He was, Maddox realised, about to mention ‘art’, unsure of its reception: ‘art’ had, for Paul, always been an ‘excuse’, offered gratuitously to cement its intrusion into an otherwise straightforward, practical, ‘no problem’ life.

  ‘There’s art, of course.’ Maddox offered it slyly, glancing up as the waiter returned. A bottle was unscrewed, two glasses filled, ice and lemon already in each.

  It was Maddox who murmured, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘Like religion. Out of touch.’

  ‘I was always suspicious of Viklund.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Much of what he said was out of touch. That television series. Another world.’

  ‘I found it inclusive,’ Maddox said.

  ‘It’s one reason I left the Church.’ His brother gazed at him blankly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Religion is politics. Exclusivity, not the other way around. Negotiating not with God but with one another. It’s why they wear frocks. Cross-dressers. Surrogate lovers. If God is a man then they’ll be a woman. Spiritually, in your vernacular, painting pictures by numbers.’ He gestured round, startled by his own reaction. Although people had left, others had come in, some acknowledging his brother’s presence as they did so, every table crowded. ‘The patriarchal society. A self-delusional world, Mammon and God much the same thing.’ An unusual complicity had enveloped their encounter, Maddox wondering why, since it was based, very largely, on a denigration of both their worlds. ‘Where there’s men there’s power. Hormonal, in your terms. When women move in as in the Church, you can be sure that the sources, as opposed to the resources of power, have moved elsewhere. Women selling bonds. Okay. Investment managers. Fine. Women bishops. Inevitable. Women running anything, other than as surrogates: no chance.’ He shook his head, still eating: chewing and thinking appeared to be complementary activities where his brother was concerned, a characteristic of Paul’s he had noticed before. ‘The real bananas have moved elsewhere.’

  ‘Bananas?’

  ‘Balls. Force of nature. The simulation of power is a turn-on for women.

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ Maddox asked.

  ‘Afloat.’ His brother laughed, his hand indicating movement again. ‘Swimming.’ Raising his glass of water he drank: conceivably, Maddox reflected, he needed to dilute the alcohol he’d drunk already.

  ‘You think I’ll just get better.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll tell the psychiatrist.’

  ‘I should.’

  ‘And the former therapist.’

  ‘I’d leave that well alone.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Particularly if, as you say, you’re screwing up her career.’

  ‘How are things with you?’ he said, diverting Paul’s attention.

  His brother was looking round. ‘I thought she might be here. We usually meet at lunchtimes. I could have introduced you. We book a room and fuck until two o’clock. She’s a martinet for time. Martinis, too. That sort of thing.’ He turned his gaze to the street outside. ‘Where are they all going?’ he enquired, indicating the crowds, the traffic.

  Maddox, having looked forward to meeting his brother, suddenly felt defeated: an energy here, in Paul, in the restaurant, in the street – on the road, on the pavement – which he couldn’t in any way match: life, once engaged in this way, sustained its own momentum: it welcomed no intrusion, probably, he reflected, scarcely even noticed it. He might, to this degree, be invisible, crushed, if not by people, the places they chose to occupy.

  He wondered what Simone would make of Paul, or, worse, what he would make of her: her composure, his casualness; her reflectiveness, his restlessness. He assumed Paul saw him as a liability, not least because of his illness: that, if anything, disqualified his past, and authenticated Paul’s own.

  ‘What was that about Viklund?’ he asked.

  ‘He drew you back,’ Paul said, ‘to something of no importance. Who gives a fuck who painted what, when, or how? The only relevant thing is you happen to be alive this minute. Don’t waste the fucking time. They didn’t. The ones who painted the fucking pictures.’ He gestured to the street. ‘None of this will happen again. What we are will have gone for good.’

  His brother had been drinking: had perhaps come to the restaurant from a bar where, briefly, he’d been engaged with people he undoubtedly considered ‘real’: a phenomenologist in motion (rarely, he concluded, if ever arrested: everything moves, and always will).

