‘Great. Thanks.’
She had brushed her hair and patted some powder on her face. She smiled, clinking her glass against his.
‘I don’t make this a habit,’ she said. ‘But these are exceptional circumstances.’
They sipped their drinks and then discussed. They agreed that large items of furniture would remain in situ, until they decided whether to rent or sell. Clothes and books would be donated. Any objects of sentimental value would be boxed separately to go to the respective family. It was as if the siblings had been enlisted to proceed with a divorce settlement. Belongings of the couple were now being deconstructed, each item reverting to the original single owner. The exception was his wedding present, the painting above the mantelpiece; his parents had already relinquished any claim, offering it to the Armstrongs. On this, Jane would consult her parents. On a more practical note, the fridge needed to be completely emptied, which he offered to start with.
The decisions made, he moved to the kitchen area, just as Jane’s phone rang. The next hour was spent throwing away everything that remained in the fridge and freezer, quickly filling a black bin liner and then another, while Jane was involved in a protracted conversation. The old Victorian-style pulley that was raised near the ceiling in the utility nook carried his sister-in-law’s underwear, his brother’s running gear: their last laundry load. He lowered the pulley and shoved everything that was on it into the bags, then passed through the living room and walked out, down the stairs to the street, where he located the large skip that served the block of flats and hurled the bags in. When he re-entered the flat, he saw Jane sitting on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table, the phone in one hand, her gin and tonic in the other. As far as he could tell, she ran a business and was on the phone to one of her employees.
‘You should find an order sheet in his file . . .’
He worked quickly, around her, and then moved to the small study. There were two laptops. His father had requested Ben’s, and any of his brother’s notebooks or drafts of writing. What about Clare’s laptop? A decision for Jane. The shelves of books: he skimmed the titles, all academic. They could be donated to the university. He would box them and ring the library for some advice. Eventually, Jane ended her call, and he could hear her moving around. When he came back into the living room, several hours had passed and it was nearly dark outside.
‘Would you mind?’ she said. ‘I know I haven’t done much. But maybe we could get something to eat? Blitz the rest tomorrow?’
They left the flat and took a bus uptown to their hotel, where she checked in before they searched for a place to eat. They found an American-style grill, with exposed brickwork and heavy wooden tables. As they waited for their food to arrive, he looked at his phone: no message from Lucie. Jane was tapping furiously: bedtime routines had been transgressed was what he could discern. Eventually, she sighed, pushed her phone away and picked up her glass of wine. The next day, they both knew, they would have to clear out the bedroom. A strange turn of events, when he would step into his brother’s most private space. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing, because she said, ‘All her clothes. It’s going to be odd.’
Then, ‘And how are your parents?’
‘Coping. And yours?’
‘The same. Very upset still. We all are.’ She plucked at a thread on her sleeve. ‘We’re just grateful that it seemed to have been very quick. You know, that they didn’t suffer.’
‘Yes.’
They both looked out the window, across the broad street.
‘You know he strayed from the flock, don’t you?’
She moved a strand of hair away from her mouth.
‘The fold I mean. You know he had an affair, don’t you?’
Her tone was perfunctory. She picked up her napkin, folded it in half and then again.
He set his glass down.
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
She nodded, a large oversized nod, looking down at the napkin, which she opened up and started folding again.
‘About a year and a half ago? With a colleague. Who has since moved away.’
He looked at her and she smiled, a different smile to her usual: crooked, more weighted to her right side. There was a sudden strong resemblance to Clare, he realised, despite their different colouring.
‘How did you find out?’
‘She told me. But not then, not when she was in the middle of things. Last Christmas. We went out, just the two of us. You see, he never admitted it. But she knew.’
He tightened his hold of his glass.
‘How could she be so sure?’
‘There were signs. He was always in meetings. Classic stuff. She just knew.’
‘But,’ he tried to control his voice, ‘if he was upset about their,’ he stumbled over the grammar, ‘their IVF, he might have just been finding somewhere quiet, somewhere to gather his thoughts . . .’
‘She knew, Francois. Ben had an affair.’
The complacency in her voice was unpleasant, and a sudden anger erupted inside him. He released his glass, afraid of snapping the stem, and picked up his cutlery, tightened his grip, looked down at the table. The waiter arrived with their plates and then left.
She leaned back against the banquette. ‘I mean, you seem astounded. Is it so surprising, given what they went through? All that messiness?’
He was silent; she was watching him with frank interest.
‘So you really didn’t know?’
He shook his head.
‘He never kind of confided in you?
He refused to answer, picked up his fork. It was his signal to her and she, at least, recognised it. She fell mostly silent, occasionally checking her phone through the meal and rewarding the small screen with a wry smile. He only spoke at the end, to ask her if she had finished, and when she nodded, he paid the bill and they left. Back at the hotel, they arranged to meet in the lobby after breakfast. For a moment he was tempted to invite himself to her room simply to see her reaction: she would be able to form a delightful opinion of two marauding brothers. But it was only a flash, less driven by malice than from a restlessness that plagued him for the remainder of the evening, as he stood under the shower, then flipped through the channels on the television in his room until he felt he could sleep.
