The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [27]
‘What does Alice think about it?’ Mark found himself asking. ‘What does she reckon you should do?’
‘We haven’t talked about it much,’ Ben replied. ‘Why? Has she said anything?’
And suddenly Mark had a chance to force the issue. He remembered that Keen had asked an almost identical question as they were leaving the restaurant in Queensway.
‘What’s Alice’s view?’ his father had said. ‘Does she think Ben’s right about this? Right not to want to meet me?’
Mark had hesitated briefly, but the wine at lunch had led him to betray a confidence.
‘She’s just got used to the idea. Ever since she’s known Ben she’s known about you and your situation. And if you want my honest opinion I reckon she thinks Ben’s being narrow-minded. In fact, she’s told me as much.’
If Mark could have retracted that statement, he would have done so in an instant. Keen’s eyes had lit up.
‘You could use that,’ he said, and the inference was appalling.
‘Use that? What do you mean?’
‘Tell Ben that you and Alice are in agreement. Tell him that it’s time he reconsidered. It’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘… Mark?’
Ben was trying to attract his attention.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I wandered off.’
‘I asked you a question. I said, has Alice said anything about this?’
‘Well, maybe you should ask her.’ Mark had not intended to sound mysterious.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Does she know about this? Does she know that we’re having this conversation?’
And at that moment Alice looked over, sensing the note-change in the tenor of her husband’s voice. Ben saw the set-up instantly.
‘Jesus. You’re not here by coincidence, are you?’
Mark wasn’t sure whether Ben was touched or angry; his face was momentarily unreadable. As a consequence he did not bother to lie in response. Shaking his head and even smiling at the stupidity of Keen’s plan, Mark said, ‘I’m not here by coincidence, no.’
And Ben was out of the pub in seconds.
13
Ben knew that it was not a good idea for a man of thirty-two to walkout of a crowded London pub after telling his older brother to fuckoff. Not in Kensington and Chelsea, at any rate. And not in front of half a dozen of his wife’s colleagues, most of whom would now be on their mobile phones telling anyone from the Standard not fortunate enough to have been there in person just exactly what happened in the lounge bar of the Scarsdale at 8.28 p.m.
Mark had followed him outside, and Ben had heard Alice calling his name as he turned on to Kensington High Street, but they had both decided to let him go and were probably still waiting backin the pub. There was no sense, after all, in going after Ben when the red mist descended. They both would have known that from long experience.
He walked in the direction of Hyde Park, turning backon himself at the gates to Kensington Palace and returning along the opposite side of the street. Alice tried calling him on his mobile phone but he switched it off. It took about ten minutes for Ben to calm down and another five for embarrassment to set in. So much of his anger, he knew, was just a pose, a melodramatized statement of his long-term refusal to change. Whatever arrangement, whatever trap had been set by Alice and Mark, angered him only because he had been kept out of the loop, treated like a child by his wife and brother, and finally cornered in a place from which there was no realistic escape. It had occurred to him many times that he was clinging to old ideas simply because they shielded him from facing harder choices; in a very dangerous sense, Ben was defined by an attitude towards his father which he had formed as a teenager. To abandon that principled stand would mean the dismantling of an entire way of thinking. How would people react