Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(128)

Ben felt a sudden rush of dizziness when he saw him. He said, “Dad.”

Eddie Kerne looked him over, one of those abrupt head-to-toe movements that?to an offspring of the adult performing them?tend to signify assessment and judgement simultaneously. He stepped away from the door without comment. He disappeared into the bowels of the house.

Under other circumstances Ben would have departed then. But his mother murmured, “Shush, shush,” from which he took comfort, no matter where she was directing the sound. It came straight from his childhood, and he embraced its meaning. Mummy’s here, darling. No need to cry. He felt her hand on the small of his back, urging him forward.

Eddie was waiting for them in the kitchen, which seemed to be the only remaining usable room in the downstairs of the house. It was well lit and warm, while the rest of the place was shrouded in shadows, packed with bits and bobs and clobber, smelling of mildew, filled with the skittering of rodents in the walls.

He’d put on the kettle. Ann Kerne nodded towards this meaningfully, as if it gave evidence of something within Eddie that had altered along with his physical decay. He shuffled to the cupboard and brought out three mugs, along with a jar of coffee crystals and a raggedy box of sugar cubes. When he had this on the chipped yellow table along with a plastic jug of milk, a loaf of bread, and an unwrapped cube of margarine, he said to Ben, “Scotland Yard. Not the locals, mind you, but Scotland Yard. Not like you thought, eh? It’s bigger’n the locals. Didn’t ’spect that, did you? Question is, did she?”

Ben knew who she was. She was who she had always been.

Eddie went on. “Other question is, who phoned ’em. Who wants Scotland Yard on the case and why’d they come running like a fire’s lit under ’em?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

“Wager you don’t. If it’s bigger ’n the locals, it’s bad. If it’s bad, it’s her. Things is home to roost now, Benesek. Knew this would happen, didn’t I?”

“Dellen’s nothing to do with this, Dad.”

“Don’t say her name round me. It’s a curse, it is.”

His wife said, “Eddie…,” in a conciliatory tone, and she put her hand on Ben’s arm as if afraid he would bolt.

But the sight of his father had abruptly changed things for Ben. So old, he thought. So terribly old. Broken as well. He wondered how he had failed to understand till now that life had long ago defeated his father. He’d beaten his fists against it?had Eddie Kerne?and refused to submit to its demands. These demands were for compromise and change: to take life on life’s terms, which required the ability to switch courses when necessary, to modify behaviours, and to alter dreams so that they could meet the realities that they came up against. But he’d never been able to do any of that, so he’d been crushed, and life had rolled over his shattered body.

The kettle clicked off as the water came to a boil. When Eddie turned to fetch it to the table, Ben went to him. He heard his mother murmur shush and shush another time. But he found that comfort unnecessary now. He approached his father, one man to another. He said, “I wish things could have been different for all of us. I love you, Dad.”

Eddie’s shoulders bowed further. “Why couldn’t you shake her off?” His voice sounded as broken as his spirit.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I just couldn’t. But that’s down to me, not to Dellen. She can’t bear the blame for my weakness.”

“You wouldn’t see?”

“You’re right.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Still?”

“Yes. That’s my personal hell. Do you understand? In all these years, never once did you have to make it yours.”

Eddie’s shoulders shook. He tried and failed to lift the kettle. Ben lifted it for him and carried it to the table where he poured the water into their mugs. He didn’t want the coffee; it would keep him awake that night when all he wanted was indefinite sleep. But he would drink it if that was what was required of him, if that was the communion his father wanted.

All of them sat. Eddie sat last. His head looked too heavy for his neck to bear, and it fell forward, his chin nearing his chest.

“What is it, then, Eddie?” Ann Kerne asked her husband.

“I told the cop,” he said. “I could’ve tossed him from the property, but I didn’t do that. I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. Benesek, I told him everything I knew.”

The restless night that followed thus had a twofold source: the coffee he’d drunk and the knowledge he’d gained. For if his conversation with Eddie Kerne had at least gone some way towards burying some of the excruciating past between them, that same conversation had resurrected another part of it. For the remainder of the day and into the night, he’d had to look at that part squarely. He’d had to wonder about it. Neither was an activity in which he particularly wished to engage.

Set against the rest of his life, one night should have been insignificant. A party with his mates, and that was all. A gathering he wouldn’t even have gone to had he not just two days earlier had the courage to break off with Dellen Nankervis yet another time. He was thus morose, his life a thing that he believed was in tatters. “You want cheering up,” was his mates’ recommendation. “That wanker Parsons is having a party. Everyone’s invited, so come with us. Get your mind off the bloody cow for once.”