Letting Go

Dominic, the figure in the bed, writhes a little, his sleep disturbed, his sweat burning. Violently, he turns, again to bury his enflamed mouth in the sopping pillow.

The gentle slam of a door throws him once more as his brother, Benjamin, enters. Dominic is neither awake nor dormant and remains unaware of the presence.

Benjamin walks tentatively but with certainty to the far edge of the bed where the posts are stationed. He halts in his step before proceeding further.

Benjamin paces over to the window. There are no locks on this one. Still Dominic jostles in his bed in tortured restlessness. His face is wet from the pillow. He drinks his own dribble, his own spit.

Assisted by the strength of Benjamin's forearms, the single sash window opens with ease, although the wood on the left frame is tightly split.

There are no bars either and Benjamin is able to lean his head outside and breathe in the surrounding view. The air is pure, there are no traces of the city here. He senses serenity, the countryside lies before him in the distance. Immediately below is the garden: picturesque, with tall swinging trees and blooming shrubs. There is a circular concrete path to walk around. It does not veer off in twisted directions; it is encompassed only by green. Nurses in all white push chair-bound convalescents around the secure circle. Anti-clockwise, clockwise. They pass, they greet, some still converse. Most just gargle. The uniformed girls ease their distress and pat them with pity to feel soothed.

They have chosen well this time. A good place to die in.

Benjamin turns to his brother, still wriggling, as if his hands and feet are bound. But they are free.

Half words, lost garbled syllables.

Benjamin walks towards the top edge of the bed where Dominic's head rests. He looks down at him. He does not try to catch what his brother says. Dominic is a dying man and unable to reach any level of sense.

Benjamin strides into his inner jacket, hoping to find cigarettes. The pocket is hollow, the material cut and he has to reach deep within the jacket's lining to retrieve the near empty packet. Relieved, he smiles.

He takes out the matches from within the packet. Lighting up, Benjamin sights the judicious glance of each of the four "No Smoking placards, positioned strictly on every one of the four walls. So long as no alarms go off. The window is still open. That will deflect suspicion. Benjamin recalls a childhood spent learning how to blow fumes out of nearby accommodating windows. He is not staying long anyhow.

Benjamin blows down on his brother.

Hoops.

His one time brother.

Dominic's eyes open from time to time. They fix upon the intruder in short bursts.

Even as a child Dominic had been sickly. That pale putridness. That physical fragility, that inspired only Benjamin's hate. Needing more attention, extra care. But wasn't Dominic the elder brother? The role model? The one to be in awe of? To follow around? To be shunned by? Pushed away by? It was always the opposite. Never as it should have been.

Benjamin cannot remember ever playing with his brother. Dominic is only four years his senior but seems fifteen.

It had never been different. There were snapshots of Dominic holding him in forced poses. They were rare, fabricated.

When people speak of brotherly and sisterly kin in words of love Benjamin chokes himself to sleep.

When Benjamin hears slow words of irritation vented towards that same kin he gleams with envy at the mildness of their sentiment, at the reserve of their anger. They don't know hate.

Towards others Benjamin has learnt to love.

Towards his brother he has known only the hatred.

As a boy, Benjamin said he was alone and longed for a younger sister to care for. Not too young as her friends would be expected to fall deeply in love with him.

Benjamin, of course, in his wiser, more mature state would send them away. Sometimes, he would have to make his sister cry were she clinging too tightly in the presence of his friends. But, when alone, Benjamin would be true to her and she would know she was loved and protected.

That is how Benjamin would have been. Even a brother would have been nice. So he said he was alone. Benjamin never understood the blood link. It was too chance- worthy.

A brother is to be chosen.

A friend.

Dominic's eyes are fully open and his discomfort appears more acute. Perhaps someone should be called. Benjamin reaches for the buzzer, hanging from the cord, knotted around the back bedpost. He lets it slip away, swinging in mid air for an instant. It is the end anyhow. For both of them. His death will put them both to rest. Dominic would not want any assistance meted out on his behalf. He would not be grateful.

