A Cornish Summer

by Catherine Alliott

  At one time the barn had been Iris’s overflow block, but she no longer kept horses there as she’d done when Shona and I were young. They all were stabled at the house, so it was where Roger, and to a lesser extent Hugo, kept their classic cars. I say classic, and in the plural, but in Hugo’s case it was actually just one, and a modern one at that. A Ferrari, which, to his credit, he was embarrassed about and rarely used. It had been a present from Belinda on his thirtieth birthday, one which Peter, upon discovering its existence a few years ago, was obviously fascinated by. Hugo had even let him … Oh dear God.

  I was halfway to the barn when I stopped. Stared. Listened. Then I broke into a run. The open side of the Dutch barn was facing me. Both the floor and the loft were stacked solid with hay bales, ready for the winter, neatly piled and crammed in. But from the other side, where the loose boxes were, came an almighty commotion. A banging and a crashing. I raced along the track. Round the other side of the barn I darted. Tommy, red in the face and wracked with exertion, was wrestling with a lock on a stable, which I knew could be locked from the inside. He stood back and smashed it with what looked like an iron scaffolding bar. The heavy bar broke the wood but not the lock. There was a terrible smell. Noxious. Gas, and it was seeping from inside.

  ‘Nooo!’ I shrieked in horror, as I raced towards him.

  He turned. ‘Get an axe!’ he bellowed. ‘From the woodshed – quick!’

  I froze for a moment. Then tore back down to the stables. I remembered nothing later of the journey to and from the yard, except that I’ve never run so fast in my life. There were two axes lying on the top of the woodpile. I reached up and grabbed them both. Then, as I turned to go, I remember glimpsing the old Mule bike, which Hugo and I had roared around on as teenagers. It was kept in the corner, and it was covered with sausages and pans. I choked back a sob and fled. Back at the barn, I thrust the larger axe at Tommy, who’d almost broken in but not quite. The huge axe was the thing.

  ‘Hurry, Tommy – hurry!’ I pleaded, standing back, tears streaming down my face.

  ‘Stand clear!’ he shouted.

  He swung the axe back in a great arc behind his head, and then, with tremendous force, brought it crashing down on the lock and the wood around it. It shattered the entire area, so that with one yank, the door was open. Fumes came billowing out and I had to cover my face as nausea and panic overcame me.

  ‘Get back!’ Tommy yelled, advancing on the car, his forearm over his mouth. He bent and seized a tube on the exhaust pipe and pulled it off easily. I ignored him and followed, and saw the other end, feeding through a tiny gap in the front window. Hugo was in the driving seat, visible through the fog within, slumped back, acres of neck exposed, eyes shut, his mouth open.

  I shrieked again as Tommy wrestled with the car door, then I ran back for the smaller axe. I thrust it at him and he ran round to the other side of the car, to the passenger seat, where there was no risk of hitting Hugo. With a horrible smashing of glass and metal which spattered everywhere, he reached in, but still he couldn’t open the door. In desperation he smashed the front windscreen, blow after blow, glass going everywhere, over Hugo too, but it couldn’t be helped. Tommy climbed up on the bonnet, and reached in. It took two of us, though, to dig him out from that angle, and I was up on the bonnet, right beside him. It took all our collective strength to haul him clear as somehow, limp, lifeless and heavy, like an enormous rag doll and with shards of glass sticking to him, we dragged him head first down the pristine, shiny red bonnet, and then half carried, half dragged him outside.

  ‘Is he dead? Is he dead?’ I shrieked hysterically when we finally dropped him.

  Tommy didn’t answer. He flipped Hugo over so he lay face down, sprawled on the gravel. He held his shoulders, put his knee into the small of his back and pressed hard. Nothing happened. Neither of us spoke. I made myself not scream. He put his knee in again and pressed with more force so Hugo’s shoulders came right back. Suddenly, a thin stream of vomit flew out of his mouth. Tommy was pumping Hugo’s arms backwards and forwards now.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ he panted. His voice came in bursts. ‘The pipe wasn’t fully attached to the car. It had slipped. Half went in the garage. Ring for an ambulance.’

