Trowchester Blues

by Alex Beecroft

  “Good,” said Finn beside him. “That’s good. I didn’t like to think you’d do that to me. I suppose a suspended sentence is not too bad, and then it’ll be well and truly over, and I can relax.”

  Trying not to let Finn see his sudden doubts, Michael raised his head to smile at him. The animation, the dynamo glow that suffused Finn’s presence, had begun to show again beneath his face, filling the car with relief, and Michael couldn’t . . . It was . . . He just couldn’t bring himself to poison it with his infernal doubts.

  “Yeah.” He leaned over to open Finn’s door for him. Though Finn was clearly capable of doing it by himself, the guy—even in this subdued form—had a movie-star quality that made Michael want to wait on him hand and foot. “Yeah. It’s going to be no big deal. I’m sure of it.”

  Finn let him stay after all, and he was in combination so grateful not to have been kicked out and so guilty-worried about the upcoming trial, he may have taken the protectiveness a little far.

  “You’re fucking smothering me,” Finn said as he drove him back out of the door two days later. “Every time I bloody turn around, there you are.” He pushed Michael in the chest, making him take two steps back. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because I know you’re concerned about me, and that’s sweet, but I don’t need you around here constantly. Go and do some Michael things. Stop bothering me.”

  He stood on the doorstep in another grey, chilly, autumnal day and wanted to be able to smile. If Louise had only wanted him to stop bothering her sometimes, they might still be together, paradoxical though that sounded. It was one more reason why he desperately didn’t want this to end, as prison would surely end it.

  Finn seemed to have taken Michael’s reassurance as gospel truth, and was almost back to his old self, though sharper and with less patience. But in return Michael had picked up Finn’s fear, and he didn’t know how to put it down.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, retreating another step with his hands up. “But this has been a shit couple of days, and we’re both on edge. So can I just check that you mean ‘get out of my hair for a few hours and come back this evening,’ and not ‘piss off, I never want to see you again’?”

  Finn’s brave face was like his outfit, a little more conservative than usual, the colours paler, the vibrancy dimmed. Michael was beginning to think he hadn’t really stopped worrying at all. He was just determined not to show it anymore.

  Finn managed a strained smile. “I have forgiven you, you know. Subject to unexpected incarceration. I knew what I was getting into, taking on an ex-cop.”

  “So that means . . .?”

  “Yes, yes. It means come back this evening, you idiot, and we can do the awkward-conversation-followed-by-desperate-sex thing again. But for now I need to work, so sod off.”

  It was pleasant to get out of the tight confines of the flat, even if it meant walking down streets slippery with rotten leaves, desolate and quiet now the tourists were gone, half the shops shut up tight until the winter solstice. Michael left the car at Finn’s and walked home, glad of the exercise and the peace. Simultaneously relieved and terrified that there were only four more days to go until the trial.

  Awkward scarcely covered it. Michael was frightened and clingy; Finn was frightened and sarcastic. Michael wanted to wrap Finn up in silk sheets and worship him as if he were precious and breakable. Finn wanted to be hit. With copious self-restraint and a great deal of careful conversation, they were managing to hold it together, but the thought of the oncoming trial was already beginning to assume the shape of a relief, however it turned out.

  Streaks of pale rain fell through the hanging streaks of reed feathers along the borders of the river. A curl of darker grey smoke rose from the chimney of a narrowboat he almost didn’t recognise as his own. Hard to tell, with water in the face, but he didn’t remember it having scarlet panels choked with golden roses, or blue hyacinths on its stern, or a cluster of black-enamelled watering cans on the roof, on which copper Daleks shot death rays of green ivy and a board proclaiming that these things were for sale.

  He knocked at the stern door, now painted to resemble a set of theatre curtains. “Sarah? It’s Michael. Can I come in?”

  The door opened, but it was Tai on the other side, clutching their laptop to themself and giving him a sceptical look. “I suppose so.”

