Imperfect Harmony (9 page)

“Okay, I think that’s good enough,” Rhys said. “Shall we start with the ones we did yesterday? I made a list of them. Then we can iron out those harmonies before moving on to something new.”

They sang through the songs they’d performed at the home, pausing now and again to decide on who would keep to the tune and who would split off. John got some paper and a couple of pens so they could make a few notes to remind themselves.

Once they’d finished going through Rhys’s list, Rhys said, “How about ‘Danny Boy’? I saw you had it open earlier on the piano. That’s a popular one. I usually do it with the guitar, though.”

“Yes, it’s probably better on the guitar, a bit more gentle and lyrical,” John said. He paused, heart pounding. “I was, um, thinking….” He looked down at the floor as Rhys looked at him questioningly. The swirly pattern in the pale green carpet made him feel faintly nauseous. Why had his mum ever thought these designs were a good idea? “I was thinking… perhaps I could join in with the fiddle. It lends itself well to that one, maybe for an instrumental break?”

In the silence following his words, John heard the thud of his heart in his ears. He dragged his gaze reluctantly up to meet Rhys’s eyes.

“I think that would be brilliant,” Rhys said softly. “If you want to?”

“I want to try.” John had to force the words out. He felt as though he’d swallowed a lump of food that was too big to go down. He took a shaky breath. “I’d better tune her.”

“Her?” Rhys raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I’ve always thought of her like that.”

David used to tease him, say he should give “her” a name. “Violet the violin” had been his suggestion. John had rolled his eyes. “Way too obvious,” he’d said.

John stood. The few steps across the room felt momentous. He lifted the violin out of the case and plucked each string in turn, adjusting them until they were back in tune. “Poor thing. It’s been far too long.”

Rhys watched him in silence.

When he was satisfied with the tuning, John put the fiddle down and picked up the bow. He tightened it, put some rosin on the hairs, and finally lifted the instrument again and fitted it carefully on his shoulder.

Before he had time to change his mind or to think better of it, he launched himself into “Danny Boy.” Over the years he’d played it at countless music sessions in pubs, a song he knew so well, he didn’t have to think about what his fingers were doing. Well-trodden neural pathways told his fingers where to go to play the tune that was in his head, and the fiddle sang for him, the tone haunting, clear, and perfect.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rhys listened, entranced, as John played. John coaxed the melody from the strings with absolute confidence. If he hadn’t known, Rhys would never have guessed that John hadn’t played for so long. John closed his eyes, lost in the music, his body swaying slightly as the notes soared, spilling out of the instrument like something tangible in the stillness of the room.

Rhys’s breath caught in his throat and he shivered at the raw beauty of it, the power in the simple tune.

When John finished, he opened his eyes and blinked, as though he’d momentarily forgotten where he was.

He focused on Rhys and gave a small smile. “I haven’t forgotten how to play, then.”

Rhys shook his head, not trusting himself to get any words out past the lump in his throat.

“Can I…?” John lifted his bow again. “There’s something I need to do.”

Rhys nodded mutely. He felt privileged at being present for this moment. It was like witnessing new life, a flower opening in time-lapse photography, the arrival of spring, the rebirth of something magical. Whatever John needed was fine with him. Rhys set his guitar aside, leaned back in the chair, and waited.

John started slowly, quietly. Rhys recognised the tune although he couldn’t place it. Haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful, the music grew to fill the room. It cut through Rhys making the lump grow in his throat and tears prickle in his eyes. The melody wasn’t in a minor key, yet there was somehow loss woven into every note—sadness, and a yearning that was almost unbearable.

But there was hope there too, and as John drew out the final notes, Rhys was left breathless, wanting, and full of too many emotions to name.

A single tear slid down John’s cheek as the last note died away.

“That was so beautiful,” Rhys said hoarsely. “What’s it called?”

John put the violin gently down in its case as he replied. “Ashokan Farewell.” He wiped the tear away and turned to Rhys. “David, my partner, used to love it. I wanted to play it at his funeral… but I couldn’t.” His voice cracked. “I couldn’t do it.” He hung his head and his shoulders shook with a sob.

