Free Staring At The Light by Frances Fyfield Page B

decade older bearing all the gravitas of middle age. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. Sir.’ It stuck in his throat to reply
     in kind and he realized, too late, that he might be mistaken for a mimic. There was no jauntiness or sense of irony in John
     Smith. This man had neitherlogic nor humour, which did not mean to say he lacked charisma; only that he looked as if he had never laughed, except as
     a private and derisive reaction to something horribly personal, which Andrew did not like to consider. Aside from that, he
     was attractive, if only as an acquired taste. A folded face was what he had, jowled and lined in a way that might make a sallow
     French film star attractive and a pale pink Anglo-Saxon resemble a certain kind of pedigree dog with a long tongue and plenty
     of spit. There was a faint scar leading from the left corner of his lip. Imagining John Smith in the privacy of his bedroom
     was not therapeutic; neither was it sufficient to stop Andrew Mitchum from being afraid. Or to prevent him from wondering
     how it was that a man as rich as this should have such terrible teeth. The better to eat one with. One ceased to notice after
     a while. One never ceased to be surprised.
    ‘What I fail to understand’, he found himself saying, with deferential but genuine curiosity, ‘is why it matters.’
    ‘Why what matters?’
    ‘Finding your twin brother. If you aren’t his keeper. Sir.’
    ‘You miss the point entirely.’
    ‘Perhaps I do.’
    John Smith emerged from behind his desk and stood by the window with his back to Andrew, looking out and jingling coins in
     his pocket. The window overlooked a large garden, level at this height, with the branches of a horse-chestnut tree festooned
     withthe tattered remnants of a few orange leaves. Andrew imagined the ground below littered with conkers. Noone would collect
     them.
    ‘If ever I leave this house,’ John Smith was saying to himself, ‘I’ll leave it empty and let it
rot
.’
    This announcement was entirely irrelevant to any that had preceded it. Andrew allowed himself to be differently distracted.
     The house already seemed wasted. Nobody, surely, needed so much space or so much ornament. The curtains drawn away from the
     vast windows were as opulent as something borrowed from a theatre – the opening of them demanded an overture. The carpet yielded
     to every step: he felt as if he was walking across a sand dune inside a house unnaturally quiet. If the statue of a preying
     eagle, carved in silver and standing guard on the mantelpiece, were to fall from its prominent position to the floor, it
     would make no sound – and it would take a very long time indeed for this house to rot. As for the pictures on the walls …
     Andrew shuddered.
    The paintings were all reproductions, highly coloured to the point of being inflammatory. Above the fireplace, cornered by
     the eagle, there was a battle scene,
The Charge of the Light Brigade
or something of the kind; men with muskets and red uniforms, many contorted in dramatic attitudes of death while non-specific
     Hottentots appeared to be on the winning side. On the opposite wall, in similar, massive scale, two battleships of 1914 vintage
     were engaged in furious combat on the high seas, one sinking in scorching water. They were vivid enough to make Andrewimagine explosions and screams, without being subtle enough to stir his emotions. The canvases were extraordinarily shiny.
     In the hallways were Andy Warhol-style posters, huge heads and one-dimensional faces heavily framed as if they were Victorian,
     looking odd against flock wallpaper and Edwardian picture rails. The whole house was a riot of garish acquisition.
    ‘It would be perfectly easy to find your brother, even though he is … a trifle elusive. I
did
manage to get access to his prison records.’
    ‘Part of them,’ John Smith barked. ‘What did you do? Pose as his doctor? You found the fucking
dentist
they gave him. That’s