by Aileen Izett
There was too much at stake for him.
“You won’t tell anyone?” he asked.
“That you were here doing a deal when there was an international embargo?”
He looked shamed.
“Put like that, yes.”
“I’m your sister.”
“You won’t tell anyone? Not Philip? Not Eveline?”
“No one. Promise.”
He was wrung out, exhausted suddenly. “Thank you.”
He clambered to his feet. “I’ve told you everything now. No more secrets. I bloody well wish I’d never heard of the Kumono Mining Company. Are you coming down for supper?”
I shook my head.
“Suit yourself then,” he said flatly, stung by my rejection.
I woke in the middle of the night to the gentle rumbling of snoring, one floor down. My father snored. I liked the sound of it as a child, waking up and knowing my parents were near. I went down the stairs carefully, the sheet trailing behind me, stepping over the shadows which lay motionless on the treads.
I stood over Tom in the gym room, lying flat out on the mattress. The exercise bike was nearby, eerie in the moonlight. It could have been Tom’s tethered horse from the Gingerbread House of our childhood. Snores shunted in and out of his slack mouth and every so often, he snuffled one back through his nose. Either way, the noises spilled into the room and out to the rest of the house. I looked for the little boy who shared my childhood. I looked and looked from the tip of the receding hairline to the edge of sheet half covering the hairless chest, and I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see him at all. It was as if he had been cannibalised by the stranger in the bed.
Tom’s eyelids flickered open. His face was glazed with sleep. “Sis,” he mumbled. He pulled away the sheet, about to get up. “Something wrong?”
Always, I thought sadly, he had some misplaced notion of protecting me.
‘You’re a duplicitous bastard.’ I didn’t say that. Instead, I said “Nothing. You were snoring.”
He flopped back onto the bed and closed his eyes. I pulled the sheet up around his shoulders. I didn’t know for whom I felt more sorry: him or me.
Tom grunted and rolled over to face the wall. I tiptoed out of the room, back to my turret through a silence heavy with shadow.
Chapter 49
I didn’t emerge from the turret until after midday. I dozed, off and on, listening to the activity outside. Tom and Eveline were gardening, from the sounds of the wheelbarrow rattling across the gravel, the occasional grunt from Tom, and Eveline’s light voice, questioning.
When I eventually looked out of the window, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Heart pounding, I ran down the stairs, wrenched open the front door and ran down those steps.
I hadn’t been hallucinating: there were six long, oblong heaps of earth dotted around the vicinity of chapel’s ruined wall.
Tom and Eveline, with their backs to me, were sitting on a knoll of lawn nearby. They were wedged close to each other. He had his arm around her. Her head rested on his shoulder. Tom heard my feet crunching on the gravel. He turned his head. “Nothing.”
He smiled up at me, tired and triumphant. Eveline looked miserable. She got up onto her feet and dashed past me, disappearing through the front door which I’d left open in my haste.
“Poor little girl,” Tom said. “She’s seen reason at last.”
“You’ve ruined the lawn.”
“It will mend. Like she will now. Valerie was right. She did need closure.”
“You’re Machiavellian.”
He laughed. “No. I just survive.”
A series of clanks rumbled out of the château. Eveline was having a bath.
“I wish you’d warned me about the plumbing,” he said, giving a mock groan.
“This is just bonkers Tom. Why here, by the chapel?”
“She insisted. Said that she felt his presence. I tell you she needs professional help.”
“Have you heard anything more from the Wareing man?”
“No,” he said sharply. “The phone’s disconnected remember?” He shielded his eyes with his hand. “Isn’t the view glorious?”
Tom proposed a dip in the pool.
“I can’t be bothered to go up to the tower again to get my costume.”
“You’ve got your bra and pants.”
“Pants,” I considered myself in my baggy grey pants which have been chewed by the château washing machine too many times.
“I’m your brother, Sis, not Greg.” He gave a knowing grin.
So we moved through the pulsating heat to the swimming pool terrace. Tom took off his t-shirt and shorts. His soft body, streaked with earth from his digging and clad only in a pair of boxers, glowed white in the sun. Tom slipped into the water. I stood hesitantly by the side. He dipped his head and shoulders beneath. “It’s great!” he shouted, striking out.
I peeled off my clothes.
“What do you mean about Greg?” Dirt from my feet eddied through the water like chocolate sauce.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice him mooning over you.”
“I didn’t actually,” I say, which was true up to a point. “Not until you came, anyway.”
Water sloshed over the sides of the pool as Tom ploughed backwards and forwards. I didn’t try to keep pace. I enjoyed the rhythm of my arms and legs, breaking through the shimmering reflection of sky. Eventually, Tom turned onto his back. “This is the life.”
“If you have a life. Unlike Eveline’s brother.”
“Please, don’t go on and on.”
“I wonder where Eveline is?”
“You’re very possessive of her aren’t you?” He kicked some water at me, teasingly.
“I like her. I can’t imagine what she has been through.”
“It’s more than that. You’re half in love with her.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Anyway, she is going tomorrow. Nothing more to keep her here. Job done.”
