A Traitor to Memory

“I may have said that, but what I meant was—”

“Bugger what you meant!” Robbie kicked a cupboard door. Pitchley flinched.

“Wha's this, then?” Brent had returned to them, having pinched their mother's packet of Benson & Hedges. He was lighting up.

“This yob's doing another runner and claims he don't know where he's going. How'd you like that?”

Brent blinked. “Tha's shit, Jay.”

“Bloody right tha's shit.” Rob jabbed his finger into Pitchley's face. “I did time for you. I did six months. You know wha' it's like inside? Lemme tell you.” And the catalogue began, the same dreary recitation that Pitchley had heard every time his brother wanted more money. It began with the reason for Robbie's run-in with the law: beating up the journalist who'd unearthed Jimmy Pytches from the carefully constructed past of James Pitchford, who'd not only printed the story pulled from a snout at the Tower Hamlets station but had the audacity to follow it up with another despite being warned off by Rob, who stood to gain nothing—“sod all, Jay, you hear me?”—for taking up arms to protect the reputation of a brother who'd deserted them years ago. “Us lot never came near to you till you needed us, Jay, and then you bled us dry,” Robbie said.

His capacity for rewriting history was amazing, Pitchley thought. He said, “You came near me back then because you saw my picture in the paper, Rob. You saw a chance to put me in your debt. Bash a few heads. Break a few bones. All in the cause of keeping Jimmy's past hidden. He'll like that, he will. He's 'shamed of us. An' if we keep him thinkin' we're 'bout to pop out of his cupboard at any time, he'll pay, stupid git. He'll pay and he'll pay.”

“I sat in a cell,” Robbie roared. “I shat in a bucket. You go' that, mate? I go' done over in the shower, Jay. And wha'd you get?”

“You!” Pitchley cried. “You and Brent. That's what I got. The two of you breathing down my neck ever since, hands out for the dosh, regular as rain in the winter.”

“Can't wash cars in the rain, can we, Jay?” Brent offered.

“Shut up!” Rob threw the rubbish sack at Brent. “Blood and guts, you're so fucking stupid.”

“He said—”

“Shut up! I heard wha' he said. Don' you know what he meant? He meant we're leeches. Tha's what he's saying. Like we owe him and not the reverse.”

“I'm not saying that.” Pitchley reached in his pocket. He brought out his chequebook, where inside was the incomplete cheque he'd been writing when the cop had shown up at his house. “But I am saying that it's ending now, because I'm leaving, Rob. I'll write this last cheque and after that you're on your own.”

“Fuck that shit!” Rob advanced on him. Brent took a hasty step back towards the sitting room. Jen Pytches called, “Wha's goin' on, you lot?”

“Rob and Jay—”

“Shut up! Shut up! Christ on the cross! Why're you such a bleeding git, Brent?”

Pitchley took out a biro. He clicked out the ink. But before he could put pen to paper, Rob was on him. He ripped the chequebook from Pitchley's hand and threw it against the wall, where it hit a rack of mugs which crashed to the floor.

“Hey!” Jen shouted.

Pitchley saw his life flash before him.

Brent dived into the sitting room.

“Bloody stupid wanker,” Rob hissed. His hands went for the lapels of Pitchley's jacket. He jerked Pitchley forward. His head snapped back. “You don't understand fuck all, you git. You never did.”

Pitchley closed his eyes and waited for the blow, but it didn't come. Instead, his brother released him as savagely as he'd taken hold of him, shoving him backwards against the kitchen sink.

“I di'n't do nowt wanting your stupid money,” Rob said. “You handed it over, yeah, right. An' I was glad to take it, yeah, I was. But you're the one what go' out the chequebook every time you saw my mug. ‘Give the bloody git a thousand or two and he'll disappear.’ Tha's wha' you thought. And then you blamed me for takin' the handout when the handout was nothing but guilt money in the first place.”

“I didn't do anything to feel guilty—”

Rob's hand chopped the air, silencing Pitchley. “You pr'tended we didn't exist, Jay. So don't blame me for wha' you did.”

Pitchley swallowed. There was nothing more to say. There was too much truth in Robbie's claim and too much falsehood in his own past.

From the sitting room, the sound of the television rose, Jen raising the volume to drown out whatever her oldest two sons were doing in the kitchen. None of my business, her action said.

Right, Pitchley thought. All of their lives had been none of her business.

He said, “I'm sorry. It was the only way I knew to make a life, Rob.”

Rob turned away. He went back to the fridge. He brought out another beer and opened it. He raised it to Pitchley in a mocking, farewell salute. He said, “I only ever wanted to be your brother, Jim.”





GIDEON





2 November