Growing Pains

by Mike Seabrook

  The giant stared at him for a moment. Then the grin was in evidence again. “Well said, my man,” he murmured. “You got guts, son. So what I’m gonna propose to you is, why don’t we just have a little arm-wrestle, you an me, just for fun? Ain’t gonna be no lighted matches under the loser’s hand or anythin a that kind. Jest let’s do it, an see if I’m as good as you reckon I am. What you say, my man?”

  There was nothing the young man could say. He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, set his elbow as firmly on the bar as he could, and proffered his open hand. “Nah, nah, son,” said the giant patiently. “Like this.” He lifted the boy’s arm, slid a folded bar towel underneath his elbow, then engaged him. The other youth was big, and his hand and arm were meaty and well-muscled; but the giant had to slew his arm towards himself to lower his fist sufficiently to take hold, and the young man’s entire hand and wrist disappeared in his huge fist.

  The bout was over in less than a second, announced by the slap of the young man’s arm and the back of his hand on the bar. “Once more,” rumbled the bikie. The second bout lasted a second or two longer, as the youth did his best to work out the trick of it. “You ain’t tryin, man,” said the bikie. “Better have one last go.” The third attempt was no more successful than the last. But then, to everyone’s surprise, he let the boy go. “You ain’t no arm wrestler, kid,” he said. “But you got some pluck down there. What you drink?”

  The youth was caught on the hop between vast, overwhelming relief at the unexpected promise of escape and fear that it was nothing more than the play of cat with mouse, that he failed to take in what the giant had said. “Your wits not workin too brill tonight, son,” rumbled the giant. “I said, I’m buyin you a drink. What is it?”

  “Oh! I… er… well, if you’re… a half of lager,” spluttered the boy. “Thanks.”

  “Ain’t no one drunk a half a anything with me for fifteen years,” said the giant reflectively. “Not when I been buyin, any road.” He called Tom, bought a pint of lager, and stuck it in the young man’s hand. “What’s your name, my man?” he said.

  “Er… M-mike. Mike T…”

  “Mike’ll do,” chuckled the giant. “Ain’t interested in last names no way. There’s your drink. Cheers.”

  “Ch-cheers,” said the boy.

  “Down the hatch,” said the bikie genially. The boy stared at him. “Off you go, kid,” he said. The boy raised his glass slowly, and drank it steadily down. He was a long time about it, but the pale amber lager disappeared in one long, slow draught. When he set the empty mug down there was a roar of applause from the bikers. “Not bad, m’man,” said the giant admiringly. “Have another.”

  “N-n-nunno, th-thanks,” pleaded the youth. “I… I’ve got to… to drive tonight…”

  “So’ve I, son,” said the bikie gravely, and poured most of a pint of Guinness down his throat in no time at all. “Come on, son, have another. Ain’t often anybody says no to me. You’re one a this gay crowd, ain’t you?” he added without the slightest warning of the change of subject. Now it’s coming, thought Stephen to himself in dread. The boy at the bar stared at his tormentor, his eyes growing large in fear. “Like bikies?” asked the giant pleasantly.

  The boy stared at him still longer, feeling an irrepressible urge to assert himself rising in his spirit. He fought it, in vain, and then gave in to it, rather as some people have sudden, irrepressible urges to jump off when they look over cliff-tops or the parapets of high buildings. At last, unable to help himself, he eyed the giant’s lips in the midst of his huge expanse of black beard and moustache, emitted a faint, expiring giggle, and said “Well I don’t know, but I think if you took your teeth out I could fancy you.”

