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There are a number of scenes I have chosen to omit from my tale – from mundanity, irrelevancy, for the sake of the reader’s boredom or my own embarrassment – and by this manner of selective memory, I have been able to reshape the story in my own head into something more literary, more polished, perhaps even beautiful. Years later, my longing for the picturesque prevails. But one such scene sticks in my mind more than any other, a jagged splinter against my smooth narrative that will not allow itself to be sanded down.
When I say this is a secret I mean it sincerely. Among our group of friends, there were dozens upon dozens of “secrets” that would be passed between us, turned over and whispered about, with or without the knowledge of the owner of the secret – I’m sure many of my own secrets were quietly discussed among our circle. Back then there was not really such a thing as a secret, as we were all so close, but I had the good sense to keep this specific occasion to myself completely. As far as I know, only two people knew that it happened, and one of them is dead.
Perhaps I chose not to tell anyone because it was so strange and uncharacteristic, for both of us. Perhaps because I was terrified to tarnish or warp the others’ perception of Henry, or of myself. Or perhaps it remained a secret because I was not sure then – am not sure now – whether it even really happened.
Suffice to say I was inebriated. A sense of lingering, overwhelming drunkenness one gets from drinking consistently for several days, plus a Judy Poovey wet dream of every pill I could get my hands on, and there were plenty of pills in the Corcorans’ house. This was in the strange days after Bunny had died, but before his funeral. Late at night, or early morning. I had emerged from the basement in search of something to drink, but on unscrewing the cap of the first bottle I found, I felt a sudden lurch of illness, and somehow made the sensible decision to fetch myself a glass of water instead.
The kitchen seemed foreboding in the half-light. I hung in the doorway for a moment, my eyes slowly focusing, and then I saw a big lump that was unmistakably Henry-shaped, sitting on the tile floor and leaning back against the cabinets. He did not look up or acknowledge me in any way as I entered the room. Glass of water forgotten, I took a swaying step closer to Henry, crouching down on the floor and awkwardly shuffling towards Henry until I was kneeling in front of him, as if in prayer.
Henry looked ill. His face was pale, his thin mouth slightly open. His eyes were open, but barely, his glasses precariously low on his nose and a dark lick of hair loose over his brow. He was in his shirtsleeves, ghostly white in the darkness, and sitting messily, his legs apart and one wrist draped over his knee, fingers curled, as if grasping an invisible cigarette. His complete stillness was alarming. I had the sudden, awful premonition he was dead.
‘Henry,’ I said, drunkenly attempting to whisper. ‘Henry.’
Henry didn’t move. I looked closer at his face, the red in his cheeks seeming even darker now the colour had drained from the rest of his skin, his dilated pupils looking out at nothing.
‘ Henry ,’ I said again, my voice cracking with childish impatience. I shuffled closer still to Henry, until we were almost touching. I didn’t know what to do. The floor was cold, and my vision was wobbling a little at the edges. At that moment I wanted nothing more than for Henry to wake up and speak to me.
‘Oh, shit,’ I murmured, too drunk to be embarassed at the possibility of Henry waking up and thinking me queer for the way I was nestling into the empty space his huge body had created, or that one of the others would walk in on us and add yet another sharp corner into our already edgy group dynamic. I was completely convinced Henry was dead. Perhaps the others would think I had killed him when they found his body.
My throat was too tight to repeat Henry’s name again. Instead, I pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. I was surprised at the warmth of his skin but did not have the clear-headedness to wonder its significance. I kissed him again, slowly at first then with an increased desperation; on his cheeks, his brow, his nose, finally his mouth. Then I drew back, uncertain, wondering if I had made some terrible mistake, whether Henry would awaken and call me a faggot, whether he had been awake the whole time.
Although it shames me to say it now, these confused thoughts were easy to push away in my confused, drugged state. I kissed Henry’s mouth again, pressing my lips against his in a childish French kiss. I dared not put my tongue in his mouth, but I held the kiss for a long moment, unwilling to pull away. Confused, blurred pictures ticked in my head, and I could not make head nor tail of the emotions I was feeling.
Then, like that of a tectonic plate shifting, there was suddenly a great movement. Too surprised to back away, I fell against Henry as he shifted, sitting up away from the support of the cabinets. His hands moved in the dark, bashing clumsily against my back, as if surprised to find me there. Without my meaning to, the kiss had deepened, my nose pressed awkwardly against Henry’s. I was beside myself with terror, and would have got up and run had Henry’s strong arm not been now pressing against my lower back, trapping me against him. I became aware of the unbelievably strange but not unpleasant sensation of Henry Winter’s tongue slipping into my mouth. He was warm and alive and the experience of kissing him was not terribly different to anyone else I’d ever kissed, except for the frenzied quiver of my heart in my chest that gave the whole experience such a desperate rhythm. I’d never been so aroused or so terrified; I have not been since.
