Nocturne

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘So they bury him,’ he explained. ‘They put him in a little flat with a pension from a trust fund and they leave him to get on with it. This is an idea that travels. It could be any city in the western world. London. New York. Melbourne. The guy’s mad, crazy, a non-person.’

  ‘Gilbert?’ I inquired coldly. ‘You’re talking about Gilbert?’

  Brendan ignored the question.

  ‘Brother number one makes it big time. Becomes a minister. Sits in Cabinet. Brother number two goes from bad to worse. Problem is, we need a POV.’

  POV means Point of View.

  ‘This is a documentary?’

  ‘Drama.’

  ‘Drama?

  ‘Yes, a series. Six hours. Maybe seven.’

  Billie’s face was smeared a rich, dark brown. I moistened a finger, wiping away some of the chocolate. Brendan, I finally realised, couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s lives. First it was me. Now it was Gilbert. Cuckoo Productions, I thought bitterly.

  ‘How much do you know?’ I heard myself saying.

  ‘About Gilbert? Quite a lot. About what it’s been like for you? Not very much.’

  ‘Is that why I’m here?’ I looked up at him. ‘Am I the POV?’

  He smiled at me, not answering, completely shameless. Even Varenka, I sensed, was startled.

  For a moment or two I was tempted to surrender to what I really felt, to tell him what a monster television had turned him into, but that would bring this conversation to a close and there were certain questions to which I still needed answers.

  ‘Where’s Gilbert?’ I asked.

  ‘Dorset somewhere. They’ve put him in a home.’

  ‘Who have?’

  ‘The family.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did Morris tell you that as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he’s told you everything else he knows?’

  ‘He’s told me enough.’

  ‘In return for what? A series of his own?’

  ‘Of course. What would any politician want?’

  He smiled, happy at the thought of the webs he could spin, and I sat back, making Billie more comfortable in my lap, waiting. Hatred is too weak a word for what I felt for this man but in spite of everything I still wanted the rest of the story.

  I’d been a spectator at this play for far too long. I’d even struck up a relationship with Tom, Gilbert’s so-called brother, the voice at the end of the telephone. The fact that Gilbert had fooled me over the course of all those conversations was a tribute to his acting skills. He should have stuck with the stage, I thought. I’m sure he’d have made it in the end.

  Sipping his coffee, Brendan began to fill in one or two of the gaps that had been preoccupying me for most of the last four weeks. Gilbert, he said, was the only child of his father’s first marriage. The marriage had ended with his wife’s suicide. At the inquest in Dorchester, she was judged to have taken her life while the balance of her mind was disturbed. Gilbert, at the time, was nine years old. Mother and son had been inseparable. Within months, the father remarried. Another child, a boy, quickly followed.

  ‘So there is a brother?’

  ‘A step-brother, yes.’

  ‘Just the one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re saying he’s now a politician?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well-known?’

  ‘Household name.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me who he is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is his name Tom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it Morris?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Morris knows him?’

  ‘They keep the same political company.’

  ‘Like minds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cabinet minister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  Brendan didn’t answer me. I shrugged, not bothering to argue, no longer wanting to give him the satisfaction of pleading for the name. Numbed by the exchange, I didn’t want to hear any more about drama projects, about points of view, about international sales projections. I didn’t even flinch when Brendan taunted me with the working title he’d come up with for the series. He wanted to call it Trickledown, he said. He thought it was rather witty.

  I ignored him. All I could think about was Gilbert and the make-believe world he’d probably inhabited for most of his waking life. A world where his precious mother was still alive. A world freed from the shadow of the father he hated. A world where - when the going got truly unbearable - he could seek a kind of solace by pretending to be his step-brother. Soon enough, with the little word processor I’d just bought, I’d be able to re-run all those phone conversations in my head and try to understand the way things really were. I’d get everything in order, exactly the way it had all happened, and see what sense it made. For now, though, I’d had enough.

  I got to my feet and brushed the crumbs from Billie’s Babygro. Brendan was looking up at me. He said he hadn’t finished. He’d got more to tell me, more trumpets to blow, more ways of pointing out just how much I was missing by no longer being part of his busy, busy life. I shook my head. I’d heard far too much already.

  ‘You’re either crazy or inadequate,’ I said softly. ‘And you’re not crazy.’

  The word inadequate stopped Brendan in mid-flow. It was the one accusation he couldn’t handle, the one home truth that seemed to get through.

  ‘What do you mean, inadequate?’

  ‘You copped out,’ I said savagely. ‘You copped out then and you’re copping out now.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘With us. When we were together. The little lies. The big lies. The not facing it.’

  ‘Facing what, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘Life, Brendan. You could have been honest with me. I’m glad now that you weren’t but it was there for you, there on a plate. I trusted you completely. God knows, I even loved you. You took it all, didn’t you? You took it all, and you played your little games, and when you’d had enough you ran the fucking credits.’

  Varenka blinked. The last bit seemed to have impressed her.

  ‘It was over,’ Brendan muttered. It was finished.’

  ‘That’s not what you said later.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You were pregnant. You were going to have a baby. I had rights. Responsibilities.’

  ‘Responsibilities?’ I held Billie a little tighter. ‘What would you know about responsibilities?’

  ‘Quite a lot as it happens.’ Brendan had composed himself now, pulled himself together. ‘Are you saying I was wrong to get Billie out of there? Out from under that loony upstairs?’

  ‘He’s not a loony.’

  ‘He’s not? He watches you? Follows you around? Breaks into your flat? Pisses through your ceiling? Have I been away too much? Has the language changed? Am I missing something here?’ He’d raised his voice again, letting his anger get the better of him.

  Billie was beginning to stir.

  ‘So you did take her,’ I said quietly.

  Brendan didn’t answer, just stared at me. I stepped towards the desk, came very close. On top of the pile of scripts was a glossy presentation brochure. Celebrity Home Run, it said, Japanese Edition. I bent towards him, cradling Billie in my arms.

  ‘You’ll never see this baby again,’ I said. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think you can do that?’

  ‘I know I can do that.’

  ‘How come?’

  I glanced down at Billie. Her Babygro looked bulky enough to conceal one of those tiny audio recorders.
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br />   ‘I wired Billie,’ I lied. ‘And I made some good mates in the police. So just leave us alone, eh?’

  I looked him in the eye. He didn’t flinch. By the door, on the way out, I paused.

  ‘Life’s not a game show, Brendan.’ I glanced at Varenka. ‘Not quite yet.’

  Billie and I visit Gilbert as often as we can. His room looks south, over the soft green hills towards Charmouth, and we spend the afternoons chatting, or playing with Billie. Gilbert has acquired a huge library of children’s books and Billie sits on his lap gazing up at him while he reads her stories. For each of the characters, he puts on a different voice. The one she loves best of all is Pinocchio, at which Gilbert is very good indeed. He’s had enough practice, bless him.

  At four, the staff at the home serve afternoon tea. We generally have scones and little glass bowls of Dorset cream and home-made strawberry jam. Billie adores the strawberry jam and since the New Year Gilbert has been giving her big jars of it to take away. We carry them back to London with us, trophies of our expeditions to see Uncle Gillie, and once the jar is empty we know it’s time to go back. Lately, the jars have got smaller and smaller but I think that’s because Gilbert misses the company and wants us back again sooner.

  As a special treat for Billie he’ll sometimes play the flute. With Gaynor’s help, I managed to rescue it from Napier Road and Gilbert dances awkwardly around the room, inventing little jigs, pursued by Billie. She’s only just learned to walk but I know she’s really deter- mined to catch him. And one day, if she’s as lucky as her mother, she will.