by Patrick Gale
Lying in bed listening to seagulls, he heard Dad get up and take his and Mum’s tea and biscuits back to bed. Sandy stirred as he lifted the sheet, and threw out an arm to catch his thigh. Eyes still glued shut, he mumbled sexily, a faint smile on his lips. Will gently prized himself free. The two of them had ended up on one bed, impossibly cramped in their movements and he ached all over. Sandy mumbled again as Will pushed the second bed chastely away.
“It’s early still,” he said. “Save your strength. You promised them a theme park today, remember.” He planted a kiss on his stubbled chin. Sandy groaned and rolled away from the light. Will pulled on his trunks and retrieved a dryish towel. Standing near the gap in the shutters, he looked back at the man sprawled so greedily across the bed, at Sandy’s heap of clothes neatly folded the night before, at the glass of water he religiously brought to bed to drink when he woke, the book about the SAS he was reading. This was a glimpse, he realized, of the husband rather than the lover. A man for whom he felt tremendous affection but whom he could never love. “Sandy?” he said softly.
“What?”
“This has got to stop, you know. All this.”
The noise Sandy made was more like a child deprived of pudding than a man facing the end of a relationship. But that was surely the whole problem; it was no relationship, to his thinking, but something stickily addictive, no less desirable for being contrary to doctor’s orders.
“Why?”
“She’s my sister, for fuck’s sake, and I don’t want to hurt her. What more reason do you need?”
“So?” He did not even look at Will to speak, head still half-buried in pillow. “We’re both mad about her.”
“And I want my life back. It’s gone on too long. It’s not healthy.” He bent over Sandy’s bed again, pressed a hand to where his ass was clearly outlined through the twisted sheet and kissed his shoulder. “We can talk later on. Tonight sometime. But I wanted to tell you now. So you can think about it.”
Sandy made the small boy wants pudding noise again so Will pulled back hastily and left him to sleep. He regretted telling him to think about it and promising a discussion since it sounded as though he required a decision when what he needed was a handshake. They had held versions of this conversation before so Sandy probably interpreted that morning’s announcement as nothing more serious than one of Will’s periodic fits of conscience. And perhaps it was. Perhaps they would still be sleeping together when he was fifty.
As Will walked down the deserted beach, however, the dazzling sun, cold sand and colder water strengthened his resolve and the exhilaration that went with it. “This is real,” they said. After the rain in the night everything looked freshly made and it was easy to imagine it the dawn of a new era in his life, a new, healthier period of truth and accountability and commitment. He was still a lousy swimmer but even that could change. The time he had formerly devoted to seeing Sandy, and waiting for Sandy and mentally recovering from seeing Sandy, he could devote to swimming lessons. He might start singing again, join the Barrowcester Glee Club, which was famously a second-chance marriage market. He trod in a tangle of seaweed and recoiled, having to kick to break free of it. He might, he reflected sadly, merely give up more time to helping his troubled parents.
There was a bark and Fay came racing down the beach and into the sea to cool down. Rather than swim, she ran through the surf parallel to the beach, raising spray like a small horse cantering. Roly came behind her from the cliff path, a brace of large rabbits slung over his shoulder like a scarf. He called Fay to follow him then saw Will, who raised a hand from the water. Without even a glance to see if they were overlooked, Roly slung down the rabbits, stripped off and swam out to join him. “Should have brought my soap,” he said.
Will took him in afresh. Despite all the photographs, he had forgotten how he looked and had rebuilt him in his mind, larger and less vulnerable than he was in the flesh. “I’ve been wanting to see you,” he said.
“Should have come over, then.” Roly swam in a circle around him.
“I couldn’t get away. My family.”
“Ah.”
“No. I mean it.”
“So come today. Run away. I’ve got to go over to Fowey. You could come too.”
“When?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Just turn up and we’ll go.”
“I need to dress and grab some breakfast.”
Roly smiled. “Me too. You could help me choose what to wear.”
“Will!”
Will turned at the squeaky voice. Oscar, the youngest, was racing across the beach in his pajama bottoms, his red hair like a flash of flame. He backed off as Fay bounced over to inspect him then saw she was friendly and laughed as she licked his face. Then he was transfixed by the dead rabbits.
“A nephew,” Will said. “Better go. I … I’ll see you, then.”
Roly swam back faster than him and dried himself on his shirt. Oscar was fascinated.
“He’s naked,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” Will said. “He was in a hurry.” He winked over at Roly as they turned away. “How about breakfast? I bet you haven’t even washed your face yet; you’ve got sleepy-dirt in your eyes.”
As they walked back up to the house, Oscar recounting at length a marvelously egocentric dream he had just enjoyed, it struck Will there was now nothing to stop him being entirely open. He had met someone, the sad young man in fact, and was going on a trip with him. He could do as he pleased. They were all adults. They would survive without him.
“Are you coming to the theme park with us?” Oscar asked.
“No, Oz. I’m going on a trip with my friend.”
“Who?”
“Roly. The naked man back there.”
“With the rabbits?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. OK. Can I have mashed banana on my toast?”
