The Harder They Fall

by Debbie McGowan

  “I can’t very well ask you if you’ll marry me, when you just said you won’t, can I?”

  “So be creative.”

  “I’m trying!” he snapped in exasperation.

  Shaunna’s neck was beginning to ache from holding it in such an unnatural position. It was futile anyway, because she couldn’t see a thing, as they were now on a section of motorway with no lighting. Andy pulled out and overtook the car in front. Come on, he urged silently. What is he waiting for?

  “Adele,” Dan began for what he hoped would be the very last time. “When we were in juniors, I asked you to come to my birthday party, and you said you didn’t want to be the only girl there. When we started high school, you refused to come and watch the football team, and gave me the same excuse. And again when I asked you to come visit me at uni.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “The thing is, Adele, after thirty years I still ask the question, hoping that one day you’ll give me the answer I want to hear. You always were and will always be the only girl. So please, will you just say yes?”

  The pause that followed wasn’t very long really; Andy knew this because he was counting down the signs to their turning, and even then he almost missed it.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “To getting engaged,” Adele clarified. “As for getting married? One day, maybe.”

  She held out her hand and Dan lifted the ring from its box, a ring that had been transferred from pocket to pocket, forever waiting for the singular word that would set it free. He slid it onto her finger and held it there. Andy and Shaunna breathed a united sigh of relief and bumped fists.

  At Jess’s request, Kris had phoned her mother when they stopped at the motorway services, to tell her that Jess had flu and also that she and Andy had broken up. Thus, her mother was at the door the second they arrived and came out to the car to greet her very sick daughter. Kris carried Jess’s bags inside, then Josh dropped him off too; Shaunna was just returning from taking Casper for a quick circuit of the block, having got back a good twenty minutes ago, thanks to Andy’s inability to stick to the speed limit. Casper went crazy when he saw Kris, and was obviously still feeling very proud of himself, strutting with his head held high. Josh waved wearily as he pulled away, glad to be almost home.

  Alas, the relief was short-lived, for it was only when he pushed the front door open against the pile of mail and the rubberised underlay folded back on itself, concertina-style, that he remembered the state in which he had left the house; in an instant all of the pain of the weeks preceding their holiday came rushing back. George stepped past him, picked up the post and straightened the underlay with his foot, watching patiently as Josh found the courage to once again face the demons he had yet to exorcise.

  “Come to me,” George beckoned. “Forget about the carpets and everything else. They’re just things. Come on. Come to me.” Josh took a deep breath and held it. “I’m going to make coffee,” George offered hopefully. Josh tried his best to smile. George moved away, towards the kitchen, listening out for the sound of the door closing.

  “How can a house make me feel like this?” He’d made it as far as the hallway and couldn’t bring himself to face the devastation all around him.

  “How does it make you feel?”

  “Out of control.” He edged closer.

  “In what way?”

  “Like everything’s wrong. It all needs to go. Look at the kettle, for instance.”

  George examined it and shrugged. “It’s a kettle. It serves a purpose.”

  “But it’s old and noisy and takes too long to boil.”

  “You bought it two months ago. I was with you, remember?”

  “I should’ve bought the other one, with the blue LED.”

  “And if you’d bought that one, we’d be having the same discussion about how you should have chosen this one instead. Wouldn’t we?”

  Josh sighed and turned away from the kettle, the urge to pull it from the wall socket and throw it across the room almost too hard to resist.

  “You know I’m right. This isn’t about kettles, or carpets, or wallpaper. You can keep on replacing them forever more and they’ll always be wrong.” George put his arms around him and kissed him gently on the forehead. “We’re both tired and it’s late, but if you want to do this now, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “No,” Josh withdrew and patted George’s arm. “I’m shattered. Let’s just make the coffee and go to bed.” George nodded and filled their mugs, following him to the top of the stairs, where they both stopped.

  “So,” Josh said cautiously, “do we just go back to our own rooms, or—”

  “If you’re asking me what I want to do, then you already know the answer. It’s up to you.”

  He didn’t know the answer. It would be so easy to bring an end to the incessant battle he had been fighting for the past week, so desperate to be close to George, yet always anticipating that moment when things would go too far, knowing he didn’t have the strength to see it through, nor to tell him that this was how he felt. The doors to their rooms felt like they were falling towards him, closing in, crushing him into submission.

  “Help me,” he urged. “Don’t let me hide. I need you to make the choice for me, because if you don’t I will push you away and I don’t want to push you away, but I can’t help it.”

  George reached forward and opened his door.

  “Then tonight we stay in here, where there are carpets and curtains and things you can’t change, because they are my things. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe we’ll try your bed instead.”

  The next morning, Josh was up and dressed, ready for a full day of work, with back-to-back appointments from nine onwards. George watched him going through the motions of his daily routine: coffee brewed; bread in the toaster; laptop next to the coffee machine, ready to check through his client list, emails arriving in the background. The toast popped up and Josh buttered it, dangling a piece from his mouth as he opened his diary on screen. George leaned forward and took the toast from him, bit off a corner and handed it back, examining the full page of appointments.

