Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  He sat at the other end of the carriage, from where he kept on glancing at his mother. He had known her at once, in the supermarket and in the church, but he had not recognised her by sight; he had recognised her by feeling. He had been drawn to her by some bond of sympathy or perception that was instinctive and unassailable. She was staring straight ahead, immersed in her own thoughts. She seemed to Sam to be troubled; he wanted to approach her, and to comfort her, but he could not do anything so bold.

  She left the train at Borough and Sam followed her through the wind-haunted passages, past the peeling advertisements and the grubby white tiles, past the piss-stained corners and the rusted metal grilles, until she came out into the hall of the escalators. He watched her rise slowly, and then himself stepped on the moving stairs so that he would not lose her. She came out onto Borough High Street and began walking south, taking the old pilgrim trail from Southwark. Sam felt curiously light-hearted as he followed her. Eventually she turned up the path of a small terraced house.

  There was a low wall on the other side of the road, bordering a wild waste of garden in front of an untenanted house. Sam sat there, and waited. At regular intervals cars drew up to the parking spaces in the road outside. Individual men would then enter the house, leaving after an hour or so. Two young women came up, arm in arm, and were admitted. They did not leave.

  Sam came again the next day, and then the next. He did not know what he was waiting for. He knew only that this was what he was supposed to do. He noticed that all the curtains of the house were drawn, and that he could hear no noise. Then on the third day he walked up the narrow path and rang the bell. A young woman, holding a plastic cup in her hand, came to the door. “Can I help you?”

  “I’ve come to see Mrs. Hanway.”

  “Who? There’s no one of that name here.”

  “I know her.”

  “Let him in.” It was his mother’s voice.

  The young woman moved aside, and Sam crossed the threshold into a hall decorated with crimson flock wallpaper and a number of watercolours of pastoral scenes in heavy gilt frames. He went towards his mother standing at the end, at the foot of a staircase.

  “Well, Sam, you have found me.”

  “I saw you in the church. In Allington Street.”

  “I go back there sometimes. I like it.”

  “So do I.”

  He looked away from her for a moment, but she did not look away from him. “I would know you anywhere, Sam. Your hair is not as light as it used to be. Come in here. Mary, will you make us a pot of tea?” She led him into a small room with a window overlooking an empty yard and a brick wall. A blue vase of tulips had been placed on the table at which they sat. “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” she said.

  “I was seven.”

  “You’re nineteen now, aren’t you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  They were silent for a moment as Mary brought in the tea.

  “So you’ve left school.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Nothing.” She stared at him for a moment, with a fixed attention. “What do you do?”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “This.” Then she questioned him about Harry, and about Daniel, listening eagerly as he tried to remember all the details of the immediate past. She never once mentioned Philip Hanway.

  “Why did you go away?”

  “Why does anyone do anything? No. That’s unfair on you. I was in trouble. That’s all I want to say.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I went away. It doesn’t matter where.” He remembered now the paleness of her pale blue eyes. “I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t mean to leave you. Your father wanted it. He didn’t want to see me again. It wasn’t easy.” She paused for a moment. “It was the hardest thing in my life.”

  “You thought it was for our own good.”

  “Yes. That’s it. Your own good.”

  “We knew that something was wrong.”

  “What did your father tell you?”

  “He didn’t. He never said a word.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “We talked about it to each other. But we never wanted to mention it to anyone. I think we felt guilty for something, but I don’t know …”

  “You felt guilty? How do you think I felt? I have never felt anything else.” She reached over and touched the vase of tulips. “You never spoke to your father?” Sam shook his head. “You boys were always very private. You never gave anything away. You were the strangest boys in the world. Nothing will stop Harry. Nothing will trouble Harry. Danny is more fragile. And you were always the dreamer. I was always most concerned for you. Do you remember the time when—No. Let’s not talk about the past. You’re grown-up now. You’re an adult.”

  “So what should we talk about, as adults?”

  “How do you get by?”

  “Get by?”

  “If you have no job, what do you do for money?”

  “Dad helps me. I live at home. I don’t cost much.” He laughed. “I’ve nothing to spend it on.”

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” He looked at her, and said nothing. “Don’t you have any friends?”

  “Who would want to be friends with me?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I just did.” He looked at the vase of flowers. “There are lots of people in the world who have no friends. Sometimes I see something interesting. Or I feel something. But I know that I have no one to tell.”

  “And the red red robin comes bob bob bobbing along.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It was a song I knew as a kid.” They stared at one another. “Now that I’ve found you,” she said, “I’ll never let you go.”

  “Is that another song?”

  “No. It’s the truth.” She stood up and left the room, returning a few moments later with a five-pound note in her hand. “Here. Take it.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Take it. I need to give it to you.”

  “To buy myself a friend?”

  “Buy whatever you want, Sam.”