At first, Dominic was portrayed as different, unique. A wild, free, individual spirit. This was how they initially termed his childhood behavioural difficulties. Excuse after excuse, justification after justification came out.

Then the doctors were brought in. Dominic was always running away. Sometimes to the college. Sometimes he found out where the doctors lived. And he would go to them saying he was unloved. Speaking in riddles, making them smell abuse. Then Dominic played with the social workers. And he showed them his burn, a deep scar, left of his naval.

Dominic's parents had been called in years before. Then the probing, scathing questions.

The burn was the result of an inattentive French au pair.

Veronique had been with the family for over three months, earning the full trust of Dominic and Benjamin's parents: Otto and Eva Saxinger, both second generation Austrians.

Barely turned nineteen Veronique was living away from her native Avignon for the first time and to the disapproval of her conservative minded family.

Otto and Eva had experienced only difficulties with previous au pairs. Both parents needed to work for reasons of financial and emotional independence. Veronique was studious, seldom went out, aside from obligatory trips to the park with the boys- a concern of Otto and Eva's as they did not think it was healthy for such a young girl always to be caged up in her room during her spare time- and blushed at the mere mention of the opposite sex.

She adored children and it was clear from the start that Benjamin and even Dominic were at absolute ease in her presence. Veronique was affectionate and attentive with both boys yet they were not mollycoddled. When called for she was strict yet always just. Tears had little effect upon her. Veronique explained her basic principles of childcare at the preliminary interview:

' I see it as a question of balance. I learnt much from my own upbringing. My parents were far too severe, my sisters and I were expected only to obey, never question. They believed in the old maxim of children being seen, not heard. A good child was a dutiful one. Don't get me wrong Mr and Mrs Saxinger, I won't let your children run wild. I know that children need firm guidance. And of course there is respect. Children have an acute sixth sense for weakness. The failing of many liberal families is that they have no rule. Children need to know where they stand with you. You do them no favours by letting them do as they please. But they also need a forum for individual expression, encouragement for their independence of thought. Your children will respect me Mr and Mrs Saxinger but they will also grow to love me.'

Otto and Eva were suitably impressed by this forthright young woman. The usual agency-recommended second interview was bypassed and Veronique was quickly ushered into the family home.

She appeared to appreciate Dominic's need for extra care. It was only after the burn that he was paraded around the local medics but the Saxingers explained that Dominic was prone to bouts of over excitement and hyperactivity.

Otto and Eva's only reservation about Veronique lay towards her apparent distractedness. From that first meeting they both noticed her tendency to drift off during conversation, seemingly wound up in her own thoughts. She would return to the discourse after long, uncomfortable silences, excusing herself and asking to be reminded of what they were speaking, unaware of the attention that these temporary absences drew to her. The Saxingers put this down to an excessive dose of teenage introspection but could not help but feel there was something sad and empty about Veronique, perhaps connected with her past, perhaps with the telling words she had uttered concerning the family she had left behind.

Having set a pot of water to boil, Veronique left the two children ' Dominic already five years old and Benjamin still a toddler- unattended in a corner of the kitchen, close to the stove.

Dominic had gone for the pot almost at once. The result was inevitable, requiring Veronique's immediate dismissal.

When questioned, Veronique refused to say why she had left the children alone and what she had been doing. Nobody actually suspected her action to have been deliberate, all of the difficult questions were directed towards the Saxingers. She had been careless and wandered into an adjoining room but it was arranged that she be returned to France.

Only when her departure was made known to her did she protest, yet without offering any insight into what had occurred in the kitchen.

IV

Benjamin wore a scar too, resting more prominently upon his chest where a few unkempt hairs had sprouted despite the soft tissue. Sonia, a close family friend, was at the hospital in the immediate aftermath. Years after, Sonia told Benjamin she had never witnessed anything so horrific. Both children nearly perished. Their pupils dilated, their pulses weak.

