The Boy I Love

by Marion Husband

After a long silence Adam said, ‘How are you?’

  He lit a cigarette, wanting a contrast to the burning sweetness. Pinching a stray strand of tobacco from the tip of his tongue he said, ‘You know how I am. They cut my eye out. Other than that, I’m fine.’

  Adam sighed. ‘I’m still missing you, counting the days until you’re home.’

  ‘Do you really miss me?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that? Of course I do! I love you, you know that.’

  He thought of Jenkins, his body slumped against his own. At last, remembering Adam’s presence, he said, ‘You wouldn’t love me, if you knew what I’d done.’

  ‘What? Paul, I can’t hear you if you mumble.’ Frustrated, he said. ‘Paul, won’t you try to pull yourself together?’

  The train began to slow. Fellow passengers folded their newspapers and collected coats and briefcases. Margot smiled at him, sleepily. ‘Are we home, already?’

  He nodded. Getting up he busied himself with buttoning his coat so that he wouldn’t see the fragile happiness on her face.

  Chapter Eight

  HER MOTHER FOUND THE gloves Patrick had forgotten on Christmas Eve. She laid them on the kitchen table in front of Hetty, silently waiting for an explanation. Unable to keep the exasperation from her voice, Hetty said, ‘If you must know he carried the chicken home for us on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘You know who. You know they’re Patrick’s gloves.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Patrick, is it? Not Mr Morgan any more? I suppose you’re all free and easy with him now you’ve asked him into our home? Well, next time, Madam, you ask me if you can bring men into this house. You don’t do it behind my back.’

  ‘It would have been rude not to ask him in. Especially after he’d given us the chicken.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for his charity. Tough as old boots, anyway. I’ve told you before I don’t want meat from that shop.’

  Hetty picked up the gloves, turning them over in her hands, wanting to press them to her face to see if they still smelt of him. He hadn’t missed them, as far as she knew. Planning to return them to his house each evening, each evening her courage failed and the gloves remained in their hiding place.

  She said, ‘You shouldn’t go looking through my things.’

  ‘Looking through your things?’ Her mother laughed scornfully. ‘Tidying up after you, don’t you mean? Putting things away. If you want to keep secrets you should keep them more carefully.’

  Hetty put her coat on, thrusting the gloves into the pocket.

  ‘Where’re you going?’

  ‘I’m taking them back to him.’

  * * *

  She would say, ‘You left your gloves at our house on Christmas Eve. I’d forgotten all about them until this evening, and as I was passing your house anyway …’

  Hetty sighed, nervously fingering the gloves in her pocket. With luck he’d be home. If she missed all the cracks in the pavement he would smile and ask her in and his brother would be safely tucked up in bed.

  Outside his house she stood at the gate, surprised to hear music coming from the lighted room that looked out over the small front garden. A man spoke above the music that came to a sudden end with the sound of a gramophone needle being scratched across a record. Another voice, unmistakably Patrick’s, decided her. Walking up the path she pulled the front door bell.

  ‘There’s someone at the door, Patty. Go and see.’

  ‘I’m not expecting anyone.’ Patrick slipped the gramophone record into its sleeve and put it away. ‘They’ll go away if we ignore it. It’s time for your bath, anyway.’

  The bell rang again and Mick wheeled himself over to the window. Lifting aside the lace curtain he peered into the darkness.

  ‘It’s that little shop girl of yours.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Patrick caught sight of Hetty over Mick’s shoulder. He groaned. ‘I’ll get rid of her. Wait there.’

  Hetty said, ‘Oh, Mr Morgan … you’re home, then.’ She looked surprised to find herself there. Her usually pale face was even paler against the dark scarf wrapped around her throat. Awkwardly she said, ‘I hope I’m not bothering you.’

  Behind him Mick said, ‘Hello, Hetty. Please, come in. You must excuse my brother keeping you on the doorstep. He’s not used to visitors.’

  Patrick ignored him. Still standing in the doorway he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘Oh, no. No!’ Hetty laughed as though the idea was outrageous. ‘I was passing and …’

  ‘For God’s sake, let the girl in. You can see she’s freezing.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll go if it’s inconvenient.’

