Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  “When you said that in history you can make things up, but in fiction you have to tell the truth.”

  She laughed at her own remark, as if she were hearing it for the first time. “Well, that is the case.” It occurred to Daniel that her apparent shyness was actually slyness—and that she had a high opinion of herself. Her voice had a slight rasp, a metallic quality that was oddly intimidating. “At least,” she added, “I take fiction seriously.” She looked at Damian Etheridge.

  “I bet you take everything seriously,” he said.

  “And what is wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” A few minutes later he whispered to Daniel, “That’s what’s wrong with her books.”

  “Wrong?”

  “They’re very heavy. Teenage suicides. Back-street abortions.” She heard the word “abortions” and glared at him. “As I was saying,” he added in a louder voice. “The French nouveau roman is doing very well here. In critical circles.”

  Daniel could hear Rentoul’s voice in conversation with someone else. “You must have come across totalism. It comes out of situationism. Have you read Derrida, by the way? You simply must.”

  “I’ve tried. I don’t understand a word of it. I prefer Heidegger.”

  “Oh that’s very old hat. All that Dasein business. A real German bore.”

  “I’ve just turned in,” Davis was saying, “a piece on Jimmy Baldwin.” Daniel had never heard the phrase “turned in” before, but he assumed it was of common currency.

  They carried on drinking into the late afternoon, their voices getting louder and their conversation more animated. They were arguing about the books pages of the various newspapers and periodicals—which had the best contributors, which chose the most interesting books. Clive Rentoul was complaining about the favourable treatment given by the Observer to the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes whom he denounced as the “Cambridge versifiers.” Wilkin had nothing to say in their defence, of course, but he objected to Rentoul’s description.

  It was time to attend the party at Connaught & Douglas. The offices of the publishing house were in New Bond Street. So they crammed into a taxi, excited by their sudden physical proximity, and made their way through central London. In this company it seemed to Daniel to become an unfamiliar city, brighter and more colourful than the one he had known as a youth. It had become a place of promise as well as of pleasure. When they arrived at their destination they all clambered out of the cab, leaving Daniel to pay the fare.

  The party was held in the board room and chairman’s office of the company, taking up the first floor of a late-eighteenth-century house. Wilkin immediately went up to a tall, doleful man who did not seem particularly friendly towards him. Wilkin beckoned Daniel over. “This is Max Sitwell,” he said. “Max works on the Sunday Times.”

  “Daniel Hanway.”

  “Are you a poet, too?”

  “Far from it. I teach.”

  “At Cambridge?” Daniel nodded. “I was at Cambridge. Caius. A million years ago. I hated it.”

  “I don’t think,” Daniel replied, “that it has changed much.”

  “Oh look,” Wilkin said, “there’s Graham.” He went over to a portly young man, wearing large horn-rimmed spectacles, whom Daniel recognised to be Graham Maland. With a nod to the doleful man Daniel joined the two of them. Clive Rentoul came over, too. “I loved the last novel,” Wilkin was saying to Maland. “Superb.”

  “My favourite character,” Rentoul said, apparently laughing at the memory, “was the taxidermist. Hilarious.”

  Daniel noticed that their appreciation of Maland’s work had risen very quickly. Maland seemed embarrassed by their compliments, as if he suspected them of not being quite real. “That’s very kind of you,” he said. “How about you, Paul? Are you publishing another volume?”

  “Not yet. Not yet. I’m waiting for the right time.”

  Maland quickly turned away and introduced himself to Daniel Hanway. Daniel was now quite drunk, and he was amused at the self-composure with which he greeted the famous young novelist. In other circumstances he might have searched for something to talk about. “I wouldn’t necessarily believe,” he confided in Maland, “everything that they say.” Later he would not remember using those words.

  “I don’t.” Maland smiled. “I don’t believe any of it.”

  Daniel felt relieved and reassured by this answer, as if a whole complex of problems had been resolved. He joined another group that included Damian Etheridge. “I do think that Benny Hill is the true successor to Puck,” someone was saying.