The evening had cast a pall over him. Whatever had happened with Ben, whether he had indeed been unfaithful, this seemed to shrink in size compared to the other discovery: his brother had not sought his advice, his counsel. He remembered there had been one rather morose visit to Lisbon, some years ago, which his brother had initiated because the warm weather would ‘do Clare some good’. The couple had spent a long weekend with him. They had strolled along the narrow, cobbled streets; they had spent hours sitting in the sunshine at cafés in the squares. He remembered that Clare had been particularly enamoured of the flaky custard pastries, pasteis de nata. But after the initial enjoyment, she had become withdrawn, unreachable. Ben had tried rather obviously to compensate for Clare’s silence, and he had rather uncharitably resented his sister-in-law’s aloofness. It might have been the time when he could have encouraged Ben to talk about their struggles, shown himself to be a support. He hadn’t. It was not for a lack of empathy or sympathy; he had simply assumed that Ben would know that he had these feelings, that he loved Ben, without the need to be explicit. But he might have been wrong. Ben had always been more of a talker.
The next morning when he went downstairs, Jane was waiting in the lobby. This time he picked up her suitcase before she handed it to him. She looked tired and did not attempt to make conversation. They rode the bus in silence, which continued as they opened the flat, but both exchanged a glance before they went into the bedroom. It was a large room with tall sash windows looking onto the cobbled street and the river beyond; sanded wooden floorboards with two oriental rugs, one at the base of the large wrought-iron bed, the other under the window. There was a bedside table and lamp on either side of the bed, each holdin
g a pile of books. Seven weeks had passed since the couple had got up, got dressed, made the bed and left their flat.
Outside, a light rain was falling. Jane moved to the window and stood looking out, and he followed her before stopping a few feet away. He was still angry with her.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said suddenly, then half-turned, so that one side of her face had the grey light falling on it. ‘They worked through it, whatever happened, didn’t they? I should have let sleeping dogs lie.’
He could not think of how to respond, and so he said nothing. She gave him a slight smile.
‘I think I was cross with her for telling me. And then not talking about it again. She had that way: of letting me in so I could play the big sister. And then closing a door with me left outside, feeling stupid.’
He went to stand near her.
‘She could be like that.’ Now the tears were running down her cheeks. ‘She made me feel a frump. You try and keep it together when you have three kids under seven.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘But of course it was her way of coping. She so desperately wanted children of her own . . .’
He stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders.
‘This has been an incredibly difficult time,’ he said. An anodyne commentary, but all that he could think to say. She gave him a small smile, then briefly laid her head on his chest. They stood by the window, each offering the other light pats, little squeezes: tactile consolations, a primate ritual. Then she straightened her shoulders.
‘I’m not going to stop long,’ she said. ‘I’m worn out.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘I’ve changed my flight to leave early afternoon.’
‘We should be done by then anyway.’
They moved apart, like a splitting shadow, like an egg that separates to form twins but instead produces two sibling-less adults. He walked to a bedside cabinet, opened it and closed it. ‘Clare’s side,’ he said to her. It was obvious anyway, with a bottle of hand cream, and a pair of glasses crushed between her piles of books. She nodded and opened one of the sliding wardrobe doors, then the other.
‘They were very neat, weren’t they?’ she muttered. ‘You should see my husband’s clothes.’
He was glad she had mentioned her husband: it served as a reminder of their earthly lives. He moved to the en suite, the only bathroom in the flat. The laundry bin was half full, and he picked it up, tipped the contents into a bin bag, followed this with the bottles and jars from the medicine cabinet. He knotted the bag, left the flat and chucked it into the skip. Wasteful, death was. He had thrown away foodstuffs yesterday, medicines and clothes today. He watched a swan float on the river, before turning away and mounting the stairs back to the flat. Jane was sitting on the floor on the other side of the bed, her legs tucked under her, engrossed in a notebook. He squatted on his brother’s side of the bed, quickly glanced under it – empty – then opened the drawers on the bedside table. There was a collection of documents, old passports, several battery cases, two small notebooks. He skimmed through them. The small pages were covered with notes, tightly squeezed writing, related, he could just make out, to Ben’s research. These would be passed on to his father. Under all the junk, a small green oblong: a camera. He picked it up: it was a good make, light in his hand. He leaned back on his haunches and turned it on.
It was the first photograph on the roll – the last his brother had taken – and his breath was suddenly gone. He looked up – Jane was still reading, turning a page – and then looked down again at the small screen. The window he recognised instantly: he had stood in front of it a few minutes ago. He saw a bare back, a long line of neck, a towel held together loosely at her chest. As on Jane’s face earlier, there was the effect of half-in, half-out of shadow, but the sun was brighter, higher, a summer sun, and the face was younger, soft-skinned: a girl, really. He saw a movement in the corner of his vision: Jane had raised her head to him, and he slipped the camera into his pocket, gave her a wide, foolish smile, his heart pounding. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but at the same moment her phone rang: her husband calling to arrange where and when he should pick her up.
