The Boy I Love

by Marion Husband

  Chapter Twenty-six

  HETTY WATCHED FROM BEHIND the French windows as Patrick thrust the spade into the heavy clay of the flower bed, burying it deeply and with such force she wondered at the effortless way he lifted it out again. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, his muscles bulging with the effort of the work. The rose bush he was digging out trembled, scattering white petals at his feet. She thought of confetti and smiled to herself. Patrick stopped to wipe his brow with the back of his hand and caught her eye. He gazed at her coldly.

  Mick said, ‘Quite a specimen, isn’t he?’

  Startled, she turned round. Taking off his glasses Mick folded them in their case and looked out of the window at his brother. ‘Pat’s always turned heads. I’ve seen him walk down the High Street and half a dozen women have stopped to look at him go by.’ After a while he turned to her. ‘You know I’m afraid to tell him, don’t you.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell him soon.’

  They watched Patrick take off his shirt, unbuttoning it slowly as though he was aware of their eyes on him. The shirt was dropped to the lawn where it lay crumpled in the long grass. He stretched, arching his neck so that the curve of his throat was exposed to the sun. There were sweat patches on his vest; a crucifix nestled in his chest hair, too delicate a thing for such a broad, powerful man. Hetty turned away too quickly. Beside her Mick bowed his head, closing his eyes as though the sunlight hurt.

  ‘I think I should go,’ Hetty said. He nodded and she crouched beside his chair, covering his hand with hers. ‘You’ll tell him today, won’t you, before we go to Mam’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She kissed his cheek, imagining that Patrick had become the watcher.

  Patrick washed his hands at the kitchen sink, lathering the soap and scrubbing the mud from beneath his fingernails. Soil always made him feel unclean; he hated the creatures that crawled through it, the worms recoiling from the cold of the spade, the fat slugs contracting to hide their underbellies. He had come across a dead blackbird, maggots gleaming beneath its body. His nostrils flared in disgust as he remembered. Behind him Mick said, ‘You’ve caught the sun on your shoulders, you should rub on calamine lotion, stop it getting sore.’

  ‘I’m all right.’ He scooped up handfuls of water to wash the sweat from his face. Groping for the towel he asked, ‘Has Hetty gone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He threw the towel down. ‘What do you want to eat?’

  ‘I’m not hungry. Sit down, I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’ll do it. It takes you three times as long.’

  ‘You’ve left your shirt in the garden.’

  ‘It was hot out there.’

  Mick lit a cigarette. Looking down at it he said, ‘I’ve asked Hetty to marry me. She said yes.’

  ‘Really? Well, well, brave little woman! Good for her.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down, turning Mick’s box of matches over and over on the table in front of him. Sensing Mick’s anxiety he glanced at his brother. ‘It’s all right, Mick. I won’t hang around getting in the way. You can have the house, you and Hetty.’

  ‘It’s your house, too, we thought we could divide it, you could have the upstairs –’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mick.’

  ‘You could live above the shop.’

  Thinking how cold and lifeless those rooms were without Paul in them Patrick laughed bleakly.

  Mick said, ‘I love her, Patrick. If it wasn’t for her, well … I can’t believe she’s taken me on.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a handsome bastard, Mick, I’m sure that has something to do with it.’

  He looked down at the box of matches, thinking of Paul and the first time he’d taken him to the rooms above the shop. He remembered the effort he had to make to stop himself calling him sir and how gauche he had felt, huge and clumsy beside this slight, gorgeous man who talked and carried himself like an officer. Yesterday afternoon, as Paul stood in the shop for what Patrick knew would be the last time, he had almost looked like any young father who lived along the terraced streets, a beautiful, frail impersonation of one of those exhausted men. Only his voice had kept its officer’s authority.

  Patrick said, ‘Paul’s wife had the baby. A boy.’ He laughed emptily. ‘He was with her, I didn’t keep him from his duty.’ After a moment he said, ‘He’s going away. To university. He came to see me after I closed the shop yesterday. He told me then.’

