by Tim Parks
Because Martin substituted for my brother. Twenty minutes later Daniel was climbing to the third floor of a once grand terraced house now split into small flats. He and his elder brother Frank had last met, but hardly spoken, at the colonel’s funeral. But then they had hardly spoken at all since that afternoon thirty years ago when Martin Shields had taken it upon himself to tell the house-master about the blood on his younger friend’s back. Was it entirely coincidental – Daniel stopped on a patch of old carpet – that the crisis with Hilary had come simultaneous with Colonel Savage’s death? On the landing, as if in some Masonic trial, there were two identical doors, left and right, with nothing to distinguish between them. Certainly he had frequently felt, during the old man’s interminable illness, that he had to sleep with every woman he met. Had to. He would visit his father, then use the excuse to rush off to a girlfriend. Stink of death. The stairs smelt of cat. Tanned as ever! a voice called. Daniel looked up. I thought you said the third floor. Did I? Sorry squire. Daniel climbed the last flight. His brother greeted him with a mocking bow. My name is V-Vrank. Velcome to my ha-umble ha-ome!
Frank had always been a fat boy. Now he was a flabby, shambling, bespectacled man in his late forties. They had seen each other so little. Generous trousers, clean white tee-shirt. No neck. Daniel watched his brother as he walked ahead along squeaking boards to an ample sitting room, thickly carpeted, cluttered with the sort of moderately priced antiques, plaster busts and brass bric-a-brac that Hilary was always so scornful of. English muddle, she called it. As if Hilary didn’t belong in England. Take a pew, Frank said, but Daniel went to a window that opened over the patternless scribble of the southern side of town. It was quite a view. To his surprise his brother came to stand beside him. Three hundred thousand souls, Frank commented. There was heavy traffic. Or none, of course, he laughed, depending on how you look at it. Was it bad? he enquired when Daniel sat down. He seemed genuinely sympathetic. Coma, briefly, Daniel said. So the world was told, and the eye? Another couple of weeks, then we see what it can see. Frank scratched at the corner of his mouth. He has, Daniel was aware, a slovenly, sensual mouth, yet it was the colonel’s mouth too. The colonel had never been slovenly. But the fat face was the same. The man was his son.
Frank seemed pleased to have got his brother into his flat. Pain? he asked. He was immediately more accommodating than at any time on the phone. No time for it at the time, if you see what I mean, Daniel explained. There was a short silence. Daniel said: Actually, it wasn’t as painful as when you used to cut strips out of my back, Frank. They looked at each other. Still thinking about that? Frank raised an eyebrow; his broad face assumed the wry expression that had always awed his younger brother. The fat man laughed. Course the person who should have been expelled, he remarked lightly, was yourself, squire, for letting me do it. He’s at ease with himself, Daniel realised. My wayward, sponging failure of a brother is at ease with himself! Arthur, Frank was shouting. Arthur! A door opened along the passageway. Want to make some tea, can you?
Still, you probably did me a favour in the end, Frank went on easily. I didn’t do anything, Daniel said quickly. No, Frank agreed. He sat down in a second dusty armchair. No, you never did anything, did you? He put his feet up on a low table. None of the furniture in the room seemed to be from the same set. On the other hand, the place had a wayward cluttered cosiness to it. Brightly painted and carved as if flapping, a wooden Union Jack hung askew on the grey wall. The man called Arthur appeared with mugs and teapot. Stick’em on the table, kid, Frank said. And he said: Only now, three decades later, that same impeccably-behaved brother finally gets in touch again because he wants bruv to find a tart for him. Nice, eh?