  “Last one at seven,” Josh said, scrolling down the list. “There’s nothing like ten hours of lamenting housewives to keep your mind occupied. What’s your day got in store?”

  “Not much. I’m meeting Sophie at the farm, if that’s OK with you.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “The whole Crash Team Racing thing?”

  “Ah. I see what you mean. I honestly don’t mind you spending time with Sophie, but…”

  “Just don’t play Crash Team Racing with her?”

  “Yes. It’s irrational, I know.”

  “It’s actually not that irrational, knowing what I know now, but anyway. Could I take on some of those appointments? Share the burden a little?”

  “You’ve done your time with me already.”

  “But your clients don’t know that, do they?”

  “That doesn’t make it acceptable. No. Thank you for offering, but I’ll be fine.” Josh gulped down his coffee, closed his laptop, picked it up and was halfway to the front door, when he backtracked and kissed George.

  “See you later,” he said and then he was gone, leaving George standing trancelike. He shook himself out of it, went for a shower and unpacked his suitcase.

  It was very strange to have so much to say and not be able to find the right words in the right order to even begin to explain what had occurred since he last met Sophie for lunch. Much of it was too private to share, and so he stayed quiet, encouraging her to tell him about her antics at the farm over the previous week or so, hoping she would understand his lack of communication was not due to unwillingness. He needn’t have worried on that score, and she regaled him with tales of her latest victory with a five year old girl with ornithophobia, supposedly, whom she’d been working with for several weeks and finally had a breakthrough with some newborn chicks,
getting her to hold them without her realising they were birds, soon moving on to ducklings, then ducks, chickens and finally geese—from a safe distance—all producing no reaction, until the geese took off in flight, at which point the girl started screaming. It turned out that she had partial hearing loss and it was the air vibration caused by the flapping wings that was upsetting her. She was now undergoing further hearing tests and looking forward to showing off her ‘ear-ring aids’ to Sophie.

  This and other stories took them through lunch and they made their way back to the farm, with George pondering over whether it was worth having a chat with the farmer himself. Perhaps it was something for another day, because at the moment the future felt very much beyond his control. Sophie gave him a hug and a knowing smile, and he turned to walk back down the lane to the main road. He got no further than about five yards from her before she shouted him back.

  “I forgot to ask. Is there anything you and Josh don’t like? Only I’m going shopping for tomorrow night on my way home.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Sean’s birthday? You’re coming round for dinner.”

  “I am?”

  “Well, Sean got a reply from Josh this morning to say you were.”

  “He didn’t mention it. Maybe it was after he’d gone to work.” He checked his phone for missed calls, of which there were none. “Oh well. No. We’ll both eat pretty much anything.”

  “Good stuff. About seven?”

  “Sounds good. See you.” George headed off and caught the bus ten minutes later, puzzling all the way home over why Josh hadn’t told him (or better still, asked him) and also why suddenly they were being invited to Sean’s as a couple, as it wouldn’t be enough for Sophie to have mentioned it. The dynamic between Josh and Sean was too complex for anyone else to make decisions as to where and when they should socialise together. The one thing he did know for sure was that he was going to have it out with Josh when he got home from work, because wasn’t that what he’d requested? And much as he’d rather not have to take the lead, it looked like he had no choice.

  Back at the house, he did his best to tidy up and undo the damage Josh had caused before they went away, but short of laying new carpets, there was little he could do to improve things. He turned on the vacuum cleaner and lightly ran the vented brush nozzle over the underlay, with the predictable outcome of sucking half of it into the hose on more than one occasion, and in so doing, discovered that underneath was a perfectly serviceable solid wood floor. It would be a bit drastic, but surely it had to be better than dusty, tattered underlay? He quickly folded it up and shoved it into a black bag, which he hid under the stairs, before resuming his vacuuming and giving the whole place a thorough going-over with a mop. Next, he rubbed the remaining scraps of lining paper off the lounge wall and temporarily re-hung the painting that had been there before. He was done and had dinner ready just as Josh’s key turned in the lock.

  “Hi…” He stopped in the doorway, taken aback by the expanse of beautiful, dark oak.

  “What do you think? I wasn’t sure if it would be OK, but I didn’t want you to come home and feel like you did last night, and when I was vacuuming I saw this underneath. Is that OK? Oh, and I put the painting back on the wall, just until you decide on some new…”

  “Yes!” Josh said, putting his hand over George’s mouth. He stopped talking and Josh released him.

  “If you want, I can go and get the wallpaper for you, but I might pick something you don’t like, so maybe it would be better to…”

  Josh silenced him with a kiss this time. It was no more than a peck on the lips, but it had the intended effect.

  “Please shut up, George. And thank you, for doing this, for me. I couldn’t even face making a start on it yet and it was really getting me down. So, how was Sophie? Did you have a good chin-wag?”

  The change of subject was obvious and deliberate. They were to talk of his destruction no more.

  “Yeah, it was nice, although she did all the chin-wagging and I did the listening. She also asked if there was anything we didn’t like. You know, for Sean’s dinner party tomorrow?” George was watching closely as he said this, trying to read the reaction as it was in the making, but there wasn’t even a flicker. Like a daisy at dusk, Josh had shut him out, concealing his fragility, the secret he could not stand to share, that had the potential to lay to waste the honesty and closeness they had begun to explore, and their relationship.

