“You frightened me.” He sucked in a breath.
Mrs. Wylit said nothing, but raised her corpse-white hand and pointed to the window that overlooked the harbor.
James went to it and pushed the curtains aside. This time he could not contain the strangled noise of surprise that ejected from his throat.
The harbor was deserted, the boats having been moored for the night . The water lapped serenely against the stones and the pebble beach, illuminated by the swollen moon. The village was peppered here and there with warm, welcoming lights for travelers in the dark, but there was no sound or movement save the lapping of the waves and the far-off clanging of a ship’s bell.
There, on the cobblestone walk, with his back to the water, and facing James' window, was the man in the old brown coat. He was backlit by the moon and James could not make out his features. He sucked in another breath to yell for Arthur and Lance, but stopped. The man lifted up one hand and waved to him. After a long moment, he waved again.
“Good God he waved at me.” James clutched the window sill for support.
“I think he’s ready for a chat,” Mrs. Wylit suggested as she wiggled herself out of bed, joining James at the window with a cigarette waiting to be lit in her hand.
“What if he — what if—”
“I’ll watch from the window,” she promised through a breath of smoke. “Go on, then.”
James stuttered out a few more incoherent syllables.
“Shh!” She put her finger to her lips. “Do you want to wake the whole building?”
James looked down at the figure once more, and then snagged Mrs. Wylit’s liquor bottle from its place sticking half-out of her purse. He gave himself a good dose of liquid courage, put on his trousers and stretched his suspenders over his striped pajama shirt.
In a blink, he was out on the front stoop of the inn, and then closed the space to stand a few feet away from the man in the brown coat. As he neared, features made themselves more apparent — a slender man, in his middle age, with graying auburn hair and shiny round spectacles. His eyes were green, his eyes were—
Just like mine?!
He swallowed back down the nasty taste of bile, and Mrs. Wylit’s liquor. “Who are you? W-what do you want?”
The man trembled a moment, his mouth gaping, fish-like. Tears came to his eyes and he wiggled out a handkerchief from one of the coat’s old pockets. He raised his glasses to wipe his eyes. “James. You’re James Wilde?”
“Yes,” James shot back. “And who are you? And why have you been following us?”
“You don’t recognize me,” he said, a melancholy cast to his voice. “Not at all?”
“No,” said James. Then, he squinted a moment. Something about — “I’ve... I’ve seen that coat before,” he admitted. “A long time ago.”
The man sniffed and let out a little relieved chuckle through his tears. “It’s the last thing you saw me wearing — when I — when I abandoned...”
“Oh God,” James prayed, to the deity he was not certain existed.
The man took a shuddering breath. “I’m John Wilde, James. You’re my son.”
Chapter 26
As dawn stained the horizon, James sat with his father, a man he hadn’t seen since he was a little child, and they watched the sunrise over the Isle of Skye.
It took several minutes for John Wilde to convince James he was who he said he was, but after a time, it set in with a strange, otherworldly numbness. They sat down on the edge of the harbor, and his father asked him all kinds of questions. How had he done in school? Where was he working? What had happened to him during the war? How was his mother? James' mouth was dry from the responses, as well as the shock of it all.
“So, do you think you’ll apprentice under this tailor, or stay in the bookkeeping business?” His father unbuttoned the old coat at last and took it off. It revealed a checkered shirt and a tweed jacket that had seen better days.
“I’m not sure.” James fixated on his father’s (how odd it was to think those words) worn shoes as they dangled over the water. “What I really want to do is write.” He paused, and then straightened his back in the growing light of day to look his father in the face. “Why on earth am I letting you ask all of these questions? Don’t you think I’ve got some bloody questions for you?”
James' father looked at his hands, then out over the water. “I suppose you do.”
“Where have you been? Let’s start with that.”
John shifted so he could sit facing his son, one leg still dangling over the bank. “I live in Leeds, and I teach literature at the university. During the war I was an intelligence analyst for the RAF and got my education after.” He swallowed audibly and broke their gaze a moment to look at the water. “I never remarried, and I never had any other children.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?” James had not been aware until that moment of the cesspool of rage that bubbled within him. It sat beneath the shock of sitting here, hours away from finding Matthew Barlow, talking to his father, who had been nothing but a shadow in his mind for the last decade. “You left us. You said it yourself. Abandoned.”
“I have no intention of defending myself.” John’s mouth curled into a pitiful little frown, and for a moment James had the eerie feeling of looking in a mirror through time. “What I did was unforgivable. But that’s part of the reason why I’m here — to explain to you what happened all those years ago.”
“Why now?” James flung a pebble into the harbor. The town slowly awoke around them; gulls came in from the ocean, and humans opened up doors as they called to neighbors and cooked breakfast. The smell of bacon over the wind made James' stomach yowl. “Why now after all these years?”
“I’m not sure if you’ll believe me if I tell you.” John shook his head with a sigh, and then caught James' green gaze in his own. “But I’m going to try.” He pressed his lips together for a moment, then went on. “A few months ago, I was down in London for an educator’s conference. I happened to be walking near Mr. Conner’s tailor shop, and it was the strangest thing. I saw myself, a young me, come out of the shop. I couldn’t believe it, but there I was, as if I was looking through a window back in time. And then I realized it — I wasn’t looking at myself, I was looking at my son.”