  “Do you? What an interesting point. But surely he is Falstaff? And Hancock is Hamlet.”

  “Perfect.”

  He then found himself in a group around a television journalist who had just published his memoirs. He was a man in late middle age but he was glossy, perfectly preserved, with a shine on his skin and a shine on his suit. Daniel noticed that the others gazed towards him, as if some source of enchantment was to be found in the glowing cheeks and forehead. He did not appear on television. Television appeared on him. Despite his modest stature he was larger and more capacious than those around him. But then it seemed to Daniel that some kind of bright liquid was flowing down his face and falling onto the ground. He was beginning to dissolve.

  Daniel overheard conversations. “Oh the Spectator. Terrible circulation. Shadow of its former self under Lawson. Gale has just appointed some teenage literary editor. Ridiculous. Think of all the perfectly good literary journalists there are.”

  “The opera was so—so Shakespearean.”

  “Tremendous fun.”

  “There was a dog in it.”

  “I thought the dog was marvellous.”

  Then Daniel dropped his glass.

  He found himself leaning against a wall on the pavement outside; he was smoking a cigarette which (had he known it) he had begged from a passer-by. He was swaying, with half-opened eyes, and was in danger of toppling forward into the street. Then someone put an arm around his shoulder. “Are you all right, Danny boy?” It was Sparkler.

  X

  That’s the way to do it

  SAM HANWAY had become Asher Ruppta’s “odd-job boy,” as Ruppta called him, expected to perform various tasks from visiting the bank to sorting out the diverse files created by the business. He spent much of the time with Julie Armitage in a small back office, where every morning he would find an offering of food on his desk—a ginger biscuit, a packet of nuts, a sausage roll, a pork pie, a bar of Bounty. He felt like a pet rabbit. Soon Julie would be stroking him.

  He was often asked to collect the rent from Asher Ruppta’s various properties. Julie Armitage used to commiserate with him, for what she considered to be an unenviable task, but in fact Sam felt no awkwardness or embarrassment as he went from door to door with his rent book. He looked forward to the opportunity of talking to people, of learning about their problems, of hearing their complaints. He took an almost aesthetic interest in speculating about the truthfulness of those whom he interviewed. He would speak to them in a slow and steady voice; he was infinitely patient with them, but he was determined. He could wear down the most spirited or most volatile of the tenants with his politeness. He had an air of remoteness about him, also, as if he were not quite sure what he was doing in any particular place. He looked as if he might ascend into the sky at any moment. His eyes were pale, lending his face an air of placidity and calmness.

  He also liked talking to Asher Ruppta: Ruppta would sometimes break off from business and, stretched out in his chair with his hands behind his head, he would tell Sam about his childhood on the island of the Celebes Sea. He would tell him stories of creatures of shifting shape that lived in swamps or marshes, of ghost birds that could be heard but never seen, of spirits that waited for the living in the shadow of barns or old buildings. His face then seemed to Sam to be set in a more cruel and ferocious look than the pliancy and passivity of his customary expression. On
Ruppta’s island each dwelling had its own familiar soul, to whom offerings were made at dawn.

  One evening Ruppta told Sam the story of the boy who became a tree. It began when his palms started to itch; he scratched and scratched, but the itching would not stop. Then the tips of his fingers began to tingle, and he began to tap them relentlessly on the crude wooden table in his small house. He woke one morning to find two fingers of his right hand covered in warts or growths, so strong and tough that they looked as if they were made of horn. He could not cut them with a knife, and when he tried to tear them away from his flesh the pain stopped him. After two or three weeks, the fingers of both hands were covered with these strange growths. The local doctor was baffled by the symptoms; he gave the boy some ointment, made from hyena fat, but it had no effect. Then the boy’s mother took him to the wise woman of the district. She took one look at his warts, and then turned away. Already the woody warts had covered the skin up to his wrists; they were of mottled texture, and dark brown in hue. They resembled the bark of a tree. The wise woman told the boy’s mother that there was nothing to be done, but that he would not die. It was a disease, she said, that came from the forest. There had been stories of it over many generations. It had no name.

