulate, and you held some talks at the Goethe Institute . . .’
His father held out his hand again, and the man took it.
‘I remember. The Thomas Mann season . . .’
‘That’s right.’
‘And how is the Goethe doing?’
‘I’m no longer in the foreign service,’ was the reply. ‘I’m a consultant for a bank now, in the City.’
‘Well, I have fond memories.’ His father made a gesture. ‘My son Francois.’
‘Yes.’ The man shook his hand. ‘Actually, we met some years ago, at one of your exhibitions in London. I am an admirer of your work. We bought a couple a few years back.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
Then they fell silent.
‘You’re probably wondering,’ he said, ‘how I know Ben. He was a friend of my wife, and he stayed with us when he was in Harare.’ He broke off. ‘Here she is. Can I introduce you to Patricia?’
She was much younger than her husband: elegant in a black trouser suit, her hair arranged in braids, then in a loose bun at the base of her neck.
‘Mr Martin,’ her voice was low. ‘My sincere condolences.’
Then she turned to him. ‘You must be Francois,’ she said. ‘Ben spoke of you often. We bought two of your paintings some years ago . . .’
‘Your husband said.’ He took her hand.
‘It’s such a shock,’ she said. ‘He had so much life left. And Clare too . . .’
‘Will you come for some refreshments?’ his father asked.
‘No,’ the husband said. ‘Forgive us, but we need to be back in London by this evening.’
His wife spoke again. ‘I was in touch with Ben just last month . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He was such a good friend, and he helped me so much with my studies. You can be proud of him.’
Walther took his wife’s arm and there was a pause after which he said, ‘I’m afr
aid we need to go. Please pass our condolences to your wife and Clare’s family.’
‘Of course.’
There was a car waiting outside the church. A driver stepped out and opened the door.
‘A nice couple,’ his father said, and he mumbled his agreement. He watched the wife as she slipped into the car, her husband following. And then she turned around, to raise her hand in a goodbye. He recognised her name: he had seen it in Ben’s books. A person who would have her own memories of his brother.
He was suddenly exhausted, an exhaustion which did not leave him during the small gathering at Clare’s family’s house. Lucie had already left by then, and he stood next to his mother while an uncle of Clare’s made a brief speech, reminding the gathering that theirs had been a young love which grew with time, and that they had died together, Ben in the driving seat – a comment which might have been an indication that the Armstrong family would not let his parents forget that fact. At least they had each other in the after-life, if there was such a thing. The uncle stood down to an awkward murmur of thanks. His mother trembled beside him, her face blanched of any colour. He squeezed her arm, to reassure her; she smiled up at him, the weariness in her eyes making his throat tighten, before moving away to speak with Clare’s mother.
While the conversations around him continued, he noticed a photograph on the mantelpiece. Ben and Clare at their wedding. Ben in a smart suit. Clare impeccable, with gleaming shoulders. He moved to the mantelpiece and picked it up. A warm summer’s day, in the same village they were in now. Eight years ago: he was still living in Mozambique but beginning to feel restless. At the time, he was living with Gertrude, who was a medic for a Swedish NGO based in Maputo, and she had accompanied him to the wedding before paying a visit to her family in Stockholm. He remembered that she had laughed loudest at the short speech he had given at the reception, something that he was eternally grateful for and which added a few more months to their relationship. Then, later, he had danced with Clare, and she had accepted his compliment on her dress with her usual, perturbing, lack of expression.
The Inheritance Page 7