The Boy I Love

by Marion Husband

  ‘I want to marry you, Margot.’

  ‘Why? I mean, apart from the baby …’

  ‘Isn’t that a good enough reason?’

  Tears ran down her face. ‘It just seems so unfair on you.’

  Taking her cup he put it down and crouched in front of her. ‘Have you thought it might be unfair on you? After Robbie, having to marry a one-eyed, nervous wreck isn’t every girl’s dream, is it?’ He took her hands. ‘It’s pointless talking about fair and unfair. It just is. Besides, believe it or not I’m happy. I feel settled for the first time in my life.’ Squeezing her fingers he laughed a little. ‘Maybe I should ask if I’m ruining your life?’

  ‘No, of course not! Please let me tell them it’s Robbie’s baby. Daddy won’t be angry with you then.’

  ‘He won’t be angry for long.’

  She wiped her eyes, avoiding his gaze, and he ducked his head to look up at her. ‘Margot, I don’t want this baby to grow up and find out from someone else I’m not its father.’

  She began to cry more desperately and he helped her to her feet. He caught her scent, that smell of rose petals seeped in a hot bath, and he thought of Rob, wondering if he had been astonished by it too, or if all women smelt like her. Wanting to catch her scent again he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. Desire stirred inside him, sweet and surprising.

  Later, after he’d walked her home, he wondered how long they had stood there. Eventually she’d stopped crying and her arms had moved cautiously around his waist. As she rested her head on his shoulder he could see the way her hair had been combed and held into place. There was something affecting about it and he touched her head lightly so that she wouldn’t feel it but would go on standing still and quiet in his arms. He had closed his eyes and allowed himself not to remember anything.

  The memories came back when he woke in the night.

  He was blind; both eyes were covered in gauze and bandages that smelt of his father’s surgery. They might save one eye, if he could lie very still. That was very important. He had to lie very still on his back and not move. The sheets became creased and uncomfortable, a pungent heat seeped from the rubber mattress and from time to time a nurse would slide a bedpan beneath him or wash him with brisk thoroughness. Whatever they did they warned him in advance, breaking from their private conversations to explain what they were about to do. Only when they changed the dressings on his eyes did they give him their complete attention. Then their voices were quiet, their commentary frighteningly precise as what seemed like yards of bandages were unwound.

  The last person he’d seen was Sergeant Thompson, an ex-miner with coal dust tattoos etched beneath his skin. The sergeant smiled into his memory, showing off the gold tooth that looked too soft to break skin and made his breath smell of gun barrels. Thompson had held him in his arms screaming, ‘Get the bastard stretcher bearers!’ And then, remarkably tenderly, he’d heard him whisper, ‘It’s all right, sir. Take your hands away from your face and let me see.’

  Paul closed his fingers into fists, crumpling the sheets. Across the landing his father coughed. He too was wakeful and soon Paul would hear him get up and pad to the bathroom in his felt slippers, not flushing the lavatory, not closing the bathroom door in case these sounds might wake him. The noise of his father pissing was proof of his love.

  He’d asked only, ‘It’s Robbie’s baby, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He listened as George made his way back to his room. He imagined leaving his own bed and climbing into his like he had as a child. Those excursions had been rare; his father suffered them only so long before carrying him back, kissing his forehead with quick finality as he tucked him tight between cooling sheets. And if he did climb in beside his father, if he buried himself in the stuffy sleepiness of his double bed and said, ‘I’m scared, Dad,’ what could George do? He was scared, so what? Being scared was normal. Scared had its own peculiar comfort.

  Lying on his bed, Paul curled on to his side. Closing his eye he forced himself to concentrate on sleep, trying to ignore Jenkins’s quiet humming of The Boy I Love.

  Chapter Five

  ‘ARE THEY STARING AT me?’

  Standing beside Paul at the front of the church, Adam turned very deliberately and looked at the bride’s side of the congregation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re just whispering amongst themselves.’

  ‘About what a bastard I am.’

