Port Mungo (11 page)

Chapter Ten

It was a little over a year ago now that I came downstairs after my bath one evening and discovered an unfamiliar smell in the sitting room. I made myself a drink, and when Jack appeared I told him someone had been smoking. He took his time, I remember. He hovered over the drinks tray, laying his long careful fingers on the neck of the bottle I had brought up for him. Jack’s lack of interest in his own appearance may have accelerated with the years but occasionally, and without intending to, he achieved a certain careless elegance. After days in his studio he would be filthy, and when at last he noticed this he took to his bathroom, and then discovered in his closet fresh clean clothes, folded and ironed by my housekeeper, Dora. Then he presented a picture of elegance. So he did that night, as he loomed over the glass of wine he had poured, and lifted it to his nose.

When he had settled himself he told me he had been busy all morning with what he called the large canvas, a painting begun months before but as yet indeterminate. It was late October, so yes, a year ago, raw and damp, bad for his joints, and he was not in the best of tempers. He had stopped work at noon and eaten lunch at the kitchen table. He had asked Dora if there were any messages. Dora has been with me for many years. What an odd look she gave him, he said—full of foreboding, full of dire warning that what she was about to tell him he might not wish to hear. We both knew this look of Dora's. Jack told her to just please tell him who had called.

—Anna.

It took me a second or two.

—Your Anna? Anna Rathbone?

He nodded.

Anna. The other daughter. Whom he hadn’t seen in twenty years. He told me he picked up the phone and sat gazing at Dora with his hand over his mouth as though to keep from saying something he would later regret.

I never knew Anna in Port Mungo, but I certainly remembered her from the dreadful days immediately after we got the news about Peg. She was four years old then. She travelled to New York with Jack and they stayed with me. Vera arrived a few days later. We were all in a state of shock. Anna was silent and withdrawn, like a little ghost. She sat gazing out of the window, clutching a rag doll, her lips pressed together as though she had been forbidden on pain of death to breathe a word. Particularly frustrating from my point of view was that Jack was hardly more forthcoming. There had apparently been some sort of accident. Peg’s body had been discovered in a mangrove swamp. She had been missing for some days. The cause of death was unclear, as were the circumstances. There was no boat, so no indication of how she’d got there, and an open verdict was recorded. I felt sure that Jack could at least make a guess as to what might have happened, but when I tried to discuss it with him he glared at me then left the room without a word.

Matters were not improved by the arrival of my older brother. Gerald could at once be identified as one of us, as a Rathbone, I mean, for he was a gaunt, hawklike sort of a man, although unlike us he bore the marks of professional success: he was imposing and ponderous, he wore an expensive dark suit, his manner was clipped and grave and he had a way of taking off his spectacles when he wished to frown. What was he doing here? Extraordinary thing, but having somehow learned of Peg’s death he had flown to New York to sort things out; on the assumption, I suppose, that none of us was capable of it. It seemed he was most concerned about the welfare of little Anna. I have always believed children to be tougher than they look, it was certainly my father’s attitude towards the three of us, and I saw no reason why Anna wouldn’t get over the shock of her sister’s death provided she had an adult or two looking out for her. Jack felt the same. Gerald most certainly did not.

We were in the big sitting room downstairs, which in those days was very different from what it is today. Much more cluttered. It was just the four of us. Anna was there for the first few minutes until it became clear that this would be a stormy meeting, and Dora was called to take her upstairs. Vera took almost no part in the proceedings. She had not yet sobered up and had little to contribute to discussions of child welfare and the like, the only welfare which concerned Vera at the time being her own—I mean, her alcoholic welfare. And for the first time I noticed something which would become more apparent in her later sobriety, namely that real damage had been done in the years of heavy drinking. I didn’t trouble to analyze it precisely, but she couldn’t think straight any more. There were holes in her memory. Her logic was off. She lost words, proper nouns in particular. So Vera took almost no part in the proceedings, which left Jack to fight for Anna by himself.

