by KJ Charles
Clem tipped his head. “Mostly very pleasant, thank you.”
“Was there something unpleasant?”
“Oh, well. Mr. Lugtrout.”
Rowley had disliked Mr. Lugtrout on sight, and acquaintance had not improved the man. He would not have chosen to move into a house with an obvious drunkard on the premises, and had been inclined to give notice on the spot when he’d met the fellow, but the location next to the shop he’d rented had been so convenient, and the lodging keeper so appealing, with his lush black hair, thick dark brows like a pair of fox moth caterpillars, and those eyes.
Good Lord, those eyes, so impossibly, richly brown. It was a long time since Rowley had wanted to be a fool for a fine pair of eyes, but he’d looked again at his landlord and decided then and there that he could tolerate a gin-swiller.
Tolerate, but not like. “What has he done now?”
“Oh, he had a terrible head, of course. So he was rude to Polly, which made her angry, and then this evening Mr. Power came down to complain because Mr. Lugtrout was having a terrible row with someone. In his room.”
“You don’t allow guests,” Rowley said. “Is he an exception?”
“No, he is not.” Clem looked thoroughly ruffled. “And of course Mr. Power said, why could Mr. Lugtrout have visitors and he not, and he wants to invite Miss Blanchard to tea, and Polly was very cross about that—”
Thank God for Polly. Rowley had strong views on the charming, encroaching Mr. Power, who had assured him early on that their lodging keeper was “a simple chap” that Rowley would be able to “get round.” Exploit his kindness, was what that meant. Fortunately, it would be easier to get round the Cape of Good Hope in a dinghy than to get round Polly, who made up for Clem’s good nature with an eye so chilly it could keep Rowley’s raw materials preserved for weeks.
“It was all rather tiresome,” Clem concluded. “And Mr. Lugtrout’s guest left while I was talking to Mr. Power, so I couldn’t tell him not to come back. Really, Mr. Lugtrout is a bother.”
“And there’s no discussing this with the owners?” Rowley asked. “If they understood that he might damage the business, might they let you give him a warning, at least?”
Clem shook his head, which made the almost-loose lock of hair on his forehead tumble into his eyes, which made Rowley want to brush it back into place. “It was the condition when I took the place.”
“I’m sorry. What a nuisance for you.”
“Oh, well. I had a very interesting morning, though.” Clem smiled at him. He had a spectacular smile, washing away the little frown of worry and concentration that creased the skin between his brows. Rowley’s only objection to that smile was that it narrowed his eyes. Good Lord, those eyes. Rowley had an entire cabinet in his workroom full of glass eyes carefully arranged in every likely shade, and he didn’t think he had a single pair that would do justice to their rich, glowing, mahogany depth. “I keep thinking about that case of birds.”
“What are you thinking?”
Clem opened his mouth, shot him a quick glance, and closed it again. Rowley waited. He was extremely good at waiting. His work involved a lot of waiting and was always precise and painstaking; a preserver without patience created monsters, often ones that started to smell.
“I can’t decide,” Clem said at last. “I mean, that’s what I think, that I can’t decide. It’s beautiful, like an explosion of birds, but they’re dead, and everything I like about it is the things that make birds alive. Movement and colour.” He waved his hands. “But yours would have been on a dustheap being scavenged by crows, and instead they’re a lovely thing and…that’s why I keep thinking about it.”
“But that’s the art in a nutshell.” Rowley leaned forward, feeling a tingle down his spine that had nothing to do with Clem’s closeness, for once. “That’s exactly it. I can’t make life, or save it, but I want to preserve something of it. To snatch something from the wreckage, to keep something back from the worms. And I know it’s no more than a pale shadow of what birds are—”
“It’s a bright shadow,” Clem said with fierce intensity, and Rowley’s throat closed. For the words, and their meaning, and for Clem’s open look, without the nervous apprehension and the hint of a stammer. For the trust that allowed him in moments like this to drop his ever-present guard.
