VI. Martin #5
I begin to retrace my steps back down the hallway, but in my haste, I bump into the console table. The marble countertop slams into my hip-bone and I cry out. The silver bowl of artificial flowers wobbles, then rights itself.
‘What the—?’ Ben’s voice comes from the study, followed by his footsteps.
I sense him approaching. I look around, pointlessly wondering if there is any escape.
But no – he is next to me now, reaching out to help and then, seemingly thinking better of it, he retracts his arm.
His hand hangs for a moment, suspended in mid-air: Michelangelo’s God creating Adam. Then he drops it entirely.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was looking for the loo.’
In my first week at Burtonbury School, someone savaged me for asking where the toilet was.
I have never forgotten it and have not spoken the offending word out loud since.
I remember, one bleak school holiday, I told my mother I was ‘off to the loo’ and she laughed at me.
‘Oooh, Lord Hoity-toity,’ she jeered, ‘I suppose you’re too good for the likes of me,’ and she refused to speak to me for the rest of the day.
My life was a constant criss-crossing over different classes and cultures.
They have a word for it these days (of course they do – they have words for everything). They call it code-switching.
Ben looks at me, his expression caught somewhere between fondness and annoyance. Maybe I’m imagining the fondness.
‘Come on now, Martin, you’re not going to tell me you don’t remember where the loo in my parents’ house is! It’s the first left, before the stairs.’
‘Ah. Yes. Of course. I confess, I don’t recall the exact layout of this enormous house given it’s been – what would you say? – twenty-five, almost thirty years?’
He grins, in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes.
‘Gosh, is it that long since you’ve been at Denby? Is it really? Well.’ He clasps his hands behind his back. ‘Well,’ he says again. ‘I won’t keep you …’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And once you’re done, why don’t you come and join me in the study? I’ve just broken the seal on a terrific Japanese malt.’
I hate whisky. Meths for people with money.
‘Alright,’ I murmur.
I take my time in the toilet – sorry, loo – and check my reflection carefully. I straighten my tie and then I practise saying a few things out loud in the mirror, to check that I sound normal.
‘Oh, the South of France? How lovely. Yes, very nice this time of year.’
‘Come now, Martin.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you don’t remember.’
‘Looking forward to strategising.’
‘Yes, I’m very well, thank you. No, I don’t miss you at all. Not at all, in fact.’
My voice stutters. I try it again.
‘No, I don’t miss you at all.’
Better.
‘No,’ I say, as I turn the handle and walk back into the gloom of the main house. ‘I don’t miss you at all.’
In the study, Ben sits in a wingback leather armchair in front of the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other in a figure of four.
He is holding a tumbler of whisky. A bookcase behind him carries all four volumes of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, naturally (truly the Instagram influencer of his day), and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War – exactly the same edition I picked up once at a second-hand bookshop while at school.
Ben’s jacket is slung over the fireguard. The fire remains unlit. He points to the armchair opposite him, his signet ring catching the light.
‘Please.’
I sit, like an obedient child. A glass has already been poured for me on the side table.
‘So, Martin.’ He takes a swig, staring at me. ‘How have you been?’
As if he really wants to know. As if we have enough time even to start to find the words.
‘Fine.’
‘I don’t mind admitting it was rather a shock to see you here again, mate.’
I am not your mate, is what I think. Instead what comes out is:
‘I received an invitation. I thought it was the honourable thing to do.’
Ben smirks.
‘Honourable?’
‘I always liked Fliss very much.’
He stands, walks towards the window. Outside, I can just about make out the tinkling sounds of champagne being replenished on the far lawn. Ben stretches. I notice the flex of shoulder muscle underneath his shirt.
‘You did,’ Ben says, turning back to me and I can see immediately that he’s decided warmth is going to be more productive. ‘And she very much liked you too. Dear, darling Fliss.’
‘What happened to her?’
He waves a hand in front of his face.
