The English Boys

by Julia Thomas

  Nick worked for over an hour on the flower beds. There was a light wind, and the sky, which had begun to darken overhead, occasionally blew a few drops of rain onto the brim of his hat. It can’t make up its mind, his mother sometimes said. Just like me. He never asked what she couldn’t make up her mind about. It wasn’t done.

  He raked some of the leaves, kicking them into a pile. This time tomorrow, he would be in London with Carey. He wished to God that she hadn’t gone into medicine. It took forever to graduate and then to qualify, and who knew what hospital she would work at when the time came. It wasn’t likely to be in Wales. In the meantime, however, he would get his degree to satisfy his mother and then move wherever Carey was to look for a job in a garden center. He was relieved to have a plan.

  The following morning, he bought a ticket to London and boarded the train a little after nine. It wasn’t crowded, for which he was thankful, and he made himself as comfortable as he could in his seat, clutching her letter in his hand and a knapsack full of magazines and snacks that his mother had insisted he bring. He wasn’t sentimental about most things, but this journey had a sense of importance about it. Carey was meeting him at Euston Station, giving him the opportunity to support her during the worst crisis of her life. He put aside any feelings he had regarding Tamsyn. Carey had mentioned in previous emails that she wanted to take him to Covent Garden and Leicester Square, and he knew she was fond of the British Museum. She wrote about it often enough. For him, however, she was the only thing worth seeing.

  The trip was long and hot, the train car jarring and uncomfortable. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on reading, worrying instead about how things would go when he arrived.

  “You’re here,” Carey said, approaching him as he got off the train.

  She kissed him on the cheek. He knew she appreciated how much effort it had taken for him to make such a trip. As they walked out of the station into the harsh afternoon sun, she tucked her hand inside the crook of his arm. The tremor stilled the moment she touched him. Without a word, she led him through the crowds rife with noise and confusion, people coming, people going, things for sale, things to eat, all of it contained in one huge, stifling place. He hated it at once.

  “I don’t want to go home yet,” she said. Carey was always quiet, but there was something else evident in her demeanor, a deep sadness he had not expected, though she had written about it. She looked up at him, concerned. “That is, if you don’t mind. If you’re tired, we can go back to my place.”

  “I’m fine,” he lied. Shifting his pack on his shoulder, he wanted to get away from the noise and traffic and find a quiet place for a meal. In spite of himself, he couldn’t help resenting that she normally would have remembered his likes and dislikes, crowds being something he loathed. Of course, she had suffered a recent shock. She wasn’t herself. He would have to understand.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  Carey shrugged. “I haven’t been able to eat much.”

  “You have to eat.”

  “I could drink some tea, I suppose.”

  “Do you know a place we could go?” he asked, glancing around.

  Carey rubbed his arm. “Of course. We’ll take the tube to Russell Square. I know where we can get you a good cottage pie.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were seated in the corner of the Sheffield Bistro and a strong pot of tea had been placed on the table. Nick watched Carey arrange the cups and saucers and begin to pour. He pushed his pack under the chair and sat back, pleased when he saw she remembered the sugar.

  “This is nice,” he said, accepting the cup she offered. “Being here with you.”

  She tried to smile. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s been ghastly.”

  “I can hardly believe it’s real.”

  “It doesn’t feel real, and I was there.” Her voice broke for a second.

  “What do the police say?”

  “The only people in the vicinity besides the bishop were family and friends. They talked to everyone at the scene, but they haven’t discovered who did it.”

  The food arrived and Nick watched as Carey picked at her meal, jabbing her fork into a stringy piece of lamb.

  “You have to eat something,” Nick said.

  “I can’t. Really.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “You need to keep up your strength. Who knows what’s ahead?”

  She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She smiled at him, and he was suddenly very glad he had made the trip to be here for the person he loved best. Things were meant to happen, sometimes.

  “I’d do anything for you,” he answered. Even as he said it, he wondered if she knew how true it was.

  Fourteen

  Tamsyn Burke’s funeral took place in the very spot where her wedding was to have been, a mea culpa, it seemed, from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey for having lost her so tragically on her most important of days. The service drew a large crowd. Apart from the family and friends who had been present on the day of her murder, there were other relatives and business associates who had never even met her. Inspector Murray and Ennis were in attendance, scanning the room for suspects. Outside the church, onlookers gathered on the pavement with mobile phones held over their heads, snapping photos when Hugh stepped out of his car and walked head down into the building. The Hardy film was weeks away from release and Tamsyn had not been well known enough to have real fans, but such circumstances bring out the morbid. The Burkes followed Hugh inside and sat across the aisle from the Ashley-Hunts, nodding stiffly as they took their seats.

  Carey sat with her mother on one side and Nick on the other. She was glad he was there. It was an ordeal only to be managed on the arm of a good friend. She avoided looking at the casket in the front of the room. The first notes from the organ jangled her nerves, echoing in the hollow recesses of the room. Even the murmur of people greeting one another or trying to take a seat was distressing. The majesty of their surroundings did nothing to help, and even before the service began, Carey knew she would never darken the door of the Abbey again. She glanced at Hugh, who sat red-faced and silent between his parents, and at Daniel beside him, who was as stony-faced as anyone in the room. Her own parents sat numbly, having done their weeping at home.

