by Zoe Strachan
‘Who was Jason?’ As he asked Richard worried that Jason had been Stephie’s boyfriend, and therefore a name he should have remembered.
‘Oh, just some dickhead from school. But I didn’t grass him up.’
‘Very noble of you.’
‘Yeah well,’ she said. ‘Want the last crisp?’
‘No thanks.’
She shrugged and ate it herself. ‘So, did you fancy him?’
She made the question sound schoolish and trite, Richard thought. ‘Did you fancy Jason?’ he said.
She made a fingers down the throat gesture, then said, ‘I’m not trying to do your head in, you know.’
‘I know. I’ll just go and open another bottle. This one’s almost dead.’
‘My god,’ Stephie laughed. ‘Is it a two bottle story?’
‘Depends how much you want to know,’ Richard said, standing up.
‘I’m not going anywhere and you haven’t got cable.’
‘Captive audience, maybe that’s just what I need.’
He went through to the kitchen. They could have a frozen pizza for dinner, he decided, with some of the salad left over from the previous evening. He couldn’t have his mum complaining that he hadn’t fed Stephie properly. Though the less she knew about their wine consumption the better, he thought, selecting a screw-top Chilean from the rack and going back outside.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ Richard said.
‘At the beginning. Duh-uh.’ Stephie finished her glass and held it out for a top up.
‘The first time I met him?’
‘Yeah, that’ll do.’
Richard sipped the wine tentatively, sucking in his cheeks at the difference in tannin.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It was the day I left home.’
0
Although I enjoyed our walks back from the castle, they were also imbued with a hazy sense of disappointment. I wanted to stay longer, always, to see how the place looked by candlelight, what corners were thrown into sharp relief and which imperfections melted away.
Shame we have to go home, I said, as we tramped along the road towards the town. Birds were squabbling over the last haws and rosehips in the hedgerows and the light was fading, bringing an enthusiastically wintry bite to the evening air.
You know the rule, Luke said, and indeed I did. We recited it to remind ourselves: if you’re caught somewhere you shouldn’t be in daylight you’ve got half a chance of talking your way out of it; if you’re caught there at midnight, you’re fucked.
After a while he said, I’d like to see it some day, your town.
Don’t worry, I said. It isn’t going anywhere.
All the same.
I shrugged. Any time.
We jumped up onto the verge as a car slowed to pass us, a silver Audi driven by a woman with long blonde hair. It stopped a little way ahead of us.
Maybe she needs directions, I said.
No, that car’s passed us before, Luke said. Last week. I recognise it.
What’ll we do?
Nothing. Just keep walking.
But as we grew nearer the car drove off over a hummock in the road and away.
I think our card might have been marked, Luke said.
Och, maybe she was just fixing her make-up or something. She was looking in the rear view mirror.
Hmm. I guess we knew it wasn’t ours forever, eh?
The driver wasn’t the only person who’d noticed our trips out of town. The academic community lauded in the prospectus by (token Scot) Gillian from Stirling as ‘close-knit and fantastically welcoming’ was a hothouse. Sometimes it seemed that nothing within its parameters was private.
I saw you! Francis had crowed at me one Monday evening at the Les-Bi-Gay. Where were you off to then, with him? A romantic stroll?
Well well well, what’s going on here then – Hugo had asked, after stopping his car alongside us at the Haste Ye Back sign – A bid for freedom?
As if he’d tuned into my thoughts Luke said, I was wondering about giving the pub a miss tonight.
Yeah, I said. It can get a bit much sometimes, can’t it.
And the money, he said. Don’t know about you, but I’m skint.
Me too, I said, having just tried to work out a budget tight enough to see me through to the next grant cheque. But I thought Mendelssohn was going to pay you for shifting his books?
Yeah, he did. A tenner, like.
Last of the big spenders.
Do you think he’s gay?
Mendelssohn?
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. Why?
Aw, nothing. Just, he was quite nice to me and I thought he was maybe looking at me.
And did he touch you on any of your private parts?
Fuck off.