I was about to argue with him. I didn’t like the note of satisfaction in his voice. He turned on his back again with a hefty splash to gaze at the sky.
“There you are!” It was a call full of cheer and undisputedly directed at us. For a second I thought they were little old men, hunched over by the heaviness of their rucksacks, as they came alongside the pool — then I recognised the high forehead as Harry removed his trilby.
Chapter 50
“Who the hell are you?” Tom charged through the water like a bull.
Harry and Serena were in the same clothes that they were wearing before: same shabby green shorts and shirt for Harry, and Serena in the swirly skirt with tiny mirrors embroidered on the hem.
Harry took a step back, nearly toppling with the weight of his rucksack. “We thought the place was deserted at first but then we recognised the car round the front…”
“And then we heard your voices!” Serena smiled, unhitching the straps of her rucksack from her shoulders. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s okay,” I called over to Tom as he was about to heave himself out of the pool. “I know them. They’re students.”
Tom splashed back into the water and glared.
The prospect of getting out of the pool was not appealing. I really didn’t want Serena’s sympathetic gaze lingering on my improvised bikini. I made the introductions from the water, Tom alongside me.
“This is my brother, Tom Braid.”
Tom, I knew, was waiting for the exclamation of recognition. It never came.
“How come you know Sis?” Tom sounded quite jolly, welcoming even.
“Your sister gave us a lift,” Serena explained breathlessly, “and when she mentioned that she was staying in this village, it… well…” She looked to Harry.
Tom was out of the water, looking around for the towels which we hadn’t thought to bring.
“It piqued our curiosity,” Harry finished what Serena was going to say, “and since we’ve seen all the major
sights provincial France has to offer, we thought we’d come, take a look.”
“Nothing better to do?” Tom rubbed himself brusquely with his t-shirt.
Harry gave Tom a look full of admiration for his frankness. “I suppose you could say that, yes.” He changed the subject adroitly. “This is the Kumono château, isn’t it?”
Tom took me aback with a simple “Yes.”
Harry shook his head in disbelief. “Wow.”
It was easy to see that Tom had decided to deal with the Kumonos’ connection to the château, as a matter of fact. Nothing more and nothing less. Reluctantly, I clambered out of the pool.
“How fascinating.” Serena turned to me as I once again put dry clothes onto wet skin. “You never told us you were actually living here?”
I pretended not to have heard her. I left Tom to give our unexpected visitors a tour of the château. He took them round to the front so that they could see the chapel. He’d make up some story to explain the dug-up earth. It wouldn’t be the truth. I knew that for certain. I went back in the house.
Eveline wasn’t in her room nor was she in the bathroom. The tub was still full of water. I pulled the plug, plunging my hand through the oily surface of the tepid water. I picked the damp towel off the floor, with the monogram ‘CH’ beautifully embroidered in a corner. I hung it on one of the pipes running across the wall. All the while, Tom’s voice floated in through the open window with the resonance of a tour guide’s.
The doors on the first floor swung open onto silent rooms. Most showed signs of Greg’s recent industry: a swipe of fresh plaster, a dismantled radiator, a new floorboard with the old one propped up against the wall. I pictured Greg’s little daughter, her arms outstretched, her face beaming, her short legs running towards the father who had bent his long gangly frame to catch her up in his arms — but she couldn’t, I thought. Greg’s daughter wouldn’t know who he was.
There was a shout of laughter from outside. I looked out the window. Harry was larking around on the edge of the pool — fully dressed and wildly showing off, I would have said, for Eveline’s benefit. No wonder I couldn’t find her. She was in the pool with Serena, finally in her bikini. She looked lovely: wet hair slicked back from a face lit up by a smile. Harry was pretending to teeter. Serena reached up, trying to grab his ankle. Her voice carried clearly.
“Come on Eveline, let’s get him!”
Tom had introduced her by the only name he knew. Harry toppled in. The girls jumped on top of him.
Tom was on the pink lounger, far enough from the pool not to be splashed. He was back in his swim trunks. He had a glass of wine in his hand and was smiling with amusement, watching the antics in the pool. The bottle was on the ground beside him.
I leant out. “Everything okay?”
All four faces looked up. Eveline waved. Tom waved as well.
I went up the stairs to the second floor. Tom, despite his protestations about a bad back, had turned the gym room into a makeshift bedroom. The exercise bike was draped with clothes. A towel was slung over another machine. His bedside table was a suitcase, a travel alarm clock within easy reach. No wonder Tom rose early in the morning, the alarm was set for six o’clock. The clock told me that it was five o’clock in the afternoon, which was right, given the slant of sun across the floor.
I switched on the treadmill, set it at an impossibly high speed and listened to it whir; a clackety-clack sound. I left it running. There was a lot of choice, a lot of machines.
I decided on the shoulder press. I brushed the layer of dust covering the plastic seat, put my elbows on the outside of the pads and tried to push them together, as demonstrated by the helpful diagram. Nothing moved. The weight, I discovered, was set at twenty kilos. I moved the weight to one.
