by Harper Fox
“No, he’s not,” said Andrew. He was waving at the glass panel in Silver’s door. Turning round, I saw Sil propped up on one elbow, smiling and waving back.
He had colour in his face. And, in a flash, I saw it all from his point of view—the loneliest man in the world, rootless, blown on strange winds across the world, from bed to bed, warzones and hotels. Maybe a room full of family—broken, dysfunctional, chattering, Crispin bleating in delight at the racket of it all—could be a good thing. Could be his, if he wanted. Could even be mine. Silver beckoned.
I opened the door and let them all in.
Chapter Thirteen
The one kind of man Silver had never had in his life was a guy he could go to for comfort.
It felt so bloody strange. He’d only walked through Oak Vale to look at the outside of the house George had chosen for their fantasy future. The sale board was down, all the windows open. A cheerful drift of Radio 4 blew across the garden. In the porch, daubed by squares of light from its blue-and-gold stained glass, George was sanding down the edge of the front door.
Walking still hurt. Silver’s stitches tugged, and for the first time in his career, he was having flashbacks. Nothing crippling, but he was puzzled. Plenty of men had done worse to him than Lenny Price. He stopped by the gate, laying one hand to one wrought-iron curve to steady himself.
Perhaps it was just that George Fenchurch had re-educated him to value his own skin. Silver had forgotten so much over the years—that he was human, that he could still mind being manhandled and called names. George raised his head, saw him. Dropped his sanding block on the front step and ran.
They met at a midpoint on the garden path. Groundsel and grass blades were pushing through the cracks. Silver watched these over George’s shoulder, his mouth pressed to the fabric of his T-shirt and the solid warm bulk beneath. He didn’t want to cry out. George was holding him so deep and tight, there in full view of anyone on the street who cared to look. But no-one would. A curious glance, maybe, a grin or a roll of the eyes. No curtains would twitch, no malign attention focus. The people here had business, pleasures, troubles of their own. George smelled of paint and turps. Silver would’ve traded off a good few years of his life to stay right here, the sun warming his back, the birds in the oak leaves overhead. With a grating effort, he stepped back. “Afternoon, George.”
“Afternoon yourself.” George kept a grip on his arms, looking him over. “I didn’t know you were out of hospital. I was going to come and see you at visiting time today.”
“They discharged me this morning. I’m fine.”
“Should you be walking around, though? You’re very pale. Shouldn’t you—”
“George, don’t fuss.”
Like an old married couple. They both caught the sound of it at the same time and began to laugh. “Sorry,” George said. “Do you want to come indoors?”
“Can I? Whose doors are they?”
“Well, Jamie needs a bit of time somewhere safe, and Andrew’s missus has taken a shine to him.”
“Uh-oh. There goes the spare room.”
“That’s right. And this place was vacant possession, and I could manage the downpayment, so...” He guided Silver ahead of him through the porch and hall, and into a high-ceilinged, stripped-out living space. “So I just thought, fuck it, I’ll move in. Like the Balfron Tower architects who moved into the block they designed. There’s no better way for me to make sure the things that get done here really benefit the people who live in these houses than to...”
“Than to live in one yourself.”
“That’s right. Upstairs is a bit of a wreck, so I’m camping out in the back room, through this archway. Here, sit down. I’ll get you a cup of tea.”
Silver liked the arch. It was broad, with oak leaves in the plasterwork. The design in these houses had gone right through, an everyday, everyman consistency that said everyone deserves this. He liked the sounds of George in the kitchen across the hall. The beauties of the terrace were in their front gardens, but he liked the neat rear yard with its moss and red brickwork too. He liked folding down into the chair George had offered and looking out through French doors into the shaded privacy of it. The armchair was shabby, its springs shot, but once upon a time had been covered in rich gold velvet.
He pushed his fingertips through the remains of the plush. He had to be careful not to close his eyes, or one of his near-narcoleptic sleeps would come over him. He wanted to enjoy it, this moment in a quiet house, with someone who cared enough to do so boiling the kettle for his tea.