Hell’s bloody teeth.
Rowley was…call it three-quarters sure that Clem’s inclinations matched his own. He had made a careful, patient study of his landlord over the months of their acquaintance, but Clem was not a man you could read like a book, or if you could, the book was in an unfamiliar typeface, with no page numbers. The look in his eyes could mean pleasure at the meeting of minds or anticipation at the meeting of bodies, and Rowley could not be sure.
He was even less sure that Clem’s tastes in bed would run to short, scrawny, bespectacled, unremarkable. Rowley had no illusions about himself, and he was not a charming man, able to make up for his physical shortcomings with easy likeability. He didn’t give of himself, and nobody gave back, and that had suited him very well for most of his thirty-five years. All he’d ever wanted was to be left alone.
And now he wanted Clem, wanted his smile and his closeness and his intimacy, wanted something of Clem so much that he’d give whatever he had to in return, and in the teeth of common sense and probability he could not let go of the hope, or the delusion, that his landlord might feel the same.
But he had to be sure. He liked Clem too much to risk their friendship by pushing for more, and he was absolutely certain that a push, a grab, a selfish act would destroy everything they’d built in here over evening cups of tea and quiet conversation. Clem wasn’t a man for a casual stroking-off in a shadowed alley, and Rowley had to get this right—however that might be done—or not do it at all.
So he didn’t put a hand on Clem’s knee, as he wished he had the certainty and the courage to do, but sat back in his chair. Cat, displeased by the movement, kneaded his thigh with paws that held a threat of sharpness.
“A bright shadow. That’s a lovely way to put it. I’d like to think I could live up to it.”
Clem smiled at that. “I think you do. You didn’t have butterflies.”
Rowley was getting used to the speed at which Clem’s mind worked, taking him from A to C without troubling to stop at B. It made him feel something of a plodder. “No, I don’t do insects. There’s no art to it. Well, in arranging them, I suppose. But honestly, I enjoy the preparation of larger pieces.”
“The…emptying the skins?”
“Fleshing out, we call it. Well, yes, I do. That’s the technical, practical part of the work, and then getting the pose right and making an effective mount is the artistic part. It’s satisfying.”
“Could I see you do it?”
Rowley hesitated. “Are you squeamish?”
“I don’t know,” Clem said, considering. “I grew up in the countryside and my f— That is, there was always shooting and so on. I don’t imagine I am, particularly.”
Perhaps not, but he was certainly compassionate, and Rowley didn’t want to see a look of revulsion on his face. Very few men would admit to being squeamish, just as many women felt it necessary to claim they were, and all in the teeth of the evidence. “I have found the most surprising people are affected,” he offered. “An army officer once insisted on overseeing the preparation of his pet dog. He assured me he’d seen the ground red with blood, and an animal’s body was nothing to him. I began the fleshing out; he fainted; and as he fell forward he knocked over the bowl of disjecta—the innards—and it flipped up and went all over him.”
“Oh, it didn’t.”
“It was one of those calamities that happens so fast there’s nothing one can do. I was still standing there stunned with a knife in my hand when he returned to consciousness a few seconds later to find himself covered in dog. I’ve never heard language like it, and I grew up in South London.”
Clem had his hand over his mouth. “Oh, th
e poor man. His dog.”
“I don’t let people see me work on their pets any more,” Rowley said. “So you are entirely welcome to watch me, but maybe a bird?”
“And be careful where you put the bowls,” Clem said. “Believe me, if there’s one there, I’ll knock it over.”
It was a joke, a casual bit of self-mockery, and there was no reason for Rowley to bristle at it. “I’m quite sure you wouldn’t. I’ll happily let you know when a specimen worth your attention comes in. Is there anything you’d like to see?”
“Oh, anything. Although, uh, I don’t suppose you’re working on any more large pieces like the birds, are you? I would like to see how that…” He waved his hands. “How you put the things in the right place, the, the…how it happens.”
