by Primula Bond
It’s New Year’s Eve and the city is revelling. I was swimming against the tide as the Yellow Cab brought me slowly up Broadway just now after my fruitless trip to the airport, hoping that Gustav would be on the next plane. Everyone else was surging southwards, towards the overcrowded neon oblong of Times Square.
As the rockets explode like mortars above the building another reflection in the darkened window comes to stand beside mine.
Pierre presses his mouth against my ear. ‘Such a pity Gustav isn’t here.’
CHAPTER TWO
The Levi Gallery in central London, two weeks ago. The moment when Gustav Levi came face to face with his long-lost brother.
You could have heard a pin drop. The five of us were frozen in a tableau, our expressions ranging from bewilderment to shock. Gustav, me, Pierre, Polly, and Gustav’s faithful assistant Crystal.
It was suddenly very dark in the huge space. The pool of light from the anglepoise lamp struggled against the encroaching shadows and the thick white snow falling over the Embankment outside, which blocked out the remains of the day, closed all escape routes and turned down the volume.
‘Pierre! So let me get this straight. My cousin Polly’s new boyfriend turns out to be Gustav’s brother?’ My voice, too shrill, was the first to shatter the silence. ‘You were masked last time I saw you at the Halloween party. No wonder I never put two and two together, just the eyes – but my God, look how alike they are!’
Nobody replied. Nobody stirred.
‘I’m – for once I’m lost for words,’ Gustav stammered at last, his voice creaking up from somewhere so deep inside it could have been buried in a coffin. He had taken one step, but he was still standing behind the gallery desk. I could see a dense stain of colour creeping up his jaw line. ‘I never thought I’d see you again, Pierre. How did you find me?’
‘I’ve always known where you were. After all, you haven’t exactly ventured far in five years, have you, despite being an international man of mystery? I thought you might have started afresh, Paris, perhaps. Amsterdam. Tokyo. But I guess you’ve been keeping close to your assets.’
Pierre’s voice was as deep and dark as his brother’s. There was the same mesmeric, smooth texture to it, except that tonight it was pebble-dashed with bitterness and there was a transatlantic twang in his accent, contrasting with the clipped, European flavour of Gustav’s.
‘I’m just about to make a move to New York, as it happens,’ replied Gustav. ‘Various business projects over there need my attention for the next year or so. Another few days and you’d have missed me. But I’ll admit it, a part of me always hoped you’d come back one day.’ He leaned heavily on the desk, his dark hair falling over his face as he bit his lip, hard, in doubt. One hand was still poised over the sales figures we’d been congratulating ourselves on just a couple of minutes ago. ‘So what are you doing here?’
Pierre gestured at the photograph Stairway to Heaven, depicting an empty escalator forever ascending in a shopping centre. The picture was now propped up against the desk, half wrapped in brown paper and gaffer tape. My self-portrait was still up on the wall, not yet destined for New York. All the other photographs had been shipped to their new owners.
‘It appears that I’m a client. I’ve had a few hours to get my head round this unexpected reunion, so I’m better prepared than you, but until this morning, when Polly asked me to write a cheque to the Levi Gallery, I had no idea we had any connection.’
‘No connection? No connection?’ Gustav lifted both his hands and slammed them back on the desk, pushing it with a discordant scrape of wood and wheels across the concrete. We all flinched. ‘We’re brothers, you bastard!’
‘Gustav! Stop it! He must be as anxious and wounded as you are, but he’s here, isn’t he?’ I pressed close to make him hear me. My hand was still on my lover’s arm. I locked my fingers hard even though I knew perfectly well he’d rather I backed off. ‘I still don’t know exactly what went so terribly wrong between you, but isn’t this, deep down, precisely what you’ve longed for?’
‘Serena, please,’ Gustav hissed back at me. ‘You don’t know what he and that witch did.’
‘They slept together. And left together. You and Crystal between you have told me that much. And I’m guessing it was extremely ugly – enough for you to stop speaking for five years.’ I lifted my hand towards Pierre, still keeping my voice down. ‘But he’s stepped back into your life. Now’s your chance to make up.’