  Patrick stood aside. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Mick poured her a glass of sherry; he even cut her a slice of the last of the Christmas cake. He talked too much, as he always did when he felt others were embarrassed. Eventually, as Hetty calmly sipped her drink, Patrick realised that it wasn’t Hetty who was embarrassed, but Mick himself. His stream of words had dried up and he smiled desperately at Patrick, willing him to end the silence.

  Patrick cleared his throat. ‘That’s a pretty scarf, Hetty.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s Mam’s. I bought it for Christmas but she lets me borrow it.’

  Mick said, ‘Did you have a nice Christmas?’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘Ours was quiet, too. Wasn’t it, Patrick?’

  ‘Very.’

  Mick laughed, a short, embarrassing burst of noise. ‘We should all have a rowdy New Year to make up for it. We should go dancing …’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ Hetty grinned. ‘Somewhere posh with a nice band.’ She looked at Patrick, adding, ‘Somewhere they let balloons down from the ceiling at the stroke of midnight.’

  ‘The Grand used to do that kind of thing, didn’t it, Pat?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Turning to Hetty he said, ‘I was just about to help my brother to bed, Hetty.’

  She fumbled in her coat pocket. ‘Oh! Nearly forgot.’ Handing him a pair of gloves she said, ‘You left these at our house the other day. I was passing and I thought …’

  ‘It was kind of you.’ He stood up. ‘Well, if that was all.’

  ‘Yes. Right.’ Placing her glass on the table she smiled shyly at Mick. ‘Thank you for the drink, Mr Morgan. And the cake.’

  ‘My pleasure, Hetty, and call me Mick, please.’

  Patrick held the door open. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  As Patrick came back into the room Mick glared at him. ‘You shitty, bloody bastard.’

  Gripping the arms of the wheelchair Patrick brought his face up close to his brother’s. ‘I told you I’d get rid of her, didn’t I? But no, you had to ask her in and show me up as well! Thanks, Mick. Was that little charade worth it?’

  Mick took his cigarettes from his pocket. His hands shook as he struck a match. ‘You were rude.’

  ‘Rude!’ Patrick laughed. ‘That’s bloody priceless coming from you.’

  ‘She’s a nice girl.’

  Patrick stood up straight. ‘I don’t want to encourage her. She’s an employee, not a friend.’

  ‘Of course! God forbid we might have any friends!’

  Patrick gazed at him, his anger slowly ebbing away. ‘You’re tired. She could see how tired you are. She wasn’t going to stay long, anyway.’

  ‘All the same you had to remind her how bloody helpless I am.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You like everyone to know you do everything for me. Well, what a great big bloody selfless bastard you are! I wish you’d left me in the hospital. At least there …’

  ‘Go on. At least there what?’

  ‘I had people to talk to.’ Sullenly he said, ‘I wasn’t alone all day, every day.’

  ‘Shall I take you back there? You can take up basket weaving again. So, seeing as you miss it so much, first thing in the morning off we go.’

  ‘All I’m saying is she coul
d have stayed a little longer.’ He bowed his head. ‘She could have stayed. We were getting along.’

  Patrick sighed. ‘She came to see me, Mick. You know what she’s after.’

  ‘So? Marry her. Once she finds out you can’t get it up for her maybe she’ll find her way into my bed.’

  ‘Don’t be so disgusting.’

  ‘You’re disgusting. A lovely girl like that showing an interest and all you can think about is buggering some whey-faced, lisping boy.’

  ‘He doesn’t lisp.’

  Mick laughed. ‘Doesn’t he? I could have sworn …’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve met, Paul and I.’

  ‘When? When did you meet?’

  ‘Oh, sometime. Can’t remember.’

  ‘Liar! Fucking liar!’ Patrick seized Mick’s arms, digging his fingers into the flesh. ‘You’re just lying now.’

  ‘Let go.’

  ‘And what can you do about it if I don’t?’

  Drawing his head back Mick spat in his face.

  ‘You filthy bastard.’ Patrick wiped the spittle away, glaring at his brother as he stepped back. ‘I think I will take you back to that hospital. I really think I will.’

  ‘And close the shop for a day? I don’t think so.’

  ‘No? Well, wait and see.’

