Page 6 of Just for Me
“And it is even more than being ugly and hairy and battered,” René said, taking another swallow of wine. “You are a coward. Yes, I said it. A coward. We can never go anywhere together, I can never tell anyone your name, not even my family, not even my friends, and why? Because you are afraid. Here I am, facing the world as I was made, while you, who are so tough, who are so brave and strong, are still hiding. You hide behind us, behind those like me. You let us face it for you, so you can keep your position, so the people cannot say, ‘We don’t want to watch a rugby player who is having sex with other men. Get him off this team. Get him away.’ You hide, and you make me hide, too. You are a coward, and I cannot be with a coward anymore.”
Maybe Luke wasn’t a coward now. Except that he must be, because he was scared in a way he’d never been at school or out on the paddock in the toughest test match of his life. In a way he’d only ever felt when he was injured. He could handle any pain, any fatigue. Handle it, and rise above it. He couldn’t handle being helpless, and he couldn’t handle people seeing him that way.
He was pretty sure Hayden was gay, too. What he’d said … he had to be gay, didn’t he? And handsome and charming, with good hair, and hecouldtell thehistoiresand entertain the room. You only had to look at him to see it, but what did it matter? What did any of it matter, now?
Maybe he could never have made a good impression, but he could have done better than this, because he was still crying. It was summer in New Zealand, and the room was full of people and paint, but he was cold, and he was alone. Hot with embarrassment and tears, and cold anyway. As cold as the river Tyne. As cold as winter in the north of England.
As cold as his mother’s house.
He didn’t want to think about this. He wanted to think about anything else, but here it was, because he’d told his mother already, and she hadn’t wanted to know. Now he wasback in New Zealand and had told heaps more people. He was stripped bare, his secret out there for everyone to see. Out there for the rugby world to see. Out there for hisdadto see. He’d torpedoed his life, and he was panicking.
He couldn’t be tough anymore, and he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known how to be tough. Not in primary school, where he’d learned to fight. Not at home, where he’d learned to shut up, and not at the boarding school he’d been dropped into at age nine, where he’d learned four things. One, that knowing how to fight was still a good thing, no matter how posh the school was, if you were nine and a New Boy, or if you just couldn’t stand to watch other kids being tortured. Two, that being good at sport was even better than knowing how to fight, and Grant Armstrong’s sons were always going to be big, strong, and good at sport. And as Grant was a rugby coach, what Luke was best at was rugby.
He’d tried to make that cricket instead, so he’d have his own thing that his dad couldn’t touch, but the more he grew, the broader he got. He could go hard, and he could even go fast, but he couldn’t go fast enough for cricket. Mostly, he could lift heavy things and get stronger, and he could stand solid and hit his man harder than anybody else, and he liked to. That wasn’t cricket. That was rugby. Not the flash parts, sidestepping like a gazelle through the tacklers and across the chalk, being lifted by your mates and slapped on the back because you’d scored the try. The parts you did in the dark places, the parts that took nothing but grunt. He’d been a hooker, and then he’d been a prop, and a prop was what he’d stayed. A life in the front row, and the body and face to match.
Four things. Thing Three, that there was a name for what he was, and it was shameful. And Thing Four. That he was on his own.
Even in a rugby squad, that band of brothers, he was alone. He had a secret, and he couldn’t let down his guard, or the one place he shone, his one spot of safety, would be gone.
And his dad would find out.
All of that, maybe, was why, on that first day of school, when his mum had stopped the car in front of the forbidding brick building, with its tower and arched windows that looked like the scariest kind of church, he hadn’t thought about how his parents were getting divorced and his dad was going back to New Zealand. He hadn’t thought that he was scared about that, and scared to be here. There was no point in it and nobody to care except Kane, and Kane couldn’t know he was scared, or he'd feel even worse. So Luke had turned and said to his brother, who was only six and sitting there curled into himself, the tears running down his cheeks, “I’ll see you at half term.”
“Don’t leave,” Kane said, turning an anguished face to him. Kane hadn’t learned yet that you couldn’t say things like that. “Why can’t you still go to school with me? Why can’t you stayhomewith me?”
“I will go to school with you,” Luke said. “Soon as you’re nine. You’ll come here and be with me.”
“But that’slong,”Kane said.
“Stop blubbing,” their mum said. “Nobody wants to see that. If you have to cry, cry in bed.”
Luke wanted to do something, to say something, but he didn’t know what to say. Kane was too soft sometimes, yeh, but that was because he was kinder than any of them, and more loving, and wasn’t that meant to be a good thing, even if it made you soft? Luke’s Year Four teacher had said it was good to be kind and thoughtful, but his parents didn’t care about that, and how would he know which was right? He didn’t know what to do, so he just said again, “I’ll see you at half term.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Kane asked.
“No,” Luke lied. “This is where I have to go, so I’m going.” And he did. He got out of the car and walked up the stairs, through the knots of other boys, the tearful mums, the proud dads, and didn’t think anything at all.
He’d kept his promise, though, as long as he could. He’d looked after Kane once his brother had come to join him three years later. Kane hadn’t had nearly as much coaching from their dad, other than a short visit to New Zealand every year at Christmas and a longer one in August, but he had more natural talent than Luke. At rugby, and at cricket, too. Luke still worried about how soft he was, but sport would help with that. Eventually.
Besides, Luke was there. He wasn’t going to let anyone bully his brother, and every boy in school knew it. He might only be twelve, but he didn’t care about pain. Most boys did care. When their nose got bloodied or they got hit in the ribs, they stopped. Luke didn’t stop.
That was what he thought for a term, anyway. Until his mum collected the two of them for Christmas and told Luke in the car on the way home, “That’s it for you, then. You’re off to En Zed.”
“What?” he asked.
“That was always the plan,” she said. “You stay here until you’re twelve, and then you go to your dad, so he can make a man of you.”
Luke didn’t say,I’m not a man. I’m a boy.No point. He said, “You didn’t tell me that.” His voice cracked, because the dread was hollowing out his belly, tightening his throat, but he kept his face as expressionless as he could, so she wouldn’t see. You couldn’t keep from feeling bad, but you could keep other people from knowing.
“Of course I did,” she said. “It was always the plan.”
“No,” Kane said. Just one word, and this time, he didn’t cry. He’d learned. But his face had gone pale, his hands gripping the seat.
Luke asked, “When?”
“After the New Year,” his mum said. “The New Zealand term starts at the end of January, but Dad’ll need some time to get you kitted out, and you’ll need to be able to shift for yourself once his season starts and you’re in school. You’ll have to start the school year over again, of course, but that’s good. Make you a bit older when it’s time for First XV selection.” The rugby squad that would compete for the national secondary schools championship. That was years and years away, and every boy who played rugby wanted to be on that squad and most would never get there, but it didn’t matter. His dad believed in planning. He believed in discipline. He believed in structure. And he believed that all those things would make his sons elite rugby players, because theywerehis sons.
Luke had discipline, and he had structure. That didn’t mean he had to like this. “Why am I going?” he asked. “Why should I? Why should Kane? Dad doesn’t want us.”
