Brother and Sister (10 page)

She hoped that, apart from the sleeping, she'd given Connor, especially, no sign of how she was feeling. She hoped that she'd
been as pleasant and placid as he liked her to be, as—as he
deserved
her to be. That was the trouble really, Carole thought, this matter of her obligation to Connor, this elusive kind of emotional
debt to him that she seemed to have contracted so long ago, almost without knowing it, and which she had wearily come to see
would never be quite paid off. Sometimes she'd had moments of resentment about it, flashes of pure, exhilarating, blinding
rage about the unfairness of some kinds of emotional liability conditioned so powerfully by social convention, social expectation.
Sometimes, she thought she'd be punished forever, for every day that she lived, for something that had been at base and quite
simply a powerful, natural, human instinct of the heart.

She went out of the sitting room and across the hall with its polished pale floor and interesting modern rugs to the kitchen.
She would put the kettle on. She didn't, she reflected, much want a cup of tea, but she felt she ought to want it, that it
was a respectable thing to want, just as a proper gratitude for her life and comforts was only respectable. She laid a hand
on the kettle and lifted it off its base. Respectable. Her hand shook. If only they knew, all those people who recognized
and judged Carole Latimer by what they saw and heard. She almost let the kettle drop. If only they knew about the letter which
was lying in her stocking drawer, under the lining paper, out of sight, the letter which had been lying there for ten days
now and about which she hadn't breathed a syllable to a single soul.

A key turned in the lock of the front door across the hall. Carole grasped the kettle firmly and took a brisk step or two
towards the sink.

She called out cheerfully, "Hello, darling! Good game?"

"It's me," Martin said.

Carole spun round. Martin was coming across the hall wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket. His hair needed cutting.

"Hello, darling—"

"Sorry I'm a bit early."

"Early?"

"I told Dad," Martin said. "I told Dad I'd be here around seven."

Carole lifted her cheek for a kiss.

"Dad never told me. He didn't say you were coming—"

"Does that matter?"

"No," Carole said. "No, of course not."

"Look," Martin said, "I'll go away. I'll go out and come in again, later. Would that suit you better?"

Carole said tiredly, "Don't be silly, darling."

Martin took the kettle out of her hands and ran water messily into it at the sink.

"It shouldn't matter, should it,
what
time I come? This is my home, isn't it?"

"Of course—"

"Or am I going to get another lecture about my complete failure to get my act together and leave home and be independent?"

"Stop it," Carole said.

Martin carried the kettle across the kitchen and banged it down on its base.

"I could do with a bit of
support
sometimes."

"Darling," Carole said, "I went to sleep by mistake and I've only just woken up and I wasn't expecting you. That's all."

Martin grunted.

"I don't really feel like tea," Carole said. "I don't know why I was filling the kettle. Shall we have a drink?"

"I'm not drinking."

"Good for you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Carole said tightly, opening the cupboard to find a whiskey tumbler, "that I admire you for your restraint."

"Sorry," Martin said. He took the tumbler out of her hand. "I'll do it for you."

"That's OK—"

"I'll
do
it," Martin said. He crossed the kitchen to where the spirit bottles stood on a lacquer tray. Carole watched him splash whiskey
into the glass. And down its side.

"Water or soda?"

"Water, please," Carole said. She tried to smile. "You should know that by now."

Martin picked up a mineral-water bottle.

"I should know a lot of things. Shouldn't I?"

"Darling," Carole said, "please try and forget that I didn't know you were coming. Please forgive me. You know you're welcome
any time. Why else would you still have a key?"

Martin's shoulders drooped a little. He handed her the whiskey tumbler without looking at her.

"Sorry."

"There's some juice in the fridge," Carole said. "Bring it into the sitting room." She reached past Martin to tear off a paper
towel from the roll on the wall. Martin watched her wrap it round her wet whiskey glass.

"When'll Dad be back?"

"Any minute."

"I might wait then—"

"Wait for what?"

