Three Brothers (5 page)

Palmer looked at them severely. “You behave,” he said afterwards, “like a couple of schoolgirls.” This set them off again choking with laughter.

When they rode home on the bus Daniel had the habit of getting off three stops before his neighbourhood. He did not want the others to know where he lived. In his early days at the school he had lied about everything. “My dad,” he said, “has a Buick.” He pronounced the name of the car as “Brick.” Or he might say, “My dad was one of the Dambusters.” One of his first assignments in the geography class had been to draw a scale-plan of his house. He exaggerated the size and the number of rooms, so that the small council house in Camden was transformed into a large suburban villa.

He had other secrets. He never mentioned to his friends the fact that he was attracted to boys rather than to girls. They would not have welcomed the information. They would not have known how to respond to it.

He saw Harry, one Saturday afternoon, walking slowly along Camden High Street. He was arm in arm with a young woman, who was laughing at something he had said.

“Oh there you are,” Harry said airily, as if they had parted company an hour or so before. “Have you finished school yet?”

“Another year.” He detected a slight note of sarcasm in his brother’s voice. “Are you still at the
Bugle
?”

“No fear. I’m going up in the world. I’m on the
Chronicle
now.” Daniel tried not to show that he was impressed by this news. “In Fleet Street.”

It was only now that Harry introduced Hilda to his younger brother. She put her head to one side and remarked, “You
look
like each other. Oh Hilda. What a very silly thing to say. Anyway, you do.” She had noticed something else. She had noticed some communion between them. It was not of character, or of temperament. It was something harder and deeper, something almost impersonal.

“And what about you?” Harry asked him.

“What about me?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I sit my exams. And then I intend to go to Cambridge.”

Hilda recalled how Harry had used the same phrase, “I intend to,” with the same directness. “That will be nice,” she said.

“Rewarding,” Daniel replied.

“How’s Dad?” Harry asked him.

Two evenings before, when Daniel was lying on his bed reading, he had heard his father opening the front door. He must have returned from another long journey. He always entered the house quietly, not letting the door slam. Daniel resumed his reading. Then he heard a crash, and a yell. He got up from his bed, and walked slowly down the stairs to find his father standing in the living room with an old cloth armchair upturned on the floral-patterned carpet. There was a smell of dust in the air. “It just fell over,” Philip said. “I never touched it.”

At that moment Sam came into the house; without greeting them he went straight to his room.

“A leg must have been loose.” Daniel settled the armchair upright.

Philip promptly sat down in it, and asked his son to pour him a whisky. “How does Sam seem to you, Danny?”

He hated being called Danny. Danny was the young child on the council estate. His name was Daniel. “I don’t know how Sam seems, Father. I know not ‘seems.’ ”

“What?”

“Hamlet. Shakespeare.”

Philip was immediately impatient with his son. He had come to the conclusion that Daniel was prim and affected. He did not understand how this had happened. Once he had been so likeable and cheerful. Perhaps he also realised that his son now disliked him. Or, rather, that Daniel felt disdain for him.

In truth Daniel blamed his father for life in a shabby house in a shabby street. He resented the lack of ambition that had consigned the family to this council estate. He disliked Philip’s weary look, and detested his air of defeat and resignation.

“I suppose,” Philip said, after a pause, “that you are doing well at school.”

“I think so.”

“Whatever you do, Danny, you must …” He trailed off.

“What did you want to tell me, Father?” There was some malice in his voice, which he did not believe he had intended.

“You have brains. You are quick. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“My head is fine. So are my brains.”

“Don’t be clever.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to be.”

They were not looking at one another; they were staring into infinite space.

Philip began again. “So you want to go to university?”

“To Cambridge.”

“That’s a big step.”

Daniel seemed to consider this truism for a moment. He disliked his father’s faint cockney accent, especially since he had gone to some trouble in removing all traces of his own.
He had managed to hypnotise himself. He had drawn a large black dot on the ceiling of his narrow bedroom, and stared at it with concentration until he felt his ordinary awareness slip away. Then he repeated certain words out loud—cornflake, lunar, rain—without any London intonation. Much to his surprise, the method worked. “It
is
a big step,” he said. “That’s why I’m making it.”

