The Witch Elm

by Tana French

  “Yeah,” I said. “That it did.”

  “I wanted to do more stuff like that—I mean, not like that, but stuff that made a solid difference. Stuff with weight. Smoking Athelstan’s hash and singing around campfires was too fluffy. It was light. I’d met Tom a month or two before I headed off to Cornwall, and he was obviously mad about me, but I hadn’t even had room to think about whether I was into him. Except when I did think about him, he felt like he had weight. Getting together with him would be serious; it wouldn’t be like snogging Athelstan for a laugh. I pretty much knew if I snogged Tom, I’d end up marrying him. So I came home and rang him.”

  “Thank God,” Leon said. “He was hanging off me like a puppy. Great big moony eyes, asking me over and over when you were coming back. I’d have been a lot nicer if I’d known you were into him. I told him you’d married Ethelbert in a naked Wiccan ceremony at Stonehenge.”

  “I know. He didn’t believe you.” Susanna gave him the finger. “Same for having the kids: not that it felt more important than getting a PhD or whatever else I could have done; it just felt more solid. A difference I could see, right there in front of me. We made two whole new people. It doesn’t get more concrete than that.” To me: “I know you always thought I was insane for getting knocked up so young. And I know you’ve never been crazy about Tom. But it made sense to me.”

  Leon was watching her curiously. “God, I never had any of that. The exact opposite, actually.”

  “But you did stuff that mattered,” Susanna said, turning towards him, surprised. “You came out, that autumn. I always thought it was because of Dominic. No?”

  “Oh, totally. I’d probably still be in the closet, if it wasn’t for that. I’d been agonizing for years.”

  “It wasn’t 1950,” I said. “You weren’t going to get shunned and, and, tarred and feathered.”

  “I know that, thanks,” Leon said, with a flick of asperity. “I knew exactly what would happen. I’d hear even more shitty stereotype jokes, I’d lose a couple of friends, and Dad would try to convince me it was a phase. I could handle all that. It was the thought of people seeing me as something different. Not being just a person to them any more, not being just me, ever again; being a gay. If I said something snotty, it wouldn’t be because I had a point or because I was in a bad mood or because I’ve always been a stroppy bastard; it would be because gays are bitchy. If I was upset about something, it wouldn’t be because I had a good reason, it would be because they’re so dramatic. I’m sure this seems like a non-issue to you”—me—“but it wasn’t to me. On the other hand, I wasn’t mad about the idea of spending the rest of my life in the closet, either. I wanted to have boyfriends, for God’s sake, hold hands in the pub, bring them home to meet my parents; that shouldn’t be too much to ask. I just felt totally paralyzed. I thought I’d be stuck that way forever, rock and a hard place. But after Dominic . . .”

  He reached for the poker and stirred the fire, which shot up a ragged, gallant spurt of flame. “The whole thing looked totally different. If people didn’t see me the same way once I came out, who cared? I’m not talking about being brave, or some YOLO shite. Just . . .” He shrugged. “They’d be out of my life soon enough anyway. Nothing lasts forever, and I don’t mean that in an emo way, I’m being factual. Dominic was enormous in my life for years, this huge presence looming over every single thing, I went to sleep thinking about him and had nightmares about him all night and woke up in the morning dreading him. And then we did this one thing, it only took a minute or two, and he was gone. Just gone. It’s hard to think of anything as permanent, after that. What you’ve got”—to Susanna—“the husband and the kiddies and the mortgage, all that ever-after stuff, it’s never felt like an option.”

  “Do you wish it did?” Susanna asked. For the first time she looked worried, twisting on the sofa to peer at Leon in the dimness. “Do you wish you’d gone like me, instead?”