  It was at this time that the boy began to sense a heaviness in his legs. There were small bulbous lumps swelling on the soles of his feet, and his toes were beginning to sprout the same dark wart-like growths. The layers of wood had also become thicker and harder upon his hands, and soon began to move upwards along his arms. One morning he saw some ants crawling among the layers; it seems that they had found something sweet to eat.

  The growths had soon covered his feet, and were moving up his legs; he noticed that twigs and small branches were growing where his toes had once been. When he tried to walk, there was a soft scraping across the floor. Patches of green mould formed on the bark along his arms and, if he scraped them, pieces of the wood would become detached and fall away. He called out, day and night, “Pahintuin! Pahintuin!” Make it stop! Make it stop!

  By now the bark had come up to his chest, and wooden growths had reached the back of his neck. He felt them moving onto his scalp and into his hair. Then he felt flecks of wood within his eyelashes. He sensed that there were little pieces of wood underneath the skin of his face. He was now helpless. He lay upon the ground outside his little house, where his mother fed him. He could no longer move, since the tendrils coming from his body had fastened themselves into the earth.

  Eventually the people of the village could bear it no longer. He was an abomination. Against the protestations of his mother, and of his younger brother, they dragged the boy into the forest and left him there among the trees. He did not die. He seemed to find some nourishment within himself, and the frequent rains quenched his thirst. Eventually the bark covered his eyes, and his limbs were entirely engulfed in its mantle. It is also possible that certain roots slowly penetrated his skull and somehow changed the nature of his brain. His mouth was the last human trace of him, but that turned into what looked like a knot of wood. The boy now resembled a fallen tree of gnarled or rotting bark, a haven for small insects. The birds alighted upon it, and pecked at grubs or larvae.

  The boy’s mother visited the forest every day, and sat beside what was now no more than a fallen log. She stroked the green moss that had grown across its bark, and passed her hands slowly over the rotting wood. It smelled now of vegetable decay. She was sure, sometimes, that she felt a sensation of warmth. How did Asher Ruppta know this? He was the boy’s younger brother.

  “The Byrnes are very troubling to me,” Ruppta said to Sam one morning. “They are never paying their rents. They must be taught a lesson.”

  Sam visited Mrs. Byrne on the following day. “I need the housing benefit for him.” She nodded towards the closed door of the bedroom. She offered two or three pound notes. “For the sake of the children, sir. Look at them. Can’t you see their poor pale faces?”

  Reluctantly Sam accepted the money, and noted down the amount still owed.

  “God bless you, sir. I’ll pay it all back to you. I’m expecting a parcel from Belfast.” She stared at the closed door. “He had one of his fits last night. I had to sit on him. My own health is terrible poor.” The three children were eating bread with Marmite, their lips and cheeks smeared with the brown paste.

  After the unsatisfactory interview with Mrs. Byrne, Sam walked up the next flight of stairs and knocked on the door of the flat immediately above. The tenant knew Sam’s touch, and the door was flung open. “Come on in, Sammy boy. Time for daylight robbery, is it? Smash and grab? You should wear a hood and mask.” It was Sparkler.

  Sparkler had been a tenant in Britannia Street for four years. He had always lived in this part of London, and he relished the anonymity associated with it. But he enjoyed the weekly visits of Sam with his rent book. “Now then, Sammy boy,” he said, “cup of char? Soak your powerful mind in tea.”

  As they sat together Sam told Sparkler stories about the other tenants whom he visited. He called him Spark. “Well, Spark,” he said on this afternoon, “the Robertsons have vanished. Everything has gone. Bed. All the furniture.”

  “As clean as a whistle, is it?”

  “A bone picked clean,” Sam replied. “Nothing left at all.”

  “That is a very remarkable thing, Sammy. How did they manage to get away without making any noise at all?”

  “The area is strange like that. Nothing ever seems to stick. Everything just fades away.”

  “I know exactly what you mean, Sammy boy. The streets will swallow you up. They’re misty. Like the Thames next door. It was tough in 1944.”

  “What made you say that, Spark?”

