by H. S. Cross
—Can’t we go to York Minster instead? the boy tried.
—It’s much too far.
—We could take the train.
—And how would we get back?
—You brought the motorcar right across the country, yet you can’t see a way to get to York tonight?
She plunged her needle into the pincushion, cranberries dangling from the thread:
—I’ve no idea what I’ve done to deserve this treatment!
Her eyes brimmed, her voice rose:
—Whatever it is, I’d rather you say it. I’m sure I can’t stand any more of your—
She broke off in tears.
John found himself curiously cool, as if he were merely watching a play, one in fact he’d already seen. He felt sure he could write the rest of the script, and indeed the boy was rising silently, taking the coal scuttle, and slipping meekly outside.
How long would it continue, the frankly predictable skirmishing? When both were in the room, the air fairly seethed, but when the boy went upstairs to lie down, a weight seemed to leave his mother, and John’s friend returned, the woman he could make laugh. When later he sat alone with the boy, the mother having gone upstairs for a bath, John wordlessly passed him a half-completed crossword. The boy attacked it with zeal, and they passed it between them, silently correcting each other’s errors and leaving tentative answers in the margins, until together they mastered it. Were things always this way between the mother and son, or was his presence making things worse? Was he truly a bystander, as he’d been his whole life long?
Sometime after ten, the church bells began to play. John unstuffed his shoes and found them dry enough. He was just taking off his slippers when the boy appeared wearing pajamas and dressing gown.
—Don’t, his mother began, don’t even—
—I told you I’m not going.
—Thomas Gray Riding, you most certainly—
—I don’t believe in it.
—I beg your pardon?
—I’m an atheist.
It was all John could do not to laugh. There had been a time, perhaps, when such a declaration might have moved him to ire, but now he found it distinctly ridiculous.
—Atheists are welcome, I’m sure, he said.
She inhaled sharply, and the boy turned on him with a murderous expression. John had meant to diffuse the moment, but now he saw he’d accomplished the opposite.
—Why don’t you, the boy said slowly, just shut up.
John blinked.
—Gray! his mother cried.
—And you! the boy continued in the same venomous tone. If you want to go on worshipping someone who’s dead, then please yourself, but I’m not doing it.
She gasped. John almost gasped, but before he could think:
—Apologize to your mother.
—It’s true and she knows it.
John got up:
—I said apologize to your mother.
He stood where he was, wondering what he’d do if the boy refused again, but then the boy was turning pink and, inexplicably, grinning.
—It isn’t funny.
A smile still, as if he couldn’t wipe it from his face.
—Well? John said icily.
Gaze cast to the floor. A graceless apology.
—Thank you, John said. Now you can go in there and wait for me.
He gestured to the small room off the parlor. The boy gaped.
—Go on.
But went, kicking the ottoman on the way. When the door closed, John turned to his mother:
—Go ahead without us. This could take a while.
—But—
—Trust me, this once, please.
* * *
He was still smiling even though he knew it was making things worse. When Mr. Grieves came into the room, he tried to compose himself, but Mr. Grieves, too, looked out of character, his face mild and inscrutable. Rather than bark at him, the man busied himself lighting the other lamps in the room, spreading the glow across the whole book-lined chamber.
He felt almost as he used to with Morgan despite the strangeness of the scene. A room that wasn’t a study, quite. Housemaster and boy that weren’t, quite. His costume the same as he sometimes wore to see Morgan, and Mr. Grieves in his Sunday suit, an outfit Gray knew but not in this way. It was all like a stage set ineptly provided. He threw himself into the armchair in vexation.
—I don’t remember telling you to sit down, Mr. Grieves said.
He stood:
—I don’t have anything to say to you!
The man turned to face him but said nothing further, leaving him in the middle of the carpet feeling distinctly uneasy, not in the usual way, yet in a way he knew, quite.
* * *
John had no plan what to say or do. He trained all his concentration on the lamps. Finally when no more remained to be lit, he sat down in the armchair with a slow deliberation. Each breath brought him further into the scene, the real one they were making together here, and with each breath he admitted another fraction of the truth: he did know what he was doing; it hadn’t always been beyond him.
—I have had quite enough, he began mildly, and if you think I’m going to stand by and watch this nonsense, then you’re mistaken, I’m afraid.
He let this sink in, for both of them. The boy’s frame tightened:
—You’re not my father!
Dear God, the gauntlet already?
—And yet, John said, here we are.
The boy gaped:
—It’s none of your business!
—And yet, here we are.
—You’re not even my Housemaster!
—Yet, here we are.
The calm repetition pushed the boy to his limit.
—I don’t have to stand here and listen to you!
—You can leave, of course.
The boy turned furiously and made for the door.
—But I think, somehow, you won’t.
Hand on latch:
—Won’t I?
—No, John said. Because you know you’ve been wrong. And you know you deserve it.
—Deserve what?
—What I’m going to give you.
He hadn’t planned any of it, yet here he was removing his jacket, unfastening a cuff link, and rolling up a sleeve. One did it only for effect, of course, a signal of intent and a first move in the assertion of authority. Now, having done it, he had no choice but to carry it through. Literally, of course, there was always a choice, but despite the boy’s petulance, or perhaps because of it, he could see the boy had already joined the pact. He had not left the scene. He was standing at the door, scanning the room—for the customary objects?
—Oh, John said, we can get along perfectly well without that.
The boy looked startled, and John’s hands felt unsteady, not in the way they’d been lately, but in the way they used to be before a trial began. He placed a chair in the middle of the rug and took from his foot a carpet slipper.
