On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory (16 page)

My father's asking: “Is there anybody who'd like to add anything to that?” And immediately a host of hands go up. It reminds me of my experience a little earlier on. “Yes Sarah?”

Sarah's the younger of my sisters; only a year or two older than myself.

“I just want to say that I miss him … I miss Danny. He was as good a brother as you could possibly get. And Brad was like a really nice brother-in-law; someone we were truly glad to welcome into our family and someone whom we'd hoped to know better and better as the years went by.”

Well that's all right: none of my siblings had shown themselves to have even the smallest difficulty about accepting you and whenever we had spent time with any of
them
, particularly in the absence of my parents, the atmosphere had been totally relaxed. Sometimes gay issues had been fleetingly discussed and sometimes amongst other jokes being told there'd been a gay one at which we'd all either laughed or groaned according to its quality; but mainly everyone's sexual preferences—although in such surroundings you and I had never felt too inhibited about showing each other our affection—had appeared to be taken wholly for granted, either forgotten about or regarded as irrelevant.

But
.

He was as good a brother as you could possibly get. I tried to remember just one instance of my having deserved a plaudit such as that, as though even
one
instance would have rendered the statement fully valid, siphoned off all its extravagance. The most I could come up with was that I'd generally been cheerful and out of my five siblings had been the biggest clown, the one who'd oftenest made the others laugh: i.e. had possessed a natural ability to play the fool which had given
me
quite as much entertainment as anybody and at the same time had pandered to my vanity. But apart from that—what? Had I ever really put myself out? Ever mended anyone's puncture (unless I were getting paid for it) or taken over anyone's paper round (unless I were getting paid for it) or ever tried to entertain a brother or sister who was ill in bed (unless for some reason I too was feeling bored or had been begged by one or other of my parents please to do so)? And on the occasion that Simon had wrecked his own Lambretta had I then let him borrow mine although the speedy loan of it might well have prevented that subsequent failure of nerve; a failure of nerve from which he hadn't yet recovered even after five years?

Or had I often spent more than I felt I could get away with on their Christmas and birthday presents although frequently I had done pretty damn well in return? But then, naturally, I
was
the youngest wasn't I, I
was
the baby of the family? And even as an adult … when wedding presents also had to be included and then the snowballing presents of a rather surprisingly chuffed uncle … well actually in all fairness I suppose I might have been growing a little more generous even before I'd cast in my lot with you Brad but that didn't exactly turn me into a John D. Rockefeller.

So no. Plenty of practical jokes, in retrospect mostly unfunny and even unkind … yet, apart from being the resident family buffoon and sometimes, at table, drawing off my parents' anger from whoever might have been temporarily out of favour, I couldn't recall one single really
brotherly
thing which I had ever done.

“As good a brother as you could possibly get.” She even has to repeat it.

And yet … And yet it could have been so easy. I wasn't ill-natured. I wasn't (particularly) slothful. So what then had stopped me? I wished to God I had been brotherly. At that minute it seemed the most important failure of my entire life.

But even yet Sarah hasn't finished. “I know I speak for both my sister and my brothers when I say how privileged we feel to have had you with us Danny. Even for such a relatively short time.”

“Hear hear!” calls out Rachel.

“Hear hear!” cries Barnaby.

“And maybe it's true what that old cliché says.” Simon; Lambretta-balked Simon. “Though I've never understood why it should be—and have to add still don't. But here's another very strong piece of evidence to support it. So perhaps …” His voice breaks in the same way that Sarah's had. “Perhaps the good do die young.”

Oh Christ.

What's more, people on every side are murmuring their assent.

