Mia gave me a look of desperation, and I did my best to intervene. “Guys,” I tried, “one of you is a barrister, the other one’s a doctor. You are both way too smart to still be falling for this shit.”
“What shit?” asked Christopher, and to my dismay, he seemed to genuinely mean it. “Ollie here did everything they wanted, so when I didn’t, I got hell.”
Oliver sneered. He actually sneered. It was like I was dating the evil one in a costume drama. The one who’s determined to steal the hero’s tin mine. “You mean you did whatever the hell you liked, and they still thought the sun shone out of your backside, so I had to work twice as hard to get half as much—”
“I can’t believe you would even suggest—”
“Mia”—I announced over the top of the Blackwood brothers—“do you want to just run off together? I know I’m gay, but I reckon I can work something out.”
Stepping pointedly in between Christopher and Oliver, Mia took my hand. “Yeah, let’s go to Paris.”
Christopher flung a glance at us. “What are you two doing?”
“We’re leaving you for each other,” Mia explained, “because you’re both awful.”
“I mean,” I added, “you’re both in your late twenties or early thirties, and you’ve been talking about your fucking A-level results.”
There was a little silence. Not a this-man-has-made-a-good-point-and-we’re-chill-now kind of silence. More an O.K. Corral kind of silence.
At last, Oliver took one of his trademark I-am-being-calm-and-mature-and-you-are-not breaths. “Perhaps we are being a little heated. Christopher, I understand that what I did today caught you unawares. And in an ideal world I should have said something to you beforehand.”
He’d been trying to be conciliatory, but Christopher didn’t look conciliated. “‘I should have said something to you beforehand’？ Is that the best you can do?”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to read ‘If’？” Normally I loved Oliver’s dry half jokes, but this clearly wasn’t the time.
“How about if you were going to find the backbone to talk back to our…to our…to our complete prick of a father…” The moment the words were out, something lifted from Christopher Blackwood—a small something, admittedly, but something. “You should have done it when he was alive. When it could be at least a tiny bit of use to either of us.”
A similar something, and similarly small, seemed to shift in Oliver too. “I didn’t plan for this.”
“I know you didn’t. Just. Fuck.” Christopher pulled at his hair in frustration. “I really, really, really resent having to go here because I in no way want to validate your grandstanding bullshit, but you remember that thing you said about how the worst of it is you’ll never know how it would have been different if you’d called him on his bullshit earlier?”
“Unfortunately not,” Oliver admitted. “I’m afraid, looking back, it’s rather a blur. But it feels like something I remember wanting to say.”
“Well, how do you think I felt listening to that?” And there was the note of challenge in Christopher’s voice again. But under that, a note of pleading. “Don’t you think I wanted to know what my life might have been like if you’d stood up for me just fucking once before you were fucking thirty.”
Oliver went very still in that way he had when he was very angry or very devastated. “I wasn’t aware you needed to be stood up for.”
“I know you weren’t.” Christopher’s shoulders slumped and, with a stiffness that made him briefly look much older, he sat down where Oliver had just been sitting.
“I…” said Oliver finally. “I fear I may have been a bad brother. I apologise.”
Lifting his arm, Christopher dragged his wrist across his eyes, like he wasn’t sure whether he was about to cry or not. “I’ll be honest, I really thought it would feel better to hear that.”
“If it helps,” Oliver offered, “I thought it would feel better to tell Dad to go fuck himself.”
“Well”—Christopher gave a slightly helpless shrug—“thanks for saying it anyway. And I guess I was kind of a crappy brother too.”
Mia cleared her throat. “Or you had fucked up parents, and this isn’t on either of you.”
The seesaw of recrimination and self-recrimination hovered briefly in the middle. And, for a moment, it looked like the Blackwood brothers might get off the ride. Maybe even leave the playground entirely. But, then, there was only so much you could fix with one conversation. Eventually Oliver said, “I’m sorry I ruined the funeral.”