I SHOULD HAVE known. That’s what I think, as I sit by Freya’s crib, trying to lull her into sleep, with a pain in my throat from unshed tears.
I should have known.
Because it was all there in front of me, for me to see. The scars on Luc’s back as he swam in the Reach, the marks on his shoulder that I assumed were botched inoculation scars, but when I asked him about them, his face only twisted and he shook his head.
I am older now, less innocent. I understand those small circular burns for what they really were, and I feel sick at my own blindness.
It explains so much that I never understood – Luc’s silence, and his dog-like adoration of Ambrose. His unwillingness to talk about France, however much we pestered him, and the way Kate would squeeze his hand, and change the subject for him.
It even explained something that I had never understood – the way he would let the village boys tease and mock and swagger at him, and he would just take it and take it and take it … and then crack. I remember one evening in the pub, when the village kids had been ribbing him, gently but relentlessly about hanging out with ‘snooty’ Salten House girls. Luc’s position, not quite town, not quite gown, had always been a tough one. Kate was firmly Salten House, and Ambrose somehow effortlessly straddled the two worlds. But Luc had to negotiate an uneasy class divide between the state school in Hampton’s Lee that he attended with the majority of the village kids, and his family connection to the private school on the hill.
And yet, he managed. He put up with the teasing, the ‘our girls not good enough for you, mate?’ remarks, and the veiled comments about posh girls liking a ‘bit of rough’. That night, in the pub, he had just smiled and shaken his head. But then, right at the end of the night, as last orders were being rung, one of the village boys bent down and whispered something in Luc’s ear in passing.
I don’t know what he said. I only saw Kate’s face change. But Luc stood, so fast his chair hit the floor behind him, and he punched the kid, hard and straight on the nose, as if something inside him had snapped. The boy fell to the ground, gasping and groaning. And Luc stood over him as he bled, and watched him cry, his face as expressionless as if nothing had happened at all.
Someone from the pub must have called Ambrose. He was sitting in the rocking chair, waiting for us when we got in, his normally good-humoured face without a trace of a smile. He stood up when we entered.
‘Dad,’ Kate said, breaking in before Luc could speak, ‘it wasn’t Luc’s –’
But Ambrose was shaking his head before she’d even finished.
‘Kate, this is between me and Luc. Luc, can I speak to you in your room, please?’
They closed the door to Luc’s room, so we couldn’t hear the ensuing argument, only the rise and fall of the voices, Ambrose’s full of disappointment and reproach, Luc’s pleading, and then at last angry. The rest of us huddled below in the living room, in front of a fire that we barely needed, for the night was warm, but Kate was shivering as the voices above us grew louder.
‘You don’t understand!’ I heard from above. It was Luc’s voice, cracked with furious disbelief. I could not hear the words of Ambrose’s reply, only his tone, even and patient, and then the crash as Luc threw something at the wall.
When Ambrose came down, he was alone, his wiry hair standing up on end as if he’d raked it through and through. His face was weary, and he reached for the unlabelled wine bottle under the sink and poured himself a tumblerful, downing it with a sigh.
Kate stood as Ambrose sank into the armchair opposite, but Ambrose shook his head, knowing where she was heading.
‘I wouldn’t. He’s very upset.’
‘I’m going up,’ Kate said defiantly. She stood, but as she passed Ambrose’s chair he put out his free hand, catching her wrist, and she stopped, looking down at him, her expression mutinous. ‘Well? What?’
I waited, my heart in my throat, for Ambrose to explode as my father would have done. I could hear him now, raging at Will for answering him back, I’d have been thrashed for cheeking my father like that, you little shit, and When I give you an order, you listen, got it?
But Ambrose … Ambrose didn’t shout. He didn’t even speak. He held Kate’s wrist, but so gently, his fingers barely circling it, that I could see that was not what was keeping her there.
Kate looked down at her father, searching his face. Neither of them moved, but her expression changed, as if reading something in his eyes that none of the rest of us could understand, and then she sighed, and let her hand drop.