  Mick tossed his cigarette stub into the fire. He smiled slowly. ‘I suppose you could always dump me there on a Sunday when the shop’s closed. Bit of a bugger getting there on a Sunday, though. And on Sundays there’ll be no one at the hospital to do the paperwork. They’re very strict about their paperwork.’

  ‘Well, they can just leave you sitting in the drive until Monday, then, can’t they?’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mick lit another cigarette. ‘You are cross. Poor me.’

  ‘You’re pathetic.’

  ‘You and me both.’ He looked up at Patrick through a haze of cigarette smoke. ‘I bet Hetty’s got gorgeous tits. Not too big. Just nice. You didn’t have to be so off-hand with her.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Now, do you want that bath or not?’

  They were identical twins, a novelty act dressed up in matching outfits: sailor suits with beribboned caps, blue velvet breeches with white knee socks. Their mother spent too much time brushing their hair, smoothing it into exactly matching neatness. She wanted others not to be able to tell them apart, a trick she played on the world until even their own father couldn’t be bothered to tell which was which.

  Patrick stooped over the bath, dipping his hand in the water to test its temperature.

  Mick smiled at him. ‘Just the right degree of boiling?’

  ‘Just. Ready?’

  Mick nodded, putting his arm around Patrick’s shoulder as he was lifted from the chair. He closed his eyes, sighing as the water covered him.

  ‘Hot enough?’

  Mick nodded.

  ‘Call me when you’ve finished.’

  ‘Pat … don’t go for a minute. I’ve been thinking …’ He laughed, frowning down at the water. ‘What have you put in this bath? It smells like one of Mother’s handkerchiefs.’

  ‘Lavender. It’s supposed to help people sleep.’

  ‘People? How about bad-tempered cripples?’

  ‘It might help. You never know.’ Patrick sat on the edge of the bath. ‘So, what were you thinking?’

  Drawing a deep breath Mick said quickly, ‘I was thinking maybe we could go dancing, Hetty and I. Oh, you could come too.’

  ‘Could I? Thanks. Where shall we go? Paris?’

  ‘The Grand Hotel.’

  Patrick laughed. ‘The Grand Hotel? The Grand Hotel with all the steps leading to the doors?’

  ‘We could manage a few steps.’

  ‘You mean I could.’

  ‘All right. You could.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’

  ‘They’re holding a New Year Dance. I saw it advertised in the paper. And Hetty said she’d like to go.’

  Patrick stared at his brother. The lavender-scented steam seemed to blur his features, making him look younger and less like himself. His eyes were wide with hope.

  Shaking his head Patrick said. ‘She’s made quite an impression on you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about her tits.’

  ‘Mick …’

  ‘Oh, don’t Mick me. I don’t want your sympathy. I just want to take a girl out.’

  ‘To a dance? You know how people stare at the best of times.’

  ‘I stare back.’

  ‘Hetty will want to dance.’

  ‘You can dance with her.’

  ‘Which will give her the wrong idea entirely.’

  ‘Not if you behave as you did tonight.’ After a moment he said, ‘We still look alike, don’t we? Even now. If she likes you …’

  ‘No, Mick.’

  Mick sank lower into the water. ‘Fuck off, then. Fuck off so I can have a wank in peace. After all, it’s the only relief I’m ever likely to get. I knew you wouldn’t agree to it. So fucking scared of a few stares! Just keep me hidden away till I rot.’

  ‘You go out sometimes.’

  ‘And you wheel me back again.’

  ‘Because you get drunk and spew your guts all over me.’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘I get scared for you, when I’m not there.’

  Mick looked at him. The cold tap dripped like the measured tick of a clock, timing the silence. At last he said, ‘Please, Pat.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Patrick sighed, unable to think of a good enough reason why they shouldn’t go. Knowing he would regret it he said, ‘All right. I’ll ask her.’

  Mick exhaled a long breath. ‘Thanks.’ He closed his eyes and Patrick recognised this as his cue to go.

  Cleaning the bath, hanging towels over the clothes-horse to air, Patrick tried to imagine asking Hetty to the hotel’s dance. He saw her face brighten only to fall when he said, ‘Mick’s coming as well.’ He hoped she would turn him down, certain she wouldn’t.