  Paul had refused to go upstairs to their room. Standing in the shop he had said, ‘It’s not for a few months, the new term doesn’t start until October, but I’ve decided to give up teaching and move back with Dad. Margot will be more comfortable there.’ On a rush of breath he went on, ‘It’s best I go away, Patrick, best I’m on my own. I’m no good to anyone. You understand, don’t you? It’s for the best.’

  He had wanted to kneel at his feet and beg him not to go. He pictured himself doing just that and knew that Paul would be dismayed, and that they would end up in their room making love because retreating into the mindlessness of sex would be so much easier than such an embarrassing scene. But he knew they would lie together afterwards and the familiar emptiness would creep back and Paul would still leave, as he always did: too quickly and silently as if he felt words might encourage him.

  Mick said gently, ‘Patrick?’ He wheeled his chair closer to him and touched his arm. ‘Will you be my best man?’

  Patrick said, ‘I would have taken care of you, you know that, don’t you? No matter what.’

  * * *

  Hetty’s mother had set the table in the parlour. Sardine sandwiches, scones and a pink blancmange for afters were all laid out on the best lace cloth she had spent the morning starching. A vase of Sweet William stood next to Albert’s photograph on the mantelpiece, their scent spiking the parlour’s fusty, unused air. Beside the flowers the candle’s flame was a pale ghost in the sunlight.

  Wheeling himself into the little room, Mick said, ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, Annie.’

  ‘No trouble, Major. It’s just a bit of tea.’

  ‘You must call me Mick.’

  Her father laughed awkwardly. ‘Aye, mother, you’re not on parade now.’

  Giving him a withering look Annie said, ‘Hetty, you can help me in the kitchen.’

  As Hetty edged past Mick’s chair he squeezed her hand. She smiled at him nervously, wishing her mother had served the tea in the kitchen, as she would’ve for any other young man she brought home. Tea had been days in the planning, furniture had been moved to accommodate the wheelchair, her father ordered to be on his best behaviour, scrubbed, shaved and sober. Catching her father’s eye she realised he was as nervous as she was, and she smiled at him.

  In the kitchen Annie was brisk. ‘Set the tray with the best cups, see that you don’t use the chipped one, mind, the major won’t drink from a chipped cup.’

  Hetty sighed. ‘He wouldn’t mind, Mam. You don’t have to put on a show for him.’

  ‘Don’t I? Why not? You know – he might have been Albert’s commanding officer. What would we do if he came to tea, eh? You’d want everything right then.’

  ‘He wasn’t Albert’s commanding officer.’

  ‘No, but if he had been.’ She sat down suddenly, her face flushed. ‘I’m just saying if he had been.’

  Hetty squatted at her side. ‘It’s all right, Mam, don’t get upset …’

  ‘I got a letter from his captain, you know? Saying what a good lad Albert was. I used to imagine him coming here in person, handing over Albert’s few bits and bobs. Daft, really. He probably hardly knew who Albert was.’

  Hetty found her eyes straying to the photo of Albert her mother kept on the dresser. He had been her mother’s favourite, but she hadn’t minded – she had her father, after all. The plain, no-nonsense boy in the photograph gazed back at her and she looked away quickly, not wanting to believe any more than her mother did that he was dead.

  Straightening up she said, ‘Shall I
make the tea?’

  ‘I’ll do it. You can put a few of those biscuits out. We’ll show the major a nice spread.’

  Mick ate three sandwiches and two scones, her mother constantly pressing him to eat more. As she filled his teacup for the third time he cleared his throat, smiling at her. ‘Mr Roberts, Mrs Roberts.’ Reaching across the table he took Hetty’s hand. ‘I’ve asked Hetty to marry me and she said yes.’

  As though relieved it was finally out in the open Joe said quickly, ‘Well! Married, eh? I’m very happy for you both. We both are, aren’t we love?’

  Hetty looked at her mother. She swallowed hard, tasting the vinegary sardines again. ‘Mam?’

  Annie turned to Mick. ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She won’t be your skivvy, you know. You’ll have to treat her well.’

  ‘I know, I will.’

