Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  “I promised,” Harry told her, “to get him some details on a rival company.”

  “That’s right. And I heard some good news yesterday. The old Jew has pulled out of the racing business.” He was referring to Pincher Solomon. “That will teach him.” He took a thick slice of roast beef, and covered it with a mound of horseradish sauce. “I like it hot, Harry,” he said, drooling slightly at the mouth. “As hot as hell.” Then he put a boiled potato in his mouth, and swallowed it. Suddenly he burped. There was a scent of horseradish in the air. “I’m going to get rid of Havers-Williams.” He was talking about the editor of the Morning Chronicle. “He’s a useless bastard. He mumbles.” He took another bite out of the beef and horseradish. “I come from nothing, Harry. I’m a bastard. Did you know that?”

  “I have heard.”

  Flaxman laughed very loudly. “No. A real bastard. Wrong side of the sheets. Do you know how that makes you feel? It makes you feel different. It makes you feel special. I made my first deal in the army. I sold military supplies to civilians. Does that shock you?” Harry shook his head. “Well, it should do.” Flaxman swallowed another potato. “I am telling you this because you are almost part of the family. Almost. But not quite.”

  Guinevere suddenly spoke up. “Let’s put an end to this nonsense. Do you want to marry me, Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Daddy, will you sign on the dotted line?”

  “You see what a romantic she is, Harry?”

  Lady Flaxman entered the dining room. “I warn you in advance, Martin,” she said to her husband, “that my nerves are bad today. Good afternoon, Mr. Hanway. What’s all this about marriage?”

  “I was telling Harry, Maud, that he is almost part of the family.”

  “Why he should ever want to be part of this family is beyond me. We are a frightful shower aren’t we, Mr. Hanway? Simply frightful.”

  “He’s after my money.”

  “Do you see what I mean, Mr. Hanway? There is no refinement here. No elegance.” Lady Flaxman was a tall, thin woman with a voice of the purest diction and a black dress of the most elegant cut. She wore her jewels as if she had inherited them. In fact she came from a family of small traders in Enfield. “Are you sure you aren’t making a most terrible mistake?”

  “Oh no. I love Guinevere.”

  “Love is a very small word.” Flaxman was sucking on a piece of fat. “For a very small thing.”

  “You see, Mr. Hanway, my husband has no finesse. He is nature, red in tooth and claw.”

  “I’m not the only one.”

  With a pained smile she sat beside her husband. “Is there any beef left?” Then she looked, slowly and sorrowfully, at Harry. “Like a lamb to the slaughter,” she said.

  “He is not being slaughtered, Mummy, he is getting married to me.”

  “The married state is like a butcher’s shop, dear. Blood on the floor. Everything. The works.” She toyed with a piece of potato. “If there is to be a marriage,” she said, staring disapprovingly at her daughter, “it must be somewhere rural and delightful. A medieval churchyard. Graveyard. Yew trees. Bells. That sort of thing.”

  “As long as there is no confetti,” Guinevere replied.

  “Aren’t you supposed to tie an old boot to the car?” her father asked her. He was looking at his wife.

  “We don’t want anything sexual,” she said. “My mother will be there.”

  “The graveyard may come in handy.”

  “Oh I really can’t bear it. I haven’t got the strength to fight you any more, Martin. Where is the horseradish?” Harry handed her a cut-glass jar and its acccompanying silver spoon. She spread the contents delicately, and then began cutting up the meat in small squares. “I presume, Guinevere, that you will be wearing white?”

  “If you say so, Mother.”

  “It is not what I say. It is what you may or may not have done.” Sir Martin laughed. “It is not a laughing matter. A virgin bride is a wonderful thing. I should know. I was a virgin once. I was the cynosure of all eyes.” She popped a morsel into her mouth. “I am very feminine, you see, Mr. Hanway. I am my own worst enemy. I am easily led.” She glared at her husband. “Not that anyone considers my feelings any more. I might as well be deaf and dumb. I might as well be blind. Like those poor mice.” Guinevere looked towards her father and raised her eyebrows. “Of course,” Lady Flaxman announced to Harry, “there’s no question of children.”