So there I was, my arms moving backwards and forwards, squeezing the minutes away and thinking about how both Tom and Eveline had an extraordinary ability to switch personas much in the same way as a chameleon reacts to its surroundings, when it occurred to me that Tom’s mattress was not flush with the floor. I remember smiling because, as a little boy, he had stuffed all his treasures under his mattress in the vain hope that I wouldn’t find them. It didn’t occur to me not to investigate. Respect for my sibling’s privacy simply wasn’t part of the childhood memory which propelled me, with infantile delight, to slide my hand underneath the mattress. I dislodged bundles of newspapers.
Tom, it would seem, the five days he had been at the château, had bought every single copy of every English newspaper carried by the newsagent down in the village. Puzzled, I looked through them. Why? My little brother was literally front page news in a back issue of the Daily Mail. There he was in black and white, times five, because there were five copies: my brother Tom and Samantha, looking impossibly glamorous, smiling out at me. My mind seized up. I had to spell out the words of the caption — times five: ‘Braid Bust’.
I examined and re-examined the photo which must have been at least ten years old. Tom seemed so young.
I saw page seven as per instruction. I read black words such as ‘fraud’, ‘tax evasion’, and ‘pension deficit’. In fact, I didn’t have to read them; they leapt out at me, up off the page.
Page three of a broadsheet had a headline with the word ‘Braid’. Colin Wareing’s explanation was convoluted: Tom had been using money that he didn’t have to buy companies. If the banks hadn’t started to call in loans, no one would have been any the wiser.
Another newspaper talked of breaking bank covenants and investor panic.
The most recent edition discussed of Tom’s disappearance — not even his ‘estranged wife’ knew where he was. There was concern for his mental and physical welfare.
No wonder he had rushed down to France. No wonder he had wanted to keep the château secret.
The alarm shattered my concentration. My hand slammed down on the clock, breaking it, silencing it forever at six o’clock.
I stuffed the newspapers back under the mattress and sat for a while, listening to the silence. Only birdsong filtered in from outside. The treadmill had ground to a halt. According to Colin Wareing, my brother was a thief. The pity of it was that I wasn’t surprised. I’d suspected as much for a long time but, true to form, had never acknowledged my suspicions. I couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. It was a relief. It was a relief too, to realise that knowing what I did, I still loved my brother. I thought then that my love for my brother had passed the ultimate test. How wrong I was.
I heard Tom’s voice, Harry’s voice and Serena’s voice, their shoes crunching over the gravel. A car door slammed: once, twice, three times. My car, not Harry’s and Serena’s, fired up. The noise faded as the car went down the avenue. I wondered where Tom was taking the youngsters. It worried me, I remember, that he was too drunk to drive.
I got to my feet. The lights on the console blinked furiously like there was an emergency. There was, in a way, an emergency going on in a château which used to belong one of the world’s most dissolute dictators, and which now belonged to a man, who, from what I had read, would have to spend some time in prison.
He hadn’t wanted me to know. With no internet access, TV or radio, I could only have found out through a newspaper. He’d have guessed that the resident English would be too circumspect — and too afraid to be seen to be prying — to tell me. It was a small crumb of comfort.
The swimming pool was deserted, a child’s faded plastic ball floating on its flat surface. The sight of it, bobbing about like a bald man’s head, made me shiver. There was an empty wine bottle beside the lounger and four dirty glasses. I passed through the archway, past the furniture store and out onto the gravel in the front.
Eveline started when she heard her name. She turned round and watched me approach. She had been sitting gazing at the view across the valley, by the ruined walls of the chapel.
“I thought everyone had gone.” I sat down beside her. The sun was low enough in the sky to make the graveyard on the oppo
site hill glint, like a myriad of little fireflies in the light. The tranquillity of the scene belied the frantic activity of only hours before; the heaps of earth in front of us.
“They’ve run out of oil for their car, so Tom has taken them to a garage.”
“You didn’t go?”
“I wanted to be alone.”
I told her that I was going to go back to England sometime soon. “Come with me.”
Eveline turned away from me, back towards the panorama.
“Harry has offered me a lift to Paris tomorrow.”
“So they’re staying the night?” I was surprised that Tom had invited them.
“And from there, I am going home. I am going to tell the authorities what happened.” Whether they believe me or not… there is so little proof.”
“But what if they put you in prison? Aren’t you running a terrible risk?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I have nothing to lose.”
I longed to run a finger down the nape of her neck, feel the bones beneath the skin. To have her. To comfort her. I wanted to tell her that there had been a passport which would have been sufficient proof. I didn’t. I didn’t want to add to her distress. I didn’t want her to think of Tom as a heartless monster. I thought that maybe Tom was correct, that it would be better for her not to know for certain that her brother had been at the château. Whatever the reason, in that small moment of longing, I failed her.
“My brother was here, despite what Tom says. I know he was here. Finally,” she turned her head and smiled at me, “I have peace.”
“What about your husband?”
“My husband,” she said, as if it were a joke, that she had a husband. Then she asked when I would return to London.
“Soon.” I would have liked to explain about me and Philip, about me and Tom, about what Tom is presumed to have done — but it was too inconsequential compared with what she had had to face.
“I needed to know about my brother. Nothing else mattered.”
“Be careful,” was what I wanted to say to her. I didn’t.