I sent him a stern look. He caught it and quickly carried on.
‘We never spoke about the matter again. We both knew what he was and neither of us wanted anyone else to know. So I know nothing about his boyfriends. But I do not imagine there were many. I happened to drive past a restaurant last year and saw him sitting outside chatting to a well-known sportsman. It would not have been noticeable to many others, but there was a kind of intimacy between them that made me guess that my brother had a lover. It also explained why he was in unusually good humour over the next few months.’
‘And how did you feel about it?’
He shrugged.
‘In terms of my own opportunities, I hoped that it would not get out, but I was happy for Leonard to get his pleasure with whoever he fancied as long as I did not need to witness it.’
‘Did your father know?’
Again, there was silence for a while, and this time it was definitely more protracted. Fredrik Schelderup swallowed twice before answering. I registered with some glee a faint trembling in his voice when he did.
‘I hope you appreciate my honesty and openness now. Yes, my father did know. He heard it from me some days after the episode last year that I just mentioned. I thought that it might be of interest to him to know what his son got up to…’
Now I really did give him a very stern look indeed and could hear the indignation in my voice.
‘And the reason that you broke your promise to your brother was that you believed that it might be beneficial that your father knew this before he wrote his will?’
He looked down and nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was definitely shaking.
‘As I hope you understand, I am a greedy but honest good-for-nothing. Yes, I feared for my own position in terms of the will and reckoned that young Leonard would do well regardless. He has always been so determined and conscientious. And I have never been either, so have to get by as best I can with what I was born with: family money and a degree of intelligence.’
I did my best to show restraint and asked Fredrick Schelderup when this might have been, and how his father reacted. He thought hard, his brow furrowed.
‘I cannot remember the exact date, but it was late in the autumn, around November-December possibly. Father was a man of exceptional self-control. All the same, it was obvious that he was affected by the news and that he disliked it intensely. He said “thank you for the information”, and I cannot remember him saying anything like that since I came home from school with an unexpected top mark for one of my exams some twenty years ago. I have no idea if he ever talked about it with Leonard, nor if it was one of his reasons for changing the will. I certainly did far better in the second will than I did in the first, but fortunately that was also true of my brother.’