  “Mummy!”

  “Guinevere is too frail. Too weak. It would kill her.”

  Harry looked at his intended wife without any expression.

  The wedding took place on a grey and overcast day. The ceremony in the Guards Chapel was, at Guinevere’s request, very simple. But she wore a white bridal dress, and Harry had bought a dark morning suit. They smiled pleasantly at one another when the union was pronounced by the priest. It was in fact Sir Martin who cried, sobbing quietly as he stood beside his daughter. As the newly wed couple walked down the aisle one of Harry’s colleagues remarked that he seemed very pleased with himself—“As well he might,” he added in a whisper. Guinevere, on the other hand, had an expression of faint bewilderment.

  By the time of the reception, in the Ritz Hotel just across the park, Sir Martin had recovered his composure. He had already decided that he wished to make a speech, and so a microphone had been set up in a corner of the large room in which the party was being held. The walls glittered with long mirrors, and the thick scarlet carpet glowed in the light. The sun shone through the high windows so that the chandeliers, with thousands of pieces of intricate glass, seemed to swim in the general brightness. It had been noticed by some of Harry’s colleagues that this was entirely a Flaxman affair; none of Harry’s family had appeared, and it was presumed that none had been invited. Did he in fact have a family at all? One suggested that he was a Barnardo’s boy, while another speculated that the Hanway relatives were too poor or too uncouth to be shown.

  “I stand here a happy man,” Sir Martin Flaxman was saying into the microphone. “Almost as happy as Harry. He is the cat who gets the cream, isn’t he? I never thought Guinevere would marry. I thought she would become a nun. Seriously. I hope for Harry’s sake that she doesn’t behave like one.” There were loud guffaws from some of the male guests. “I wish you luck, Harry. You’ll need it.”

  “Really this is too much.” Lady Flaxman had turned to her elderly mother. “He has no finesse. No style. No bearing.” Her mother suffered from severe tremors in the lower part of her face, and could scarcely get the glass of champagne to her lips. When she felt the rim on her teeth, however, she gulped it down greedily. She was about to reply. “Shush!” her daughter told her. “I need to listen to this.”

  “I have an announcement to make,” her husband was saying. “When I die—if I die—I intend to leave the business entirely in Guinevere’s hands. I have watched her. I know her. She will make a good chairman of the board.”

  “Jesus H. Christ. This is an absolute insult.” Lady Flaxman turned to her trembling mother. “I have a much better business brain. Guinevere is a mere girl. Do say something, Mother. Please.”

  In the middle of the night, one month later, Harry was lying awake beside Guinevere; she was sleeping, although she was as always restlessly dreaming. He could not sleep; he was making intricate plans for the future, visualising every scene and scheming every move. So he remained alert. But then he saw something. He saw what seemed to be a structure of light rising from Guinevere’s body and taking her shape. This silver outline then seemed to sit upright. It was taller than Guinevere, by a few inches, but it bore the impress of her features. Then it bowed down, apparently in sorrow, before disappearing.

  XII

  The goddess of wind

  “I DON’T blame Harry for not inviting me to the wedding. I understand. I sympathise.” Daniel Hanway was writing to Peter Palmer. “He wants to escape from his past. Including his family. I don’t want to see him any more than he wants to s
ee me. Other news. I have started writing fiction reviews for the Chronicle! The literary editor there is called Damian Etheridge. Very much a journalist. A bit stupid, actually, but friendly enough. He sends me notes with the books saying ‘Don’t hold back’ and ‘Lay down the law.’

  “I know you are going to say that I have always despised novels. This is true. I stopped reading them when they reached the twentieth century. The funny thing is that this is the best possible preparation for reviewing contemporary fiction. Most of it is just embarrassing. Excruciating. You have never seen such garbage. Yet of course the regular reviewers treat these so-called writers as if they were Tolstoy or Proust. If I see the phrase ‘an accomplished debut’ or ‘a return to form’ or ‘a magisterial performance’ or ‘voice of his generation,’ I shall scream and scream until I’m sick.