“The composition. Really?”
“Absolutely. It’s fascinating.”
“Well, as it happens, I have been thinking about starting another such piece,” Rowley said, entirely inaccurately. The last one hadn’t sold and probably never would, but it brought people into the shop. He could justify making another to himself if it would interest Clem. “I haven’t got so far as putting anything together yet, or even planning really, but if you’re interested, I’d very much enjoy discussing it with you.”
The look in Clem’s eyes was worth a far bigger lie. “That would be marvellous. I’d love to see it.”
“I’d love to hear your ideas,” Rowley assured him, and that, at least, was true.
—
On Saturday, Rowley sold the badger.
It had been a wonderful few days. He and Clem had had their heads together, discussing ideas for a new display piece. Clem had become so intensely absorbed in the work, they’d gone well past lock-up time, which was very lucky for Mr. Power, coming in late again. Rowley couldn’t care. Clem’s fascination with the picture developing in his head had been overwhelming, his enthusiasm wildly contagious. He was creating something, that much was clear, and Rowley would be his medium.
It was going to be unusual. Rowley had selected bright birds from the little feathery bodies brought to him last time, but Clem was thinking about London birds, about rooks’ nests and ravens, and quick, hopping house sparrows. Ordinary birds are beautiful too, he’d said, and Rowley could only nod.
Clem hadn’t quite articulated what was coming together in his mind, and perhaps he didn’t know yet, but Rowley was entirely happy to wait for developments. It had the flavour of Mr. Dickens’s work, something that brooded and reeked of London, and Rowley didn’t think he’d ever seen a piece quite like this was going to be.
He’d never seen Clem so unaware of himself, either. He was a startlingly imaginative thinker, leaving the methodical Rowley quite behind with his leaps from subject to subject—at least until Clem caught himself at it and tried to put his thoughts into a more routine order. Rowley could well imagine exasperated schoolmasters telling him to do just that, to think and speak and be like everybody else. As if the world needed more people like all the people it already had.
But now Clem was lost in the joy of imagination and creation, and Rowley found himself swept along in that, and the pleasure of being with Clem. And in some mysterious manner that exuberance had transmitted itself throughout the shop and into his customers. He’d had a lot of those, including the man Lugtrout, sober for once and poking his gin-mottled nose around, and he’d made the best of it. He’d sold half a dozen small pieces, set up an arrangement to preserve a pigeon-fancier’s champion bird, which might drop off its perch at any time, and to crown it all, the blasted badger was off the premises, with its ghastly winged helmet and the paper scroll clutched in its mangy fist, and had left him a magnificent four pounds to the good. Four pounds for a thing he’d happily have burned. There really was no accounting for taste.
And since he had four entirely unexpected pounds in his pocket—four holiday pounds, one might say—Rowley shut up the shop early and took a speculative walk down to High Holborn. The arrangements he made there were quite satisfactory, or at least he hoped they’d be satisfactory. It was surely worth a try.
Clem had gone out that evening, as he usually did on Saturdays, but Sunday was a bright day for the first time in weeks, though cold, and Rowley proposed a stroll around the nearby Charterhouse Gardens in order to put forward his suggestions. The gardens were mostly November-brown and soggy, but the sky was blue through the permanent haze of smoke.
“Do you recall I mentioned the Flying Starlings to you?”
“The trapeze artists?”
“That’s right. I wondered if you might like to come and see them with me.” He held up a hand before Clem could do more than wince. “I know what you said about the crowds, but the thing is, I’ve secured a private box. We’d be high up, but for trapeze artists that means a better view, and of course it would only be me and you.” There was a thought he’d been trying not to make too much of. “No pushing and jostling, that is to say, so…But if you’d rather not, that’s quite all right. I didn’t mean—”
“No.” Clem shook his head. Rowley opened his mouth and clamped it tight again. Shut up, shut up, let him talk. “It’s—that’s so kind of you. I, uh, I don’t know what to say. Why?”