  ‘A handsome bastard, though.’ He touched Paul’s hand discreetly. ‘Listen – if you look round they’ll all smile at you. They think this is terribly romantic.’

  ‘I look idiotic, don’t I? Should I have worn the eye-patch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Adam.’

  ‘Hush. Don’t say that now. Try and calm down.’ He frowned at him. ‘You’re not going to faint are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I need some air, I think.’

  ‘I’ll come out with you.’

  ‘No.’ He smiled, hoping to reassure him that he wasn’t going to run away. ‘I need to be on my own for a while.’

  He’d told Adam he was going to marry Margot the day after he’d proposed to her. They had been in bed, feathers from Adam’s pillows and eiderdown curled into the dusty corners of the room and drifting in the draught beneath the door. There were so many feathers it was as though he and Adam had been pillow fighting. Beside the bed a pillow slumped like a weary, defeated body, its insides poking through its worn ticking. He had picked it up and hugged it to his chest. Very quickly he’d said, ‘I’ve asked a girl to marry me.’

  ‘What?’ Adam had laughed, a harsh burst of noise that had made him cringe. Adam had sat up and reached for the spectacles he always removed before sex. Hooking their metal arms over his ears he’d repeated, ‘You’ve what?’

  Paul had actually quaked, and that had been the worst part of it, feeling so afraid that the ordinary contempt Adam felt for him would finally erupt into something vicious. Adam had stared at him, his face suspended above his so that he could smell his own scent on his breath, and at last he’d said coldly, ‘Did this girl say yes?’

  To his shame he had began to cry because he cried too easily, even now when he was supposed to be cured of crying. Adam hesitated a moment too long before pulling him into his arms. He held him awkwardly as though sex had made him unclean. ‘It’s all right,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘Just tell me how it’s happened.’

  Adam had believed he was being told the truth. He believed the story that he’d laid down with Margot in the long grass of a meadow beyond the asylum’s grounds. He believed that she’d allowed him – a lunatic – to push her skirts up and shove her legs apart. He believed they had both been overcome by a passion that stemmed from their shared grief over Robbie and it was this last shameful invention that stopped Adam short of hating him. He’d said he could understand, he knew all about grief and passion. He said that it could even work out for the best if one of them was married – who could suspect them if he had a wife and child? He’d held him tighter and it seemed he was almost excited at the prospect of fucking a married man. ‘I’ll talk to the headmaster about getting you a job at the school,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t cry any more. Everything will be all right.’ Suddenly Adam had planned a life for him: he was a family man and schoolteacher and undercover queer. He had an urge to tell Adam the truth just to see him look ashamed.

  The fact that Adam believed him, that Margot’s parents believed him and hadn’t simply laughed at such patently obvious lies, seemed bizarre. He wondered what their belief said about him and about Margot, who surely deserved better. He’d considered telling the truth only to realise that if he did no one would allow them to marry. They would say it was too much of a sacrifice on his part, meaning that he wasn’t fit to be a husband, let alone bring up another man’s child.

  Margot and her father appeared at the entrance to the churchyard. They paused, the Reverend g
lancing at his watch, angry and impatient as ever, as Margot nervously adjusted her veil. The plain, old-fashioned white dress she wore made her look pale and frightened and the shiny material strained across the small bump of her belly, guaranteeing that all eyes would be drawn to it. He could hear the tongue-clicking already. Moved by the sight of her, he swallowed back the ridiculous tears and went back quickly inside the church before she saw him.

  In the vicarage dining room, Paul looked down at the glass of sweet sherry he’d been nursing since Margot’s mother had ushered him into the house. The feeling he was being stared at persisted, along with the idea that everyone knew where he’d been for the past year. They would be speculating on the nature of his madness, whether he was a potential danger or mere nuisance. Lunatics were usually one or the other, aside from embarrassing, of course. He sipped the sherry, relieved that Whittaker had decided to do away with the formality of speech making. Beside him Adam said quietly, ‘Don’t look now.’

  ‘Ah, Paul!’ His new father-in-law smiled with forced heartiness. ‘Won’t you introduce me to your best man?’

