When the Sky Fell Apart (13 page)

‘—don't give a damn about me.' Will finished, his eyes hard with a defiant sort of triumph. ‘Mum and Dad are happy in the wilds of Cornwall and will swallow whatever lies I feed them. Anything to avoid confrontation, that's their motto.'

‘I'm sorry.' Carter thought of his own father at home, seeking out confrontation at every opportunity. Imagining Father's snarling mouth, Carter shrivelled.

Will snapped his fingers in front of Carter's face. ‘Tim. Say you'll live with me.'

But looking at Will's hopeful eyes, his wide and easy smile, Carter knew he couldn't do it. How could he rain shame and ruin upon this wonderful man, this bright boy who carried light and laughter wherever he went? Will would be better off without him. He would be happier, ultimately. And as he thought this, Father's growling seemed to quieten.

Carter returned home to Father and joined a small practice in the village. He missed Will dreadfully in the months that followed, and tried to forget about him, but Will sent letters every week and begged to be allowed to visit. Eventually, he relented, and when Will finally came up from London, it was impossible to resist the pull of his eager smile, his muffled laughter, his hot breath on Carter's skin.

Carter crept into Will's room every night and they talked and smoked and made love and then talked again, for hours—about Will's life in London and how Carter might join him one day. They laughed about escaping to live in a log cabin in the wilds of Canada.

‘You can learn to fish and I'll go hunting with a spear,' Will chuckled. ‘I hope you like eating rats.'

It was early one morning, when the watery sunlight was just seeping under the curtains. Will and Carter had been awake into the early hours and were now exhausted, or one of them would have startled at the thudding footsteps on the stairs. They would have roused before Father came bursting into the bedroom and saw his son and
that man
, limbs tangled together in sleep, naked.

It was a cool night, Carter had stammered. They had huddled together for warmth. Nothing perverse in that. Just high jinks, tomfoolery, don't you see?

But Father, disbelieving, disgusted, had raged at his son's
abhorrent behaviour.

Carter had gabbled more excuses. But even as he spoke, his mind had been full of thoughts of Will: outlined against a window, dark shadow stitched in gold. Like a naked angel fallen to earth, still burning in Carter's arms. He was so beautiful—every part of him. How could he fail to love the man? What other option had he?

To his father, Carter had said, ‘It isn't what it seems.'

But Father had scowled. ‘I have always wondered what was wrong with you. Get
away
from me! You've always been weak. Now I see why. Re
pul
sive!'

He had allowed his son the time to dress and pack a suitcase, then thrown both him and Will into the street. He would not have a
deviant
under his roof. He would not listen to Carter's pleas and explanations.

Devastated, bewildered, nauseated by himself, Carter had left, and he and Will had walked to the park, where Carter had sat beneath a willow tree, hiding in the low hanging branches and trying not to weep.

Will had put his arms around him. ‘It's dreadful for you, but now he knows. Now you can come and live with me.'

Carter had pushed Will away, roughly. ‘Get off me. This is all your fault, don't you see?'

‘My fault?' Will frowned. ‘I know you're in a lather, but this is for the best. I want you to be happy, Tim—'

‘
Happy?
' Carter spat. ‘My life is in ruins and you want me to be
happy?
' His voice was an ugly growl, and now he couldn't stop the poison spilling out.

‘You're a simpleton, Will. A sweet, vacant-headed fool.
How
could I come and live with you? Do you imagine they'd let you keep your job if they knew what you were?'

Will was white-faced but he stretched out a hand and put it on Carter's shoulder.

‘Tim, it's…love. You know that.'

Carter brushed his hand away. This was the right thing to do. They needed to be free of one another. Perhaps he could make amends with Father. Will would be happier without him, in the end.

‘Go. Get on your train.'

‘But Tim—'

‘
Go!
' Carter didn't turn around as he heard the crunch of Will's receding footsteps. Once the park was silent again, he sat on the bare earth and pulled his knees up to his chest.

