The Hidden Man (2003)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. His attitude was not aggressive or unfeeling, merely a relaxed, clear assessment of his position. ‘I don’t care where it came from, why he gave it to you or which one of the Keen great-great-grandfathers wore it during the Crimean War. That stuff is between you and him. I don’t want any part of it.’

  At the bar a soft drinks gun coughed.

  ‘Fair do’s,’ Mark muttered. ‘Fair do’s. I just wanted to let you know, so there was no big mystery or anything.’

  ‘Well, I appreciate it.’

  There was hefty silence. Mark instinctively felt that the timing was all wrong; both of them a little drunk, Alice only ten feet away and their father on the other side of London. Why had he agreed to do Keen’s dirty work? What was in it for him?

  ‘But it’s connected to what I wanted to talkabout,’ he said.

  ‘What’s connected to what you wanted to talk about?’

  ‘The ring. The dinner,’ Mark replied.

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  Ben actually looked quite bored.

  ‘The other night, when I came round for dinner and you and Alice were going at it…’

  This seemed to galvanize Ben briefly. He looked up and gave a quick response.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Alice has been a bit stressed lately. Both of us, in fact. Workstuff, marriage. We haven’t been getting on and it’s just been one argument after another…’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean.’

  Ben cocked his head to one side. They were talking at cross-purposes.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Look, why don’t I just spell it out?’ Mark moved uneasily in his chair. It was like breaking bad news, waiting for the right moment. ‘I think things have changed between me and you, brother. Not as easy as they were. You follow?’

  Ben shook his head. On the way to the pub Mark had sketched out the basics of a speech in his mind, but he was moving on to it too quickly.

  ‘It’s like this. The last six months, however long it’s been since Dad and I started meeting up, it’s as if you’ve gone into yourself, moved away.’

  To illustrate his point, Mark spread his arms outwards like a cross and nearly knocked half a pint of cider out of the hand of a passing customer. Across the pub a man was slamming his fist against the hard plastic casing of a fruit machine, spitting the single word ‘Fuck’.

  ‘It’s just that we’ve never really chatted about any of it.’ Mark was rubbing his jaw, words coming out before he had time to contemplate their impact. ‘It’s just been swept under the carpet. I’m abroad a lot, you’re with Alice, it’s not easy finding the time. But we need to clear the air. Your opinion matters to me. Now talkto me about what’s going on.’

  Ben looked completely taken aback.

  ‘Where’s this coming from?’ he said.

  ‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Just seeing you tonight made me want to talk about it.’

  Ben’s hand went up to his forehead, almost pulling the skin back from his eyes. He looked bloodshot and tense.

  ‘So OK, we’ll talk about it.’ He tipped his face up to the light and exhaled in a gasp. ‘It’s like this.’ Mark was listening very carefully. ‘I don’t allow myself to think about him. There are hard certainties in my life. There’s you. There’s Alice. I have my painting and my good friends. That’s how things stay under control. That’s how I manage to get by.’

  The answer was so characteristic of his brother that Mark felt there was almost no point in going on. When Ben got an idea into his head it was impossible to change his mind. Only a basic desire not to let his father down led him to say, ‘Is that good for you?’

  ‘Is what good for me?’

  ‘Thinking about things in that way? Breaking them down?’

  ‘It’s just how I’ve learned to cope.’ Across the room, somebody had paid fifty pence to hear a bad cover version of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ on the jukebox. The song was forced and loud and Ben had to speakup. ‘And now that Alice and I are married I have to deal with that. She needs my support. I want to look after her, to make things right. You know all this. Why the fuckare you bringing it up now? Let’s get back to the bar and relax.’

  Yeah, let’s, Mark thought, and hated what he was doing. He genuinely believed that the stand-off between his brother and Keen was unhealthy, a running sore in the family, yet there was nothing, surely, that could be done about it. He was manipulating Ben for his father’s benefit, pure and simple. They had set a trap for him, pushing Ben towards something that he wanted no part of. And where was Alice? Laughing at the bar, oblivious to what was going on, facilitating her career while Mark was risking everything. Why didn’t she come over, why didn’t she think of someone else for a change? He felt heavy with sweat and drink. A woman at the bar was hanging her arm around the neck of a fat, bald Irishman mouthing the lyrics ‘How does it feel?’ over and over again.