  ‘Surely you look to the past to illuminate the present. Isn’t that what consciousness,’ Maddox said, ‘is about? The capacity to look back, as well as forward, as well,’ he continued, ‘as around.’ He, too, waved his arm at the street, then, for reinforcement, at the surrounding tables.

  The tendentiousness appeared to irritate his brother: there was, after all, this residual authority in Paul: he was an operator, a functionary, a practitioner. If everything moved, then he moved with it: you couldn’t get much more ‘authentic’ than that. Whereas he himself was always standing still, a denial (if an illusion) of the first imperative of nature.

  The vertical lines had hardened between his brother’s eyes: something here, he reflected, of their mother: the masters, even the head-teacher of the school where she had worked had been intimidated by her – had been said to be actively afraid of her.

  ‘So which of us goes nuts?’ his brother said, drawing a line beneath everything.

  ‘Sure.’

  Severity in Paul’s face mellowed to something approaching despair.

  ‘Which isn’t what I meant to say.’

  Having finished eating, Paul pushed his plate away, waving to the waiter to take it, a gesture reminiscent of his behaviour at home when he’d signal Mrs Tyndal, their domestic, to do the same, an arrogance which neither time nor age had improved. Placing his elbows on the table, he picked up his water again, something prohibitive and exclusive about the two-handed gesture, cradling the glass between his palms. ‘You might so easily have gone into the Church,’ he said. ‘You had the temperament. At the time I felt I was doing you a favour. Completing our family’s commitment. Providing a stamp of acceptance. Doing it,’ he concluded, ‘instead of you.’

  ‘I thought,’ Maddox said, ‘it was the other way around,’ surprised by, if not suspicious of this sudden confession.

  ‘Unworldly, for you, wouldn’t be quite the word. All those books you bought. You were only fifteen. The next thing, I thought, he’ll be a priest. That earnest look that came over you in church, in chapel. As for me.’ He put the glass down. ‘Some of the mysticism still hangs around. Fucked by God. It taught me a lot. Largely I shouldn’t be there. Also, at the time, a great deal about people. After a while they assume you’re a cipher. Social work, to the point where you begin to assume you’re a rumour put around by someone else.’ He gestured to the street. ‘Consciousness works in bits and pieces, the whole being inconceivable.’

  Maddox had seldom heard his brother in this mood before: he leant to the table to physically as well as mentally encourage him.

  ‘A parasite,’ he went on. ‘If you were paid pro rata you’d be chasing corpses, pregnancies, divorced couples who want to marry, an unsecularised solicitor-cum-mortician, in a chasuble one day, a cassock the next, jeans and sweater the day after. Take my word,’ leaning back. ‘The secular and the divine. You see which one I’ve chosen.’

  Maddox, in response, drew back too. Paul was suggesting, frustratedly, that he’d gone into the Church in order to forestall his brother, his older brother, doing the same, to relieve him, presumably, of an onerous task, something which, with his occluded nature, could only have done him harm: spontaneously, Paul had pre-empted a disaster, sacrificing himself on behalf of someone who, even at that age, he could see should not be encouraged to be more of what he already was, otherworldly, ‘spiritual’, ‘soul-searching’ – when (his brother could authenticate this), he’d ‘been there’, no ‘soul’, in his view, to be found.

  ‘Those books.’ Paul shook his head. ‘Jesus.’ He shook his head again. ‘Those fucking saints, miracles that never happened. Didn’t it ever strike you, none of that was real?’

  ‘Those happened to be books on painting,’ he said.

  ‘At fifteen?’ He resisted shaking his head. ‘The fourteenth fucking century!’ something jubilant in his brother’s response. Though leaning back from the table, he had now extended his arms towards it, holding its edge with the tips of his fingers, a gesture which reminded Maddox, sharply, of a similar gesture, made by himself, when visiting Taylor. Did Paul see him in an equivalent light? Had madness, at least the potential of, been so apparent as a youth, a child?

