A Hallowed Place

by Caro Fraser

  He decided he would think no more about it. Instead, he turned his mind to the call he intended to make later that evening, to a dealer friend in Copenhagen who might have some works of interest to the museum. Leo switched on some music and concentrated on driving and keeping his thoughts off Joshua.

  As soon as he slipped his key in the front door and opened it, Leo saw the light from the living room. He walked slowly, edgily, up the hall, not daring to allow the hope in his heart to expand. He stopped in the doorway. Joshua glanced up and saw Leo standing there, looking tired, dressed in jeans and open-necked shirt, and a battered leather jacket that looked as though it had once been very expensive. Joshua noticed that there were small purple stains on Leo’s shirt and that the faint stubble on his face was dark, in contrast to his hair. It made him look younger. He couldn’t read the expression in Leo’s eyes, so he just sat there, the book he had pulled from a shelf still in his lap, one leg hooked over the side of the armchair. Perhaps Leo didn’t want him there. Perhaps that night had been all he wanted, and this was a mistake. Still, he had had to come back. Leo had played too much on his mind, kept invading his thoughts. He had wanted to be with him again, be in this place, in this quiet. To find out.

  Leo closed his eyes briefly, as though very weary, then opened them again. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked. His voice was slightly hoarse. ‘You do realise …’

  ‘What?’

  There was a silence. ‘I thought I might never see you again.’

  Joshua said nothing for a few seconds. The depth of feeling in Leo’s voice, in those simple words, astounded him. He felt his own eyes brighten unexpectedly with tears and he looked away quickly. This wasn’t what it was all about. ‘Yeah, well … I’m sorry.’ After a moment the wetness in his eyes cleared and he could look directly at Leo again.

  Leo crossed the room to where Joshua sat and knelt down. He put his face in Joshua’s lap and Joshua, astonished, uncertain, put out a hand to stroke Leo’s head. Then Leo looked up, drew Joshua down to him and kissed him. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

  Some hours later, lying in bed, Leo asked, ‘Do you have a friend called Damien?’

  ‘Yes. How do you know?’

  ‘The Australian girl at the Galleria told me. I went there when I was looking for you.’

  ‘Looking for me?’ Joshua lay with his chin propped on his hand, gazing at Leo.

  Leo said nothing for a moment, tracing a line with his finger from Joshua’s neck and down his shoulder. ‘Where does he work?’

  ‘Damien? The Ritzy Cinema, in Brixton.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why?’

  Leo sighed and smiled. ‘I was just curious.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Next morning Leo stood in the kitchen, tying his tie, watching Joshua flicking through the book of poetry he had taken from the shelf the night before.

  Joshua looked up, feeling Leo’s eyes upon him. ‘I know what you want to say,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘You want to know if I’ll be here tonight.’

  Leo sat down, smoothing the corners of his collar. He reflected briefly on what Joshua had just said. It could have sounded arrogant, or unpleasantly triumphant, the words of one displaying his power. But Joshua had spoken gently, matter-of-factly. After a moment’s consideration Leo said, ‘I want you to be here tonight. I want you here every night.’ Joshua’s hazel eyes looked into his. ‘You know how I feel about you. I can’t bear any uncertainty. If you don’t want to come and live with me, then say so now. I have to know.’

  Joshua considered this, faintly amazed. If Leo wanted him here it meant he wanted to keep him. He would pay for things. Food, clothes, everything. When someone like Leo took you on, that was what it meant. You belonged. Did he want to belong to anyone? Joshua thought of the bedsit in Earl’s Court. He thought of his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in eighteen months, and of his stepfather, that bastard. There was no belonging there any more. What would it be like to share Leo’s home and life? There was no point unless he could return Leo’s feelings in some measure. Could he love Leo? He supposed he could, in whatever way Leo wanted. And there would be safety and affection, and a home. All for as long as he chose. That was the main thing. He could decide for himself how long it went on. Leo was in love with him, he could tell that. He might not ever have had this kind of a relationship with a man before, but he knew love when he saw it. This was his game all right. What had he to lose? Freedom, perhaps. Some people were unconditional and he guessed Leo was one of them. Yet there might be much to gain. Leo knew things, understood things about which Joshua wanted to learn - art, money, the ways of possession and influence. And he was generous. Were seedy, boring clubs, nights out with Damien and the occasional girl much of a sacrifice? Not in the short term …