I seriously think have I descended into hell. Almost seriously think it. He goes on to make a big deal out of some bit of really ancient history when he and I had been playing in the woods and come across a smeary trail of blood which we'd decided we had no option but to follow. It led us not to a human body but to that of a pitifully trembling and rolling-eyed fox who'd plainly been run down whilst crossing Bounds Road then painfully dragged itself over this instinct-driven short distance in order to die. Tearfully we'd hunted for some sufficiently stout stick. But in the end Simon couldn't bring himself to use it; we'd been terrified we were either going to botch the first blow—or blows?—or hear the skull crack and see the brains spill out. Afterwards in spite of none of these fears being
quite
realized we'd both been very sick together, really pretty violently sick, Simon just as much as me—“a real example of fraternal bonding,” he now terms it, “fairly basic I'd say.” This raises a slightly shaky laugh somewhat comparable to our own on that long-ago day when we'd thought we might be tracking murderers and stumbling towards a possibly headless and otherwise dismembered corpse. All the emotion being generated—expressly to mock and punish me it seems—again makes me wonder if the devil himself doesn't have a hand in it.

“And my darling I'd like to second everything that Sarah and Simon have just said.”

My mother—well of course my mother; Satan would scarcely have neglected the opportunities afforded by a grieving mother. Not only is her son aware he doesn't deserve such eulogies; what's worse he also knows it really wouldn't have taken that much effort to begin at least partly to deserve them.
I wouldn't have needed to be a saint to have still come a lot closer to this astonishing guy everyone's inventing
. And it isn't as though I'm stupid. Maybe not wonderfully educated but certainly possessing an average share of native wit. And added to that—at any rate theoretically—a Christian. Why hadn't I
seen
? Just answer me that please. Why on earth had I not seen?

She goes on.

“We do indeed feel privileged to have had you with us my darling. And yes the good really do seem to be taken from us young. What more can I say? Your life was an example. And anyone who knew you, even briefly, realized you were special. We all loved you—very very much.” Satan has obviously advised her that if she wants to produce the fullest emotional impact she should follow Sarah's lead and speak to me directly; and oh sure you have to admire the guy—how does he work it that she isn't instead producing the deepest and most cringe-making embarrassment? People appear to be sincerely moved, don't keep their eyes fixed firmly on the floor nor look as though they're likely to congratulate themselves afterwards: “My God only suppose that we'd begun to giggle…!” And all of this for
me
. “I can tell you darling there won't be a single day of my life when I don't remember you with all the love I feel for you right now.”

Oh bullshit Mum. I love you too, dearly, but just listen to yourself. Please. This is me, this is Danny. Why are you talking in this way? My life was an example all right—no question. But of
what
may one ask? Of unremitting blinkeredness? Of waywardness and wasted opportunities?

And just hang on a moment! Hang on! What about Brad? Since Sarah nobody has mentioned Brad. Fuck it his parents supplied all that champagne which you all have in your hands—and a lot more with which to give you refills. Yet anyone who didn't know would suppose that I was the luminary around here and Brad was just my acolyte.

Because it's me who's still being celebrated: currently it's Sebastian and Sally and Laura from the hotel who are all having their little word. (And bless them they're sweet; in other circumstances I'm sure it would have been fun and gratifying to hear them and I know that later I'll appreciate their good intentions and their obvious affection.
But
—once again
but
.) These three are followed by Martin Frobisher from school—we've met perhaps a dozen times over the past eight years—what does
he
know about the way I lived my life? Then there are the kind Miss Cottons who've supplied the tea. You'd think that I'd popped in to see them regularly to mend fuses, replace washers, unblock drains; to read aloud
A Christmas Carol
while they sat with their embroidery before the fire. In fact I had done each of those things
once
(the book admittedly spread over several evenings); this was the only way in which I could ever have been thought to eclipse you, my love, no matter how faintly—somehow I had always had a gift for getting on with old people, particularly old ladies, which despite the origins of
A Hundred Years Hence
you didn't altogether share. Then there's the vicar Mr Kenworthy putting in his own few words—Mr Kenilworth who so far as I can remember never even met you. But where are all the people on
your
side—yes I know I'm making this thing sound too much like a wedding—where are all your longtime London friends? Where are our host and hostess from the party on the night on which you died and at least six or seven of our fellow guests? Where are all those people you felt close to in the theatre and where are all the down-and-outs from across the length and breadth of the land who never once held out their hand to you in vain—and who at one time might even have had business cards left in their palms as well as money? And where is Hélène? And where Suzanne?