  ‘I was pre-empted,’ he enquired, ‘by you?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Or were you persuaded by my absorption that there was something there worth going into?’

  ‘I might have been.’ Already he was losing interest, looking round, anxious, it seemed, not only to be disengaged from the table but from Maddox as well. ‘I wanted also,’ he said, ‘to be different. In this respect, more different than you. If you could absorb yourself in all those fucking books, I thought, I can do it for real. A light-headed gesture at the time, but since I couldn’t think of anything else, religiosity being very much a part of Mother’s and Father’s lives, particularly Mother’s, she seeing it as a form of community work before community work had even been invented, I thought I’d chip in as well. If not one chip ahead. Instead of looking at God you’d have first to look at me!’ He laughed, lightly, removing one hand from the table and waving it at Maddox. ‘That Sunday School crap. The catechism learnt by the age of thirteen. Would anyone believe it?’

  He was looking round the room again, maybe still looking for his latest partner, anxious to introduce her, one further illustration of his message. ‘Think about it,’ he went on, signalling to someone on the way out. ‘There’s nothing in our background, genetically speaking, or otherwise, which would predispose you to crack up. That must have come out of not what you are but what you’ve done. Spent most of your life, like Viklund, with your head up your fucking arse. I’m speaking candidly, brother. No one else will find the time, or know you as much to tell you. I love you. I want to see you come through. I don’t want to feel I spent my time being a fucking saint for nothing. Consciousness doth make cowards of us all, if it doesn’t first drive you round the fucking bend. Life is there to be lived, not studied. Studying maketh no man. Nor woman, come to that. Knowledge moveth no one. It only dries you up. You went off into art, I went up the pole with Jesus. One of the two of us changed position. What’s all this crap, by the way, about prison?’

  He’d released the table and, pushed back from it, folded his arms: self-containment, exclusivity: reproach.

  ‘What prison?’

  ‘This guy you’ve been to see. The one who murdered his kids.’ He paused. ‘And wife.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘What does it matter, for fuck’s sake, who told me? Charlotte. I rang her to see how you were.’ He shook his head, a more than condemnatory gesture. ‘Haven’t you enough trouble without getting caught up in that?’

  ‘How caught up?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ His brother was looking round once more, less to identify someone across the room than to measure the distance to the nearest tables, disinclined, suddenly, to be overheard. ‘“A former student,” she said.’

  ‘He asked me to go and see him.’

  ‘You didn’t have to go.’

  ‘I thought I should.’

  ‘There you are! A fucking priest!’

  ‘Charlotte didn’t have to tell you. You didn’t have to ring. Just as easily you could have rung me.’

  ‘To be told that everything was fucking perfect?’ He waved his hand, the gesture restrained. ‘You,’ he went on, ‘didn’t have to tell her. She’s enough on her plate with Gerry. Or are you anxious to keep her involved? You don’t honestly think she’s going to come back? She’s well out of it. I’ve never seen so many books in one house.’

  ‘I hardly have one at present.’

  His brother examined him in silence: a lateral movement of his head, scarcely discernible, indicated which way his thoughts were moving.

  ‘As for Gerry,’ he said, assured that Maddox had nothing further to add, ‘bullshit. That’s his charm. Can’t complain. Plenty of it, I’d say, around. As for Charlotte, she doesn’t wish to see you hung out to dry. She wants to see you up and about.’

  ‘She told you about Simone.’

  ‘Some time ago,’ he said. ‘And now she comes up with this fucking student.’

  ‘Former student.’

  ‘So what?’ He shrugged, unfolding his arms. ‘For fuck’s sake. He killed his fucking family. What’s all this to do with you?’

  ‘I used to be his tutor. He wrote asking me to visit him. I knew his wife. As a student. Before they married.’