Instinctively Rhys got to his feet and put his arms around John. It was the only way he knew how to comfort him. If he tried to speak, he’d end up crying too. His own grief and loss were all tangled up with John’s. There was nothing useful he could say, but he could empathise. There was nothing anyone could ever say.

Death sucked, losing people sucked. It was as simple as that.

“I’m sorry,” he managed. He squeezed John tighter, and John hugged him back, burying his face in Rhys’s shoulder and letting out another ragged sob. “It’s fucking shit.”

“Yeah.” John’s reply was muffled. “You can say that again.”

“It’s crap that you have to go on without him. It never goes away, even when it gets better… it never stops hurting completely.” Rhys’s throat ached and his voice was raw. But now the words were flowing they wouldn’t stop. “It’s as if you had a story together and it was never finished. You never got to know the ending because a whole fucking chunk of the pages have been torn out of the back of the book. And it’s so unfair.”

The old familiar anger was back, boiling in the pit of Rhys’s stomach. He’d been so angry after Lyle died that there’d been almost no room for grief. Angry with the universe, with himself for the decisions he’d made that night, with Lyle for being careless. He’d hated everyone and everything, consumed by rage and pain. The only way out of it had been oblivion, and he’d been cheated of that too and forced to carry on living. Now, he was glad about that. But for a long time, he’d wished his mum had given up on him.

John pulled away, not completely, just enough that he could see Rhys’s face. He put his hand on Rhys’s cheek, holding him so he couldn’t shy away. John’s gaze was penetrating as he frowned, making sense of Rhys’s words. “That’s exactly what it’s like. You’ve lost someone too, haven’t you?”

The sympathy in his eyes was too much. “Yes.” Rhys gritted his teeth as anger and pain rose, as raw and fresh as though it was only yesterday. It was weird how grief worked. You could be fine for days, weeks, months sometimes as the time stretched out. But with the right trigger you were thrown back into it, and the feelings were so strong it was as though no time had passed at all.

John put his arm around Rhys’s shoulder and guided him towards a small two-seater sofa that was pushed up against the wall opposite the window. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Rhys shook his head. “I don’t know.” He could hardly get the words out around the constriction in his chest.

“Let me tell you about David. It’s supposed to be good to talk, or so my counsellor kept telling me. I usually try to avoid it.”

Rhys huffed. “Yeah, me too. That’s why I quit counselling.” He felt shaky now as the violent wave of emotion began to subside. Rhys settled himself more comfortably on the sofa, angling his body so he could see John.

John turned sideways too, and their knees bumped. He knotted his hands together, twisting them in his lap as he started to speak.

“So David was my partner. We were together twenty-two years. We lived together, bought a house together. We were like an old married couple without the marriage. We didn’t see the point in a civil partnership but were planning on getting married once it was legalised.”

John paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “He died in a car accident just over two years ago.” He clenched his fists. “I was driving. We were on our way home from a New Year’s Eve party, and I hit some black ice, lost control. The car rolled, ended up in a ditch. I hardly had a scratch on me, but David had a massive head injury. He never regained consciousness, and the paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.”

Rhys stared at John in horror, shock and sympathy rendering him speechless. John’s face was impassive now. There was no trace of his earlier emotion. He sounded like a robot as he got the words out.

“They told me it wasn’t my fault. But I didn’t believe them. Surely there was something I could have done? If I’d braked harder, or less hard, if I’d turned the wheel a different way. My reactions must have made a difference. I couldn’t accept that it wasn’t my fault. I felt as though I’d killed him.” John’s mask finally shattered again and Rhys saw the pain and guilt in every line of his face. “I still do.”

Rhys took one of John’s hands and gripped it tight in both of his. “I understand,” he said in a choked voice.

“Nobody ever understands.” John squeezed Rhys’s fingers. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told who didn’t immediately tell me I mustn’t blame myself.”

“But you
do
blame yourself.” Rhys shrugged. “There’s no point in telling you not to. It’s like saying your feelings aren’t valid.”

“That’s what my counsellor told me,” John said, his voice rough and weary. “That I have to recognise and accept the guilt. She told me it was a normal reaction.”