  Throughout the difficult parts of the sermon, Carey placed her hand on Nick’s arm for support, where the irregular vibrations of his tics passed through his arm and into her fingers like a stream flowing into the mouth of a river, gently but steadily, pulsating and alive, comforting in its constancy. As the service began, she couldn’t listen for fear of crying. Instead she shut it out, mentally quizzing herself on the parts of the Central Nervous System: brain, brain stem, mesencephalon, tectum, cerebrum peduncle, pretectum, mesencephalic duct. She imagined the soft pink and white tissue inside Nick’s brain and the damaged part that caused the tics, what it would look like to the naked eye, if it could be surgically repaired. Anything was better than listening to the funeral of her only sibling. Occasionally, the sound of sniffling broke her concentration. She was a reserved person by nature, prone to analytical thought and ruled by common sense, but suddenly she felt herself sliding into the Slough of Despond; not just a place of despair, but despair tinged with guilt. She could have been a better sister. She hadn’t judged Tamsyn, but she had often feared for her, and now, the worst had come true.

  She longed, suddenly, to believe in prayer, to be washed in something pure and true that would cleanse her from the filth of this wretched mess. She believed in God; as a member of the scientific community she believed that adaptation was measurable and therefore indisputable, and that evolution did not occur universally but in fits and spurts; but the thought that an ultimate Creator had time for one among billions of human beings seemed improbable, to say the least. Too many millions suffered every day for him to hear and t
o acknowledge the cries of one, though believing in God allowed her the hope of heaven, where Tamsyn surely deserved to be.

  The service droned on. Carey became sore from sitting motionless for such a long period of time. She massaged her neck during the final prayer and then took her mother’s cold, unresponsive hand.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  She looked at her mother. Miranda Burke was young, not yet fifty, with only the slightest hint of gray beginning to show in her hair. Her face, when the girls were growing up, had been creased with laugh lines, though Carey knew the last ten years had taken a toll on her. When Tamsyn had turned fifteen, she had rebelled against authority, and her mother had been left to deal with the consequences. Carey had the sudden wish to see her smile again, but now that wouldn’t be possible until she was back in Llandudno, sometime in the distant future when the painful memory of their beloved Tamsyn on the floor in a bloody dress had begun to fade, if that was even possible.

  Her mother roused herself from her thoughts. “I suppose so.”

  She was wearing a black suit quite proper for someone of middle age, though Carey had refused the custom and donned a green jacket she would have worn to class on any ordinary day. She could imagine Tamsyn would have wanted them to wear something as colorful and irreverent as her own personality, and though Carey had none of her sister’s verve, she had made an attempt. Black seemed so final; green, on the other hand, reminded her of leaves and trees and fields, of heaven itself, which lay just beyond their reach.

  “Do you want to go to the pub, Mum?”

  Miranda shook her head. “Not especially. But we should go anyway, for Tamsyn.”

  Carey was disappointed, but there was nothing to do but go with them. She squeezed her mother’s arm. Of course, even if she didn’t feel like making small talk, she could spend the time observing the attendees. Was it possible that the murderer would come and sit among them and lift a glass in Tamsyn’s honor? The thought revolted her, and yet, anything was possible if someone was hardened enough to stab the sharp end of a knife into a beautiful living being.

  Most of the people walked from Westminster Abbey to the Regency Arms several blocks away, but the Burkes and Nick Oliver squeezed into a cab and jostled through traffic to arrive at the pub a few minutes early.

  “I suppose I’ll have to talk to people,” Carey remarked to Nick as they walked through the door.

  “I suppose,” he agreed.

  She looked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry. This is awful, I know. Especially this, crammed in a small room with lots of people we don’t know.”

  “Or want to,” Nick added.

  She watched her parents and Nick find a table and sit down. She didn’t care for alcohol but ordered a half pint to be socially correct, wondering how long they would have to stay. She never went to pubs. For one thing, there was never time. She was either in class or studying; even her mobile phone was always set to vibrate so that it wouldn’t interrupt whatever sentence she happened to be writing and make her lose her train of thought. For another, she rarely socialized beyond the study group she had joined. They were an interesting lot who had come together during their first term at university: Jared Chin, a Chinese student from Guiyang whose father, a worker in a small umbrella factory, wanted him to become a doctor; Roddy MacInnis, who was studying medicine to best his brother, a barrister; Gillian Stewart, who was a few years older and had returned to university after losing her parents in an accident; and Fiona Dickson, who had inherited a fortune from her great-uncle and decided to pursue the career she had dreamed of since childhood. All of them were serious, apart from Roddy’s occasional and generally unwelcome attempt at humor. From time to time they would get into arguments over a method of diagnosis or treatment, but mostly they were a congenial group in which there were no weak links. Carey had originally suspected that she might have to carry the load when someone faltered, but they had proved sound and reliable, all of them getting excellent marks.