  ‘Know, biblical? Or social?’

  ‘Both.’

  His brother didn’t respond: incredulity gave way to bemusement: aspects of Maddox were being revealed which, post-sectioning, post-North London Royal, were still capable of causing surprise.

  ‘He asked you to go and see him because you fucked his wife.’

  ‘Before he knew her.’

  His brother shrugged again.

  ‘I admired him as a student. I wrote testimonials for him, both at the time he left and later. I thought, at one time, I might have been called at his trial.’

  Paul was delaying what, moments before, might have been his departure: behind his back other figures were leaving, several calling out but receiving no response, his brother turned resolutely away from the rest of the room: over half the tables had emptied. ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘What did the thief want on the cross?’

  Maddox turned to the window: the grid-locked traffic, the crowd, denser than before, passing on the pavement: suddenly he had a measure of how far he was separated from what he was inclined to call his brother’s world. ‘I had the feeling he wanted me to write him up. In something other than a journalistic fashion. See him, as you might describe him, focused on the present, as a phenomenon. See him, in his terms, along conceptual lines.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘See what he did in terms of everything around him. Immortality. In a fashion.’

  His brother was examining him with increasing concern: his eyes had darkened, his mouth tightened: a grimace – of apprehension – mask-like, characterised his features.

  ‘Does he know you’re receiving treatment?’

  ‘No reason why he should.’

  ‘Does he know you were sectioned?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You haven’t told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should?’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  Clearly, Paul was thinking, ‘two of them together’: would the worse of the two drive the lesser down?

  ‘What does your former therapist think?’

  ‘I should leave well alone.’

  ‘Not advice you’re inclined to follow?’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘And she’s going to be struck off?’

  ‘That’s still some way ahead.’

  ‘Because of you.’

  ‘Two clients have made accusations. That’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘And I should know.’

  His brother watched him in silence. Finally, he added, ‘Do you think the treatment you’re getting is effective?’

  ‘As far as I can tell.’ He paused. ‘Some days I feel worse. Progress is not in an even line.’

  His brother moved closer to the table. ‘I could put you in touch with someone I believe could help.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone who wouldn’t fuck around. It wouldn’t interfere with your present treatment. It’d be complementary. He might even find out why you’re so pissed off.’

  ‘I’m not pissed off.’

  ‘Suicidal.’

  Maddox waited.

  ‘He wouldn’t put up with all this crap.’

  ‘Yours?’ Maddox said.

  ‘Yours.’

  Now his brother waited, intense: a reminiscence of a childhood encounter: any moment one of them would call out for a parent or their uncle to adjudicate.

  ‘This would be free,’ his brother went on. ‘He comes expensive but I want to pay. It’s something,’ he added, earnestly, ‘I want to do.’ The table creaked beneath his weight: urgency, and something more intangible, characterised his manner. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve asked around. He’s highly recommended. You won’t lose anything by going. He’s already agreed to see you once.’

  ‘Agreed with you?’

  ‘A colleague of mine who recommended him.’

  ‘I’m being put out to tender?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, fuck you.’ His brother drew back.

  ‘I probably don’t need to see anyone,’ Maddox said. ‘Apart from those I see already. I appreciate what you’ve done,’ he added.

  ‘Sure.’

  His brother’s head turned to survey the tables, most of them now deserted. A moment later he took Maddox’s arm. ‘See him once. No obligation. Do me a favour. If he tells you to piss off, nothing lost. One great man to another. He knows your writing. Collects pictures.’ Pausing, he concluded, ‘I do, too.’

  A final, unexpected endorsement.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since recent.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Picture fucking pictures. What kind are there? Paintings. Definitely not religious.’ He laughed, his hand retained on Maddox’s arm: no escape, his tightening grip suggested. ‘What d’you say?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘To see him?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll ring you and give you the time. The rest,’ he released his arm, ‘is up to you.’

  ‘So you came with this already set?’