by C. J. Sansom
The police had phoned Frank at work to tell him his mother had had a stroke while out shopping, and died two hours later in hospital. Frank sent a telegram to Edgar, who replied, to Frank’s surprise, at once, saying he would come over for the funeral. Frank did not want to see Edgar, he loathed him; but even though he didn’t like train journeys, he had travelled from Birmingham to Esher to meet Edgar at the house where they had been brought up. On the journey he wondered what his brother would be like. He was an American citizen now. The letters their mother showed him were always full of his busy life at Berkeley, how he loved San Francisco, how his wife and three children were getting on.
But when he’d visited his mother at Easter he had found that Edgar, for the first time in his life, had upset her. He had written to her to say that he and his wife were getting a divorce. Mrs Muncaster had been shocked, wringing her gnarled hands and telling Frank she hadn’t liked Edgar’s wife the one time he’d brought her to England: she was brassy and full of herself, a typical American. His mother had cried then, saying she would never see her grandchildren, adding bitterly that Frank was hardly likely to give her any now. Frank wondered if all the shock and distress had led to her stroke.
The crowds on the train frightened him; he was glad to get off at Esher. He walked to the house. It was a cold, misty afternoon. A boy on one of the new Vespa scooters buzzed past him, making him jump. When he entered the house he was aware of an emptiness, a new silence. Mrs Baker would have said it was because a spirit had gone over. Frank shivered slightly. There was dust everywhere, peeling wallpaper, damp patches. Somehow he hadn’t noticed how badly his mother had let the house go.
Edgar arrived a few hours later. He’d put on weight since Frank had last seen him. He was forty now, bespectacled and red-faced, his hair receding, the youthful handsomeness Frank had envied just a memory. ‘Well, Frank,’ he said heavily. ‘So, she’s gone then.’ Just as Edgar’s voice had taken on a Scottish accent while he was at Strangmans, so now he spoke with an American twang.
Frank took Edgar round the house. ‘It’s in a bad state,’ Edgar said. ‘Some of these rooms don’t look like anyone’s been in them for years.’ They went into the dining room. There were mouse droppings on the floor. ‘Hell,’ Edgar said irritably. ‘I don’t know how she could’ve lived like this. Didn’t you try to get her to move?’
Frank didn’t answer. He was looking at the big dining table. The electric light above still had the cheesecloth shawl draped over it; Mrs Baker had needed muted light to commune with the spirit world.
Edgar pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘What are house prices like in England these days?’
‘Going down. The economy’s not doing well.’
‘Best thing we can do is get shot of this place as soon as we can. Sell to some developer.’
Frank touched the table. ‘Remember the séances?’
‘Lot of bloody nonsense.’ Edgar laughed scoffingly. ‘They were all nuts. Mum, too. Believing Dad came through to her every week, just for her to tell him off about going to war and leaving her in 1914.’
‘I don’t think she ever forgave him for going away to fight the war.’
Edgar looked at his brother, considering. ‘Maybe that’s why she didn’t like you much, cos you looked so much like him.’
That evening Edgar suggested they go out to eat so they walked to a restaurant a few streets away. It wasn’t much of a place. They had beef stew with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, all swimming in watery gravy. Edgar ordered a beer. Frank, as usual, drank little but he noticed Edgar was drinking fast, one beer after another.
‘The food in this country’s still bloody awful,’ Edgar said. ‘In California, you can get anything you want, well cooked and lots of it.’ He shook his head. ‘This country looks more miserable and downtrodden every time I come.’
‘Did you go to the San Francisco Olympics in the summer?’
‘No. It made getting around difficult, I can tell you. The next ones are in Rome, aren’t they? Old Mussolini will mess it up, the Wops can’t organize for toffee. By the way, I keep seeing the letters V and R painted on walls. What’s that all about?’
‘The Resistance signs. R for Resistance, Churchill’s V for Victory sign.’
‘I’d give him a V sign.’ Edgar laughed. ‘How’s Beaverbrook? Still licking the Germans’ arses?’
Frank said, ‘Yes, yes, he is.’
‘Thank God Britain lost the war and Roosevelt lost the election in 1940, and Taft did his deal with the Japs. Though if that do-gooding leftie Adlai Stevenson wins the election in November he could start sticking his nose into Europe again.’