“Are you ready for it?”

“Ready?”

“There will be people there with a lot of money. There will be a few snobs, too.”

“So?” How dare his father assume that he would be the victim of snobbery?

“There won’t be many of you.”

“Many what?”

“Working-class boys.”

Daniel was too angry to speak for a moment. “I don’t think these divisions mean anything.”

“Wait and see.” It occurred to Daniel that his father was jealous of his success. He had no knowledge of Philip Hanway’s early ambitions, but he sensed his father’s envy. “I’m only a lorry driver, Danny. I never expected to be a lorry driver. I don’t want to be a lorry driver. So I don’t amount to much.” Daniel did not reply. “When I was your age I had ambitions. I know. The same old story. But you get beaten down. You get distracted. You get betrayed. That’s when some people become sick. That’s when some people die.”

“The horror of life.” Daniel had recently come across the phrase.

“Is it? That says it. The horror of life.”

Daniel knew that he ought to feel pity for his father, but instead he was still filled with anger and resentment. “Why did Mother disappear?”

“She ran away with another man. That’s all I know.”

“Did you try and find her?”

“What was the point? She didn’t want us.”

“You could have tried.”

“When you drive long distances, you can dream. Dream of the past. Dream of what might have been. I spend my time dreaming.” Daniel noticed that his father had changed the subject, but he did not interrupt him. “My life is over. I know that. That’s why I worry about Sam. I wouldn’t want to see him—” Philip put his hand up to his face, and started to weep. Daniel was horrified by this display of feeling. He should, perhaps, have gone over to his father and tried to comfort him. Instead he sat solemnly in his chair, staring at him but not daring to speak. “That wasn’t meant to happen,” Philip said after a few seconds.

“No,” Daniel replied. “I don’t suppose it was. I still have some homework to finish.” He rose and left the room.

“How’s Dad?” Harry repeated the question.

“He is—he is—fine. As far as I know.”

Daniel replied to his brother’s question in as easy and nonchalant a manner as he could muster. He wondered whether he should mention their father’s explanation for their mother’s disappearance. He looked up at Harry, and Harry’s eyes told him to stay quiet. He thought that he had seen, within them, the image of a woman with her finger to her lips.

“Got a girl yet, Dan?”

“He’s only a child,” Hilda replied for him. “Fancy asking that.”

Daniel resented being called a child. “I do have a friend,” he said. “She works in a flower shop near my school.”

Harry knew, from the way that Daniel put his hand up to his neck, that he was lying.

“Let’s have a walk in the park,” Hilda suggested. “It’s ever such a nice day.” Daniel winced.

He joined them reluctantly. He did not care to be seen in their company. He started walking a few paces behind Harry when Hilda noticed another similarity between the two brothers. Their pace was equal. Their posture was alike. The direction they were taking, without appearing to notice one another, was identical. They were advancing towards the same destination without being aware of the fact. They stopped beside a fountain and small pool. A short distance away was a stone folly, wooden benches set up inside, its roof ornamented with stone doves and weeping angels. It was a secluded spot from which to sit and stare at the rising and falling water.

“I used to come here,” Harry said, “when I had finished at the
Bugle
. It was quiet, in the evening. I used to watch the ducks getting ready to sleep.”

“I used to come here,” Daniel said, “on a Sunday afternoon. It was so cheerful and peaceful then. I used to watch the children feeding the ducks.”

“I used to lose track of time.”

“I used to fall asleep.”

The sparkling of the sun on the water of the fountain cast a strange light over them, and they seemed to Hilda to have grown taller. Harry put his arm around her shoulder. “Cup of tea?”

There was a café in the park, the haunt of solitary people, pensioners and pigeons. The mild light of early spring shone upon the paper cups and plates. “It all comes down to this, Dan,” Harry was saying. “You’ve got to take your chances where you find them. No one gives you help in this world.” He seemed to have forgotten George Bradwell. “Every man for himself.”