Gustav shook his head impatiently, his eyes still lasering across the room at Pierre as if he couldn’t bear the sight but could not tear himself away either. ‘Pierre. First things first. You just said you found my business card in your car. How did it get there?’
‘My driver gave it to me when he picked me up from the airport the other day. He’d cleared out the car immediately after my last trip to London and found it wedged beside the arm rest.’ Pierre continued running the card across the dark bristles on his upper lip. ‘Someone had left it there. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t Polly and it certainly wasn’t you. So we had to recall who else had a ride in the limo when I was over here at Halloween.’ Pierre flicked the card over in his fingers and tipped his head to one side. ‘Which didn’t take long. Because on the back, in your handwriting, it says, “Ring me, Serena.” So it all started to fall into place.’
Now all four of us were looking at Gustav, waiting. He kept his black eyes fixed on his brother. So agonisingly similar. Same simmering, volcanic fury. Same height, same glossy black hair, although Pierre’s is cut shorter and thicker, standing in rebellious boyish tufts on his head.
They were like a pair of matching stags about to rut in the gloaming.
Pierre cricked his neck and then waved his arm in a sweeping arc to encompass me and Polly. ‘Looks like our lovely girlfriends have brought us together.’
‘How did the business card I gave to you, Serena, end up in my estranged brother’s car?’ Gustav turned slowly and glared at me. I could see the muscle going in his jaw, the flicker of tension that I hadn’t seen for weeks now. ‘What the hell has been going on?’
I opened my mouth like a fish, closed it again. Kept my grip on his arm. He tried to shake me off, but I put my hand up to his face and turned it towards me, gripped his jaw in my fingers so I could feel the scrape of his teeth, see my own fingerprints going into his skin. The same gesture he uses to calm me down.
‘Look at me, Gustav, and stop treating me like a jerk.’ I kept my voice deadly calm. ‘Nothing has been going on. I met Pierre on Halloween night. Just that once. I didn’t know he was your brother. I didn’t even know his surname. Only that he was Polly’s new boyfriend and she’d met him through her work in New York. They are both in the entertainment industry. Polly’s a fashion and personal stylist for magazine shoots. Pierre supplies wardrobe for film and theatre. He was throwing a Halloween party to launch his costume business in London.’
Gustav continued to stare at me. The veneer of anger was fading slightly but I couldn’t be sure he was hearing me. I could see something else, confusion, fear, flickering behind his eyes. I put my finger on his mouth and pressed it hard.
‘Go on,’ he muttered hoarsely.
‘That first night you and I met, we went to the Dukes Hotel bar, remember, and we had those Martinis. I was already hoping something would happen between us, but then I got that text from my cousin Polly saying she was over from New York and inviting me to a party, and I had to leave you. Turns out the party was Pierre’s Halloween launch party. It was full of beautiful people in amazing clothes and masks, but I couldn’t get into the spirit of it, I couldn’t get you out of my head, I just wanted to be with you, Gustav. Even though we’d only just met, I wanted to get back to you somehow or at least speak to you. I was in a terrible rush to leave the party but I reckoned you would no longer be sitting in that bar so Pierre’s driver took me home and that’s when I lost your card. That’s why I couldn’t ring you.’ I was gabbling now, aware th
at everyone was watching me.
‘I was frantic, you had my cameras because I’d left them behind at the Dukes Hotel bar and in all the excitement I hoped you had them, but everything turned out fine because just when I was giving up hope of ever seeing you or my cameras again you phoned my mobile the next morning. Thanks to technology, you said. You’d put my number into your contacts so you obviously wanted to see me again, too. Oh, God, I wish I’d persuaded you to come with me to the party now.’
‘Then all this drama could have been dealt with weeks ago. But how would that have played out, do you suppose?’ murmured Pierre from behind me. His voice was very quiet, very low, as if he was feeling his way in the dark. ‘Can you imagine the mushroom cloud going up over Aldwych if my beloved brother had sauntered unannounced into my London launch?’
‘We were all in masks!’ remarked Polly, finding her voice again and twisting her fingers in their sparkly fingerless mittens. Her elfin face with the ice-blonde crop and aquamarine eyes looked lost in the swathes of her purple suede and silver fur Afghan coat. ‘You might not have known it was him.’
