Another Time
By Jude
Stringfellow
comments: jude.stringfellow@gmail.com
His cousin’s question hit him somewhat
out in left field, he wasn’t sure how to address it.
“Why does your mum call you ‘Lexy’
anyway? That’s a girl’s name.” But to be honest, Lexy had never really
questioned the matter. Being born Alexander John Wilson, he just thought it was
the easier thing for his mum to do, to shorten the longer first name to a
shorter one. She could have called him John, but he was named after his
grandfather, and he was called John. Even the thought of being called “Johnnie”
was repulsive to the man. At 40 one thinks
about other things in life, not necessarily about why his mum or anyone else would
call him by a name that still others felt wasn’t up to par with the world’s
standards. There weren’t that many Lexy, is it Lexies, who are men; at least he
didn’t think so. Most women who went by the name spelled it with an “i”
at that end. He decided not to let it bother him. This was his 4oth birthday;
he was the guest of honor at the party, he would smile through it as best he
could. Family could be really annoying.
After a few well-wishers had passed
him, slapping him on the back or the bum for good measure, and then taking the
time to either give him a few quid or mention they had meant to bring some but
had forgotten their wallets, Lexy found himself walking from the great room of his late aunt’s robust estate to a smaller less used room, the drawing room she once called
it. The room was where there were chairs and small tables for drinks and
refreshments. The windows in the room seemed overly large, but he didn’t notice
any drawing tables; he supposed the term was just a way to describe a small
room where people talked rather than focusing on some sort of televised
entertainment. There wasn’t a telly in the room either. He wondered how his
aunt and uncle had survived their marriage without a telly. He imagined there
must be one somewhere else in the house.
Sitting on an attractive golden-toned
settee, Lexy sighed a long and exhaustive breath, while at the same time, he
made himself comfortable, he glanced over at the door to be sure he had
remembered to close it behind him. His anxiety was kicking in with so many
people gathered in one place. With most of them rubbing up next to him, touching
his arms, his back, and his backside, he wasn’t completely comfortable being in
the house. He had remembered it from years back, back when he was a kid, back
when he was too young to be taken seriously when he had something serious to
tell his mum and dad about what had happened to him there in the house. He was seven.
He was seven years old. That means it
was now thirty-three years, and thirty-three years to the day because it had been on
the occasion of his seventh birthday that he had last been inside the grand
home; a place he had vehemently had avoided. Why he had agreed to return to it
now must have had something to do with the passing of his uncle the spring
before his late summer birthday. With Uncle Rabbie gone, there wasn’t really a
reason to fear the place; unless of course, someone there knew what happened. No
one knew because when he had gathered the nerve to insist that something had
happened he was immediately met with hush-hush instructions from both his
mum and dad. “We can’t talk about it, ever.” His mum had told him. If it
did happen; and he knew it had, it would never be something to discuss with
family and certainly not with others. This sort of thing can be handled by the
adults. The adults never said a word to anyone. At 40, Lexy realized that when he
heard from his cousins just how beautiful and wonderful the funeral of their father
had been. So many good things were said about Rabbie that day. Lexy knew
no one had mentioned that Scott "Rabbie" Wilson had molested the boy rather than giving
him a quid on his seventh birthday or that he had continued to sexually assault
him for months afterward.
“Oh, this
will be better than a quid Lexy”, said the letch. “This will
be our secret and we can do it every time we see each other if you want to.”
The boy couldn’t lie at that age. What his uncle had done to him did feel
incredible; but if it was such as wonderful game they shared, why was it such a
secret? Aren’t secrets between two people who trust each other supposed to be something
that binds them closer together? Lexy had a secret with his mum at about the
same age too; she would take him to his favorite ice cream store and let him
pick whatever he wanted if he promised to sit still in the corner and wait for
her to return to the front lobby. It usually only took a few minutes while she
talked to Debra Sterling in the back where they kept the ice cream tubs frozen;
Daddy didn’t need to know.
