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Cowardice	By : saucyminion Category: G through L > Lord of the Flies Views: 17461 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Flies, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 5
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Part 6—Therapy

    Ralph glanced up at the clock mounted on the wall of the rusty coloured teashop. The almost cleverly tea spoon-shaped hands read that it was 4:55, and it must have been at least the tenth time he’d looked at the clock since he’d arrived at 4:50. He’d considered being fashionably late, though he knew it would have been a terror-induced absence.
    Terror… was that what he was feeling now? No, surely not. He was petrified beyond belief. He was mortified with himself for offering the invite, and he was pleading in his heart that Jack would not show up. He hadn’t received a message in return to his last, so maybe Jack hadn’t received the letter. Maybe he’d decided not to show up.
    The soft clang of chimes over the doorway signalled a customer’s entrance.
    Ralph hadn’t expected to be caught off guard. He hadn’t expected to recognize Jack in a single instant… but he did. Though Jack stood hesitantly inside the doorway without advancing, Ralph could see the recognition in his eyes, even from where he sat across the room. He was taller, yes, his body fuller, his hair a duller shade, and his eyes—his eyes had changed the most severely. There was little left of that confident, imaginative gleam. His eyes were old. No one else had seen the things those eyes had seen; that was clear.
    Ralph’s heart thudded hard against his ribs. His gut churned and twisted. He didn’t know what to feel, and he was experiencing such a knot of unnameable emotions that he was dizzied for a moment. He swallowed hard and stood slowly, signalling that he acknowledged Jack’s presence. When he saw the boy—man—advancing, he discretely wiped his sweaty palms against his slacks. This would be a brave opportunity. This would be his therapy.
    Jack paused a few feet from Ralph, licked his lips, took a deep breath, and extended a hand. Ralph reached out and shook it.
    “Hello, Ralph.” Jack’s deep voice was an exhale as soft as his handshake, which put Ralph a little more at ease. The fact that the handshake had been the first human contact he’d had in several months also gave him some level of sore comfort.
    “Hello, Jack.”
    Ralph sat and Jack sat across from him. Both avoided eye contact and there came a long, awkward silence. Everything that Ralph had wanted to say seemed meaningless all of the sudden. His senses began to irritate him—the smell of honey and burned water, the feel of his weight pressing against the chair—everything felt uncomfortable. He felt like a fool.
    “I’m sorry that my response to your letter was so rude,” Ralph said abruptly, sounding as though he had pushed out the words with a great deal of effort. He was still looking down at the round paper place mat on the polished wood table. “I had no right to call you cowardly when you were the one who sent me your apologies.” He sensed that Jack was looking at the top of his slightly ducked head and decided to face him. His face was now, though tired, more welcoming than the challenging expression it used to hold. His freckles had faded significantly and so had the colour of his hair, so he was not as vibrant as he once appeared to be. He had definitely matured physically: his once overgrown ears and nose were now proportioned to his oddly striking face, and a proper haircut gave him a more gentlemanly appearance.
    “You were right, though,” Jack responded slowly. “I am a coward. I always have been.”
    Ralph shook his head slowly looking back down, feeling a pang of guilt that blended superbly with his feelings of foolishness. He remembered now that Jack had gone through as much torment as he had. Being in his physical presence was giving him an entirely different perspective from the one he had previously held. If only Jack had tuned out to be a snobbish boar…
    “I didn’t mean it,” Ralph whispered. He wasn’t certain if Jack had heard him. “I meant it at the time, but I was feeling so angry and confused when I got that letter… I was being irrational.”
    “But it’s true. It is,” Jack assured him, his voice still at a soft volume. “I never tried to contact anyone involved other than you. I never tried to write to the parents…”
    When he didn’t complete his sentence, Ralph looked up at him to see that he was resting his face in his hand. He didn’t have to finish though; Ralph knew what he meant to say. Before, he had wanted to cause Jack due pain. Now, he was searching desperately for something to say to comfort the obviously troubled man—boy, really.