  So began the series of their strange meetings. On the same day each week, at the same time, he would ring the doorbell and would be admitted. He looked forward to the pot of tea brought in by Mary; he looked forward to the fresh flowers in the blue vase. He looked forward to hearing his mother’s voice. It was nothing she said in particular, but the soothing syllables of her conversation induced in him a feeling of repose.

  “I see faces before I go to sleep,” she said to him one afternoon. “I don’t know them, but I think somehow I recognise them.”

  “Ancestors?”

  “Do you think so? That is a nice idea. One of them did look a bit like you. He had your smile.”

  “Sometimes,” she said on another occasion, “I smell the strangest things. The smell of burning rags, where there is nothing burning. Sometimes I smell the perfume of roses on a busy street.”

  A fortnight later Sam said to her, “I’ve got a job.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “As a nightwatchman. I’ll still be able to come around in the afternoon.”

  “That’s what your father used to do.”

  “He was the one who found it for me.”

  In fact Philip Hanway had become more and more concerned about his youngest son. When he eventually discovered that Sam had no work, it occurred to him to contact his old employer: there was no qualification needed to be a nightwatchman. So, on Philip’s recommendation, Sam was hired.

  “You may get lonely,” his mother said to him.

  “Me?”

  “Your father used to complain.”

  “I’ll get used to it, I expect. I get used to everything else.”

  “Have you mentioned me to your father?” she asked him a week later.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No. Some things are better left unsaid, don’t you think? What abo
ut your brothers?”

  “What about them?”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Sometimes I think I see their reflections. Sometimes I think I see them across the street. I see them in my dreams all the time.”

  “You know, Sam, you baffle me.”

  “Just begin at the beginning. You’ll find your way.” He looked at the blue vase. “How do you pronounce it? Vase as in stars? Or vase as in maze?”

  On another visit he spoke to his mother about his work as a nightwatchman. “I like it. I like to sit and think. Why do I prefer blue to red? If colours were words, what would they say? Why do eyes get tired?”

  “Some questions, Sam, have no answers.”

  “Do you know who you remind me of? The unknown soldier. You don’t have much expression, do you?” It was Julie Armitage. Sam had been given work at a newly built office block along Kingsway; just before his arrival, the property business of Asher Ruppta had taken premises in the same building. Julie immediately felt sympathy for one whom she considered to be a fellow sufferer in the world. “Here. I’ve made you a nice sandwich. Do you like Spam? I love it.”

  He picked up a neatly quartered piece. “You have some, too.”

  “Oh no. It’s for you. Oh well, all right then. If you insist.” She bit into it while all the time keeping her eyes upon Sam. “What do you think of corned beef?”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “I like it with pickle. Not that piccalilli muck. I can’t abide it. Just regular Branston. Next time I’ll bring you a pickled egg.”

  “I’ve never seen a pickled egg.”

  “It’s just an egg, really. They sell them in pubs.”

  So began the friendship between Julie and Sam. He came on duty at five in the evening, and she finished work at six. She would come down with a “snack,” as she called it, and sit down beside him as he ate it. She began to confide in him. “He’s planning something.” “He” was Asher Ruppta. “He sits very still and smells his fingers. I know the signs. Sometimes he whispers a word or two. As if he was praying.”

  “What does he do?” Sam asked her on another evening, between mouthfuls of cold sausage sandwich.

  “Now there’s a question. What doesn’t he do? He does this and he does that. Am I making myself clear? As clear as mud?”

  “Perhaps it is mud.”

  “You are a sharp one, aren’t you?” She was silent for a moment. “I think you’re right, actually. It is mud. Deep and dark. But you would never know it. It all looks good on paper.”

  “I think there’s something going on,” she announced two weeks later. “He has been meeting people out of the office. He never does that. I’ve had to book him tables in restaurants.” She seemed excited by these events.

  Sam now visited his mother two or three times a week, before setting off for his work. He mentioned Julie Armitage, and Sally laughed. “That’s a coincidence. I knew—” But when he spoke of Asher Ruppta, her eyes widened and she looked away. From that time forward she sometimes asked about Julie and her employer, in an indirect and only slightly curious way.

  Sam saw Ruppta often enough. He would walk out of the lift at approximately the same time every evening, and pass the young nightwatchman on his way to the street. He was courteous, politely nodding to Sam before putting on the black Homburg hat that he always wore. Yet he rarely looked directly at him; whenever he did so, his hooded eyes seemed to flash with some inward fire. Sam then saw the spirit of Ruppta as a hawk or some other bird of prey. He thought that he had seen such a bird, perched on the roof of the building, its wings unfurled, but in a moment it was gone.

  One evening a young man rang to enter the lobby. “I’m here to see Mr. Ruppta’s secretary,” he said. He looked at Sam curiously, as if trying to recall where he had met him.

  “I’ll call her,” he said. “Can I give her your name?”

  “Stanley Askisson.”

  Julie came down with a small package wrapped in brown paper. She gave it to Stanley Askisson, who thanked her and walked out. Before he left the building, he stared once more at Sam.