  Leon thought that over, nudging charred bits of wood delicately towards the heart of the fire. “No,” he said. “Not dissing what you’ve got, but it’s not my style. I’m happy the way I am. It’s got its downsides—I’ve dumped every boyfriend I’ve ever had, or else made them dump me, and I feel like a total shit every time. But I like the feeling that anything’s possible. I could be in Mauritius, this time next year, or Dubrovnik.” He glanced up at Susanna, smiling. “I love places, you know,” he said. “I always have. The less I know about them, the better. The Yorkshire moors: don’t they sound amazing? All that space and heather and Viking place names? And New York, and Goa, and . . . Once I get to know them a bit, the shine wears off and I get itchy feet, but this way, that’s OK, because I’m not tied down. I don’t have to pick one; I can have them all.” He grinned. “And I also really like guys, and I don’t have to pick just one of those, either.”

  Susanna smiled back at him. “Good,” she said. “Send me postcards.” She reached out a hand; Leon wove his fingers through hers and squeezed them. In the fireplace a splinter of wood caught, flared.

  They felt alien, as if they were made of some material I didn’t understand and shouldn’t touch. The curve of Susanna’s cheek white and smooth as polished rock, under the layer of moving firelight. The long shadow of Leon’s arm skimming across the wall as he pushed back his hair.

  “So,” Susanna said. She leaned back into the corner of the sofa and watched me. “There you go.”

  “Right,” I said. “OK.”

  “Not what you were expecting?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “Are you OK with it?”

  I said, “I have no idea what that would even mean.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Susanna said. “Give it time.”

  Leon was watching me sideways. “Tell us you’re not planning to run to Rafferty,” he said: joking, except it wasn’t a joke.

  “What?” This had never even occurred to me. “No.”

  “Of course he’s not,” Susanna said. “Toby’s not stupid. Even if he wanted us to go to prison, which he doesn’t, it’s not like telling Rafferty would make that happen. It would just kick off huge amounts of mess and chaos, and when that cleared, we’d be pretty much where we are now. Everything’s fine as it is.” She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Right?”

  “Not if Rafferty still thinks I did it.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t. And even if he does, there’s nothing he can do about it.” When I didn’t answer: “Seriously, Toby, chill out. It’s all under control.”

  “But,” I said, looking from one of them to the other. There were things I needed to ask, vital things, but I couldn’t figure out what they were. “Don’t you feel bad about it?”

  As soon as I’d said it, it sounded like a stupid question, sanctimonious and faux-naïve. I expected some barbed putdown, but they were silent for a moment, glancing at each other, considering.

  “No,” Leon said. “I’m sure that sounds terrible. But no.”

  “Not for Dominic,” Susanna said. “For his parents, yes. I didn’t at first, because it had to be partly their fault he was such an entitled arsehole; but once I had the kids, yeah. But I’ve never felt bad for him. I’ve actually tried to. But I don’t. Fuck him.”

  “I mean, I wish it had never happened,” Leon said, “any of it. I wish we’d never met him. But we did, so . . .”

  “Do you?” Susanna asked, interested. “Really?”

  “Well, I wish I hadn’t had to kill anyone. You don’t?”

  Susanna thought that over. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts to have kids, if none of that had happened. It’s not like Dominic was this once-off supervillain; the world’s full of people like him. If there’s absolutely fuck-all you can do about them except lie back and take it, and then listen to people explaining how it’s not a big deal? Bring kids into that? Now”—reaching to flip the blanket over her t
oes; the room was getting cold—“at least I know, if anyone tries to fuck with my kids, I’ve got a decent shot at taking them down.”

  Her story about the doctor, me wondering through my hash-and-booze haze why she was telling it. A warning to me, I had thought, but of course I had got it all wrong. That had been for Leon, nothing to do with me, and it had been a reassurance: Don’t worry. Look what we can do.

  “It’s not like ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’” Leon said to me, through another cigarette and the click of the lighter. “We haven’t spent the last ten years hearing skeleton fingers scrabbling inside the wych elm whenever we walked past it.”

  “Every now and then there’d be a storm and I’d be like, I hope that tree doesn’t come down,” Susanna said, “but that’s pretty much it. I saw the wych elm every time we came here, and nine times out of ten Dominic didn’t even cross my mind. I’ve sat against it.”

