Brother and Sister (17 page)

He hit the shut-down keys on his laptop and stood up. There was a sharp pain in his knee and his shoulders ached from sitting
crookedly. He caught sight of himself in the framed mirror hanging above the chest of drawers. He looked tired, out of sorts,
old. His hair was beginning to recede. He touched his forehead gingerly, apprehensively. His hair had begun to recede when
he was twenty-two; he remembered noticing it in a changing room after a game of squash, suddenly being aware of the peak of
hair on his forehead and the shadowy triangles either side where the hair was thinning. David's wasn't receding. David was
taller than he was and broader than he was and his hair had a thick permanence about it that had been one of the first things
Martin had noticed, one of the first things to go on the list of rivalries. Martin turned away from the mirror and crashed
out of his room and across the hall to the kitchen.

It was as tidy as the kitchens of his childhood had always been, as tidy as the kitchens of women whose primary preoccupation
is not culinary so often seem to be. On the table a place had been laid, a knife and a water glass, and next to the fruit
bowl, a sandwich on a plate under a skin of cling film. Martin picked the sandwich up and peered at it sideways through the
film. It appeared to be cheese and tomato, the sandwich filling he had always chosen in childhood, the sandwich filling you
could only get now, on account of its simplicity, in old-fashioned places.

Martin peeled the film off the sandwich and sniffed it. Then he crossed the kitchen, trod on the pedal of the chrome Italian
waste bin, and tipped the contents of the plate inside.

"Tell me," Nathalie said. "
Tell
me!"

She was holding the door open for him, gripping it almost, and her eyes were shining. He bent and kissed her.

"What was it like? What was she like? What happened?"

"Everything," David said. "Nothing."

"What do you
mean
—"

"I'm so tired," David said. "I feel absolutely sandbagged. I haven't
done
anything, physically, and I'm worn out."

Nathalie took his arm and propelled him into the kitchen. There was a basket of mixed polyanthus on the table, as brilliantly
colored as a Mexican mural. David gestured towards them.

"Nice—"

"Never mind them," Nathalie said, pushing him towards a chair. "Never mind. Tell me. Tell me what happened. What did she look
like?"

David stared ahead.

"She looked great."

"What kind of great?"

"Quite tall, blondish. Sort of expensive-looking—"

"Did she cry? Did she hug you?"

"No—"

"Dave—"

"She's in quite a mess," David said. "She's got this husband. And boys. Two sons."

"Did you meet them?"

"Yes."

"And? David,
and?
"

David shut his eyes.

"Nat, I got what I went for. I got that and more. Rather a lot more."

Nathalie was hovering over him. She had her hands clasped in front of her, almost as if she was praying.

"Like what?"

He opened his eyes and looked up at her.

"I know who my father was. I know where I was born. I know why she gave me away—or at least, I know why she says she gave
me away. I know that nobody knew about me, not even this Connor guy she married. I know that seeing me threw her back somewhere
she never thought she'd have to go again."

Nathalie loosened her hands. She put one on David's shoulder.

"You OK?"

"I don't know."

"Did you—did you like her?"

"If you mean," David said, "did she feel like my mother, the answer is no."

Nathalie felt for a chair, still looking at David, and sat down.

"Was she kind to you?"

"Not really."

"You mean
hostile?
"

David's eyes widened.

"She used that word."

"Hostile?"

"Yes. She said she couldn't take hostility. She couldn't take it from anyone. It was the one thing, she said, that she couldn't
take."

"Did you tell her you were angry with her?"

"I said I had been. But I wasn't when I was with her. I wasn't angry then."

Nathalie leaned forward.

"How
did
you feel? I can't imagine it, I can't imagine how I'm going to feel—"

David frowned.

"I was kind of—fascinated. And fearful. I wanted to know the answers but of course having them means I have to deal with them.
When you just imagine, you don't have to face anything, in the end."

Nathalie swallowed.

"No."

"My father was called Rory David Ecclestone. He buggered off. Before I was born. She said I looked like him."

Nathalie attempted a small smile.

"Lucky her—"

"I don't think so."

"And her husband? Connor?"

"Oh," David said, "you know. I work for hundreds of them. Well-set-up guy in his sixties, perfectly pleasant, prosperous.
Probably reads the
Telegraph.
Collects maritime prints. When he shook my hand, he looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Welcome, my boy.'"

"Nice of him—"

"I don't know. Or establishing something, making sure I knew—" He stopped.

"Knew what?"

"Where I stood," David said. "Where I'd be, in relation to his sons. I felt he was making sure I knew he was doing the right
thing." He leaned forward and touched a poly­anthus petal. "She changed when he came in."

"Did she?"