  ‘Why do you want me to live with you? Why can’t you just see me now and then?’ If he was honest, he supposed he asked this question just to torment Leo, and just to hear him say the thing Joshua wanted to hear.

  ‘Because I love you. I want you. I want you to be there. You must know all that.’

  Joshua did. He put out a hand to Leo’s face. He liked this guy. More than liked him. Something about him turned Joshua on, and that was a start. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  Leo kissed Joshua’s hand. ‘You can have your own room. Treat everything here as though it’s yours.’

  ‘Including you.’

  Leo did not think he would ever feel so utterly besotted, so entirely and immediately happy, as at this moment. ‘Including me.’

  Leo’s day in court passed smoothly, perfectly. He dealt with what was a difficult and complex case effortlessly, with a clarity of thought and swiftness of response which he had not found within himself for months. He felt charged, purposeful, and went back to chambers at the end of the afternoon glad in his heart and easy in his mind.

  In the clerks’ room he picked up his mail, paused to exchange brief banter with Henry about his moustache, then went up to his room, whistling.

  Henry gazed thoughtfully after him. ‘Haven’t heard him whistle in chambers for months,’ he remarked to Felicity. ‘Not since Wales won the Five Nations. Sir Basil couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘What? Wales winning the Five Nations?’

  ‘No, the whistling. That, and him taking the stairs two at a time. Not that he does much of that these days.’

  ‘Getting on, I suppose. Still, nice to see him happy for a change.’

  She sighed. ‘Wish I was.’

  Henry glanced at her. ‘What’s up?’ Henry had for some time nurtured an unrequited love for Felicity. He had once managed to kiss her in the back of a taxi after Felicity got drunk at a chambers Christmas party, but that was as far as it had gone. It was treated as a joke between them. He knew Felicity wasn’t interested in him, except as a friend, but still he cared about her, and any suggestion that all was not well with her made him worry.

  ‘Oh, nothing, Henry.’ She smiled at the sight of his kind, anxious face. ‘Nothing that time won’t sort out.’ She turned back to the papers in front of her. She might as well resign herself to the fact that her days at 5 Caper Court were numbered. In a few months she would be gone and it would be the end of her precious, wonderful job. She might have known it would be too good to last.

  Leo left chambers at six and went to catch the train at Temple station, conscious of anxiety growing within him. He didn’t think that Joshua would leave again, not after last night, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything until he got home and was able to reassure himself. The journey to Sloane Square and the five minute walk to his flat had never seemed longer. When he got in, he could hear music coming from the kitchen. His sense of relief was almost as great as that of the night before.

  At the sound of the front door closing, Joshua stepped out into the hall. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, his feet bare, and in one hand he held a kitchen knife. He looked more cheerful than Leo had ever seen him. ‘I brou
ght my things over this afternoon. I put them in that bedroom at the back. And I bought some food. Just chicken and stuff. I thought I’d cook us some supper. And I got some wine, just something from Sainsbury’s. It’s in the fridge.’ There was something new and pliant about Joshua’s manner, less streetwise, more ingenuous. How Leo loved him.

  Leo opened the fridge and glanced at the wine. Definitely not. He would put something else in later, after he had changed. ‘That’s kind of you, to think of supper. I had to wait for ever for a train. Bloody District line.’

  ‘I thought you drove to work.’ Joshua sounded faintly surprised.

  ‘Not always. Only if I’m going in after the rush hour.’ Leo leant back against the sink, happy to watch Joshua inexpertly cutting up a red pepper.