  “It actually makes me angry, although I admit that anger is an unworthy emotion. As you know I am the most mild-mannered person imaginable. But put me behind a typewriter and I become a fiend. I like to go for the established names. Braine. Golding. Greene. What a lot of charlatans they are! And I get paid thirty pounds a review!”

  Still, he was getting noticed. At literary parties, for which he often travelled to London, his name was becoming recognised. “So you,” one writer said to him, “are the enfant terrible.” He pronounced the French phrase exquisitely.

  “I wouldn’t say that.” As usual, Daniel was very modest.

  “Oh I would.” There was a touch of contempt in his voice. “You like to pick a fight, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why don’t you do some serious reviewing?”

  Daniel did not understand why he was so angry with him. Daniel discovered later that he had criticised a novel by one of his friends.

  “You are making waves,” another writer said. “Make sure that you don’t go under.”

  At Cambridge of course he was ready to dismiss his journalism as a matter of no consequence—if anyone had asked him about it. But his colleagues did not mention it. He knew very well that it was considered vulgar and even indecent to appear in the “public prints.” Yet he had an advantage over his contemporaries in the English Faculty. He had been commissioned to write a book.

  One of the editors at Connaught & Douglas, Aubrey Rackham, had invited him to lunch at The Tramp in Air Street. “I have been keeping an eye on you,” Rackham said as they sat down at their table. He had a low rasping voice, at once affable and conspiratorial. “You are terribly naughty in your reviews.” He always wore a bright red handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suits, and was known to his acquaintances as “Hanky Panky.” “Pure poison, dear. You are a wicked witch. I’ll have a gin and It, please.” He nodded to the waiter, and then winked at Daniel. “In this restaurant, they know what ‘It’ is.” Daniel had no idea what he was talking about, but he laughed all the same. “Bottoms up,” Rackham called out as the drink was placed in front of him. Daniel was then greeted with another expansive wink.

  “Is there a book in you?” Rackham asked him after the first course was over.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Not literally, dear.” Rackham squealed with delight. “You should be so lucky. I mean, do you think you could write a book?”

  The idea had in fact often occurred to Daniel. There was, however, one obstacle to his ambition. He could never hit upon an appropriate subject.

  “I admire your style, you see,” Rackham was saying. “It just needs direction. Thrust.” He settled comfortably into his seat. “A little bird told me that you are a cockney boy.”

  “I was born in Camden Town.”

  “Out of earshot of those silly bells. But you are a Londoner.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I come from Devon originally. Home of old cows. Just up to lipstick level, darling.” A waiter was refilling his wineglass. “There is a book I would like you to think about. Can you guess what it is?” Daniel shook his head. “The Writers of London.”

  He was perplexed and a little disappointed. He had been expecting Rackham to mention an academic topic, perhaps a book of literary criticism, or a new edition of a celebrated classic. The writers of London had never been part of the university curriculum. “London writers, or writers about London?”

  “You can have it both ways, my dear. If you know what I mean.” Another wink. “Look at that waiter. Straight out of Caravaggio.”

  So a few weeks later, after Daniel had prepared a synopsis, he was commissioned to write the book. He tried casually to mention the fact to Paul Wilkin.

  “What?” He looked incredulous. “Who has commissioned you?”

  “Rackham at Connaught & Douglas.”

  “Hanky Panky? That old queen?”

  “Is he?”

  “Is he? Is the pope Catholic?” It was quite like him, Daniel thought, to use a vulgar phrase.

  “How much advance are they giving you?”

  “A thousand pounds.”

  “A thousand pounds!” Wilkin tried unsuccessfully to conceal his envy and resentment. “So what’s it about?”

  “The writers of London.”

  “So it won’t be a long book then.” Now he was sneering at him.

  Daniel decided that he had seen quite enough of Wilkin for the time being. He invented an urgent meeting and walked away.

  He visited Sparkler on the following Sunday. They kissed amicably when he arrived at the little flat in Britannia Street. “I do believe,” Sparkler said, “that you are looking well.”

