Brother and Sister

by Joanna Trollope

  David bent and put his hands under her arms to lift her.

  "Come on, Marnie, come on—"

  Marnie was crying now.

  "I mean it, I mean it, I didn't mean to drive you all apart, I didn't—"

  Nathalie leaned across Polly's bed and put a hand on Mamie's arm.

  "It's all over. Promise. All that, over—"

  "But it's changed things!"

  "It was bound to," David said. "Change had to happen." He got Marnie clumsily to her feet.

  "We were all part of it," Nathalie said. "We all were."

  "What?" Ellen said.

  There was a silence.

  Ellen said sharply, "This adoption business?"

  "Well," Daniel said, reaching for another of Polly's grapes, "I'm going to Canada."

  David held Marnie upright.

  "We're coming with you, mate."

  Marnie put a hand out towards Polly.

  "Promise you'll come soon. Promise."

  Polly said loftily, "When my ear is completely better."

  "Of course."

  "Which may be ages."

  Marnie bent and kissed Polly's head lightly.

  "Bring them all—"

  Polly nodded. Steve glanced at Nathalie. Nathalie was looking at David and David had his gaze fixed above all their heads, at the hospital's cream-painted wall.

  "Bring some stuff for the blackfly," Ellen said to Polly. "They are vicious."

  Now, a week later, Polly was back at home and behaving badly and Nathalie had permitted Steve back into their bedroom but was wearing pajamas. He felt himself to be on remand, electronically tagged as to his whereabouts, required to show remorse and the capacity to reform but, at the same time, to be capable of demonstrating a desirable, powerful maleness which Nathalie, in her present state, could not do without. It was because of this latter quality, this need to be strong and sheltering, that Steve had not told Nathalie about the business. He had told her that Titus was quitting—in fact, she had asked in one of her first outbursts after the revelation of his affair with Sasha how Titus could stand to work with him for another minute—but he had not revealed that Justine and Meera were going too, that Justine had, in fact, already gone, leaving her desk in a state that would have looked like a childish revenge if Steve had felt less unhappily responsible for her state of mind. He had not said a word about Meera because it was, in a way, the departure he felt most keenly about, the one that most pointedly showed up his own weakness, his own inability to put the professional before the personal, his own folly and destructive risk-taking. To fail in Meera's eyes was something he could not, in his own mind, even tiptoe towards without wincing. And when she offered to stay, while he found a replacement, as long as that period didn't exceed a month, and he accepted with pitiful alacrity, he knew he'd sunk in her estimation about as low as he could go.

  "One month, then," she said. "From this Friday. No overtime."

  He glanced up at the clock on the wall above her desk. It said ten to six. She had left precisely at five-thirty, leaving no sign behind her that the evening's departure was any different from any other evening's. Her desk was immaculate, her bin empty, and a faint breath of Issey hung in the air like the ghost of a reproof. Steve sat down in her chair and looked up at the ceiling beams. They did not appear to him a source of comfort tonight, but merely old, interesting pieces of ex-tree which had seen every kind of human stupidity and were perfectly indifferent to his. He thought, staring upwards, that someone else might have to work under them soon, that he might have to sell everything he had worked for because he had let so much slide, because he had made a mess of things, because he had done exactly what his angry, disappointed father had said he would do if he turned down the Royal Oak in favor of art college.

  Somebody knocked on the door to the staircase. Steve sat up, alert.

  "Come—"

  The door opened slowly.

  "I saw the light was on," Titus said. "I wondered if you were working—"

  "Have you ever knocked on a door in your life?"

  "Not since school—"

  "No."

  "I wasn't sure," Titus said, "what you'd be doing. If you see what I mean."

  Steve put his hands behind his head.

  "I am contemplating the future."

  "Oh."

  "I don't like the look of it."

  Titus came further into the room and stood a foot away from Meera's desk.

  "None of it?"

  Steve eyed him.

  "Why do you ask?"

  Titus looked away. He cleared his throat.

  He said awkwardly, "I—I'm sorry about Nathalie."

  "What?"

  "I'm sorry," Titus said, "that I insisted you tell Nathalie."

  "You were angry—"

  "I was. Steaming. I wanted to bloody kill you. But I didn't want to kill Nathalie, I didn't want to hurt her at all."

  "Titus," Steve said, "why are you here?"

  Titus gestured. He was wearing a denim jacket and half the collar had got tucked in.

  "I—um—wanted to see if she was OK. With Polly in hospital and all that."