Hilda burst out laughing. “Oh look. Isn’t it funny?” She was watching as a terrier chased a squirrel across the grass. The squirrel then scampered up a tree, leaving the dog staring upwards and barking furiously. “They never catch them,
do they?” she said. The little dog was trembling with purpose and desire, his body shaking with fierce energy. The squirrel, clasping the bark, remained quite still. He gazed down at his pursuer, while the dog directed his bright and eager glance upwards. Their eyes met, and darkness called to darkness.

“As I was saying, Dan, life is a struggle. A battle.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“Then you’ll do nothing. You’ll go down.” He jerked his thumb towards the ground.

“I won’t go down. But I don’t have to fight.”

“You two.” Hilda was laughing again. “You would think there was a war on.”

Harry felt contempt for Daniel’s passivity, but he took care not to show it. Nevertheless Daniel felt it. The little dog was still barking. “I saw Sam recently,” Harry said.

“Where?”

“He was walking along the Embankment. Chelsea. He didn’t seem to notice me.”

“He doesn’t see anything. Not really. He sees what he wants to see. What he intends to see. Sometimes he stares and stares into space. But he’s happy enough, I think. He sees something I don’t see.”

“Nutter?”

At that moment Sam cried out in his sleep. He was still in his bed, having walked through London for most of the night.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “I hope not.”

“Does he have a job?”

“Dad—Father—gives him money. I don’t think he wants to work.”

Daniel walked home sensing that he had made a bad impression on his brother. Harry had looked at him strangely when he had said that he had no wish to fight. But it was the truth.
He disliked confrontation of any kind, and could not bear disagreements or disputes.

“I hate sports,” he wrote in his diary. “I hate team games. Wednesday afternoon is my black afternoon. Everything about it repels me. Packing up the kit. Walking to the playing fields. Undressing in the changing room. It is all so
undignified
. And unnecessary. What is the point of running around in the mud with a ball on a winter’s day? Everything is cold and wet and dismal. Cricket is worse. I went to the public library to find out the rules, and I still don’t know them. I hate that hard little ball coming anywhere near me. I always duck it. That’s why no one ever chooses me. I’m always the last one standing. It’s embarrassing. Anyway I can’t stand the team spirit. Savages in a pack. I don’t know how they can get so worked up over
nothing
. And the communal bathing is misery. It is all so grotesque.”

He had a horror of being late for the first class of the morning, and was often the first to arrive in the schoolyard. This schoolyard sloped down towards a wooden fence that separated it from the road. That road had once been a river, and the sloping yard a grassy bank. There had been a river here for hundreds of thousands of years, a remnant of the vast ocean that had once covered the site. Where Daniel stood and dreamed, there had swum the plesiosaur and the coelacanth. But the ocean had gone, leaving behind the river. This river created fertile ground. To its banks came hippopotami and elephants the size of small dogs. Some early settlers had encamped just where Daniel was standing. There had been a fight here. A man had been struck in the face with a rock, and had died. He had fallen at Daniel’s feet.

Battles had also been fought in this favoured region of the river. And Daniel watched as slowly the yard was filled with the noise and dispute of schoolchildren. Something glinted at
his feet. He stooped down to pick it up, when suddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to throw himself upon the ground; he steadied himself, by putting his hands on the tarmac, and remained crouched for several seconds. The sound of winds and waters was in his head. Then it passed. “Ready, steady, go,” someone shouted at him. He had looked as if he were about to start a race.

He worked hard, throughout the last autumn and winter of his school years, preparing for his final examinations. “Exams are three days away,” he wrote. “I must not panic. I must revise everything one more time. I hope it’s Cicero or someone else easy. I hope it’s not Tacitus or Ovid. Now I feel sick. I don’t suppose I’ll get an hour’s sleep between now and exam day. I must concentrate. I have to be steady. Otherwise I will become like that tramp.”

He had seen the tramp a week before. “I saw a beggar by the road today. I didn’t feel pity. I felt fear. Fear that I could become like him. One little slip and I could go down. It’s all so hopeless. I don’t think anyone understands me. Hell is other people.”