  He ran cold water into the bath, sluicing away the last of the lavender suds. As children they had bathed together, their mother sitting where he had, on the edge of the bath, watching them with rapt indulgence.

  No girl would ever have been good enough for her boys, but she would have hated Hetty more than most. So common, so coarse, with her rough hands and scrawny features. Such women didn’t even wash properly. Involuntarily Patrick curled his lip in disgust. Hetty would smell of milk and blood and bone. All women did.

  He remembered the whore’s room, papered with a pattern of abstract flowers and Chinese dragons, hump-backed, serpent-like creatures with manic, goggle-eyed smiles. He had stared at them, counted their repeat around the walls and tried to imagine such creatures breathing fire as the girl worked on him. Her hands were small and brown with half-moons of dirt beneath her fingernails, her fingers surprisingly strong around his cock. She frowned over her task, tipping her head to one side so that he imagined her as a bird, poised over a half-buried worm. He’d closed his eyes. Reaching out he’d grasped her wrist and lifted her hand away. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry, pet, it happens.’ Her voice was singsong Geordie. Into his silence she laughed. Lowering her voice she said gruffly, ‘Not to me it doesn’t.’

  ‘What?’ He opened his eyes to look at her.

  ‘You all say it. I say it happens and you say not to me it doesn’t.’

  She had been kneeling at his side on the bed and she got up, the flimsy robe she wore falling open. A trickle of blood ran down her thigh and she drew the robe tighter around her. All the same he caught her scent, his mother’s scent, ripe and fecund and suffocating. He gagged, stumbling to the basin in the corner of the room, vomiting Dutch courage under the grinning eye of dragons.

  Chapter Nine

  HER FATHER HAD A new curate: a stocky, cheerful redhead who shook Paul’s hand too vigorously, studying his face as though trying to decide which eye was real. As
the curate, Martin Peters, asked Paul if he had accepted Jesus into his life, her father smiled at Margot as though some need for revenge had been partly satisfied.

  Taking her to one side her father said, ‘Your mother tells me he’s found a job. Will he cope with a class full of boys, do you think?’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  ‘Well, I hope so, Margot. I hope he can take care of you.’

  ‘He can.’ She looked at Paul. Without thinking she said, ‘Isn’t he like Robbie? He even laughs like him.’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t see Robbie in him at all. Robbie was a fine boy. And perhaps you’ve forfeited the right to mention his name.’

  Humiliated, she looked away so he wouldn’t see her eyes fill with tears. Her father sighed heavily.

  ‘Have you a handkerchief? Then use it. We have a guest, please don’t embarrass him.’

  Margot walked out through the French doors into the garden, ready to cry as much as she liked. Once outside though she only felt childish, shivering in the cold without even a cigarette to occupy her. She glanced back into the brightly lit dining room. Her father stood with the curate and Paul, his expression still pained and angry. After a moment he touched the curate’s arm, excusing himself.

  Standing beside her in the garden he said, ‘I’m sorry. Of course you can talk about Robbie if you wish.’

  Unable to speak she smiled tearfully, taking his hand.

  ‘Oh, you’re cold!’ He rubbed her fingers. ‘Let’s go in.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Margot. I’m sorry.’ Exasperated he said, ‘I’m just so angry still.’ He looked back at Paul. ‘What he did to you makes me angry. But I’m trying. I’m trying to get over it.’

  ‘He’s not as bad as you think – I really like him …’ She thought of the night in the seaside pub and blushed.

  ‘Like! You should be head over heels in love with him. Instead you’re crying alone in the garden.’

  Quickly she said, ‘He’s taking me to the New Year Dance at the Grand tomorrow.’

  ‘And so he should! Now, dry your eyes and let’s go in. Your mother’s serving the tea.’

  The curate reminded Paul of a sailor he had once fucked in the lavatories on Darlington Station. The sailor had a short, stubby cock nesting in the most vividly coloured pubic hair he’d ever seen. His skin smelt of hot, dry canvas and a mermaid tattoo swished her tail over his coccyx. He thought often about that mermaid. He was thinking about it now as the curate said, ‘I’m afraid I spent the war in Blighty. Spent a lot of time pushing paper around in the War Office.’