"A kind of frankness went. She hadn't been very generous to me before he came, but at least I felt she wasn't pretending.
But when he came in, a kind of mask went on. She was more polite to me, but I didn't feel she was being so honest. I felt
she knew her family were watching her."

"I can't imagine it—"

"The younger son was fine. He's going to be like his father, minus the pomposity. He just behaved like this was bloody awkward,
but it was bloody awkward for everyone so let's just make it as pleasant as we can. The older one looked like he wanted to
kill me. He hardly said a word. He wouldn't sit down, he just stood there by the door, glaring."

"For God's sake," Nathalie cried, "what are you taking that's his?"

"Nothing. And maybe I could have asked him the same question. I don't want anything of his, I don't even want his
mother
—"

"David!"

He turned to look at her.

"I don't."

"You can't say that. You can't know that after one meeting—"

"I can."

Nathalie was silent. She gazed at him with huge, troubled eyes.

"Remember what Elaine said?" David said.

"What—"

"Something she said to you. Something you told me. That—that we all know, deep down, if we're wanted."

"Didn't Carole love your father?"

"Oh yes," David said. "That's the trouble. It was my father she
did
love."

Nathalie gave a little shiver.

"Oh."

"If she hadn't been pregnant, she might have kept him."

"But you look like him—"

"That just confuses things. It confused her. Perhaps I'm a kind of travesty of him, to her." He put a hand out and laid it
on top of Nathalie's. "I'm OK, Nat. Really. I'm exhausted, but I'm OK." He took his hand away and got slowly to his feet.
"Better get home."

"Haven't you told Marnie?"

"Not yet."

"Dave—"

He bent and kissed her forehead.

"Now, would I? First?"

Nathalie had her eyes tight shut.

"David, go home,
go.
"

"I'm going," he said. "Now I've seen you, I'm going." He took a step towards the door, and then he stopped. "Mar­nie wanted
to meet her. Before I went to London, she reminded me that she wanted to meet her. What am I going to do about that?"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
itus's kitchen looked, he told himself with a kind of swagger, hideous. It usually looked pretty awful; it was not uncommon,
after all, he thought, tiptoeing gingerly across it, to stick to the floor, but this aftermath of cooking on top of its usual
carefree squalor was award-winning. There were even violently colored smears—turmeric? chili? blood?—down the fronts of the
cupboards and the sink was so full it was impossible to wedge the kettle in, to fill it. It was a prime case, in fact, for
that television program where a couple of presenters swoop down for the weekend, and whip all your crap away, and sell it
to some sad other-people's- crap-hunters at a car-boot sale.

Gingerly, he moved the stack of crockery and pans in the sink to one side and inserted the kettle under the cold tap. The
kettle was interestingly full of flakes of limescale, floating about like chunks of coral in a tropical sea. Sasha had once
bought a sachet of descaler to deal with the kettle, but as she declined, on principle, to take on the burden of Titus's living
conditions, and as Titus himself didn't give a monkey's about the state of his kettle, the sachet lay where she had left it,
now obscured by a moldering bag of bagels.

Plugging the kettle in, Titus remembered Sasha commenting on the extreme contrast between the meticulous fastidiousness of
Titus's approach to his work and the boastful slovenliness of his attitude to his domestic arrangements. She'd said it as
she said all these things, as an observation rather than as a criticism, and with a lack of personal engagement which indicated
that she wasn't going to lift a finger to change things. She was wonderfully unfeminine in that way, miraculously unmaternal,
and to Titus, consequently extremely attractive. It was therefore, he thought, looking at the mess in the sink, a bit odd
that not only had he noticed when Justine had made no move to clear up after their drunken cooking session the night before,
but also it had irritated him. He'd almost, he thought he remembered, asked her if she wasn't going to wash up. Or, at least,
he'd noted the enquiry somewhere in his mind, in amongst all the other possibly more pervading thoughts about sex. He sighed.
Sex. Amazing how much you wanted it when you wanted it. And conversely, even if this feeling only lasted an hour or two—how
much, if standing in a revolting kitchen with a headache and the distinct possibility of being late for work, you didn't want
it when you didn't.

Titus picked two mugs out of the chaos on the counter and rinsed them cursorily under the cold tap. His mother had always
been scornful about hygiene, claiming that germs only invaded those who were afraid of them and that anyway too much sanitary
preoccupation was bourgeois. He fished about in a cupboard and found a handful of teabags squashed into the top of an open
box of rice. "Rice with Lime Leaves and Ginger," it said on the label. Titus looked at it for a moment. It must have come
from Sasha's health-food shop. He dropped the teabags into the mugs and reached for the kettle. He hadn't seen Sasha in almost
three weeks and when he left her messages she just sent little laconic texts back saying "Busy" and "Back soon." Part of him
burned to know what was going on and part of him shrank from the knowledge. When you knew, after all, you had to deal, and
Titus didn't want to deal. He just wanted to be back in a place where he was carrying two mugs of tea—milkless, as the milk
had settled into a rank lump in its plastic bottle—back to a bed which contained Sasha, rather than Justine.