  My hands were trembling so violently I could barely press the numbers. I managed it, though, relief flooding my heart. Not dead. Not dead. Message conveyed to the ambulance services, I pocketed my phone and raced to help Tommy, who was moving Hugo off the gravel, and further from the vomit and fumes, on to the grass. The smell of gas and sick was revolting. More shattering, though, was Hugo’s face, as Tommy turned him over. Blood was trickling from dozens of cuts on his head where we hadn’t been able to shield him from the glass, and he was deathly white. Was he breathing?

  ‘See if you can stop the car,’ Tommy told me.

  I ran and did as I was told, wondering if he didn’t want me to see Hugo like this. It was a ridiculously hi-tech vehicle, but there was at least a key and, leaning in from the passenger side, I yanked it out. The ominous, expensive purr of the engine, which had been rumbling quietly away like a horror movie soundtrack, came to a sudden halt, which was a relief. Quiet descended. It was punctuated suddenly by a great rustle of trees, as a high wind whipped around. A flock of crows flew away in a great surge from the top of one of the tall chestnuts in the avenue. Tommy had Hugo propped like a child between his legs now, sitting up, head lolling forward, and making no sound. No heavy breathing, no vomit.

  I seized his wrist. Couldn’t feel a pulse. I looked at Tommy in horror.

  ‘It’s there,’ he assured me, his eyes on mine, steady and unwavering. ‘It’s just faint. Look at his chest.’

  I put both hands on his chest and did feel some slight movement.

  ‘Oh, please God, be quick,’ I breathed to the paramedics men of Truro. ‘Please God, hurry.’ As I said it, Tommy and I looked knowingly at each other, realizing it couldn’t be so. The hospital was miles away and the lanes were choked today.

  ‘Should we take him?’ I urged. ‘Shall I get a car?’

  ‘No, we’ll never get through without a siren, and he’ll need the oxygen in the ambulance. We’ll wait.’ He was wiping vomit from Hugo’s face and neck with his sleeve. ‘Trust me, Flora, he’s alive, he’s breathing, we just need him checked.’

  He was very limp, though, very full of poison. Suddenly I had a thought. ‘There’ll be one on the beach,’ I said, as it struck me. ‘For the regatta. D’you think they’ll even know they’ve got one close by? Should I ring and say?’

  Even as I said it, the wail of a siren could be heard in the background. We looked at each other with relief. Blood trickled freely from cuts on Tommy’s hands and face and I wanted to wipe them. Closer and closer it wailed, the siren, and up above, a noisy rumble, too, in the low, threatening, thickening clouds which had been a feature of the afternoon, but which now let fall huge plops of rain. They were intermittent to begin with, one landing on Hugo’s forehead, then on me, then Tommy. Then, with a sudden vengeful hiss, down it came. It poured on to the parched clay ground, the dry yellow grass, bouncing off the gravel, and before long was running in rivulets and paths. Another tremendous rattle of thunder erupted above as rain steamed down on our heads. If nothing else, it covered the nauseous smell of fumes and sick and I was glad of it.

  The sound of the ambulance got louder and came into view from the lane, having gone to the back drive. It came careering down through the avenue, yellow and green with flashing lights, towards us. I stood up, soaked, and went to the middle of the path to wave my arms above my head. In no time at all it had stopped. A man and a woman leaped out.

  ‘Gas,’ Tommy told them.

  They nodded, mutely, then ran to open the back door and pulled out the stretcher. They lifted Hugo on to it, then, crouching low, fixed him up to some oxygen. They were just manoeuvring him into the van when the girl turned and looked at us enquiringly.

  ‘Anyone?’

  ‘You go,�
�� said Tommy quickly. He knew I couldn’t have done otherwise. ‘Someone has to tell the others.’

  I looked at him gratefully, knowing he’d got the worse option.

  ‘Keep in touch, Flora. Let me know,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Of course.’ I realized then that he was more worried than he was letting on, but didn’t want to alarm me.

  I clambered in behind the stretcher. As I sat down, I turned. Before the doors closed, Tommy and I looked at one another: a long, searching look. His blue eyes were very bright, very steady. Nothing was said, but it was a look that reached back across the years, across the oceans between continents, across generations even. It was full of pain for a friend, but also, something I’d never seen before, and couldn’t quite place. It rocked me. Tenderness. That was it. Then the driver came around to slam the door, and in moments, we were away.

