The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [50]
Ben was standing in the kitchen, looking out of the window.
‘Brother. Jesus. What are you doing here?’
Ben turned round. He looked to be in a trance.
‘Hi,’ he said very quietly, unfazed by the sudden intrusion. He looked back at the window. ‘You took most of his stuff.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Mark said, breathing quickly. ‘To get the rest of it. How did you get in?’
‘Spare set of keys. Kathy gave them to me. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Why would I mind? You can come here whenever you like.’
‘It’s just that I wanted to see the place for myself.’
‘Sure you did.’
Mark looked towards the sitting room. He had not expected to feel this, but his brother’s presence was an intrusion, an unnecessary complication he could do without. To make matters worse, Ben was clearly adrift in self-pity, one of the least attractive elements of his personality. For three weeks Mark had wanted to shake him free of gloom, to move him on.
‘So what’s left to take?’
There was an almost combative tone to Ben’s question.
‘Clothes, mostly,’ Mark told him. ‘Some suits. A couple of pictures…’
‘Yeah, I saw those.’
‘And there’s a box of papers underneath his desk. Bank statements. Insurance records mostly. Dad didn’t keep a diary or anything, so none of it’s any good to the police. I was going to take them home.’
‘Fine.’
There was a prolonged silence. Mark scuffed his shoes against the kitchen’s linoleum and thought about moving next door. When Ben spoke, his voice was removed, almost hypnotic.
‘They say that when your father dies, it’s actually quite liberating. The intercessionary figure has been taken out of the picture. There’s supposed to be this feeling of transcendence.’
‘So is that what you feel? Liberated by what’s happened? Transcendent?’
I don’t have time for this, Mark thought. Not now. Not tonight.
‘It’s funny,’ Ben went on, ignoring the question. ‘I remember when we were children, when Dad first left, I had these feelings of guilt about it that went on for so long… It was as if everything was my fault, you know? We used to talk about this, you and me, don’t you remember?’
Mark nodded. Ben was still looking out of the window, waiting for the moment to turn. It might almost have been a performance, a stage picture. From the fourth floor there was nothing to see but swathes of grey sky and a clutter of roofs.
Ben carried on: ‘It got to be ridiculous. I started to think that if I’d behaved better, eaten what was put in front of me, not cried so much as a child, that Dad wouldn’t have left like he did. But what kind of shit is that to be thinking? It was his fault, not mine. It tookme a long time to realize that.’
‘Me too,’ Mark said instinctively, as if it would help.
‘I had a kind of fantasy of reunion right up until my late teens. Like he would just suddenly reappear and beg our forgiveness. Turn up at school and say everything was going to be all right and then take us out for lunch at Garfunkel’s. Did you ever have that?’
Mark shook his head.
‘Maybe it would have been easier if Mum had had a boyfriend, someone that could have replaced him. I always felt that her life was structured to avoid pain after that, you know? I think that’s why she never remarried.’
Mark made a gesture of understanding, something with his face that he hoped would seem empathetic. In his experience, this kind of talk went nowhere. It was just the theorizing of the artist, the amateur psychologist enjoying his private confession. He thought for a moment that Ben might have been drinking.
‘You getting much work done?’ he asked, trying to steer him off the subject. ‘How’s the picture of that girl going, the good-looking one? What’s the deal on the exhibition?’
But Ben just ignored him.
‘It never occurred to me until