I kissed him with renewed fervour, acutely aware that he could be the last person I ever kissed. Would I find myself at the bottom of some ravine, quietly poisoned with herbs or mushrooms? What on earth was going on inside Henry’s head? Surely he had kissed people before: he was firm and not clumsy, pushing his mouth onto mine with a measured drive. I couldn’t keep my eyes closed, as one is supposed to when kissing: I had to continue my desperate study of Henry’s face, looking for any hint of emotion that might have been previously shrouded in the half-light of the kitchen. I could not tell if Henry’s eyes were open or closed; with his glasses still on the edge of his nose and askew, it was possible he could not see me at all, or that he did not know who I was – no, he knew, he had to have known.
It seemed as if we were kissing for hours. Finally we broke apart and looked at each other. I could not speak. I was too scared to kiss him again.
Henry put his hand on the back of my head, the pad of his big thumb on the back of my neck. It was a stiff, cautious gesture, but inexplicably something inside me broke and I burst into tears, burying my face in Henry’s big shoulder and feeling something almost akin to embarrassment as my body shook with heaving sobs.
I had never seen Henry lost for words before, but it was an awfully long time before he spoke. Even after I had regained my composure and lifted my face from Henry’s shoulder – helpless to my prison of perception, forced to notice the top button of his shirt was undone and that a curl of dark hair was visible on his chest, that I had left a wet tear stain on the shoulder of his shirt – it was still an agonising eternity before Henry spoke.
‘Let’s not speak of this to the others,’ he said, and pushed his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. I could not make out the emotion in his voice, or perhaps I was afraid to try and decipher it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, my voice weak and teary, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing–’
He held up a finger to shush me – instantly my voice ceased to work – and then he leaned closer to me again. Stupidly, frozen in place – I still wonder what could have changed if I’d reached to close the gap – I waited for his lips to touch mine, but at the last moment he changed his mind and drew away. I felt humiliated, suddenly aware of what he must think of me, the way I was still pretty much sitting on his lap, looking up at him desperately for some signal of what to do.
‘I didn’t realise this was how you felt,’ he said.
Oh, God, I thought. No more staying at Henry’s house.
Or perhaps Henry had already known. Perhaps they had all known. I could not think of a single thing to say that would save me from this situation. I closed my eyes and awaited damnation.
A light touch on my jawline. My eyes snapped open again in disbelief, unable to comprehend Henry’s fingers trailing across my skin. He looked at me with his head tilted, as he might look at a plant or a book, with a sort of scientific, detached affection.
‘Why here, for God’s sake?’ he asked.
And a prevailing part of my brain still believes that this didn’t happen, that this was some hallucination or vivid dream, induced by my relentless substance abuse and some longing that I hadn’t quite realised was there. Because it happened too gently, because it was just so damn unrealistic – because as much as I clung to the memory of kissing, and touch, and as much as I held this treasured memory in my head at all times, whenever I looked at Henry I could never make the tender image reconcile with the real Henry, could never plausibly cross the gap between how he was really and how I wanted him to be.
I don’t know why all my insecurities manifested into a homosexual love fantasy for a man who had killed two men and was planning to kill a third, a man who I was not sure was even capable of feeling love, much less plausibly feeling it for myself. I didn’t know how I felt about Henry then and I don’t know how I feel about him now. Perhaps it is less shameful to imagine that it was real, that Henry’s actions were his own rather than my childlike projection of how he might behave, given the opportunity.
In the kitchen, it was real.
‘I thought you were dead,’ I whispered. The terror had made me feel suddenly far more sober. I wanted to touch Henry’s chest but was somehow afraid he would disappear; instead I felt for his hand and touched it. Henry grasped my fingertips loosely, and I curled my fingers around his thumb. His hand was larger than mine, so much so that I felt like a child clinging to a parent’s hand. As if about to cross a road.
Henry did not say I’m not dead , as another man might have, as he despised stating the obvious and did not have the sensitivity to see how it would have reassured me. He looked at me from behind his glasses. I have always felt embarrassed to describe Henry’s eyes as blue, as if it is incriminating for me to have noticed – as one does not often notice the eye colour of one’s male friends unless he is looking in a certain way – but to tell the truth, I often could not take my eyes off Henry’s, even when he was not looking back at me. Now, as he returned my gaze, I wished to be swallowed by the deep blue of his irises, swept into the stormy seas of Neptune and dashed on the rocks. I wished for oblivion and I wanted, shamefully, for it to be Henry’s doing.