And on the other hand—in my case the utter reverse of all of this—where's Philip? Where Jonathan (whose principle defect was merely his lack of age)? Where Mr Tibbotson? (Dead of course: at a bit of a disadvantage.) And where all those countless down-and-outs who never once held out their hand to
me
and found themselves rewarded for their pain? (Well ‘never once' is maybe overstating it but only very slightly; ‘hardly ever' would be fractionally more correct.) Why don't such as they, those countless down-and-outs at least, now cut a swathe through our sitting-room lugubriously reminding each damp-eyed mourner that inasmuch as I hadn't shown any compassion towards
them
what earthly right did I have to hope for, let alone expect, any to be shown towards
me
? ‘I was a stranger and you took me in …'; the quote goes something along those lines. My Macduff-and-Banquo-type accusers, many of whom have doubtless died from disease and exposure and lack of sustenance, would probably have learned the rest of it and could probably now declaim it with conviction and majesty and resonance.

Hell it seems like some conspiracy. This is
your
house we are standing in; indirectly
your
champagne that is being drunk. By rights it should have been your commemoration a great deal more than mine.

I've had enough of it. I go upstairs.

In our bedroom I lie on the bed—my side of it. Then I move across to yours, wanting to see things as far as possible exactly as you yourself would have seen them: the underside of the light fitment with its metal clusters of overhanging grapes plus trailing leafstalk (sounds kitsch but isn't—you the grandmaster of non-kitsch); the small threadbare patch in one half of the claret-coloured Victorian curtains, a flaw we'd been meaning for a long time to have invisibly mended and which is noticeable at the moment even though the curtains aren't drawn; the smile of the fat cherub at the top of the gilt-framed mirror (okay, a
fraction
kitsch) whose gaze was levelled marginally more at you than at me. I jump up abruptly and pull back the counterpane, let my own head rest on the pillow where yours last rested. Turn and press my face against it. You very often slept that way—I thought I remembered you doing it for some of the time last Friday night—lying on your stomach with your hands clutching either side of the scrunched-up pillow and your nose buried somewhere in the centre.

Oh Brad.

Brad.

I'm sorry for that farce downstairs. So well-meaning but so … so laughably selective; and though in some sense genuine … so laughably false at the same time. I wish the picture that it gave of me was true. I wish that you, not I, had been the focus of it. And above all else—I so much wish that you'd been here to hear it with me.

Time passes. I get up and wander round. Just touching things. Your things. Go inside the study. Sit in the armchair near the window where in the evenings I sometimes sat reading whilst you—obsessed—worked fluidly at the computer. Normally when I wasn't on duty we'd spend much of the evening on the couch downstairs watching a DVD or some programme on the box, frequently I with my head in your lap, frequently you with yours in mine; but from time to time the characters in the play you were writing simply demanded to be listened to and have you transcribe their words even after seven o'clock—and well after seven o'clock—when more typically at that hour we would decide the sun was over the yardarm.

In any case always before we went to bed you'd read to me the work you'd done that day and over our ritual nightcap would often amend things according to my suggestion.

“Yet don't ever think you're going to wrangle your name onto the playbills as co-author; I'm always fiendishly possessive of my babies. On the other hand though—when at last it comes to getting the script published …”

“Some fulsomely heartfelt dedication?”

“Possible. Just possible. How fulsomely heartfelt would you want it to be?”

“‘For Danny. Always fiendishly possessive of my babies.'”

I may have been a little drunk; that wasn't at all the kind of thing I usually said. Highly unliberated. Even you Brad looked a bit surprised. (Though on the whole quite pleased.) In any event by last weekend the play still wasn't finished: the twist ending—dramatic, poignant but mildly funny too—not fully worked out to author-satisfying standards. Despite your death, however, the chances are the play will be produced. The chances are it will get published. The certainty is … there'll be no dedication. But I now feel wonderfully glad I made that tacky tacky comment.