  There was a moment’s dead silence. Then there was a simultaneous hiss of indrawn breath from all round the bar, followed by another silence more profound than the first one. Then, finally, there was a roar of applause from the bikers, mingled with catcalls and whoops, all directed at the arm-wrestling champion. He leaned backwards in his comfortable stance at the bar, then straightened up to come a little closer to his full height, and surveyed the young man appreciatively. The boy quaked, hoping only that the end would be relatively quick and painless. “Well, m’man,” the bikie said eventually. “You brought your balls with you tonight, din’tcha? I like that. I like it,” he roared. “You better have a drink on me, kid,” he said, signalling to Tom. He gave the boy the new pint of lager. Then, after looking down at him for a moment, he stood up straight, so that he was now looking down on the boy from a height of about six feet seven. “Like I said, boy, you brought your equipment with you tonight. Jist thank your good fairy” — he glanced across at the birthday party pointedly — “that I’m in a good mood myself tonight. Cheers.” And he lowered another half-pint in a draught.

  “Ch-cheers,” said the boy for the second time that evening, and began to swill his lager.

  “Ain’t no need to hurry, kid,” said the giant. He turned to speak to the biker on the other side of him. The boy felt the others behind him part to let him through, and realised that he had been dismissed. He edged backwards through the bikers, hardly able to believe his good fortune, and escaped.

  “Better find someone a bit bigger,” said the giant biker. “Ain’t gonna find us much sport here, though, I don’t think, on second thoughts. Shall we take our valued custom elsewhere, friends and neighbours?” And as if by some pre-arranged signal the bikers all moved off in a single movement, almost like a single organism, flowing in a stream to the doors. They vanished in seconds, and, astonishingly, almost in silence. The last to leave drew the door softly closed and latched it without a sound. There was a roar of engines, and, inside the bar, a rush to the windows. After a moment they roared off in an orderly single file, hogs, choppers and an occasional classic English machine, led by the arm-wrestling giant astride a vast black Harley Davidson.

  Two minutes after the last biker’s tail light had disappeared round the bend in the lane, one of the uniformed police raiding parties arrived. There were four of them. They made ten times the noise coming in as the bikers had made going out, and spent the entire time they remained there wondering why everyone seemed so pleased to see them, and why apparently all present seemed to want to buy them a drink. They went out after a quarter of an hour, very puzzled and suspicious policemen indeed.

  ‘‘Well,” said Stephen to Tom, Richard, the Major and the couple of members of the cricket club who were there, when the initial round of exaggerated sighs of relief had subsided. “Were we lucky, or were we lucky? Or what?”

  “I dunno,” said Tom, “but I was beginning to get a bit worried, I can tell you. Did they have some kind of look-out out there, d’you think? They seemed to know when the law were coming.”

  “I know that gang,” volunteered a slightly-built, scantily-dressed boy in the birthday crowd, who were now beginning to recover their nerve and eddying about once more with the return of normality.

  “You do?” said everyone in earshot.

  “Yes,” the boy said, looking round shyly as he saw that everyone was craning necks to see who had spoken. “They use some of the places in Brighton. They’re one of the local bikers’ chapters. Only they’re all gay. I think that’s why they didn’t… you know, why there wasn’t any trouble…”

  His further remarks were drowned in the uproar that this revelation evoked.

  “Great God! Are we going to have them coming in here now…”

  “…got to be done about this…”

  “…put a stop to this…”

  “… couldn’t care less if they’re as gay as my hairdresser’s underpants. I’m bloody glad they were if it meant…”

  “…doesn’t go to a hairdresser… only got to look at him to see that…”

  “…coppers were as suspicious as hell, you could see that a mile off. That means more trouble to come from them…”

  “…mark my words…”

  The reluctant arm-wrestler was wi
dely feted as a hero, including by the Major, who sought him out, gave him a grandfatherly pat on the arm, bought him a drink, and insisted on introducing him to Stephen and Richard.

  “You’re the same sort as these two,” he said, twitching his moustache approvingly. “Friends of mine, both of them. If you’re as you are, and you’ve got the pluck to face that great oaf like that, you’re the right material, make no mistake about that. And don’t let any of this silly hostility upset you, my boy. These two don’t.”

  * * *

  But the Major was wrong. When the party eventually broke up, the last few late-stayers were got rid of and they had had their customary nightcap with Tom in the silent bar, made cosy by turning off all the lights except the one above their own corner of the bar, the boys lay on their separate beds, staring at the patterns of shadow and light on the ceiling above and talking things over in low voices, far into the night.

