Page 68 of Broken Country

“Of course.”

Leo crushes my fingers with his own. His body is trembling.

Think, think. What comes next? Do I make a dash for the phone? Would Jimmy fire at me? Somehow, I don’t think so. I am his brother’s wife and he thinks of me as his sister, has told me so many times.

“Gabriel!” I yell, coming to my senses. “Don’t go out there. It’s dangerous.”

Too late. I hear Gabriel’s boots running along the hall, a bolt being unlatched, the front door opening.

Sometimes you get a chance, mere seconds, perhaps, when you can avert a tragedy before it happens. This is mine. My moment. My chance. But I don’t take it. I don’t run after Gabriel and throw myself at Jimmy’s mercy, begging him to put down the gun before any blood can be shed. Instead, I make a foolish choice, one that will turn all our lives into a horror show and keep me awake night after night with an endless parade of “if onlys.”

I decide to stay where I am, cowering beneath the table with Leo.

“Jimmy’s going to kill him, isn’t he?” Leo whimpers, and then I feel it, the seep of warm liquid pooling beneath me as he lets go of his bladder. Poor boy. Poor baby. He’s far too young for all of this.

“I’m sorry,” he says, weeping now, and I pull him into me, the scent of his urine sharp in my nostrils.

“We’ll be all right, I promise.”

Why do adults do this? Why do they promise things they have no way of being able to deliver?

“Your dad will talk to Jimmy and make him see sense. Trust me, Jimmy is not a killer.”

“He is, Beth. He killed my dog.”

“Oh, Leo,” I say, resting my forehead against his for a second.

The dog shooting that began it all. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Part FourFrank

1968

Everyone in Hemston had their own view about what happened that night: How the young farmer lost his life. Some thought Frank Johnson had finally flipped and shot his brother after an argument. God knows, they said, pausing to chat as they collected their milk and papers from the village shop, he’d had more put upon him in the last few years than any man could be reasonably expected to take.

The first story, broken the next morning by theDaily Express, had caused shock waves in the village with its stark headline: “Novelist’s Love Tryst Ends in Death.”

To think, people said, putting the kettle on for another Nescafé, lingering over their Rice Krispies and Weetabix, their hot buttered toast, something somenacinghad happened right on their doorstep. It was more lurid and shocking than one of Gabriel Wolfe’s novels.

Back then, only the sparest facts were known. Frank Johnson had been arrested for the murder of his brother, Jimmy. Jimmy, known to be unstable, had gone on a ten-hour drinking spree and threatened to kill Beth Johnson’s lover, Gabriel. How it ended up that Jimmy was the one who got shot, was anyone’s guess.

And guess was what the villagers most liked to do.

As the weeks passed, more details emerged. Frank Johnson pleaded not guilty to the dual charges of murder or manslaughter and was released on bail while he awaited trial. He and his wife kept to themselves in the intervening months, never seen in the village, although Frank could be spied on his tractor from time to time. Stories keptappearing in the press. Every paper, be it broadsheet or tabloid, wanted a piece of Gabriel Wolfe’s fall from grace. A former pupil at the Immaculate Conception Convent toldThe Daily Telegraphabout the licentious love affair which began when Gabriel and Beth were teenagers. TheMirrorran a piece about their open-air “sexploits” alongside a photograph of the lake at Meadowlands. Neither Beth Johnson nor Gabriel Wolfe was available for comment.

As the date for the murder trial drew closer, the villagers were buzzing with excitement. It would be at the Central Criminal Court, in London, and many of them planned to go along and watch. Frank Johnson in the dock, Gabriel Wolfe called to testify as a witness; it was their very own Hemston soap opera.

Days before the trial was due to begin came a further shock.

Frank Johnson had broken his bail conditions and was now awaiting trial in Wandsworth Prison.

The Trial

My former lover is on the witness stand, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, the same one he wore to Jimmy and Nina’s wedding. Opposite him in the dock is my husband, also in his navy wedding suit, the only one he owns. If only we could turn the clock back to that night, to the foolish conversation Gabriel and I had behind our shield of elm trees. Or wind it further, to the day a lurcher tore into our field and slaughtered our lambs.

I have sat opposite Frank at our kitchen table day in, day out for so many years, I know every centimeter of his face, his body. But this man looks almost a stranger viewed from above. I gaze at him until my eyes hurt from looking, until my heart can no longer take it.

It is my first sighting of the jury: The men and women who hold my husband’s fate in their hands. Will they hear how Frank was a parent to Jimmy as much as a brother, his friend, his guide, and realize he would never have hurt him, let alone murdered him?

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