  “Although,” Leon said, with an exasperated glance at her, “it would have been really great if you’d kept him in mind enough to teach your kids not to mess about in that bloody tree.”

  “I did. I told them a million times. Zach was just looking for attention, he was all wound up because of Hugo—”

  “Yeah, but you knew he was like that. You could’ve left him with your parents, or—”

  “I didn’t know Hugo was going to call some big meeting. And anyway, how would that have been better? Dominic would still be out there. We’d have to deal with it sooner or later. At least now—”

  Bickering like kids, like someone had dropped someone’s phone or spilled Coke on someone’s homework. “I don’t get it,” I said, loudly enough that they both stopped and looked at me.

  “What?” Susanna asked.

  “You fucking killed someone. You’re”—the pair of them looking at me inquiringly, interested, it was hard to stay focused—“you’re murderers. How—” How are you not fucked up is what I meant, you should be fucked up, it’s not fair— “how is that not a big deal? How do you not feel guilty?”

  Silence again, and those glances. I could feel them considering, not how much was safe to tell me, but how much I would understand.

  “Has there ever been someone,” Susanna said, “who treated you like you weren’t a person? Not because of anything you’d done; just because of what you were. Someone who did whatever they wanted to you. Anything they felt like.” Her eyes on me were unblinking and so bright that for a wild moment I was afraid of her. “And you were totally powerless to do anything about it. If you tried to say anything, everyone thought you were ridiculous and whiny and you should quit making such a fuss because this is normal, this is the way it’s supposed to be for someone like you. If you don’t like it, you should have been something else.”

  “Of course there hasn’t,” Leon said. Something in his voice brought back the kid he had been, scuttling along school corridors, eyes down, huddled under the weight of his bookbag. “Who would ever?”

  “Has there?”

  “Yes,” I said. For some reason it wasn’t just the two men in my apartment I thought of—them of course, sweat-and-milky smell horribly close and the blows crunching in, but in a confused whirl it was also the neurologist in the hospital, the clammy pallor of him and the fold of his neck over his shirt collar as he stared blandly back at me: It depends on multiple factors.

  What fac, factors? Thick-tongued and idiot-sounding. The near-concealed pity and distaste sliding across his eyes, the moment when he demoted me to something not worthy of explanations, branded and filed away, no appeal possible.

  It’s very complicated.

  Yeah but but but, can you, can—

  Why don’t you concentrate on your physio. Leave the medical issues to us.

  Kick in the ribs and something snapping, stupid cunt think you’re fucking great

  “OK,” Susanna said. “What did you want to do to them?”

  It stopped my throat. Not for anything in the world could I have put it into words, what I had wanted to do and how badly. I shook my head.

  “And how did it feel when you didn’t?”

  The memory flared all through my body: fist throbbing where I had smashed it into the wall over and over, leg one great bruise where I had punished it with every heavy object I could find, head pounding blindingly from slap after slap. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Now imagine,” Susanna said. She was looking at me very steadily, through the smoky air. “Imagine you did it.”

  Air rushed into my chest and for an enormous light-headed moment I felt it: the impossible ecstasy of it, almost too huge to be survived, the vast lightning rush of power and my fists and feet thundering down again and again, bones crunching, hoarse screams, on and on until finally: stillness; nothing left but obliterated gobbets of pulp at my feet and me standing tall, streaming blood and gasping air like a man rising from some purifying river, into a world that was mine again. My heart felt like it would burst free of my ribs and soar like a Chinese lantern up and away, through the window glass and out over the dark trees. For an insane second I thought I was going to cry.

  Susanna said, “That’s what it was like.”

  For a long time no one said anything. Things wavered in a sly draft, flames and high cobwebs, pages of a book lying open on the coffee table, the soft edges of Susanna’s hair.

  Leon said, “Aren’t you happy?”

  I laughed, a harsh astonished crack that came out too loud. “Happy?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. Or anyway not anything that could get you in trouble. That’s not good news?” When I didn’t answer: “Should we not have told you?”

