The Bones of Summer (29 page)

“It's Paul,” he replied, looking at his father again. “The man I was with. You remember? When you found me and sent me the note? You showed me it was wrong and we're not together anymore.”

As Craig spoke, his eyes filled with tears that he blinked away. Now wasn't the time for this.

“Yes. Sin,” his father hissed. “You were both sinners. Sin needs to be purged to make a person whole. The Lord demands it.”

The intensity of the silence near the trees deepened, but Craig didn't respond to it. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on his father.

“I understand,” he said, “but you were telling me about my mother. How you purged her sin and made her clean.”

“Deserter,” he whispered. “
Jezebel
. She was so pure, once, and she fell so far.
How could she have done that?
”

Craig swallowed and wondered if his father could hear it in the night's silence. “What did you do? How did you help her?”

When his father laughed, the wind and chill swept over Craig again and he began to shake. All the time the old man talked, Craig dug his nails into his palms to try to stop the shaking. Because more than anything else in the world, he wanted to hear his father's words.

“I cleansed her,” he said. “I cleansed her so she would never be impure again. I did it for her. And you. You were only six, Craig, when I found out her sin. Such a small boy. How could I let her corrupt you by leaving me? No, I did it for you. For you and her. The Lord told me what to do to save you both and I did it.”

“Wh-What did you d-do?” He no longer knew if the quiver in his voice was due to cold or something else. It no longer mattered.

In answer, his father gave the rope that tied Craig's hands a sharp tug, bringing his face so close to his that Craig could almost taste the shape of every word he spoke.

“I found you both in the utility room,” he said. “It was summer. I can still remember how bright the day was. I'd come in to wash and fetch the toolbox—my hands smelt of oil—and it was then that the Lord spoke. You were playing a game with your mother, so engrossed that neither of you saw me come in. She was wearing a red dress. Her favorite. I spoke her name—Anna, I said—and she glanced up at me. Her face had been so alive, so shining when she'd been with you, but all that went the moment she saw me. I knew then she would leave me soon. So I reached out, took the hammer from the worktop—the one I'd been looking for—, and hit her over the head with it. I had to drive the evil out of her, and it was the only way. The Lord said so. I kept on hitting her until all the sin had gone. The Lord's instrument drove it out and she was cleansed. There was so much blood, but that was good. It's how the sin comes out.
Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.
And you—you screamed once, but then you were so silent, so still. I knew you understood. You could be such a good boy when the Spirit was upon you; at your heart you knew it was for the best. And you never spoke of it afterwards. That's why I thought you were safe. That's why I thought you were pure. How could I have been wrong?
And how could you have fallen so far into sin?
”

By the time he finished, Craig's eyes were shut and his breathing was shallow. But, with his father's sudden quick-fire questions, instinct and the need to survive kicked in. He had to distract him.

“How did you get away with it? How did you stop the questions?”

“The Lord provided,” his father replied. “My wife was going to leave me. It was easy enough to tell Andrea, and the villagers, that she'd gone. Easy enough to write to Andrea too, once or twice. A letter from my wife. The Lord permitted the deceit.”

“And the Fellowship? What did they think?”

His father frowned. “It took a while. In the end I told them I'd had to ask her to leave as she was a sinner. I told them I did it for you.”

Craig opened his eyes, staring into darkness.

“Wh-What. Did you. Do. With. My mother's body,” he said. “Is she. Here. Too?”

Only then did Craig look at the older man. He thought his father was smiling but he could never be sure.

“I buried her,” he said. “In the place we loved the most. Here on the hill overlooking the valley. Just like the sodomite I killed. She's here now, Craig. Beneath us. Where she's always been.”

Several things happened at once. Craig spat in his face and, at the same time, Paul gave a small, sharp cry and began to run toward them. Craig's father gasped and stepped back, pulling Craig with him. As Craig tumbled down onto grass and mud, his father dropped the gun.

“Stay away,
stay away!
” his father screamed at Paul.