  Daniel laughed. “How was I looking before?”

  “You were looking like a piece of warm dripping. But now you look better. A few months ago—”

  “Oh now you’re going back to that drunken night at the party—”

  “You was so drunk I could hardly see you.”

  “In—”

  “New Bond Street. Next to the hatters. Opposite the jewellers.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Know? There is nothing about London I don’t know. I’m on first-name terms with the sparrows and very chummy with the pigeons. I’m like a black cab. I get about.”

  They went that evening to the Spit and Sawdust, a public house close beside the river. It was a few yards down from the local police station, and so was patronised by many officers. But it had also become a haunt for Sparkler, who enjoyed their company; they knew him to be a petty thief and a part-time prostitute, but this was no reflection on his character. Two of them were sitting in the saloon bar when Sparkler and Daniel entered.

  “There you are,” one of them said with a laugh.

  “You are absolutely right,” Sparkler replied. “Here I am. This is a friend of mine. He doesn’t say much. What can I get you, Bill? And you, Ben?” He never did call them by their right names. He brought the drinks over, with the help of Daniel. “Bungho!” he said as he raised his pint of Guinness.

  “Here’s looking at you!”

  “One in the eye!”

  “That hit the spot.”

  Daniel said nothing. He did not feel at ease with these two policemen.

  “What have you been up to, Sparkler?”

  “Well, gentlemen, that is a leading question which I may not be at liberty to answer.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “Now don’t embarrass me. I have feelings, don’t I?”

  “I’m weeping.”

  “Enlighten me on one thing, Bill. I came into your station about a month ago. To tell you about the arson attack on my block.”

  “Oh did you?”

  “Yes I did. No one never gave me a ring about it.”

  “Did they not?” They looked at each other and smiled.

  “You know that Asher Ruppta is the landlord.”

  “The wog? Of course we do. He is the big cheese around here.” Ben was rubbing together his thumb and first finger. “He’s got the lolly.”

  “If it was him what did it, and I only say if—if it was him, then
he should be stopped.”

  “Where does your friend come from? Not around here.”

  “University.”

  The two policemen looked with suspicion at Daniel. “He ain’t a student.”

  “I am a lecturer.”

  “Is that so?” He looked back at Sparkler. “You don’t want to be worrying about Ruppta.”

  “I want to find him out.”

  “He has a lot of friends.”

  “I’m not scared of him. I’m not scared of anyone or nothing.”

  The other policeman had been watching Daniel. “What’s a nice boy doing with a villain like this?”

  It was not an easy question to answer. “Dry up,” Sparkler answered for him. “None of your business.”

  “But it’s yours, is it?” Both officers burst into laughter.

  Daniel blushed, and looked away.

  Sparkler changed the subject. “I might need a little bit of help.”

  “For what?”

  “Finding them.” It suddenly occurred to Daniel that this was the reason Sparkler frequented the Spit and Sawdust—“help” was offered and taken in both directions. Information was passed on.

  “And what do you mean by them?”

  “Them bastards that started the fire.”

  The policeman stared at Sparkler, his level gaze suggesting perhaps that this was not the best idea. But he said nothing. Then his colleague offered a diversion. Someone was sitting at a nearby table. He was a tall and emaciated figure, with long yellow hair. He must have been in his early twenties, but he was wearing the clothes of a middle-aged man—a black overcoat, black trousers, and a black cap. “Do you know who that is? That’s the jackdaw.”

  “The jackdaw?” Sparkler looked up with surprise and interest. “What’s he doing around here?”

  “Sizing up the neighbourhood, I should think. You’ve got competition.”

  The young man with the black cap looked over towards them with what seemed to Daniel to be a contemptuous expression. The “jackdaw,” as Daniel soon learned from Sparkler, was a notorious thief and receiver of stolen goods who operated south of the river in Southwark and Bermondsey. He had a reputation for viciousness. Although Sparkler had never met him, he was acquainted with several people who had been slashed or beaten by this emaciated young man.