It didn’t take too long before Lexy
shared the gift and secret he had with his uncle with his parents. It may have
been on their way home that night from his party, or it may have been the next day
as they rode the ferry back to the mainland. He never really remembered when he
talked first about it but he was certain that when he did he was made to shut
up about it, never to say it again, and that sort of thing, this sort of thing,
can’t be talked about. That’s how big of a secret it was. Whether he knew it
was wrong, the boy wasn’t sure, but it was in fact a secret and he knew that
from the moment he opened his mouth. Lexy saw his Uncle Rabbie a few times over
the autumn months, and of course, they celebrated Christmas, but not at the big
estate. Rabbie and his family had left the Isle of Skye to travel to Edinburgh’s
outskirt town of Tranent to be with other family members. Lexy let his uncle
know that he had only told his parents, no one else. It was still a secret.
On
Christmas day Lexy’s father entered a room of his father’s home to find the boy
curled up in Rabbie’s lap and whispering into his uncle’s ear. A long and stern look, a glare really, was
exchanged between the men, but nothing else was said. Uncle Rabbie never came
to another party after that. Excuses were made regarding his health. For that
matter, Lexy hadn’t seen his cousins more than a few times over the next thirty-three
years. Uncle Rabbie’s health had kept them from making travel plans as well, it
seemed. His death had somehow released them from their otherwise obligated
restrictions; one or two mentioned the past, but for the most part, it was left
unspoken. Being in the estate didn’t make it any easier for Lexy to enjoy
himself on the Big 40; if anything, he felt closed off. He wasn’t breathing
very deeply. When he took his retreat to the drawing room he couldn’t even
remember if the cake had already been served. He just knew he needed to escape.
When did
it all begin anyway? What led him to this state of heightened anxiety whenever
he thought about being around his own family? It couldn’t have just been the
fact that when he was a little boy he was molested, it had to be more. Maybe it
was the fact that he wasn’t even sure if he belonged to that family. Since
Rabbie Wilson was Murdoch Wilson’s brother and John Wilson’s son, that would
mean he was related to the man his mother married but if he was to believe his
own mum’s words, Lexy wasn’t really even a Wilson! He was a Collins, or at
least he assumed he was a Collins.
It was
during one of his parents’ infamous fights that his father dodged a flying tea
saucer that had been hurled at him by his wife of over a decade after he had accused
her of having another affair. He used the word “another” as if it was an
ongoing thing. His mother’s response was both useless and confusing; she had stated
something like “You didn’t mind me having an affair with you when I was
married to Robert Collins. In fact, if I remember correctly, you rather enjoyed
yourself.” But his father wasn’t
having any of it and retorted that at least he, Murdoch, was a man, and he
could understand if the woman had been with another man, but to cuckold him so that
she could be with a woman was unthinkable!
If he was keeping up with the conversation,
as he tried to remain hidden behind the door of his bedroom, this meant that
his mum had not only had an affair with his father but that she was now having one
with a woman. Then another thought him right between the eyes; his father
had said “After a decade you’d think I’d have figured you out”, a decade
is a period of ten years, but Lexy was 14 when he had heard this particular
fight. What about the years before that? Was Robert Collins his actual father?
Was someone else his actual father? Lexy closed his bedroom door and made an
unscheduled exit through his bedroom window that night. He didn’t return home
for several hours. He needed to think.
Finding out at the age of 14 that you
may not be your father’s child, and you may not have a mother who even loves
you enough to tell you the truth about who you are can be devastating to a boy.
Being an only child didn’t make it easier; there was no one to confess to, no
one to fight with, no one to cry with or share his deepest emotions with.
Emotions were another thing Lexy wasn’t really allowed to express in the Wilson
home. It’s almost as if speaking of one’s feelings somehow lessened their Scottishness
by a degree or two; couldn’t happen. Murdoch saw to that. Upper stiff lip and
all, even if that was an English thing, it was a Wilson thing as well. Somewhere along the way their motto seemed to take shape in the words “Never let
them see you cry”. Well, here he was turning 40 and Lexy needed to cry; and he
did. He did so in a room that could have been a trigger point if he had allowed
it to be, but instead, he willed himself to allow it to be a place where he
could confront the very event that caused so much turmoil.