Rhys stared into John’s eyes and gave him a small smile. “It is.”

Rhys’s counsellor had told him the same thing. Denying the guilt was pointless; all you could do was learn to live with it.

John frowned, staring intently at Rhys as though trying to make sense of him. “How do you know?”

Inspired by John’s honesty, Rhys felt he owed it to him to share his story too.

“I blame myself for Lyle’s death,” he said quietly.

John’s gaze softened and he squeezed Rhys’s hand again gently. “Tell me what happened?”

Rhys gathered his courage and began. “Lyle was my first real boyfriend. The first person I’d fallen in love with. Our relationship was pretty rocky at times. We weren’t exclusive at first, but we kept coming back to each other, and when we did… it was like nobody else existed. Eventually we decided to do the whole monogamy thing, and it worked. We were happy.” Rhys sighed, wishing he could turn the clock back and change the past. “But we were also young and stupid. We thought we were invincible. We were both musicians, starting to get a following on social media and gigs in better places. Life was amazing. We did a lot of partying, and a lot of drugs to fuel the partying. We were swept along by it, this crazy, exciting tide….”

Rhys stared into space, his mind full of memories. He hesitated, trying to find the strength to admit to the next part. Shame carved a hollow in his gut and turned his stomach to acid.

John’s hand was warm on his, and his eyes held nothing but sympathy and understanding.

“The night Lyle died, we’d taken magic mushrooms. I’d never tried them before. We were at this party at a mate’s flat, and someone gave me some. I thought it might be fun, and Lyle was always up for trying something new. Anyway, the mushrooms made everything beautiful, like… weird, but beautiful. All the colours were so bright and shimmering. Lyle was happy lying on the sofa just staring at the wallpaper—it had leaves and flowers on it and he said he could see them growing. But I wanted to go out on the roof and look at the city lights. I thought they’d look awesome. So I persuaded him to come out with me for a spliff. The building was a big block with a flat roof. You could get out through a window at the top of the stairwell.”

Rhys took a deep breath.

“I never even saw what happened, exactly. When we got out there, I spaced out, staring at the moon and the stars. I was lying on my back, felt like I could see the whole universe. I wasn’t paying attention to what Lyle was doing. I could hear him singing, this song we used to sing in our band, that we’d written together. I remember he must have been moving, because I could hear the sound coming and going as he went back and forth past me. But I didn’t realise—” Rhys broke off. His windpipe tightened as though a fist gripped his throat. He whispered, “One minute he was singing, and the next there was a scream… and then nothing.”

John stared at him, shocked realisation dawning on the kind lines of his face. “He fell?”

The connection of their joined hands was grounding Rhys, keeping him in the present as he faced the horror of the past. Memories came flooding back, too vivid to handle. Too much. He gripped John’s hand like a drowning man clutching at something, anything that might save him. Unable to tear his gaze away from John’s face, he nodded; tears flowed down his cheeks. “I looked over the parapet and he was down there, this broken shape on the pavement, like… a hundred feet down or something. I knew there was no way he could still be alive. I called 999 and I waited up on the roof. I couldn’t move. I was up there for what felt like hours until a police officer came to find me.”

Rhys sniffed and wiped the tears away, but more fell. “I blamed myself. I still do.”

“Even though it was an accident.” John’s hands were warm and comforting. He stroked Rhys’s hands as though he was soothing a frightened animal.

Rhys nodded again. “It was me who gave him the mushrooms. It was my idea to go out on the roof while we were tripping. I wasn’t watching him. I should have been looking out for him.” His voice rose, the anger returning. “I was too fucking lost in my own head to pay attention. If I’d done things differently that night, it would never have happened.”

Just as Rhys hadn’t dismissed John’s feelings of guilt earlier, John did the same for him now.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was gentle. “I’m sorry you lost him.” He moved closer to Rhys, pulling him into the sanctuary of his arms. Rhys went willingly, craving the comfort John was offering. He wrapped his arms around John’s solid body and clung to him, finally giving in to the storm of rage and grief that shook his body. John held him, stroking Rhys’s back with his broad hands until Rhys’s sobs slowly subsided, giving way to shuddering breaths as the tempest passed.