‘Your friend is very beautiful,’ pointing to Rita.
Francois turned, let his eyes sweep over her in mock appraisal, before replying to the young man, ‘She is.’ Then he turned back to her, smiling: ‘This is Gildo’s nephew.’
‘I can dance with her?’
Francois was laughing: ‘You have to ask her.’
Gildo appeared, spoke rapidly in Portuguese to the young man, then in English: Be gentle with her.
Her cheeks were burning after the exchange over her, but when the nephew held out his hand, she took it. It was flattering: to be complimented, invited, appreciated. The young man wore a tight white T-shirt, biceps bulging, his hair in shoulder-length braids. He put his hand on her back as he led her to the dance area. I am Ricki, he said conspiratorially, his breath tickling her ear, his eyes locking hers. Rita and Ricki. She wanted to giggle, but he was so serious she was sure she would offend him. There was not much for her to do except allow Ricki to move her around, and when he gave her space to move by herself she was rewarded with a murmur of approval – boa, boa – his eyes resting frankly and admiringly on her legs.
Francois, she saw, showed no inclination to dance, but was talking to another woman, who had slipped her hand into his shirt and was caressing his chest, while he looked down at her, smiling. Her attention was then taken by another young man who asked her to dance, and then another, and then she was reclaimed by Ricki, who was more confident now. He pressed his lips against her ear and placed his hands on her hips, moving her against him. She was surprised she did not mind. It was, in fact, nice to be touched. At one point, he clasped her bottom, and then his hand was removed quickly with a muttered apology, as if it had acted of its own accord.
When Jacinta pulled her away, laughing, pressing a plate of food into her hands and another glass of wine, she found she was ravenous. She saw Francois leaning against the wall at the other end of the garden, stabbing at his plate, talking to another man, and went over to join him. Immediately he turned to give her a smile, before pulling a chair over so she could sit next to him. When everyone had eaten, the music started again and Ricki appeared, holding out his hand, to lead her back into the dance area. And then finally she saw Francois, amongst the other couples, holding Jacinta tightly to him. They were swaying to the music, her cheek was pressed to his, and she was whispering something in his ear. The sun sank, and the night air grew chillier; the wine kept flowing, and in the end Jacinta had to prise her again from Ricki’s arms. Francois had said they were leaving.
‘That was nice,’ she said as they drove away.
To her surprise he burst out laughing, and it was only after he had laughed for some time that he said, ‘You certainly made a splash.’
She blushed, and he patted her arm briefly, smiling. ‘That’s a good thing, I mean. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.’
‘I did.’
‘Good,’ he repeated, then turned to her. ‘You’re allowed to, you know.’
She smiled back at him, a warm feeling spreading through her: the wine.
‘They’re so welcoming.’
He nodded.
They were silent; she looked out of the window. She was a little drunk, but it was an agreeable feeling. She reached forward and touched the glass.
‘Do you want to open it?’ he asked. Perhaps he was worried that she would be sick, but she felt only pleasure from the light-headedness. She shook her head, her thoughts scattered, floating with the wine, the music replaying in her head, the shouts and claps when the young man had put his arm around her waist and turned her to him. Be gentle with her. Her eyes were closing, she was falling asleep, and then she woke, her mind clear.
‘What was wrong with Ben’s wife?’ she said. ‘What was wrong with Clare?’
He turned to glance at her briefly. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
She shook her head again, sat up straighter. ‘Why was she ill?’
‘Some kind of stress-related fatigue,’ he said.
She waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t she asked, ‘So she was stressed about something?’
He shrugged his shoulders, and she could immediately feel his reluctance, which with the clarity she had acquired caused her to pursue her line of questioning.
‘Was it their marriage?’
‘Most probably.’
His response came suspiciously quickly; she swatted it away.
‘What do you think it was, Francois?’
He stared at the road so intently that she turned to follow his eyes. There was nothing to see, so she turned back to look at him, his profile. He was silent for so long she thought she would have to prompt him again.
‘They’d been trying to have kids,’ he said finally. ‘And it wasn’t working. That could have triggered it, along with other factors.’
The words entered her like a stone: rather, as if a bag of stones were poured into her, through her ears to fill up her limbs.
She found her voice: ‘You mean, they wanted to have children and they couldn’t?’
He gave a sideways nod: a tiny movement, as if to undermine the enormity of her discovery.
‘Were they trying for long?’
‘I think so.’
‘And she was upset?’
He nodded.
She stared out of the window. It’s not so simple. She remembered how her mother had comported herself in her family home, how she had appeared shrivelled by the derision she had sustained. She was back in the bedroom in the old house, lying under the fan, her mother sitting beside her. She had asked her mother: Why did they have to make you feel so bad? But in the end her mother had produced two healthy children, unlike Clare. Clare’s chances for motherhood had been stolen; a car accident had robbed her of the opportunity to recover.
They turned off onto another road, long and straight, the gentle brown hills now indistinct in the darkness that had gathered around them. She was still light-headed, but her stomach felt twisted. He didn’t speak, as if he wanted her to fall asleep, move on from their conversation.