—Sir…!
—We’ll have to make do.
His voice sounded bizarrely cheery, and even as part of him was looking for a way out, another part plunged forward with instincts no less keen for having been forgotten.
—I’m too old for that! the boy cried.
—You aren’t too old.
He thought the boy might bolt, but he didn’t.
—And it isn’t too late.
It wasn’t like the time with Halton. They were nearly the same size, but with Halton he’d done it to bring him to his senses, done it with vigor, surprise, and a school plimsol that meant business. Now, although the boy was still protesting, John felt strangely relaxed. This would take as long as it took. He told him to hold still, and then he began.
—Your mother doesn’t know what to do with you, does she?
He built a certain rhythm that made the words sound natural.
—Does she?
—No, sir.
He continued, reading the breath,
the tension, the weight he gave over.
—And your father, what did he do with you?
—Nothing.
—When you’d done wrong?
A gasp, though certainly not from anything he was doing. He sensed the art of it, showing him he wouldn’t relent without pushing him over to defiance.
—Gray?
The name sounded as strange as in the night, but judging from the breath, some arrow had gone home.
—I’m waiting.
—He …
Don’t stop, not yet.
—He wouldn’t talk, that’s all.
—To anyone?
—To me.
—And when he died?
The boy erupted into coughing. John paused, and the coughing continued, not a performance, though certainly a reaction. John pulled him up and gave him a handkerchief as he fought, as if drowning, for breath. John fetched the wastepaper basket and stood beside him, holding his shoulder and trying to overcome the fear that was rushing in: no one was going to be hurt by a carpet slipper. He’d used it smartly but still, no one. This crisis of respiration had to have been conjured by the theater of it, though which part? The assertion of this particular style of authority? The domesticity of it, here in the little book-lined room? The closeness that forced them both into their roles, insisting that he wasn’t too old and that it wasn’t too late (though, God, for what?). Could it even be the mildness of the act when the boy expected something worse that had unlaced these strings so long knotted shut?
He coughed something into the wastepaper basket, and his breath began to come back under control.
—It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?
The boy winced, and John let the ambiguity stand. The boy’s shoulders had softened, and the impulse to petulance was gone, but he still held something, there in his chest, protected by his arms, which clutched one another.
—Right, John said. Get ready for bed.
—But—
A protest without conviction, issued for form’s sake.
—Clean your teeth, wash your face, come back to the kitchen.
This would take, John thought, a long time. More evenings. Many more, perhaps.
He heated water for steam inhalation and prepared the mixture the boy’s mother had been giving him. When the boy returned, John administered both.
—It would mean a lot to your mother, I think, if you went to church with her tomorrow.
The boy hacked loudly under the towel.
—I can’t.
—Won’t, you mean? Have a little charity.
The boy said nothing more, but when it came time for the mixture, he protested. It was vile and useless and he couldn’t be forced to take it.
—Don’t you think this is wearing a bit thin? John said.
The boy looked caught between cursing and laughing.
—You have my attention, so you can just calm down.
He handed him the mixture. The chin wavered, and he drank it.
—Right, John said, passing him a glass of water. It’s time you were asleep before Father Christmas passes us by.
He meant it as a joke in which the boy might play along, but to his dismay it summoned everything he’d labored to repel.
—I wish it weren’t Christmas! the boy exclaimed.
—You what?
—I hate Christmas.
Who was he to hate Christmas?
—You aren’t too old for presents, surely?
—I don’t want them!
—Whyever not?
Eyes threatening tears again, then retracting them, alchemy.
—I don’t deserve them.
He took him upstairs, watched as he got into bed. He was too exhausted to read to him, and suddenly too sad. He ought to make him say his prayers, but it seemed too pat and shallow a response. The sorrow that abided in this one answered the same that he carried. He’d been teased about his surname since he was old enough to know what it meant. The old Adam sat on them both. Neither singly nor together did they have the strength to cast it off.
He sat down again on the edge of the bed, and the boy lay with his face turned away. John turned down the lamp and waited for something to say, but his mind was filled with a scouring silence, a limitless nothing when he most needed aid.
The Bishop used to put his hand on John’s head, like this. He didn’t speak, but he held it this way, fingers on the crown. Sometimes his head seemed to tingle, even like this. Did the Bishop feel it, too, as his fingers were feeling it now, something potent and alien, fierce and good, flowing through him, through the same fingers that tipped the vial that almost stopped his heart, through the same hand that tried to kill this boy, or at least kill him off that day, through the same arm that wrapped around Meg as their lips told silent truth. His hand was touching the top of the boy’s head, and the thing that overshadowed was quickening him—real things never happened the way you expected. Cataclysms were all the same that way. You were living a life and then everything was different. The telegram fell, the rock rolled aside, and you were in a cottage as Christmas bells rang, and it was dark, and a star appeared.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Jennifer Gibbs, Jean Wagner, Wendy Weckwerth, Cameron Henderson-Begg; Jeremy M. Davies, Jonathan Galassi, Alice Tasman, Beth Parker; The Writers Room (NYC), Holy Cross Monastery (NY), and the Hawthornden Literary Retreat (Scotland).
ALSO BY H. S. CROSS
Wilberforce
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. S. Cross was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She was educated at Harvard and has taught at Friends Seminary in New York City, among other schools. Her debut novel, Wilberforce, was published in 2015. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Lent
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Easter
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Trinity
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Summer
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Michaelmas
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Christmas
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Acknowledgments
Also by H. S. Cross
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2019 by H. S. Cross
All rights reserved
First edition, 2019
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71346-1
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