  I said, “I have no idea.”

  “I didn’t want to. I thought we were all better off just leaving it. But Su thought you should know.”

  “I felt bad about making you think you might have done it,” Susanna said. “But that seemed like the best way to handle things at the time. And I was right, wasn’t I? It all worked out in the end.”

  I let out a hard, breathless laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “It’s over. The cops are gone. We can forget the whole thing.”

  “Yeah. Melissa’s gone, too.”

  “That’s just because all the fuckery and drama got to be too much for her. I don’t blame her. Now you can go tell her it’s over, you had nothing to do with it, the end. You’ll be fine.”

  “She’ll be over the moon,” Leon said, peering earnestly at me through the dimness. “She’s mad about you.”

  “Sweep her off her feet,” Susanna said, tossing her cigarette butt into the last of the fire. “Live happily ever after.”

  Rain swept softly against the window, the fire fluttered. I felt like there was something else they should be telling me, some crucial secret that would illuminate this whole story so that all its rotten shadows blazed to life with a great transforming meaning, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what that might be.

  Twelve

  It seems obvious that, just like Leon said, that revelation should have improved things. I wasn’t a murderer after all; what could be better news than that? Plus—yay for Toby the Boy Detective—I had finally found out what had happened to Dominic, just like I had wanted to; and to put the cherry on top, it was pretty clear that Rafferty couldn’t do anything to anyone, we were all home free and clear. Everything should have felt, within the limits of the situation, just creamy-peachy.

  And yet, somehow, it didn’t. I had no idea what to do with this new state of affairs. Just for example, probably I should have at least done a little bit of ethical debating with myself about whether or not to tell anyone (my father, for one, didn’t he deserve to know that Hugo and I were both innocent?), but I didn’t. I didn’t have it in me; I had nothing left with which to debate this, assess this, think about this at all. It was like Susanna and Leon had dumped an enormous IKEA packag
e in the house: presumably it would change the landscape if and when I got up the energy to assemble it, but until then it was just there, in the middle of everything, where I barked my shin or banged my elbow on it every time I tried to get past.

  I went about my routine methodically: breakfast and a shower, then up to the study for my day’s work. While I didn’t go as far as actually cooking, I did take breaks at the proper times to eat random assortments of things I found in the kitchen—someone, probably my mother, kept it stocked up with lavish quantities of stuff that didn’t need preparation. After dinner I sat in the living room with Hugo’s laptop and clicked around the internet until my brain shut down, at which point I went to bed. You’d expect I would have spent the nights tossing and turning, racked by grief and moral dilemmas and whatever else, or at least having more of those gruesome nightmares, but actually I slept like the dead.

  I was doing well with Haskins’s diaries; now that I’d got the hang of his handwriting, I was ripping through them at a great pace. He went through a stage of trying to get the baby’s father’s name out of Elaine McNamara, who pissed him off royally by refusing to say. Haskins’s voice had become very clear in my head: nasal, heavily emphasized, overwhelmingly genteel, with a triumphant little throat-clear every time he had made some irrefutable point. One time, when I had been working for too long on a little too much Xanax (I was taking a fair amount again, not because I was tense exactly—I hadn’t gone back to pacing all night or beating myself up, none of that—but because it seemed like a much more sensible way to live), I asked him if he wanted coffee.

  The only real change to the routine was the Sunday lunches, which by unspoken agreement weren’t happening any more. Someone called in every couple of days, presumably to make sure I wasn’t rocking and mumbling in a wardrobe or decomposing at the foot of the stairs, but I wasn’t very good conversation and they never stayed for long. Oliver gave me some speech about how we were all grieving but life went on, which I had absolutely no idea how to respond to; Miriam gave me a purple rock that promoted psychic healing, which I promptly lost. Leon rang me a few times; when I didn’t pick up, he left long, tentative, confused voice messages. I didn’t hear from Susanna at all, which was fine with me.