‘I’d know my own brother! Gustav Levi is unmistakable, no matter how elaborate the disguise might be. He was always the one making the dramatic entrance, often with the sexiest woman on his arm.’ Pierre glanced pointedly at me then lifted his hands as if belatedly greeting Gustav. ‘But it’s a good thing he didn’t come that night, because neither of us likes surprises. We like to be prepared. And I’ve the advantage, Gustav. I’ve had time to mull over everything. Seeing that business card was a shock, but it was a kick up the butt, too. Did I want to pick up the phone and call you, put an end to these years of silence? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t ready. In fact I nearly flew back to New York without seeing you. But then Polly needed my help to buy her cousin’s photograph, and I realised it was hanging in the Levi Gallery, so there was your name cropping up twice in as many days, as if you were somehow waiting for me, and, well, everything was starting to feel like it was meant to be. Or maybe a conspiracy.’
‘It wasn’t a conspiracy!’ Polly and I spoke in unison, our voices rising high like birds disturbed by gunshot.
We smiled at each other as I concluded the sentence. ‘How could we possibly have plotted to get you together when we didn’t even know you were brothers?’
‘No need to squawk like a pair of hens!’ Pierre put his hand on Polly’s cheek. ‘It was a figure of speech. Thinking of it as a conspiracy theory was the easy option, that’s all. I could blame it on destiny rather than having to decide what to do. But in the end it seemed like utter madness not to take a chance on seeing my brother again. Not to grab such a golden opportunity to heal some wounds. Get some answers.’ Pierre’s hand remained on Polly’s cheek as he turned to stare again at Gustav. This time it looked as if Polly was supporting him, not the other way round. ‘And just think. I might have missed him anyway.’
Gustav couldn’t seem to look at his brother, despite the fact that it was his turn to speak. Instead he kept his eyes on me. ‘So you really had no idea who he was, Serena?’
‘Don’t take this out on her, Gustav. That would not be a pretty sight.’ Pierre’s voice grew deep and dark. Just like his brother’s when roused. ‘God knows I didn’t expect you to roll out the red carpet, but ultimately you know that any hostility existing between us is almost entirely your fault.’
‘No, no.’ Gustav shook his head wearily. ‘Not only mine.’
I took a chance and pulled him closer to me. To my relief he leaned his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. His thick eyelashes fanned out on his cheek.
Across Gustav’s shoulder I saw Pierre frown. Was he surprised at our closeness, that I already knew how to calm Gustav when I needed to?
‘An old head on pretty young shoulders, this one, and no wonder, from what Polly tells me about her appalling upbringing.’
Now it was my turn to flare up. ‘Polly? What have you been saying?’
My cousin was still trying to take in what was going on. Her face went pink as she turned to me.
‘Nothing awful! Just the truth. I love you, Serena. Of course I’m going to talk about you to my new man, tell him how we’re like sisters rather than cousins, how I used to beg and plead to visit you in Devon because I knew how wretched you were, how we used to escape from your horrible parents and that horrible cold house on the cliffs and talk and smoke and sleep on the beach.’
She stopped, as if out of breath.
‘I’m sorry, Polly. I didn’t mean to snap at you.’ I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘For God’s sake let’s not you and me fall out as well!’
Gustav stroked my hair behind my ear and moved away. Pierre looked from him to me and back again.
‘Just because you and I haven’t spoken for five years, don’t go driving a wedge through other people’s lives, Pierre.’ Gustav’s voice was quiet, with a slight shiver to it. ‘Not when we have a chance to talk this through.’
‘You’ve obviously got a short memory, brother.’ Pierre smiled, but now there was something mocking in his tone. ‘You forget that I learned that kind of mischief-making from the mistress herself.’
Gustav stiffened beside me. I could feel the sharp hiss of his breath as if Pierre had slapped him. ‘Don’t you dare bring that woman into this discussion!’
‘The road always winds back to Margot in the end, though, doesn’t it?’ Pierre lifted his chin, and his shoulders and fists rose with it. ‘And by the way, you lost all rights to lecture me a long time ago.’
