He smiled. ‘Sounds like I would.’
There were some shouts behind them, and two motorbikes roared up in the still of the night and stopped some feet away from them. He laid his hand on Rita’s knee to reassure her – provoking further catcalls – before remembering that she would not understand what the young men were saying. When they turned their bikes and roared away, he took his hand away and saw that her body had stilled. Her hands were cupped around the glass, now empty, against her chest, and her eyes darkened as she said, ‘My turn.’ Then, her voice low, ‘What would you say to Ben if he were standing in front of us right now?’
Her question hung in the air. But it was not unwelcome; he found that he wanted to answer it. He breathed out.
‘There are a lot of things I should tell him,’ he began. ‘Like that I’ve finally read his books, or at least long sections of them.’ He smiled weakly at her. ‘But I’d probably tell him about something that happened when we were still living at home.’ The night seemed to thicken with his words. ‘It’s years ago, years and years. There was a girl I was terribly in love with. I never told her, which is my fault. But Ben went out with her. It’s all come back for some reason, and I can’t stand not knowing if he ever knew how I felt about her or not.’
She was quiet for some time, and then she said, ‘I think he mentioned her once.’
‘Really?’ He stared at her, stunned. ‘Denise?’
‘He didn’t say her name.’ She paused. ‘He made a joke I think, that he might have married her, if he’d stayed.’
His heart was hollow: was it the farewell with Lucie, the reminder of Denise, the whisky, the circumstances of sitting in the dark with his brother’s young mistress? That his brother had revealed the depth of his feelings for an old girlfriend to the young girl beside him, that at least Ben had had those feelings and the relationship was not merely a taunt, was disorientating. He should not have chosen to tell the truth. Something generic would have worked. But he had a wish to open a wound, stir his hand into its flesh, and so he said, ‘Can I copy your question? What would you say to him?’
She put her glass down beside her, then shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, kicked at the wall with the back of her heel.
‘I’m so angry with him, Francois,’ she whispered. ‘He should have told me about the children thing.’
He didn’t respond, and then she continued, her voice still a whisper. ‘I’d like to think that if I’d known about what they’d been through, him and Clare, I would have acted differently. He told me they weren’t really sleeping together any more; I didn’t think to ask him why. He just used me, he used me to—’
‘It was more than that, Rita,’ he interrupted. She turned to hold his eyes. ‘I’m sure it was more than that.’
She didn’t ask him again, what she had already asked, that day he had found her: how can you know that? She looked away and slipped her hands between her knees. Impossible to know you, he wanted to say, without feeling something for you. Her hair fell forward, hiding her face from him. He watched her. They had arrived at his brother again, which was why she was sitting with him, in the dark, in this city, on its castle walls. All those years ago, they had both wanted the same girl, Denise. And now, this girl, Rita.
She shook her head, turned back to the view, the mist engulfing them. He cleared his throat and picked up his glass and hers, slid them back into his pockets. The atmosphere had turned, and he searched for the strength to pull himself away from his thoughts.
‘What did you do today?’ he asked eventually.
‘Oh well,’ she tucked her hair behind an ear. ‘I bumped into Moises on the way back here, and he introduced me to some of his friends. We all went for a coffee together, and then I went back to the flat.’
He nodded, saying nothing, and then watched her as she reddened.
‘I think he likes me,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sure he does,’ he smiled.
‘But I’m not sure,’ she faltered. Then, after a long pause, she said, ‘I’m not sure about anything. I feel like I have no right to be thinking about anything that makes me happy or makes me feel good in any way.’
He watched her; her head was bent again.
‘But it’s nice for you to meet people,’ he said eventually, and added, ‘and people of your own age.’
‘I’m no good with people my own age,’ she replied.
There was silence again, and then she shook herself, as if trying to throw off the moroseness that had settled between them. She turned to him: ‘And how is Lucie?’
He hesitated and then said, ‘She’s going back to Germany in a few weeks. She wanted to end things between us in an amicable fashion.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Her fingers went to her lips, and then she touched his arm briefly. ‘Are you OK?’
He thought for a few moments. ‘I am,’ he said eventually, then with more honesty than he expected he would show the girl, ‘But I’ll miss her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, her eyes holding his, ‘if I’ve played any part in that.’
‘You haven’t.’ He touched the ends of her hair briefly, and her eyes dropped quickly to his fingers. ‘Really. It was a long time coming. We’ll still be friends, keep in touch. I’m sure of it.’
They ended there. He suggested they go back, and she agreed. They walked back across the square and down the street in silence. When they were back in the flat, she took off his jumper and folded it, handed it to him, and then as he took it from her she reached up and kissed his cheek, so that for a brief moment he could smell her hair, feel the softness of her lips. He wanted to press his hand to the small of her back, as Moises had done earlier, then pull her closer into him and kiss her mouth. But he didn’t, and she moved away. So that they settled back into their positions, the windows letting in the moonlight, on opposite sides of the room.