He had never felt so utterly lost and entirely alone.

Carter moved into a small boarding house and tried, for two years, to build up a practice near Barford. He tried to forget about Will and attempted to regain Father's trust, visiting him weekly to sit in the drawing room, with the slow ticking clock marking out the distance between them. It would have been better, he knew, if he could have forced himself to marry, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Carter spent his nights lying awake, burning—longing for dreams of Will. But if the dreams came, they were unfulfilling. Sometimes Will was talking, but in another room, his words muffled. Sometimes he was laughing, but tantalisingly out of Carter's eyeline. Occasionally Will kissed him, long and deep, pressing his body against him, and Carter woke feeling his loss as the stinging pain of a fresh wound.

After two years of trying to forge a solitary life for himself, Carter admitted defeat and eventually decided to find a post elsewhere.

He wrote to Will, his phrasing stiff and formal, apologising for his behaviour at their last meeting and asking if he might possibly visit him in London.

Carter held little hope of a reply—after so long, he had no doubt that Will would have found no shortage of men, ready to fall in love with him.

But a return telegram arrived within the week, passed to him by Mrs Burton, who was purse-mouthed with displeasure.

Tim, you bloody fool. Come immediately.

‘I don't approve of such language,' scowled Mrs Burton.

‘I'll scold him roundly,' Carter grinned, practically skipping from the post office to pack a suitcase and board the next train to London.

Will greeted him as if they had never parted, clapping him on the back at the station and then, once they reached his tiny flat, embracing him and kissing him with a hot and open mouth, and Carter, who felt like he'd been frozen for two years, found his touch dizzying and he backed away, breathless, holding up his hands.

‘I wanted to apologise—'

‘Shut up, Tim.' Will grinned and kissed him again.

Carter lived in the London flat for the next five weeks, and the time spent within those walls, in the fug of summer heat and burning electricity of desire, were the happiest he had known. But as soon as he stepped outside the flat, with Will at his side, he was conscious of people's eyes on them, sidling glances, hushed whispers.

‘They're laughing at us,' he said to Will, when they were safely back in the flat.

‘Don't be ludicrous. How could they know? You're not branded with a
Q
, Tim.'

Carter frowned and Will hissed the word
‘Queer'
with narrowed eyes, then chuckled and knocked his forehead lightly against Carter's. ‘You're so very
grave
, Tim.'

Carter couldn't bring himself to laugh—the joke was too close to the bone. Even if people weren't giggling and staring now, they soon would be.

So when he saw the newspaper advertisement for the post in Jersey, he applied. As long as he was near Will, there was no escaping from the looming shadow of disgrace and shame, no matter how much pain it might cause them both. He just couldn't do it.

‘I'm taking the post in Jersey. You're better off without me, Will. You'll see,' Carter said, miserably.

‘For Christ's sake!' Will grabbed Carter's shoulders and shook him, roughly. ‘How could I be better off without you?'

‘If I stay, it'll ruin you. You don't understand—'

‘No,
you
don't understand.' Will released Carter and paced the space of the flat, then turned to face him, his eyes blazing. ‘You say you're concerned about gossip? About people up in arms because of how I live my life behind closed doors? I don't care what anyone else says, Tim.'

‘But your job…your landlady. I've seen her staring. You could end up on the street—'

‘I'll happily live in a wooden crate under a bridge, next to an open
sewer
, if you'll stay with me.' Will's eyes were frantic and he threw himself at Carter, wrapping his arms around him and kissing his face again and again. ‘Don't you see, this is all that matters?
This
. Here. Both of us. You
must
see that.'

Will's mouth was fiercely alive and, in that kiss, Carter could feel all the pent-up years of longing. He could sense a glimpse of a future there, a possibility of hard-won happiness within his grasp. But something inside him shrank and he pushed Will gently away and shook his head.

‘I…can't do it.'