Gustav’s jaw tightened. There was a tangible shift in the air, as if someone had opened a window to let an icy wind blow through the room. I could practically hear Gustav’s muscles straining to control the fresh anger at the mention of Margot’s name, straining to stop this pivotal moment from going horribly wrong.
‘You came face to face with me tonight for a reason, Pierre. You could have just given the money to Polly and let her collect the picture on her own, but I’m glad you came. It’s time we broke this stupid silence. So what is it you want from me? Revenge? Blood? I can do those.’ Gustav clenched his fists, opened them again. Then patted his pockets with a harsh batting motion. ‘Or is it money?’
‘You’re putting words into my mouth. What’s wrong with cold hard curiosity? Seizing the moment?’ Pierre was icily calm as if determined not to match Gustav’s aggressive movements, but still he took a step closer. They were mirror images of each other. The uncanny likeness had been totally concealed by Pierre’s Halloween mask when I first met him, otherwise it would have hit me like a truck. ‘I could have ripped that business card into pieces. I could have left it five, ten years before giving you another thought. Maybe a lifetime.’
Any minute now their heads would butt, their antlers lock in battle. I fell away, powerless and frightened. The euphoria of an hour ago shrivelled like a bouquet of dead roses.
I watched Polly implode in the same way. She had even less idea of what this was about than I did. But we both wanted to avoid any conflict. We’d seen more than enough of that in the house on the cliffs.
‘There is no way I would have wanted this estrangement to last a lifetime.’ Gustav spoke through gritted teeth, as if the effort was hurting him. ‘You said you wanted answers. As it happens, so do I. But go on. I’m listening.’
‘What I did that night, screwing her then running off with your wife, I was driven to it. Because I was the one who was hurt and let down. And badly betrayed.’ Pierre rubbed his chin with the card. His eyes blazed at Gustav, dark and direct. ‘So I wanted to know how it would feel to be in the same room as you after all this time. After the disgusting scene I witnessed between you and Margot the last time I saw you. Maybe I wanted an explanation. Or, better still, an apology?’
Gustav spread his hands in the space between them, palms upwards.
‘An explanation. I can give you that. I can run through every ghastly detail of my hideous marriage up until the day Margot turned you against
me. I can tell you that it was over, and she wouldn’t accept it, which is why everything turned so ugly. But why should I apologise when I did nothing wrong? When what hurt me the most was losing the little boy I’d taken care of all his life?’
Gustav’s voice was deadly quiet. I could see the very faint effect it was having on Pierre, despite his bravado. Blood flowing thicker than water. A slight softening around the eyebrows at the mention of his childhood.
‘You were my rock.’ Pierre’s voice wavered. He cleared his throat. ‘But don’t you see? Rocks should never crack, and, when they do, there’s no putting them back together.’
Polly and I pressed our hands over our mouths. My heart was sore in my chest.
Gustav closed his eyes as if stabbed by a sharp pain.
‘I still am that person. Or could be, if you would let me. But I have nothing to apologise for. What Margot has no doubt told you about me, about our married life, that I was somehow the dominating bully forcing her into unspeakable practices and she was the cringing, unwilling submissive – it’s all a tissue of lies.’
‘Well, you certainly haven’t forgotten what your wife is like. Because, yeah, she told me all that, and a whole lot more.’ Pierre seemed to grow in stature the more Gustav struggled. There was a really black fire in his eyes now. ‘But she didn’t need to tell me what was going on that night. I can only work with what I’ve got. Which is the eyes in my head.’
Gustav stepped out from behind the desk, fists clenched, face thrust forward. I could see the tension in the sinews of his neck. Even his hair looked stiff with rage.
‘I’m not the one who laughed in my face and told me I was scum! I’m not the one who ran off with his sister-in-law!’
‘Whoa! Cutting to the chase!’ yelled Pierre, stepping closer. ‘I’m not the one who turned that little boy’s home into a sick torture chamber full of depraved losers, then kicked him out into the street when he caught you indulging your perverted fantasies. I’m not the one who changed the locks, physically and metaphorically.’