Double Vision

Twenty

A man gets off a train, looks at the sky and the surrounding fields, then shoulders his kitbag and sets off from the station, trudging up half-known roads, unloading hell behind him, step by step.

It’s part of English mythology, that image of the soldier returning, but it depends for its power on the existence of an unchanging countryside. Perhaps it had never been true, had only ever been a sentimental urban fantasy, or perhaps something deeper — some memory of the great forest. Sherwood. Arden. Certainly Stephen had returned to find a countryside in crisis. Boarded-up shops and cafés, empty fields, strips of yellow tape that nobody had bothered to remove even after the paths reopened, just as nobody had bothered to remove the disinfectant mats that now lay at the entrance to every tourist attraction, bleached and baking in the sun.

The weather continued fine, amazingly warm for the time of year. Every morning he looked up at the trees and thought that today — with only a few more hours of sun — the green-gold haze on the branches would burst into leaf, but evening came and the trees were unchanged. He lived in the hollow of a green wave, knowing it couldn’t last, that it must end soon. These weeks seemed to have the shaped quality of the past.

One evening he was standing in the garden looking into the copse, when he heard a cough behind him. Robert.

‘I came through. I did ring the bell, but I couldn’t make you hear.’

Typical of Robert to emphasize that he hadn’t overstepped the bounds of propriety, but also typical that he didn’t assume he could enter the cottage whenever he chose merely because he owned it. Sometimes Stephen made an effort to see his brother as a stranger might, to discard the past faces that lay under the skin of this middle-aged face. The good little boy, breathing through his nose as he pushed a crayon across the page; the priggish adolescent — he had been priggish, surely? — this couldn’t be all sibling rivalry — the brash medical student who talked about diseased bowels till he made you want to puke. Shy at his wedding, proud at Adam’s christening and no doubt, in countless consultations, day after day, kind, sensitive, tenacious, efficient. A proper life. That was the way Stephen thought about Robert — a man who lived a proper life. By implication, a life unlike his own, and yet he didn’t regret his choice of career.

They stood together by the hedge, with this lifelong competition behind them, and talked about the weather.

‘The lawn needs mowing,’ Robert said.

‘Big garden.’

‘Yeah, too big.’

‘Beth likes gardening. She always seems to be potting on or pricking out or something.’

‘Yes, but it’s too much for her. You need somebody going at it full time.’

They drifted back into the cottage, where Stephen, after a glance at his watch, offered Robert a whisky. He expected Robert to refuse — he was almost ostentatiously abstemious — but this time he nodded, and sat down heavily on the sofa.

Stephen poured himself his usual generous double, then paused. ‘You’re not driving again this evening?’

‘No. I’m in now for the night.’ He sounded like somebody returning to an open prison. Stephen revised his estimate of what might be acceptable and handed him a glass so strong he choked on the first gulp.

‘My God, Stephen.’

‘You sound as if you need it.’

Robert sighed noisily, puffing out his cheeks, making a joke of unhappiness. ‘Is it that obvious?’

Stephen sat in the chair opposite. ‘Not to somebody who hasn’t known you all your life.’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ Robert said. ‘I must say, Stephen, you look a hundred per cent better than you did when you arrived.’

‘I feel it. I jogged three miles yesterday.’

‘Good.’

‘And it was up hill all the way. Do you know from the top of that hill you can see three burnt areas? Where the pyres were. I’d no idea they were as close as that.’

‘It started two miles down the road. We got the first blast. They closed the roads — sent in the army. You could smell the carcasses for miles. I used to smell them on my skin at work.’

‘Yes, the smell does linger a bit.’

Robert took another gulp of whisky. ‘I say “we” but of course it isn’t “we”. We’re not part of it. Country life, I mean. We just float on the surface like scum.’

‘Scum?’

A short laugh. ‘You know what I mean. Buy up the houses. Commute into work. We don’t give anything back. I suppose Beth does a bit, more than me, anyway.’ He shook his head, drank again. ‘She’s a pillar of the community, in fact.’

It’s difficult to deal with anger when the topic under discussion isn’t what’s causing the anger. That was Stephen’s impression of Robert this evening, that he was above all else a very angry man, though the anger was continually suppressed. A kind of ongoing genial rage. No doubt working in the NHS gave plenty of cause for irritation, but he suspected the roots of Robert’s malaise lay closer to home.

‘Bad day at work?’ Stephen asked reluctantly. He didn’t really want to talk about it.

‘No, not particularly. In fact, we got the grant. Do you remember I told you, the one I was applying for?’

‘Good. Well done. How much?’

‘Three million.’

‘My God, Robert.’

‘It’s not going into my pocket.’ He hesitated. ‘Beth finds it very difficult.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Because part of the research involves the use of human embryos. And she has ethical objections. I suppose I shouldn’t have told her… But then if you can’t talk about the big moments, what kind of marriage is it?’

‘Pretty typical, I should think. A lot of married people live separate lives. They reach some kind of modus vivendi, and…’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t manage it.’

‘All I know is I’m bloody well pig sick of it. I’m fed up with getting into bed every night with somebody who thinks I’m Josef Mengele.’

‘I can see you might get tired of that.’

‘It’s not funny, Stephen. She thinks I kill babies.’

‘And it’s not a minor flaw, is it? Not something you can overlook.’ He smiled. ‘There must be one or two women around who don’t think you’re Josef Mengele.’

‘Yes.’

Said flatly. Evidently no confidences were to be offered on that subject. ‘How bad is it?’

‘I don’t know. There’s Adam…’

‘Oh. That bad.’

‘And there’s the house. I can’t leave her stuck in there. She’s scared stiff when I’m away.’

‘You do go away quite a bit.’

‘I have to. It’s part of the job.’

A pause. ‘So what are you saying, Robert?’

‘That I’ve got to make a go of it.’

‘Would moving into town help?’

‘She loves the garden.’

Stephen had become aware of strains in his brother’s marriage, though when he first arrived he’d assumed it to be entirely happy. It seemed to him now there’d been a lot of masochism involved in his first impressions. He’d almost wanted Robert’s life to be in every way more successful than his own. It was a kind of wallowing in his own failure. But he was surprised to find Robert was thinking of moving out. ‘Are Beth’s objections religious?’

‘Yes. And they seem to be growing on her. It happens to some women at the menopause. I can’t respect it. I wish I could.’

‘Then you have to shut up and leave it alone. Can’t Alec Braithewaite talk to her? Isn’t he —’

‘He agrees with her.’

‘Ah, not entirely a menopausal symptom, then?’

‘No, I know. I’m being arrogant. Anyway, thanks for the drink. Thanks for listening.’

He tossed back the last of the whisky, almost like a foreign correspondent. Stephen was proud of him.

‘Do you have any views about it?’

‘What? Research on human embryos?’ Stephen shrugged. ‘I’ve seen too many kids blown to bits to worry about that.’ He took Robert’s glass. ‘How’s Adam?’

‘Running Justine ragged, poor girl.’

A slight constraint. Of course Robert and Beth knew. They couldn’t not know, with Justine’s car parked outside the cottage most evenings and occasionally all night.

‘Oh, by the way, Beth wants to know if you’d like to come round for lunch on Sunday.’

Stephen nodded. ‘Yeah, love to.’ He showed Robert to the door and watched him stride away along the country lane, looking bizarrely out of place in his shiny black shoes and dark grey suit.