He sniffled again and put the handkerchief to his lips.
“And?” James prompted, his impatience not dampened by John’s struggle.
“And so I followed you down to the corner, and there you met this bear of a man. The two of you walked together a few blocks to a brick row house, and went inside. I could see, as night fell, through the sliver of the curtains, the two of you... living. Together. Talking and laughing. And I knew right then and there.”
Panic put James' heart in a vice. “What?” he barked.
“I knew you and your... flatmate, if you want to call him that, were... in love.”
“What?” James resisted the strong urge to get on his feet and run. “How dare you, we aren’t—”
“James, please. Please, stop. I know.” His father put tentative hand on James' shoulder. James flinched away. “And when I realized, I knew I had to see you again to explain. To talk to you about all of this, because I know you’ll... you might have some inkling...”
A sudden flashbulb exploded in James' head. “You’re the one who called Mother!” he shouted. A man feeding the gulls on a nearby boat turned his head sharply in their direction. “You were calling her and hanging up, weren’t you?”
His father went scarlet, but no utterance of denial slipped from between his lips. “I tried so many times,” he whispered, “but every time I heard her voice, I froze. I wanted to apologize to her, and to ask her how to get in touch with you. Proper channels and all. But.” He swallowed hard again, and his jaw quivered. “I’m a coward, I suppose. I hurt her as much as I hurt you, if not more so, and I’m still ashamed of what happened between us. My voice just froze.”
“And so,” James said, wat
ching the blossom-colors seep away from the clouds as the golden sun rays fully encroached on them, “you decided to come and talk to me yourself. Except you’ve been too afraid to do that, and lurked about like some kind of creeper instead of getting up the courage to approach me.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head, son.”
The word reverberated through James like a gunshot. “N-no,” he stammered, “no, you don’t get to call me that. I was still in nappies when you ran out on us.”
“I know.” His father turned away and dropped his leg. Together, they watched the fishing boats leave the harbor and head for fruitful waters. “After I tell you why I left, I’ll leave. I understand if you never want to see me again. All I want to do is tell you my story, and ask you one question. Then I’ll go. Forever.”
“Why should I listen to your reasons?” James pelted the water with another pebble.
“Because I don’t want you to make the same mistake,” John replied. “I doubt you will, but just in case it all becomes... too much. And you decide hiding is easier.”
Something in James' heart ruffled and awoke, a bird rustling the nest. “Hiding?”
“Yes, James.” John sniffed, used his worn handkerchief again, and then tucked it out of sight. “You see, I — I suppose the plainest terms are best. No reason for euphemism. I tell my students their writing ought not to be so flowery and get straight to the point.” He pinched a smile, perhaps at the irony of taking his own advice. “I’m a homosexual,” he said.
James had often read stories where it was said that characters’ mouths dropped and hung suspended in the air. He’d always found that description tiresome, but now, it actually happened to him.
“I’ve known this about myself since I was a lad.” His father dropped his voice as an old man with a cane hobbled past behind them on his morning walk around the harbor. “I had a friend growing up, and so was he. We were best mates. And we were more.” He choked on the last word. “Our families found out, and it was a nightmare. We were forbidden from seeing one another, and I was told that I must change or be thrown out of the house.” He rubbed his chin and withdrew his handkerchief again, only to ball it up in frustration. “And so I did. I thought I could change. I started chasing after girls, pretending as though I liked them the way I’d loved... him. I pretended for so long I thought I was cured. Cured enough to—”
“Marry my mother.” James' voice was just above a whisper as tears slipped between his eyelashes.
“And have you.” John put out his hand as if to touch James' shoulder, but drew it away before making contact. “She was naive and I was in denial. For a year or so, I honestly thought it would work. But in the end I couldn’t.” He coughed. “So I did the most dishonorable, abhorrent, and cowardly thing a man could possibly do in that situation. I left you and your mother without an explanation. Once I fully understood what I’d done, how unfair I’d been, it had been too long.” He put his hand to his eyes for a moment, and then let it fall. “If I hadn’t seen you that day on the street with Arthur I might have never had the strength to find you. But once I realized you were...” He let the silence say gay. “I thought perhaps you could, someday, maybe years from now, find a way to forgive me.”
James said nothing.
“When I made up my mind to approach you; when I finally found my courage, you and Arthur decided to take the strangest holiday,” John said through a forced but hopeful smile. “I had to follow you and your companions all over this sceptered isle. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that drunk woman your landlady?”
“She is,” James said through a sigh that preempted what was likely to be a very long explanation. He took a minute to condense it in his brain.
“And Arthur. When did you meet him?”
“When the Jerrys started the bombing campaign, Mother thought it best if I left London.” James started to retell re-vaporize the story.
“You were part of Pied Piper?” John Wilde interrupted.