He picked up the mugs and kicked the kitchen door open. The sitting room was in half-darkness, and the daylight outside was
showing, very clearly, that a greater part of the curtains hung off their hooks than on. There were plates and newspapers
on the floor, and glasses on the television and half Justine's clothes lay on the sofa, strewn about in a way which, in the
morning, only managed to look pathetic. Titus sighed. He stubbed his toe on a stray shoe, and swore.

From the bedroom, he could hear Justine giggling. She'd laughed a lot the night before, through the red wine and the curry
attempt, even through a lot of the sex. At the time, Titus had found the laughing rather a challenge, as if he had to rise
to immense heights of inventiveness and sensation to extinguish it, but now it was only annoying. Justine's giggles were as
annoying as was her inevitable girl's expectation that, as they'd had sex together, he must not only feel something for her,
but also say so. He trudged into the bedroom. Justine was half-sitting up against the pillow, with the duvet pulled up just
far enough to cover her nipples. Even in the gloom, he could see her eyes were shining. He dumped the tea down on the chest
of drawers, out of her reach.

"We're going to be late," he said.

Marnie had thought about telephoning. She had thought, changing the children's bedding and replacing Petey's upstairs toys
in their hamper, that she would put in a calm, reasonable call to Nathalie and ask, in the steady voice she was now managing—most
of the time—to use to and about David, if she might come and see her. But it occurred to Marnie, fitting together various
component plastic parts of Bob the Builder, that Nathalie might ask what the call was about, and whether they might not, whatever
it was, sort it on the telephone. And, contrary to what she felt was her normal conduct, her usual, steady, reasonable conduct,
Marnie did not want to have this particular conversation on the telephone. It was a conversation that needed to happen face
to face if Marnie was going to derive any satisfaction from it, and satisfaction, Marnie thought, was right now not just something
she craved, but something that she was somehow entitled to.

She put Bob the Builder into the hamper and closed the lid. The older children were at school and would not be home until
the afternoon. Petey, at present in front of the television with his sleepy rag, in defiance of all Mamie's long-held principles
about stimulating amusement for even the youngest of children while awake, could be put into the car and taken to Nathalie's
flat where he might play on the floor of her kitchen with all the amenableness he seemed unable to display at home. She could
take his juice and some rice cakes, or she could rely on Nathalie having something for him, the kind of thing, Marnie thought
with sudden savagery, that he would reject with screams at home but would probably eat with enthusiasm at Nathalie's. Marnie
held on to the hamper and took a breath. This was ridiculous. This was in fact worse than ridiculous; this was really dangerous,
building up more and more illusory reasons for resenting Nathalie when the real reason—the fundamental reason—for resenting
her lay, as it always had, with David.

She went downstairs. Petey sat, glazed and absorbed, in front of a video of Walt Disney's
Sleeping Beauty.
At eighteen months, he had worked out how to use the video, and was now given to murderous yells if prevented. He loved buttons
and plugs, switches and keys, anything that clicked and whirred and sent lights flashing and noise roaring. All Daniel had
wanted, Marnie remembered, had been bats and balls and running, anything faintly connected with sport, even as a baby, and
Daniel had been impervious to any other temptation.

Marnie went back to the hall and dialed Nathalie's number.

"Hello?"

"Nathalie, it's Marnie—"

There was a tiny pause, as if Nathalie was rearranging a response.

"Oh, hello—"

"Will you be there in the next quarter of an hour or so?"

"Well, yes—"

"May I bring Petey over? Just for twenty minutes?"

Nathalie cleared her throat.

"Of course. I haven't seen Petey for ages—"

Marnie put the telephone down and went back into the family room.

"Time to turn that off—"

Petey yanked his fingers out of his mouth.

"No!"

"Yes."

"No! No! No!"

"Petey," Marnie said, stooping to heave him off the floor, "we are going in the
car.
"

"You OK?" Nathalie said.

Marnie looked down at the floor. Petey was eating a breadstick Nathalie had given him and arranging Polly's Noah's Ark animals
in a long unsteady line.

"It's just," Marnie said, "that he screamed all the way."

"He'll stop," Nathalie said. "They all stop. How many twelve-year-olds scream for hours? Would you like some coffee?"

Marnie nodded. Nathalie indicated a chair.

