Chapter 25 #2
Lillian’s pink-painted mouth formed an outraged little ‘o’, and Jude knew he’d crossed a line he’d never stand behind again. He cast a glance at Joe, who had sagged slightly in his seat. He looked relieved, Jude realised. Like a weight had been lifted off him.
In all the years since he’d fallen out with Lillian, Joe had never once lost touch with Jude.
He’d visited him at university, hosted him in Manchester, called him every week .
. . but he’d erected a barbed-wire fence around the topic of their childhood.
Jude could see now that separating how they each felt about Lillian, rarely even mentioning her, had rendered her powerless to divide them.
He wondered how many things Joe had kept to himself during that time; how many things he hadn’t told Jude, for fear that if he wasn’t ready to hear them, home truths could land like bombs, destroying more than their intended targets.
God, there was so much he hadn’t understood.
So much he hadn’t looked directly at, until now.
That guilty feeling needled him again, and he recognised it for what it was: the shame of not wanting the thing she wanted for him.
The pain of wishing for something different and knowing it would disappoint her.
Lillian was the parent who’d stayed – the one who hadn’t abandoned him and Joe when they were kids. In Jude’s childish mind, the logic had been simple: he owed it to her to justify the pride she took in him. He’d never once asked if the price he paid for her pride was fair.
‘I have only ever acted in your interests,’ Lillian said – seeking to soothe and reassure him.
‘You needed help to reach your full potential,’ she explained, ‘guidance to choose the right path. You’re too self-effacing.
Not as ambitious as you should be. You’d have gone to Warwick instead of Cambridge if I hadn’t stepped in.
Wouldn’t that have been silly?’ She gave a laugh; a hollow trill, entirely empty of mirth.
‘I hated Cambridge,’ Jude said. ‘I was miserable there.’ He’d never admitted this before, not even to Hannah.
‘Nonsense,’ Lillian argued, with a musical giggle and a firm shake of her head.
‘It’s the truth,’ Jude insisted. ‘And . . . I don’t want to go back to Australia. Larry’s a soulless lunatic, and I can’t work for him anymore. No amount of money could convince me. You can’t convince me.’
‘I’m only concerning myself with this because I care for you,’ Lillian said, in the tone she might have used on a toddler teetering perilously close to a tantrum.
Jude heard another laugh then, a bitter one, and surmised it had come from Joe. ‘You care about him so much you’re desperate to see him back on the other side of the planet, when he’s just said that isn’t what he wants. Make it make sense, Mother.’
‘Pipe down, Joseph. You’re only here to—’
‘Oh, I know why I’m here,’ Joe said, cool and collected in the face of Lillian’s rising temper.
‘I was supposed to witness your triumph, wasn’t I?
Your checkmate moment. This was about you winning – besting me, after he refused to listen to you and insisted on staying for my wedding.
But your mistake was thinking that any of this was a game.
I’ve never wanted to influence or control him.
Jude,’ he said, finding his brother’s eyes and holding them, ‘I hope you know that. I love you and I want you to live well, and happily. That’s all. ’
‘I know,’ Jude said. He believed his brother entirely.
‘You simply cannot pass up an offer like this,’ Lillian said, turning to him almost desperately. ‘I see now that your head’s been turned again by that stupid girl. But surely someone of your intelligence can see that—’
‘Hannah isn’t stupid,’ Jude said. ‘She’s the best person I’ve ever met. The only woman I’ve ever loved, or will ever be capable of loving. And I’ve always known that. What’s worse is that I think you have, too.’
‘She is wrong for you in every way!’ Lillian hissed. ‘She always was.’
‘How would you know?’ Jude asked, emotion thundering through him, pulling him up and out of his seat.
‘What do I enjoy, Mum? What do I care about? What makes me happy, or sad, or scared? You care so much about what I can do, what I can achieve . . . but I don’t think you have any real idea who I am. ’
‘She broke your heart!’ Lillian cried, incredulous.
‘She sees me clearly,’ Jude said, chest aching with the truth of it. ‘She knows me better than anyone. And I broke my own heart – at least some of the way. Aided and abetted by you, I now realise.’
‘I’d say that’s lunch over,’ Joe put in, standing up and addressing Jude. ‘How d’you feel about skipping dessert and heading to the Fox and Feathers for a pint?’
‘Good,’ Jude answered. ‘I feel . . . very good about that.’
‘You cannot do this,’ Lillian shouted, slamming her palms down on the mahogany tabletop, rage erupting as she rose to address her sons. She was furious in a way Jude hadn’t seen since his mid-teens. As he watched her face redden, it hit him that her anger didn’t scare him anymore.
‘I simply will not allow it,’ she yelled. ‘You can’t be so stupid, so ungrateful as to throw away an opportunity like this – an opportunity I made sure you received. I refuse to let you damage your prospects in this way.’
‘The thing is, Mum,’ Jude said, with a desolate, almost disbelieving shake of his head, ‘it really isn’t up to you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said, the moment he and Jude were settled at a tiny table in the village pub, pints of IPA in front of them.
‘What on earth for?’ Jude asked, astonished.
‘So many things,’ Joe sighed. ‘Enough to fill a psychology textbook, probably. I didn’t realise I was doing it when I first started acting out, when I first began resisting her, but I made you into the responsible one. The good one. And then you felt you had to live up to it.’
‘I know that wasn’t deliberate,’ Jude said.
‘You were a kid yourself, and dealing with coming out, which I know she didn’t make easy.
And I could have “resisted her”, too. Why didn’t I?
’ He felt like he didn’t quite know himself; like he was a far weaker, far less perceptive person than he’d thought. It hurt.