“I’d like you to see them,” Rowley said. “And really, it’s nothing. Well, it’s a celebration. I sold the badger.”
“You did?” Clem’s eyebrows slanted comically. “Congratulations. What sort of person buys the badger?”
“He looked completely ordinary. Just a man in a coat, muttonchop whiskers, not sticking straws in his hair or claiming to be Mr. Gladstone. You’d have thought he was quite sane.”
“Except he wanted a badger dressed as a Greek god. Well. I can see that calls for a celebration.”
“So will you come?”
“I’d love to.” Clem’s smile broke out, and the sodden brown garden seemed a little more springlike.
—
They went on Monday. Polly, who was to stay late to supervise the house, bade them farewell with a stern eye in which Rowley was nevertheless sure he detected a hint of approval. The Grand Cirque was a building of medium size, and it was already thronging by the time they approached. Rowley had plenty of experience of fighting his way through narrow entrances, and finding his face pressed into someone’s back or hat by the crush of bodies, and had decided they might usefully bypass that distressing experience. A few extra badger-earned shillings meant they were conducted via a discreet door on the mews at the back of the building into the bowels of the theatre. Rowley had been advised that hanging around and gawping at the young ladies dressing was not included in the price; that, he had assured the doorkeeper, was quite all right.
The box was high up, on one side of the large music hall. They had two chairs set close together in a little space that looked out over the crowd, which was a fearsome array of humanity already. Tobacco smoke hung thick in the air, and the gaslights blazed. It smelled of oranges and unwashed skin and perfume and, where Rowley was, of Clem.
“Is this all right?” he asked. “If it isn’t, if you’re uncomfortable, will you say?”
Clem nodded, looking down on the crowd. He clearly wasn’t troubled by heights. “Rowley?”
“Mmm?”
“How did you know to do this?”
“Well, you told me,” Rowley said. “You said it was the jostling and people shouting in one’s ear, which I don’t enjoy either—”
“Yes, but you can, can’t you? You’d just be a bit hot and bothered, sitting down there.”
“Very hot and bothered, and probably with a view of some lady’s best hat. I’m a little short for the seats.” He looked sideways at Clem’s profile, the little frown between the dark brows. “But yes, I could very easily sit in the stalls. I’m quite happy that you’d rather not.”
“Most people,” Clem said carefully, “most people think that I shouldn’t make a fuss.”
“Most people think that nobody should make a fuss until it’s their o
wn comfort at stake, at which point they will bring the roof down shrieking about it.” Clem gave a startled yelp of laughter. Rowley went on, “And in any case, you didn’t make a fuss. You said what you wanted, that’s all, and since it was very easy for me to get what I wanted while giving you what you wanted—”
“What do you want?” The words came out on an indrawn breath, like a little gasp. Clem’s hands were on the rail, long brown fingers curved around the brass, and he wasn’t looking at Rowley, but their thighs were pressed close, so very warm and firm, and he wasn’t moving away.
Come on, Green. Do it.
“I’d like to make you happy,” Rowley said softly. “However that might be done.”
Clem’s breathing deepened a little. “Uh, Rowley?”
“Yes?”
“My friends said I should tell you that I’m very bad at taking hints. They thought I should be sure to let you know that.” Clem was trying to smile, not quite managing it.
Rowley considered. “Well, firstly, I did know that. And secondly, it sounds as though you have interesting friends, and thirdly…” It was extraordinarily difficult, here in a public place even if nobody else could hear a word, after a lifetime’s habit of secrecy and allusion and implication. All the things he wanted to say were coded. You’re remarkably handsome. I like you very much. Perfectly clear to any other man, but then Rowley wasn’t interested in any other man.
Damn it. He put his hand to Clem’s thigh, not far enough to be a gross intrusion but decidedly too far up for a friendly pat on the knee, and felt him shiver but not move away. He took a deep breath and more or less choked on it as Clem’s hand slid down over his, gently interlacing their fingers.