  She saw that her friends had come to the Regency Arms to support her on this dreary afternoon. They huddled around a table in the corner and nodded at her in sympathy, as unused to taking time off or having a drink as she was. Carey went to greet them, though she didn’t feel like engaging in conversation with anyone. It was too much effort.

  As she lifted her glass to her lips, her mobile began to vibrate in her coat pocket, startling her and causing her to slosh ale on her sleeve. She reached for a napkin and dabbed at it, her back to the crowd. Irritated, she took the phone from her pocket and saw there was a message from Daniel Richardson.

  Don’t talk to me here.

  Although she hadn’t seen him arrive, she could suddenly feel his presence somewhere behind her. She fought the impulse to turn around and scan the crowd. Instead, she fumbled with the keypad to send a reply.

  How did you get my number?

  I have my ways. Does anyone look suspicious?

  Right now, everyone does.

  He didn’t reply. Carey longed to abandon her glass, but it served as a means of avoiding conversation. It was odd, seeing Daniel’s name on her mobile. She knew that half the girls in London would have taken her place in a heartbeat just to have the chance to talk to him, but she was different. Anything relating to sex or the male species was nothing more than a distraction when one was studying medicine. Waiting for his response, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Miss Burke. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She knew the deep, elegant voice before she turned around. It belonged to Dr. Henry Landrake, one of her biology professors. He was unusually attractive for a university professor, so unlike the balding academes she vastly preferred. His forceful personality and reputation among the students caused her to avoid as much contact with him as possible.

  “Thank you,” she managed, just.

  “She was a lovely girl.”

  Carey had forgotten that Tamsyn once met her after Landrake’s class. He had demanded an introduction, which she had reluctantly given. Landrake was like that, prying into her personal life. She’d had the sickening feeling all term that he was trying to sleep with her.

  Carey gave a tight smile and lifted her glass, only to freeze when he put his warm, smooth fingers around her wrist.

  “Don’t forget, I’m always here for you should you ever need anything.”

  “School’s going well,” she said, avoiding his meaning.

  “I meant in a personal capacity as well.”

  “Thank you,” she said again, hardly daring to breathe until he removed his hand from her arm. Over the glass, she caught Fiona’s raised eyebrow. She hoped Fiona didn’t think something was going on between them. Surely the sheer number of hours they spent working together contradicted that possibility. As if sensing her discomfort, her friend moved toward her, and Landrake left to get a drink.

  “I was up half the night,” Fiona said. “Even though we’re between sessions, I’m desperate to work ahead for next year.”

  Carey was relieved that she hadn’t offered condolences or made some sort of vague, prying remark. It was tiresome, trying to respond to them. “I’m anxious to get started, too.”

  “That’s understandable. Maybe we can get together next week. I wouldn’t mind staying ahead of the boys.”

  Jared and Roddy were engaged in a spirited discussion behind them, possibly about boating. Roddy had been trying to get their whole group organized for a picnic and outing in the country, which everyone else in the group had resisted.

  “We need the occasional change of scene,” he’d said.

  “No, we don’t,” Gillian had replied.

  “Of course you don’t. Who would want to waste time relaxing?”

  Gillian had nodded. “We don’t need to develop lazy habits.”

  He’d been disappointed, but reliably good-natured the next time they’d
seen him. Carey caught his eye now and smiled. He was the odd man out sometimes, but well-meaning.

  She was lucky to have friends who would drop everything just to be there for her when the bottom dropped out.

  Her mobile began to vibrate again. She slid it out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

  There’s someone you need to talk to. Meet me on

  the Blue Bridge, St. James’s Park, 20 minutes.

  Carey glanced across the room at Nick. He was a good friend, talking to her parents and her aunt and uncle. She made her way through the crowd until she reached their table.

  “I’m feeling a bit tired. I’d like to go now.”

  Nick stood. “I’ll come with you.”

  “No,” she said. “I just need some air. Can you please see Mum and Dad back to the hotel?”

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “I’ll ring you later, then.”

  Carey kissed her mother’s cheek and touched her father’s arm before turning to leave.

  She didn’t even have to look in his direction to know that Daniel Richardson was watching her every move.

  Fifteen

  At St. James’s Park, Carey walked out onto the bridge, which spanned the length of the lake. Daniel Richardson was nowhere in sight. A band of tourists took photographs of Westminster Palace at the other end, their cameras glinting in the glare of the sun, which had suddenly appeared between the clouds. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, listening to the flap of wings overhead and the water slapping against the bank below. She took a deep breath and realized she was hungry. Usually when she imbibed the rare pint, it dulled her interest in food, but now she thought of rich pasta, pesto, and garlic, things she rarely craved. She studied the water, trying to put the thought out of her mind. Nearby, a flock of pelicans flapped their feathers in the sunshine as if to assert their dominion over the lake, St. James’s Park, perhaps even London. For one futile moment Carey wished it were just a normal day, not the day her sister was being buried. She felt guilty being alive.