by Anne Brooke
I should stop watching all those TV crime dramas, but once a thriller junkie, always a thriller junkie, I supposed.
“Listen to me, won’t you?” Mark said with a sigh and gripping my face even more firmly. “If that happens, then you’ll have tried. But not trying isn’t an option.”
“Okay,” I managed to say, with some difficulty, as Mark’s hold on me forced my mouth into a shape it wasn’t used to in normal conversation. “Okay, so all you’re asking me to do is go back and look at something I wasn’t very good at compared to my father, chat about it to my parents and never lie to you about things which make me shit-scared again, sir.”
Johnny chuckled. “I think that’s about the size of it.”
“Good-oh,” I replied, my lips returning to their usual shape as Mark released me, presumably having got whatever he’d been waiting for. “In that case, I can’t wait. Roll on tomorrow.”
“That’s our boy,” Mark said. “We knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
I could only admire his confidence in me. Whether my parents would say the same was, of course, an entirely different affair. One thing about the Delaneys was certain: being at home with them was never going to be dull.
Chapter Six
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that taking the Delaney twins to meet my parents for dinner was never going to be a relaxing evening. One day after my little showdown with the delectable but dangerous duo about my failure as an artist and here I was, sitting in the back of their chauffeured car, staring at my parents’ house.
“Look,” Johnny said, his hand on my knee. “We never said this was going to be easy, but there’s no need to hide in the car. It’s a meal with your parents, not a bust-up with the neighborhood gang.”
I did my best to smile at him, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the neighborhood gang might, in the end, be the better option. In a fight to the finish, my bets would be placed on my parents, every time. Unless it was against the Delaneys themselves, in which case, I knew who would win, easily. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Mark, however, had no time for delicate negotiations, and possibly no idea what they might be. He wasn’t a man for diplomacy and had sprung out of the car the moment it glided to a halt in the driveway, flexing his muscles and looking prepared for anything.
“Come on, Liam,” he growled, leaning into the doorway and fixing me with the kind of look that usually preceded me getting naked quickly. “Stop dithering and get out of the car. We don’t have all night.”
I scrambled out before he’d finished his sentence. Frankly, he’d had me at “Liam” so no change there then. “Yes, sir. Sorry, I was just preparing myself.”
In the soft beam of the courtesy light, Mark frowned and cocked his head at me. “No need. I like you as you are, and so does my brother. If they don’t like that, then your parents will have us to answer to, won’t they?”
I blinked at him just as Johnny’s shadow loomed to one side of us.
“Don’t forget,” Johnny murmured in his brother’s ear, “this is a social call, not a business meeting. No need for any confrontation. Not with Liam’s family.”
Mark sighed. “Yes, I know. I was only going to talk. I’m not armed, you know. Not tonight.”
Well, thank goodness for that. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what my mother might say if she thought anyone had brought weapons into her house, though I could see my father being amused about the whole thing. In the meantime, Johnny grimaced.
“That’s a relief,” he said, but I didn’t think Mark heard him. By now the elder twin was halfway down the driveway and glancing around, as if he were casing the joint.
I hoped he wasn’t. The Delaneys had, I suspected, a great deal to learn about mothers. The front door swung open and the subject of my thoughts herself appeared on the threshold.
“At last!” my mother cried, flinging out her arms as if she was expecting the whole of the Roman army. “Welcome to our home.”
The next moment, a cloud of Clarin’s L’Amour surrounded me as I was trapped in my mother’s hug. “Darling, so lovely to see less of you than at our last meeting. I know you were naked when you were born, but, really, clothes are to be recommended if entirely possible.”
The memory of my mother’s sudden arrival just after I’d succumbed to the Delaneys’ delicious demands and showed them exactly how accommodating I could be brought a flush of shame to my cheeks. In every sense as, at the same moment, Mark laid a proprietary hand across my arse and leaned over my shoulder.
“Ah, but, Mrs. O’Connell,” he said, “Liam was dressed perfectly for the act he was engaged in at the time. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
Johnny snorted with laughter, but managed to turn it into a cough. A wise move as Mark was deadly serious. So, however, was my mother. She released me, took a slow step back and looked up at Mark.
“I think you’ll find,” she said, “that my son is always appropriately dressed for any activity he’s involved in. His father and I expect no less. However, a mother never expects to interrupt her child in the middle of coitus, especially with more than one partner. I hope, Mr. Delaney, that you and your brother intend to treat my son with the respect he deserves?”
I held my breath, unsure how Mark would take my mother’s challenge to his romantic behavior. Though, when it came to Mark, probably “romantic” wasn’t the word.
Before Johnny could step between the two apparent antagonists or I could dream up a bumbling phrase or two to ease the tension, Mark threw back his head and laughed.
“Johnny told me dinner with Liam’s parents would be interesting and it looks like he’s going to be proved right. Shall we go in?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mark released his hold on my arse cheeks and sent a bright if slightly sinister smile in the direction of my mother before disappearing inside. Johnny shook my mother’s hand before following in Mark’s wake.
