The Judas Tree, page 9
Just then, Will came into the living room carrying three plates like a silver-service waiter. ‘Supper,’ he announced with exaggerated brightness. ‘Burnt, bloody and somewhere between.’
Harmony pushed her mother’s death from her mind and stood. ‘That looks delicious,’ she said, as she approached the table.
‘This is very kind of you,’ Luke said, as he came to the table and placed his wine down. ‘And what a treat to have steak.’
Will wiped his hands on the tea towel, still slung over his shoulder, then pulled his chair out to sit. ‘I hope it tastes OK.’
Harmony could see how hard her husband was working to appear relaxed, how rehearsed his words were, as if he’d been in the kitchen practising until he could recite them without tripping up.
‘So how did you two meet?’ Harmony said, as she cut into her steak. It was just how she liked it, cooked through with the slightest blush of pink in the middle.
‘You know how.’ Will furrowed his brow. ‘At school.’
‘Yes, but I wondered how you actually became friends. You seem quite different. It would be interesting to know what drew you to each other, I suppose.’
‘We just met,’ Will said. ‘We shared a dormitory with thirty other boys. No special story.’
‘Harmony’s right though. There was a moment that we came together, that cemented our friendship. It’s quite a story, isn’t it?’ Luke finished his mouthful then sat back in his chair. He smiled broadly and reached for his wine.
Harmony saw Will swallow. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure we need to talk about any of this. It wasn’t the happiest of times for either of us.’
Luke laughed. ‘It certainly wasn’t. But what do they say? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?’
Harmony felt Will tense as he cut vigorously at his meat. ‘The steak’s a bit tough,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that. I should have let it rest a while longer.’
‘Mine’s perfect,’ said Luke.
Will raised his head. His face was stony, his eyes hooded, and Harmony was shocked to see how angry he looked. He put his knife and fork together then pushed his plate away. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
‘Will?’
‘It’s a charade, Harmony.’ Then he turned on Luke. ‘How can you just sit there without a care in the world? How can you act like you’re interested in my photographs? Laughing it all off like it doesn’t matter?’
Harmony looked between the two men, Will’s face reddening, his breathing heavy, hands clutching the table with white knuckles. Then Luke, impassive, his body relaxed, registering no surprise at Will’s outburst.
‘You want me to tell you the story he’s laughing about?’ Will said to her, his voice hard and unyielding.
‘No, I—’
‘You want me to recount the details in all their unpleasant glory?’ But then Will stopped speaking. He shook his head, and thrust his hands up to his face, jamming the heels of his palms against his eye sockets.
Luke leant forward, resting his elbows on the table. ‘We knew each other,’ he said, his voice quiet, his eyes bolted on to Harmony’s. ‘From the dormitory and from lessons. We’d spoken a bit, but we weren’t good friends, not until the day Will rescued me.’
‘Rescued you?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘I was tied to a fence,’ he said. ‘Naked, of course. This was boarding school, after all.’ He moved his glass an inch to the right, sliding it across the table with his index finger. ‘A group of boys grabbed me after supper, took every scrap of clothing off me then tied me to the fence in the garden of our boarding house and left me there.’ He spoke with no emotion, his face blank, intonation flat; he could just as easily have been discussing the weather forecast.
‘That’s appalling,’ breathed Harmony. She looked at Will, who shook his head slightly, eyes closed.
Luke ran a hand through his hair. ‘The best bit,’ Luke said with a smile, ‘was when the headmaster found me and told me to stop mucking around and get back up to the dormitory, “And when your housemaster asks why you’re late, tell him you’ve been playing silly buggers and need a caning.”’ Luke started to laugh. The noise was disconcerting against the uneasy silence in the room. ‘So there I was, naked as a newborn baby and tied to the fence, unable to move, with this crazy man shouting at me to get back to the dorm.’ Tears of laughter formed in the corners of his eyes.
Harmony shifted in her seat. She glanced at Will, his face set in an iron grimace as he pushed a piece of steak fat towards the edge of his plate with the tip of his knife.