‘OK,’ she said. And I knew that whatever Ambrose had wanted to say, Kate had understood, without needing to be told.
There was another crash from above, breaking the silence, and we all jumped.
‘He’s trashing his room,’ Kate said under her breath, but she made no further move towards the stairs, she only sank back down to the sofa. ‘Oh, Dad, I can’t bear it.’
‘Aren’t you – can’t you stop him?’ Fatima asked Ambrose, her eyes wide with disbelief. Ambrose winced as the sound of broken glass came from above, and then shook his head.
‘I would if I could, but there’s some kinds of pain that only stop hurting when you lash out. Maybe this is what he needs to do. I just wish …’ He rubbed his face, and suddenly he looked every day his age. ‘I just wish he wasn’t breaking up his own stuff. God knows, he’s not got much. He’s hurting himself more than me. What happened in that pub?’
‘He took it, Dad,’ Kate said. Her face was white with upset. ‘He really did. You know what they’re like, it’s that kid, Ryan or Roland or whatever his name is. The big one with the dark hair. He’s always had it in for him. But Luc was putting up with it really well, he was just laughing it off. But then Ryan, he said something else, and Luc – he just lost it.’
‘What did he say?’ Ambrose asked, leaning forward in his armchair, but for the first time I saw the shutter come down between Kate and her father. She went completely still, a kind of wary reserve behind the blank mask of her face.
‘I don’t know,’ was all she said, her voice suddenly flat and strange. ‘I didn’t hear.’
Ambrose didn’t punish Luc, and Fatima shook her head over it on the way home because we all knew, relaxed though he was, that he would never have tolerated that kind of behaviour from Kate. There would have been recriminations, reproaches, repairs taken out of her allowance.
With Luc though, Ambrose seemed to be an unfailing well of patience. And now I understand why.
Freya is asleep, her breathing even and feather-light, and I stand, stretching, lost in memories as I stare out across the estuary towards Salten, remembering the Luc I knew, before we went away, and trying to work out why his anger in the post office has shaken me so much.
I knew that that fury was there, after all. I’d seen it, directed at others, sometimes even at himself. And then I realise. It’s not his anger that has scared me. It’s seeing him angry at us.
For back then, no matter how furious he was, he treated the four of us like bone china, like something too precious to be touched, almost. And God knows, I wanted it – I wanted to be touched, so very much. I remember lying beside him on the jetty, the heat of the sun on our backs, and turning to look at his face, his eyes closed, and longing with a heat so fierce that I thought it might consume me, longing for him to open his eyes, and reach out towards me.
But he did not. And so, with my heart beating in my chest so hard that I thought he could surely hear it, I reached out and put my lips to his.
Whatever I expected to happen, it was not this.
His eyes flew open instantly, and he shoved me away, crying out, ‘Ne me touche pas!’ scrambling up and back so hard he almost fell into the water, his chest rising and falling, his eyes wild, as if I’d ambushed him while sleeping.
I felt my face turn scarlet, as if the sun were burning me alive, and I got up too, taking an involuntary step back, away from his furious incomprehension.
‘I’m sorry,’ I managed. ‘Luc?’
He said nothing, just looked around, as if trying to understand where he was, and what had happened. In that moment, it was almost as if he didn’t recognise me, and he looked at me as if I was a stranger. And then recognition came back into his eyes, and with it a kind of shame. He turned on his heel, and he ran, ignoring my cry of ‘Luc! Luc, I’m sorry!’
I didn’t understand then. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong, or how he could react so violently to what was, after all, barely more than the sisterly kiss I’d given him a hundred times.
Now, though … now I think I know what kind of experiences were at the back of that terrified reaction, and my heart is breaking for him. But I am wary, too, for that moment gave me a taste of what I felt again in the post office.
I know what it’s like to be Luc’s enemy. I have seen him lash out.
And I can’t help thinking of the dead sheep, of the fury and pain behind that act, of its guts spilling out like festering secrets into the clear blue water.
And now, I am afraid.