He stood up with a sudden energy, swept the books off the top of the cabinet and into a box, threw away the assorted collection of batteries, a torch, junk from the drawers, then straightened up and moved back through the living room to the study, where he stood in the middle of the room, breathing deeply, Jane’s voice rising and falling in the background. There was nothing: nothing in the shelves that stared back at him, the walls, the blinds; nothing to explain why his brother had a photograph of a half-naked girl on his camera.
The next hour passed by as if speeded up. He accompanied Jane, who looked pale and pensive, to the stop for the airport shuttle bus, and then walked around the city for the next two hours before his train was due to leave for London, resisting the urge to put his hand into his pocket for fear of finding the camera was still there. On the train, he took it out and held it in his palm: it now seemed to weigh much more. He was unwilling to look through the photos with his fellow passenger, an elderly woman, by his side, not sure what other poses he might find. When she got off the train, he moved into her seat by the window, and then, trying to dampen down the furtiveness he was feeling, he clicked through the camera roll.
There were few pictures, ranging from months before: the camera was not often used. Several were of a cover of a journal: perhaps his brother needed to upload an image to a website. There was only one of Clare, from the previous year, holding up what appeared to be a long string of garlic: an inside joke. Then, after a few more, he arrived at the girl. Now, in the privacy of the train, he allowed himself to peruse it carefully: a tumble of hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, a slender body. She was beautiful. But young: there was no doubt. The date read from a couple of months previous, a week or so before his brother had died. He switched the camera off, leaned back and stared outside, remembered the conversation with his father the last time he had made the same journey: I’d imagined them to be invincible.
When his parents asked after the flat, in tired voices, each wondering whether they should have accompanied him, he reassured them that there had been no need. The most essential tasks had been done, and he would come back again in good time after he had had a chance to discuss with Jane what she saw as the way forward. Of the photograph he had found, of the butterflies in his stomach when he thought about his brother, he made no mention. He flew back to Lisbon the following evening and saw Lucie waving to him. There was, however, a slight stiffness about her when he took her into his arms. He was being given a reprieve: he had not, the last few weeks, been very good company. But as they drove back to the city he asked if he could come to her flat, and she held his eyes for a moment before nodding. They made love quickly, without speaking, and then lay together, the windows flung open, the curtains pushed aside, looking at the night sky from her bed. She had her head on his chest, and he stroked her back as she described her doings of the last few days.
But his mind was elsewhere, in another space, another time. He was back in Maputo: the sun was setting, and it was that time of the day when the light seemed to cling on, unwilling to plunge the city into darkness. The air was redolent with the smell of drains and exhaust fumes, mingling to form a heady mixture. He was in a taxi, halted outside a restaurant in the Feira Popular, with its esplanade of white plastic tables and chairs. And through the window he could see the girls, emerging like birds of prey, their legs shiny and long, drifting between the tables, leaving a lingering presence of cheap perfume. One girl caught his eye: a slim girl, her hair in beaded cornrows. As she walked towards a table, he could see a scar on the back of her right leg, like a zip that beckoned to be unfastened to reveal her flesh and bones. She sat down at a table where a middle-aged man with a red beard was nursing a glass of whisky. When she smiled encouragingly, she revealed a missing front tooth which, rather than making her unattractive, lent a s
ordid realism to her attempts. Years later, lying now with Lucie, her skin under his fingers, all he could think about was the young girl with the zip on her leg, and all he could feel was sorrow, a stab of concern about how her evening had ended.
He was back in that taxi, he was leaning out of the window, his arm hanging down the side of the car, the wind blowing in his hair. He was closing his eyes, feeling the taste of salt air on his tongue on a hot humid night. The taxi was swinging away, so the girl was now out of sight, never to be seen again.
11
AT the weekend, he drove out past the familiar stretches of land and arrived at Gildo’s house in time for lunch. His wife Jacinta came out as he was parking his van and kissed him, ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. He held her for a little longer than necessary, enjoying the feeling that he had known these two people for many years, from a different life; that despite the passing of time, relationships could survive. Gildo hugged him, pulled him into the house. It was after the meal, when Jacinta insisted that they leave the clearing up, their daughter was due back from a friend’s and would help, that they took a few bottles of beer each up the road that led to a hill, a rocky outcrop overlooking the other houses and their gardens, where they had often sat and drank. He slid the green camera out of his pocket, turned it on, and with now practised touches found the photograph on the roll. He handed it to Gildo.
‘I found this on Ben’s camera.’
Gildo set his bottle down, took the camera and peered at the small screen, then let out a low whistle.
‘That’s his flat. She’s in his bedroom,’ he continued. ‘I haven’t told anyone else, not showed anyone else, not even Lucie.’
Gildo was holding the camera closer, his eyes darting over the picture.
‘Indian?’
‘Looks like.’
The Inheritance Page 10