As I searched around for something suitable—anything really—to say in the light of the twins’ arrival, my mother nodded as if she’d been proved right about something very serious.
“Good,” she said. “I do like men who know their own minds. Which is far more than that weak-willed cousin of theirs you used to go out with did, Liam. I do believe your choice of men is improving after all these years. Whatever next?”
With that, she gave me an enormous wink and tip-tapped her way, in her customary four-inch heels, after the Delaneys. It was going to be one hell of an evening.
My parents lived in an old farmhouse belonging to my mother’s family. The surrounding fields had gradually been sold off over the years so now theirs was the only home more than half a century old in the road. It made it stand out and often proved a good navigational landmark for the odd lost tourist. On the other hand, at the height of my father’s artistic fame, it had been easy to locate and there’d even been a period of a couple of years when I was a teenager that we’d been on the route for a few of the art history tour buses.
Once, when I was fifteen, I’d been having a quick kiss and a fumble in the front garden with the local post boy, and the nine-thirty A.M. open-topped bus had drifted slowly by. The group of art-loving Americans on the top had whooped and cheered at the sight of my first steps into the adult world, and I’d turned redder than the letterbox at the end of the road. It had been one hell of a way to come out to my parents, but a month later my father’s American market had taken off in a big way and everyone had been happy.
So, I liked to think I’d done my bit for the family coffers, even if my own artistic career had never got out of the stalls. Every little counts, as they say.
Of course, whether that argument would ever satisfy the Delaneys remained to be seen.
Inside the hallway, Johnny was shaking the hand of a tall, grey-haired man, whose beard was flecked with paint and whose smile went up more on one side of his face than the other. I didn’t look much like my father, though our noses were simil
ar and, in certain lights, there was something around the shape of our chins smacking of genetic connection.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” my father was saying, his voice, as ever, cutting through any background noise and making everyone concentrate on his words a little more. “We’ve heard so much about you, but none of it from Liam.”
Mark snorted. “We don’t allow him a lot of time for talking.”
“So I’ve seen,” my mother said, as she swept past us and headed toward the living room.
“Really? He’s never had difficulty with expressing himself before,” my father grumbled, thankfully not quite getting the point of my mother’s comment. “Good to see you, son.”
At this point, as was our custom, my father and I went through that very peculiar British ritual of trying to work out whether we should shake hands in an emotional way or hug in a manly way. We’d never really resolved the problem and, of course, neither of us could ever talk about it. Today we ended up in a half-hug, which mainly consisted of gripping each other by the shoulder and making low-pitched greeting sounds.
Sometimes I envied the French, who had this kind of problem sorted out long before they ever reached the age of potty training.
“Anyone for gin?” my mother sang out from the other room. “I’ve heard it cools the libido, in case any of you fine young men is planning to do something terribly sexual behind the arras.”
“Oh Lord,” my father said. “The joys of being married to a liberated woman. There’s a lot to be said for the patriarchal society, should it ever be rediscovered anywhere.”
He let me go and strode off in the direction of my mother’s voice. “Coming, Caitlin! You’ve not made a decent drink since 1967, and I doubt you’re about to start now.”
Left alone with the Delaneys, I gave them both my brightest smile.
“Welcome to my family home,” I said. “As you can see, sirs, I’m the sane one.”
Johnny chuckled. “And I thought our background was pretty unique. Mind you, knowing you and having met your mother already, we should have been warned.”
“Nonsense,” Mark interrupted with a growl. “There’s nothing wrong with the Delaney family. We’re all perfectly normal. It’s everyone else who’s wrong. Though I agree with your mother in one respect.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Doing something terribly sexual behind the arras—whatever that may be—is a plan I can only approve.”
* * *
The five of us sat in the living room, having our drinks of choice. Only my mother chose the gin option, which she sipped from a tall, crystal wine goblet. She’d never been one to pay much attention to what goes with what. My father had his usual whisky and soda, whilst Johnny and Mark drank red wine. I toyed with a beer from the fridge and wondered if I might be able to taste the wine in the twins’ mouths later.
This train of thought took my mind off the twins’ ostensible purpose in coming here. Because it wasn’t actually just to meet my parents, was it? Oh no, that would be far too simple for the Delaneys. What we were actually here for was to discuss my failed art career, which had been so brief in the first place that you wouldn’t even have had to blink to miss it. And, when they’d done that, they intended to start a conversation about whether it was possible to resurrect something that had never even existed.
How I loved introducing my boyfriends to the family. It was a riot.
Eventually, my mother came to the end of her conversational starter. This, bizarrely, seemed to consist of an overview of the town’s road-building plans, together with her opinions on the local criminal network and how useful the Delaneys were. When she paused, Mark drained his glass and placed it firmly on the coffee table.
“Thank you,” he said with a satisfied nod. “We like to provide a beneficial service for the area. It’s a family tradition.”
“Just as art and the appreciation of art is for us,” my mother pitched in and gave me a piercing stare that made me wonder just how much she’d gleaned from Johnny in their secret conversations.