How’s Mother? Daniel asked, I see some newspaper managed to get a few quotes out of her. Enjoying her dotage, Frank said. I presume, Daniel said, that she’s run out of money. Frank sighed, that’s right, squire, more or less, if she doesn’t sell up, that is. So my badly behaved brother waits thirty years, then calls me to ask for money when his mum runs out? Touché! Frank smiled. Depressing isn’t it? He seemed in excellent spirits. The man called Arthur wore blue shorts and a tank top. Perched on a bar-stool by the window, his body was wiry, his thin, clean-shaven face alert and solemn. Daniel had expected something very different. No one had ever said that Frank was gay. But then the only news he ever got of his brother was through Mrs Savage, when she deigned to speak to him. Mrs Savage spoke to Frank, and Colonel Savage spoke to Daniel. They were sponsors of competing teams. Your mother always loved a loser, the colonel had confided.
Presumably you know that mum always tells me not to get in touch with you, Daniel said. Claims it would only upset you. Is that so? Frank asked. And you very wisely obey her? I don’t imagine you were waiting by the phone, Daniel said. To tell the truth, I thought you were in London. Frank sniffed, shook his head, exchanged a glance with Arthur. Let’s get to the point, he said, have you brought the cash? Daniel took an envelope from his jacket pocket, he had his court clothes on, and laid it on the card table beside the teapot. This, after all, was exactly how the police went about finding information. They paid informers. People like Harville. People who often enough had had a part in the crime they informed about. So the stuff about the mortgage and bridging loans was all bull, Frank smiled affably. Not at all, Daniel said. I’m in rather a difficult situation actually as far as cash is concerned. Yet willing to spend generously when it comes to skirt. Just tell me where she is, Daniel said.
Arthur? Frank made a gesture. Unsmiling, the younger man went to the table between the windows and picked up a small notebook. Flat 72, Arthur read, Sandringham House, Dalton Estate, Sperringway. His accent was American, but of the kind that suggests the best New England education. In his late thirties perhaps. That’s all? Daniel asked. He found a scrap of paper in his wallet and fiddled for a pen. I don’t recall the master asking us anything else. Frank again hammed an extravagantly ironic expression. It was the sort of thing that used to drive Colonel Savage mad. Daniel ignored it. But you’re quite sure? he insisted. Arthur said: A young Korean woman called Minnie Kwan – that’s K-W-A-N right? – definitely lives at that address on Sperringway. How did you find out? Any fool can find out this sort of thing, Frank interrupted. Then he said: Arthur and I have a stall in Doherty Street. Actually we need the cash, you might be reassured to know, to buy some better stock. There are plenty of people at the market you can ask for help when it comes to finding someone.
Doherty Street market? Daniel could hardly take it in. Running a market stall hadn’t seemed one of the possibilities available to Colonel Savage’s children. Antiques, Frank smiled. And in case you were wondering, yes, we have already sold most of Mother’s stuff. The vanished inheritance. I have to be off, Daniel stood up. He felt dazed. As a child it always seemed that the only options in life were professional English success or nameless, third-world poverty. Now his brother was running a market stall.
He got to his feet, offered Arthur his hand. Behind him Frank hadn’t risen. Why don’t you stop a bit? he asked. His air of avuncular superiority was annoying. But perhaps he means to be friendly, Daniel thought. I’m in a rush, he said. Quietly Frank announced: Someone’s screwing you for cash, aren’t they, squire? Daniel turned and smiled. Nothing so dramatic, he laughed. That nervous laugh again. Comas and eye-patches sound pretty dramatic to me, Frank remarked. Someone’s blackmailing you.
Having climbed onto his feet, Daniel now found they wouldn’t move. Standing still in the middle of the room, he was again struck by what a different world this was, these dusty rugs and armchairs, this quiet view of the drabber suburbs. But complete in its way. I could live here, he thought. It was this domestic solidity he hadn’t expected. News of Frank had always had to do with addictions and bookmakers and unpaid rent in threadbare boarding houses.
