Junction X

by Erastes

  “She started making excuses. You know what it’s like. ‘I’m tired, I’ve got an early class, do you mind if we don’t…’”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  “I even got to the stage where I asked her if there was someone else. She swore to me there wasn’t.”

  “So when did she tell you there was?”

  “This morning. I came back from that meeting with Carhart this morning and found her bags in the hall. Evidently she’d planned to leave me a note. She wasn’t even going to bother to tell me to my face.”

  “Have you ever seen this man?”

  “Man? He’s hardly more than a boy,” he said bitterly. “No. I haven’t. She wouldn’t even give me the address she’s going to. She says she doesn’t want anything. She’ll be back, I know. When she’s fed up with living in squalor.”

  I wondered if Phil had considered that this artist might not be poverty-stricken, but I didn’t say anything. He was maudlin enough as it was. So I sat, listened and poured more alcohol into him. Finally, when he passed out on the couch, I rang for a taxi and left.

  I think what shook him more than anything was that Claire had told him she was pregnant.

  “She swore she’d never wanted kids,” he’d slurred. “It never bothered me one way or another—they are all right, and yours are great—but, apart from your two, she’d never taken an interest. I used johnnies for her sake—and God knows, I hate them. I wouldn’t have minded.”

  Now it seemed all that had changed, and Claire and this artist were thrilled to be expecting.

  + + +

  The next day being Monday, I sought him out at work and wasn’t surprised to find him not in. I rang him when I got in that evening and he sounded sober, if a little hoarse.

  “I’m all right. I suppose I behaved like an idiot last night? Or did I? Did we…?”

  I wondered if he meant ‘Did we have an episode?’, and I was quick to reassure him. Another time I might have left him guessing, but he had enough on his plate. “No. You were fine. You talked a lot. Some of it made sense.” My attempt to lighten the mood fell flat. I could hear him breathing in the silence. “Do you want me to come round?” Say no, I thought treacherously.

  “No, I’m all right.”

  I felt ashamed at my relief. “If there’s anything either of us can do.”

  “All right,” he repeated. The line went dead.

  I gave a heavy sigh and went through to the dining room where Valerie was dishing up. “How is he?” she asked.

  “He’s taking it hard.” I’d let her know what I’d gleaned from Phil when I’d got home the night before.

  “Hardly surprising. He adores her.”

  I went silent for a while, mulling that over in my mind. His reaction had surprised me, it was true. But he’d never displayed any adoration that I’d noticed. They’d seemed well-matched; they’d met at a Young Conservatives ball, I remembered. But did he adore Claire? If so, then he had a funny way of showing it. In a way, he was more affectionate with me, and that was saying something. Phil was a careless shark, seemingly unaware that his actions might cause ramifications. The casual charm, the hail-fellow-well-met charisma, the steady but impressive rise throughout the firm. Nothing had ever seemed to affect him, and that was why this collapse had surprised me.

  My skin crawled for a moment. I suddenly wondered if Phil had used his occasional preference for male company to facilitate his rise. I could hardly believe it to be true, given the men he’d have to charm, but one never knew. To the outside world I doubted if I looked the type of man who was capable of crushing Phil against leather car seats, his tongue in my mouth and his cock hot and heavy in my hand.

  How much do we know about other people? Did he adore his wife? Or was it just wounded pride that had caused such a paroxysm of depression? The more I thought about it, the more confused I felt and the more I realised I knew nothing of what really went on behind other people’s closed doors.

  I didn’t see Phil at all for the next week or so; even though he was back at work, our paths simply didn’t cross. I didn’t see much of Alec either, and I tried to tell myself that it was good that I didn’t. I called Phil once or twice to see if he wanted to play golf, but he was rarely in—working his way through the separation, I assumed. My obsession with Alec remained, even though I only caught glimpses of him here and there, and I refrained from catching his attention when I did.

  But sometimes fate—or one’s own sense of self-destruction—has other plans.

  + + +

  One Tuesday I had an early meeting out of town, so I used the Bentley, though I didn’t enjoy driving the big car in and around London. By the time I came off the main road, my shoulders aching, I was glad to see the final roundabout at the end of the dual carriageway. As I turned into The Avenue, a leggy figure in a black blazer ran across the road in front of me, hurrying slightly as he heard the engine. It was Alec and, by the quick glance he gave the car as he scurried by, it was obvious that he’d seen me. I remember willing my foot onto the accelerator so I could drive by, but my feet were no longer under my control. Instead, I braked beside him and rolled down the window.

  “Need a lift?”

  He grinned, his teeth white in the dusk, and hurried around to the other side while I unlocked the door.

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t make a habit of kerb crawling, you know.”

  “I believe you.”

  The ride was too short. In no time at all, we were pulling up outside our respective houses. “Thanks,” he said again, but he made no move to get out. His fingers moved restlessly over the handle of his briefcase, making a fist and then opening out to stroke the brown leather. Brown-white-brown went his knuckles and I couldn’t stop staring at them.