Benjamin never referred to it but he had never considered the burning accidental. He was too young to recall anything but he had heard the story often enough and had lived with the looks on girls' faces when they first came across it.

As far as Benjamin was concerned Dominic had been old enough to appreciate the effect of placing his hands upon a pot of boiling water and causing it to topple over.

And from what Benjamin had understood he had been nowhere near the stove at the time of Veronique's exit.

How exactly did both children come to be burnt?

Why had Dominic never been questioned, except within the recesses of Benjamin's mind?

Eventually, the interrogation ceased. The parents were exonerated and Dominic's difficulties acknowledged. However, the burn was not forgotten. Its role in his stifled development was regarded as fundamental.

Dominic later told the doctors of his lost year of schooling.

In the early years the burn impaired Dominic's speech. When sent to school, aged seven, he was taken away from the other children by a concerned teacher. The children circled and taunted him for his speech. When he spoke, he was not understood. Those he met were bemused and cruel. He stayed at home for a year, embraced by endless attention. He learnt to speak and went to school.

Benjamin throws the cigarette end through the open window which he had left as it was. Some of that green air might rid the room of its sick hospital stench.

He sits down on a chair in the far corner of the room. He does not pull the chair over to the bed to be closer. He refuses to go near again. He feels nothing, no itching remorse. How could he, after all this time? He is here for his wife. She is level headed but he knows there is no point to it.

Benjamin had made himself forget about his brother a long time ago. When his parents were alive he participated in the group discussions, in the therapy. For their sake and theirs alone he feigned belief in the notion that only the family mattered.

He was never convinced by the theorising. Benjamin had seen him as a boy, grown up alongside him. He sensed what he must have been like even before the burn.

Benjamin had always known that Dominic was bad. Whatever the symptoms, neither the doctors nor the Saxingers ever appreciated this. Only Sonia ever understood. Sonia knew he was bad.

She remembered him playing with her own children before the burn. He drove them away and tore up their games, never the victim. After the burn, not every child walked away from him due to his speech. Not at first. Later, they all left him, all except the Saxingers who built a well deep enough to store a world's worth of unconditional love. Benjamin stayed too, but he had no love, only a sense of duty.

Benjamin promised himself early on that when his parents were no more he would shed himself of this worry. He did not intend to become his brother's sole protector. There would be more hospitals and there was ample financial provision. Even this place was selected long ago, although according to the doctors Dominic was here by chance this time.

In this final place of rest.

Dominic would not have wanted his brother's help anyhow and would have sneered at those whose assistance he took.

As a child, as an adult, Dominic swam in the attention. He never had a personality as such, nor interests, sustainable companions, kept up friendships. There was just him, his problems and his unease with the world.

V

The hospital had contacted Benjamin's wife a few days before. There had been an accident. A car was involved. The driver said Dominic just stepped out in front of him. It was the dead of night, the road was poorly lit and he was hit full on before the car could brake. The driver went to him. He said Dominic was smiling.

Benjamin's wife repeated what the hospital had said. Benjamin knew it was deliberate, but that his brother did not want to die, that he had calculated badly, that he never wanted to die, he just wanted to make everybody think about it all the time. Just for the game, just for the attention. Just to bring Benjamin to him.

The doctors said Dominic would not live beyond the end of the week.

It is Sunday. Benjamin put it off for as long as he could, until he could bear his wife's insistence no longer. She wanted to come too. She had never known Dominic. She wanted to be of use, to support. She wanted to understand her husband, to share his pain. This was something Benjamin had never shared with her, could not share with her.

Benjamin does not need to be held up. That had been his brother's problem.

Dominic had never been left on his own.

Benjamin learnt to stand alone.

Benjamin can tell his brother is near the end. The doctors were right. The machines don't seem to want to go on any longer.