  Ducking through, he found the blank white canvas of the interior of the boat equally transformed, with tattoo-like birds and flowers on every wall, and one or two dinosaurs hiding amid the leaves.

  “We didn’t steal anything.” Tai retreated backwards, not taking their eyes from Michael’s face. “My father had some ends of paint cans left from when we painted the house, and I bought the varnish and the things to be decorated from my cleaning money.”

  Gone was the minimalist emptiness of the small sitting room from which Michael had thrown out everything that could be moved. Now the table was covered in paintpots, brushes, cleaning rags, and varnish. The starboard side of the floor was covered in unpainted wares—flowerpots and planters, watering cans, narrowboat storage chests, and blackboards. The port side was cluttered with the same stuff, but beautifully, strikingly painted, in a style that combined traditional narrowboat motifs with pop culture in a way that even he could see would have the younger boaties geeking out.

  He would never have recognised the girl sitting cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by books on the history of art, if it wasn’t for the bare feet and the way he had to stand quite still for five minutes before she would raise her gaze off the bedclothes to meet his eye.

  “Sarah?” Oddly enough she could have been his niece by resemblance, though some part of her ancestry must have been black. She had the May family curls, and the beauty that they tended to grow out of around age thirty and mourn forevermore.

  She looked so much more vulnerable with her face washed and visible, wearing the bargain jeans and the fuzzy sweatshirt he’d bought her with the white stars, its hood lowered. He thought again about her absent parents who had thrown her out to live on the streets. How could they? How could anyone?

  “Hi,” she said, after she’d determined that he was not going to lunge forwards and grab her.

  “Hi.”

  Tai seemed to regard this, rightly, as a cease-fire. They relaxed from their position in between Michael and Sarah. Michael only realised that he was seeing a gesture of protection—a knight getting between his lady and the monster, a mother getting between the threat and her child—when Tai dismissed him and dropped to the sitting room bench, sliding their laptop back on the table.

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Sarah ventured, her voice small, as though she expected this to be the last straw, expected to be told to leave.

  “I think it’s great,” he said. “Genuinely. In fact, when I get my new boat built, will you paint it for me? I’ll pay you by the hour.”

  Tai had definitely appointed themself protector and guardian, possibly agent too. They poured a cup of tea and slid it over the table to Michael. “Well, we might be able to help you. It depends on how business is doing by then.”

  Michael wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether to be charmed or unsettled. He’d only been away three days. When had all this happened? “Business?”

  Tai swung the computer around to display the screen of an Etsy shop on which the newly painted goods were displayed.

  “I paint things,” said Sarah proudly, “and Tai helps me sell them, for ten percent of the profit.”

  “Yeah?” He brought his reading glasses out of his pocket and looked more closely at the screen. “And people are buying them?”

  She looked worried that she had done something wrong, and he hurried to add, “That’s wonderful!”

  “We’ve already sold nine items and paid for the materials.” Tai beamed with pride. “And traffic is increasing to the website all the time.”

  “They stop outside too,” Sarah offered in a voice so quiet he wasn’t sure he had heard
it. “They see the notice on the top and berth nearby, and come over to buy cans or plant pots. I don’t really like that, but they’re mostly nice.”

  “I’ll stay with you!” Tai offered fervently, their eyes wide with sincerity. And yes, Tai was a good kid, but they had to learn to back off a little.

  “How d’you feel about dogs?” Michael asked Sarah as they exchanged a glance over Tai’s head, him asking if the kid’s enthusiasm was a problem. He got the impression that she thought she could handle it, was flattered rather than frightened. Good. But it didn’t hurt to make sure.

  “I’m thinking we could get you a terrier of some kind. Something small enough to live on board but fierce enough to go for people’s ankles if they thought those people were making you unhappy.”

  “You can’t keep giving me things!” She sounded distressed, but he had seen the moment before, the moment when she was a child again who desperately wanted a puppy.

  “I wasn’t going to,” he trod carefully. “But rescue dogs are cheap. Tai or I could drive you to the nearest shelter to pick one up. And now you’ve got money of your own, you could buy one for yourself.”