  Whittaker shook Adam’s hand. ‘Now, Adam, let me introduce you to a few of the other guests. Paul, shouldn’t you be with Margot?’

  To be with Margot he would have to edge his way through a group of women. Margot stood quietly amongst them, holding the small bouquet in front of her like a shield. The women’s voices rang around her, rising in pitch before their sudden laughter made her look down at the carpet. Side-stepping through the women, Paul took her hand.

  She smiled at him shyly and from the corner of his eye Paul saw the women exchange knowing looks. One of them reached out and touched his arm flirtatiously. ‘We were just saying what a very handsome pair the two of you make.’

  He turned away, leading Margot through the crowded room.

  When they were alone in the garden he lit her cigarette. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so.’ She glanced away from him, blowing smoke towards the graves. ‘Better when it’s over, I think.’

  She had put her hair up, making her look older. Fine tendrils escaped, curling at the nape of her neck and around her ears. Her veil had been discarded as soon as the ceremony was over, leaving the top of her hair flat where it had been gripped in place. She shivered. ‘Handsome pair, eh? Silly woman.’ She drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘When shall we leave?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I have to get changed.’

  ‘Hello, you two.’ Stepping forward Adam said, ‘Sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping. I just came out to say your mother’s looking for you, Margot.’

  She threw her cigarette into the bare brown soil of the rose bed. ‘I’d better go and see what she wants.’

  Adam watched her walk towards the house. ‘Childbearing hips.’ He glanced at Paul. ‘Funny, I imagined she’d be ever so fragile-looking. A frail, delicate doll with an obscene little bump. But she has tits and an arse. I’m surprised at you, Paul.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Taking off his glasses Adam took a handkerchief from his pocket and polished the lenses vigorously. ‘Sorry. I suppose I’m just a bitter bastard.’ He sighed. ‘She seems sweet, really. And she smokes! You’ve one thing in common, at least.’ Quickly he said, ‘I’ve left you both a bite of supper in the pantry – just cheese and bread, that kind of thing. Milk and tea of course – I presume you’re not going away anywhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Probably best, this time of year. Not much fun.’

  ‘Thanks for standing by me today.’

  ‘We coped, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes. We coped.’

  Adam stepped forward and hugged him, the stiff, awkward embrace of an ordinary best man. Stepping away hastily he said, ‘Shall we go in? I think you have to cut the cake.’

  From the house George called, ‘Paul, for heaven’s sake boy, come in out of the cold!’

  Adam laughed emptily. ‘He’s always wanted you in out of the cold, hasn’t he? Well, at least someone’s happy.’

  They turned to walk back to the house. Startled, the graveyard rooks hurled themselves into the sky.

  In the house on Tanner Street, Margot stood in the bedroom doorway and looked around the little room. Paul had brought furniture from his father’s house, a chest of drawers and a bedside table made from some dark expensive wood, recently polished and smelling of beeswax. On top of the drawers stood a jug and basin, decorated with the cheerful faces of blue and yellow pansies. Tucked discreetly under the bed was a chamber pot in the same pattern. Beside the jug was a vase full of holly, heavy with berries.

  Placing her suitcase beneath the sash window Paul said, ‘Sorry about the smell of paint.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘I kept the windows open for a while but I didn’t want the place getting too cold.’

  ‘Really, I can barely smell anything.’

  ‘Right, well, I’ll go and light the fire downstairs. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Unless you want something stronger?’

  ‘No! I mean I just thought …’ Lamely she said, ‘Tea would be nice.’

  He went downstairs. Margot took off her new, going-away hat and tossed it at the chair in the corner of the room. Suddenly exhausted, she lay down on the bed. The stink of fresh paint hung heavily in the air and she tried to breathe only through her mouth, turning to bury her nose in the eiderdown. Smelling lavender she tugged the quilt back to reveal freshly laundered sheets. He had taken care with their wedding bed. She shivered.