"Well, wait to say what I've got to say."

Carole looked at him. She took a swallow of her whiskey.

"Oh."

Martin shrugged. He went over to the fridge and swung the door open.

"Is it important?" Carole said.

Martin didn't turn round.

"You could say so."

"If it's important, darling," Carole said, "then it's going to be a bit difficult to talk about anything else while we wait
for Dad, isn't it?"

Martin put a carton of juice on the counter, lifted it to drink out of directly, remembered, and opened a cupboard for a glass.

"I guess so."

"Well, then."

Martin turned round slowly and leaned against the counter. He crossed his ankles and stared at his feet. He was wearing peculiar
modern trainers, black canvas with wavy soles and elastic gussets. Carole found herself wondering how much they had cost.

"Mum," Martin said, "it didn't work out."

Carole rearranged the paper towel round her whiskey glass.

"What didn't?"

"Danny's company."

Carole went very still.

"Your friend Danny? The one you invested in?"

"Yup."

"It didn't work out. You mean it's failed?"

"He did his best. He worked all hours. But it's been the stock market and September 11th and stuff. It was all against him."

"So you've lost your investment?"

Martin nodded. His head was still bent.

"Was—was it much?"

Martin nodded again.

"How much?"

There was a pause. Martin crossed his ankles the other way.

"Everything."

"What do you mean, everything?"

Martin sighed. Carole put her glass down.

She said again, "What do you mean, everything?"

He mumbled something.

"What?"

"My flat. Everything."

"Your
flat?
"

"I re-mortgaged it to give him the money."

"You
didn't!
" Carole said.

Martin shouted suddenly, his head jerking up, "Mum, Danny is a
friend!
"

"Sorry," Carole said. She turned and picked her glass up again. "Sorry."

"I know it's a bit of a shock. It's a shock to me."

"Yes."

"I've known for a week. For a whole week. I've known I've got nothing left except my job and you know what I feel about
that.
"

"Yes," Carole said. Her hands were shaking again.

"Sorry, Mum."

She shook her head. She put a hand out to him.

"It's all right, darling, it's all right. It's just—"

"I know."

Carole let her hand fall. She took a swallow of whiskey.

"What a pity."

"What a waste is what you really mean," Martin said.

"That too."

"Don't you want to start on all that stuff about my education and your hopes and investment in me?"

"No," Carole said.

"Well, thanks for that anyway."

Carole closed her eyes.

"You say everything's gone. Or going."

"Yes."

"Well." She took a huge breath and opened her eyes again.

"Well, darling, is there anything Dad and I can do to help?"

Martin said sourly, "Sound as if you mean it, for a start."

"I
do
mean it."

"There—is, actually."

Carole waited.

"And?"

"You won't like this."

She smiled. She felt her lips tight against her teeth.

"Try me."

"Can I move back in?" Martin said. He raised his head and looked straight at her, straight at her tight small smile. "Just
until I get myself a bit sorted, can I come back home?"

Through a tapering chink in the curtains, Connor could see the reddish London night sky. Every so often, there was a tiny
light across it, maybe a star, or a plane. Or his imagination. He didn't like what his imagination did when he couldn't sleep,
didn't like how disproportionate it got, how it played tricks and tried to frighten him. His usual comfort on these occasions
was to focus on Carole, warm and steady and sleeping beside him, a palpable reminder of the reality and reliability of things.
But tonight was different. It was different because Carole wasn't asleep either and because she wasn't her body exuded tension
and unhappy preoccupation, instead of repose and reassurance, and these silent agitations conveyed themselves to Connor in
a way he found very hard to bear indeed.