  Later, as I sat in a corridor outside a room in A&E, my head resting back on the wall, a polystyrene cup of coffee cooling in my hand, having watched a team of nurses race Hugo in on a trolley, a mask to his face, then more doors close, I thought about that look. It was a look I liked to think I’d seen on my husband’s face, years ago, when we first were married. Engaged, perhaps. But I knew in my heart it was different. Hugo’s face, when he looked at me with tenderness, which he did, was always tinged with remorse. With guilt, I suppose. I hadn’t recognized it for what it was back then, principally because I hadn’t known any other regard, from any other man. But I now understood how stark the difference had been. Hugo loved me, but he loved me not. Could not. In Tommy’s eyes there’d been a fire, a passion, that I realized I’d never seen before. I’d got to this great age, and never seen it before in my life.

  30

  An hour or so later, when Christina came flying down the corridor in her trainers, I got to my feet. She fell into my arms.

  ‘Oh God oh God oh God—’ she sobbed into my shoulder. I held her tight. She was trembling and she could barely speak.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I told her quickly. ‘He’s going to be absolutely fine, is already fine,’ I assured her. I took her shoulders and made her look at me: forced her white, pain-wracked face to believe me. ‘I swear to God, Christina, they came and told me ten minutes ago. Tommy got there just in time, there’ll be no long-term effects. Plus, Hugo bogged it to a certain extent. A lot of the fumes went in the garage.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ she whispered, clutching her mouth with both hands. ‘But why!’ she wailed suddenly, sinking down abruptly in a chair. She raked a hand through her hair in despair. ‘I mean – I know why, the business obviously, such a worry. Such a mess – he was so concerned, and Tommy’s just told me it’s got much worse. But why do that, out of the blue?’ She turned her incredulous face up to mine, full of horror at the magnitude of the act, the ramifications for her and her children. ‘Why?’ she repeated imploringly.

  I did know the answer. But equally, I didn’t think it was Ted’s fault. He wasn’t to know the entire scenario. Wasn’t to know the pressure on Hugo, from all quarters; that he might just have delivered the final blow. Luckily Christina meant it more rhetorically and her mind was already racing ahead.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ she pleaded. I wanted her to have been the first to see him, but I couldn’t lie about this.

  ‘Yes. I have. Briefly. But he’s asleep now.’

  ‘Oh, thank God. I mean – that he saw someone he loved first, and who loved him.’

  My eyes filled with tears at her generosity. But it occurred to me that Christina’s love for Hugo was like mine. Wholehearted, but different to physical, jealous, sexual love. What we shared was the love of two sisters for a most beloved brother.

  ‘Did he speak?’

  I sat down beside her and told her about how he’d kept saying sorry. Sorry-sorry-sorry. And how tears had poured down his cheeks. They’d poured down mine, too, and Christina’s now, as I told her. I told her how he’d said he was so ashamed, but how – in that split second, as he’d opened the door to the woodshed, about to get the Mule bike, trays of meat in his hands – suddenly he couldn’t see any other way. He’d been overwhelmed by panic. How he’d thrown the pans in the air in despair and raced up to the top barn, far away, where no one went, although, as Hugo had said as I sat there, holding his hand, looking at his yellow, almost jaundiced face, he hadn’t at that moment honestly been thinking of anyone else. Not Peter, not Christina, not Ibby and Theo. Just himself.

  ‘Not even your mother?’ I was running on pain and adrenalin, which is my only excuse, but the moment it left my mouth, I wished I hadn’t said it. More tears streamed down his face, so that I was really sorry. I stuttered to tell him so, to take it back, but he suddenly controlled himself and motioned for me to stop apologizing.

  ‘No. No, you’re right. And it had to be said. I need to face it. Face how much influence she’s had on my life, but mustn’t any more.’

  I paused and let him gather himself. Let him breathe. ‘But why, Hugo?’ I said gently, at length. ‘What sort of a hold did she have on you?’