Having shaken hands, Arthur had gone to a cabinet in the corner and was shuffling through a stack of CDs. Frank, Daniel said firmly, I am not being blackmailed. Fran
k looked at him, lips pursed. But you are going right away to see this girl whose no doubt numerous friends and relations beat you up, right? Not at all, Daniel lied. Danny, Frank said, for a moment his voice shed its customary self-parody, can’t you see? I’m actually worried for you, fuck it. I’m even beginning to like you. You’re a judge, a public figure, you’ve been all over the papers and TV, you’ve always been Mr Clean, then all of a sudden you’re spending two grand just for an address, for a child anyone could have found if they’d thought about it, and then rushing off to the Dalton Estate of all places, Shanghai, Bombay and Khartoum banged together in British prefab. I love it. He smiled: What I’m saying is. Perhaps I can help. Your old useless brother can do a bit more for his cash, squire, he finished. The bantering tone was unmistakably affectionate now.
I don’t need help, Daniel said. But he seemed unable to move. Someone had clearly told the police that a dark man, well dressed, had been sitting at table with a bunch of Koreans. In the Capricorn. Why else the photos? They were digging out their criminal Koreans. Judge Savage was struck by a sense of unreality, the frightening counterpart to that exhilaration he once used to feel making love to a young Asian girl on a heap of rugs, or to a colleague’s fiancée in a seaside hotel. Jane’s yellow hair! That too had been quite unreal. Carnival, the word came to mind. He should have been wearing a mask. Is Judge Savage amongst us mortals, Frank enquired. Or is he communing with powers above? Daniel looked at his brother. It was this girl’s people beat you up, Frank insisted. Some abuse of nuptial rights, I presume. Dan, brother, I’m on your side. I’m pleased you had it in you! Daniel shook his head.
Only now did he notice that soft jazz had begun to play. He had always loathed jazz. In particular soft jazz. Very practically, perched on his bar stool, the man called Arthur suggested: Perhaps we could come along with you at least and offer our, er, moral support. Right, Frank said. Bit difficult to start hitting three of us. I’m fine, Daniel insisted, he even managed to smile. The situation isn’t at all what you imagine.
Sperringway, he told the cabbie. He had never been in these estates before but knew that they tended to be divided up into different ethnic groups. A black in an Asian block might be even more obvious than a white. So many of his clients had come from Sperringway, in the days when he defended. The truth was that without his wig on, he wasn’t entirely sure how people saw him. Sandringham House, he said. He was against the movement to scrap wigs. Then it occurred to him that perhaps it was Father’s death that had allowed Frank to do something other than succeed or fail, as in a way it allowed me to imagine leaving Hilary, he thought. Somebody dies and quite unexpectedly you can be someone else.
The driver pulled off the main road into a group of council high-rises. It was when the flats were sold off, Daniel had heard, that people started to sort themselves into their ethnic groups. Then it occurred to him that if he had a mobile phone – he must get one at once – he would be able to call Hilary at a moment like this, from the back of a cab. Not to discuss this business with her, of course. But to touch base, to run a hand along the solid wall of that side of his personality. Man in carnival mask phones wife! No doubt that sort of thing does happen.
He paid the driver. There is nothing frightening about the place at all, he told himself, standing by a bin. The few kids hanging out didn’t seem surprised to see a taxi. They were kicking a tennis ball. My defence is surprise, Daniel thought. They can’t be expecting me to arrive at the door. This place has been harshly judged, he decided, walking across the hard mud of what designers must have planned as a lawn. Where was it he had seen the Dalton estate mentioned recently? He looked around. You have to move your head more with only the one eye working. He looked up and was dazzled. As yesterday at Tom’s Sports Centre, the weather was halcyon, the July sun brightly blurred behind a haze of high cloud. Never judge a place in sunshine, Hilary always said.
Yes, it was the man who broke his son’s wrist. Daniel stopped by the first block. Not the stone-throwers, they came from the other side of town. A better area. Is this Sandringham? he asked. A freckled little girl ran away chased by her dog. There’s too much dog shit here. Trying to work out where the name of the block would be written, he remembered that the social worker in the case had made much of the cramped circumstances in which the man’s family found themselves. It’s ridiculous that it doesn’t say which block is which! The boy claimed he had fallen out of the first floor window, but in his confession to the police the father had pointed out that the windows didn’t open enough for anyone to fall out of them. How long did I send him down for? Then he saw a sort of swimming pool mosaic on the column beside the door. Balmoral. Good.