  ‘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 to him? How would he square it with what had happened to Mum? Ben wished to honour her memory, and yet that was the easy position. Far more difficult, surely, to do what Mark had done, to let bygones be bygones and to open himself up to chance.

  He was heading backto the pub via a street at the western end of Edwardes Square when he heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Ben?’

  He turned and saw that Mark was following him. He looked shattered. With the club opening in Moscow, he was probably only sleeping five hours a night and this was the last thing he needed.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Don’t blame Alice. I asked her to help me out and she was just being loyal.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry if I tookyou by surprise. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. We just…’ Mark stalled on the words. He had obviously rehearsed something and was determined to get it right. ‘All I was trying to say was this. More and more I’ve been thinking about the future, you know? Where are we gonna be ten years down the line? You and Alice have kids, Dad’s their grandfather, but because of all this shit that’s thirty years in the past his name can’t be mentioned at the dinner table. Mean while he and I are getting on better than ever, but we’re still having to creep around behind your back. How long’s it gonna last?’

  ‘So you want me to meet him just so that you can have a better time of it when you’re fifty-five?’

  Ben regretted saying that, but for the sake of fraternal pride did not want to concede too early.

  ‘I’m just saying that you should think about giving him a chance. Not tonight. Tonight is fucked into a hat. But soon, Ben, soon. Otherwise he’s just going to be this barrier between us, a bridge we can’t cross.’

  Ben smirked and looked up at the night sky.

  ‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘Something like tonight.’

  ‘It was inevitable,’ Mark said.

  ‘Yes it was. And you know why? Because he’s talked you into it. You’re too soft on him, brother. You always want to do what’s right so that no one gets upset. Well, I’m upset. I got very upset in there. I embarrassed myself, I embarrassed you and I embarrassed my wife in front of everybody she works for. How does that feel?’

  Mark did not respond. It looked as if he wanted to, but was holding backfor fear of making things worse.

  ‘You want my truthful opinion?’ Ben was not surprised to feel that there was still resentment inside him. Most of it was a desire not to lose face, and he knew that he was prepared to make a later concession. ‘I thinkthe relationship Dad has with you gives him what he wants - an opportunity to absolve himself of guilt.’ From his jacket pocket he took out a packet of cigarettes and watched his brother’s face for a register of annoyance. ‘Now he wants to complete that process, supposedly to convince me of his worth as a father. But that’s not motivated by a genuine concern for my welfare, or Alice’s, or anyone else. It’s just a selfish desire to convince himself of his blamelessness in respect of the past. He’s a spy, for Christ’s sake. All his relationships are games, little intrigues and power struggles. Lookhow he’s manipulated you. For most of his adult life Christopher Keen has been making a living out of an ability to convince people that he is something other than the person he appears to be. Think about it, Mark. If he could do it to Mum when they were married, if he could to it to us when we were kids, what’s to stop him doing it now?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Mark said, his face tightening. ‘You think I’m that much of a mug?’

  Ben didn’t answer. He started walking towards the metal fence that ran along the western edge of the square. He had to move between parked cars.

  ‘You’ve got him all wrong,’ Mark said, following behind. ‘He’s not some puppet-master pulling the strings. Don’t you think people change? Don’t you thinkit’s possible that he might want to say sorry?’

  Ben stopped and turned.

  ‘Has he said sorry to you?’

  Mark could not give the answer he needed to without lying.

  ‘That’s not his style,’ he said, fudging it. They were now standing together on the pavement. ‘Dad just wants to make his peace. It’s that simple.’

  ‘Well, maybe he does,’ Ben conceded. ‘Maybe he does. And he can make it somewhere else.’

  There were lights on in several of the houses on Edwardes Square, oil paintings and chintz and Peter Sissons reading the news. Ben saw a man enter a yellow-wallpapered drawing room wearing bottle-green corduroy trousers and a bright red sweater. The man was carrying a tray of food and talking to someone in another room.

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ Mark said.

  ‘Don’t I?’ Ben stared hard into his eyes. ‘He’s doing what I always thought he’d do. Crawling back, mid-life crisis, wanting us both to pat him on the head and tell him everything’s OK. Well, it’s not OK. He doesn’t meet me, he doesn’t meet Alice. End of story.’