My father harrumphed. This was basically the reaction I’d wanted to give, but I’d hoped to get in first.
“More wine?” I asked, leaping up and waving the half-empty bottle in the direction of the twins. “That’s a family tradition, too.”
Johnny laughed, but Mark frowned, and I decided maybe changing the subject to something safer was a tradition best not explored.
“Sit down,” Mark said, the shadow of a snarl in his voice. “I was talking with your mother.”
I sat, clutching the wine bottle like a comfort blanket. Both parents stared at me, but, as usual, it was my mother who recovered first.
“Goodness me,” she said. “I think it must be the first time my son has obeyed a command since he was five years old and even then I’m sure it was a mistake. I must say, Mark, I’m impressed.”
Then they were off, my mother and Mark, both of them leaning forward and having a rather too in-depth conversation about my childhood peculiarities and how my mother always knew I’d be trouble. Or rather, my mother spilled the beans, and Mark nodded and interrupted for clarification at key moments. I wondered if he was storing up these essential facts for later humiliations and then had to cross my legs and think of the gallery accounts once more when my cock began to harden.
It would be beyond humiliating if I sported a hard-on in the presence of my parents. I’d never be able to come home again. Hhmm. So, good to know there was always a bright side then.
A hand on my arm made me jump, and I blinked at Johnny as he hunkered down in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him get up. The sight of him wasn’t conducive to sexual calm, but I did my best as Melissa’s accounts spreadsheets filled up my head. Hidden from my father’s steady gaze, Johnny brushed his hand over my still eager cockhead, and I swallowed down a groan.
“I’d really like more of that wine you’re keeping so close,” Johnny said, with a sparkle in his eyes that meant a hundred other things besides. “It’s a grand taste, don’t you think?”
“Y-yes of course,” I stuttered. “Here you are.”
I offered him the bottle, and he gave me a slow wink before standing and refilling his glass. My eyes were now on a level with his crotch and I couldn’t help but appreciate the view, grateful my father couldn’t see what I was up to. Johnny turned ’round slowly and raised his glass to my father.
“I’ve heard a lot about your art,” he said. “I’d love to see some of it, if it’s possible, and I’m sure my brother will say the same.”
My mother stopped talking at once and swung toward Johnny. Mark frowned, presumably thwarted at his storing-up of tidbits about yours truly. My father, now I could see him as Johnny moved to one side, raised his eyebrows and drained his drink dry.
When he’d been painting seriously, my father rarely showed his work to anyone outside the immediate family until it was ready to be launched onto the relatively eager world. Both my mother and I had learned to accept, with humble gratitude—not a characteristic which came readily to either one of us—any indications he might want us to see something and we would certainly never comment on it, either negatively or positively.
In the meantime, Johnny smiled, and glanced at Mark as if giving the final decision to him. Which, if my experience of the Delaney twins was valid, he probably was.
Mark grunted. “I’ve heard how you don’t show any painting in progress to anyone else beyond your family, Mr. O’Connell,” he said, revealing a knowledge of my father’s working methods I hadn’t credited him with. “And Melissa confirms it. But Liam’s a part of our family now, and so naturally we’re a part of yours. Perhaps we can have a viewing before dinner?”
Mark couched his command beneath reasonable phrases, but I had no doubt about the answer he was expecting. Of course, he didn’t have any idea of the extent of my father’s obstinacy.
“Mr. Delaney,” my father said, eyeing both twins as he spoke, “in fact, both Mr. Delaneys,
I’m more than honored you rate your relationship with my son so very highly, and rightly so, though I accept I might be prejudiced. However, I didn’t show my art to my wife until we’d been together for a year, and Liam didn’t even know I was an artist until he was six years old, so what makes you think I might be tempted on our first meeting to show you what—apart from my family—makes me tick?”
If the intense silence that fell upon us now had been a wire, my parents and I would be lying garroted across the living room rugs. Which would have been a shame, as my mother was very proud of them. Mark’s face was utterly still and utterly unreadable, whereas Johnny looked like he could leap into defensive action to uphold his brother’s honor at any moment.
I swallowed. Damn it, why did parents always cause so much trouble? All those years in my childhood trying to train them and it had been no good. Right now, it looked like it was up to me to break the impasse with some trivial and unnecessary comments. Still, always play to your strengths, they say. I coughed into the silence. As if I’d shouted or jumped up and down whilst yodeling, everyone swung around to gaze at me, which in itself was rather disconcerting.
“Seeing as I’m part of the O’Connell family and accepted into the Delaneys as well, why don’t you allow me to show you my father’s studio, but after dinner so he has a chance to tidy it up first?”
This actually meant it would give my father time to tidy away the work he would definitely not want anyone else to see at the moment. Before I could congratulate myself on my considerable cunning and social manipulation skills, Mark toppled my assumptions, as ever.
“We haven’t built up a lifetime business of crime management without knowing when we’re being railroaded,” he said, giving me such a hard stare it took all my reserves of etiquette not to fall at his feet there and then and beg for punishment. That, and the fact my parents were present.