Omega

I kept Tanya waiting throughout the summer, fobbing her off with excuses that my father was away until finally she phoned to say that she was taking the ferry to Ostende at the end of September. By now she must have guessed I wasn’t going to accompany her, especially since I’d discouraged her from visiting me in Swansea. I remember asking her if she intended going alone. She told me that she’d rather have me with her. I let a silence extend before saying that I didn’t think it was going to be possible.

There was a background hubbub of noise from her end of the line; she’d been working behind the bar in one of the local pubs since her finals. She asked if I couldn’t manage a few weeks.

My silence felt like a dereliction of emotional duty. I had the impression that she switched the receiver from one ear to another before asking me if that was it, if I’d decided “between me and her”.

I made to protest my innocence but suddenly I was convinced that Geoff must have said something. When I made the accusation she just laughed and said she’d known from the start and had wondered if I would ever get around to telling her. She told me that I had her phone number and address if I wanted to get in touch. Then she hung up.

I should have rung back immediately but instead I waited a week. Tatiana answered and informed me that Tanya had already gone to Europe, would be away until the New Year. She was travelling around. There was no forwarding address.

I’d got a two-one for my degree: Tanya, I learned later, a first. My father announced that he was taking me out for a celebratory meal. A few days before he did so, I was playing cards with Rees when Rees informed me that mother had killed herself.

Swallowing my surprise and unease I asked him why he thought this. He replied that he’d read the book Father had written. The one about her father. Our grandfather. He’d destroyed him, turned him into a monster. And M mo never been able to live with that. Which was why she’d done herself in.

I skim-read his copy of the book before Father took me out. That Saturday we drove to Oxford, to a gentleman’s club in the heart of the city. I was still a little unbalanced from reading the book. To this day I don’t believe that Mother committed suicide, but I’d certainly detected a savagery in my father’s unstinting portrait of my grandfather’s wartime years. Before I knew it, I’d blurted out what Rees had said to me.

My father took it in his stride. In one of his rare expansive moods, he almost laughed at the suggestion. My dear boy, he said to me in his most patronising manner, Rees is scarcely in a position to form balanced judgements, particularly about matters pertaining to his family; he’s not in complete possession of his faculties.

I knew only that our mother had died in a head-on collision with a lorry on the outskirts of Swansea. My father told me that the lorry driver, who escaped unscathed, claimed that the car had simply veered across the dual carriageway into his path. Neither the brakes nor the steering appeared to have been faulty, and there was no evidence that mother had suffered anything like a heart attack or a seizure. But it was raining heavily at the time and possibly she had hit a patch of standing water and simply lost control. Failing this, she might have sneezed violently or suffered a blackout or even a sudden unbearable cramp in a leg. A random instant of misfortune that had proved fatal. We would never know for certain, but everyone agreed that something like this must have happened. Everyone except Rees.

According to my father, history would be tantamount to book-keeping if it didn’t seek the causes and meanings of events; but he refused to entertain any psychological speculation about Mother’s death. He did, however, say that he considered mental illness to be largely genetic: it was like a neural time bomb waiting to go off, and no one should be blamed for its eruption. If Magda had for some unfathomable reason killed herself—a proposition he was by no means endorsing—it would be reasonable to suppose that Rees had inherited his own instability from her side of the family. He was confident that I had the more robust constitution of his own bloodline and with sufficient effort would go on to achieve whatever I wished in my chosen career.

PART TWO BROTHERS IN ARMS

SEVENTEEN

Owain was doing bare-chested exercises at his open balcony window. Outside fog blanketed everything. The television in the living room was on, showing a sky thick with Woden assault helicopters.