Gordon fell to his knees and then onto his chest. Ben was right, Sam was wrong. Sam had thought it was as simple as setting free a memory he had kept bottled up, but that was not how it was. To recall Owen’s death was to reach into a dark arsenal where it was one of many concealed weapons. All had been locked up, and there was no exactitude in what destructive force he might have reached in and brought out, no certainty about what else he might have jolted loose. Was it a memory anyway? When he had spoken to Kelly and Ben on the ledge, it felt more like an invention. A fact, possibly, but a fiction equally concrete. He did not know what he was playing with. He did not know what else was in there. Following Sam’s encouragement, he had been hoping to make his family real in more than name, pushing that heavy guard aside, opening the gate of his little one-man compound and letting his wife and son in. He had shared his shame. He had killed his brother. He had told them at last. This was meant to fix him? All it had done was spread the burden of a story. Kelly and Ben were better off when he had kept himself in quarantine: a lifelong quarantine.

‘I’ve made a mess of it.’

‘You’re fucking telling me,’ Kelly said.

‘I feel sorry for you, Dad. I really do.’ Ben stepped forward, bent down and gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘But now I’m going up there with Mum. I need to get some sleep; I’ve got a big game tomorrow.’

Gordon heard Kelly’s weeping and Ben’s consoling murmur recede as they went to the jump rock at the base of the wooden stairs. Soon he could no longer hear them. He wondered if he could lie here until the tide came in and drowned him. He lay on the sand until the lights in The Lodge had gone out. Finally he pushed himself to his feet, brushed the sand off his back and his front, and walked towards the firehouse.

BOYS

Boys