‘Then Will comes along,’ Luke continued, his laughter fading, ‘and unties me. Then he asked my first name. I remember that so clearly.’ He looked at Will. ‘We called each other by our surnames, you see, so him wanting to know my Christian name felt special.’ Luke smiled and looked back at Harmony. ‘Will was my hero from that moment on. I’d have done anything for him.’
Will looked up at the ceiling and she noticed a hint of exasperation or perhaps impatience in his expression. ‘A hero?’ he said. ‘For Christ’s sake, I was just a boy who thought another boy stripped naked and tied to a fence could do with some help, that’s all. I didn’t do anything heroic. I just untied him.’
‘Will, I think—’
‘For crying out loud, Harmony! Please stop it will you? Just leave it alone.’
Chapter Eight
The steak sat like concrete in the pit of Will’s stomach. He remembered the panic that had coursed through him as he fought with the ropes, knots so tight he worried he’d never loosen them. All the time his heart pummelled his chest. All the time ready to run if the boys or the headmaster showed up. How could Luke talk about it with such casual disregard? Will flinched as he recalled Luke’s eggshell skin marked with bruises from where the older boys had manhandled him, his pathetic nakedness, the tear tracks that cut through the dirt on his pinched cheeks, and how, as Will battled with those hellish knots, Luke had gazed up at him as if he was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.
‘All I was going to say is I can’t believe those boys would do something like that,’ Harmony said with lilting sympathy that stung Will.
‘Alastair Farrow’s an accountant now.’ Luke spoke matter-of-factly.
‘Alastair Farrow?’ Harmony asked.
‘One of the boys who tied me to the fence.’
Will’s gut twisted as anxiety flooded him and a hatred he tried to keep at bay reared up from the depths of him.
‘I found him on Facebook,’ Luke went on. ‘Wife. Two children.’
Will closed his eyes and swallowed. Then he shook his head and stared at Luke. ‘Why are you here?’ he said. ‘What do you want? I don’t understand. Do I owe you an apology? Is that what you’ve come for?’
‘I don’t want that.’
‘Then what?’ Will shouted, banging his hand against the table. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Will, don’t,’ said Harmony, reaching out to rest her hand on his.
‘I should go.’ Luke stood and wiped his hands on his napkin.
‘Yes, I think you should.’ Will pushed back from the table and strode out of the room. He walked into the kitchen and out of the back door, into the garden, and breathed deeply. He kicked the ground and swore. He hated that he’d lost control. He couldn’t let this get to him. He sat on the edge of the terrace, elbows resting on his knees, his chin in his hands. Why had he confronted him like that? All he needed to do was be pleasant, cook steak, share a bottle of good wine, endure an hour or two of small talk, and then close the door on it all again. He shuddered at the memory of Luke tied to the fence, that look of adoration in his desperate eyes, the horror of what followed.
A few minutes later Harmony appeared beside him and sat down, her body pressed up against his. At first neither spoke. Then she put her hand on his leg and stroked him.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
He looked down and nodded slightly.
Harmony leant forward and picked a daisy from between the blades of unkempt grass and began to pull off each petal one by one. He imagined her chanting a childish rhyme: Will he talk? Won’t he? Will he talk? Won’t he …?
Will rubbed his face and concentrated on easing his racing pulse. When he’d collected himself he took a deep breath and blew sharply out as he tried to find the words he needed to explain what he was feeling. It was impossibly hard. It all took place so long ago. He’d buried it – or tried to – but right now it was all as clear and raw as if it happened yesterday.
‘The bullying was pretty bad,’ Will said. The sound of his voice surprised him, as if his words had become impatient and barged out of his subconscious without his consent.
Harmony took his hands in hers.