Maybe only a few moments passed in real-time, it seemed that way to the visitors and guests just beyond the door. One
or two of them had seen Lexy make his retreat. Because everyone in the house
had been there before, they knew the larger-than-usual windows were actually
French doors, and that they led directly to the back garden pool and guest house.
More than one cousin had spent the summer months enjoying the poolside
pleasures. Lexy wondered silently if these same cousins, not the sons or daughters
of Uncle Rabbie, but the other cousins, the daughters and one son of his father
and Rabbie’s sister Julia; were fallen victims to the hands and mouth of
their uncle or was it just something Lexy endured alone? Again, no one to ask
directly, it wasn’t something you brought up under ordinary circumstances.
When the door opened, and Lexy could
see clearly the shy and intimate face of his sweet cousin Renee; his Aunt Julia’s
firstborn, he knew he was in good company.
As Renee quietly shut the door she allowed him to see her overly
exaggerated face making a funny sort of relieved expression as if to congratulate
him on finding the hidden spot where anyone could step away from the mayhem of
reality, and collide into the soft and inviting cushions of a world long since
forgotten. The drawing room of an older woman was a haven to them both;
something they could have shared a thousand times if Lexy’s father and Uncle
Rabbie were on speaking terms during the past thirty-three years. Lexy quietly
smiled at Renee, deciding to be rather blunt rather than coy.
“You found me.” He spoke directly.
“It wasn’t so difficult. You halfway caught my eye before you came into the room. It’s always been my place to
hide, but I can share.” She
answered.
“Has it always been this way with
the Wilsons? Have there always been dozens of people milling about and taking
over the place? I don’t remember I guess because when I was just a boy, I
remember being held back from most of the crowd because I was so little, I may
be squashed.” He half laughed, but only half, knowing that most of what he
said was true.
The two cousins sat a few feet from one
another holding the same golden-colored throw pillows tightly, as if hugging
them made their existence better. Renee was a few years older than Lexy and
remembered the rumors that spread quickly after his unfortunate seventh birthday
party, the one where he forgot to take some of his presents with him, but had
never returned to retrieve them either. Renee’s mother hadn’t thought to bring
them with her to Edinburgh, to give them over to Murdoch. The presents were
either given to his cousins, which is the most likely scenario, or they were
simply binned and forgotten. The thought of mailing the toys had never entered Uncle Rabbie's or Aunt Claudia’s mind.
Claudia Anne Baskerun Wilson, the aunt
of all aunts. Renee remembered her well enough, but upon her death a few years
earlier, Renee was shocked to understand that neither the house nor any of her
own possessions were to be distributed to her children until the death of her spouse
Scott Andrew Wilson; her husband and joint survivor of the estate and all that
came with it. How no one in her family had thought to force a prenuptial
agreement between the two is surprising, but again, having only been a younger
woman at the time her aunt passed from this world, Renee was certain she had no
inkling of an idea as to what was and what was not legitimate regarding the marriage
of the Rabbie Wilsons; their uncle had kept his lips tight where that was concerned, even
if he opened them to things he should not have, to the children who visited.
Renee was the first to draw emotional
blood. “Aunt Claudia never knew how he was. You couldn’t have told her
anything about Rabbie that didn’t fit into her already iron-clad box of how
wonderful she believed him to be.”
With a glance of surprise that held its own tinge of embarrassment,
Lexy questioned her, more or less feeling out what he could, to see what she
knew. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.” He started. “Sure,
you do. You would; of all people who would know, you would know.” Was her
curt and well-directed response.
Adjusting himself into an even more protective posture using his pillow
as a shield, Lexy chanced to look his older cousin in the eyes, those watering
sweet clear blue eyes, and without a word, he nodded his agreement. Renee
quietly slipped her left hand out from under the pillow she held and offered it
to her cousin. In silence they sat; his head lowered, her eyes welling up for a
second time in only a few minutes.
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