“Of course.” Will ruffled his hair, smiled at the matter-of-fact tolerance of early childhood and thought what a pity it was that the crowd politics of school would soon educate it out of him.
Hugo was already breakfasting while browsing the Internet. “It’s all right,” he said, catching Will’s anxious glance. “I’m using Dad’s mobile, not yours.”
“You’ll be giving him an almighty bill, won’t you?”
Hugo tapped on his mouse. “He doesn’t mind. Mum says it keeps me quiet.” He giggled. “Look what I found.”
Oh God, Will thought. Porn. But Hugo had found Henry Farmer’s home page.
“This is the robber Grandpa let out of prison,” Hugo told Oscar. “He’s so old! He was a rapist too.”
“Yes,” Will said, leaving Hugo to answer Oscar’s inquiry as to what a rapist did exactly. “Eat your breakfasts both of you while I have a look.”
There was a beaming photograph, a lengthy diatribe against the injustice of trying to extradite Farmer and an extract from his forthcoming life story. There was also a special offer: one-pound notes, signed by the old rogue himself and purporting to be a share of his original haul. All major cards accepted it announced and proceeded to ask for a disturbing number of personal details.
Will stared hard at the sun-lined face, its heavy white eyebrows, a gold tooth, gold dog tags on a neck chain, but felt no glimmer of recognition. There was an e-mail option. Perhaps he could send him an e-mail asking, “Remember me? Because I don’t.”
“Don’t let Grandpa see this,” he said, turning back to his toast. “It would only make him cross.”
Sandy was in the shower so he could dress quickly and excuse himself.
“I seem to have hooked up with your sad young man,” he told Mum, who was discreetly queuing for the bathroom, reading spines on a bookshelf. “I never told you, did I? He’s the sculptor.”
“No! So that’s what all the driftwood’s for.”
“And it wasn’t a wife who died. It was a boyfriend.”
“Ah.”
“I said I’d help him drop something off. You don’t
mind, do you?”
“Of course not. We’ll see you when we see you.”
“Thanks, Mum.” He kissed her cheek, guilty that he had just dumped a pile of information on the person in the household least able to process it, and hurried off before Sandy could come out and start asking questions.
Roly was butchering the rabbits as Will arrived. As he peeled the fur away from the pale, fatty flesh beneath, Will remembered childhood bathtimes and the instant of delicious confusion as his father peeled a turtlenecked jersey over his head and crooned, “Skin a rabbit,” while Will’s face was held tight in woolly darkness. He saw how apposite the phrase was. The carcass did indeed have a look of naked child about it and the limp jacket of fat-lined fur looked indeed like a garment that might as easily be slid on again.
“Sorry about this,” Roly said, tossing the parts he did not want to his feet where Fay fell on them, fur, fat and all. “If I don’t do them straight away, they start going off.”
“How did you learn to do this?” Will asked. It seemed a far cry from dinners on a Notting Hill balcony.
“From a very old American cookery manual. There were also instructions for dealing with bear and ground squirrel.”
“Bear?”
“That was a bit wasteful. You only took the paws. For stewing.”
Out with it. Out with it, Will thought. The longer you leave it the harder it’ll—
“I’ve got a confession,” he blurted.
Roly looked up from washing his hands under the rain butt tap. He let Will suffer a few moments before saying, “You broke into the fourth bedroom. It’s a bit Bloody Chamber isn’t it? Impossible to resist once you’ve taken a first peek.”
“How did you know?”
“Persons who look at other persons’ photograph albums after dark should close the shutters first, then read by torchlight.”
“There’s a good explanation.”
“I’m sure.”
“One of the boys broke Mum’s pearls. They rolled under the door and before I could stop him Sandy, that’s my brother-in-law, just bashed it open. So I couldn’t help seeing. I saw everything.”
“Even the everything in the bookcase. Night after night.”
“Why did you pretend to be straight?”
“Did I?” Roly opened the back doors of his old van and started nestling sculptures on a heap of blankets in there.
“Well, you let me believe it.”
“You assumed it. I only let you think I’d been married.”
“And you had.”
“In a way, yes.”
“But why?” Will pursued. “I feel so stupid.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you again, so what was the point? I won’t see you again. You’re only here for another week.”
“Who says? I might decide to stay.”
“The house is let all month,” Roly said, not missing a beat to consider what he had just heard. “What makes this place so attractive suddenly?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“You make it sound as though that makes a change.”
“It does. I mean the kind of thinking I’ve been doing does. Roly, I think I love you.”
Roly merely looked at him then looked away and carried on loading sculptures into the back of his van. “That’s very sweet, William. Sweet William. You must get that joke all the time.”
“I don’t, actually. Everyone calls me Will.”
“Oh. Well that’s very sweet of you but you have a life elsewhere, with your shop and your café and your family and friends and I have a life. A precarious life. And an even more precarious kind of … I was going to say happiness. Christ! What I mean is—”
“It’s okay,” Will butted in, catching Roly’s upper arm to stop his restless pacing to and fro. “I wasn’t proposing marriage. I’m not a complete fool. I know these things can’t be rushed. I was just … I just felt good about how I was feeling and wanted to let you know.”
