by Alexis Hall
“But he recognised me. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Yes, it tells me you’re really hot.”
Alfie blushed. He still wasn’t used to being complimented by other men or to how much he liked it. The occasional bluntness of it. None of this you have nice eyes crap that he usually got from women when they had their hands between his legs. And, of course, that made him remember Fen’s rough touches. His pale lips. His fierce glares. The taste of salt. Wrists beneath his hands.
“It felt like more than that. Like . . . I dunno . . . like he needed something from me. I was so fucking lost up there, Greg. So lost and . . . sort of at home at the same time.”
Greg nudged lightly at the top of his arm. “Look, I know being gay is kind of a big deal to you. It doesn’t have to be, though.”
So people kept telling him. People who didn’t think it was a big deal. Except Alfie didn’t feel like arguing about it now. He slid a hand around Greg and pulled him a little closer. It felt nice. Not sexy nice. But nice. To want to a hold a man like you would a woman, in friendship, for comfort, because you could.
Greg sighed and nestled for a moment. He still fit very nicely. “Alfie, you know you could probably have any guy in London? You could feel at home here too.”
Alfie stared into the muddle of light and shadow, their mingled reflections, hazy in the glass, and didn’t know how to answer. After a moment, he pulled out his phone and winced at the time. “Shit. I need to grab a couple of hours sleep before work. Are you crashing?”
Greg had that awkward look he got when he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to begin. In the end, he just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his designer-shabby jeans, and nodded. Followed Alfie slowly to the spare room.
7
Dear Mum,
* * *
Winter is coming. That’s funny, and you won’t know why. But winter is coming, undramatically, in a gathering of grey. It wasn’t until I moved away that I realised how much winter is its own kingdom here. I wish I could see things the way you did. But all I see is this ghost of a ghost town.
I walked through the promenades at Little Haven today. That’s such a Victorian word. Promenades. A place where you promenade. I probably should have had a parasol, and a pink dress with a bustle, and a gentleman to take me by the arm. But all I had was the echo of my footsteps, and the promise of winter’s silence all around me.
Not even a group of kids with skateboards to shout obscenities at me as I passed. Do kids still have skateboards? But that’s what I remember, the rattle of wheels on tiles, the kick-punch laughter of recognisable strangers. Alfie Bell never had a skateboard, but he was here sometimes, slouched against one of the pillars, self-conscious, with a cigarette between his fingers.
They were so frightened of cigarettes, these rough-tough boys with their mincing inhalations. By the time I was fourteen, I was on a pack a day, and so proud of it. And I didn’t just stand around trying to look cool, I smoked. I really smoked. It was the perfect vice for me, so good, so bad, teaching you how to love the thing that hurts you.
I used to imagine, sometimes, smoking with him. With Alfie Bell. I’d watched him, fumbling, trying to make it look casual, like he knew what he was doing. (The way he kissed me by the Rattler, all bravado and confusion and tenderness.) So I would have to light his cigarette for him, just like in the movies, and give it to him, his lips pressed to the place where mine had been. And I’d dream of this too. Not this mediated kiss, but the light wavering at the tip of his lighter, or the matchbox slipping from his unpractised hands.
I didn’t know you knew about the smoking, but of course you did. It was Dad, in the end, who made me stop. I’d come in from school, and I was making toast with too much butter, just like we like it, so that the plate glistens afterwards. I can’t remember what he was doing, but I remember what he said, sort of conversationally like he was asking if I had a lot of homework or if I’d had a good day at school (I always said yes, but I never had good days at school).
He said, “Why are you making your mother watch you kill yourself?”
Which is ironic on some level, isn’t it?
So, anyway, I stopped. And I’ve never smoked since. But maybe it wouldn’t matter, since there’s nobody to hurt right now but me.
And Dad. But what would he say? How would he stop me, how would he help me, now he can’t sneak his love in next to yours as if I wouldn’t notice, and say “your mother thinks” or “your mother wants”? How do we do this without you?