  Annie turned to her husband. ‘Get that bottle of sherry out, Joe. We’ll have a bit of a toast.’

  In his room Patrick spread Paul’s letters over the eiderdown and arranged them into date order. Starting with the earliest he read each one again. He knew them all by heart, the familiar descriptions of men and landscapes, endearments and questions and jokes he didn’t get. Paul had drawn in the margins, recognisable caricatures of Thompson and Cooper and Hawkins, but there was nothing of him, he didn’t even mention his name. They hardly knew each other then, of course.

  Patrick tossed the last letter down. It described a ruined church and each time he read it he stood again on its stone flagged-floor and looked up at the wooden sculpture of Christ still nailed to his cross. Paul wrote how the nail through his feet had fallen away, the agony preserved in the perfect round of the nail-hole. He had inserted his finger into the hole, felt the splintered wood, the soft pad of sawdust. The wood had smelt so bitter he could taste it.

  Patrick’s fingers went to his own crucifix and traced its raised outline through his shirt. He remembered how Paul had once rubbed its figure of Christ between his fingers, his expression as curious as a heathen’s; after a moment he’d smiled, eyebrows raised as though Patrick had told him he believed that fairies lived in the bottom of the garden.

  He tied the letters together, resisting the urge to keep one back to hide between the last pages of his mother’s bible. Those last, all at once colourful, pages depicted the map of the World of the Patriarchs, the Travels of the Apostles and Paul’s Missionary Journeys. As a child he would trace the red lines promising himself that one day he would follow the maps from Ur through Damascus to Beer-sheba, from Jerusalem to Antioch. Even as a child he knew he would welcome the heat of the sun on his face and the feel of dry sand beneath his feet and that he wouldn’t miss the mud and rain and cold of Europe a bit. After Mick’s wedding he would go to Palestine; he would find a dark-eyed, olive-skinned boy who loved him and wouldn’t feel ashamed.

  Taking the letters, Patrick left the house and walked towards the rows of terraces that ran from the High Street. In an alley he stopped, scanning the line of wooden gates that led into the backyards of the little houses. He guessed which gate he wanted from its peeling paint and pushed it open cautiously. At once he knew he’d guessed correctly. The yard he found himself in was obviously neglected: there was no woman in this house to scrub the back step or whitewash the walls. Beneath his feet the cobbles were slimy with moss and he remembered almost losing his footing on that night months earlier when he had followed A into this house.

  For a moment he waited just inside the gate, as ready to turn back as he had been since leaving home, but then the back door of the house opened. A stood in his shirtsleeves frowning at him fearfully. He was holding on to the door as though ready to close it quickly and slip the inside bolt, barricading himself against past indiscretions. Patrick noticed that the hairs on A’s forearms had raised as if he had seen a ghost. He stepped forward cautiously, aware that sometimes he could appear frightening.

  ‘Hello.’ Patrick smiled awkwardly. ‘Hello again.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ The man’s voice broke and he cleared his throat, glancing nervously over his shoulder into the dark interior of the kitchen. Turning to him he said, ‘Not here.’

  Patrick took another step forward, conscious of the slipperiness of the ground. ‘Do you have someone with you?’

  ‘No. It’s just –’

  ‘I won’t keep you.’ He thought how odd the expression was, as though he could hold him against his will. He remembered the skinniness of A’s body beneath his own, how he’d felt he would crush the life out of him, how he was frail compared to Paul, who only appeared breakable. A’s fright was genuine and so he said carefully, ‘I won’t stay. I just wanted to return these.’ He held out the letters and saw them now only as a poor excuse. He thought of Paul writing them and his heart felt like a stone suspended in mud.

  Adam took a step back and opened the door wider. ‘Come in. Quickly.’

  He made a pot of tea. He said, ‘I’m sorry I don’t have any sugar.’