  The evening was more companionable than Leo had expected. It was the first amount of time they had spent together that was not emotionally or physically charged. They simply ate and talked. Joshua listened while Leo talked about his past, about Wales and his mother, about the father he could not remember, and about Rachel and Oliver. He told Joshua about the room he had prepared for Oliver’s eventual weekend visits. ‘Rachel thinks he’s too young to be staying away from her on a regular basis, but it’s important to me that I build up a close relationship with him while he’s still little. I know what it’s like not to have a father.’

  ‘We’re a bit alike,’ said Joshua. ‘I’m an only child, and my dad walked out on us. But I was ten, so I remember him, of course - I mean, I still see him. Well, I used to. He moved to Halifax two years ago.’ He sipped his wine. ‘I really missed him when I was a teenager. That was when I wanted him around. Some days I felt like I hated him for leaving.’

  ‘I know,’ said Leo thoughtfully. ‘That’s why I want to be there for Oliver.’ He glanced at Joshua. Having the boy living with him was going to complicate things, especially if Rachel found out. But what else could he have done? Feeling as he did, what else could he have done? Anyway, Joshua was here now. Thank God. ‘Tell me more about yourself, about your family.’

  Joshua gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I haven’t seen them since last Christmas. I left home the summer before, after I’d finished art school. I couldn’t take all the rows with my stepfather. His name’s Alan and he’s a bastard, besides being a policeman. My mum met him about a year after my dad left. We used to get on all right when I was a kid, but then as I got older he tried to pull the big authoritarian act all the time. He used to try and make me look small in front of my friends. That was when I really started to hate him. Then when I wanted to go to art school, he made out that it was a soft thing to want to do, that it was a cop-out. My mum never thought it was. But he tried to discourage her from paying my tuition fees and stuff. He never shut up about what a waste of time it was. Still, she backed me up. Then when my friends from art school started coming round to the house, he’d have a go at them. Nothing direct, but sort of snide, insinuating remarks. He made a lot of the fact that he was in the police, sort of hinted that he could shop them if they were using drugs, stuff like that. They couldn’t stand it, or him. We used to have really bad rows, and my mum would get all hysterical and upset. So I left. Got myself the bedsit in Earl’s Court and the job at the Galleria. I’d ring Mum up now and again, of course, just so she knew I was all right, and then just before Christmas she said it would be nice if I came home for a few days. Well, I didn’t really fancy spending Christmas in the bedsit and all my mates were going to be with their families, so I went. Biggest mistake of my life. Alan started off okay, but after he’d had a few drinks, he couldn’t resist getting the needle in. So when I told him the police were a complete load of corrupt racists with a collective IQ of an average snooker score, he got really rattled. He actually went for me, grabbed me. I don’t think he’d have hit me, but poor old Mum was all over the place. I haven’t been back since and I never intend going. Of course, the money’s a bit of a problem, which is why I’ve done those things on the side. I didn’t believe I could do it at first, but then … Well, after a while it becomes easy money.’ He stopped, faintly embarrassed.

  Leo had been listening with interest, studying him, absorbed in the beauty of the boy, the movements of his face as he talked, the expressiveness of his hands. ‘What about your art? How much does it mean to you? Are you ambitious, for instance?’

  Joshua laughed. ‘No, not really. I don’t want much out of life, to be honest. I mean, I take what comes.’ He leant back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head. ‘I do like painting. It takes me out of myself. I suppose in a couple of years I might think of studying some more, turning it into a proper career, become a designer, something like that. But for the moment, I don’t much care.’

  Joshua’s tone was nonchalant, but Leo knew from the pain in his eyes that leaving his family had been more traumatic than he had been prepared to admit. He tried to make it sound as though he had chosen his way of living, but Leo could see all too clearly that the boy was too broken, lonely and dispirited to make anything of his life at present. Maybe he could change that. Maybe with time and enough affection, Joshua could make something of himself. Leo desperately hoped that he could be the one to help him.