23
HE left the flat just before sunrise. He needed to clear his head after a fitful night’s sleep: the whisky had only served to make him feel thirsty and restless. He did his press-ups in isolation, ran back to the flat where Rita was still asleep, showered and left just as she was waking. He had started avoiding her: an unsatisfactory state of affairs, but his thoughts were too confused, and he did not trust himself. Neither did he want her to feel he begrudged her presence, and so he wrote a note, telling her that the degree show was open to the public from midday onwards, and she would enjoy it. It was in the college just down the hill on the way to the Baixa.
The café held the usual regulars, and he ordered breakfast while catching up with several others with whom he had comfortable, unassuming friendships: his life for the last six years. On first arriving in Lisbon, he had taken some time to adjust to living in Europe, but not long. He had dipped in and out of the lives of several amorous but undemanding women before his convenient and pleasurable attachment to Lucie. But nothing had yet given him cause to feel as much turmoil as the arrival of Rita. He drank his espresso, ate two large croissants and conversed with Fabio, who had also been invited to be an ‘esteemed observer’ of the students’ work. He tried to shake off thoughts of the girl as they walked back up the hill and entered the exhibition space, where he saw several faces he recognised from the classes he had given over the years. It was a few hours later that he realised his phone, which he had turned to silent, was vibrating against his chest, and he remembered suddenly how it had done the same that night, nearly six months ago, when his father had called to tell him Ben had died.
This time it was his mother, whom he had forgotten to ring back. He cursed himself, answered guiltily, but she brushed his apologies away impatiently, ‘Darling, is this a good time?’ Her voice was tight with tension; it was not a request. He moved outside the chamber and went to stand in the landing, the staircase before him leading to the exit, his mother’s voice continuing, louder now in the silence of the stairwell.
‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ she was saying. ‘
It’s all been very strange. You remember I told you about that student who came to see us? Ben had lent her your dad’s book?’
His skin contracted, and he felt goosebumps appear on his forearms. He opened a door and moved into an empty room.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Well, I phoned Marc Duplessis a few days ago, you remember, the South African? Ben’s colleague?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was so touched, you see. I wanted to send her one of Ben’s books, but I wasn’t sure whether she would have a pigeonhole in the department, you know? Well, Marc said, Francois, that that young lady hasn’t been back to university since last summer. She didn’t re-register.’
He didn’t speak, but let his mother continue.
‘The thing is,’ she was saying, ‘Marc was very strange, very odd. And when I explained how thoughtful she had been, he became cagey.’
She paused, as if expecting a reaction, and in the silence he could hear a hissing sound in his ears, as the truth leaked out. He could picture his mother with her soft hair, her swirling skirts and delicate wrists. She would be holding the phone to her ear, unsuspecting, unprepared for what she would learn of her son, her youngest. He gripped the phone and pressed it to his ear as if by doing so he could delay the moment, arrest her words.
‘But that’s not it,’ she was continuing, ‘I wouldn’t have given that another thought. Except that he got back in touch today, Marc that is, to say the Armstrong family have been in contact with the university. They’re unhappy that they weren’t consulted about the award. Well, I have no idea why they think they should have been consulted, Clare didn’t work for them, but then Marc said they’re also requesting that the university investigate Ben’s relationships with his students.’
By now her voice was showing her distress. ‘Francois, I mean, what on earth are they implying? That Ben was having an inappropriate relationship with a student?’
‘Mum,’ he interrupted without preamble. ‘Ben was having an affair with the girl. Rita. He was having an affair with Rita.’
Saying her name provoked an image of her: in the Gulbenkian, in front of his painting, her face lit up. As if she had just realised that she had her life ahead of her, to appreciate the beauty of art and of other things; that she needed to forgive herself. Perhaps he had in some small way helped her reach that point: that could be his defence. His mother was quiet for many minutes, and then the questions came quickly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Rita? The girl who came to see us?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when was this? Do you mean recently?’
‘Just before the accident.’
His mother fell silent again; all he could hear were noises in the background, very faint noises coming from afar.
When he had phoned her, twelve years ago, to tell her that he and Paula were divorcing, she had been similarly quiet on the other end. His father had just joined his mother in London; his parents were cohabiting after ten years’ separation. If there was any couple who could appreciate the vagaries of a marriage, it was his parents. But he had found himself listing all the expected reasons why the decision had been made. Only when he had finally dried up, unconvinced himself by the litany he had recited, had she said, simply, her voice full of love – Francois – and this had plucked the truth from his heart, so he had continued, without thinking: I’m no good as a husband. Shouldn’t she have the freedom to find someone who is? His mother had been quiet for a long time before giving her verdict: I have faith in you, son.
Because he had in mind her voice from all those years ago, when she said ‘How do you know all of this?’ he was shocked to hear how she had aged. He had never thought someone’s voice could change, but his mother’s had.
‘She told me. You see, she’s with me now,’ he said. ‘She’s been staying with me, here in Lisbon.’
She accepted the news mutely, so he continued.
