Joe wasn’t laughing. ‘You hurt him bad, Frank. If I hadn’t come along, you might even have finished him off. Is that what you planned, Frank. To kill him?’
Frank showed no remorse. ‘What the hell good is he, eh?’ he demanded. ‘He can never do a single thing right! He’s completely buggered the job.’
Joe studied his brother for a brief moment. He was no stranger to Frank’s rage. He had seen it many times before, when they were younger.
Beneath Joe’s steady gaze, Frank grew uncomfortable. ‘What the devil are you staring at?’
‘You.’ Joe was unmoved. ‘I’m staring at you, Frank. And I don’t like what I see.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means you should learn to control your temper, before it gets you in real trouble.’
Frank gave a loud laugh. ‘What. Like this y’mean?’ Raising the shotgun, he levelled it at his brother.
Joe stood firm. ‘I thought you might have got all the nastiness out of your system by now,’ he said quietly. ‘I can see I was wrong. If anything, you’re worse than you ever were.’
Keeping the shotgun level, Frank took a step closer. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ He knew exactly what Joe was talking about, and it unnerved him.
‘I could shoot you here and now. I could say it was an accident…that you ran at me, and the gun just went off.’
Opening his arms, Joe invited. ‘Go on then, Frank. Shoot me. You can explain it any way you like to Mum and Dad, but in the end you’ll be found out. I could have told Mum years ago what you were like, but I didn’t, because you were my brother, and I loved you. I even kept quiet when you tried to drown me in the brook just because I accidentally dislodged your keep net. They never knew that. And they never will, at least not from me.’
‘They’d never believe you.’
‘Maybe not, but you and I know what you did, and one day, when you think they’re not looking and your temper gets the better of you…that’s when they’ll see you for what you really are.’
‘You’d better shut your mouth, Joe!’
Undeterred, Joe went on, ‘They might even begin to ask questions, about how when you were twelve, you took their beloved dog for a walk. You told them it ran off, but some time later they found it, clumsily buried in a shallow grave down the spinney. They said he must have disturbed intruders making for the big house, but I never believed that. I’ve always had my suspicions.’
Frank said nothing, but the guilt was written all over his face.
‘It was you, wasn’t it, Frank? Mum and Dad believed the story about the intruders. But they knew how jealous you were of that little dog, and it wouldn’t take much for them to realise what might have happened. Oh, and what about that girl from the village? She came to do the housework when Mum was laid up with a sprained ankle. What happened to the girl, Frank? Why was she there one minute, and gone the next?’
It was a question he had always wanted to ask, and now was the time. ‘What did you do to her, Frank? When I saw her in the village a week later, she wouldn’t even talk to me.’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You frightened her, didn’t you, Frank? You must have done something really bad to make her run away like that.’
‘I didn’t do anything! She was a real scaredy cat, frightened of everything! I didn’t do anything to make her run away.’
‘Right. So, when you go back and tell everyone that you accidentally shot and killed me, what will you do when Jimmy finds the courage to tell it like it really was?’
He glanced towards the rise. ‘For all we know, he might even be up there…spying on us. In any case, if you killed me, there are bound to be questions: lots of difficult questions, Frank. So go on, shoot me. If that’s what you really want.’
Realising that for the moment Joe had him exactly where he wanted him, Frank slowly lowered the gun to his side. ‘You should be ashamed,’ he snarled. ‘You care nothing about Mum and Dad. First chance you got, you cleared off…left me to do all the work round this place. You took off without a single thought for anybody! A couple of months, that’s what you said when you left. If I hadn’t traced you to that pub, you might never have come back.’
‘That was clever of you…contacting the pubs.’
‘I always get what I want.’
‘So, why did you trace me, Frank?’
‘You already know why! I wanted you to be my best man.’
‘That’s not enough, Frank. I know you! Me being your best man is neither here nor there as far as you’re concerned. There must be another reason why you wanted me back.’
‘All right! There was, yes. I wanted you to see how I’ve changed; how I’ve found someone to love me. Most of all, I needed to show you how I’ve kept this place going without you.’
His face darkened. ‘You left me here to rot. You can’t even begin to know what it’s been like!’
Frantically pacing up and down with the gun by his side, he ran his two hands through his hair. ‘After Dad hurt his leg and couldn’t do it anymore, it was up to me. Hard, back-breaking work, seven days a week, through all the seasons, morning ‘til night, with no proper life of my own.’
His features softened. ‘Then, one day at the Bedford market, I met Alice. She liked me straight off, so we started going out, whenever I could snatch an hour here or an evening there. For the first time ever, I began to see what life could really be like, and now we’re getting wed. I wanted you to come back and be my best man, because I wanted you to see that I’ve got the best girl in the world.’
Throwing out his arms, he laughed crazily. ‘I got myself a life, Joe! So now you see, I’m no different from anybody else. I had to show you how it’s me and not you, who makes Mum and Dad proud. I’m able to knuckle down, keep the farm going, and soon I’ll be wed and then I’ll give them the grandchildren they’ve always wanted. I’ll be the man, Joe! That’s all I wanted you to know. I will be the man!’
Joe felt a surge of guilt. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Frank. You’ve done well.’ But he knew Frank too well to accept it was that simple.
He gave a long slow smile. ‘All the same, you’ll need to do more than be the man if you hope to convince me that you’ve changed.’
‘But I have changed!’
Joe knew different. ‘What do you think people would say if they’d seen you beating Jimmy?’
‘Oh, that’s very clever, Joe. Especially when it’s you that’s in the wrong, not me!’ Frank hit back. ‘Mum and Dad will never forgive you for staying away all this time. For months after you went Mum watched out the window, waiting for you to come home, but you never did! You’d rather be off round the country, enjoying yourself, without a second thought for any of us back here!’
He shook his fist. ‘They missed you, Joe! I missed you! Where were you, Joe? Why did you stay away for so long?’
Joe took a deep breath. ‘I thought about Mum and Dad; believe it or not, I even thought about you! I missed this place, and I missed my life here. I did think about all of you. Every single day.’
‘Liar! You must have known we were worried. You could have written!’
‘It wasn’t possible.’ Joe had his reasons.
‘How could it not be possible?’
Knowing the severity of what he was about to disclose, Joe took a moment to compose himself. ‘I was in prison, Frank. If I’d