"You sit."

Marnie sat. She could feel her shoulders slumping. The balance of power in Nathalie's kitchen was not what she had visualized,
not what she had intended. She made an effort and squared her shoulders.

"This isn't about Petey."

"No," Nathalie said.

"I imagine," Marnie said, "that you have some idea of why I'm here?"

Nathalie paused in spooning coffee into a jug.

"David—"

Marnie looked at the tabletop. There was a ring on the surface, a ring left by a glass or a mug, a glass or a mug used by,
perhaps, someone who had been sitting here last, talking to Nathalie.

She said, abruptly, "How could you?"

The coffee spoon in Nathalie's hand clanged against the glass of the jug.

"Sorry?"

"How could you?" Marnie said again. "How could you let him tell you before he told me? How could you let him come here first?"

Nathalie turned slowly and leaned against the kitchen counter.

"It wasn't a question of let."

"What?"

"I didn't let him," Nathalie said. "I didn't, as you imply, allow him or encourage him. He just came. He just arrived."

"As he always has!" Marnie cried. "As he always has because you
have
encouraged him! You've always made him feel that no one understands him like you do, that no one can share his inner life
like you can!"

Nathalie moved away from the counter, and leaned on the table.

"They can't."

"How
dare
you—"

"I'm not daring anything," Nathalie said. "I'm not taking anything that's yours. But there's something David and I know, an—an
unhappy kind of knowledge that, I promise you, you wouldn't want, that we can't help sharing. You know that. You've always
known that."

"You're missing the point," Marnie said. She held her hands flat to stop them clenching. "You've always deliberately missed
the point. You make me sick."

Petey's face appeared above the tabletop, visible only from the eyes upwards. He reached up and put an elephant and a porcupine
on the table. The elephant fell over.

"No," Nathalie said. She stretched out a hand, and set the elephant upright. "No. You're just so possessive you can't stand
him loving anyone else, you can't stand anyone else understanding him better than you do."

Marnie said nothing. She glanced down the table. Petey's eyes, as blue and round as marbles, were fixed on her with inscrutable
intensity.

"If he came here," Nathalie said, "to tell me about meeting his mother, don't you think that says as much about you as it
does about him or me?"

"Like?"

"Like why are you jealous of his mother? Like why are you jealous of me?"

Petey's eyes vanished.

Marnie said, her own gaze not leaving the spot where Petey's had been, "Wouldn't it unsettle you?"

"No," Nathalie said.

"If Steve came and told me things before he told you, wouldn't that drive you crazy?"

"You know your parents," Nathalie said. "So does Steve. You both know exactly where you come from."

Marnie gave a stifled small shriek.

"Oh my
God.
It always,
always
comes back to this, doesn't it? It always comes back to this adoption bond, to this deprivation, to this—this
thing
that makes you so special, so deserving of privilege, so entitled to anything you want, even if it legitimately belongs to
someone else, because nothing will ever, ever make up to you for this terrible injury, this wound that's been inflicted—"
She stopped, gasping slightly.

Nathalie said, in a low voice, "It is a wound."

"So it's OK to punish everyone else?"

"I'm not punishing."

"You are. You may not mean to, but you
are.
"

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"Don't you," Nathalie said, "punish David for not being able to love back like you want him to?"

"How dare you—"

"Don't keep saying that," Nathalie said.

The top of Petey's head emerged again above the edge of the table. His gaze traveled slowly round to Nathalie and then stopped.

"More bic," Petey said.

Nathalie looked down.

"Of course, darling." She glanced at Marnie. "Is that OK?"

Marnie made a dismissive little gesture. Nathalie turned to the cupboard behind her and took down the box of breadsticks.

Marnie said bitterly, "He would never eat those at home."

"Of course not."

Petey took a breadstick in each hand. He looked up at Nathalie and gave her a wide, gorgeous smile.

"Marnie," Nathalie said, "I'm not his wife or the mother of his children. But I've known him since he was this size, smaller.
I know about the kind of shadow we both have inside, the shadow that stops us quite releasing ourselves—"

"Please stop."

Nathalie straightened up.

"OK."

"You made him go on this journey. You made him find Carole. But now stop.
Stop.
This isn't to do with you any more."

Nathalie put the breadsticks box down.

"I can't stop him coming—"

"You can stop him coming here
first.
You can stop him telling you how he feels."

"Stop him?"

"Yes."

"You
want
that? You want David to do something just because he's been
told
to do it?"

Marnie bent her face over the table. She felt suddenly insecure, suddenly tearful. She shook her head.

"No—"

Nathalie said, "Do you want to meet Carole?"

Marnie nodded.

She said, "Can I have a tissue?"