‘She felt she couldn’t stay on at uni after the accident. And her parents don’t know that she hasn’t been back.’
‘But how did you meet her?’
That was a story for later, he thought. A photo, a painting, a note on a hall table: details for later. His mother’s breathing was audible now, and she did not press him. Perhaps she was unready to hear more. Then she asked, ‘Do you have to get back?’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
She fell silent again, and he waited. Then she spoke: ‘I remember when Ben told me about them, him and Clare I mean. By then they’d been trying for children for a year, and they’d decided to visit the doctor. It was his first real trial, you know? Ben was so gifted. I know both of you are gifted, but with Ben everything seemed to come even easier.’
He crossed an arm across his chest and tucked his hand into his armpit, as if by holding himself he would be better protected from his mother’s words.
‘He was telling me about how things were tricky between him and Clare. I think he expected words of wisdom from me.’ She snorted. ‘Me! I left your father because I didn’t know how to talk to him. I felt,’ she hesitated, ‘incompetent and ill-chosen to be giving him advice.’
She stopped speaking, but resumed a few moments later.
‘But that was years ago. It could have been five, six years ago or something. So all this time, it didn’t go away. I wonder what their life together was like, the day-to-day. If they ever found comfort in each other or if it was just all too painful.’ Then she sighed. ‘I thought she was a lovely girl. Rita, I mean.’
He cleared his throat. ‘She is.’
‘But she knew he was married?’
‘She knew.’ And then he added, his heart aching as he spoke, ‘She loved him, and he loved her. It doesn’t make things better, but I’m sure of that.’
Again, it came back to his brother, and now he felt an anger at Ben, which made it difficult for him to hear his mother, who was saying something, her voice indistinct at first, then becoming clearer: ‘This is an awfully heavy burden for her to be carrying.’
Someone knocked on the door, and he turned around, held his finger up, one minute, and turned back again, not seeing anything, his eyes blinded by a white screen of anger.
‘You can’t know how devastated I feel, Francois.’ His mother sounded drained. ‘I was all for fighting off the Armstrongs. But how can I defend my son when what they suspect is true?’
His heart went out to her. Whatever failings they had as parents, he was sure his did not have many. He had only felt love from them, an acceptance of whatever he decided: his refusal to accompany his mother to England, his impulsive marriage. They had been immensely proud of the cultural centre he had established in Maputo. They had both visited, braving his chaotic schedule, Paula’s family’s incomparable superiority. Then his divorce; his erratic, chopped-together lifestyle. His childlessness.
When he did not respond, she spoke again: ‘Francois? Surely you can see that Rita shouldn’t be staying with you?’
He shut his eyes, almost plugged his ears with his fingers.
‘She can’t stay with you, but I’m happy for her to stay with us. We have the space for one thing. And when she’s ready, I’ll go with her to her parents. That’s better than . . .’ she hesitated, ‘the situation as it is.’
‘She may not want to leave . . .’ He stopped himself just in time to drop the ‘me’. She may not want to leave me.
‘I know. I know, darling,’ and the way she said it he had for a horrifying moment a certainty that she knew everything: how he felt about Rita, how he had had her in his mind and body for the last days, months, since seeing her photo. How he could not shake the feeling that she had been given to him, that she belonged to him now.
‘But let her make that decision. Promise me you’ll tell her that she can stay with us.’
He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘Yes. I’ll tell her.’
The line went dead, his mother’s energy expended,
and he threw his phone down, so it clattered to the floor, the facing and battery pinging out. An immature reaction, befitting his puerile behaviour of late. Now, silence. He could hear nothing around him, only the sound of his blood pumping through his veins. He could not even see what was in front of him; he was in the muffled vacuum of his thoughts.
He had been asked once: why become an artist? The answer presented itself as a vision: of the raw, empty canvas, alone and untouched, to be tended to, nurtured, before he layered his colours on its bare form. It was never the finished product that mattered to him, even when that was what remained, but how he changed in himself when an idea took hold: he could feel it inside him, scratching at his abdomen, seeking release. Rather than the creator of a piece of art, he often thought of himself as an excavator. He was only finding what was already there on the canvas, peeling off opaque strips that hid an object of beauty from view, exposing it for the rest of the world to see. And what he found was never inanimate to him; it was a tale that spoke out from the brushstrokes. His brother wrote about women; he painted them. She had asked him: what does that say about you both? He had wanted to say: I want to give them a stage from which they can tell their story. Ben had the same intention. It seemed that he was destined to uncover how similar he and his brother were; was it then so surprising that they would love the same women?
His focus returned to the room he was standing in, to the window at one end which offered a view of the river, and the sounds of people gathering across the hallway. They were similar, he and Ben, but they were not boys any longer. They were men, each exposed to different experiences as adults, with little commonality to their everyday lives. He remembered his mother’s words: their day-to-day. Ben’s would have included many things his did not: lectures, seminars, research trips, a wife at home every night. And then, the girl: Rita.
The Inheritance Page 23