  “You’ve got ink on your hand,” I said. “You’re late home.” I sounded like a schoolmaster.

  “I’ve joined an evening club. Extra coaching.”

  “Do you need it?”

  “For Oxford I will.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. What subject?”

  “Maths.”

  I didn’t say ‘Oh,’ again, like some kind of idiot, but I was surprised. I’d known a lot of mathematicians and they didn’t have faces like Alec’s. Mostly they looked like ferrets in corduroy.

  “Where did you go?” he asked, twisting on the seat.

  I tried to will myself not to look at him, but I had my first lesson in the effects of Alec on my will power that evening. I learned that I didn’t have any. I turned and looked him full in the face and my stomach did that flipping thing again, leaping straight up and kicking me hard in the diaphragm. His new haircut had snipped away those recalcitrant white curls but the shortness around his ears suited him, brought his cheekbones into relief and accentuated the slenderness of his neck. His shirt was undone, his tie stuffed casually into his jacket pocket. I could see a glimpse of collarbone that made my breath burn. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath the thin white shirt that I could see. I knew I should feel uncomfortable even noticing that, but I didn’t, and I felt rebellion surge through me.

  “Me? Uni?” He nodded, and his lips parted, which caused my groin to stir. I coughed and shifted uncomfortably. “I did Engineering at Queens.” I braced both hands against the steering wheel and pushed back against the seat.

  “Not very useful, in your job.”

  “That’s an understatement.” I shrugged. “But then I wasn’t expecting to be a wage slave. I was going to build things. Bridges. Airports.”

  “You had different dreams.” His voice had changed, and when I looked at him again, he’d turned away and was looking out of the off-side window.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I lied. “I shouldn’t have been surprised that life included a wife and family. Life generally does. It’s not as if I thought I was going to be Isembard Kingdom Brunel.”

  The words were out of my mouth before the old dream hit me hard. I had. I had wanted to be Isembard Kingdom
Brunel. I realised that I hadn’t admitted that to myself for a long time. I wondered where my life had gone.

  “Or anyone like that,” I ended, lamely, wishing I hadn’t said Brunel’s name, wishing I hadn’t tainted Alec with my failed ambition.

  He was silent for a while and then said, “Yeah—you’re right. Thanks for the lift.” He opened the door, dropped a leg into the road and waited for a car to pass.

  My chest got that tight feeling again and I caught hold of his right arm. “Alec,” I said. He turned to me with an expression that looked like the children on Christmas morning, and I was still too stupid to read it. “I’ve been thinking. There’s the toy fair in Aliston on Sunday the fourteenth.”

  He pulled his leg back in and shut the door. “Yeah, I know. Dad can’t go. He has to work.”

  “The twins might want to.” I couldn’t help but smile. It seemed conspiratorial. Secret plans being made in a Bentley. It was worthy of Bond.

  He grinned a little, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Would they?”

  “Probably.”

  “No golf?”

  “Of course not. Not if they wanted to go somewhere else.” I made myself sound like Super-Dad, and with that, Alec and I were back to that easy banter. It seemed natural, and I enjoyed talking to him so much, that I hardly cared anymore that he was half my age. It was addictive; I’d not had this with anyone else, not with Valerie, not even with Phil. I wanted more of it.

  “I’d like that.” He got out, then stuck his head back into the car and said, “Thanks.”

  I think that was the first time that we weren’t awkward with each other. From then on—apart from a few rare notable exceptions—the way we spoke was almost intuitive, sometimes not even needing to finish sentences, or questions.

  I sat and watched him walk down the path to his front door, my knuckles whitening as I gripped the steering wheel. I knew then what I was, how I felt and what was wrong-not-wrong with me. For about thirty whole seconds, I didn’t bloody care. My blood was on fire and my skin tingled. I was warm and complete. I felt like a boy who’d just asked the girl of his dreams out on the best date he could afford.

  Thirty perfect seconds. Then the real world crept back and the colours bleached a little. Elation is a bubble that lasts for tiny tiny moments but leaves something of its memory in scents and sounds so that later, when you need that boost, you can close your eyes and remember happiness.

  Like an automaton, I put the car away and went straight upstairs to see the children before lights out. They were pleased as Punch to have an outing with Daddy to look forward to. That feeling of smug rebellion stayed with me for a while.

  The guilt and the worry took longer to resurface. I argued with myself over coffee and liqueurs. What was I doing that was so wrong? All I was doing was taking Alec somewhere he’d enjoy, and I was going there anyway. There was nothing odd that he should accompany us. No one, no one could point a finger and say there was anything strange about that.

  But I remember sliding down into my chair, closing my eyes as I wrapped my hands around the brandy glass. I remember smiling as the music poured from the radio. I remember knowing that it was wrong. And I remember holding that glass close to me on that first night as if this secret—my secret—were captive in the glass and would be easy to keep. Yes—it was wrong and I just didn’t care.