He was hardly in better shape than Vera, but for all that he was capable of a furious resentment that his brother should presume to come to New York and tell him what was good for his own daughter, and he lost no time telling him so. That’s when I suggested Anna be taken upstairs.

—How do you know what’s good for her? snapped Gerald, contemptuously. This isn’t even your house.

I was astonished by his animosity. Gerald was older than us by several years. We had never been close to him, but nothing had happened as far as I was aware to account for the intense hostility of his tone. Jack was not strong, but he came back at him with some gusto, he said he had a damn sight better idea than Gerald did, this wasn’t even Gerald’s
country.

—Then perhaps she should live in the same country as me. Be a part of a proper family. That child has every right to a respectable upbringing.

I think Jack must have made some mocking remark about the English and their cult of respectability. Gerald calmly waited for him to finish.

—All I’m saying, he said, is that nobody is looking after that child apart from a housekeeper who goes home at five o’clock.

—And?

—My dear man, you think that’s adequate?

—My dear man, this is a house where music and conversation and books are taken seriously. That child comes from a family of artists. She’ll suffocate in Surrey.

The argument continued, and at one point Gerald said that my household had “no structure,” that it was “sexually irregular,” which aroused my own indignation though Jack could not contain a hoot of laughter. After a while it got more personal still, and Gerald came close to suggesting that if Jack had raised his daughter differently she might still be alive. That’s when the words “criminal irresponsibility” were uttered.

—For god’s sake, Gerald! I cried, angry myself now.

—Shut up, Gin, he said, you know nothing about this.

That was certainly true. I was mystified by the impression he was giving of having information about events in Port Mungo of which I, for one, knew nothing.

You may imagine Jack’s reaction to all this. But he did not lose control. He did not throw a punch at his brother. He did not come at him with the sharp end of a broken bottle, which I was afraid he might, given the state he was in. He turned instead to Vera, and for the first time that afternoon she spoke up. She said to Gerald, Just cut it out.

Her nodding silence up to that point seemed to lend her a certain authority, when she did choose to speak. Then she turned to Jack and said she thought Anna should go to England with Gerald, at least for a while. I think Jack knew then he was beaten. He was not strong enough to resist his brother’s will, and I think he also recognized that he was in no condition to be a father to Anna. But he resented it fiercely.

Gerald wasted no time. The meeting broke up soon afterwards, and he went out into the hall and told Dora to please pack up Anna’s things, as she was leaving. It was a pathetic sight, the child silently coming down the stairs with her hand in Dora's, clutching the little bag containing her few scraps of clothing, her rag doll stuffed in on top. She had no idea what was going on. Gerald dropped to his knees and spoke softly to her, telling her she would be going with him now, to live with his family in his house in England. Jack and Dora and I stood in the hall watching this. Gerald stood up and Anna gazed about her, looking for her father. Jack stepped forward and she ran into his arms, and he lifted her up, holding her close. For several interminable seconds he held the child, whispering to her, and then he set her down and with a cold, sorrowing glance at his brother he turned and went upstairs. He was so very weak. A broken reed, I remember thinking. He was letting his own daughter go, giving her up. All at once she began to scream—“Daddy!”—and Gerald picked her up and carried her swiftly out the door and down the steps. It was terribly distressing for all of us. I went back into the sitting room. Vera was standing at the window. I stood beside her and we watched as Gerald flagged a cab and lifted the little girl in, then climbed in after her. I became aware that tears were streaming silently down Vera’s face.

—Darling, I said.

She turned to me.

—Poor Jack! she whispered.

It was some days before he could talk about any of this. By then Vera had left, vague about where she was going but promising to be in touch. Her own feelings about the loss of her daughter were blurred by alcohol. Gently I asked Jack how he felt about losing Anna. He had decided to be tough about it. A shrug, a snort. Well, we’ve lost that one. We’ve lost a good one there. And I understood then without his having to tell me that he had resolved not to pursue the child. Almost, it seemed, as if to intensify his pain—he had lost one daughter, what of it if he lost the other?—he let her go. And when Gerald moved to adopt Anna formally, Jack did not contest it. I had frankly no desire to have her living here, but I too was saddened at the thought of her growing up in Surrey. I did say to Jack later that it was possible we hadn’t lost her at all, because if she was really one of us—a Rathbone, I mean—then no amount of Surrey would keep her down.