  "Nathalie?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you mean, has she forgiven me?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't know," Steve said.

  Titus put his hands in his pockets.

  "Are you talking—"

  "Sort of."

  "And her brother's going to Canada, isn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "So she feels a bit, well, abandoned—"

  "Yes," Steve said. He unlocked his hands and leaned forward. He said, "It wasn't you. I had to tell her anyway."

  "I don't know," Titus said. "I don't know about all this soul-bearing. I wasn't brought up to it. I shouldn't think my parents have ever talked about love in their lives."

  "And have they been faithful to each other?"

  Titus shrugged.

  "Haven't the faintest. Don't want to think about it."

  "Well, Nathalie is the kind of person who does. And so am I."

  Titus gave him a quick glance.

  "So there's a long way to go."

  "Yes."

  Titus took his hands out of his pockets and gestured towards the rest of the room.

  "What about this?"

  Steve stood up slowly.

  He said, "Maybe it will have to go." He took a breath, thinking of Meera, and then he said, "I've neglected it."

  Titus took a few steps away and then said, his back to Steve, "I could stay."

  "You what?"

  "I could stay. If you like."

  "Well—"

  "You're a nightmare to work for," Titus said, "but I like what you do."

  "Thanks."

  "And to be honest, I'm not in a mood to start looking, I'm not in a mood to go to London and chance my arm."

  "Titus," Steve said, "it mightn't work. It might have gone too far to rescue."

  "We could start again. We could be bloody associates."

  "I don't know. I can't promise you anything. I can't even plan anything until I get down to a cold-towel session—"

  Titus turned round.

  "Are you turning me down?"

  "I think so."

  "What kind of stupid death wish is this?"

  "Maybe," Steve said slowly, "I have to do something with Nathalie now. Maybe, if she'll agree, we'll have to rethink everything, including how the money's earned."

  "Don't you think," Titus said angrily, "that you owe me something?"

  "An apology, yes. But not a job."

  "Jesus," Titus said.

  Steve moved forward. He put a hand on Titus's arm.

  He said, "I couldn't handle you now. I'd like to, but I couldn't."

  Titus glanced at him.

  "At least that's honest."

  Steve said nothing. Titus moved his arm and stepped away towards the door.

  "So it's the open road for me."

  "Yes."

  "Wi
ll you write me a reference with bells on?"

  "Of course."

  Titus paused in the doorway. He gave a quick look at the photographs hanging on the wall beside Steve's desk.

  He said, "You're a lucky sod. You always were," and then he went out onto the staircase and slammed the door behind him.

  Steve walked down the length of the studio, and looked down into the street. He saw Titus pause on the pavement below him and collect himself for a moment, squaring his shoulders, lifting his chin. And then he saw him walk purposefully out across the road, deliberately not looking, deliberately making a car swerve to avoid him. And then he crossed the far pavement and vanished into an alley that led to the center of town.

  Steve turned, and went back to his desk. It was covered with papers, papers he had not attended to, requests, complaints, estimates, invoices, papers that just at this moment represented an aspect of life which had no savor to it at all. He would, he decided, leave them. He would leave them just as Titus would leave them, and instead, just as Titus would do, he would pick up the telephone and make contact again with the essence of things.

  He looked at the phone in his hand. Then he dialed the flat.

  "Hello," Polly's voice said at once, and imperiously.

  "Hello, darling—"

  "Oh," Polly said, "it's you."

  "Yes."

  "It's Daddy," Polly said over her shoulder, and then in her former tone, and quickly before Nathalie could take the phone from her hand, "Have you finished your work?"

  Steve looked round him, down the length of the room, up into those mysterious and remote old beams above his head.

  "Yes," he said, "yes, I rather think I have."

  There was a pause, and then Polly said briskly, "Well, you'd better come home then," and put the receiver down.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable

  novels often centered around the domestic nuances and

  dilemmas of life in contemporary England, Joanna

  Trollope is also the author of a number of historical

  novels and of Britannia's Daughters, a study of women

  in the British Empire. In 1988 she wrote her first novel,

  The Choir, and this was followed by A Village Affair, A

  Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the

  Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of

  Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress

  and, most recently, Girl From the South. She lives in

  London and Gloucester shire.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named

  after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by

  Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype

  and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be

  available in identical form for mechanical hot metal

  composition and hand composition using foundry type.

  Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a font

  engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a font by

  Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an

  enduring modern classic.