They went to a pub in Esher High Street. Edgar drank heavily, but this time didn’t get aggressive. To Frank the service had just been a rite, a performance like the séances, but it seemed to have affected Edgar. He said, ‘Strange to think mother’s gone. God, she was an odd one.’
‘Yes, she was.’ There, at least, the brothers could agree.
‘I have to go back soon, I’m needed at Berkeley. But I could stay on a few days.’ He looked at his brother. ‘It would help me if we could get the house on the market.’
Frank had had more than enough of Edgar; he had been counting the hours till the funeral was over. ‘You do that if you want,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to Birmingham today.’
‘You could stay here a day or two. I don’t know when we’ll meet up again. Jesus,’ he said again, ‘Mum’s gone. Everyone in my life’s bloody gone,’ he added self-pityingly.
Frank spoke quickly. ‘I said I was going back to work tomorrow.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Edgar, I have to go now, really, if I’m to get back in time.’
Edgar’s mouth set in a sulky pout. He stared at Frank through his glasses. Then he held out a big meaty hand. Frank took it. ‘Well,’ Edgar said heavily. ‘That’s that.’ Then a nasty glint came into his eyes as he nodded at Frank’s hand, the damaged outer fingers. ‘How’s that, nowadays?’ he asked.
‘A bit painful in bad weather.’
‘It was a strange accident, wasn’t it?’
Frank met his brother’s eyes and realized that Edgar knew what had really happened. He’d been at university by then but he kept up with friends from Strangmans and someone must have told him. Frank stood up. ‘Goodbye, Edgar,’ he said, and walked quickly away.
He went back to Birmingham and returned to work. It was a beautiful October, sunny mellow days succeeding each other, yellow leaves falling gently from the trees.
For the last ten years Frank had lived in a big Victorian villa divided into leasehold flats. He had four rooms on the first floor. The building was not well maintained, the paint on the front door and the windows peeling, half the sash windows rotten. One Sunday, ten days after his mother’s funeral, he was sitting reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea when his doorbell rang. He started violently, then went downstairs and opened the front door. Edgar was standing there, obviously the worse for wear, although it was only three in the afternoon. Frank stared at him blankly.
‘Surprised to see me?’ Edgar asked. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ Frank turned and went back upstairs, Edgar following. Frank’s heart was racing. Why had he come? What did he want? They went back into the flat, which Frank had furnished from junk shops when he moved in.
‘Jeez,’ Edgar said. ‘This reminds me of Mum’s house. I’ve put it with an agent, by the way, got a lawyer to get the probate started.’
‘All right,’ Frank said.
‘I decided to come up and tell you. You should get a phone. Most people in the States have a phone.’
‘I don’t need one.’
Edgar looked at two dusty framed photographs on a little table. ‘You’ve got one of Dad, I see. God, he did look like you.’
Frank looked at the sepia portrait of his father in uniform, staring fixedly and uncomfortably at the camera. Frank sometimes wondered if he was seeing the trenches, anticipating them.
‘What’s the other one?’ Edgar asked.
‘My year at Oxford.’ Why has he come? Frank thought. What does he want?
Edgar crossed to the bookcase, looking at the well-thumbed science-fiction novels. ‘Hey, I remember some of these from when you were a kid. You were always reading them during the holidays.’ He turned and gave Frank a rubbery half-drunk smile. ‘I’m flying back tomorrow evening, I thought I’d come up and tell you about the house.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘I didn’t want to part on bad terms.’
‘Oh.’
‘Mebbe I could stay over, perhaps come and see your labs tomorrow.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frank babbled. ‘It’s not convenient. I’ve only got the one bed here, you see.’
Edgar looked hurt, then angry and somehow baffled.
‘I don’t really get visitors,’ Frank added.
Edgar’s face set. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do. Mind if I sit down?’ He weaved his way to an armchair. ‘Oh God, Frank, don’t put on that monkey grin.’
Frank remembered something horrible that had happened when he was twelve. He and Edgar had come home from Strangmans for the summer holidays. Edgar was sixteen then, tall and blond, and was developing a strutting arrogance. Their mother had suggested, unusually, that they all go out together to the zoo. ‘We don’t think enough about the animals,’ she had said. ‘Mrs Baker says they have souls just like us.’ She had given them one of her sad, serious looks.
They went to Whipsnade, and walked round the enclosures. As they passed the monkey house Edgar said, ‘Let’s go in here.’ He led the way, Frank following reluctantly with their mother, who had retreated into one of her dreamy, distant states. Inside it was horrible, a long concrete corridor with barred enclosures along the sides, a rank, filthy smell, clumps of straw the monkeys had thrown out of their cages littering the floor. A few people walked along, laughing at the antics of the small monkeys. A big orange orang-utan glared at them from the dimness of its pen. Edgar looked at Frank, then turned to their mother. ‘Look at the chimp, Mum!’ There was only one chimpanzee, sitting alone in its cage on a pile of dirty straw, staring at them. Edgar waved a hand and the chimpanzee leaned back, baring its teeth in a grin that Frank somehow knew meant fear and terror.
‘What an ugly thing,’ Mrs Muncaster said.
Edgar laughed. ‘Doesn’t that grin remind you of Frank?’
Mrs Muncaster looked at Frank forlornly. ‘Yes, I suppose it does in a way.’
‘The boys at school call him Monkey because of that grin. Monkey Muncaster.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do it, Frank,’ Mrs Muncaster said.
Frank had felt so hot he thought he might faint. Edgar smirked at him. Mrs Muncaster said, ‘It’s awfully smelly in here. I can’t imagine these things in the spirit gardens, I must say. Let’s go and see the birds.’
And now Edgar was in his house. Sitting in the moth-eaten armchair, he looked round the room again. ‘I thought you’d have something better by now.’
‘It does me.’
Edgar gave him that baffled stare again. ‘I never understood why you did science at university. Was it to try and compete with me, show me you could do it?’
‘No.’ Frank heard the tremble of anger in his voice. ‘I did it because I like it. It’s what I’m good at.’
Edgar looked disappointed. Then he sneered, just as he had at the zoo. ‘Studying meteorites?’
‘Yes.’
Edgar shifted in his chair. ‘Got anything to drink?’
‘Only tea and coffee.’ They stared at each other. ‘I don’t think you should drink any more. You – you’ve had enough.’
Edgar reddened. He set his lips, then leaned forward. ‘Do you know what I do, what my work is?’