That was when I first saw his animals. When he’d told me about them in Norfolk, I’d seen in my mind scaled-down versions of the sort of pictures we’d done when we were small. So I was taken aback at how densely detailed each one was. In fact, it took a moment to see they were animals at all. The first impression was like one you’d get if you took the back off a radio set: tiny canals, weaving tendons, miniature screws and wheels were all drawn with obsessive precision, and only when you held the page away could you see it was some kind of armadillo, say, or a bird.
‘It’s my second book,’ Tommy said. ‘There’s no way anyone’s seeing the first one! It took me a while to get going.’
He was lying back on the settee now, tugging a sock over his foot and trying to sound casual, but I knew he was anxious for my reaction. Even so, for some time, I didn’t come up with wholehearted praise. Maybe it was partly my worry that any artwork was liable to get him into trouble all over again. But also, what I was looking at was so different from anything the guardians had taught us to do at Hailsham, I didn’t know how to judge it. I did say something like:
‘God, Tommy, these must take so much concentration. I’m surprised you can see well enough in here to do all this tiny stuff.’ And then, as I flicked through the pages, perhaps because I was still struggling to find the right thing to say, I came out with: ‘I wonder what Madame would say if she saw these.’
I’d said it in a jokey tone, and Tommy responded with a little snigger, but then there was something hanging in the air that hadn’t been there before. I went on turning the pages of the notebook – it was about a quarter full – not looking up at him, wishing I’d never brought up Madame. Finally I heard him say:
‘I suppose I’ll have to get a lot better before she gets to see any of it.’
I wasn’t sure if this was a cue for me to say how good the drawings were, but by this time, I was becoming genuinely drawn to these fantastical creatures in front of me. For all their busy, metallic features, there was something sweet, even vulnerable about each of them. I remembered him telling me, in Norfolk, that he worried, even as he created them, how they’d protect themselves or be able to reach and fetch things, and looking at them now, I could feel the same sort of concerns. Even so, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, something continued to stop me coming out with praise. Then Tommy said:
‘Anyway, it’s not only because of all that I’m doing the animals. I just like doing them. I was wondering, Kath, if I should go on keeping it secret. I was thinking, maybe there’s no harm in people knowing I do these. Hannah still does her watercolours, a lot of the veterans do stuff. I don’t mean I’m going to go round showing everyone exactly. But I was thinking, well, there’s no reason why I should keep it all secret any more.’
At last I was able to look up at him and say with some conviction: ‘Tommy, there’s no reason, no reason at all. These are good. Really, really good. In fact, if that’s why you’re hiding in here now, it’s really daft.’
He didn’t say anything in response, but a kind of smirk appeared over his face, like he was enjoying a joke with himself, and I knew how happy I’d made him. I don’t think we spoke much more to each other after that. I think before long he got his Wellingtons on, and we both left the goosehouse. As I say, that was about the only time Tommy and I touched directly on his theory that spring.
Then the summer came, and the one year point from when we’d first arrived. A batch of new students turned up in a minibus, much as we’d done, but none of them were from Hailsham. This was in some ways a relief: I think we’d all been getting anxious about how a fresh lot of Hailsham students might complicate things. But for me at least, this non-appearance of Hailsham students just added to a feeling that Hailsham was now far away in the past, and that the ties binding our old crowd were fraying. It wasn’t just that people like Hannah were always talking about following Alice’s example and starting their training; others, like Laura, had found boyfriends who weren’t Hailsham and you could almost forget they’d ever had much to do with us.
And then there was the way Ruth kept pretending to forget things about Hailsham. Okay, these were mostly trivial things, but I got more and more irritated with her. There was the time, for instance, we were sitting around the kitchen table after a long breakfast, Ruth, me and a few veterans. One of the veterans had been talking about how eating cheese late at night always disturbed your sleep, and I’d turned to Ruth to say something like: ‘You remember how Miss Geraldine always used to tell us that?’ It was just a casual aside, and all it needed was for Ruth to smile or nod. But she made a point of staring back at me blankly, like she didn’t have the faintest what I was talking about. Only when I said to the veterans, by way of explanation: ‘One of our guardians,’ did Ruth give a frowning nod, as though she’d just that moment remembered.
I let her get away with it that time. But there was another occasion when I didn’t, that evening we were sitting out in the ruined bus shelter. I got angry then because it was one thing to play this game in front of veterans; quite another when it was just the two of us, in the middle of a serious talk. I’d referred, just in passing, to the fact that at Hailsham, the short-cut down to the pond through the rhubarb patch was out of bounds. When she put on her puzzled look, I abandoned whatever point I’d been trying to make and said: ‘Ruth, there’s no way you’ve forgotten. So don’t give me that.’
Perhaps if I hadn’t pulled her up so sharply – perhaps if I’d just made a joke of it and carried on – she’d have seen how absurd it was and laughed. But because I’d snapped at her, Ruth glared back and said:
‘What does it matter anyway? What’s the rhubarb patch got to do with any of this? Just get on with what you were saying.’