  “There’s something going on,” she said. It was her favourite phrase. “Do you fancy some pork scratchings? I’ll bring them down. There was money in that packet. Banknotes.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Ruppy just told me—”

  “Who?”

  “That’s my secret name for you know who. Ruppy told me to give the money to someone called Askisson.”

  “He seemed to know me. But then he didn’t know me.”

  Stanley Askisson came back two weeks later, and waited in the lobby until he was given a package by Julie. “Do you know what?” she said to Sam as soon as Askisson had gone out into the street. “There’s no reference to him in any of the letters or papers. This is the problem. There is no mention of the money anywhere. It might as well be fairy gold.”

  “Fairy gold?”

  “It fades away.”

  “But he won’t fade away, will he?”

  “He could be a blackmailer. Is that what you’re thinking, Sam?” Julie put a great deal of faith in Sam’s sagacity; she interpreted his periods of silence and withdrawal as wisdom.

  “Wait and see,” he replied.

  “Next time I’m going to follow him. There’s something going on.”

  “Won’t he mind?”

  “Who?”

  “Ruppta.”

  “He won’t know anything about it.”

  Stanley Askisson returned a fortnight later, by which time Sam and Julie had formulated a plan.

  She left the package with Sam before slipping out into the street wearing a scarf and a nondescript beige coat. On Askisson’s arrival Sam gave him the package, with the excuse that Julie had left early for a dentist’s appointment. Askisson seemed surprised, but made no comment. Once more he looked at Sam curiously, as though he had known him in some other circumstance. He left the building and, as usual, turned right. Julie followed a short distance behind. She did not want to be seen, of course, but she need not have taken any great precaution. Askisson would not have known her. He never recognised the faces of young women.

  Everyone became anonymous on Kingsway, a barren valley carved through the teeming alleys and lanes of nineteenth-century London. All the life of the neighbourhood had been laid waste by the clearance for this site, and none of it had returned. Stanley Askisson walked south towards Bush House before walking around the curve of Aldwych towards a bus stop on the south side of the Strand. The sky was blood-red with a fiery setting sun. Julie kept him in sight. When he boarded the 173 bus she followed him, sitting on the long seat close to the conductor’s platform.

  Askisson left the bus at the stop halfway down Whitehall, where Julie also alighted. She followed him down Whitehall until he turned into the portal of one of the government departments. When Julie passed it, she saw that it was the Ministry of Housing. The next morning, before Ruppta arrived in the office, she telephoned the ministry and asked to speak to Stanley Askisson. He answered the ’phone in his customary manner. “Office of Cormac Webb.”

  “Sorry. Wrong number.” Now she knew. Webb was a name familiar to her. Ever since she had shared an office with Hilda Nugent, she had been aware of his connection with Ruppta. It seemed that the payments were still being made, indirectly through Askisson, and of course she suspected the nature of the bargain. What had happened to Hilda, by the way? She had telephoned one morning to say that she was ill, and had never returned to work. Ruppta had seemed preoccupied at the time, and so Julie never raised the matter with him.

  She told Sam about her pursuit of Askisson. “Ruppy is giving money to Cormac Webb,” she said. “He wants something. Information.”

  “Planning permission,” Sam replied. “He’s a property developer, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t you think it’s exciting? I do.”r />
  He had not considered it in that light. He had not really considered it in any light at all. But now he took more interest in Asher Ruppta. And Ruppta began to take more interest in him. He would stop at Sam’s desk, before leaving the building, and engage him in brief conversation. “How are you, Mr. Sam?” he would say. “Has Julie brought you anything nice today?” He was always watchful, somehow looking all around Sam as if searching for his shadow. Ruppta believed in the spirit world. He had been brought up by his mother on a small island of an archipelago in the Celebes Sea. And now he sensed something about Sam. He was not sure what it was, as yet, but there was a quality associated with the mystery that Ruppta had experienced as a child.

  “He’s been asking after you,” Julie said to Sam one evening. She had just presented him with a sausage sandwich. “Tuck in. He thinks you’ve got promise. Potential.”

  “Potential for what?”

  “Fire bombing. No. I’m joking.”

  On the following day Ruppta came up to Sam in the lobby. “You are a young man,” he said. “Do you want to sit behind a desk like this for ever? Is it right?” Sam shook his head. “I need a smart young man. On my island, Sam, there were conjurors. Aslohi. They had assistants. Mekini. These assistants would help them with their tricks. They would climb up poles and disappear. They would rise into the air. They would fall into a trance. You can be one of my mekini.”

  “How do I fall into a trance?”

  “This will not be necessary. You can deliver little items from me. You can receive letters for me. Perhaps you will follow people. Who knows?” He was about to walk away, when he turned back to Sam. “On my island there were creatures you could not see and you could not hear. They hid in the green tapestry of the forest, in the humid air, in the great old rocks. Do you have such creatures in London, Sam?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “It is not a question of knowledge.”