Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

for 99 - I’m only in this one more bloody awful episode. And I thought doing a bit of filming in Corfu would be great - big eye-opener. I’ll be thrilled to get out. The only thing is all that’s on offer afterwards is some new reality thing. It’s called Control Freaks. Danny” (her agent) “says I’d be dumb not to do it, but do I really want some scumster in my flat exhorting me not to be so anal, while a pair of sweaty burks film it all?”

She has brightened, and over the next duet of drinks - Serena’s are Cherry-Fillers with white rum - they discuss more intently, if more constructively, what should be done. About the funeral (they should go), Angela (they should calm her or have her gently assassinated - curious, joking about death in the face of death - gallows humour, Nick thinks), their meeting again in future regularly (they must - it has been so long - why have they let that happen?), and general life reviews, rather humorously presented.

Nick asks himself if he is enjoying it, sitting with this nicely-dressed and attractive sister, being - familial. He thinks he may like it. Yet is unsure. The legacy perhaps of all that ‘long-ago’ they are now beginning to include in the conversation. Or which is beginning inevitably to include itself.

“You were such a lovely little kid,” she says suddenly. “And you know Laurence really loved you. It used to make me jealous. I used to follow him round - he was my big hero. And he was always off with some girl-friend, or at that school, or when he was at the house - whichever house we were in - he used to talk to you. I mean you were what? Three, four? He used to play these talking games with you. And he used to pick you up and swing you round in his arms. He used to take you for walks and show you rabbits and foxes and sheep. He never had with me. I don’t think he ever noticed me, really.” She sounds then sad again, not aggrieved. No vitriol. “He used to say to people, Nicolas is going to be the one. The hope of the Lewises. Look at him, isn’t he brilliant? When he grows up no woman’s going to look at me - I’d better make the most of it now. Yes. Laurence used to say that. He was about seventeen, and he’d been having girls for years. And he taught you to read. Do you remember?”

Nick sits there. He smiles, but now he is acting, far better than with Mrs Franks the feral Greek.

“No, I don’t remember that.”

“Well he did. You could read when you were three. Claudia thought you were a genius, but so did Laurie.”

“I don’t remember a grand tour of rabbits and sheep either.”

“No,” Serena says and sighs again. “I don’t remember much myself till I was five. Rotten isn’t it? What we’ve missed. Sort of infantile Alzheimer’s.”

“Yes.”

They sit, and he thinks she is now supposing he in turn will eulogise Laurence, ladling out his virtues. But all Nick can recall of his childhood interaction with his brother is jibes and sometimes punches and light stinging blows, engineered mental prat falls, and tricks - the forerunners of nastier tricks practiced more dedicatedly in Nick’s early teens. Although after the lie about Claudia’s ‘disappearance’, Laurence had found Nick mostly prepared.

“So why did he go off me?” he finds he asks her even so. Then wishes he had not.

But Serena says, “Oh, but that’s Laurence. He’s like,” - she frowns - “He was like, past, past, past post-death tense - like our glorious mummy in that. Oh yes,” she muses softly. “Claudia was just like that. Each of us was the favourite when we were what? - new, I suppose. Brand new. Laurie must have been the star, then I came on the scene. So then I was the star. Probably why he didn’t like me. But then there you were. And maybe Laurie didn’t care by then, or he was just Claudia’s rival for you. You were, after all, another bloody male. The superior gender.” She looks sulky, then dislodges the look from her face with a shake of her head and silken hair. “Sorry again, Nick. Christ, these old grudges stick around. I don’t mean to be a bitch. None of us could help it, being born, getting supplanted, taking sibling umbrage.”

“Do you want another?”

“Drink? Perhaps. Or will you let me buy you dinner?”

Nick thinks again of the women he meets. He hesitates, then finds he says, once more almost inadvertently, “I remember Claudia often wasn’t there.”

“Yes. God. There was one time when you were only about two, not even that, and she went off to do some useless thing somewhere, reviving an old theatre or something, only it all flopped. And then she came back for a few months and then went straight off somewhere again. Was it Sweden? She wasn’t filming, because she’d stopped doing that. It must have been some other play. And she didn’t come back again then until the New Year. She said she had flu, went to bed for about a month, and she was awful to all of us. Even to you. And you were two years old, not even that. And Laurence went in and shouted at her - she was lying in bed all pale and ill and I was scared. But he shouted - you know how disapproving you can be when you’re a child. He was only fourteen. But Claudia started to cry and someone went up - Dad, was it? Only he was never there half the time either, maybe it was one of those housekeepers, and Laurence came slamming down in a flaming temper and he said to me She shouldn’t have had any of us if she can’t fucking like us. Oh God,” Serena says. “Please Nick, let’s go and