  “I wish we’d never heard of this place,” said Richard. “I certainly wish old Reggie had never left it to Graham, or that you’d sold it or something.”

  Stephen lay in silence for some time, thinking about this. Eventually he said, taking care to keep his voice neutral and free from accusation, “Look, Rich, love, I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make sense. I mean it doesn’t match up to everything you’ve said before.” Richard said nothing, waiting for him to elaborate. “You see, sweetheart, it was you who first got upset and aerated about that reporter bringing the pub any publicity at all. But when the publicity caused problems with the gay crowd starting to come in from Brighton and places, it was you who insisted that we had to serve everybody equally, without fear or favour, you might say. Yeah, well I agreed with you about that — or rather, you convinced me. But now that we’ve made that the policy of the pub, you’re upset again, because that policy’s brought a bit of trouble. You can’t have it both ways, Rich, surely?”

  Richard thought about it. “I don’t want it both ways, Stevie,” he said. “Where this pub’s concerned, I think I’ve come to the

  conclusion that I don’t want it either way. I’m just thinking back to the old days, when we were living happily at my place, going about together… we used to go down to the cricket club for a drink, and to the old Golden Harp… where we met old Terry, remember? I’d like to have a talk to Terry about this situation, see how he’d deal with it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well I don’t know what Terry would think,” said Stephen mildly, “but surely it’s no good always looking for somebody like Terry Garrard to solve problems for us, is it? I mean surely, the only way people like us will ever learn how to deal with situations for ourselves — like this one — is by dealing with them and learning by experience? Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Stevie,” said Richard miserably. “I don’t know how to solve problems like these, and I don’t know if I want to know. All I know is that I’m unhappy here, and I don’t want to have to keep on facing things like policemen, and terrible attacks on little kids, and eleven-foot motor-bike maniacs. I don’t see why we need to have problems to solve at all. Why can’t we just go back to how we were, happy and enjoying life?”

  There was no answer; but after a few moments he heard the sound of Stephen getting up off his bed and padding across the room. Next moment Stephen came down beside him and cradled him in his arms. He held him tenderly, carefully, as if handling eggs, rocking him gently in his arms, running his fingers through Richard’s abundant blond hair and covering his face with little kisses. “Do you really want us to get out of here, Rich?” he asked gently. He heard Richard draw in his breath sharply, but there was no answer for some time, so he went back to caressing and soothing him. “If you really want to get out, Rich, my lovely, I’m willing to. I’ll leave it to the lawyers to go on managing the place like they were before. Or I’ll sell it, if you like. Trouble is, the problems won’t go away just because you and I go away, will they? If we clear out, someone else’ll have to cope with the problems that have cropped up because of us, won’t they? Still, I’m ready to sell. I’d sell it tomorrow if it would stop you from being unhappy. I’d give it away, come to that. It’s up to you.”

  “Up to me?” said Richard, sounding very surprised in the darkness. “It’s nothing to do with me, Stevie. It’s your pub, and I don’t want to influence you over something as big as this.”

  Stephen stiffened, and rolled away from Richard in order to stare at him in the darkness. The faint light of the moon coming through the windows lit up his hair like a heavy white-gold halo, and his eyes shone dimly from the shadow of his face. “Richard,” he said eventually, and there was great pain and hurt as well as surprise in his voice. “You can’t duck out of issues like that. You really can’t, love. No, don’t get upset. I’m only saying you can’t have things both ways. You can’t get upset about the problems here on the one hand, and then say it’s nothing to do with you on the other hand when I suggest bailing out. It’s not up to me, as you put it, Rich. It’s not nothing to do with you. And you can’t simply wash your hands of it and say you don’t want to influence me. What the hell do you think you’ve being doing for the last eighteen months, or whatever it is? Since we first met? Christ, Rich, practically everything I’ve done since then has been done because of you, on advice from you or for you. You’ve influenced me every single day. Christ, Rich, are we married, or aren’t we?”