‘Do you think so?’ Frank asked, perking up a little.
Edgar gave him a sharp look. ‘I hear these Resistance people are making trouble here. Stealing weapons from police stations, arming strikers, blowing things up, even killing people.’
Frank said, daringly, ‘Maybe Stevenson should stick his nose in here, sort it all out.’
‘America needs to mind its own business. Nobody’s going to make trouble for us,’ Edgar added complacently. ‘Not now we’ve got the atom bomb.’
Four years earlier, in 1948, the Americans claimed to have exploded an atomic bomb, and there was even a film released of it going off in the New Mexico desert. The Germans said it had been faked. ‘I’ve never been sure those stories are true,’ Frank said. ‘I know the atom bomb’s theoretically possible, but the amount of uranium you’d need is so colossal. I’ve heard the Germans are trying to build one, too, but they haven’t got anywhere. If they had we’d have heard about it.’ He looked at his brother, scientist to scientist. ‘What do you think?’
Edgar gave him a hard stare. ‘We’ve got the atom bomb. We’ve other things, too, new types of incendiary bomb, chemical weapons – in a few years we’ll have intercontinental missiles. The Germans probably will, too, by then, but we’ll have atom bombs on top of ours.’
‘And then where will we all be?’ Frank asked sadly.
‘I don’t know about you, but we’ll be safe.’
‘While Britain’s tied to Germany.’ Frank shook his head. He had always hated the Nazis and Blackshirts, the whole pack of bully-boy thugs. He had wished Britain hadn’t surrendered even back in 1940.
Edgar had never liked Frank talking back to him. He frowned as he took another gulp of beer. ‘Got a girlfriend yet?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Never had one, have you?’
Frank didn’t answer.
‘Women are bloody bitches,’ Edgar announced suddenly, so loud that people at neighbouring tables stared. ‘So I had a fling with my secretary, so bloody what? Now Ella’s taking half my salary for alimony.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I could do with my share of the money from Mum’s house.’
‘I don’t mind. We can sell up if you like.’ So that was why Edgar had really come over; he wanted his inheritance.
Edgar looked relieved. ‘Are the deeds at the house?’ he asked.
‘Yes. In a drawer. With Mum’s bank books.’
‘I’ll take those, if you don’t mind. For – what do you call it – probate?’
‘If you like.’
Edgar asked, ‘You still working at that lab assistant job at Birmingham University?’
‘I’m not a lab assistant. I’m a research associate.’
‘What are you researching, then?’ Edgar’s tone was belligerent; Frank realized he was very drunk. He remembered a lecturer at Birmingham who had got divorced and turned to drink; he had quietly been given premature retirement.
‘The structure of meteorites,’ he answered. ‘How their elements bond together.’
‘Meteorites!’ Edgar laughed.
‘What are you working on?’
Edgar tapped the side of his nose in a ridiculous drunk’s gesture, setting his glasses askew, then lowered his voice. ‘Government work. Can’t tell you. They weren’t that happy about my coming over h
ere for the funeral. I have to report to the embassy every day.’ He picked up the menu. ‘What’ve they got for pudding? Jesus, spotted dick.’
Mrs Muncaster’s funeral took place a few days later. Frank arranged it with the local vicar, careful not to tell him of Mrs Muncaster’s religious views. Apart from Frank and Edgar, only a couple of women from the days of the séances came; Frank had found their details in his mother’s address book. They were old now, sad and faded. After the service one of them came up to the brothers and said their mother was with her husband on the other side now, walking through the gardens of the spirit world. Frank thanked her politely though Edgar flashed her a look of distaste. As they walked away from the cemetery Edgar said, ‘Talking of spirits, I could do with a drink.’
They went to a pub in Esher High Street. Edgar drank heavily, but this time didn’t get aggressive. To Frank the service had just been a rite, a performance like the séances, but it seemed to have affected Edgar. He said, ‘Strange to think mother’s gone. God, she was an odd one.’
‘Yes, she was.’ There, at least, the brothers could agree.
‘I have to go back soon, I’m needed at Berkeley. But I could stay on a few days.’ He looked at his brother. ‘It would help me if we could get the house on the market.’