‘To be perfectly frank, I find it hard to talk about. She was an alcoholic and a drug addict and we tried to get her clean, but … I suppose she was on her own path.’
He drinks, ice cubes rattling.
‘Anyway, she moved to Bali. Went out for a moonlight swim. Such a waste.’
He hangs his head, then adds in a quiet voice: ‘Strange to think I had two siblings and now I have none.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say and I realise that I am. For all his charm, he is lonely.
‘It’s just,’ I continue, ‘there was this man, Derek, in the chapel—’
Ben cuts across me, sharply.
‘Derek?’
‘Yes.’
Ben smiles.
‘Ahh, Derek. Not sure what he was telling you, but you mustn’t pay any attention to it.’
His eyes are steady, unblinking.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘He’s a bit of a stoner.’
Ben is sitting again now, and he leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. Then he reaches out and gives me a playful slap on my shin. My leg tenses. I have always disliked unexpected physical contact.
‘It’s good to see you, old friend.’ He clinks his glass against mine.
‘Is it?’
‘It truly is.’
I wait.
‘So what are you doing with yourself these days?’
‘I’m a lecturer in art history at Cambridge.’
‘Really?’ He sucks in his cheeks. I can tell he’s impressed.
‘The University of South Anglia, don’t get too excited.’
‘Oh. Ha ha. Well still, that’s great, mate. So pleased for you. You always loved …’ He butterflies his hands around the room. ‘Arty stuff.’
‘I did. I do.’
‘And you like it, do you? The students?’
‘I like the subject. The students not so much.’
He laughs. A truthful laugh. I can see the shine of his teeth. I am so pleased to have made him laugh. Pathetic, but there you have it. And because I want to keep his attention, I tell him more.
‘Had a bit of bother with one of them who accused me of being “culturally insensitive”.’ I make a show of the quotation marks.
‘Yes, I heard about that. Saw it in the papers. Malik-Edwards, wasn’t it?’
‘But I thought …’
How had he seen it in the papers, I was about to say, when he didn’t seem to know what I did until a few moments ago? Had he, in fact, been keeping tabs on me all along?
‘He’s here, you know, the dad. Dominic. I can have a word with him, get it all cleared up.’
I bristle. Same old Ben. Trying to lord it over me.
‘I don’t need you to do that.’
‘I know you don’t, but let me, because … I realise, you know … how things went down all those years ago and, well, looking back, I’m sorry about that.’
I scan his face. He seems sincere.
‘Look, Serena clearly invited you because she’s ready to move on, and so am I. And she knew I wouldn’t have done it. Too proud, our couples therapist would say.’
Couples therapy? So I was on the money about their marital woes.
‘But I’m actually glad Serena did it. What do you say we just … shake on it, forget it ever happened … and, you know … be mates again? Water under the bridge and all that.’
Of course, I plan to tell him to get lost. Of course, I still hate him and all he believes he can get away with.
Of course, I will never forgive him. Of course, I take his hand and shake it and then allow him to pull me in for a hug and of course, I feel the sensation of his arms around my shoulders, and I am so, so happy to be blessed by the Fitzmaurice grace again and so, so angry at him, the family, the world and most of all myself for my own weakness.
But then, I’m wiser this time around, aren’t I?
Less susceptible to their charm. And if there is more to Fliss’s story than Ben is letting on, isn’t it better to be inside his circle than outside?
Pissing away from the tent, as Serena might say.
Isn’t it wiser to observe at close quarters rather than firing impudent questions from afar?
He thinks I’m still the same old Martin, his Little Shadow, always willing to do his bidding.
But I’m not. This time, I’m motivated not by a need to belong, but by a need to bring them down.
The whole bloody lot of them. The Fitzmaurices.
The Edward Bullers. The greedy men in charge who consider us human material to be mined.
Because the supreme art of war, as Sun Tzu said, is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Martin, I can hear Joanne Buster saying, this is not good for your anger management issues.
Joanne, I reply, perhaps I don’t want to manage it anymore.