“Look, Doc,” Joseph said as he lit his own cigarette, “I might as well come out with it. Once this job is finished, Violet wants us to knock it all on the head.”

Joseph’s tone was conciliatory, friendly, but what he said gave Edward a painful wrench in his breast. “What does that mean?” he said.

“My aunt doesn’t want you to work with the family any more.”

“This is ridiculous!”

“That’s how it has to be.”

“You agree with her?”

He shrugged. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s for the best. You’ve got the medicine to go to. I shouldn’t have asked you to do that house with me. It was selfish of me. You should’ve worked on being a doctor when you got back. It would have made a lot more sense. It still does. Think about it. You know she’s right.”

Edward gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles showed white. He stared at Joseph’s black eyes, at the clench of his eyebrows, the severe folds that creased his brow, and back to the eyes again, dark and black and unsmiling. There was no life there, no sparkle, nothing more than if Edward had been peering into the bloodless surface of a mirror. He felt as if he had been punched in his chest and his breath came fast, through his mouth. It was as if Joseph had suddenly been snatched from him and, at that, the boundless possibilities that he represented had been blown away like smoke. Edward didn’t care about Joseph. It was the injustice that made him so angry.

“Say something, Doc,” Joseph prompted, a little gingerly.

Edward got up, threw a handful of francs onto the table and set off. Joseph took his coat from the back of the chair and hurried after him. “If I knew you were going to take it so badly––”

A burning fury boiled in his blood and made him quiver. “You’ve got some nerve,” he said in a cold voice that was flat despite the crazy anger that he was struggling to contain. “You’re an ungrateful, spineless fool.” Edward stopped in the middle of the pavement and stared at him. “Do you think we would have made so much money at Honeybourne if it wasn’t for me? You wouldn’t have known where to start. You’re fine if things are simple, forcing a door or cutting rough with a guard so you can rob his depot. But if it’s complicated, if it needs careful planning? It’d be you and your friends, blundering around with no idea, not a clue, with no plan and no sense. The same goes for your bloody stupid family, too. You wouldn’t have lasted a week before the police got wise. You talk a good game, Joseph, all that lip, the silver tongue, but up here”––he stabbed a finger against his temple––“there’s nothing inside that pretty head, is there? It’s empty.”

“Watch what you say,” Joseph warned him.

“Or what? You’ll hit me below the belt again?” They had raised their voices and people had stopped to watch them. That made Edward angrier still. Joseph set off, striding purposefully towards the bone-white monument.

Edward followed him. He turned his head to see confusion and something else––fear, or suspicion?––in Joseph’s face. That made it worse. Edward wanted to explain to him, to persuade him that there was no need to behave like this, but he knew now with a sickening sense of certainty that he had been right: he was on his way out of the family. Events had gathered their own momentum now and he wouldn’t be able to stop them. The thought of that was like agony to him. The frustration, to be thwarted when he was so close, when he had finally found such possibilities for his future. The tension rose higher and, suddenly, it snapped. “I pity you sometimes, Joseph, I do––the way you can’t see how people like Billy Stavropoulos are dragging you down, and I think, without me, all you’d ever do is rob the odd house, turn over a warehouse or two, but all it would ever be is just a wait until you get your collar felt and sent down.” He went on furiously, unable to stop. “Asking me to help you wasn’t a mistake––it was the most sensible thing I’ve ever known you to do. And now you think you can just tell me it’s all over? Just like that? Toss me aside like a piece of rubbish?” He laughed caustically. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Joseph picked up his pace and so Edward reached out and grasped him around the shoulder. Joseph spun on his heel and, the angle changing so that his face became visible, Edward could see that he had prodded him too far. It was choked with fury. Joseph shucked his hand from his shoulder, closed his right fist and hooked at him. The blow was thrown carelessly and glanced Edward on the right temple. Again, he knew he should have stopped, that there were lines still to cross, but his own anger had him in a tight grip. He replied with a left-right-left combination, more accurate than Joseph, who took the first punch on his chin and the second and third on his quickly raised forearms. He ducked his head and tackled Edward into the doorway of a boutique. They rolled back into the street, each trying to hold the other down, using their elbows and heads and shoulders to wrest an advantage that they could not hold. They were of similar height and weight and equally matched.

Eventually, both with bloodied lips and noses, they broke apart.

More pedestrians had stopped to watch. A man approaching on the pavement took a step forward as if he were going to help, but stopped.

Edward rested his hand against the wall and breathed heavily. Joseph wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand, then cleaned that with his handkerchief. The top four or five buttons of his shirt had been ripped out and the shirt gaped untidily. Edward’s jacket had gashed beneath the shoulder, the sleeve hanging loose and the lining exposed, and his trousers were ripped above the knee. They stared at each other for five or six seconds. Joseph looked at Edward with disgust. Edward’s sudden avalanche of anger was spent and he suddenly felt hollowed out and desperate. He started to say something but Joseph eyed him with open contempt and the words were stopped by a tight twist of despair in his throat. He felt a sudden loss and a sense of helplessness.

Joseph straightened his ruined shirt, trying––futilely––to close it. He flagged a passing cab. Edward stayed where he was, propped against the wall, and watched Joseph’s long legs as he trotted over to where the driver had stopped and got in. The cab merged with the traffic and disappeared around a corner.

Edward found a bar and ordered a drink. His hands were still shaking. He bought a carton of untipped Gauloises. He remembered something that Joseph had said to him as they waited in the first class lounge at Northolt yesterday. He had mentioned, very casually in the middle of some conversation, that Edward had been more patient than he deserved in light of his slovenly attitude to keeping the flat clean and most people would have abandoned him by now. “I’d understand if that’s how you felt,” he’d added, trying to be guileless. It had been a clumsy hint so that he wouldn’t have to come out with what he wanted to say more directly today. Edward had ignored it but now he wished he had not. It would have made things easier, and he would have been better able to control the conversation and, therefore, his temper. Things might have been salvaged but now he knew that serious damage had been done. He knocked back his drink. All right, he would find somewhere else. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

48

EVE MURPHY LOOKED AT HER REFLECTION in the mirror. She was in the Ladies’ Powder Room at Vincanto, the chic new restaurant that had opened in Theatreland. She turned: front to the side. She was wearing the dress that Joseph had given her. He was very sweet like that, with all the presents and the surprises. It had been a Valentine’s gift, wrapped in expensive paper, sealed with ribbons and a huge bow. She could hardly believe the dress inside: a black rayon crepe with beaded and studded bodice, a modified sweetheart neckline, sleeves with darted headers and shirred elbows and a self belt. Her friend had actually gasped when Eve held it up for her. She had gone on and on about how much a dress like that must have cost, and how could Joseph afford it, and what about all the coupons you’d need, where had he got those from, and what would people think? Eve had explained it the same way Joseph had explained it to her when he had given her the watch, the necklace, the broach: he said he had been lucky on the dogs.