It had been an awful evening. Heaven knows, over the last twenty-eight years they'd had too many awful evenings either with
Martin or on his account, but this one had been unusually upsetting. And it had been so horrible because—Connor couldn't pretend
otherwise—Carole herself had been out of control, out of her senses, out of—what was the phrase?—out of
order.
Connor had got back from the Hurlingham full of the satisfaction of having narrowly beaten Benny Nolan in three sets to find
Carole and Martin propped up in the kitchen glaring at each other in an atmosphere of indescribable disharmony. He'd taken
a deep breath and ushered them both into the sitting room and re-filled Carole's glass and got himself a gin and tonic and
made Martin go through the whole pathetic, inevitable saga of Danny's failure and Martin's involvement in it. And then he'd
heard Martin out, on his pitifully threadbare plans for the future, which included—even Connor's heart sank here—the proposal
to return to live at home for six months, and he'd just been about to reply in as measured and calm a way as he could when
Carole lost it, just lost it, went from a standing start of self-control to a hundred miles an hour of pure fury in a single
second.

They'd just gaped at her, her husband and son. They'd sat there, eyes and mouths open, and watched her while she screamed
and gestured and spilled her whiskey. Connor had never seen anything like it in his life before, never seen anyone lose it
like that, and certainly not Carole. And what made it worse was that it was extremely difficult to know exactly why she was
going on like this, exactly what her deep, furious, unhappy trouble was. Of course it was irritating to think of Martin returning
to disturb the civilized order of their lives, and of course it was worrying that he'd lost so much money and in a venture
anyone with half an eye could have told him was doomed from the outset, but neither his hopelessness nor his lack of judgment
justified an outburst quite like the one they were witnessing. It was terrible, horrifying. There was something about it,
Connor thought now, staring at the chink of reddish light, that was unacceptably
primitive.

He turned his head on the pillow to look, apprehensively, at Carole. She was lying stiff and straight on her back, and he
could see in the dimness that her eyes were open: he could just see the glint of her eyeballs. He wondered if she'd been crying
again. She'd wept bitterly that evening, wept until her face was raw and shiny and she could hardly speak for the paroxysms
that gripped her throat. After Martin had gone—he'd clung to his father, briefly, in the hall, with a fierceness that he hadn't
shown since he was seven—she'd shut herself in the bathroom and Connor, miserably pacing outside, could hear that she was
crying still, crying and crying with an intensity that Connor supposed meant she had no words left to express the depth of
whatever it was she was feeling. When she came out of the bathroom at last, he didn't try to speak to her, he merely guided
her, as if she were ill, to their bedroom and left her there, with a nightcap and Radio 3, while he went to restore some order
to the sitting room and his own mind.

But the latter proved impossible. Here he was, three and a half hours later, as awake and agitated as he'd been since he got
home. Playing tennis with Benny seemed to have happened at another time, in another life. He took a breath.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," she said. Her voice was still thick, after all those tears.

He hesitated.

Then he said, "I don't want to upset you any more, and I know Martin is a great disappointment to you—indeed, he is to me,
in many ways—but don't you think you were a bit hard on him this evening?"

There was a silence. Carole rubbed at her nose with a tissue.

Then she said, with surprising clearness, "Yes."

Connor raised himself on one elbow. He smiled at her in the dimness.

"
That's
my girl."

Carole rubbed her nose again. She didn't look at him.

She said, "It's not about Martin."

"What's not about Martin?"

"Why I got in such a state tonight. I mean, frankly I don't much want him back here, and I don't think you do either, and
it's typical of him to risk everything for someone unreliable, but that—well, I can bear that. I mean, it isn't as if there's
anything new there, it's just more of the sad same."

Connor stopped smiling.

He said, more tensely, "Well, if it isn't Martin, what is it? What on
earth
could induce you to behave like that?"

Carole laid her arms straight down by her sides, like a figure on a tomb.

"The past," she said.

"The past? What in heaven's name could there be in our past—"

"Not our past. My past."

Connor sat up straighter. He found himself consciously reaching for his dignity, as he used to do in his working days when
it became necessary to issue a reprimand.

He said, in a voice he hoped was more relaxed than it sounded, "Perhaps you'd better tell me. Perhaps you had better explain."