Craig scrabbled for the rifle, though he had no clear idea what he'd do with it if he succeeded, but his father got there first. A
boom
and a streak of fire in the darkness, and Craig realized his father had fired the gun. He heard the sound of something—some
one
—landing on the ground.

“Paul?
Paul!
”

“
Shut up!
” his father yelled. He turned toward Craig and the rifle came with him until it was level with his eyes. “Shut
up
or I'll kill you. You
must
be pure. You
must
stay away from evil or it will defile you.”

Something in him snapped and, careless of the gun and whatever might come next, Craig snarled back at him. “I
know
. And I've tried. Believe me, I've tried. I've stayed away from you for seven years, but in the end you always come back. You always defile me. Because, you see, it's not me who's evil. It's
you
.”

"No,"
His father's cry began as a low moan, but it rose ever higher.
"No."

Behind his voice, Craig could hear shouts at the bottom of the hill coming closer. The knowledge that they were no longer quite so alone lent power to his voice.

"Yes,"
he said. “It's true. You're the evil one. Not me, not my mother, not Michael, not any of us. But
you
.”

“You're a liar and the son of a liar. You're the devil's son.” He chanted the words as if they were a song, still pointing the gun at Craig's head. “You're a liar's son.”

“Yes, and I'm your son. What does that make you, you bastard?”

“No!” he cried out again, the pitch of it this time all but a scream.

“Put the gun down, Mr. Clutton, please.” Paul's low voice somehow cut through everything else. It sounded so close that Craig could almost have touched it. “There are people here now. The police are coming. You need to drop the gun.”

The fact that Paul had spoken at all—the fact that he was alive—sent a ripple of joy through Craig's body. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, his father was turning the rifle around. Discounting the pain in his head, Craig launched himself toward him, crying a warning to Paul. But he was already too late and already too wrong in his assumption.

Just as Paul dived toward him, the barrel of the shotgun entered his father's mouth. For a moment, everything around them simply became still: the trees, the wind, even their own attempts at stopping what was to come seemed frozen in time.

Craig heard a roar and everything exploded. His father's head split open and warm liquid spattered onto his face and arms. For a moment the whole world was completely silent. Then he was on the ground again, nausea rising in his throat. Between gasps, he vomited on the grass, the taste of it sour on his tongue.

“God, god,
god
,” he said over and over again, and then realized that someone was holding him. Someone was wiping his father's blood and his own vomit from his face. It was Paul.

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Chapter Twenty-Five

For a while after that, Craig was only vaguely aware of things happening around him. In his head he was caught in the moment before the gun had gone off and forced to relive it many times: Paul's words, his father's mouth filled with the rifle, his own yelled warning. All of these were like a barrier between him and the outside world. Behind it, people shouted, moved to and fro over him; somebody covered him with a blanket; then the sound of an ambulance, maybe two, the clipped tones of authority. Finally and thankfully, he was being carried into an enclosed space bright with efficiency. The grip on his hand was released and he cried out.

"Paul."

An exchange of conversation above his head, then the warmth of fingers in his again and, after that, nothing.

Though his mind was filled with dreams. His mother's face, seen in clarity for the first time in a long time, her laughter, the red dress he'd only half-remembered, the lemon-scented perfume she'd always worn (why hadn't he remembered that before now?), even the game they'd been playing the day she'd gone. The day she'd died. In Craig's dreams now, he found he could remember the moment when his father had walked into the utility room. He could remember its shapes: the angular sharpness of the worktable, the way his father's legs had been framed against it. Dark shadows against a clear blue floor. He could even remember the sound of the tap. The slow drip-drip-drip of water in those seconds that his mother had turned toward his father and her laughter had ceased. Mercifully, after that, his mind refused to continue the memory, simply shutting down to allow other moments from childhood to appear. Playing in the sheds, his mother feeding the chickens, his father swinging down from the tractor, wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

Now and again though, in the rush of pictures through his brain, Craig could sense himself small and breathing, breathing, breathing. Staring out at his mother as she lay on that clear blue floor, blood matting her hair. And the sound of the hammer in his father's hand falling, always falling and never quite reaching the ground.