I asked him, ‘Why were you sitting in here on the floor?’
Henry pushed his hand through his hair and seemed to be unsure about where to put his hand next, eventually choosing to put it on my hip, his thumb on my hip bone and his fingers resting against my belt. The deliberation of this movement sent shooting sparks through my brain. I was stupidly erect. Perhaps Henry had known this would be our only opportunity – or perhaps this was a complete fabrication, summoned by deep desires that I had previously and since suppressed. I could have never discussed the whole experience with Henry afterwards. What if he had looked at me like I was insane? What if one of the others remembered being in the same room as him that night?
Henry said, evenly, ‘I felt feverish. The tile floor in here stays cold.’
‘Are you still ill?’ I whispered, touching my fingers to his forehead. He was warm, but not burning. I withdrew my hand. Henry’s eyes stayed on me, tracking my every movement.
‘I feel better having slept,’ he said. Then, suddenly, ‘You’re terribly lucky Bunny isn’t here.’
‘What?’ I had not thought of Bunny for hours and I fought to suppress the rising surge of panicked guilt that always hit me when I thought of Bunny.
Henry sighed. ‘I only meant that he would have barged in on us.’
I felt stupid for having not immediately understood what he’d meant.
‘Oh,’ I said, softly. Henry frowned.
‘Are you still terribly drunk?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I was beginning to feel teary again.
‘Did you come here to find me?’ he asked.
The question hung in the air. I had no idea what he wanted me to say – that yes, I’d come to seek him out? That I had only come for a glass of water, that this may have never happened otherwise? – but perhaps Henry was as fearful of an answer as I was, because he changed the subject.
‘I think I shall feel worse when the sun comes up,’ he said. ‘I’m very sensitive to light at the moment.’
His hand was still on my hip. I felt half mad.
‘Shall we go back to bed?’ he said.
My half-asleep brain initially heard him as shall we go to bed and leapt with delight – yes, God, yes – and then I was left breathing heavily in the kitchen, realising what he’d actually said, realising what a fool I was.
Evidently Henry had decided we were finished, as he gently withdrew his hand from my hip – but his fingers still trailed down my thigh for a moment, in a way that could only have been deliberate – and he began to stand up, disentangling himself from me and gripping the kitchen counter for support as he rose to his feet. I did the same, feeling dreamy and light-headed. There was now maybe a foot of space between us.
‘Goodnight, Richard,’ Henry said.
My brain screamed at me that the moment would be lost.
‘Don’t go,’ I said, like a child, pressing my hand to my forehead, ‘shit, Henry – My whole life revolves around you!’
I’d said it too loudly without meaning to.
‘I know,’ he said, in his familiar monotone. ‘I’m sorry. It’ll be over soon.’
‘Don’t go,’ I said again, but quieter, pleading. ‘I love you.’
Henry drew in an audible breath. ‘ Richard ,’ he said, as though taken aback, and as he moved closer I was afraid he’d strike me, or push me to the ground, or put his mouth against my ear and scold me for being idiotic. Each possibility terrified and excited me.
Henry did none of those things. He stepped closer still until we were almost touching, my body trembling with anticipation. I looked up at him and thought of oblivion.
He kissed me again. It was a quick, closed-mouth kiss, and through nearsightedness or illness he managed to miss my mouth almost completely, his lips pressing against my cheek and the corner of my mouth. Then he turned and left, his heavy footsteps thudding through the hallways of the house long after I couldn’t see him anymore.
I’ve never fully been able to explain my feelings for Henry, and probably still can’t; matters having been made worse by his death, of course. I understand his feelings for me even less. It’s hardly worth delving into it – it is too complex, and seems ridiculous outside the context of those years at Hampden. I could not give you a satisfactory explanation for my being aware that Henry may well have planned to murder me too, or at least frame me for murder, and yet I did not care, and would have followed him to the ends of the earth had he asked me to.
I wish he hadn’t died, although I felt a horrible relief when he did, as if after being sucked deeper and deeper into a whirlpool, it had suddenly lost its pull on me and I was miraculously allowed to swim up to the surface and draw in air. Perhaps I wish it had been different. Perhaps I want to see what is at the bottom of the whirlpool, deep below the sea, but the opportunity for that is lost and I know it is foolhardy to swim towards it again. For now I will enjoy the shallows, like everyone else.
I dream of Henry often, and am always relieved when I do. One day I’ll see him again.