  The kitchen smelt of dirty dishcloths; a pair of longjohns and a vest hung grey as corpses from a clothes-horse in front of a banked-down fire. School exercise books were stacked in piles on the floor, one of them open and straddling the arm of the only easy chair. Patrick sat at the kitchen table. He cleared a toast-crumbed plate to one side and set the letters down. He pushed them away a little, hoping they could be ignored. Adam glanced at them only to turn away to rummage in a cupboard. ‘I have biscuits,’ he said. ‘If you’d care for one.’ Sitting down opposite Patrick he placed a plate of shortbread between them and smiled too brightly. ‘I’m afraid they may be a bit soft. It’s the damp. The house is damp. The doctor says it doesn’t help my asthma.’ He hesitated. Glancing at the letters again he said, ‘Asthma kept me out of the war.’ He smiled bitterly as though remembering some humiliation. ‘Unfit for active service – almost any activity at all, in fact.’ For the first time he met Patrick’s gaze directly. Behind the thin lenses of his spectacles his eyes were hard and brightly defensive. Patrick held his gaze, knowing exactly what a recruiting sergeant would have made of this man; he thought of the scathing remarks he may or may not have spared him.

  Adam poured the tea and Patrick saw that his hands shook a little as he handed him his cup and laughed nervously. ‘You know, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Patrick.’

  ‘Adam.’ After a moment he said, ‘That what’s the A stands for. Adam. He – the person who wrote those letters – he couldn’t write my name, obviously. Well – it’s obviously if you’ve read them, I suppose. Have you read them?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be. Really, don’t be! I don’t even know why I kept them. He would have been amazed that I didn’t simply burn the lot.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I forgot about them, to be honest.’

  As if he knew how blatant his lie was he took off his glasses and polished the lenses on a corner of his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a collar and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows as though he was about to do heavy work. His fingers were ink-stained, the nails bitten to the quick. Patrick thought of Paul taking one of those childish-looking hands and pressing its palm to his mouth. He would have just arrived here, still stinking of the long journey home, the rattle of the train still in his head, fear as dogged as a shadow at his heels. He would toss his kit bag down and pull Adam into his arms and they would cling together wordlessly. Or at least Paul would be silent; there were so few words in him he could barely imagine his greeting.

  Adam might dare to speak. Adam would have a mouthful of words for Paul to suppress.

  Patrick picked up a biscuit and took a careful bite, expecting staleness. But the shortcake was sweet and buttery; he finished it in a couple of mouthfuls and washed it down with hot, strong tea. He felt comforted, as though he hadn’t realised how hungry he’d been.

  Sharply Adam said, ‘Why did you bring the letters back?’<
br />
  ‘They’re yours.’

  ‘But you wanted them.’

  ‘They were on my conscience.’

  Adam laughed shortly. Disconcerted, Patrick looked down at his teacup. He thought of the boy who wrote the letters, a sweeter, more optimistic Paul than the man he knew. He looked up at Adam, wanting to guess from his expression how much he still loved Paul, his need to know as irresistible as the urge to worry a rotten tooth.

  Adam suffered his gaze only for a moment. He stood up abruptly. ‘We’ll go upstairs. That’s what you came for. All I can say is I’m glad you had the excuse.’

  Patrick followed him up the stairs. He felt outsized, his feet too big for the narrow treads, the threadbare carpet disintegrating with each heavy step; the house seemed to shrink so that he felt he would have to bow his head as he walked through the bedroom door. He remembered how Adam’s bed had seemed small as a child’s and imagined it buckling beneath his weight. On the landing he stopped, his hand still grasping the stair rail; the walls were closing in on him. He saw Paul in the shell hole calmly closing Jenkins’s eyes; there was blood on his fingers where they had brushed against the wound in the side of the man’s head. He had wiped the blood on his tunic, casually, as though it were dust from a bookshelf. There was a fine spray of blood on his face. This had seemed ordinary, too.

  Patrick sat down on the top stair. He held his head in his hands and part of him was aware of how melodramatic he must look to the frail, wary man waiting in the bedroom doorway. He told himself that in a moment he would clamber to his feet and behave in a way that was as close to what was expected of him as he could manage. He would make love to A and it would be Paul’s body he was breaking into, fucking him with all his heart and strength that he might weaken him enough to be comforted. It was terrible how brave Paul was; by rights such brittle self-containment should have been easy to break.