One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [150]
There was a silence.
‘Kit, can I ask… well, what d’you think made you like that?’
He raised his eyebrows, and implicit in that look was – you have to ask? In that moment I knew. Sarajevo. Which we’d never talked about. But where I knew, in that incarcerated city, at that time, in those few months, he’d witnessed terrible atrocities. Like speeded-up film, snippets of things I’d heard about rushed through my head: the massacre at Markale marketplace, where I knew Kit had been, with friends, some of whom were killed as they lined up for water; the old man he lived with, Lyjodo, a Muslim, beaten to death in front of him; the rape camps no one talked about; the ten thousand killed in one city, most of them civilians. Ten thousand seemed to shriek at me as the last few frames snapped by: then silence. Darkness. In the quiet, a pilot light was lit within me. I waited for the flame to steady, then took a breath. Dug deep.
‘Kit, I know you don’t do feelings, emotions, have shut yourself off from all that, but I just have a hunch you’re the one person who can help me right now. The one person I should tell – must tell – before I talk to anyone else. And I want you to be totally honest with me. Tell me what you – or God, if you like – would think. Whether I’m damned to hell and damnation for ever.’ I swallowed. ‘It’s about Seffy.’
He met my eye. ‘I know about Seffy.’
I stared. ‘You know about Seffy?’
‘Yes.’
‘That he’s mine?’
‘Yes.’
I felt the breath being sucked out of me. Kit’s eyes were steady.
‘You mean… you’ve always known?’
‘No, only recently. You did a very good job, Hattie. No one knew. But Seffy told me.’
I felt the kitchen move slightly; the walls shift.
‘He came to see me last summer, at Blenheim. Came from school, on a Sunday. Slipped into the back of a service I was taking. Gave me quite a shock.’
I collected my jaw, licked my lips. ‘And… and what did he… what did you…?’
‘Oh, we walked back to the vicarage together and he explained it all very matter-of-factly. He’d known by then for a few months. Had grown accustomed enough to the idea to explain without too much emotion.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘He asked me not to. But he did ask me to tell Mum and Dad.’
I shaded my eyes with both hands as if the light coming through the window was too bright for them.
‘We’ve known for some time, Hattie.’
I moved from my stool, groped for a chair. ‘Why not, me?’ I didn’t recognize my voice. Also, I knew: Hal had already told me. ‘Because I hadn’t told him for fifteen years?’
Kit hesitated. ‘A bit. Perhaps. But no, mostly… I think he still sort of hoped you might…’
‘Tell him,’ I finished in a whisper.
Kit was silent.
‘Thought that his mother might, if he was very lucky, claim her son, in time. Given time. But I never did.’
Why, then, should I be the first to know? Why should I presume that privileged position, when I hadn’t afforded it to him? How very presumptuous of me.
‘And Mum and Dad…’ The walls of the kitchen were closing in now, like my humiliation.
‘Were joyful, to use a biblical word.’
‘Joyful?’
‘Of course. Why not? He’s ours. Seffy’s ours. Oh, stunned and shocked to begin with, naturally. But then, given time… yes, really joyful.’
I nodded. Understanding. Slowly.
‘As you must be,’ he said gently.
‘Have always been,’ I said brokenly. ‘Have always known he’s mine, you see. Always been quietly joyful.’ My mind was racing in circles, like a dog after its tail. I tried to imagine the scene, Kit, sitting my parents down – what, here?
‘I had a chat with Dad first, in London,’ Kit said, reading me, ‘who told Mum. Not Laura, because Seffy knew she’d have to tell you. But he did tell Christian. He was the only one who already knew, incidentally. Said he’d suspected from the very beginning.’
‘Christian?’
Kit frowned. ‘Who you worked with?’
‘Yes, I know who Christian is!’
My mouth wouldn’t close. I dropped my head in shame. What must they think? Me again. See?
‘That you’ve had a tough time, Hattie.’ I’d said it out loud. ‘A sad, lonely old time of it.’
Suddenly I was in Dubrovnik