but rather, had taken from him.
If people could see him now they might never guess he’d come from such noble stock. His ancestors had been prominent citizens, five generations of Hattersleys, the family crest stamped prominently on letterheads and the upkeep of their sixteenth-century Tudor manor house provided for by investments in shipping and tea plantations located in far corners of the Commonwealth. But all had gone horribly awry when the mounting debts began outweighing the income. Stocks were sold, then the companies and finally the family property itself. Benton was still haunted by the expressions on the faces of those locals, the way they had shaken their heads in disbelief, that such an empire in the space of a few years could be reduced to an invalid male and his aging sister – Benton’s mother. He was seven then and still to learn that his birth had been the outcome of a fleeting romance, the first of a string of monolithic embarrassments for the family that had only ended with the sale of their ancestral land.
For seven years he’d been kept behind closed doors in that family manor house. Now in his forties, he would readily admit that he’d been an introverted child. What strange and strict times. His grandfather, who could not accept the gradual demise of the dynasty, had required of little Benton that he learn piano, read Proust, Gide and Bertolt Brecht, and undertake French and Latin. None of it raised a single hair on the boy’s downy skin, an epidermis that had barely seen daylight, let alone the sun. What strange and strict times indeed.
In his new domicile, Benton untangled the leads to his computer and, despite himself, could not help but reflect upon those lamentable, formative years. All he’d ever wanted was the company of other children, yet when he moved into the small Hertford cottage with his mother, nothing improved. Unnaturally protective, his mother discouraged outside friendships, but she needn’t have worried; for his own part Benton had no idea how to acquire such things. From that time forward he’d watched others play, laugh, push and punch, and he’d done all those things as well – but always alone in the confines of a small loft bedroom. Now, in mid-life, he recollected the countless hours he’d stood at the smeary casement window. Even in his teens he’d continued to stand at those same old multi-panes, staring out, watching others share their company but never with him.
He was fourteen when Olga Bergeson had come briefly into the house as a renting Year Nine student from Sweden. He did not interact with her, but when she finally left he’d discovered a pair of her underpants beneath the bed. He snatched them up, took them to his room and examined them as a lepidopterist might study a rare butterfly. He held them to the light, inhaled them and, later, wrapped them around the hardening shaft of his fourteen-year-old penis. But it was all harmless play, teen curiosity: he liked the girl, and as he’d happily attest, he’d done nothing wrong at all.
What followed, however, he’d always keep secret – after all, he had a private life just like everyone else. He would never tell of his first big collecting phase. He would not recount how his normal day had been summarily converted to a quest, namely, the frenzied acquisition of underwear from other people’s clotheslines. Large bloomers had disgusted him, but small panties – even boys’ Y-fronts – had monopolised his imagination completely and he gathered enough to cover his entire eiderdown twice over. Laid out in rows, it was hard to decide which were the best, which to prize most highly – perhaps the boys’ blue jocks, tiny and tight, with a motorbike embroidered on the front. But he was very young then and, these days, he’d rather forget that teenage hobby. And forget also the period in his twenties when his activities went full circle, back to the wearers themselves, the ones he still watched from the old casement window. All he ever desired was intimacy; something that he felt sure should exist, somewhere.
He was a dozen years their senior when at last he felt equipped to approach the children, when he finally found the courage, wit and social skills necessary for interaction. The kids loved it; how he entertained them and how enthralled they were with the grown-up things he could teach them. But why had it caused such unnecessary grief? All would have been fine if the boys and girls could keep secrets. But they let him down appallingly and it was the wrath of parents that eventually put him on an offenders’ list.
Now, in these rented premises on Frederick Street, the latest in a string of lodgings, he still wondered how things could have turned out so badly. Life had such unexpected twists – and not the least was his mother’s death while they were still sharing the Hertford house. He was thirty then and her passing devastated him – but not as much as the news that she’d left everything to her invalid brother. Benton inherited a damaged Guarnerius violin once owned by his grandfather, some oval miniatures painted by a lesser-known portraitist and a leather-bound set of the works of Hemingway. That was when he moved to Cambridge, rented a neat little cottage in a quiet street and left the previous thirty years behind.
Sitting in his new North Brunswick bedroom, he again frowned. During that time in England when things were going so well, how was it that one autumnal day he’d found himself back in court? It wasn’t his fault. It was the boy across the street who’d approached him; it was he who asked to earn some pocket money and he who wanted to watch some silly program on TV. No one had forced the child to do anything. And who says a thirty-year-old can’t have young friends? Where was the harm? Of course that kind of friendship entailed certain physical liberties, intimate bridges to cross, but the boy would merely gain some mature life-experience – and under the guidance of someone who knew.
For that one casual event he was put on the national register, which meant there was nothing left to do but leave. And so he did, for the new colonies, a country young and fresh and so far away that it was like being born again. It was warm and prophetically pleasant, that day he stepped onto the tarmac at Tullamarine and marched towards the terminal. At last he could lose himself, wander on the plains of anonymity. But, as he soon learned, this was also the real heart of loneliness – which prompted his introduction to one other kind of travel: the transporting effects of alcohol.
He’d experienced a step down in his professional career. Having previously specialised in the design of renewable energy equipment for the car industry, in Australia, he found himself employed at Unitex installing home entertainment systems. At week’s end most of the staff descended on the Rickard Hotel, just three doors down from the office, and this was where Benton was introduced to the luscious liquor, as Milton put it, and where he first discovered a special kind of faux-confidence.
It had come to him one evening that no one wanted prolonged, thoughtful conversation; it was the smart and springy comments which endeared, the one-liners that could be tossed off like a text message or the half dozen words of Twitter. He could easily manage that and he learned to slip his two bob’s worth into the hotel’s witty repartee, recognising that his chronic lack of social ease went largely unnoticed. It was all quite funny, really.
And in time, Benton learned to invoke some of his aristocratic legacy. Calling upon the monologues of his forebears, he discovered that he could hold forth in front of anyone with all manner of preposterous statements – and people seemed to accept it. He remembered the first ludicrous thing he’d said to his Afghan flatmate the day they’d met: You understand, young fellow, this is a temporary measure. My inheritance will soon be forthcoming and when it does, I intend purchasing something much more agreeable, a property by the river perhaps, but certainly a long way from this unremarkable little borough. Arman’s attention had been magically arrested. You understand I’m not used to such ordinary arrangements. But in the meantime I suppose we should just make the most of it, eh?
DESPITE BENTON’S apparent lack of regard for their living quarters – or perhaps because of it – Arman warmed to him. Call me Ben, the man offered genially, unless you intend a formal dissertation. He represented so much of what Arman was not: urbane, eccentric and unwilling to accept the mediocrity that life often dished out. Benton was a gentleman and Arman assumed that his way of speaking came naturally; it was the English language at its purest. It intrigued him and challenged his own grammar and, altogether, Benton appeared to