  “I assume we are going to Sean’s tomorrow?” George asked, instead of making any further attempts to address why he hadn’t been informed or consulted.

  “I suppose we have to really, seeing as he invited us especially. I wouldn’t want to let him down.”

  “Right. I’ll go and buy some drinks in the morning then, to take with us. What does he drink, apart from Guinness? Whisky, I seem to recall from that night in the SU last Christmas.”

  “Err, yeah,” Josh confirmed hesitantly. Sean’s confession of alcoholism was not his to pass on, but he had also pushed it from his mind almost as soon as it had been made. “What I’d rather do is buy some speciality coffee. Sean’s got one of those snazzy bean-to-cup machines, so he keeps telling me. That’s something we can all share, as I’m going to be driving, and I guess Sophie will be too.”

  “A great idea,” George agreed. This superficial start to their evening was filling him with a pernicious sense of dread. Even though to have Josh in his prior state of mind would have seemed far worse to outsiders, he knew where this was leading. Josh was forcing his hand, for sharing the poem had been the first bold step in breaking down the walls they had constructed around themselves. For now, though, just for this one last night, before he took a demolition ball to that final and mighty bastion, he was content to play along with the domestic bliss routine, pretending that all was well and that he was as happy to leave things the way they were as he was making out.

  And so they sat and ate the meal George had prepared, in the lounge he had tidied, no longer distracted by the underlay that had served as a reminder of what still had to be entirely undone before it could be rebuilt. Then they went to bed, where George draped his arm over Josh as he slept and later lay in silence on his own, listening to the sounds of insomnia echoing around the emptiness of his heart.

  The next morning, when the pretence of sleep was done, the shower took George’s tears to the sewer, but the aching still remained. He returned to his room alone, and waited. He heard the bedroom door, the sound of running water, footsteps back and forth. He crept stealthily from his room, pulse racing, hands clammy.

  “Hey.” He stood in the doorway to Josh’s room, watching as he pulled the duvet straight.

  “Hey. I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I know.” He advanced into the room. Josh turned briefly and smiled.

  “If you’re going out to buy coffee this morning, can you pick me up some shower gel? I think I left mine at the cabin.”

  “Sure.” George sat on the bed. Still Josh kept his back to him, making clear that the putting of distance between them was intentional.

  “I really must catch up with Ellie later,” he was saying, and much more beyond this, but George couldn’t hear the words. He kept watching and waiting. Slowly he stood up and stepped carefully, ensuring at all times that he was between Josh and the door.

  “I’ve got to go,” he protested.

  George pressed into him with his body and kissed him, open-mouthed, searching. “This is more important,” he breathed shakily, moving from his lips, to his chin and down to his neck, sensing the urgency, the desperation to flee.

  “I’m not ready for this,” Josh said, his eyes becoming wide as he searched for the right words to say to stop it from happening. George’s hands continued downwards, peeling open each button of Josh’s shirt.

  “Please.” His voice was almost childlike. “Please stop.”

  “Forgive me,” George pleaded, “but I can no longer wait for you to be rea
dy. You asked me to help you. Forgive me.” There were just two more buttons left fastened, and he was staring right into Josh’s face, his weeping wrenching him apart, until he almost couldn’t take it. Josh was frozen, in fear and horror, paralysed, and he felt like a murderer, or worse. His hands shook as he pushed the shirt back over Josh’s shoulders, slowing it as it descended, his own sobbing indistinguishable as he let it fall to the floor.

  “Please, George, please,” Josh cried out, but it was too late now. There was no going back.

  Slowly George retraced his path of kisses, the taste of their tears mingling bitterly in his mouth, down, down, he was drowning in his own wretchedness, his sobs almost screams, raking at his throat and stealing his breath. He caressed each shoulder blade, his lips now his only sense of touch to seek out and to heal; each seared round pit a bleak biographical moment, the chaotic criss-cross of years deprived of light and life, those final paths cutting deep into the darkness, searching in solitude, desperate for release.

  Josh collapsed, his soul so empty yet so heavy that his legs buckled under its weight, his bare back slamming into the wall with each new wave of hysteria that engulfed him.

  George fell to his knees and begged for mercy, unheard and unseen. “I didn’t want to do this to you. I knew it would be like this. Please forgive me.” He kept repeating over and again, his own loss long since buried in a place he had fought to forget, now reawakened and clawing, tearing, eating him alive. He pulled his hair, his head colliding with his knees, but still it wasn’t enough. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.” A voice echoing and dying away into the nothingness that surrounded him.

  “George?”

  Someone was speaking. Were they calling his name? They seemed so far away. Was he dreaming?

  “All right now, George, everything’s going to be just fine. Take your time.”

  Yes, it had to be a dream. Or a terrifying nightmare. Oh, why? Why couldn’t it be a nightmare? For now he recalled how he came to be lying on this cruel, cold floor. Terrible betrayal. Most horrendous violation. How could he have done such a thing?