The Closed Circle (40 page)

And then Sophie began to explain. It was hard to know where to start. The era they were discussing seemed to belong to the dimmest recesses of history. She said to Patrick: “Do you ever try to imagine what it was like before you were born?”

And so Sophie and Patrick spent that evening telling each other stories. Sophie told the story of Harding and his anarchic schoolboy jokes; the rivalry between Richards and Culpepper; the teenage love affair between Benjamin and Cicely. And Patrick told her the story of how Benjamin and Cicely's daughter, Malvina, conceived on the morning of May 2nd, 1979— the only time they had ever made love—had unknowingly sought out her father twenty years later, only to find herself falling in love, instead, with his younger brother Paul. And he told her, too, the story of his mother, Claire, and how she had finally uncovered the truth about her sister's disappearance in the winter of 1974.

As they told these stories, the platform of the restaurant revolved, and they saw the full moon go by six times, until it was almost midnight, and the smiling waiters and waitresses were standing by the doors to the observation floor, waiting for them to leave. And when the full moon was hanging again over the Reichstag and the Tiergarten, they knew that it was time to go, and that the circle had closed for the last time.

It was a clear, blueblack, starry night, in the city of Berlin, in the year 2003. Patrick and Sophie walked together through the now quiet streets, along Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse and Unter den Linden until they had almost reached Pariser Platz and the Hotel Adlon. As they crossed the wide boulevard, a taxi pulled out quickly behind them from a side street, and they had to run across the final stretch of road. Patrick grabbed Sophie's hand to pull her after him, and when they reached the safety of the pavement, he did not let go.

As they passed the hotel, they saw there were only two people still sitting in the windows of the Restaurant Quarré on the ground floor: Philip and Lois. Patrick and Sophie waved to them, and gestured silently ahead in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, to let them know that they had not quite done with walking yet.

Philip and Lois had not ventured far that evening. They had moved only a few yards, in fact, from the lobby bar to the Restaurant Quarré, where they were given a window table without a reservation because the
maitre d'
recognized Lois from her fainting fit a few hours earlier.

They could hardly avoid talking about Lois's brothers, for most of the meal. It was some weeks since Philip had heard any news of Benjamin. He knew that he was down in London, and reunited with Cicely. Lois also said that he'd got another job, now, with a big firm of City accountants.

“The thing nobody ever really explained to me,” she said, “was how Cicely managed to find him again in the first place.”

“Oh, that was simple,” Philip answered. “We have Doug to thank for that. When she finally came back to London—having been in Sardinia for a few years, I think—one of the first things she did was to email Doug at the paper. He puts his address at the bottom of every column, you see. So he was the one who gave her Ben's address in Birmingham. And then, of course, when Benjamin got back from his travels, he couldn't believe it when Doug told him that she'd been trying to get back in touch. He probably went out and found her that afternoon.”

To which Lois said, surprisingly: “Poor Malvina. That would have been the last thing she wanted to happen.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she's always wanted to keep them apart. She's always wanted that, more than anything. For Benjamin's sake.” Philip seemed puzzled, so she asked: “Did you ever meet her?”

“Only once—very briefly, a few years ago, at the rally for Longbridge.”

“I spent a whole day with her,” said Lois, quietly, reflectively. “And I'm glad that I did. I understand things better now. And I'm not angry with her any more.”

“When was this?” said Philip.

“A couple of months ago. In Germany. Only a few hundred miles from here, as it happens—up on the coast. That's where she and Paul have been . . . hiding out. I went to see them both—actually it was Paul I really wanted to see, to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing—but he miraculously disappeared that day. I never got to see him at all. It was Malvina I spoke to.”

Then, slowly, she began to tell Philip everything she had learned that day.

“I think about four years ago, Malvina must have been starting to despair. I mean, imagine it. She's been born in some Godforsaken town in the middle of America to a twenty-year-old mother who's going through a lesbian phase. When that falls apart, she gets shunted from man to man, from father-figure to father-figure. As for her
real
father, Cicely thinks so little of him that she won't even tell her daughter who it is. Builds up this fantasy, instead, of some genius set designer who's supposed to have died of AIDS in the eighties. So Malvina has this huge . . .
absence
to contend with all her life, and on top of that, Cicely herself. For twenty years! Twenty years of Cicely, having a nervous breakdown every time one of these guys leaves her and crying endlessly on her little daughter's shoulder and telling her what a terrible terrible person she is. What must
that
do to you, after a while? And then the latest relationship starts looking rocky, and for the first time ever, Cicely is starting to look ill—I mean,
really
ill this time, no play-acting—and suddenly Malvina realizes that she can't do this any more. She can't do it alone. But she can't bring herself just to walk out on her mother, either.

“And then, she discovers something, something that gives her an idea. She finds an old tape someone made for Cicely, when she was still at school. It has a little piece of music on it, written for piano and guitar, called
Seascape No. 4
. The playing isn't very good and the recording quality's dreadful—half way through the piece she can even hear a cat miaowing in the background—but even that gives it a kind of charm, and it makes no difference to the really important thing, the thing she realizes as soon as she hears it: that the person who wrote this music must really have loved her mother. She becomes obsessed with this tape and starts listening to it over and over. And she starts asking her mother questions about the person who wrote the music, but all Cicely will tell her is that it was someone she knew at school called Benjamin. It's not much to go on but in the end it's all that Malvina needs. A few hours on the internet and she's worked out that his name must have been Benjamin Trotter and nowadays he works for a firm of accountants in Birmingham. So up to Birmingham she goes, some time in the winter of 1999.