It was getting late, the summer evening was fading, and the old bus shelter felt musty and damp after a recent thunderstorm. So I didn’t have the head to go into why it mattered so much. And though I did just drop it and carry on with the discussion we’d been having, the atmosphere had gone chilly, and could hardly have helped us get through the difficult matter in hand.
But to explain what we were talking about that evening, I’ll have to go back a little bit. In fact, I’ll have to go back several weeks, to the earlier part of the summer. I’d been having a relationship with one of the veterans, a boy called Lenny, which, to be honest, had been mainly about the sex. But then he’d suddenly opted to start his training and left. This unsettled me a little, and Ruth had been great about it, watching over me without seeming to make a fuss, always ready to cheer me up if I seemed gloomy. She also kept doing little favours for me, like making me sandwiches, or taking on parts of my cleaning rota.
Then about a fortnight after Lenny had gone, the two of us were sitting in my attic room some time after midnight chatting over mugs of tea, and Ruth got me really laughing about Lenny. He hadn’t been such a bad guy, but once I’d started telling Ruth some of the more intimate things about him, it did seem like everything to do with him was hilarious, and we just kept laughing and laughing. Then at one point Ruth was running a finger up and down the cassettes stacked in little piles along my skirting board. She was doing this in an absent-minded sort of way while she kept laughing, but afterwards, I went through a spell of suspecting it hadn’t been by chance at all; that she’d noticed it there maybe days before, perhaps even examined it to make sure, then had waited for the best time to ‘find’ it. Years later, I gently hinted this to Ruth, and she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, so maybe I was wrong. Anyway, there we were, laughing and laughing each time I came out with another detail about poor Lenny, and then suddenly it was like a plug had been pulled out. There was Ruth, lying on her side across my rug, peering at the spines of the cassettes in the low light, and then the Judy Bridgewater tape was in her hands. After what seemed an eternity, she said:
‘So how long have you had this again?’
I told her, as neutrally as I could, about how Tommy and I had come across it that day while she?
??d been gone with the others. She went on examining it, then said:
‘So Tommy found it for you.’
‘No. I found it. I saw it first.’
‘Neither of you told me.’ She shrugged. ‘At least, if you did, I never heard.’
‘The Norfolk thing was true,’ I said. ‘You know, about it being the lost corner of England.’
It did flash through my mind Ruth would pretend not to remember this reference, but she nodded thoughtfully.
‘I should have remembered at the time,’ she said. ‘I might have found my red scarf then.’
We both laughed and the uneasiness seemed to pass. But there was something about the way Ruth put the tape back without discussing it any further that made me think it wasn’t finished with yet.
I don’t know if the way the conversation went after that was something controlled by Ruth in the light of her discovery, or if we were headed that way anyway, and that it was only afterwards Ruth realised she could do with it what she did. We went back to discussing Lenny, in particular a lot of stuff about how he had sex, and we were laughing away again. At that point, I think I was just relieved she’d finally found the tape and not made a huge scene about it, and so maybe I wasn’t being as careful as I might have been. Because before long, we’d drifted from laughing about Lenny to laughing about Tommy. At first it had all felt good-natured enough, like we were just being affectionate towards him. But then we were laughing about his animals.
As I say, I’ve never been sure whether or not Ruth deliberately moved things round to this. To be fair, I can’t even say for certain she was the one who first mentioned the animals. And once we started, I was laughing just as much as she was – about how one of them looked like it was wearing underpants, how another had to have been inspired by a squashed hedgehog. I suppose I should have said in there somewhere that the animals were good, that he’d done really well to have got where he had with them. But I didn’t. That was partly because of the tape; and maybe, if I have to be honest, because I was pleased by the notion that Ruth wasn’t taking the animals seriously, and everything that implied. I think when we eventually broke up for the night, we felt as close as we’d ever done. She touched my cheek on her way out, saying: ‘It’s really good the way you always keep your spirits up, Kathy.’
So I wasn’t prepared at all for what happened at the churchyard several days later. Ruth had discovered that summer a lovely old church about half a mile from the Cottages, which had behind it rambling grounds with very old gravestones leaning in the grass. Everything was overgrown, but it was really peaceful and Ruth had taken to doing a lot of her reading there, near the back railings, on a bench under a big willow. I hadn’t at first been too keen on this development, remembering how the previous summer we’d all sat around together in the grass right outside the Cottages. All the same, if I was headed that way on one of my walks, and I knew Ruth was likely to be there, I’d find myself going through the low wooden gate and along the overgrown path past the gravestones. On that afternoon, it was warm and still, and I’d come down the path in a dreamy mood, reading off names on the stones, when I saw not only Ruth, but Tommy on the bench under the willow.
Ruth was actually sitting on the bench, while Tommy was standing with one foot up on its rusty armrest, doing a kind of stretching exercise as they talked. It didn’t look like they were having any big conversation and I didn’t hesitate to go up to them. Maybe I should have picked up something in the way they greeted me, but I’m sure there wasn’t anything obvious. I had some gossip I was dying to tell them – something about one of the newcomers – and so for a while it was just me blabbing on while they nodded and asked the odd question. It was some time before it occurred to me something wasn’t right, and even then, when I paused and asked: ‘Did I interrupt something here?’ it was in a jokey sort of way.