  A smile. An honest-to-God, unrestrained, unambiguous childish smile. She looked away immediately afterwards as if to conceal it, but it was too late. He had seen, and his day was made.

  Michael had fallen asleep at four o’clock in the morning, after trying to match Finn’s restless sleeplessness all night long. He didn’t wake as Finn slid out of bed two hours later, having grown impatient with darkness and waiting and his own thoughts.

  Finn slipped his feet into slippers and wrapped a dressing gown around himself, looking down at the barely visible lump in his bed that was his sleeping lover. It had been a shit week, and he had been bitter and difficult to live with, and here Michael still was, reliable, calm, and affectionate through it all.

  He wanted to blame the guy for all of this, for shopping him to the police, for setting him up for this trial, for forcing him to face the consequences of his own actions. But the truth was that this, or something like this, was inevitable the moment he had opened his stupid mouth and confessed to Lady Harcombe in her library. It had slipped out on its own in a wave of self-righteousness, that perhaps meant he had begun to have the instincts of an honest man.

  Michael wasn’t to know that, of course, but with his background he would naturally assume the truth would come out sooner or later, would assume it was best to tell it yourself and have the world give you extra credit for owning up.

  If Finn wanted to be honest about it, he had pretty much accepted this the moment he’d accepted Michael.

  He reached down and pushed his fingers into Michael’s thick shock of black hair. Michael nuzzled into the touch but didn’t wake, worn out. Shagged out, more likely. I hope you appreciate what I’m doing for you, darling. Finn found himself smiling despite the nauseating twist of his nerves. Because it doesn’t get much more heroic than this.

  It didn’t get much more heroic than leaving the man to sleep, when Finn would have appreciated the company. He opened the bedroom door as quietly as he could and tiptoed downstairs.

  The garden was eerie in the predawn hush. Not a car on the street, only a flash of black movement at head height as a cat jumped from the back wall. The plate of shepherd’s pie he’d put out this evening sat on the table with cold mashed potato gone runny with rain, and cat paw prints amongst the gravy.

  For the second night running, his ghost had not appeared, abandoned him without a word of thanks. He hoped nothing terrible had happened to them, wondered if this was another case for the police. But what exactly could they do? He’d never seen the ghost’s face, could not describe their clothes except for dark, knew no name, or circumstances, or age. Had lost any DNA traces in the dishwasher two nights ago.

  Like an electric shock, it struck him that tonight he might not be here either. He might be inside. What was it like in there? Surely not as bad as American media would have you believe, with their jokes about dropped soap in the showers and their smug unstated assumptions that prisoners were getting what they deserved. Such things would not be allowed to go on in a British jail, with the assumption that the purpose of the institution was to rehabilitate rather than to punish.

  He raised shaking hands and rubbed them over his face, his burning, gritty eyes. Not this again! Could he not even control the inside of his own mind. What was the point? What was the point of making himself sick with worry like this, when it would either happen, or it would not, and worry would do nothing to prevent it?

  He felt like a dropped glass, only his willpower keeping the pieces from flying apart, holding time and ruin still by determination alone.

  Thank God, it would be over today, and he could accept . . .

  Snatching up the unwanted plate, he hurled it against the wall, where it smashed with a slap and a crash that wasn’t satisfying enough. He picked up the seat by the table—wrought iron, almost too heavy for his shaking arms—and tossed that after, gouging holes in the ancient brickwork. A plant pot full of spring bulbs—it shattered and rained daffodils and soil all over him.

  He couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t accept it. He didn’t want to go to jail.

  A bigger planter, with a hebe in it. As he struggled to raise it off the ground, Michael’s arms slipped around him and pulled him back into the warmth—a blazing warmth now that Finn was thoroughly chilled—of a sturdy body.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” He kicked and struggled. Michael’s grip eased instantly, letting him twist around and slap the man hard across the cheek. “I hate you. I fucking hate you. Why did you do this to me?”