‘Luke was one of those boys who should have stayed quiet and kept his head below the parapet. But he had this temper on him. Christ—’ Will shook his head. ‘He went mental sometimes, you know, if people teased him. And they found it hilarious. So of course they teased him about everything – his dad being a vicar, his clothes, being small, his name, anything and everything – and each time he’d fly off the handle. It was a cruel and vicious cycle. The more he reacted, the more they went for him.’
Will was quiet for a moment or two, remembering the speed with which Luke’s anger would ignite. Sometimes the slightest jibe would set him off, screeching, stamping his feet, slamming his fists into walls.
‘I saw him smash a window once. A boy in the year above sniggered as we walked past, about nothing much as far as I could tell, and before I knew what was going on Luke grabbed this boy’s text book, tore it in half and threw it through the glass. Two prefects had to hold him down until he finally calmed.’ Will had watched, first in horror as Luke raged and kicked and screamed, then with relief as the anger left him like an exorcised spirit, his balled fists relaxing, his breathing slowing to normal, eyes refocusing.
‘I should have kept away from him. Being Luke’s friend was social suicide. But I was there, hiding in the bushes, watching them as they took his clothes and tied him to that fucking fence. All of them laughing and jeering, howling like a pack of dogs on a rabbit. When—’ Will paused to draw a steadying breath. ‘When they left, I was about to go to him, but the headmaster turned up. I was relieved, happy that he was going to get help. But the bastard didn’t help him. Instead, he started shouting. Told him to stop mucking about. To get himself back to the dorm. It was the unfairest thing I’d ever seen.’ Will recalled his horror when he saw the look of spite on Drysdale’s face, leering down at the pale, skinny boy, vulnerable and defenceless. ‘He was so scared he could barely breathe.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered.
Will scuffed the ground with the heel of his shoe. ‘Word got out it was me who helped him and then I became fair game.’
‘What you did was the right thing to do.’
Will didn’t reply. Yes, of course, she was right; at the time it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, but if he could go back in time he knew he wouldn’t do it again. He’d have left him tied to that fence so they never became friends, never pushed their bleeding palms together, never went to play by their favourite tree on that crisp October afternoon.
‘I’m glad you did what you did. It sounds like Luke needed a friend.’
‘Yes,’ he said at last. Then he sighed. ‘But, you know, he was great. I wasn’t just friends with him because he needed me. He was fun and we clicked. He was incredibly bright, which didn’t help, of course. Even the masters seemed to hate him for that, hated how he mucked around in class then got full marks in everything. It drove them mad. And he was funny. Really funny.’ Will gave an involuntary smile as he allowed himself to remember the laughs he and Luke had. ‘He was different to everyone else; there was something unpredictable about him. I envied him in many ways. He never felt as if he had to follow the crowd and he questioned everything. He was ballsy.’ Will looked at Harmony. ‘He did amazing impersonations of our masters. He used to have me in stitches.’
Will smiled again as he remembered the genius of Luke’s impressions. He’d have Will bent double and almost throwing up from laughing at his Drysdale and the Magnificent Exploding Cane sketch or his Professor Thomas the Chemical Car Crash, pretending to break test tubes and set the lab alight with a Bunsen burner as he bumbled blindly around. He even managed to turn his face puce like Mr Frood, their Glaswegian RE master, about to lose it because of forgotten homework.
‘You forgot your PREP?!!’ Luke would screech, mimicking Frood perfectly, his skin turning redder and puffing up like a toad. ‘If you FORGOT your PREP then we MUST all ASSUUUUME, including sweet Jesus HIMSELF, that you HAVE mushy PEAS for BRRRAINS. You. Are. An. IMBECEEEELE!!!’ And then Luke would fall to the floor writhing and twitching, chanting mushy peas, mushy peas, mushy peas over and over while Will creased up with laughter, tears streaming down his aching cheeks.