‘But
why,
for God's sake? Tell me that this isn't wonderful. It's perfect, you know that—'

‘It's not
real.
Shuttered away like this. It seems perfect here, in these rooms. But it wouldn't last, out there.' Carter gestured to the door, to the cold, pitiless glare of the outside world.

Will exhaled and hung his head, then smiled, bitterly. ‘I love every part of you, Tim. But I do wish you weren't such a bloody coward.'

‘I'm sorry. I wish…' Carter shook his head. He didn't know how to wish to be different, for such a wish would have made him a more acceptable son for his father, a more respectable man to the world outside. Such a wish would have changed him so that he didn't desire Will, and Carter couldn't imagine wanting to change the love he felt at this moment, agonising as it was.

And yet he knew Will was right—Carter was a coward and he could not face the judgment and disapproval that he knew he would see in every set of eyes if he chose a life with Will.

Carter had spent his entire life seeking admiration from others, striving to earn Father's respect, working to be held in high regard. He knew that, if he stayed with Will, all that would disappear. Perhaps the only way to save himself was to carve out a life elsewhere.

‘The post in Jersey is temporary,' he said, softly. ‘I'll be back in five years.'

‘Five
years
?' Will's face was pale with disbelief. ‘And what then? Will you suddenly discover a backbone in that time, do you suppose? You'll return with the courage to be in love with me, even if only behind closed doors?' His tone was sharp with pain. Carter could not look him in the eye.

‘I don't expect you to wait for me,' Carter whispered, forcing the words past the ache in his throat. ‘You can find someone else—'

‘I don't
want
anyone else!' Will slapped his hands on Carter's chest so that Carter staggered backwards. ‘I want
you.
Ductus arteriosus, remember?'

Despite the rage in Will's voice, Carter smiled. It had been a joke of theirs, from very early on: the ductus arteriosus is a tiny blood vessel that diverts blood away from a baby's lungs in the womb. After birth, it closes and the blood vessel is no longer used. When Carter and Will first began their relationship, Will said his heart had changed forever, had shut off and closed to everything.

Apart from you, Tim.

For the next two weeks, they lived in a world of cut-glass silences and wounded glares. When they made love, it was with a doomed desperation, a grief-struck knowledge that their time was running out. And at the end of the fortnight, Carter, feeling every inch the coward, left for Jersey.

When news had arrived of the Germans' impending invasion, Carter had seen the opportunity to prove that he wasn't weak: a chance for repentance, for redemption. And then, when it was all over, when the world was a different place, he would have the courage to return to Will.

So when the Germans arrived, Carter's dedication to his patients increased immeasurably. He worked long into the night at the hospital and often rose in the early hours to make house calls and deliver medicine. Where possible, he used his influence to procure extra rations or medications for his patients. Will would have been proud of him, he knew it.

And the people under Carter's care responded to his diligent treatment. It was a blessed relief, and also the source of some tension that—confounding Carter's earlier prediction—within a few months, not only had he survived, but Clement Hacquoil finally began to show signs of improvement.

Under Edith's watchful eye, his fever had subsided. He had short periods of consciousness and lucidity and he was even able to eat very thin soups and gruels—with any luck, he might be able to manage a little of his meat ration for his Christmas dinner. His pain was also lessening by the day, making him more aware and alert.

Unfortunately, the raised keloid scar tissue had resulted in a number of contractures, particularly around the neck and shoulders, which would severely limit his movements, although he would regain some functional motion of his limbs if he completed stretches each day. The skin itself was oddly pigmented, raised and shiny and would probably cause him a great deal of pain and embarrassment—at least until he and everybody around him became accustomed to his altered appearance and abilities.

Carter's initial plan had been to evacuate him from the island as soon as he was well enough to travel. Edith had assured him that she knew a fisherman who would take them across the channel, and would be glad of the help while fleeing the island himself. Although she wouldn't give out his name until things were more certain.
Can't be too careful these days, Doctor.

In the event, once he began to recover, Clement's improvement was so beyond anything Carter could have hoped for that it seemed ridiculous to risk escape.