‘But,’ she persisted, ‘if they really wanted kids, why didn’t they adopt or something?’
He tapped on the steering wheel. ‘I think by then she was ill and things were complicated.’
She didn’t say anything else; she didn’t have the words. She caught sight of herself in the side mirror. She could not rid herself of her exterior decorative self; she would forever look vital, vibrant, even if the person inside was warped, had died. She was a girl in a pick-up. A girl to pick up.
‘He told me he felt happy with me,’ she said, but she was not sure he could hear her; part of her simply wanted to see her lips moving in the mirror. ‘Did he want children as well?’ she asked in a louder voice.
‘Yes, I think he did.’
‘But then they stopped trying.’
He turned to face her more fully, his eyes glancing back to the road as he spoke. ‘You can have a nap if you want—’
‘Do you want me to shut up?’ she grinned, surprising herself; it was the last thing she felt like doing.
‘No, of course not . . .’
But then she did not speak; her tongue felt swollen, as if she would choke, and for the last few miles she resorted to her favourite pastime: revisiting their encounters, the pathetic little list she had written in her notebook, as if those events were hermetically sealed from the world around them. But the sheath of light that held each was now less bright, dulled.
It was not because he had fallen head over heels for her, not because she had arrived and opened his eyes to the constraints of his marriage. He had embarked on their affair because he was hurting, aching inside. They were aching together, Ben and Clare: bereft, baffled. Clare wore her torment on her sleeve, sat in the wheelchair like a throne. And Ben? Had he really believed he would find solace by betraying the woman who would be the mother of his children? An image played before her: Joy carrying Mira on his shoulders. She could not envisage her brother i
n a clinch with someone else; was that because Mira was a small, warm living being? If the child was not born, was just a figment – desired but not formed – did that make it easier to be unfaithful? And if Ben had been a father, with a small child holding his hand, would she have let him make love to her? That must have been the added, indefinable ingredient to their coupling. He had not simply desired her; he was pouring his agony into her, into her body. Those depths he had said he felt in her: he had found a vessel for his sadness.
She didn’t talk. When they had driven a few more miles, he asked if she wanted the radio on. She shook her head; he left it turned off.
‘Do Gildo and Jacinta know about me?’ she asked finally, when they were re-entering the city.
He glanced over at her. ‘Know what?’
‘Do they know about me and Ben?’
He didn’t respond immediately – they were negotiating a tight bend, a white, domed building to their left. They turned into a narrow, steep cobbled street. He seemed to spend a long time adjusting the gears, looking into the wing mirror. She felt an anger rise into her throat.
‘They know, don’t they?’
Again, he didn’t reply, but parked in a space a few metres from the door of his building. He switched the engine off and turned to her.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I told Gildo. He will have told Jacinta.’
He was looking at her, his hands in his lap. His expression as always seemed to be searching hers for some kind of sign.
‘Why did you tell him?’
She felt her voice shake just as she asked herself: what does it matter?
He let his eyes fall briefly to her hands, then raised them.
‘I guess I needed to share it with someone.’
‘When you found the photo.’
He nodded.
‘But you shared it with Lucie.’
‘Only after.’
‘After what?’
He hesitated. ‘After I started painting you.’
She opened the door and got out of the car. It was dark now; the air was chilly. It had not even been a week, but she felt as if she had lived here all her life. She had never had an argument with Ben. She had felt an angry humiliation when he had laughed at her declaration of love, but he had erased it instantly, absorbed it by his touch. Here, with his brother, it seemed was the next instalment of the serial: now the couple fights. She walked around to the back of the van where he had put the bags of groceries and reached for one.
‘Don’t worry I can carry—’ he began, but she ignored him, lifted the bag out, heard the bottles clink together, then walked up the street, feeling her calves ache with the incline. He fumbled with his keys, dropped them, picked them up, opened the door.
On entering the flat, she kicked off her boots and went into the bathroom. The mirror reflected her face, just as it had done in the washroom at the services, his parents’ bathroom, before and after sex, among his wife’s toiletries. She could hear Francois opening and closing cupboards, putting things away in the kitchen, and left the bathroom to lean against the door jamb of the kitchen. He was tidying away the bags of fruit and juices; a box of eggs lay open and a frying pan was heating on the stove.
‘I’ll make an omelette,’ he said, not looking at her. She could see his shoulders were braced, as if in anticipation of how she would respond.
She slid a bottle of wine from one of the bags, twisted the cap.
‘Want some?’ She didn’t recognise her own voice.
He glanced at her and nodded, started cutting some tomatoes. She took two glasses out, poured two generous measures, slid one over towards him – Cheers – and swallowed the wine, all the while ignoring the tears that had arrived unannounced in her eyes.
When she picked up the bottle again, he set his knife down and watched her pour herself another glass.
‘Drink some water with that as well.’
His voice was gentle, concerned, even fatherly. She wanted to throw the wine in his face, but she turned away. ‘Can I put some music on?’