  There was a suppressed chuckle from somewhere half beside and half underneath him, and Stephen took a moment off from the debate to reflect how he loved Richard’s chuckle. It was the same soft, sexy gurgling laugh that had been one of the things that had endeared him to Stephen from the earliest days of their acquaintance, and right through the gathering process of their love. He lay savouring the thought for a while, then sighed, switched off the lazy mood and returned to the argument.

  “What I’m trying to say, Rich, my dearest,” he said, a little wearily, “is that I can’t just take all the responsibility for everything on myself. Like for instance, I can’t just announce tomorrow morning to Tom and everybody that I’ve decided to withdraw and let them go back to running the pub as they did before — you know, let Pat Gibson back in, ban gay people — you wouldn’t like that, would you, but you know bloody well that’s the first thing they’d do. I can’t leave them in a position where they’ve got to hire forty-eight bouncers on permanent stand-by in case the bikers come back so they can tell em to fuck off. Or at least, I s’pose I could, but I don’t think that would be a very responsible way of going about the thing. We’ve had an influence on this place, Rich. You’ve had an influence — a big one. It’ll never be the same as before we appeared on the scene, whatever we decide to do right now. So okay, sure I’ll sell the fucking place, if that’s what you want. But I want you to at least acknowledge that it’s in part your decision. Christ, after all, it’s half yours, anyway, isn’t it?”

  There was a silence. Then Richard said very quietly, “Is it? I don’t know what you mean, Stevie.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Rich, are you trying to be thick?” demanded Stephen, his voice rising to a squeak of frustration — rather as Richard’s sometimes did when he was feeling the same kind of thing with Stephen. “Look,” he said patiently. “You are my best friend. You are my lover, my sexual partner, but that’s not the half of it. You are my trusted, adored, worshipped, whatever you like, you are my most beloved other half. If I went in for people of the female persuasion I’d’ve married you and you’d be my wife. If I could marry you, or if we were Danish or wherever the hell it is, I’d’ve married you anyway, and you’d be… whatever it would be called.” They both sniggered as two minds turned simultaneously to a consideration of possible forms of words. Once again Stephen lay for a moment, savouring and enjoying the moment. It reminded him poignantly, almost painfully, of something that he struggled briefly to identify. Then he saw, in a moment of intuition, that it had reminded him of precisely the former state of innocent, untroubled happiness of their first
few months as lovers, when everything was simple. Once again, he lay grasping the moment for a while, reluctant to let it go, before returning to the fray.

  “Look,” he said again. “You are all the things I just spoke of. If that’s so, it follows that you are the half-owner of everything I own. I don’t want all that money, this place, all the rest of it, without you. In a straight choice between having you and having everything else I’ve got I’d give the lot to the poor, or put it on a horse. Meanwhile, I’ve got it and I’ve got you, and it can make life very cushy and easy for us — provided you’re still part of the package. But you’re half-owner, and that’s flat. Which means that you’ve got all the responsibilities that go with ownership, as well as the opportunities it offers. Fuck me, Rich, I sound like a pamphlet. But you see what I mean?”

  Richard lay silent for a long time, allowing Stephen to stroke and caress him softly. “You’re too good for me, Stevie. You needed someone like Graham, you know. I always told you you frightened the life out of me. But yes, love, I see what you mean. I’d just… I suppose I’d just not wanted to think about it much. But yes. I understand. But I’m still not happy about us being here. Let’s talk about it some more later. Just hold me now, please, Stevie. Please hold me.”

  “All right, love,” said Stephen. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Tomorrow we’ll talk to Tom. We’ll say we’re going off somewhere for a while — going on a cricket holiday or something — and won’t be around for a bit. We’ll leave the pub in his hands, but we’ll tell him not to alter things too much. Then we’ll give ourselves a break — maybe we will have a holiday, come to that. We’ll take your parents out somewhere slap-up. Spend a bit more time with Bill and the gang at the club. Praps we could go and have a look at some of those places in Brighton that they’re always on about. I’ve never been to a gay pub, have you?”