13 AUGUST, 2021

Dear Harry,

That one time, then. When we talked about what happened with Mr. Ellis…

It was several weeks—several months?—later. Not more. Not years, I do know that. You knocked at the door of my bedroom at the Vicarage one morning. I think I was still in bed. The light was streaming in through the window that looked out over the front lawn, over the tennis court that no one ever used, over to the copse at the end of the garden. It was a small room, but a nice one, my private space, sandwiched between two other bedrooms, my sister’s and a guest room.

So there you were. That was a surprise. You hardly ever came into my bedroom, in fact I can’t remember a single other time. So this had to be important.

There was some awkwardness, perhaps on my part, because the occasion was so unusual, my father coming to my bedroom; perhaps on yours, because of what you had learned, what you had to tell me, what you had to ask me.

“It’s about Mr. Ellis,” you said. I think you sat down on the edge of the bed. There would have been nowhere else to sit. “I had a telephone call from Mr. Chris”—the headmaster at my boarding school. “He said there had been some trouble with Mr. Ellis, that they’d had complaints about him, um, interfering with other boys.” You paused, to give me a moment to process this. Then you said, “So I have to ask you… That time when you went to stay at Mr. Ellis’s house, did he… well, did he do anything he should not have done?”

I must have mumbled my confession that, yes, something had happened, because you said, “I suppose that was why you were not very nice to him, when I came to pick you up and drive you home?”

I remembered the occasion. I remembered you chiding me for not being polite enough when I said goodbye. I must again have mumbled my assent. I knew it was bad, what happened. But was it my fault? I was unable to express the feelings that I had in words. I was unable to identify them even for myself because they were so confused. There was guilt, for having allowed something so bad to happen to me and for the wicked thrill I’d felt, along with the knowing I’d done something bad. Something dirty, that was the word.

There was a long silence. Then you said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

And I said, “No.”

And you said, “Alright then. I’m sorry, Peter. I should not have let that happen.” And left the room.

That was the sum of it, as I recall. It was never mentioned, ever again, between us.

What I don’t understand, you see, is how you could have left it there, like that. You of all people, who understood the mind. Who insisted that trauma should not be ignored and buried, but remembered. Why you didn’t gently lead me into what I so much needed at the time but did not know how to ask for because I was so terribly embarrassed. Because you understood these things. You understood that people, even little children, need to talk about the things that hurt them. Need to be heard, even if they themselves don’t know it. Need to be forgiven. Need to be consoled.

Surely you knew that?

I know it’s too late now to ask it, but there’s something in me that still wants you to know, and still believes that somehow just the act of writing this letter can fulfill that need.

In any case, I could have used a hug. Had you known how to give one.

Silly me, that it still hurts, now that I’m an old man, older than any of us were back then. And I hope a lot wiser. But yes, strangely, it does.

With love—and thanks for listening, Peter