him.
“I hoped you’d come,” he said. “I longed for you to come. I can’t stand being alone any longer.”
So I knelt on the floor beside him and put my arms round him, half-expecting to be shoved away. But he held me more tightly than I held him, his face pressed into my shoulder. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, several minutes certainly. Then we both got up, simultaneously it seemed, and I told him I was going to make us a cup of tea. He followed me into the kitchen, saying he couldn’t write, he’d tried but he had what he called “the grandmother of all writer’s blocks.” He could use the Internet for e-mails and research, or he could if he had anyone to send e-mails to or anything to discover, but he hadn’t. If he tried to write the novel he was halfway through, all that appeared was what happened in Old Compton Street that night, his friend attacked, stabbed, and kicked to the ground. He could describe Kevin Drake’s blue-and-silver trainers, soon to be splashed with blood, his bare, bony ankles and his frayed jeans. He could write the word Drake and the other man’s name, Gary, Drake used when they egged each other on and describe the distortion of their faces, red with meaningless,unprovoked rage. But his novel that he wanted to write, all that was lost and gone. He told me this as we walked into the study, carrying our mugs of tea. In the weeks since that night in Soho he had grown thin, his once-handsome face like a skull, the tendons on his neck, ropes stretched taut.
“Even if I were capable of doing anything,” he said, “I’ve nothing to do. All I’ve done for years is write, and now I can’t. I’ve no outside interests, I don’t care for sport, and I’ve no hobbies. Do people have hobbies anymore? Train sets and stamp collections? Maybe they do, but I don’t.”
This was when I had an idea. I asked him if he would help me with the social-history websites, expecting a blunt no.
But he said, “You mean find some websites and go into them and see what they say?”
“I’d like someone from the outside to look at this stuff from a fresh perspective,” I said. Give him something to get interested in he’d never thought about before. This plan was just a stage in my amateur therapy. Let him do something, instruct someone even, all in the good cause of distracting him from those disproportionate fears. “What I’d like,” I went on lying, “is if you could sit beside me and tell me what you think. Would you do that?”
He would try, he said. He knew nothing about the Victorians or their social history. I fetched more tea for us, thinking that this might be the therapy Andrew was hoping for. I hated to think that my brother might stop loving him just when he obviously needed love so much.
I sat down at Verity’s computer, and James drew up a chair beside mine. I was told something I’d known for years, how to use a search engine. I told him the language defeated me. I was a purist when it came to language, and among other solecisms I didn’t care to use access as a verb. He told me I didn’t have to do it “in the great world” off-line. Think of it as a foreign language you’re learning, he said, and then it will be all right. A few websites werefound and I told him I didn’t want to have to go online every time I needed to refer to them. Print them out, he said, and I pretended never to have printed anything out, so he told me how, and soon we had a whole stack of quite useless sheets of paper that I didn’t need for my students and would never look at again.
But “helping” me like that did James a world of good. He already looked much better, said he would give me another lesson in using the Internet whenever I liked. I had a bottle of sherry in the cupboard that was here when we moved in. It’s an old-fashioned drink, but I suddenly had a fancy for it, so James and I each had a glass and he told me I had saved his life. The oxycodone was what I
“I hoped you’d come,” he said. “I longed for you to come. I can’t stand being alone any longer.”
So I knelt on the floor beside him and put my arms round him, half-expecting to be shoved away. But he held me more tightly than I held him, his face pressed into my shoulder. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, several minutes certainly. Then we both got up, simultaneously it seemed, and I told him I was going to make us a cup of tea. He followed me into the kitchen, saying he couldn’t write, he’d tried but he had what he called “the grandmother of all writer’s blocks.” He could use the Internet for e-mails and research, or he could if he had anyone to send e-mails to or anything to discover, but he hadn’t. If he tried to write the novel he was halfway through, all that appeared was what happened in Old Compton Street that night, his friend attacked, stabbed, and kicked to the ground. He could describe Kevin Drake’s blue-and-silver trainers, soon to be splashed with blood, his bare, bony ankles and his frayed jeans. He could write the word Drake and the other man’s name, Gary, Drake used when they egged each other on and describe the distortion of their faces, red with meaningless,unprovoked rage. But his novel that he wanted to write, all that was lost and gone. He told me this as we walked into the study, carrying our mugs of tea. In the weeks since that night in Soho he had grown thin, his once-handsome face like a skull, the tendons on his neck, ropes stretched taut.
“Even if I were capable of doing anything,” he said, “I’ve nothing to do. All I’ve done for years is write, and now I can’t. I’ve no outside interests, I don’t care for sport, and I’ve no hobbies. Do people have hobbies anymore? Train sets and stamp collections? Maybe they do, but I don’t.”
This was when I had an idea. I asked him if he would help me with the social-history websites, expecting a blunt no.
But he said, “You mean find some websites and go into them and see what they say?”
“I’d like someone from the outside to look at this stuff from a fresh perspective,” I said. Give him something to get interested in he’d never thought about before. This plan was just a stage in my amateur therapy. Let him do something, instruct someone even, all in the good cause of distracting him from those disproportionate fears. “What I’d like,” I went on lying, “is if you could sit beside me and tell me what you think. Would you do that?”
He would try, he said. He knew nothing about the Victorians or their social history. I fetched more tea for us, thinking that this might be the therapy Andrew was hoping for. I hated to think that my brother might stop loving him just when he obviously needed love so much.
I sat down at Verity’s computer, and James drew up a chair beside mine. I was told something I’d known for years, how to use a search engine. I told him the language defeated me. I was a purist when it came to language, and among other solecisms I didn’t care to use access as a verb. He told me I didn’t have to do it “in the great world” off-line. Think of it as a foreign language you’re learning, he said, and then it will be all right. A few websites werefound and I told him I didn’t want to have to go online every time I needed to refer to them. Print them out, he said, and I pretended never to have printed anything out, so he told me how, and soon we had a whole stack of quite useless sheets of paper that I didn’t need for my students and would never look at again.
But “helping” me like that did James a world of good. He already looked much better, said he would give me another lesson in using the Internet whenever I liked. I had a bottle of sherry in the cupboard that was here when we moved in. It’s an old-fashioned drink, but I suddenly had a fancy for it, so James and I each had a glass and he told me I had saved his life. The oxycodone was what I
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