Crockery rattled. George appeared in the doorway, balancing a tray. “Garibaldis,” Silver observed happily, grabbing a crate so that he could set the tray down. “My favourite, as it happens.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Will I regret asking how?”
George pulled up another crate and sat opposite him. “I’m willing to trade you a secret for a secret.”
“That sounds like a reckless deal. But curiosity’s got the better of me. Okay, I’ll trade.”
“I wanted to bring something other than grapes into the hospital. But I didn’t know what biscuits you liked, our acquaintance being short to say the least, so I... phoned the agency.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I wanted to speak to them anyway, after yelling blue murder at them the other day for sending you off to be killed by Lenny Price.”
“They didn’t, George.”
“No, I know that. Kind of. Anyway, I talked to your boss, and she was very nice, and she said that every time it was your turn to fill the biscuit barrel, all they got was your stinking Garibaldis, which nobody else likes.”
Silver grinned. “They are an acquired taste. Okay. I now dread what secrets I’m gonna have to trade you back. After an intel-gathering exercise like that, I mean.”
“How did you get the council to drop the DigiRev planning permissions?”
Oh, boy. Straight to the point and to the gut. Silver wondered if Melchior had ever tried a soft-shoe sneak around this man, and how far he’d got with the attempt. Honesty was the best policy, at least when your cover was blown. A virtue out of a necessity... He offered George a biscuit, took one himself, and settled back, nursing his tea. “The frights-and-favours system, if you absolutely must know. One of my clients in the department lives in terror that I’ll blackmail him—as if, but he’s got a guilty conscience. And the other...” He watched George over the top of his mug, allowing a slow smile to form. “The other one just loves me.”
“For God’s sake, Silver. Isn’t that, like... corruption?”
“From one perspective, I suppose. The other view is that, since DigiRev had given huge and scurrilous bribes to five other planning officials, my two heroic lads cleaned up and saved the day. I know you want everything fair and above-board, and here in Oak Vale it will be, because you’re here to supervise, to make sure no-one cuts corners or steals the bricks. I bet it was the same in your department at the Civil Service.” Silver could see him taking this in, recalling perhaps how the sporadic storms and scandals had swept safely past the offices under his control. “You ran a tight ship, didn’t you? Without even thinking about it, just because that’s the way it ought to be. But not every office has a George Fenchurch to keep them straight.”
“They shouldn’t need one.”
“But I assure you that they do. Getting things done in places like that—it’s not so much sleeping with the enemy as sliding beneath his skin a little way, finding out his foibles and his favourite biscuits. You show promise. Ever fancied a complete change of career?”
George had a particular face when he was trying not to laugh. Yearning suddenly surged in Silver, to be near enough to him, at breakfast tables, in theatres, on the Tube, to call up that expression often. To crack his reserve, again and again, with the satisfying snap of a piece of Edinburgh rock. “I’m working up some disapproval over here,” George said, pushing the biscuits in Silver’s direction. “Giv
e me a year or two, and I’m sure I’ll find a way to be pissed off that you... you rescued me.” He shook his head in wonder. “You rescued all of us.”
“If I did, you sure as ever-buggering hell returned the favour.”
“That’s what’s been worrying me.” Serious now, far beyond any efforts by Silver to break him up. He edged forward on his crate. “Your agency’s meant to vet people, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they do.” Silver made one last attempt. “George Fenchurch, fifty years old but only just. Is who he appears to be—assistant in his brother’s office, former civil servant and all-time cutie. That’s what we put in your file.”
Wow, not a flicker. “The process is clearly far from perfect, or you’d never have ended up alone in Kensal Green with Lenny Price. And if that happened once, it could happen again. Couldn’t it?”
Silver let go a sigh. He was the one who was breaking up, and less like Edinburgh rock than ice on the Serpentine, turning to slush and ridiculous loose-tongued goop. “Do you remember,” he began, “in the hospital, when you asked if I did my escort work as part of the whole secret-agent thing, so really I wasn’t an escort at all, just a nice and proper gent in deep cover?”