The night of Anna’s visit Jack and I went out to eat at the Spanish place round the corner. The maître d', Luis, was always very fond of Jack. He took us at once to our table, which was in the corner at the back where it was private and quiet and dark. The candle was lit. The wine appeared. Above our heads hung framed posters of bullfighters. Jack put his glasses on to study the menu. I knew my brother too well to ask him outright what had happened with Anna. Instead, studying my own menu, I murmured that I thought she must want to make terms with the past.

—You’ve done it, I said, but she hasn’t had the chance.

—That’s not my responsibility, he said sharply—that was up to Gerald. Why didn’t
he
tell her what happened?

—Because, my dear, I expect he didn’t know. Because you never told him. Who have you told? Apart from me.

I lifted to my lips a large starched napkin. The lighting was dim; the waiters hovered nearby, speaking to one another in low tones. Jack, still frowning, drank off a whole glass of red wine, and I could see it kindling the beginnings of a rage in him. No more, or he would be unable to work in the morning. I continued to dab at my lips, and his eyes glittered at me in the candlelight. Curtly he told me she hadn’t made the trip to see him. Apparently she had been in the city some weeks, and was living with a friend in an apartment on the Bowery.

—What’s she doing here?

—Nothing. Working in a bar.

—I suppose, I said, that you busied yourself with her bone structure.

—Well yes, he said, I did, actually.

He had the good grace to acknowledge my astuteness with a quick display of teeth. He fell silent again. I grew impatient.

—Jack, for god’s sake have another glass of wine.

—No, he said firmly, absolutely not.

But of course he did, and then he was ready to talk.

She was punctual. Dora, stony-faced, brought her into the big room downstairs and Jack rose from the chair by the window and went to her with outstretched hands. I broke in here, I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to know how he
felt
—excited, apprehensive? This was his daughter! Yes, yes, all that, but what was remarkable, he said, was that there was so much of her sister there.

—Peg?

He stared at his plate. I waited for more. There wasn’t any. With the years Jack had grown increasingly ill-at-ease talking about his feelings. It was a feature of age, also of the deep sadness he had carried with him since Peg’s death. So she looked like Peg, then? Yes. Though where Peg had been sunburnt, he said, and, oh, restless, volatile—Gin, you know what she was like—Anna apparently was very different, she was a wintry creature from Northern Europe, an altogether cooler character. Still, the resemblance was strong. Jack gazed off abstractedly. What was going on in that complicated brain of his? I asked him to please tell me what she looked like. Oh, she was as tall as Peg, he said, skin very pale, black hair chopped short, black jeans and a black sweater under a leather coat. Long white hands, and on the back of the left one a tattoo in black ink, the image of a scorpion.

Thus did my brother describe the daughter he hadn’t seen for almost twenty years, and in his description I too faintly caught the phantom outline of Peg, but in the negative, somehow. As though leached of all colour and life.

No small talk. They held each other’s hands for some moments, and she told him she’d wanted to come and see him for years.

Jack asked her if she remembered the house.

She did.

—You remember when Gerald took you away from here?

She did.

—That was the last time I saw him.

—He said he hadn’t any choice. Is that true?

No answer from Jack. He told me he’d felt unequal to the task of giving her an account of how it was for all of us then—me, him, Vera, Gerald—and for her too, of course, a four-year-old child living in a house of artists, all of us still in profound shock from her sister’s death—he would do it if she wanted him to, and he thought Anna understood this.

—So why didn’t you come and see me before? he said.

But he knew why. After Gerald adopted her he had made it abundantly clear that she was never to have anything more to do with her father, this for reasons that until recently were not clear to me.