Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

33. 1968

1968

Jimmy’s stag night, such as it is, takes place exactly one week before the wedding. He and Frank disappear off to the Compasses in high spirits: Every male in the village, young and old, has gathered to celebrate his last days as a bachelor.

“Watch out for him, won’t you?” I whisper to Frank as they leave, and he rolls his eyes.

“Obviously,” he says, kissing me to make up for his impatient tone. “When do I ever not?”

An evening alone. So many jobs I should be getting on with, sauces and puddings to make for the wedding, a house that always needs cleaning, a laundry basket in need of emptying.

Instead, I build a fire in the grate, even though it’s a warm night, and I sit in front of it staring into the flames. Thinking.

Over and over I replay the conversation I had with Louisa in the pub. Her suggestion Gabriel had always loved me and perhaps still does. “It’s not too late,” she said. Although, of course, it is.

Nothing has happened with Gabriel and nor will it. I love Frank, we belong to each other. But there’s no denying Gabriel and I have drawn closer in the past weeks.

It’s that glass of wine we have most evenings—often the highlight of my day—when he encourages me to talk about Bobby. Gabriel is curious, he asks questions that make me pause and consider. I find myself searching my memory for Bobby’s favorite food—honey-roasted sausages—or the name of his best friend: He didn’t have one, as he was friends with everyone. Each time, a new piece of Bobby comes back. It feels like a small miracle, this remembering.

What I feel in this hour with Gabriel at the end of the day, an hour when Leo is watching television in another room, and we sit side by side on the sofa, talking and quite often just being, is something close to happiness.

I am asleep when Frank comes back from the pub, waking as the front door closes behind him. I hear his quiet tread on the stairs, then the sound of him undressing in the dark. He gets in beside me but leaves a gap between us.

“Are you awake?” he says, eventually.

He must know from my breathing, my stillness that I am.

“How was it?”

For a moment he says nothing. Then: “As you’d expect, I suppose.”

His voice is bleak, sober.

“Did something happen?”

“Oh, God, Beth, I don’t know. Not really. He’s in bed now, anyhow. Snoring his head off. Don’t think he’ll be up to the cows in the morning, that’s for sure.”

“Then I’ll help you. What’s wrong, Frank? Was there a fight?”

“It was worse than that. He was so drunk, he couldn’t stand. I know we’ve been here before. Countless times.”

“It was always going to get messy. Jimmy’s stag.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s me,” I say, reaching for his hand. Which is not something I’ve ever needed to say to Frank before. “You can tell me.”

“On the drive home, he started crying. And I know it’s because he was out of his mind, beer tears or whatever you call it, but he said this thing—” He stops talking.

“What did he say?”

“He said—”

At last I understand that Frank, who never cries, is fighting tears himself.

“He said he didn’t think he was any good at living. Sometimes he thought we’d be better off without him. We would. Nina would. He causes us too much trouble. That’s what he said. It all goes back to Bobby. Jimmy’s never been right since he died.”

“Oh, Frank.” For a moment I struggle to speak. None of us have been right since Bobby, but it’s rare for Frank to acknowledge it. “I know you’re upset he said those things. But I don’t believe he meant them. It’s just the drink talking. Think how happy he’s been recently, him and Nina. They’ve got everything to look forward to. You know they have.”

We reach out for each other at the same time and it’s us again, me and Frank, the scent of him so familiar, his warm, hard body pressed against mine.

We don’t make love, it’s not like that. We hold on to each other and I whisper reassurances—he’ll be fine, it’s drunken nonsense, he won’t even remember it tomorrow—pressing my lips to his skin until at last the steady in and out of his breathing tells me Frank has fallen asleep.