I’d never have admitted it, but I was a tiny bit jealous of Mendelssohn’s supposed interest. I don’t mean that he should have fancied me, merely that I’d hoped for a little acknowledgement, solidarity even. Instead he maintained a distance that went beyond typical academic scattiness. Perhaps he preferred to couch his desires in admiration of more traditional masculine qualities.
So, quiet night in it is then, Luke said. Want to come round to mine? Buggerlugs is away in Aberdeen with the rugby team and I’ve got a little surprise for you.
Sure, I said, and that whisper of melancholia faded away. After a while I noticed the intense evening scent of flowers drifting over the hedgerows.
Smell that? I said.
He nodded. Makes a change from manure.
Meadow sweet, I said. I think.
How do you know all that stuff? he said and smiled at me, making me proud of the half-knowledge gleaned in my childhood. Luke knew how to face off a drunken teen and score drugs but he’d never collected frogspawn or seen a fairy ring of lurid Amanita toadstools. Those, at least, would have been right up his street; he’d already had me hunting for spindly little liberty caps in likely spots round the edge of the golf course (although the expedition failed when we were shooed away by a greenkeeper long acquainted with the ways of students).
We bought some three-minute noodles and cans of beer at the Co-op and went back to Herrick, which had a listless feel to it that evening, as though everyone’s attention was elsewhere. Calum and some friend from his Physics workgroup were sprawled in the TV room with a multipack of Doritos and the Alien boxed set.
We’re just putting on the second one, he called.
Nah, Luke said. You’re all right Calum. Ta.
Have fun, I added. In Herrick no-one can hear you scream.
We proceeded to the kitchen, which was suffused with a boiling smell, though what had been boiled I couldn’t be sure. Lentils, perhaps. It was a barren room, rendered more depressing by the official notices about tidying up and the handwritten labels stuck to the meagre selection of groceries which lurked in the cupboard. While I slopped our instant noodles into bowls Luke rooted around in the fridge until he found a bottle of soy sauce marked ‘Gemma’s!’, with which he doused our dinner. Unwilling to sit under the fluorescent strip light we retreated to his room, which in the absence of Max seemed if not nearly as good as the castle, palatial in comparison to the other options Herrick had to offer. Luke put on some gently throbbing dance music to stifle the sound of The Cure from the room next door, and we were onto our second beer before he said,
You know how you were telling me about that girl?
Wendy.
Yeah. What I was wondering was, did you manage it? With you being gay, I mean.
I looked at him. His face was serious.
Kind of, I said.
He laughed. What do you mean kind of? Did you fuck her?
Yes.
Did you make her come?
I very much doubt it.
Did you come?
I reached for another can of beer and cracked it open. After a moment I said, It was just some kind of hormonal mix-up, okay? A one off. I’m gay, Luke. You know that.
Did you like
it?
Not particularly.
You must have. If you came.
It made me feel sick actually. God, I’d never have mentioned it if I’d known I was going to get the fucking Spanish Inquisition.
Sorry, he said, smiling at me, so I didn’t know if he’d been genuine or just trying to wind me up. Then he said:
But if you’ve done it once, you’re bisexual, eh?
I made an exasperated noise. For fuck’s sake Luke, I’m gay, all right? G-A-Y gay. A poof, a faggot, a shirtlifting queer …
Take it easy, he said, patting me on the arm and grinning as though satisfied at getting a rise out of me. I’m just curious.
You’re a cunt, I said. That’s what you are.
I know, he said. But sometimes I’m very thoughtful.
Yeah right. I pretended to sulk.
I am, he said. I said I got you a surprise, didn’t I?
So what is it then?
Aha, Luke said, leaping to his feet and rummaging through the drawer of his desk. I swear that fucker goes through my stuff when I’m not in, he muttered.
What’ve you lost?
S’okay, I’ve found it now. Right. Close your eyes.
I obeyed.
Now stick out your tongue, he said.
I looked at him with scepticism.
Go on, he said, smiling in his very boyish, innocent way.