Finally, the pictures, the memories dissolved into blackness, and he slept in darkness again.

When he woke, he had no idea where he was or even what day he was in. It took a long time to surface and something in him slowed down the waking process. He felt as if he were drifting on a stream rolling toward a vast sea—faster, then slower, and faster again. Until a rush of current took him and he was plunged into....

Not waves, not salt but air. Gasping, eyelids fluttering, and suddenly he was awake. Staring at something white and bright above him. He couldn't place it. He took another breath while a shadow leaned over him and his hand was clasped in warmth.

“Craig? Craig, it's me. Paul. You're fine; you're okay.”

He blinked at Paul, trying to clear his vision. “What?”

“It's okay,” he said again, smiling briefly but releasing Craig's fingers. “You're here, you're in hospital. In Exeter. I'm with you, and Maddy and Julie are here too. Andy too, Maddy's boyfriend. From London. They've gone to have lunch; they'll be back soon. You're safe.”

“Safe?” he echoed, and just as he said the word, the remembrance of what had happened returned. “I-I have to get up.”

“No. No, you don't.” Paul put a warning hand on his shoulder, but there was no need. He was too feeble to sit up anyway. “You're in hospital; you're on a drip. You need to rest and get strong. You're not going anywhere.”

“But my father?”

“I'm sorry, Craig. He's dead. He—”

“Killed himself. Yes, I remember.” Craig was silent for a while, staring up at the hospital ceiling. Trying to bring his thoughts back into some kind of logic. As if from a distance, he noticed Paul had stopped touching him and had sat down again on the chair next to the bed, but he was too exhausted to deal with the uneasiness between them now. The new understanding of being Paul's ex had yet to hit home.

Finally Craig spoke again. But it didn't make sense. “My mother. I don't know. Did you hear him? I don't know if I ... if that was real.”

“Yes.” Paul leaned forward, his arms folded as if to contain something he wasn't sure of. “I heard him. I'm truly sorry about your mother, what you had to go through. Michael too. There's nothing I can say, I know it, but I want you to know that I'm sorry.”

“That's okay. I...” he stammered, unable to take in the enormity of the facts. Wanting to focus on something else just as important. “Are you okay though? He shot you, didn't he? I was frightened he might have—”

“I'm fine.” Paul nodded, cutting in over Craig's torrent of disjointed words. “He grazed my arm. Nothing more. It's fine.”

Then he unfolded his arms and laid his hand on Craig's shoulder. Gently as if fearing he might break it. A gesture somewhere between friendship and the end of love, Craig thought, and after that he couldn't think anymore.

He cried. It came from a place inside him he hadn't visited for too long, a great wave of grief he hadn't realized he was carrying. He didn't know who exactly it was for. There was anger too in the mix.

When at last the crying stopped, Craig felt freer. Knowing that there was more, much more, to come but for now it was enough. He breathed slowly into the silence, the pressure of Paul's fingers seeming to hold him there on the bed.

“Have they found her?” Craig asked him.

Paul let go and Craig sensed a slight hesitation. “No. No, not yet. They're digging in the area I advised them to, but they haven't found her yet.”

Turning toward him, a movement that drained him more than he'd expected, Craig stared at him. All over again, he took in Paul's narrow, arresting face, his dark hair, those green eyes. Wanted him all over again too. “You're not telling me something. Aren't you?”

Paul swallowed, but his gaze didn't leave Craig's. “Yes. I don't want to lie to you. Yes.”

“What is it?
Tell me.
”

“They've found the bones of a man. And identification. A wallet, a few cards. Of course they'll have to do tests to make sure, but I'm sorry, Craig—they believe they've found Michael.”

Of course, Paul had mentioned his name earlier, but the news, when it came, didn't strike Craig with the intensity he'd expected. To his surprise, it felt more like the end of a journey. One he hadn't wanted to take but which, now, he'd grown accustomed to. Almost. He let out a deep sigh.