    “Please, Jack… do you want to leave?” Ralph wasn’t going to keep him there. “It was stupid of me to think that meeting would do either of us any good.”
    Jack looked up from his palm, his eyes slightly reddened. “Do you want me to go?”
    Ralph thought for a moment. No, he didn’t. “If you’re not comfortable here I don’t want you to stay because I asked you.”
    Jack blinked. “But do you want me to go?”
    Ralph swallowed. “No.” He briefly wondered why he’d said that, but he hadn’t the patience to really search for an answer.
    Jack nodded.
    Some time later their server had brought them their tea—they had both ordered rooibos tea and were interested to find that it was a shared favourite. Jack had insisted on treating Ralph, for which he was glad because he wasn’t sure he had enough money. It was unsettling to be acting like old friends. He felt as though some member of the public might see through their lies, though he tried not to let his paranoia make things any more difficult for him.
    As they sat sipping their tea they were both very aware of the opposite’s searching eyes. It was natural to study each other, as several years had passed since their last encounter. Ralph had been uneasy to admit it at first, but Jack had certainly turned out to be a very handsome young man. His features were well defined and he had an elegance about him that was not womanly, but gentlemanly.
    Gentlemanly… that was a logical way of describing Jack. He was indeed gentle in the way he spoke and moved. There was something almost suspiciously careful about it.
    “You said that I’m the only one you tried to contact,” Ralph said, remembering what Jack had told him minutes earlier. He looked into his milky tea. “Why me?”
    Jack thought for a long time. “I don’t know.”
    How dissatisfying. Ralph sighed and looked up. “Do you know why you told me not to reply to your letter?”
    “I… didn’t want you to feel obligated to respond. I didn’t want it to be any trouble.” Jack took a sip of his tea. Ralph couldn’t help but notice that Jack closed his eyes whenever he brought the cup to his lips. He also noticed how red his eyelashes still looked when they fell over his fair skin.
    Ralph coughed tensely and tried to think of something else to say. He couldn’t.
    “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.
    Jack shrugged. “Neither do I.”
    Out of nowhere, Ralph remembered something. On cruiser, the officer had been talking about Jack’s parents… he still remembered that day well.
    “Can I ask… about your parents? I mean, what happened when you got home? I’ve never talked to any of the others about it.” Ralph regretted asking the question as soon as it had come out of his mouth. For one thing, he would feel even guiltier if Jack’s parents had not made it through the war as he had suspected from what he’d heard on the ship. For another, he was afraid that Jack would ask him the same question.
    “Well…” Jack began.
    “No,” Ralph interrupted. “Please don’t answer that, I didn’t even mean to ask it.”
    “It’s all right,” said Jack, without realizing that Ralph’s request was for his own sake as well. “My father and brother died serving in the war.” He said it without any hint of remorse, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It sounded very automatic, as though he had answered that question many times before. “My mother had… sort of a mental breakdown, you know, trying to deal with a dead husband, dead son, and anther missing at the same time. She went to live with relatives… she didn’t get better.”
    “Did you go into foster care?” Ralph asked, not sure what to say about Jack’s loss.
    “I went to another boarding school,” he said. “My mother continued to make the payments until she died. It was a medical condition… fortunately, she didn’t exactly leave me with nothing.” Jack scratched his head and paused briefly. “I was old enough to inherit my family’s wealth, with no other siblings or relatives entitled to it… so I continued my education until earlier this year when I bought a house and moved to London. I don’t think I’ll go to college.”
    Ralph nodded a little, trying to conceal his jealousy. A house was something he wasn’t certain he’d ever have. He was interested to notice that despite such a dim past, Jack spoke with an empty sort of optimistic tone.
    Jack sighed and offered a self-conscious smile, running his fingers through the back of his hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You didn’t exactly ask for my life story, but there you have it.”