  No reaction. He didn’t know what reaction he wanted, but indifference was definitely not it. Fucking dolt. Fucking immovable, unfeeling bastard. Finn balled his fist and threw a punch, anticipating the crunch and the pain as bone met bone and he broke Michael’s nose.

  But Michael caught his fist in one hand, tugged and twisted, doing something Finn didn’t quite follow, that ended with Michael behind him again, Finn’s arm held firmly and tightly across his chest, trapping his other hand. Disarmed and defenceless except for his words.

  “I hate you.”

  “I know.” Michael bent his head, tucked his face into Finn’s neck and held on, the way he did when they slept, when it was cold outside and he was afraid to wake. “I’m sorry.”

  They shook together in silence, wound tight, Michael’s right hand still hard around Finn’s wrist, his left spread wide on Finn’s chest, over the heart, increasingly holding him up. Finn’s legs gave way before his resolve not to cry, but that followed soon after. He hid his face in Michael’s biceps and let the guy pick him up and take him back indoors.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Michael, patiently and unconvincingly as he sat Finn down at the window seat and kissed his eyes. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. I’m sorry.”

  “You piece of shit. You’ve ruined my life.”

  Michael winced. His mouth tightened and turned down, his gaze fell to the floor, and his shoulders hunched as if crushed by a heavy weight, every line of him expressing a kind of mute, unbearable, animal misery. “I’m going to make you some breakfast.”

  He fought to get to his feet—Finn could see the struggle in the stiffness of his movements, as though his muscles had locked over terrible pain. And Finn hated him—hated that he cared about him too much to bear to watch him suffer like this. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he had to be the magnanimous one, but if it came down to a choice between forgiving Michael or driving him away by doing this to him, forgiveness didn’t seem so hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed, before Michael had entirely left the room. “I’m just scared. I didn’t mean that.”

  “I’m scared too.” Michael turned back slowly, looking wretched. “And it was true.”

  By eleven forty-five, when his case was called, Finn had moved through fear and raw, peeled pain into an exhausted acceptance.
There was something very numbing about the institutional carpet of the courthouse, the heavy, old oak furniture, lacy with the gouged graffiti of earlier generations, the bustle of ushers and solicitors, policemen and witnesses. It was all very businesslike and boring.

  Michael sat by his side with the expression of a man in hospital beside the bed of his injured wife, looking helpless and guilty and sad. Finn’s resentment finally cracked at eleven thirty, with the knowledge that this might end up like the last time—he might lose the chance to tell Michael what he felt before it was too late.

  So he nudged his shoulder against Michael’s, looking studiously in the other direction as he did. “I’ve already forgiven you, you know. I’d have thrown you out much earlier if I was going to.”

  “You say that now, but—” Michael glanced warily around, arranged a coat between them and grasped Finn’s hand under it, holding on tight. “If it does go bad, you’re going to hate me.”

  Ridiculous, that Finn had to be the one giving comfort. But it had been this way with Tom too. Arguments were tricky things for both sides to win if no one ever gave way first. There was something terribly domestic about the small sacrifice of ego, of first place. Sure, sex was a fine thing, but a fight at the end of which the pair of you were more lovingly entangled than ever, that was closer to being one flesh, one soul, than anything else.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, there. I knew what I was getting into when I took you on. I think I always knew it was going to come to this.”

  The pressure of Michael’s hand bent his bones, as Michael’s face shuttered down on some intense emotion, maybe gladness, maybe anguish. “And you thought I was worth it?”

  “I did so. And I do.”

  “Mr. Fintan Hulme?” the usher called, even as Mr. Todd, his solicitor arrived, looking inappropriately sunny in a pale suit and a yellow tie. Michael picked up the coat, but Finn didn’t allow the man to let go of his hand, so they walked in to court together, under the gaze of the recorder and the prosecution solicitor and the magistrate high on her bench, looking untouchable in her blue cashmere suit. A single pendant diamond the size of a fingernail shone like an oncoming headlight in the hollow of her throat.