  “I was thinking of mist. And smoke. I was six at the time. There was this shelter. I hated it. Mum hated it, too. So we stopped going.”

  “Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “Oh yes. Of course. It was a big oblong room, with a wooden bench along each wall. There was a tin tacked to one corner, with a candle stuck in it. It smelled terrible of piss and vomit. It’s gone now. At least I think it’s gone. What if it were still there? Still smelling? It don’t bear thinking about, do it?

  “Boys like to explore, don’t they?” Sam was silent for a moment. “I used to go down into the ground.”

  “Yes. Boys go where they are told not to go. I’m still that way. I won’t do what I’m told. There was an underground bomb shelter on the common. A big one. Still there, I think. Its entrance was boarded up after the War, but I knew a way of wriggling through. There is always a way, you know. You just have to know how to look for it. There was rooms on either side. Do you believe in ghosts?” Sam nodded. “Do you? Do you really?”

  “I do.”

  “This was the curious thing. I was lagging behind a friend of mine. His name will come to me in a minute. Keith Watson. I was creeping past one of them rooms, when I saw something out the corner of my eye. It was like a flickering light coming from inside. I went back and there—you’ll never believe it, I know you won’t—there was a garden. A lovely garden full of flowers. And in the middle was an old gentleman tending to it. It was only there for a moment. And then it faded away. I wasn’t scared or anything. I was happy. But I never told Keith Watson.” Sam now smiled at the memory.

  Sparkler and Daniel Hanway were sleeping in the same bed when they were woken by shrieks coming from the flat below. “Smoke!” Sparkler shouted in alarm. He threw on a robe and rushed out into the hall. “Call 999!” He rushed downstairs, where a fire was eating Mrs. Byrne’s front door. He kicked out at it, and one of the panels fell apart. “Open it,” he shouted, “open it!” Mrs. Byrne had the presence of mind to unlatch it, and Sparkler rushed in. “Get me some water,” he said. “Let me get to the sink.” The flat was full of smoke, and he could not see the children. He soaked his robe and then draped it across the door. Some of the flames were extinguished. He performed the same manoeuvre three or four times until the d
oor was merely smouldering. Sparkler flung open the windows to disperse the smoke hanging in the air. The children, in their pyjamas, were huddled in the kitchen; they did not cry, or speak, but stared solemnly at Sparkler. He went into the adjacent bedroom to check on Mr. Byrne but, to his surprise, found no one. It looked as if Mrs. Byrne was accustomed to sleep alone in the bed.

  By the time the firemen had arrived, there was little to do except to secure the damaged door. They were intent, however, on finding out the cause of the sudden blaze. “Do you have any idea what happened?” one of them asked Mrs. Byrne. She shook her head, but then looked towards Sparkler. She knew better than to speak, and he understood her. Another fireman then discovered some burnt rags, smelling of paraffin. “Do you have any enemies?”

  “The poor Irish always have enemies.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  “Hooligans,” the fireman said. “Yobs. There are some nasty gangs in this part of the world.”

  Mrs. Byrne went into the kitchen. “All of you get dressed now. We’re going to your Aunty Theresa.” Sparkler had followed her, and now she whispered to him. “Lend me five pounds for a taxi?”

  He went back upstairs, and borrowed the money from Daniel. He came back into bed a few minutes later, and embraced him. “At least you’re still nice and warm,” he said. “Why didn’t you come downstairs?”

  “I was scared.”

  “You’re always scared.” Sparkler kissed him again. But he could not sleep. He lay in bed with his head propped up on a pillow. “I wonder,” he said.

  “Wonder what?”

  “I wonder if Ruppta was trying to frighten them away.”

  “Your landlord? That would be a dangerous thing to do.”

  “He may be a dangerous man. I will have a word with Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  “He is Ruppta’s collector. I don’t know his last name. Everyone just calls him Sam.” Daniel stared up at the ceiling, glimmering in the dark room from the light of the street lamps outside. “There was no Mr. Byrne.” He told Daniel the story of Mrs. Byrne’s husband and his fits. “But he wasn’t there.”