Frank had had more than enough of Edgar; he had been counting the hours till the funeral was over. ‘You do that if you want,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to Birmingham today.’
‘You could stay here a day or two. I don’t know when we’ll meet up again. Jesus,’ he said again, ‘Mum’s gone. Everyone in my life’s bloody gone,’ he added self-pityingly.
Frank spoke quickly. ‘I said I was going back to work tomorrow.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Edgar, I have to go now, really, if I’m to get back in time.’
Edgar’s mouth set in a sulky pout. He stared at Frank through his glasses. Then he held out a big meaty hand. Frank took it. ‘Well,’ Edgar said heavily. ‘That’s that.’ Then a nasty glint came into his eyes as he nodded at Frank’s hand, the damaged outer fingers. ‘How’s that, nowadays?’ he asked.
‘A bit painful in bad weather.’
‘It was a strange accident, wasn’t it?’
Frank met his brother’s eyes and realized that Edgar knew what had really happened. He’d been at university by then but he kept up with friends from Strangmans and someone must have told him. Frank stood up. ‘Goodbye, Edgar,’ he said, and walked quickly away.
He went back to Birmingham and returned to work. It was a beautiful October, sunny mellow days succeeding each other, yellow leaves falling gently from the trees.
For the last ten years Frank had lived in a big Victorian villa divided into leasehold flats. He had four rooms on the first floor. The building was not well maintained, the paint on the front door and the windows peeling, half the sash windows rotten. One Sunday, ten days after his mother’s funeral, he was sitting reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea when his doorbell rang. He started violently, then went downstairs and opened the front door. Edgar was standing there, obviously the worse for wear, although it was only three in the afternoon. Frank stared at him blankly.
‘Surprised to see me?’ Edgar asked. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ Frank turned and went back upstairs, Edgar following. Frank’s heart was racing. Why had he come? What did he want? They went back into the flat, which Frank had furnished from junk shops when he moved in.
‘Jeez,’ Edgar said. ‘This reminds me of Mum’s house. I’ve put it with an agent, by the way, got a lawyer to get the probate started.’
‘All right,’ Frank said.
‘I decided to come up and tell you. You should get a phone. Most people in the States have a phone.’
‘I don’t need one.’
Edgar looked at two dusty framed photographs on a little table. ‘You’ve got one of Dad, I see. God, he did look like you.’
Frank looked at the sepia portrait of his father in uniform, staring fixedly and uncomfortably at the camera. Frank sometimes wondered if he was seeing the trenches, anticipating them.
‘What’s the other one?’ Edgar asked.
‘My year at Oxford.’ Why has he come? Frank thought. What does he want?
Edgar crossed to the bookcase, looking at the well-thumbed science-fiction novels. ‘Hey, I remember some of these from when you were a kid. You were always reading them during the holidays.’ He turned and gave Frank a rubbery half-drunk smile. ‘I’m flying back tomorrow evening, I thought I’d come up and tell you about the house.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘I didn’t want to part on bad terms.’
‘Oh.’
‘Mebbe I could stay over, perhaps come and see your labs tomorrow.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frank babbled. ‘It’s not convenient. I’ve only got the one bed here, you see.’
Edgar looked hurt, then angry and somehow baffled.
‘I don’t really get visitors,’ Frank added.
Edgar’s face set. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do. Mind if I sit down?’ He weaved his way to an armchair. ‘Oh God, Frank, don’t put on that monkey grin.’
Frank remembered something horrible that had happened when he was twelve. He and Edgar had come home from Strangmans for the summer holidays. Edgar was sixteen then, tall and blond, and was developing a strutting arrogance. Their mother had suggested, unusually, that they all go out together to the zoo. ‘We don’t think enough about the animals,’ she had said. ‘Mrs Baker says they have souls just like us.’ She had given them one of her sad, serious looks.