It was bubbling out, at last, what was inside her. Who were these men, like characters from a fairy tale, these brothers: Ben and Francois? Who were they and why did she feel like she was at the centre of a no man’s land between them, their eyes drilling into her? The thought excited her as much as it infuriated her. She found his CD player, struggled to focus on the controls, her finger sliding over the buttons, missing, then choosing the first album that came up, an up-tempo dance beat.
He entered the room with the two plates in his hands, which he laid on the table, then turned to retrieve the glasses and cutlery from the hatch. The bottle of wine remained behind in the kitchen, and as she walked back down the short hall she heard him, ‘Rita . . .’
She poured the wine as she walked back, splashing some on the floor, on her dress and onto her collarbone, from where she felt it trickle down her chest, just as she had felt the blood trickle down her thighs, that first time. Then she leaned over and poured some more into his glass as well, giving him her widest, brightest smile. She noted his unease with satisfaction and was tempted for a moment to sit in his lap. What would he do? Lift her off, or swivel her around and kiss her on the mouth? Would he taste the same: did brothers taste the same? Did they have sex in the same way?
‘Come and eat something.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
He cut his omelette into pieces and ate. An obvious ploy: parents used it all the time to entice their children. Delicious, he should say. Are you sure you don’t want to eat anything? When she sat down in her chair and picked up her fork, the relief on his face made her giggle, and then she found she couldn’t stop, started coughing over the morsel of omelette stuck in her gullet. He poured her a glass of water and slid it over, but she shook her head and drank her wine. She could not face any more food, and, pushing her plate away, she stood up and carried her glass to one of the French doors, moving her hips to the music.
At one point, she turned around to see that he had left the room, was back in the kitchen. He had taken the plates; she could hear the water running. The castle was lit up now, dignified above them. The washing hanging from the terrace opposite fluttered in the breeze. He walked back into the room and went to the other set of French doors, opened them out. When she craned her neck around, she saw that he was smoking a cigarette, his elbows on the railing, tapping the ash out onto the street. She felt her heartbeat slow down; her head ached, but then she shook herself: not yet.
She swung back into the room, walked over to him and leaned her back against the railing so she was facing him. His eyes were on the street below, and he did not look at her when he said, ‘I’m sorry. I can see you’re upset.’
‘I’m not upset.’ She could hardly hear her voice for some reason, but she must have spoken, because his eyes flickered over to her and then down again. His expression, soft and gentle, smote her, but she steeled herself, rallied.
‘What did you think,’ she said, ‘when you saw the photo Ben took of me?’
He flicked his ash, spoke quietly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ she leaned sideways, then tilted her head so she was looking up at him, blocking his view, her hair falling onto his arm, ‘what did you think of me?’
He straightened up slightly, but he did not move his arm.
‘Did you think I was pretty?’ She laughed, but then the tears returned, and she had to turn her face away before he could see them. One splashed out onto his arm, but he seemed not to have felt it.
‘Did you?’ then leaning sideways again. ‘Do you?’
She felt his hand on the back of her head, like a caress, a gentle touch. Where was his cigarette now? Was he setting her hair on fire? She sprang away, giggling.
‘Rita, please . . .’
‘Now that I’m here, in the flesh, do you want to paint me again? Paint me now.’
The idea took hold of her: why had she never thought it before? This was why he had invit
ed her, begged her to let him help her. He could paint her if she came back with him: a parting gift from his brother. From me to you. Didn’t artists always paint women in the nude? He had seen her barely clad in a towel; now he could see her without. She didn’t need the screen, right here. She was tugging her dress over her head, but it was caught in her earring, so when she felt him pulling it back down, his fingers brushing against her ribs, she could not see him. Her hair was in her eyes, clinging to her cheeks, which were wet with tears. She felt his hands at her waist as if arranging the dress more becomingly over her hips.
And then they slid around her, his arms entwining with hers, so that his whole body was against her back. His face was in her hair, and she could feel his warmth flooding into her. Her own body was shuddering, so that it felt that he was protecting her from an earthquake, not holding in her sobs. And only after many minutes, when she slid around within the circle of his arms, when she lifted her chin to his face, did she see the sadness in his eyes, so that she had to close her own because it was too much for her to bear.
Closing her eyes was a relief; he was saying something to her which she could not hear. She was back in Ben’s arms, their future ahead of them, because if she believed nothing else she needed to believe that they had had one.
Part Four
19
HE had returned to his parents’ house late in the evening after walking for hours, having tried to make the journey back from Tooting to Clapham on foot. When he was well and truly lost, he gave in and hailed a cab. London was familiar but still confused him. He let himself into the house, but then he exited the front door again quietly and walked round the side of the house. The light was on in his father’s shed. He walked across the lawn and tapped on the door, then opened it and went inside.
‘Hello, son.’ His father looked as if he had sat where he was, pen in hand, for a while, without writing anything on the notepad in front of him.
‘May I?’
The Inheritance Page 18