But then Ruth said: ‘Tommy’s been telling me about his big theory. He says he’s already told you. Ages ago. But now, very kindly, he’s allowing me to share in it too.’
Tommy gave a sigh and was about to say something, but Ruth said in a mock whisper: ‘Tommy’s big Gallery theory!’
Then they were both looking at me, like I was now in charge of everything and it was up to me what happened next.
‘It’s not a bad theory,’ I said. ‘It might be right, I don’t know. What do you think, Ruth?’
‘I had to really dig it out of Sweet Boy here. Not very keen at all on letting me in on it, were you, sweety gums? It was only when I kept pressing him to tell me what was behind all this art.’
‘I’m not doing it just for that,’ Tommy said sulkily. His foot was still up on the armrest and he kept on with his stretching. ‘All I said was, if it was right, about the Gallery, then I could always try and put in the animals …’
‘Tommy, sweety, don’t make a fool of yourself in front of our friend. Do it to me, that’s all right. But not in front of our dear Kathy.’
‘I don’t see why it’s such a joke,’ Tommy said. ‘It’s as good a theory as anyone else’s.’
‘It’s not the theory people will find funny, sweety gums. They might well buy the theory, right enough. But the idea that you’ll swing it by showing Madame your little animals …’ Ruth smiled and shook her head.
Tommy said nothing and continued with his stretching. I wanted to come to his defence and was trying to think of just the right thing that would make him feel better without making Ruth even more angry. But that was when Ruth said what she did. It felt bad enough at the time, but I had no idea in the churchyard that day how far-reaching the repercussions would be. What she said was:
‘It’s not just me, sweety. Kathy here finds your animals a complete hoot.’
My first instinct was to deny it, then just to laugh. But there was a real authority about the way Ruth had spoken, and the three of us knew each other well enough to know there had to be something behind her words. So in the end I stayed silent, while my mind searched back frantically, and with a cold horror, settled on that night up in my room with our mugs of tea. Then Ruth said:
‘As long as people think you’re doing those little creatures as a kind of joke, fine. But don’t give out you’re serious about it. Please.’
Tommy had stopped his stretching and was looking questioningly at me. Suddenly he was really child-like again, with no front whatsoever, and I could see too something dark and troubling gathering behind his eyes.
‘Look, Tommy, you’ve got to understand,’ Ruth went on. ‘If Kathy and I have a good laugh about you, it doesn’t really matter. Because that’s just us. But please, let’s not bring everyone else in on it.’
I’ve thought about those moments over and over. I should have found something to say. I could have just denied it, though Tommy probably wouldn’t have believed me. And to try to explain the thing truthfully would have been too complicated. But I could have done something. I could have challenged Ruth, told her she was twisting things, that even if I might have laughed, it wasn’t in the way she was implying. I could even have gone up to Tommy and hugged him, right there in front of Ruth. That’s something that came to me years later, and probably wasn’t a real option at the time, given the person I was, and the way the three of us were with each other. But that might have done it, where words would only have got us in deeper.
But I didn’t say or do anything. It was partly, I suppose, that I was so floored by the fact that Ruth would come out with such a trick. I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain’s exhausted, and you know there’s some far-off solution, but you can’t work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up. A voice went: ‘All right, let him think the absolute worst. Let him think it, let him think it.’ And I suppose I looked at him with resignation, with a face that said: ‘Yes, it’s true, what else did you expect?’ And I can recall now, as fresh as anything, Tommy’s own face, the
anger receding for the moment, being replaced by an expression almost of wonder, like I was a rare butterfly he’d come across on a fence-post.
It wasn’t that I thought I’d burst into tears or lose my temper or anything like that. But I decided just to turn and go. Even later that day, I realised this was a bad mistake. All I can say is that at the time what I feared more than anything was that one or the other of them would stalk off first, and I’d be left with the remaining one. I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem an option for more than one of us to storm off, and I wanted to make sure that one was me. So I turned and marched back the way I’d come, past the gravestones towards the low wooden gate, and for several minutes, I felt as though I’d triumphed; that now they’d been left in each other’s company, they were suffering a fate they thoroughly deserved.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As I’ve said, it wasn’t until a long time afterwards – long after I’d left the Cottages – that I realised just how significant our little encounter in the churchyard had been. I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn’t believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we’d had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that.
But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we’d understood that back then – who knows? – maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.
For one thing, more and more students were going off to be carers, and among our old Hailsham crowd, there was a growing feeling this was the natural course to follow. We still had our essays to finish, but it was well known we didn’t really have to finish them if we chose to start our training. In our early days at the Cottages, the idea of not finishing our essays would have been unthinkable. But the more distant Hailsham grew, the less important the essays seemed. I had this idea at the time – and I was probably right – that if our sense of the essays being important was allowed to seep away, then so too would whatever bound us together as Hailsham students. That’s why I tried for a while to keep going our enthusiasm for all the reading and note-taking. But with no reason to suppose we’d ever see our guardians again, and with so many students moving on, it soon began to feel like a lost cause.