  That morning, as she’d twisted and tugged her hair into place, her mother said, ‘Your father’s not a good judge of character, for all that he’s supposed to be.’ She’d met her eye in the mirror. ‘I like Paul. You should consider yourself lucky to catch him.’

  ‘I didn’t catch him.’

  Her mother had laughed grimly, pinning a lump of hair with a quick stab. ‘Perhaps you should put a little lipstick on. You look far too pale.’

  Paul returned with a cup of tea and placed it on the bedside table. He sat down at the foot of the bed. ‘I’ve made up my bed in the other room.’

  ‘Oh.’ She felt herself blush and busied herself reaching for the cup of tea, only to spill some of it on the eiderdown. The stain spread darkly. ‘Sorry.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m so clumsy.’

  ‘It’s nothing, don’t worry.’

  To the tea cup she said, ‘You don’t have to sleep in the other room, if you don’t want to.’

  A silence grew between them, going on and on until she hardly dared look at him. At last he took her hand, holding it between both his own. After a while he said, ‘You’re tired, I’ll sleep in the other room tonight.’ He smiled shyly. ‘I’m making some sandwiches. Come down when you’re ready, if you’re hungry.’

  When he’d gone she got up, going to the mirror above the chest of drawers. She pushed her fingers through her hair. In the vicarage bathroom she’d rubbed away the last of the sticky lipstick and she looked pale, more like a mourner than a bride. Catching sight of the holly from the corner of her eye she touched the prickly leaves, imagining their sharpness might pierce her skin, that the pain might shock her out of her numbness. Instead the leaves gave against her touch, soft and glossy as funeral lilies.

  Chapter Six

  PATRICK WATCHED THE BRIDAL party from his hiding place behind a yew tree, close to the church porch. He watched as Paul smiled for the camera and turned to kiss his bride at the photographer’s insistence. A reluctant kiss, Patrick thought. The girl on his arm didn’t even close her eyes. All kisses should be received blindly, but this girl stared wide-eyed at some point beyond Paul’s shoulder. Behind the newlyweds, the doctor, the vicar and his wife forced smiles. Patrick had witnessed few weddings in his life, but those he had attended he remembered as exceptionally joyful compared to this sad little gathering. He smiled to himself, grimly satisfied.

  Earlier he had watched Paul and anoth
er man walk up the path to the porch and wait outside the church while Paul smoked a cigarette. The other man was weedy and bespectacled, nervously checking his watch and smiling fleetingly at guests who hurried past them into the church. Paul ignored everyone. Later, Paul came out on his own and the sudden conviction that he had changed his mind and wouldn’t be going through with it had made Patrick’s heart race with the idea that he might step from his hiding place and take him home. Eventually, however, he went back inside the church and Patrick had noticed how his hand went to his face as though checking on a non-existent eye-patch.

  ‘He’s blinded.’ He remembered the pity in Thompson’s voice as they watched the stretcher-bearers take Paul away. He’d been about to run after them, all sense and discretion lost to grief and shock, when Thompson had caught his arm to hold him back. ‘Leave him be. Someone else can look out for the poor little bastard now.’

  Walking back to the shop Patrick remembered how until then he’d always thought he’d been so careful, that no one would ever guess except Paul himself. He day-dreamed that Paul would one day notice and then, during some routine business, would catch his eye, would smile that all too rare smile of his and lead him to some quiet, private place where a sergeant could fuck an officer senseless.

  In the shop, Hetty glared at him. ‘Where have you been?’

  He ignored her but she caught hold of his sleeve. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, our busiest day!’

  ‘Be quiet!’ He glared back at her, keeping his voice quiet and immediately turning to the customers. ‘Right. Who’s next?’

  She didn’t speak to him for the rest of the afternoon until, as she was about to leave, she said grudgingly, ‘Have a nice Christmas, Mr Morgan.’

  ‘Hetty …’ She glanced at him from buttoning her coat. ‘I hope you and your family have a nice Christmas, too.’ From beneath the counter he brought out the chicken he’d put aside. ‘I kept this back for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A pound of apples – what do you think?’ He bundled the cold, heavy parcel into her arms.