James nodded. “Arthur was in my class, and together we went to a country manor with the rest of the children and our teacher, and a lady from the government. Things were awful at first. It’s always been very hard for me to hide. People seem to know.”
“Children can be so cruel.” John’s hand twitched again, as if he wanted to touch James in comfort, but he resisted the urge.
“Exactly,” James said with a tone that denied any need for this man — his father — to empathize with him. “And they were cruel to Arthur, too, because he was enormous and tall then, as well. And he used to have a stutter. But Mr. Marlin, the head-of-household was a very kind man with an incredible heart. He and the lady of the house supported and encouraged Arthur and me. The Baroness’s son was like us, and committed suicide when he was fifteen. Recently, Mr. Marlin, passed away. The blond lad with us is his grandson. Mr. Marlin’s dying wish was that we find the Baroness’s son, because we suspect he faked his death all those years ago.”
During this explanation, John gave several involuntary jerks and blinked his eyes furiously. “What did you say the bloke’s name was? Marlin?”
“Yes,” James said, “why?”
“It sounds, eh, familiar, I suppose.” His father shook his head as if to rattle out a pebble from between his ears. “Maybe someone I knew many years ago. I can’t remember. You say the son only pretended to off himself?”
“Yes, and Mr. Marlin, by all indications, helped him. And I think he wanted us to go and help in some way. So we had to follow the clues. Mr. Marlin didn’t leave us with much, but eventually, we found this.” James reached into his pocket and withdrew the rumpled deed to the cottage. “This morning, well, in a few hours, a boy is going to show us how to reach this cottage. And then we’ll see if anyone’s home.”
“An admirable quest.” John’s eyes were far away over the water. “I’m proud of you for coming so far to do right by your old friend.”
James didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, and put the deed away in his pocket again, and adjusted his suspenders. It dawned on him that he was still wearing his pajama shirt and it was nearly broad daylight.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you with my,” he paused, “creeping.” John picked at his uneven fingernails. “I know you saw me on several occasions. Almost caught me a few times.”
“Why did you run?”
“Nervous, I suppose. I wasn’t as ready to talk to you as I thought.”
“You have a lot of apologies to make.” James stood and stretched his back. “Well, come on, then. It’s time you met the others. And I need to get changed.” His stomach howled with sudden ferocity.
“Hungry?”
James nodded. “We’re a little short on funds at the moment.”
“Let me take you all to breakfast.” John eagerly pulled his wallet from his pants as if to show James he was good for it. “The inn has a restaurant, I’m sure?”
James shrugged, but did not respond, and instead went back into the hotel. Mrs. Wylit, having watched them from the window, had anticipated their arrival at the room, and opened the door before James could knock. She was dressed for the day and in mid-swig from the liquor bottle. “My morning medicine,” she explained, and then stood aside so they could enter. The door to the loo was shut, and Lance sat on his bed in the midst of tying his shoes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wylit apologized as John gaped at her. “Be my guest.” She offered him the bottle.
“No, thank you,” John mumbled as he shifted from one foot to the other.
“James, where have you been?” Lance leapt up, and then froze as his eyes travelled from one face to the other. “Who — but you look—”
“Lance, this is my father, John Wilde.” James crossed his arms and only gestured to his father with a jerk of his thumb. “Otherwise known as the creep in the brown coat.”
John gave an awkward smile and hefted the coat that he held folded over one arm.
“Blimey.” Lance blinked as if his eyes weren’
t functioning properly. “I thought the two of you were, ah, estranged, is that the word?”
“We were,” John admitted.
“We are,” James said at the same time.
John’s face crumpled in hurt, but James pretended not to notice. “He saw me on the street a few weeks back and recognized me, and now he wants to make amends.” James went to his suitcase to retrieve a mostly-clean shirt.
“So you followed us the whole way?” Lance stared, wide-eyed, at them, first one, then the other.
“It wasn’t easy. That night you slept in a church, I slept under a hedge across the way.”
James gave an unsympathetic little grunt. At that moment, Arthur came out of the washroom, showered, shaved, and dressed, with his pajamas balled up in one hand. He took one look at John and strode up to him on his tree-trunk legs, and extended a gigantic hand. “Mr. Wilde,” he growled. “Interesting coat,” he added.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Arthur.” John gave him his hand, and winced as Arthur squeezed it with what was likely intentional power before he stepped over to stand close to James.
James slipped his hand into Arthur’s and pressed against his side. Arthur shot down a questioning frown in his direction. “He knows,” James explained with a dismissive wave of his hand toward John. “He’s... also. Apparently.” His lip gave a malicious curl.
Arthur’s emerald eyes widened in sudden understanding beneath the halo of his black curls. “That’s why.”
“It doesn’t excuse what happened.” James pulled his hand free of Arthur’s grasp.
“I never said it did,” John murmured softly, eyes on his shoes.
James sank onto the bed to put his head in his hands. Mrs. Wylit went to him to pat his back and offer him the bottle. He refused. “This is too much,” he mumbled into his palms.
Mrs. Wylit gave a cheerless, wry little chuckle. “Oh, the Lord never gives us more than we can handle.”
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