  By the end of just one week, Joshua’s presence in the flat seemed so perfectly right, and so necessary to Leo’s well-being, that the past months had a nightmarish blankness when he looked back on them. His love for Joshua had sprung from nowhere, but became, with every day that passed, more settled and absolute. He did not question it, could find no motive for it, but simply accepted it. He knew that Joshua’s feelings for him were of a different kind, but he hoped that, with time and patience, they would strengthen and deepen.

  At Leo’s suggestion, Joshua had set up an easel and paints in the back bedroom, and for some of the day he worked there. Leo didn’t know what he did the rest of the time. He didn’t ask. He was happy just to see him there each night, apparently content. Some evenings Joshua cooked, on others Leo took him out to restaurants. On Saturday, at the end of that first week, they went shopping and Leo bought him new clothes, and in the evening they went to the theatre, where Joshua sat a little restlessly through one of Tennessee Williams’s less well-known plays, and then to dinner. Sitting in the Ivy, watching Joshua take it all in, the faces, the food, the wine, the novelty of his surroundings, Leo was reminded of the time, some years ago, when Anthony had first come to 5 Caper Court as a pupil. Leo had taken him under his wing, had loved him, wanting to teach and mould him, to turn him into the companion of his heart. It had never happened. Perhaps that would be possible with Joshua. With all the delusion of new and undisappointed love, he hoped and believed that it would be.

  Sarah was careful to leave Anthony alone for the first week of Camilla’s absence from chambers, but on the Monday morning of the second week she went to ask his advice about a piece of work she was doing for David concerning liability insurance, knowing that Anthony had a hearing coming up on that very same subject. She sat in his room as he explained the point, only half listening but making a show of intelligent interest and, as she gazed at him, idly pieced together the distinctly erotic events of the first time they had gone to bed together. Oddly enough, she had discovered that her decision to indulge in a bit of mischief-making had actually rekindled her old interest in Anthony and she found it hard to be with him without wanting to touch him, to provoke some kind of sexual response in him. For the moment, though, she would keep her distance. There would be ample opportunity to test his powers of resistance over the days to come. With an effort, she drew her attention back to what Anthony was saying.

  ‘… So the contractors would have to demonstrate a legal liability in damages in respect of the third-party claims. That’s the main point. Does that help you?’

  Sarah nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, thanks very much. It’s an interesting area of law. I like insurance work.’

  ‘Good.’ Anthony leant back and tapped his teeth with a pencil, his eyes scanning Sarah’
s face, unconscious that he was subtly stimulating his own latent desire by dwelling too long on her mouth and the line of her throat tapering into the neck of her blouse. ‘Actually, I have a hearing in the Court of Appeal tomorrow which might interest you. It’s a case involving a cruise line trying to recover under their liability insurance for compensation paid out to passengers. It shouldn’t last more than two or three days. Why don’t you ask David if he’ll let you sit in?’

  ‘Yes, I will. And thanks for the help.’ She went out, smiling a little smile.

  Anthony sat for a few moments, fiddling with his pencil, thinking about Sarah. It was odd how relationships shifted and changed. He recalled first meeting her and the effect she’d had on him. That was history, though. They’d moved from an intense, brief affair to cold mutual dislike, and now that had given way to a friendly tolerance. She was a strange girl. You never knew if what you were getting was the genuine article. Looking back, he felt that perhaps the only times he had seen the true Sarah were when she lost her temper. She was someone you learnt to be wary of. Then it suddenly occurred to him - Leo treated her that way. Cautiously, cynically. Anthony wondered why that was. According to Leo, theirs was just a nodding, social acquaintance. Another mystery, one he couldn’t be bothered to ponder. He glanced at his watch and decided to go to the common room for tea.

  As he passed the clerks’ room Anthony caught sight of Leo, laughing about something with Felicity. Good to see that he’d cheered up recently. But Leo was like that, going into periods of reclusiveness, then emerging, brisk and happy.