He walked on. Sandringham was the third. Odd, it occurred to him, given how well-off the Kwan family must presumably be, that Minnie would be living in one of these small, erstwhile council flats. Perhaps she has escaped from home. She is well and happy. A five-year-old was going round and round the lobby on a bike too big for him, a woman with chin in hands watched from the stairs. It was hard to say what the smell was. Does the lift work? Daniel asked. I should bloody well hope so, she said. It wasn’t urine. She was cheerful and uninterested. How can I know which floor to go to for which flat? You what? Is 72 on the seventh floor? The bicycle went round and round him, the boy scraping his toe on the cement. Where else would it be? she asked. As the winch whined and the box lurched upward, Daniel felt the same rush of fear he had experienced two days ago in the lift at Carlton Mansions. Is this courage or folly? he wondered.
A narrow balcony ran right across the front of the block. It wouldn’t do to suffer from a fear of heights. I’m going to see Minnie at last. The doors were orange. Daniel knocked. There was a chrome knocker. The window was curtained. The men will all be at work, he told himself. A muffled voice said something incomprehensible. Then again. Was it a woman’s voice? It’s incomprehensible my being here. He almost panicked. Still the door didn’t open. I’m looking for Minnie Kwan, he said. Who is it? came the question. Yes, a woman’s voice, he realised, an old woman. His fingers unclenched. Daniel Savage, he said. He felt a certain satisfaction. Daniel Savage, he repeated, very slowly and clearly. I’m looking for Minnie Kwan. The door opened on a chain, showing a wrinkled cheek. Who are you? They all speak English the same way, he told himself. They’re all the same. But now a younger, shriller voice intervened. There was the sound of rapid movement, a voluble exchange, the door tensed, then swung inwards. Behind a small, flustered elderly lady stood Minnie Kwan.
They were still arguing. Beyond the narrow entrance, Daniel glimpsed a sitting room choked with colour and ornament. There was a strong foreign smell, the den of a species he didn’t know. He felt so relieved to see her. Finally, Minnie reached across the older woman, grabbed his sleeve and tugged him inside. It was incense, he realised. Alarmed, the tiny lady, whom Daniel now saw had sharp wooden skewers in her hair, retreated, almost scuttled, from the door to stand defensively at a point where three other doors were closed. She was still speaking rapidly. Don’t worry, she won’t understand a word of what we say, Minnie told him, then turned to continue their argument. Daniel watched this girl he had once made love to, jabbering away high-pitched, brushing hair from her lips. She wore blue jeans and a simple white smock. More attractive dressed than un-, he remembered. What pleasure there had been was quite insignificant now. The danger, on the other hand, had multiplied. Minnie turned. She’s agreed you can stay for ten minutes, but she has to watch us. That’s fine, Daniel said.
Quickly then, she asked, why on earth have you come? She sat on a green cushion, facing His Honour Judge Savage where he was now perched forward on a low wicker chair. In the opposite corner, he noticed a thin line of smoke rising vertically before a niche of photographs. Think clearly, he decided. He was so relieved to find her. Really, he could get up and go now. They were extravagantly framed. I’ve done my duty just seeing her.
Well? She was looking up at him, her eyes expectant and charmi
ng, forcing him to assume the role of the able older man. He clasped his hands together, as he tended to do on the judge’s table: You called me and said you were desperate. I was worried for you. I thought perhaps something had happened to you. As he spoke, he remembered the charmingly cocked inquisitive gaze she had had as she sat in the front row of the jury. You’d said your father was violent. So finally I got in touch with your boyfriend, Ben. You remember you’d told me about him. I was supposed to be going to meet him, to find out if you were okay, and instead your father and brothers came and, I presume, though I can’t be sure because I didn’t actually see them, they beat me up.