Okay, I said, sighing and closing my eyes again. He pressed firmly against my tongue, so that I could taste a hint of tobacco from his fingertip, then moved his hand away.
Now hold it there, don’t swallow.
I twitched and he said again, Don’t swallow. Then he held out his index finger, on which rested a little square of paper with a purple ohm sign stamped on it. He smiled and placed this on his own tongue, and I waited for his cue to wash mine down with a sip of beer.
An SI unit, I said. Measuring electrical resistance.
Yes, he said. You did want to, didn’t you?
Sure, I said. Why not.
He laughed. Just like the Host.
The Host? I said. It resonated somehow, but I couldn’t drag its meaning from my sluggish brain.
You know, he said, taking a sip of beer. Like at Mass.
I’ve never been to Mass.
You mean you’re not Catholic? he said. Weird. I just assumed you were.
I shook my head. My family were Protestant – in the non-churchgoing, non-religious sense of the word – and our town was Protestant too. Not so far from Lodge 0, with the Catholic church kept clinging to the outskirts of the town, its mysteries a safe distance from the Main Street and Town Buildings. My mum had taken Stephie and I to a jumble sale in the assembly hall of St Ninian’s Academy once. As we passed through the main entrance I’d felt Stephie’s little paw patting its way up my leg until she reached my hand. I assume it was the viscerally rendered crucifix that provoked her, rather than the seventies architecture. The Virgin, in her pretty blue robe, was a bigger hit. Mum had laughed when Stephie asked why they didn’t have dolly ladies in her school too. I wish I could say that I’d been set all a-quiver by the sight of pouting, red-lipped Sebastian, but he wasn’t amongst the plaster saints. Perhaps they didn’t want to give the pupils of the Nin’s any ideas.
You mean you are a Catholic? I said.
Luke smiled. Not any more, I guess. Not so’s you’d know.
The next day, for the first time, I missed my ten o’clock lecture.
9
As Richard eased himself onto a stool at the bar he realised he’d misjudged the place, put the rainbow sticker on the door together with a mild recollection of the name and come up with an image of somewhere he’d choose to round off an evening. Instead, he found himself in the Last Chance Saloon. He ordered a drink in any case, embarrassed to walk straight back out the door and still, though he didn’t quite admit it, imbued with an open-minded optimism about how the night might end up. It was only a few moments walk from his hotel after all, then a mere lift journey to the claret and cream anonymity of his room. And if someone from DaCapo – such as Jonathan from the art department, for whom Richard had conceived a fancy over dinner – met him on the way, it would only lead to a good-natured ribbing at the breakfast table the next day.
Not, he guessed, that many of his colleagues would be making it to breakfast. The group had splintered after the meal, various nightclubs calling its livelier members and Rupe leading a small posse towards a ‘gentleman’s club’ which he promised would be ‘spectacularly ironic’. Tuula had made a ‘wanker’ gesture behind Rupe’s back as he retrieved the company credit card, and Richard couldn’t help agreeing with her assessment as he watched Rupe herd the Sony exec, drunk Lisa who fancied the Sony exec, gauche Ben the intern and intense Malcolm the surprisingly influential blogger out of the restaurant.
Richard paid for his pint of San Miguel, marvelling that they had it on tap given the unreconstructed air of the place. Traditional in décor, just a normal corner bar with a mirrored gantry and repro Guinness adverts on the walls. You could come in, get yourself a drink, take a seat before you noticed. That the barmaid was the only woman in the place, aside from an elderly lady with lopsided false eyelashes and a lot of jewellery sitting beside with a man who might have been her son. That a lad on a barstool had just reached round and massaged the neck of the boy sitting beside him, close enough for their thighs to touch. The way the old soaks at the corner tables were looking at the youngsters at the bar. Richard could feel their eyes on him too, almost hear their stagey little whispers. Those few youngsters that were there must have been slumming it or trying to adopt the place as some kitsch treasure; they wouldn’t be regulars unless there was something wrong with them. He glanced towards the mirror to allow a quick scan just in case: not his type, not his type, quite nice but obviously part of a couple. The fantasy of parading a slim Marc Jacobs model-type past Jonathan in order to enflame his envy and awaken his previously dormant lust for Richard would have to remain just that.