He said it to me yesterday. As if nothing has happened or changed. As if it’s still true. “You know, Fen, your mother loves you very much.”
Oh, why am I still thinking about Alfie Bell, when I have so much else to think about? And your shop to run. Which I’m failing at, by the way, ruining everything you loved, losing you all over again. It’s so funny, though, if funny is the right word, which I think it probably isn’t, that he’s a Londoner now. It was all over him, from his voice to his suit. It was only when he was naked—all hair and muscles and that gorgeous, vulgar tattoo—that he was real to me. The same boy who had hurt me inside this man who held me. The strangest thing is that I could never imagine him anywhere but here. And yet I’m the one who’s here. He’s the one who’s gone.
I’ll never see him again. Not after what I did when he came after me. I’m almost glad it’s just another thing you’ll never know. It should have been a victory—payback even—but I’m just embarrassed. I wish I could have been cold and scornful and indifferent or, at the very least, calm. But, instead, I keep showing him all these cracked and desperate bits of myself, everything I thought I’d put behind me a long time ago. It was probably just the shock of him, making the past feel closer than it should. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How I’m supposed to bear this. Old anger and new pain, and the pure simplicity of missing you.
The truth is, I never expected to see Alfie Bell again anyway. I haven’t thought of him in years, except for the occasional flash of remembered resentment. And I told David, of course, lying in his arms as we swapped the stories of our pasts until it all seemed as trivial as cockle shells and sea glass, compared to this fresh, new love. But, somehow, it’s all become real again: this bold, beautiful man I have loved, hated, and forgotten, who has never, ever spared a single thought for me.
Beyond the promenades the amphitheatre is empty, and beyond the amphitheatre the half-shell fountains are dry.
I’m cold all the time, except I don’t feel cold. A proper Northern boy, at last, wandering the clifftops without a coat.
* * *
Love always,
Fen
8
Alfie spent most of the next week torturing himself by Googling South Shields. It filled him with an awkward mixture of pain, longing, and uncertainty, and seemed a fair substitute for Googling Fen, which was what he really wanted to do. He’d typed Fen O’Donaghue into the search box so many times, it was starting to autopopulate whenever he typed anything beginning with F. Though he’d just about managed not to actually click on any of the links. He was pretty sure that would cross the line from slightly weird into actively unhealthy. It was hard not to be curious, though. Now that he thought about it, Fen was the last person he would have expected to find still living at home. There’d always been something different about him—not just the gay thing, but something . . . else, restless and delicate and almost magical, like a wet-winged butterfly, newly emerged and struggling to fly. So why hadn’t he flown? What was in South Shields for someone like Fen? What would hold him there?
On Thursday morning, Alfie finally cracked and did the unthinkable. He walked into the office of the old man, J.D. Jarndyce himself, explained that everything was in order and that he needed a long weekend to take care of some personal business. And then he left, putting his odds of still having a job on Monday at about fifty-fifty. Clearly his priorities were all screwed up, because he was finding it hard to care.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like his job—on the contrary, he liked the money and the power a lot—but the idea of doing something a bit less intense, a bit slower paced, was starting to seem pretty appealing.
Half an hour later, he was flinging a suitcase into the boot of the Sagaris and heading north, nudging impatiently at the speed limit all the way. The landscape shifted as he drove, but he couldn’t track the point it changed, when the yellowy fields started rucking up around him, and the sky grew grey and heavy. He got his first glimpse of the Tyne as he skirted the edge of Jarrow, where it was curled around an oily jumble of rundown shipyards and closed-down docks. The ugliness of it was comforting. Before he’d seen other towns, he hadn’t even known it was ugly. It was just stuff that was there. Salt-pitted, algae-smeared concrete pressed against the edges of the river like the teeth of a comb.