“I don’t recall phrasing it like that.”
“But that was the gist. And I’d have loved to have been able to say yes to you.” Silver wished his shabby golden armchair could float him up above the treetops of the Vale, but this man of all others had deserved of him an explanation. “I’ve been in a few warzones, George. I haven’t seen much front-line action, nothing like Jamie and Lenny went through. But I did see guys come out of it all—three or four tours of duty in some of the most hellish places on Earth—and get their discharge, and being asked to go from shooting out nests of militants, dodging gunfire in the dust, to sitting in some office somewhere, maybe taking orders from some jumped-up little dick who wouldn’t know a bullet from a barn-owl.”
“I’ve often wondered. How army vets do that, I mean—go back to a civilian life.”
“What amazes me more is that so many of them do. They take other jobs, steer clear of booze and drugs, sit in front of the TV of an evening with the kids on their lap. They’re loving husbands and wives and parents.” The rope burns on his wrists were showing. Quickly he twitched his shirt cuffs down. “I never could manage it myself. I’m not a combat case, not like poor Lenny. But I’d fly back into Heathrow at three o’clock on a winter morning after weeks on an op in Gdansk or wherever, and the world would just feel... empty as an upturned cup. And so would I.”
He’d unconsciously mirrored gesture to his words. Gently George took the empty mug from his fingers. “How did you handle that, then? What did you do?”
“Phone the agency, generally. Let ’em know I was back. There’s always somebody looking for a fuck at three AM in London. And I liked most of it, you know? A few hard sessions would wear me out, settle me down, and I won’t try to tell you I didn’t like the cash.”
“Who wouldn’t? And you’ve helped people, haven’t you—your nephews, you said?”
I think you’d try to make the best of me if you found me with my hand in an old lady’s purse. “Don’t worry, I spoiled myself too. I love nice things—my car, clothes and food, all the trappings. But, yeah, I liked being able to help out my family. That felt good.”
“So what’s the problem with it all, Sil?” George set down the mug and briefly ran his thumb across Silver’s knuckles. “There is a problem, isn’t there?”
“That feeling of emptiness—trauma, I suppose, because Christ knows I’ve seen some things in Europe and out on deployment, done some things myself—it’s not why I started my trade, but...”
“It does make it hard for you to stop. If you wanted to.”
“Yeah. I went out on an op last week, just something local. A surveillance job. And it went wrong, George, so fucking wrong. And I got home, and I just thought—Christ, what am I? My house looks like the show home down the street. And I’ve been screwing men and women all my life, but I never found one I could stand to spend time with, until...”
George pushed his crate back and knelt in front of Silver. He did it awkwardly, like the slightly overweight fifty-year-old he was, and Silver loved him for it. “Don’t tell me that,” he said, smiling wistfully. “Not just now. Tell me about the other day. When you got home.”
“I was hungry and horny and scared and depressed all at once. And the agency texted and said they had this guy called Leonard, an urgent job. They hadn’t had time to vet him. And I said not to bother, and... well. I took the gig.”
***
Time passed in the quiet room. If George had other places to be, other doors to sand, he gave no sign. He’d settled on the floor, rested his head against Silver’s knee. This sensation was so agreeable to Silver that he held as still as he could, prolonging their companionable tableau. A question rose to his mind and for once he didn’t filter or check it for tact. “Why do I like being with you so much?”
George shifted a little, just far enough to look up at him. “Probably,” he said, “because I’m not all about the sex. Maybe I’m a bit of a break for you. Torquay in the off-season.”
“Oh, somewhere far more exotic than that.” Silver ran his fingertips over George’s hair. He’d acquired a good new cut since Silver had left him in Oak Vale. “And that’s the thing. You are sexy, far more than you could ever know.”