    “It’s all right.” Ralph took another sip of his now lukewarm tea as his mind raced in order to change the subject.
    “What about your family?” Jack asked. “That is… if you feel comfortable…”
    “Why shouldn’t I?” Ralph answered all too promptly. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and set his teacup down. “Quite like yours, actually,” he said. “My father died in the war. No siblings. My mother… well, she sort of couldn’t handle things either.” He really almost did stop himself there. “She wasn’t so generous with her finances, though.”
    Jack tilted his head a little to the side. “How do you mean?”
    Ralph scanned through his answer, censoring out the unneeded details. He found himself making direct eye contact with Jack, and he wasn’t certain why he didn’t feel the need to look away. “She… didn’t really want much to do with me after…” Ralph’s eyes began to sting a little. He blinked furiously and looked away, wondering how he could be sharing the private details of his life with Jack Merridew so openly.
    “After you came back from the island,” Jack said just above a whisper, as if afraid someone would overhear. “But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
    Ralph shook his head a little. “After therapy, I was going to say. Did you have to see a psychiatrist?”
    “A psychologist,” Jack admitted flatly.
    “You know how it feels, then, to pour everything out of your soul to a stranger, only to have them analyze your every instinct, every emotion, under their own personal magnifying glass…” He waited for Jack to nod. “Do you know what it feels like to have someone betray you when you’re that vulnerable?”
    Jack chose not to respond. “What happened?”
    Ralph rubbed his eye. “He told my mother everything I’d been telling him for a year. He told her I was sick. He was a liar.”
    Jack was looking at Ralph in a way that encouraged him to continue, his gaze free of any threat or accusation.
    “My… my mother believed everything that he said about me. She tried to have me institutionalized. I refused. She threatened to disown me, so I ran away before she had the chance. I haven’t heard from her in five years.”
    Jack shook his head a little. “Where did you go?”
    “I came here, to London, with the money I stole from her. I got a job in a restaurant kitchen, did a lot of odd jobs and favours… that way when I needed help there was always someone to repay me.” He shook his head and corrected himself. “Not always… but for a while.”
    “What are you doing now?” Jack asked, a genuine look of concern on his brow.
    After realizing how much he had been leaning towards Jack, Ralph sat back in his seat. “Right now I’m having tea with you. After that… I suppose I have to find another job.”
    “You’re unemployed?” Jack asked as if the concept were foreign to him.
    Ralph nodded. “I’m managing though. Still kicking.” It was close to being a lie, considering what he had been doing the day he’d received Jack’s letter.
    Jack leaned in a little. “You know I… I work at my father’s publishing company—well, technically, I own it. I could see if there’s… if…” He stopped himself when he read the expression on Ralph’s face. “I’m sorry.”
    “I’m not your responsibility,” Ralph assured him.
    “I know that. I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to bring it up.” He sighed, obviously uncomfortable.
    Ralph nodded and sighed, looking down at his lap. “It feels… easy for me to talk to you, you know.”
    “Yes, me of all people,” Jack said blandly.
    Ralph glanced up. “It’s just that… I barely know you. All I knew before today was an old memory of you that I… didn’t like very much at all.”
    “That’s why it’s so easy,” Jack explained evenly. “You don’t know me. Not really. You don’t like me enough to care what I think of your personal life, and it wouldn’t be difficult for you to cut me out of your life because I’m not a part of it. Talking to me about anything really has no risk.”
    Ralph raised an eyebrow. He was absolutely right. Well, not entirely.
    “You may be part right, but I can think of a couple of things that I would not tell you,” Ralph admitted.
    A tiny, uncertain grin passed across Jack’s lips. “That’s mutual.”
    A spark of curiosity passed between them. Or was it Ralph’s imagination?
    Jack glanced at his watch.
    “Are you late for something?” Ralph asked, doubting the question.
    “I have an appointment,” Jack told him apologetically. “With my therapist.”
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Cowardice