And suddenly they were on the edge of an argument. Keen was desperate to preserve the dignity of the occasion and astonished by how quickly the evening had disintegrated into spite and ill-feeling. Unconsciously chewing his upper lip, he began looking around for a waiter. A two-deck sweet trolley was wheeled past and he followed it with his eyes, eventually settling them somewhere around Ben’s midriff.
‘Why don’t I ask you a question instead?’ he suggested. ‘Far more interesting, I would have thought. Mark’s been rather vague about your painting.’
‘My painting,’ Ben replied flatly, as if Keen thought of it as no more than a hobby. He was now enjoyably committed to making the meal as difficult as possible.
‘Yes. Your painting.’
‘Vague?’
‘Vague.’
He feigned disinterest.
‘Well, brother can be a bit philistine when it comes to art. Might take a girl to the Turner Prize, but that’s about it.’
Keen laughed self-consciously, as if they had shared a private joke, but he felt increasingly undermined, his plan unravelling. Why had they arranged to meet in the Savoy? What had he been thinking? That a surfeit of Italian marble and silver service would somehow paper over the cracks of his past mistakes? Ben had been nervous at first, of course, but he was settled now, and itching for the fight. His temperament was exactly as Mark had described it: wounded, blunt, argumentative.
‘What sort of stuff do you paint?’ he asked, and felt that the question might be his last opportunity to maintain a civilized air of polite enquiry.
‘Do you really care?’ Ben replied. ‘Or are we just making small talk?’
For the first time he managed to hold his father’s gaze. One beat, two. Keen, now visibly unsettled, put his glass down and frowned.
‘Perhaps this was a bad idea,’ he said.
‘You think?’
‘I really don’t understand what’s brought this on.’
An elderly man at a nearby table cast Keen a disapproving look, alerted by the suddenly aggressive tone of their conversation.
‘Just traditional stuff,’ Ben said, and it was a moment before Keen realized that he was talking about painting. He felt almost ridiculed, toyed with. ‘Watercolours. Sketches. Oil paintings. The sort of work that’s out of fashion nowadays.’
Two more waiters appeared and began ladling soup into bowls at a serving table beside them. For some time nothing was said except a very quiet ‘Thank you’ from Keen as his bisque was placed in front of him. Then they ate in silence for as much as two or three minutes. Ben’s pulse was a drum of adrenalin as Keen’s consternation settled. Eventually, he found a fresh subject and tested new ground.
‘So you’re married,’ he asked.
Ben nodded.
‘How long ago, if I may ask?’
‘A couple of years.’
‘And you met here in London?’
These were questions to which he already knew the answer, and the curt manner of Ben’s reply implied as much.
‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘Is that a statement or a question?’
Keen took a deep breath.
‘A statement.’
‘Who told you? Brother?’
‘Mark, yes.’
Ben wondered what else he had revealed about their relationship. Alice is tricky. Alice is ambitious and manipulating. He knew that Mark had his reservations about her, however well he tried to disguise them. Odd that they should be so close and yet labour under such an obvious pretence. Perhaps Mark had also mentioned something about the constant arguments, the money, a marriage turning sour.
‘So what else did he say about her?’
‘That she’s a writer. A journalist of sorts.’
‘For the Standard, yes.’
‘Actually, he gave me a photograph of your wedding day.’
The revelation hit Ben with the full force of betrayal. He was not even conscious of the speed with which his temper flared.
‘He did what?’
Keen realized instantly that he had made a mistake.
‘I have it hanging in my flat,’ he said, feigning innocence. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘You had no right to take that.’
‘It was a present.’
‘It was an invasion of our privacy.’
‘Well, I think you’re over-reacting. It looked like the most wonderful day. There’s really no need to be upset.’
Several heads now turned to look at Ben, yet he was aware of nothing but his own anger. Every promise he had made to Mark and Alice, every private undertaking to give his father a second chance, had evaporated.
‘You think you have any right to tell me that?’
‘Mark informed me that he’d asked your permission.’
‘Oh, come off it. You trying to play us off against each other? Is that how this works? Divide and rule? You think that by making me angry with Mark I’ll somehow come over to your side?’
The thought had occurred to Keen, but he said, ‘Of course not, don’t be ridiculous,’ with as much credibility as he could muster. Flushed now with the awkwardness of a very public row, he searched for a means of salvaging what was in all probability a lost cause. Mark had been biddable and eager to please, as accommodating and straight forward as his mother. But Ben was a different proposition. Looking across the table at his son, Keen might almost have been faced with himself.
‘I don’t know what exactly it was that you were expecting from me this evening.’
Ben looked at him, almost breathless in the wake of his outburst, and realized that he did not know either. He was sure only that their reconciliation had come too soon, or that Mark should have accompanied him to dilute the awful sense of occasion. He wanted very much to leave, to go back to his old life, to the simplicity of the abandoned child. And yet in the square just a few nights before he had been so sure, and really only waiting for Mark to provide him with the excuse he needed to reach out and take the step. His mind was a cross-hatch of contradictory emotions: of loyalty to Carolyn; of anger at himself for lacking the maturity and good sense merely to sit the evening out; of frustration at Mark for betraying his trust. Most oddly perhaps, he felt affection towards Keen for craving a simple photograph of his wedding day. There was love contained in such a gesture: perhaps that, above all, was what had upset him.
For five minutes they ate their soup without saying a word, until Ben could no longer stomach the awful metal silence of cutlery and glass. With the conviction of a man seemingly faced with no other choice, he pushed his bowl to one side and cleared his throat.
‘You know, I just think I’m going to have to go,’ he said, and Keen seemed to have expected it.
Calmly, he picked up his napkin, wiped the corners of his mouth and with a slow, physical deliberation said, ‘Fine, yes, I think that’s a good idea. I can understand that this has been very difficult for you. I invited you here this evening because I hoped that…’
But Ben did not even hear him finish. He rose from the table, took his jacket from the chair and walked the short distance to the lobby. Eyes followed him; there were murmured expressions of surprise. His entire body felt hot with shame and regret as he pushed through the revolving doors and went out on to the street.
15
Mark was lying on the hard, starched bed of his Moscow hotel room, nursing a stomach cramp brought on by two days of cheap Georgian wine and deep-fried meats. Thomas Macklin was downstairs in the lobby cracking jokes with an entourage of deal-hungry Russians wearing badly cut suits and explosive aftershave. Neither of them had any idea of the where abouts of Sebastian Roth.
Ben telephoned him from a booth outside Charing Cross Station. At first Mark thought about ignoring the call, but he had given his number to a good-looking French television journalist whose eyes had worked him over at a bar on Tverskaya. There was just the faint possibility that it might be her, bored and lonely on another cold night in Moscow. He cleared his voice by saying ‘Telephone’ into the room and moved off the bed. His body felt slow and lumpen, a searing pain across his abdomen when his feet touched the floor.