He’d been back barely a handful of times since he’d started working for J.D. Jarndyce, but he still knew where to go without having to think about it, without even having to remember. Somehow, though, always in a rush or preoccupied or on the road well after dark, he’d forgotten how green it was. Even at the edge of winter. Or maybe it was just the way the sky made everything vivid. Like Fen’s eyes, so fierce in his pale, narrow face.
As he approached the town centre, he was struck by the way everything had become familiar and alien at the same time. London was a hodgepodge of centuries, banging elbows like drunks at a bar, but South Shields was barely built up at all. Everything was as scattered as Lego bricks. There were posh bits, like the town hall with its famous ship-shaped weather vane, but mostly it was like being stuck in the seventies. Right now, he was driving between a disused office block with mirrored windows and a Sofa Carpet Specialist warehouse in brick and corrugated plastic. Then came the town hall itself, with its never-on fountains and the podgy statue of Queen Victoria, flanked by a pair of naked torch-holding blokes.
From there, it wasn’t far. Past the Morrisons that used to be Asda that used to be Safeway, and he was turning onto Ocean Road. The club on the corner had changed its name, but he couldn’t remember from what, only a jumble of nights in a hot, wet basement, drenched in blue light and noise. Other names had changed too, but somehow it still looked exactly the same as it always had: a faded row of curry houses, pawnbrokers, newsagents, off-licences, and bookies. At the place where the road fell into the horizon, the sky gleamed with the reflection of the unseen sea.
Alfie turned into a side road and slid the Sagaris into a space against the kerb. Then he grabbed his suitcase and went to find himself a B&B. It didn’t take long because it was out of season and there were lots along here. Grand old Victorian houses with bay windows and the occasional dodgy turret. He took a room at a place called the Atlantis, which didn’t strike him as the best name for a guesthouse in a seaside town, dumped his stuff, went back to his car, and drove to Pansies.
Trying not to think too hard about what he was doing. Or had done. Or if this had really cost him his job. Or what he was going to say to Fen. Or if Fen was going to cover him in plant juice again.
He found somewhere to park on the Prince Edward Road and raced into the shop before common sense got in the way of action. The bell jangled, announcing him.
Fen was standing with a customer over by the main flower display. Just like at the Rattler, he had his back to Alfie, his weight resting lightly on one leg, and Alfie found it just as enticing. He hardly knew the man, and yet it seemed like him, somehow, this carelessly tempting pose.
“I’ll be with you—” Fen’s head turned slightly, and Alfie caught the flash of his eyes, the sudden tightening of his mouth “—in a moment.”
The customer, a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties, was leaning slightly, but visibly, away from Fen. “Look, I’ll just tek the roses, mate.”
“But, Wendy doesn’t like roses. You haven’t bought her roses in the last twenty-five years.”
“Nora used to sort it oot fer us.”
“Well, my mother isn’t here,” snapped Fen who, whatever his skills, seemed to be struggling with the basics of customer service, “and I am, and I know what flowers your wife wants on her birthday.”
“Aye, but Nora—”
“Still isn’t here.”
“Let us choose fer mesel. And I’ll tek the roses.”
Fen didn’t quite sigh aloud, but his irritation was obvious in every line of his body. “You can’t buy a woman red roses for her birthday. You might as well just tell her you don’t have a clue who she is.”
“Ah reet.” Fen’s customer folded his arms and glared at him. “And wha’ do ye knaa aboot wimmin?”
“Oh for God’s sake. Enough to be able to make up a bouquet for one.”
Alfie stepped forward quickly. “Me mam likes them tulips. Ha’ ye got any o’ them?”
He told himself it hadn’t been deliberate, but his voice had roughened to match the other man’s, his accent sliding into the familiar grooves of his childhood. He was, once again, the Alfie Bell everybody liked. Except he wasn’t really, he was just pretending. And it was working. The customer, who could have been Alfie’s dad, or any of his dad’s friends, was looking at him with approval. Instinctive friendliness. Like he saw something he recognised.
“Yes,” Fen cut coldly into the silence. “I do have tulips.”