They went to Whipsnade, and walked round the enclosures. As they passed the monkey house Edgar said, ‘Let’s go in here.’ He led the way, Frank following reluctantly with their mother, who had retreated into one of her dreamy, distant states. Inside it was horrible, a long concrete corridor with barred enclosures along the sides, a rank, filthy smell, clumps of straw the monkeys had thrown out of their cages littering the floor. A few people walked along, laughing at the antics of the small monkeys. A big orange orang-utan glared at them from the dimness of its pen. Edgar looked at Frank, then turned to their mother. ‘Look at the chimp, Mum!’ There was only one chimpanzee, sitting alone in its cage on a pile of dirty straw, staring at them. Edgar waved a hand and the chimpanzee leaned back, baring its teeth in a grin that Frank somehow knew meant fear and terror.
‘What an ugly thing,’ Mrs Muncaster said.
Edgar laughed. ‘Doesn’t that grin remind you of Frank?’
Mrs Muncaster looked at Frank forlornly. ‘Yes, I suppose it does in a way.’
‘The boys at school call him Monkey because of that grin. Monkey Muncaster.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do it, Frank,’ Mrs Muncaster said.
Frank had felt so hot he thought he might faint. Edgar smirked at him. Mrs Muncaster said, ‘It’s awfully smelly in here. I can’t imagine these things in the spirit gardens, I must say. Let’s go and see the birds.’
And now Edgar was in his house. Sitting in the moth-eaten armchair, he looked round the room again. ‘I thought you’d have something better by now.’
‘It does me.’
Edgar gave him that baffled stare again. ‘I never understood why you did science at university. Was it to try and compete with me, show me you could do it?’
‘No.’ Frank heard the tremble of anger in his voice. ‘I did it because I like it. It’s what I’m good at.’
Edgar looked disappointed. Then he sneered, just as he had at the zoo. ‘Studying meteorites?’
‘Yes.’
Edgar shifted in his chair. ‘Got anything to drink?’
‘Only tea and coffee.’ They stared at each other. ‘I don’t think you should drink any more. You – you’ve had enough.’
Edgar reddened. He set his lips, then leaned forward. ‘Do you know what I do, what my work is?’
‘No. Look, Edgar, perhaps you should go. There’s nothing to drink here . . .’
&n
bsp; Edgar stood up, swaying slightly, his expression threatening now. Frank stood too, suddenly afraid. Edgar walked across the dusty carpet, right up to him, then said, his breath stinking of alcohol, in Frank’s face, ‘I’ll tell you what I bloody do.’
Edgar told him: told him what his work was and, as one scientist to another, how they had managed it. The explanation made total, horrible sense. ‘So you see, we cracked it,’ he crowed, his voice full of beery satisfaction.
Frank staggered back, face full of horror. Now he realized why Edgar’s people had been reluctant to let him come to the funeral. All he had ever wanted was to be left in peace and now there would be no peace, no safety, for the rest of his life. Horrors as bad as any in science fiction had been created and Edgar had told him how. He stared at Edgar, suddenly understanding that his brother – a lonely, broken man – wanted Frank to know his power. ‘You shouldn’t have told me,’ he said in a sort of desperate whisper. ‘Dear God. Have you told anyone else?’ He grabbed at his hair, found himself shouting. ‘Jesus, the Germans mustn’t find out . . .’
Edgar frowned, the seriousness of what he had just done beginning to penetrate his fuddled brain. ‘Of course I haven’t told anyone,’ he answered sharply. ‘Calm down.’
‘You’re drunk. You’ve been drunk half the time since you came here.’ Frank reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm. ‘You must go home, you mustn’t tell anybody else. If anyone found out what you’d told me—’
‘All right!’ Edgar was looking anxious now. ‘All right. Forget I said it—’
‘Forget!’ Frank howled. ‘How – can – I – forget!’
‘For God’s sake shut up, stop shouting!’ Edgar was sweating now, his face beetroot. He stared at his brother for a long moment. Then he said quietly, as much to himself as to Frank, ‘Even if you did talk, no-one would believe you. They’d think you were mad, they probably do already – look at you, grinning little cripple—’
And then, for only the second time in his life, Frank lost control. He ran at his brother, all flailing arms and legs. Edgar was much bigger than Frank but he was very drunk and he stepped backwards, raising his arms ineffectually to try and defend himself. Frank came on, hitting him again and again, and Edgar tripped and fell over, against the window. His weight broke the rotten sash and he fell through it in a shower of glass, arms windmilling, wildly crying out as he disappeared.