‘Not seen you in here before.’
‘No,’ Richard said, turning back to face to the man who was sitting to his left. Not his type either, never mind.
‘Local, are you?’
‘I live up north. Just down here for work.’
‘You don’t sound like a teuchter.’
‘No.’ Richard hesitated, drinking too much from his pint as though he was thirsty. ‘I’m from south Ayrshire originally.’
The man smiled, his face crinkling into a murder of crow’s feet. ‘No offence son,’ he said, ‘But you don’t sound like you come fae there either.’
‘I haven’t been there for a while. I must’ve lost the accent somewhere along the line.’
‘Aye, that can happen,’ the man said, his eyes darting to the door and back again. ‘Get you another of those?’
‘Thanks,’ Richard said, though what he’d meant to say was, no thanks. He sensed that it wasn’t a chat up, the man was too distracted for that. He ordered a double vodka with orange for himself, but had downed it by the time Richard’s pint was pulled. The barmaid served him another without being asked.
Soon the man – they didn’t bother with introductions – upgraded to treble vodkas and lemonade and showed Richard pictures of his two children. His wife thought he was working, he explained, driving a minicab. Instead he was fortifying himself, he explained, for when his boyfriend came to meet him.
‘The truth of it is that I’m feart of him,’ the man said suddenly, surprising Richard because he was a wiry type, with a boxer’s quick shiftiness. He hadn’t been swift enough to avoid the knife that had traced a pale scar over his jawline though.
‘But he loves me, you know? Gave me this.’ He indicated his wrist, flashing a watch through Richard’s line of vision too quickly for him to discern whether it was expensive or not. The man’s hands were shaking. Richard felt he should take them in his own to still them, but he didn’t.
‘Listen,’ he said instead. ‘Why don’t y
ou just go home and see your kids and forget him for tonight?’
The man chewed on his lip and said, ‘I cannae, take it from me I cannae.’
Could it really be that bad, Richard wondered, or was it a poor attempt at melodrama, falling flat because it wasn’t coming from some pretty young scenester in skinny jeans? But then the swing doors to the bar flew open, and what must have been the man’s lover flounced in. Flouncing, Richard realised, could look extremely threatening when the flouncer was six foot tall and built like Desperate Dan.
‘Right,’ he announced to the bar in general, in a voice that seemed more frightening because of its affectation than in spite of it, ‘Where is he? Where the hell is he?’
Richard could feel himself shrinking from the man by his side, not wanting to get involved but disliking himself for his response. His companion hopped off his stool and stood still as his lover marched up to him, hauled him to the middle of the floor and punched him in the face. He crumpled to the ground, clutching his jaw.
‘You get in that car right now,’ the bigger man said, then he turned on his heels and stalked out.
Richard looked towards the barmaid, expecting her to be dialling 999, but she was holding a glass to the vodka optic, her back to the scene. As the wiry man scrambled to his feet and wiped his face she called, ‘Here Joe,’ and held the glass out to him. ‘On the house.’
He downed it in one, not looking at Richard, not looking at anybody. The bar was quiet enough now for the music to be heard, a poor remix of an early Madonna song. As it finished the man placed the glass on the bar with care, nodded his thanks to the barmaid and walked through the door.
A high-pitched cackle erupted from the side of the room. Richard looked in the mirror and isolated the source: a plump boy in a tight pink T-shirt and clunky gold chain, nudging his companions like a puppy begging for scraps. The music increased in volume and all at once the bar was filled with chatter and giggles. Richard finished his drink and met the eye of the boy he’d noticed earlier. He and his partner looked vulnerable now, as though suddenly their Ben Shermans and tank tops were insufficient armour. Richard guessed that the bar’s prospective elevation to kitsch treasure had plummeted, offered a half-smile in their direction as he got up and left.