‘Don’t be a fucking crass idiot. Your son, my son, what difference does it make? Stupid git gets himself into trouble, surely the two of us can put our heads together and come up with something to get him out...’
‘I’m doing just that, and I don’t need you... I don’t want you, nor does he — go on, get out!’
Edward took a massive wad of notes from his pocket and started to count them. ‘That’s exactly what I said to your wife when she came running round begging me to help. She had no idea where you were. Where have you been all these months, anyway? All hell’s going to break loose in the City — you know that, don’t you? So I’ve been cleaning up the back yard, so to speak, and keeping a very low profile. You know the Americans have started blabbing? Take one big guy down and the rest fall like a pack of cards. You know who they’ve got, don’t you? Well, if he can cough up millions in fines, he’s going to make sure he’s got a deal and he will name names... You hear what I’m saying, Alex?’
‘Right now I’m not interested in the backhanded deals you have always persisted in, all right? I will straighten everything out as usual, when I get back. Just get your bulk out of here and leave me alone.’
Edward showed no inclination to get off the bed. He plumped up the pillow, lay back on it. ‘Way I look at it, Alex, you are desperate to hold on to him as your son, because — and for this reason only — you know I want him.’
Alex flung open a window to clear the cigar smoke that billowed around his brother’s head. ‘Oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Offer me a deal, you get him off and he’s yours, is that it? You’re too late, you won’t ever have him...’
For a man his size, Edward moved incredibly fast, pinning his brother against the wall, pushing him so hard his head snapped back. ‘This is the second time I’ve had to do this, first time was with your bitch wife, you know what she’s worried about? That you won’t get your fucking title! That’s what she’s worried about, so just listen, you stupid bastard... I don’t care if he knows who I am, what I am. I’m here to get him out, even if it means using a rope and scaling the wall. All right? I know I lost him, I know he’s not “mine”, and I have to live with it, here, inside me...’
‘All right, all right, I’m sorry... I’m all strung up, it’s the prison, it gets to me.’
‘Yeah, well, it would... You got to admit you did a bloody poor job of bringing him up.’
Alex pushed his brother away, went to lie on the other single bed. Even when Edward wasn’t talking, his presence was an intrusion, and his heavy breathing was irritating Alex. He closed his eyes, sighed. ‘You’re right, maybe I did make a mess of bringing him up, but that was down to you. You destroyed everything I had going with him, did you know that? For a while I hated the poor kid, not because of what he had done, but because of what you had done. Barbara may be a bitch, but deep down inside that plastic body there is this guilt. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been a girl, but your son? Have you any idea what it felt like to find that out? The way I held him, when he was born — I was there, and to find out he wasn’t... wasn’t... Ah, shit...’
Edward had a coughing fit while he thought of something to say. But, unusually for him, there wasn’t anything, because he was actually trying to imagine what it must have been like for his brother.
Alex stared at the wall, then after a while he said, turning to Edward, ‘See, I was blinded, because I thought he looked like Dad. But she, Barbara, never knew him, all she saw every time she looked at Lyn, as she calls him, all she ever saw was you... When I found out, Christ, I felt such a prick, so dumb that I’d never even tumbled to it... Jesus, what a cunt you have been, all my life you’ve been kicking me. So tell me, why did you go to bed with her? Why, Eddie? All the women you could have had, and it had to be her, why? Was it to get at me? Was that it?’
Edward coughed again, spat in the handbasin and ran the water. ‘I didn’t want her, Alex, she came of her own free will. I never set out to take her, I never set out to hurt you. And right now, if I said I was sorry, it would mean nothing, but if you want to hear it...’
‘I don’t — like everything to do with you, it’s too late.’
Edward walked aimlessly around the room, searched his coat pocket for another cigar. He could remember Barbara’s visit clearly, and that it had coincided with one of Harry’s breakdowns. But there was no point bringing it up. He unwrapped the cellophane from the cigar, picked off the small gold band. He had screwed her, and had even enjoyed it for a while. He patted his pockets, looking for matches — he never could keep a lighter for more than a few weeks. Well, only one. He had kept the solid gold one he had been given in payment for the use of his body. He chuckled to himself — he wouldn’t be paid so much as a matchstick for it now, the size he was. He puffed on the cigar, the smoke coiling in the air, then sat on the bed opposite his brother. He looked at Alex as he lay stretched out on the other bed, put out his big hand and squeezed his shoulder. No words could ever make up for the things he had done, and he knew it.
Alex put his arm across his face and began to cry. Between heart-rending sobs he described what Evelyn had looked like in jail, how he had gripped his father’s hands and seemed so helpless.
Edward pulled out his silk, polka-dot handkerchief, leaned over and wiped his brother’s face, just as he had done when they were kids. ‘Listen, you and me both, we’ll leave no stone unturned, we’ll get this thing sorted out together, yeah? That’s the deal, brother, okay?’
Alex blew his nose and wiped his eyes. ‘I love him, Eddie, I love him, and you know something? He’s just as stubborn a bastard as you always were. But he is my boy, and it wasn’t until he clung to me, held me, that it meant so much. He needs me, and... I need him.’
Edward flopped back on to the bed, the springs creaking ominously. ‘Look, I’ll agree to anything, but will you stop calling me Eddie...? Now then, I have a contact in the Foreign Office, and I shall have to spread a lot of jam. Maybe I can swing it, get it down to a couple of years...? I’m not making promises...’
Alex drew himself up to sit facing his brother. His blue eyes were troubled, his face twisted as he dredged up his past. ‘Not good enough, Eddie, because you do that and I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen to him. Believe me, I know — it doesn’t matter if it’s here in France or in England. Behind bars men all act the same way — he’s a good-looking kid, they won’t leave him alone.’
He reached for his case — the one with the Gucci monogram — and took out a bottle of duty-free Scotch. Unscrewing the cap he drank, and slowly, piece by piece, Edward learnt what Alex had been put through as a boy even younger than Evelyn. The bottle was half-empty by the time he had finished, and he had not once passed it to his brother. Holding it carefully by the neck he stood it on the table between the beds. Edward looked up at him, bereft of words, swamped by a terrible helplessness at his inability to ease his brother’s anguish, so long kept hidden beneath the surface — so much pain. He reached up, offering his brother his hand in a gesture of submission, of understanding. If Alex did not take his hand, Edward did not know what he would do with himself.
Slowly, Alex reached out, threaded his fingers through his brother’s. He spoke so softly Edward had to strain to hear him. ‘Oh, Eddie, how I hated you... and it went on and on, it never ended. Barbara, Evelyn — everything I had you took from me. You know where I’ve been all these weeks? With Skye Duval... Yeah, you’re surprised?’
Alex released his brother’s hand, began to walk around the room. ‘Eddie, I have letters back in England — that doctor I sent you to, when you were ill, remember? Well, there are other letters, and newspaper clippings, proving you are a drunkard and incapable of running the Barkley empire. I wanted it, I wanted all of it, and just in case you tried to fight the board, I got proof of your illegal transactions in South Africa. Plus your part in the murder of a woman called...?’