‘I was pretty good at taking shit, kept my cool, didn’t react, and by the end of the year they’d eased up on me.’ He glanced at her and kicked at the ground again. ‘Bullies try and get under your skin. I found that if I built walls it helped. It’s probably why I don’t talk about any of it. As far as I was concerned, if I let them get to me I let them win. I also made sure I wasn’t seen out and about with Luke too much. We’d hang out on our own in the woods behind the school instead. There was this den we made, hidden away in the trees. We went there. Sometimes in the refectory I sat with other boys to eat.’ Will felt a sudden swell of guilt as he heard those words out loud, recalling Luke’s downcast eyes, resigned and abandoned, while Will sat with other boys in his year, boys he didn’t like as much, but boys he could be seen with without risk. Luke took it on the chin. He never mentioned it, never asked to join them. It was as if he was just pleased to take whatever companionship Will was willing to give him, as if he deserved no more.
‘Will?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you ask if he wanted you to say sorry?’
Will’s stomach knotted.
‘Maybe talking about it will help,’ she said. ‘You can tell me. I’m your wife and I want you to trust me. You don’t need to keep secrets from me.’
‘I can trust you. I do. My …’ He paused, searching his head for the right word. ‘… reticence to talk about it has nothing to do with you.’ He took hold of her hand in an attempt to reassure her.
‘He doesn’t seem angry or upset with you,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any bad feelings towards you at all. He seems fine.’
Will put his arms around her and buried his face in the warm, sweet-smelling curve of her neck, breathing her in as if she were a drug. His skin prickled. He lifted his head and kissed her. He wanted to lie her back and, right there on the terrace in the dying warmth of the day, make love to her. He wanted to lose himself in her. His desire, their sex, erasing Luke – and everything that came with him – from his head.
They sat like that for a while until eventually she made a move to stand. ‘We should go in; it’ll be dark soon.’
Harmony cleared the unfinished supper away and scraped the food into the bin while Will scrambled some eggs, which they ate leaning against the kitchen worktop. In bed, she pushed herself into him, her back to his chest, his arms enfolding her so he felt she was part of him. He kissed her shoulder, gently lingering, parted his lips and brushed the tip of his tongue across her skin, the slightly salty taste arousing him, the desire he’d felt in the garden returned.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
He ran his hand along her arm and over her breast. Then he kissed her and she kissed him back. When she touched him, he moaned quietly. She stroked her hand upwards and over his stomach and chest, then ran her finger over his lips and his mouth. He closed his lips around her, running his tongue around her fingertip. They made love for the first time in a while. It was comforting and safe, each of them knowing their role to perfection, instinctively doing what the other liked, the familiar, satisfying sex of a twenty-year marriage. He adored her body, every curve, imperfection, scar and mole. The touch of her skin excited him, and the smell of her, the real smell of her beneath the creams and lotions.
Afterwards they lay beside each other, fingers lightly laced.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’
His stomach churned as nerves gathered. He hesitated, the words knotting in his throat. ‘It’s to do with this baby thing.’
‘This baby thing?’ she repeated, with a small laugh.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her in the light coming in from the hallway. ‘Nothing’s changed, Harmony. I wish I felt differently, but I don’t. I … I still don’t want a child.’
Her face fell. ‘But why? You’ve never explained why.’
The words of the poem he’d memorised at fifteen echoed in his head, as poignant now as they’d been when he first read them. It was the first time a poem had touched him, the words chiming as if the writer inhabited Will’s own headspace, the headspace of a boy with no relationship with his father, who had been taken from his mother, his childhood blighted at home and at school. He’d stumbled on the poem while searching for something by Wilfred Owen for a First World War history essay. It was by a man he hadn’t heard of before. Philip Larkin. Standing alone in the library that smelt of old books and wood polish, he read the words over and over, angrily swiping at the tears they provoked. The words were stark, sweary, and spoke to him directly, chiming in a way none of the poets he was usually forced to read ever had.
It was there in black and white.
The truest thing he’d read.
Don’t have children, Larkin warned him. Don’t ever have children.
Will reached over and stroked his hand down her cheek, tucking a tress of her hair behind her ear. ‘There’s something I’ve kept from you. I should have told you months ago.’ He hesitated.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know how—’