“She gets talking to the receptionist at Benjamin's office, and before long she knows who to look out for. She follows him to a bookshop and follows him into the café and waits for her moment, and soon enough it comes. But of course, she doesn't have any kind of game plan. Somewhere at the back of her mind is the thought that here's somebody who might be able to come to her rescue, one day, to take Cicely off her hands. But she only has to talk to him for a few minutes to know that it's not going to work, that she can't go through with it. Not because he's forgotten her—oh no. Quite the opposite, as it happens. He talks about Cicely the very first time he and Malvina meet, because he tells her about this epic novel-with-music that he's writing, and admits that one of the things that's driving him on—the main thing, in a way—is the thought that he's still writing it for her, to prove something to her, that it's a kind of present that one day he wants to lay at her feet. He doesn't know
how
this is going to happen, exactly, he doesn't seem to have thought it through, but he seems to have no doubt that once this thing is published, or released, once it's
out there,
anyway, Cicely will know about it and . . . what? Come running back to him? God only knows.” Lois looked down, wincing, her brow furrowed with pity. “Well—whatever. Malvina's in no doubt that he's still in thrall to her, at any rate. But this is exactly what makes her realize, after a while, that she can't go through with the plan. There's a big problem, you see, something she hadn't anticipated. She
likes
Benjamin. Really, really likes him. And she feels so sorry for him, too, for the way he's locked himself inside this obsession and it's ruined everything for him, in the end—his work, his marriage, his whole life up to that point. She knows that seeing Cicely again is the thing he wants most of all; and she also knows that it would be the very worst thing that could happen to him. So she keeps quiet. In no time at all she's learned to do what all of Benjamin's friends learn to do, sooner or later. You don't mention the C-word.

“No doubt the sensible thing would have been to get straight on the train to London and never come back. But she's drawn to Benjamin, for reasons she can't explain. She feels incredibly close to him. And he senses this too, and feels the same way, but because he doesn't know what's going on, he gets confused, and starts to wonder whether really she fancies him, whether there's some kind of attraction building up here. Of course, being Benjamin, he doesn't act upon this, doesn't do anything crass like jumping on her or trying to start an affair, but still, when they see each other again, and the time after that, and the time after that, he makes the mistake of keeping it a secret from Emily, and before long, for him, it's started to
feel
like an affair, even if there's nothing like that really happening. So he gets into a bit of a muddle over it. And all Malvina's thinking, in the meantime, is how comfortable she feels with this person, how nice he is to be around, how
kind
he's being to her. Because he
is
kind, Benjamin. Nobody would deny him that. And Malvina notices that he listens to what she has to say—not many people listen to her, it's an unusual experience, at first—and he takes an interest in the fact that she wants to write, and he takes an interest in what she's doing at university in London. And that's where his kindness leads him to make a big mistake.

“Malvina's doing media studies, and she's doing a project that year on politics and the media, with specific reference to New Labour. So what does Benjamin suggest, with that big heart of his? ‘Oh, you should really have a word with my brother.' And of course, Malvina jumps at this idea. Paul's not very keen, at first, but then Benjamin tells him how pretty she is, and that seems to do the trick, and—well, the rest you know . . .” She gazed out of the window, looking back over this train of events, trying to make sense of it. “It all started,” she realized, “with that piece of music. Recorded in my grandparents' house. Decades ago. That's where it all began . . .”

She looked up, suddenly aware that a waiter was hovering over her. It was late in the evening, now, and he had come to offer them coffee.

When he had left, Philip asked: “How much of this do your parents know?”

Lois shook her head. “Almost nothing. Well, they know that Paul and Malvina are together now, obviously . . .”

“But they don't know . . . who she is?”

“We've got to keep it from them,” Lois said. “They couldn't handle it. The only thing I can hope is that it doesn't last much longer. Malvina's coming back to London more and more. She sees Cicely. Benjamin won't see her. Not while she's living with Paul. But I wonder if she'll realize, soon, what a terrible mistake she's making. I think she might.” She looked up and smiled; a brittle, unhappy smile. “Her writing's coming on, apparently. Did you ever see anything of hers?”

“No, I can't say I have.”

“Well, I don't suppose I would've done, either, except that I was shelving the new periodicals last week, and I saw that she had something in one of them. A poem.”

“Did you read it?”

Lois nodded.

“What was it about?”

“Fathers. Fathers and daughters. Ironic, isn't it—that Benjamin's daughter, of all people, should make it into print before he does? I wonder how he'll feel about that, if he ever finds out.” She sipped her coffee. “Anyway: that's why I try not to blame Malvina, too much. Her motives were good—some of them. Paul's the one I blame. He's the one I can never forgive. None of us can. The fucking . . .
idiot.
” The word suddenly came out with terrible force, terrible venom. Philip would never have imagined that Lois could speak like this. “Abandoning Susan and the girls. Giving it all up, giving up
everything.
I mean, what does he think he's going to do? What's he going to do when it all falls apart?”

“Oh, you'd be surprised,” said Philip, wearily. “Paul will be back. Sooner rather than later.”

“I don't see how. His political career's finished.”

“He's got a lot of contacts in the business community. A lot of good friends. They'll find something for him. The thing is, people like Paul always bounce back. Always. Look at Michael Usborne. After he ran that last company into the ground and parachuted out with a couple of million, everyone said he was finished. But now he's back and he's running a bloody electricity company. These people aren't like the rest of us. They're invincible.”

Lois didn't know who Michael Usborne was. Philip explained, as well as he could, the story of his involvement with Paul—and the even stranger story of his brief, unsuccessful relationship with Claire, which had ended this time last year with their holiday in the Cayman Islands.

“And is Claire OK?” Lois wanted to know. “How's she managing, these days?”

“Claire,” said Philip, with undisguised delight, “could not be happier. She's gone back to Italy and she's with the man she loves and the last time I saw her she was looking about ten years younger.”