Benjamin stands up, straightening the chair. He walks over to the window and peers out once again. The scene outside is the same as before. The circuit path, the uniforms and chairs. Only a small pond in the far corner of the garden area, around which visiting infants are being kept busy and laughing freely, had evaded his earlier gaze.

He brings himself back inside the room. It is getting late and his wife will worry that he is brooding. There are also the children to consider. They never knew their uncle. They never needed to.

Benjamin moves to close the window and it slides down with ease. He thinks again of his wife and without really knowing why he goes to his brother and places his left hand on Dominic's left cheek. He can taste Dominic's burning, his private hell. Benjamin leaves his hand there for a moment, not knowing what he is hoping to achieve. To take away the heat, divide the pain? Please his wife, assuage his own guilt? Dominic bolts his eyes out and smears his cheek against Benjamin's palm, either in recognition or madness.

Benjamin bends down, kissing his brother soothingly on the remaining cheek, his lips lingering on the salt.

He makes for the door and reaches for its handle. An emphatic but senseless sound sings from the bed. He considers turning around, deciding against it, not wishing to extend his visit any further.

Benjamin goes out into the corridor, closing the door firmly, confirming his exit. He pushes his back up against the zealously white wall. No looking back. He is peculiarly calm. It is finally over. He was right all along. His wife warned that he would break down when confronted with his brother: that all the pity and guilt would come streaming back to him. That it had all been repressed, blocked. Instead, Benjamin feels curiously liberated. He wants to see his wife, make love to her. See his children, throw them in the air, catching them steadily, reassuring them.

They warrant his love.

Again, Benjamin swims into his hole-ridden pocket and strikes up a flame. He inhales the smoke deep within. He smiles when the glowing porridge sensation reaches and rubs his chest.

VI

A sexless child zooms down the alley, chased mercilessly by a heavily framed matron. The child slows down for an instant as it passes the man, holding up its treasure, a thickly crayoned picture of a giraffe with little neck and zebra stripes where there should have been dots. He blows her some rings. The child pockets them fast and carries on with its audacious escape. Just before it turns off to the left at the end of the corridor, sliding in order to turn, the child flashes him a broad toothy grin.

The child's head is without hair. The child deserves to be loved. Probably has nobody. Love should never be unconditional, he thinks. To a certain degree, it has to be earned. Dominic's problems were all self-manipulated, self-designed. He never wanted to know happiness, always blaming the rest. It hit Benjamin again, hard, at the moment of that child's smile.

By now the matron has given up. Someone else will have to bring her in.

She stops in front of him, her hands resting heavily upon her hips. She gasps slightly, her grandmotherly mug continuing to flush, like an ineffective traffic beacon, from white to red, red to white.

'Put out that cigarette at once young man!'

Young man. Inwardly, he chuckles a little without risking her wrath. There is at most five years between them.

Benjamin puts out the nearly extinguished cigarette, using the end of his boot, making sure not to create a mess. He places the butt slowly in his jacket pocket. He feels it slide down into the lining to rest with the other debris.

'Can't you see that smoking is strictly forbidden in all areas of this hospital? If I catch you again, I'll have you removed!'

'Sorry Sister, I wasn't thinking. I'm not quite myself'. Benjamin manages to get this out with enough feigned regret.

The matron recovers herself and looks him over with gazing curiosity. She speaks again, this time with interest and a hint of concern.

'Are you here for Dominic in Room 11? Are you a relation? No one else has been. Did you know?'

Benjamin does not know which question not to respond to first. He launches a universal response, hoping to dismiss her and be on his way.

'No, I'm not here for him. Not anymore. Not at all. I'm here for my wife.'

Knowing that the matron has made no sense of his response Benjamin begins to walk towards the hospital lift. Without stopping to turn he calls back to her, adding cheerily:

'And for Benjamin. Yes, I'm here for Benjamin this time.'