“They’re bonny, aren’t they?” offered Alfie. “Do ye think your missus would like ’em?”
“Nae bloody clue, mate.”
“You could get the red uns, like the roses. That’s the colour for love, isn’t it?”
“Actually,” put in Fen. “White is love. Red is passion.”
“Oh aye. Reckon that’ll do nicely.” Alfie elbowed the stranger, earning a grin.
Fen pushed between them and carefully lifted a selection of ruby-red tulips from their bucket, the flowers bright in his pale hands. “Anything else?”
“Well, yeah. He can’t just give his wife a bunch of tulips on her birthday.”
Fen gave Alfie a sardonic look. “Of course he can’t.”
There was a long silence. It was like, Alfie thought, a Bermuda triangle of awkwardness. “What do you think?” he asked at last.
Fen opened his mouth, but then he closed it again, some of the frustration fading from his eyes, leaving them weary instead. He looked down at the flowers he was holding and then at the displays. “Irises.” And when this drew no response, he went on, “The tall blue-purple ones with yellow tongues. I’ll do you a dozen of each, with some salal leaves. It’ll look . . . striking.”
The customer finally nodded. “Yeah, alreet.”
“Okay, good. Give me a moment.”
Fen gathered up a matching handful of irises and crossed over to the counter. While he was busy, Alfie and his new friend talked softly about women, the footie (which Alfie had honestly stopped following), and the weather. Safe, comfortable topics. They had just about run out of conversation when Fen was done.
The bouquet looked more than striking. It was spectacular. Simple and bold, and far beyond anything Alfie had imagined when he’d remembered his mum liked tulips. The man paid up hurriedly, dumping the money on the counter rather than passing it to Fen, and left without a thank you.
Alfie felt oddly betrayed. “Ungrateful git.”
“What do you want this time?” Fen was standing with his hands braced, palm-down, on the countertop. He looked just like Alfie remembered: thin and pale and angry, with his too bright eyes and his too bright hair. Not handsome, not pretty. And deeply, deeply sexy. Like the ungettable girl all the boys wanted. Except not.
“I came to see you,” he said.
Fen’s lips got even more thin and sneery. “Oh, you were just passing through, were you? From London.”
“I took a . . . sort of holiday.”
“Well, I’m not a tourist attraction.”
There was a long, unpleasant silence.
“You’ve changed your glasses,” said Alfie suddenly.
&nb
sp; “What?”
He had. They were thin, silver rectangles that made the angles of his face even sharper and his eyes all glittery.
“You’ve changed your glasses.”
Fen put a hand to the edges of the frames and pushed them up his nose. “Is this really what we’re talking about? Yes, I’ve changed my glasses. I own several pairs because I put them on my face and I’ve never understood why the thing you wear on your goddamn face would be the thing you never change. Now answer my fucking question.”
“I told you. I wanted to see you. I’ve thought a lot about—”
“Stop. Don’t. Please.” It was the least pleading please Alfie thought he’d ever heard.
“But—”
“What part of ‘I never want to see you again’ did you miss the first time round?”
“No, I got the message. What with the plant juice and everything. But I thought maybe when you weren’t so angry and I wasn’t such a dick . . .”
“What? That we’d overcome our indifferences and grow as people?”
This wasn’t going well. Probably it had been silly to hope otherwise. But there didn’t appear to be any buckets nearby, at least ones that weren’t full of fresh flowers, so it was already going better than last time. Which meant it was basically now or never.
He took a deep breath. “Honestly, Fen, I dunno. I just wanted to tell you I was sorry. And you were right, I didn’t get it. But I do now. So I’m proper sorry. For everything. The shit I did when we were kids, not recognising you, and then not getting it, chasing you down like a psycho—”
“Chasing me down like a psycho twice. Even though I explicitly asked you not to.”
“Yeah. All of it. Everything. Except being with you that night. You can regret it if you want and turn it into this big mistake in your head. But I can’t, and I won’t, because it was, y’know, really good.”