  ‘Is that how she feels?’

  ‘Why don’t you askher?’ Ben turned again. ‘You two seem to be very close.’

  ‘I don’t need to askher.’ Mark was angry now. He couldn’t keep it in. ‘She knows what I know. She knows what you should know if you weren’t so fucking pig-headed. She knows that you’re fascinated by Dad. She knows that you can’t wait to meet him.’

  Until that moment, Ben had thought that he was in control, bending Mark to his will. But this last remark caught him off guard. He ran through every one of his recent conversations with Alice, every argument, every lie, every quiet chat in the house, but he could not recall even hinting at what Mark had just suggested.

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ he asked.

  ‘She doesn’t need to tell me.’

  Ben frowned.

  ‘Look,’ Mark said. ‘Don’t you even want to know what he looks like? How his character is different from yours? Don’t you want to know if he’s boring or vain or funny or rich? Doesn’t any of that interest you? Don’t you wonder what sort of a person he is, the hidden man?’

  ‘We have nothing in common,’ Ben said, but the statement lacked conviction. He blew a column of smoke at the railings. ‘Anyway, I’m not interested in any of that at all.’

  But Mark was on to him.

  ‘I don’t buy it. You have nothing but interest in that. Listen, if you turn around now and agree to meet him, Alice is not going to think badly of you. Your friends won’t thinkyou’ve sold out. I won’t think you’ve sold out.’ Mark touched his chest. ‘Is that all that’s stopping you? What other people might think?’

  Ben was stunned by how well they both knew him. He thought that he had concealed his feelings, maintained a privacy, but his thoughts had been preempted. It was as if he was listening to his entire personality being pulled inside-out. He managed to say ‘No’, but the word was meaningless. Mark was whispering.

  ‘And it’s not disloyal to Mum. I know that’s always been on your conscience, but she wanted us to be happy.’

  ‘Does Alice think I’m stubborn?’ It was a question to which Ben already knew the answer. Somebody walked past them, but he did not look up. ‘Does Alice think I’m too proud to face facts, that I’m stuckin the past?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about you?’

 
; ‘Ben, it doesn’t matter what I think. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. If you feel the way you feel, then it sounds like we’re all wasting our time. It sounds like there’s nothing more to be said.’

  Ben waited. He was ready now. It was the right moment. He knew that Mark was being shrewd and not forcing the issue.

  ‘Nobody should make you do something that you don’t want to do,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day, just because I’ve started seeing Dad doesn’t mean that you should too.’

  ‘I know that…’

  ‘But I thinkit would do you good to meet him. I think it’s something that you need to do. Even if it’s just to let off steam, to have it out with him. That’s why we set this thing up tonight, this disastrous fucking drinkin this disastrous fucking boozer.’ Mark nodded his head in the direction of the pub. ‘But to know that he’s here in London and not do anything about that is just going to eat away at you. It’s bad for you, it’s bad for me and it’s bad for your marriage.’

  And, finally, he had said enough. For a moment Ben allowed the silence of the square to envelop them, then he extinguished his cigarette on the black painted spike of a gate.

  ‘I’m right, you know,’ Mark said.

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  Ben stared, taking his time.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  14

  There was something almost mundane about the hour that preceded their reunion. Ben simply showered, put on a clean shirt and a suit, placed a tie in one of the pockets of his jacket and drank a single gulp of vodka from a bottle of Stolichnaya he kept in the fridge. The spirit burned in his throat, spreading like linctus across his chest. Then he walked outside on to Elgin Crescent and began looking around for a cab.

  It was a quarter to eight on a Thursday night. Alice was still at work, Mark already back in Moscow having acted as the intermediary in setting up the reunion. Ben found a taxi on Ladbroke Grove and settled into the backseat, wearily informed by the driver that pre-Christmas traffic had jammed up throughout London and that it might take as much as an hour to reach the Savoy. Ben was already late and wondered how long his father would wait before giving up and going home. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? What would be an appropriate span of time for a man who had not seen his son in twenty-five years? At eight thirty, still five hundred metres short on the Strand, Ben decided to walkand paid off the driver with a twenty-pound note. He resented the cost of the journey.