“Oh. Well, good.” He looked down at Will’s restraining hand, took it in both of his, seemed to read its palm a moment then pressed it to his lips. He raised an eyebrow. “Shall we go to bed straight away or would you really like to see Fowey?”
“Would you be very hurt if … I’d love to go out, for once.”
“For once?”
“I mean,” Will hastily covered his tracks, “people are always so keen to leap into bed and it would be really good just to spend time with you, watching what you do. You know?”
“I know.”
“And then maybe …”
“Hmm?”
“Maybe later.”
They kissed against the side of the van. In his excitement, Will had quite forgotten where they were standing. If his mother had taken her usual cool seat at Blue House’s rear, she would be enjoying quite an eyeful.
“Tell me about Seth,” he said.
Roly broke away. “We should go if we’re going.” He opened the passenger door and carried on talking as he walked around to the driver’s side. “He was a violinist. One of the many prodigies who don’t make it. Or not as big as he’d hoped. He taught and he played in a string quartet that now has a new first violin.”
“But you were happy together.”
“Oh, as happy as two difficult, creative people can ever be. First he was disappointed. Then he was ill. And that became what he did. And gay politics for a bit. Now, do you mind if we don’t talk about him any more?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, not for a while.” He gave one of his snatched, nervous smiles and clicked the ignition key, waiting for the diesel light to go off. “Still a bit raw.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“You’re not to be polite. It’s one of the things I hate. Which reminds me …” He fumbled in the welter of old toffee papers, parking tickets, seashells and nails and found something. “Fay!” he yelled. Fay startled Will by leaping in at his open window, crashing across his lap and taking up, as to the manner born, an alert sitting position between them. She was still chewing some rabbit organ. “Her breath stinks, I warn you,” Roly said. “I tried chicken toothpaste but it felt sort of demeaning. For both of us. Here. While I remember.”
He reached across and Will thought he was going to run a hand through his hair but instead he only tapped a finger to the middle of Will’s forehead as if to admonish wrong thinking. Then he started the engine and, smiling to himself, lurched them off up a track along the valley, skirting the golf course and the old manor that was now its clubhouse.
“That’s where my cousins used to live,” he muttered. “Smug bastards.”
A minute or two had passed before Will caught sight of himself in the wing mirror and spotted the small, yellow star on his brow.
BEACHCOMBER
The sun was so warm Frances felt she was melting, drop by waxy drop, into the sand. Skip was helping Julian build a castle from pebbles. They were being supremely methodical, sorting stones by size and color so they could start with the largest and build up to the small ones while executing patterns in the masonry. The challenge, inspired by the day’s lesson in church, which she had demanded, to Bill’s amusement, they all attend, was to build a house on sand that could withstand the tide and thereby the ordinances of God.
Julian was as brown as his cousin now, his hair stiff with salt and his legs streaked with mud and sand. He looked good enough to eat, especially the back of his neck and the vulnerable backs of his knees. “Little savage,” she murmured when he caught her eye and smiled again at that day’s Psalm line, Neither delighteth he in any man’s legs. Across the beach she could hear the insistent clacking of Bill’s typewriter where he worked at the veranda table.
She had been deeply touched to wake from desolate dreams to find Skip in the bed beside her. Sleep rumpled, the girl was warmly childish and confiding, offering her trust in a way that penetrated Frances’s guard. Perhaps John had been right and her surliness was simply muffled sorrow. Sh
e certainly responded to attention and, once Frances set her talking, fairly bubbled over. It was mainly questions about girl stuff, as Bill would term it. The poor thing was fearful about having her first period. Half the reason she favored loose-fitting dungarees was her terror that it would start without warning and show through her clothes. She wanted to discuss the various merits of Tampax and Dr. White’s towels, which Frances assured her were more suitable for a young girl. She was also terribly worried about breasts. Would they hurt? How could you tell when they’d stopped growing? How did you measure them? How many bras did you need?
Frances did her best to comfort and advise and was surprised to find that talking like this made her feel her age as giving birth or getting married had never done. Skip let her brush her hair, which was really a very pretty color if only she would let it grow again, then trim and file her nails, which scrabbling on the rocks had battered, and give them a coat of clear nail varnish to protect them. In the hours since, Skip had assumed her defiant, faintly bossy manner and given no sign to betray what had passed between them but now that Frances knew the manner for what it was, it touched rather than offended her. She was startled to realize how much of what she took for her own attitudes had in fact been formed by John. This must have been the case, since now that he was not here to keep tabs on her reactions, she felt less and less obliged to voice a high-minded indignation.
She was about to turn on to her belly to roast the other side while she read some more of the John Updike book she had borrowed off Bill, when she heard motorbikes and twisted her neck to see three of them being ridden along the beach. They were monstrous things of black and chrome and as they drew nearer, causing people to jump indignantly out of the way, snatching back towels, children, dogs, she saw the riders, long-haired, unshaven, leather-jacketed, sunglasses lending their faces impassivity. The children had stopped their building work to stare.