Against the far wall, a camp bed had been set up. Basic, but still the kind of nest a man like George would have: thick warm blankets, everything clean and neatly folded. Both he and Silver had begun to watch it. On a table beside it, the elk-horn chess set was waiting for someone’s next move. The only nonessential item in the house so far, from what Silver could see, the thing George had cared about enough to put into place before anything else. He nodded as if Silver had spoken. “I was thinking up a stratagem or two.”
Silver let a yearning rasp enter his voice. “Fancy a game, do you?”
“Not just now. But...” He turned so that he was kneeling between Silver’s thighs. “Jesus, Sil. Do you ever want to look at a bed like that again? Are you even well enough?”
Silver shrugged. To have someone catch the reflection of his flashbacks, to know without being told why a narrow bed, a metal frame, might make him shiver in distaste... It was good, sweeter than daylight to him, but dangerous too. Unmanning. “You’re kind of a bandage,” he said, deliberately keeping his tone flat. “We can lay a good memory over a bad one. Lenny bangs Silver in a basement, George does it properly here.”
He waited. You don’t have to talk like that anymore, was what two ex-boyfriends and one well-meaning woman had said, like he was Roxanne and only put on his red light out of poverty or desperation. Like he needed to be saved. “Oh,” said George, and all he was doing was once more rolling with the punches of Silver’s language, his experiences, his life. “Um, okay. You know I’ll bandage you... any day of the week and twice on Sundays, but...”
“But what?”
“We can make some other memories, if you want. Lenny’s gone. He’s locked up, and hopefully they’ll throw away the key. Right?”
“Jamie texted to say he was going through with the assault charges. They’ll come better from him than from a whore. Oh, George, it didn’t always use to be a horrible thing to call someone. Comes from the same Indo-European root as carus in Latin. Dear.”
“Dear,” George echoed, and the loving vibration he put on the word almost finished Silver off. “Right. So Lenny bangs Silver in a basement, and... George sucks him off right here.”
“Oh, my God.” A hot ache gathered at the root of Silver’s cock, the pang of it sharp as a teenager’s. When nice guys resorted to short words... He writhed up as George undid his belt buckle, button and zip, awkward but determined, a man with a tricky, important package in hand. I should stop you. Neither of us knows what we’re doing here, what footing we’re on. I’m the one who starts stuff; I don’t just sit
here and get done, even by the sweetest, most capable...
Fears and thoughts flew out of Silver’s head. They went up like startled pigeons, fireworks on a dark sky. A sweet and capable mouth had closed on his cock. “Condom,” he gasped automatically, but he knew he was clean, and George gave a dismissive grunt—goes without saying, Sil, if you’re letting me near you like this at all—and bore down.
Perfect. He was perfect. He’d been a faithful husband: Silver bet he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of guys he’d blown. But somehow the push of his tongue up the underside of Silver’s cock hit every nerve in his body. He let his head fall back, drove his fingertips into the worn velvet of the chair. Patched and peeling plaster, acorn and oak-leaf ceiling-rose... The leaves seemed to shift with the surge of his blood, and he suddenly understood: he didn’t just love the sturdy guy at work between his thighs, the way he’d told him in Lenny Price’s basement. Didn’t just love him for saving his life. The impossible feeling beginning to unravel defences built up over a whole life... “Falling in love with you,” he grated out. “Oh, God. Falling.”
George would make the catch. He gave a choked moan and drove his hands up under Silver’s backside, holding, lifting. Caught Silver’s climax and carried that too, impossibly far and high, hot mouth not ceasing its rhythm until his cries had ceased and the last wrung-out pulse of his seed was done. “Stand up, you bloody beauty,” Silver ordered, voice worn thinner than the velvet. “Come on. Do it now.”
He obeyed, and Silver pushed him back for an instant to admire the state of him. Cock like a rock inside his paint-stained jeans. The kind of lad who’d forget to jerk off during a blow job, too wrapped up in the task at hand. Desperate for it afterwards. “Falling too,” George said, and Silver cast an enquiring glance at him between popping one button out of its denim hole and the next. “In love,” George clarified. “Oh, man, I want you. Am I too old for this?”