  Although I knew this might not be the moment, even more compelling was the realization that it might be the only moment. I had a strange feeling this was the time to ask. He turned his face away to the wall. Became silent for a long while. It was at that point, as I told Christina in the corridor, as I’d sat with Hugo by his bed, that I told him I knew he was gay. I told him the truth, but I varnished it slightly. About Tommy suspecting since university days. It was up to Tommy, I thought, if one day he told him he’d walked in on him: somehow I didn’t think he would. I told him I knew he could never have loved me properly and had done his very best, and I told him I knew about him and Christina. About what they’d no doubt recognized in each other all those years ago, and why they’d married. Why he’d left me. So that he didn’t have to feel guilt and remorse any more, could be himself. As she could be herself. I saw Christina visibly relax as I did.

  ‘I always said you should know. You and Peter. My parents and my sisters know about me, have done for some time, about my happy but unusual marriage, and they’re pleased for me. Why not Hugo’s family?’

  I told Christina that Hugo had relaxed, too. That his face had come back from the wall, from the past, initially full of sorrow and shame, but how I’d silenced it in one look. In one squeeze of the hand. Hadn’t said, ‘I wish you’d told me.’ Hadn’t added to his pain, but had just asked him why he hadn’t ever been more open about it.

  ‘I was.’ He looked at me squarely. ‘Once. When I was young. About fourteen. I was at boarding school and I was very confused. All my friends were talking about girls but I didn’t feel it. I tried to kid myself I was a late developer, but I knew I was different. At home that summer, in the holidays, I was half-heartedly Blu-Tacking posters of models, the Spice Girls, like my friends had, to the wall by my bed, when I suddenly just broke down and sobbed. Mum came in. She’d been tidying the airing cupboard down the corridor and she heard. She was so sweet. She sat on the bed and hugged me and persuaded me to tell her what was wrong. She listened. When I’d finished, she sat back and, when I looked up, I saw her face was horrified. But she gathered herself. She said, very calmly, that it was natural for adolescent boys to be confused about their sexuality. But that was all it was. An adolescent phase. She said it was entirely possible to choose, to make a decision, one way or the other. And she knew that I knew where my duty lay, to choose the right way. Because if I was to choose the wrong way, that was just a weakness. A giving in, and the only way I’d be truly happy was to avoid that at all costs. She said that if I went the wrong way, if I was to be a homosexual, it would break her heart. She said it would break my father’s heart and it would break my grandparents’ hearts. The only boy in the family. And it would destroy the family. Not only that, but its reputation. She was very calm, very measured. And then she got up off the bed and left the room. She didn’t hug me, or take my hand, or anything. Twenty minutes later, I was downstairs having tea wi
th my parents and Etta on the terrace, and that was it.’

  Christina’s hand went to her mouth in shock as mine had done when Hugo told me.

  ‘So cruel,’ she whispered.

  ‘So cruel.’

  ‘And Hugo was such an obedient boy.’

  ‘Exactly. So biddable. And he told me that from that moment on she maintained that distance, withdrew all maternal love. She was cool towards him. Until he went out on dates, with girls. Then she was warm to him again.’ I remembered Hugo’s cracked voice:

  ‘And I missed that, Flora. Sounds wet, I know. But I loved her so much. I was young. She was my mum.’

  As I repeated this to Christina, she had to breathe to steady her anger, her emotion. Tears choked her throat. ‘He would have done anything to get her love and approval back, Flora.’

  ‘Quite. Not like Etta.’

  ‘I’ve only met Etta once, at our wedding.’

  ‘She’s more forthright. Bolshie. Hugo never said, he was too loyal to Belinda, but I suspect she wouldn’t play her mother’s game. Wouldn’t be controlled. She always wanted to get away, far away. I mentioned her just now, in there, asked him if Etta knew. He said he didn’t know, but that before she went to Australia, they’d had lunch together. When she left the restaurant she looked at him very hard and told him to be true to himself. Always. At whatever cost.’

  Christina nodded. ‘Hugo wants to visit her in Sydney. Soon. After all this time. But … why didn’t he tell me? About Belinda. I mean – I knew all about him being gay from a young age, we’d both talked about that, obviously, about realizing at school, the trauma that came with it – but why didn’t he tell me about his mother? That conversation?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he was ashamed of what he didn’t do. Didn’t defy her. Didn’t man up. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I think he didn’t want to cast her in a terrible light. To anyone. Didn’t want us thinking badly of her. It’s about that loyalty he has to her and that hold she has over him. That love that she offers … then withdraws. To the extent that his whole life has to be a lie – at least, when he’s with the Bellingdons.’