  Trashy novels would state that my world changed in an instant, but it wasn’t like that. I didn’t see the world change. You don’t, if you are standing too close. I don’t know when it started to change, but I remember knowing when it had. It was like standing in a field after the densest fog has finally lifted and finding out, after thinking that you were so good at navigation, that you are not at all where you thought you were. You find you are not safely in the wheat field where you started out, but high on a cliff with cormorants below you. It was dizzying, disorientating. It wasn’t until after I realised that I felt a strong physical and mental attraction for Alec that all that confusion I’d been feeling meant something. Stupid? Naïve? Yes. Yes. All those and more.

  What then, I remember thinking, am I going to do about it?

  Nothing, of course. The implications of “doing anything about it” were unthinkable. A thirty-three-year-old man turns to a seventeen-year-old boy and says…what? You’re beautiful? I haven’t been able to get the image of your face, your lips, your legs—God help me—out of my mind for days? One shout to his father and Edward Johnson’s perfect life would end there. What Phil and I, consenting adults, did in secret, was no one’s business. Even though that wasn’t true either. But Alec was untouchable.

  Untouchable.

  The word echoed around my mind as if I’d shouted it. Untouchable. No one could know. Most certainly Alec himself must never know.

  Was I then mad then, to make excuses to see him? I was already concocting schemes to do this. Other fairs. Model villages.

  Would it not be better to break the connection and treat him as the teenage son of a neighbour? It should be his father I was cultivating. I should be inviting Albert to evenings at the club, introducing him up and down The Avenue. I should be planning dinner parties with just the four of us, perhaps thinking about a joint Christmas. I shouldn’t be thinking of ways to take Alec out of The Avenue in my car, just so I could be alone with him.

  But God help me, I was. And it made me feel alive.

  Later that week, I finally got back in touch with Phil. One of the reasons we hadn’t seen each other since Claire leaving him was that he’d been throwing himself into his job—which is what I suspected he’d do and what I’d probably have done in his circumstances. I asked him if he wanted me to come over to his house, but he told me that he had arranged client meetings in pubs and clubs the length and breadth of the commuter line. I couldn’t help but smile. Claire’s departure might have knocked the bottom out of Phil’s world, but if he was really working the way he said he was, the firm would benefit from his family tragedy.

  On Friday, he surprised me by being on the train, and as soon as the doors slammed and the whistle sounded, he slid next to me and kissed me. I was too startled to do much more than let him. Phil instigating a kiss was unheard of. He pushed me back onto the cushions. My hat tumbled to the floor and he had my cock out of my trousers before I could think straight. It didn’t take him long to get me off. It never did.

  To show my appreciation, I put my paper on the floor, knelt on it fastidiously and gave him the best blowjob I was capable of. We said nothing about it, but he ruffled my hair afterwards before asking my opinion on the chances of sugar cane going down that winter.

  I wanted to talk to him about these feelings I had for Alec, but of course I didn’t. I was confused enough as it was, and I worried what his reaction would be. I longed just to say ‘Do you…? Should I? How can I?’ But of course I didn’t. I didn’t even have the words to ask him how he was managing on his own. I pushed my cowardice away and invited him for a round at the weekend.

  “Can’t,” he said, “I’m booked solid, but I can do Monday evening.”

  “Probably better,” I replied. “It’ll remove the temptation to get drunk.”

  “It won’t remove mine,” he muttered from behind his paper. “I’ll ring Bryant and Rydell and see if they can make a foursome.”

  The train slid into the next stop and I retreated behind my Times, but I didn’t concentrate on the news. I was imagining what it might be like to be alone with Alec in an empty train compartment, wondering how it would feel if instead of the solid adult-ness of Phil, my hands could wrap around Alec’s slender frame. I was so engrossed in my imagination that I forgot that my hat had rolled under the seat and was almost to the barrier at Waterloo when I realised and had to hare back to fetch it.

  It was like that throughout the rest of the day. My thoughts spent more and more time in a fantasy of what—if things had been different in a way that even I couldn’t imagine—it would be like if my episodes were with Alec, and not
with Phil.

  It was the sweetest torture, and Sunday week seemed a lifetime away.

  Chapter 9

  We were about half a mile down the road when I wondered about the wisdom of bringing the twins, for all of their convenience as a smoke screen. First, there had been a fight about who would sit in the front seat, but I quashed that almost immediately. Not only did I want Alec where I could see him and could almost feel the heat from him, but also I couldn’t subject him to the vicissitudes of my over-excited offspring. They continued their feud in the back of the car until I stopped before we reached the roundabout and they shut up instantly. They knew I was quite capable of taking the car home, although I wouldn’t have done, even if they’d been throwing things. But they did not know that.

  Alec was dressed rather formally, in a shirt and tie and his school blazer—a decision, I’m sure, made by his mother. While I would have preferred to see him in those rather-too-tight jeans for my own pleasure, I was happy that he was smart enough to take to a restaurant—which I planned to do.

  As I curved the car around the roundabout, I was terribly aware of the fact, in a way I never had been even when Valerie and I were courting, that the car had a bench seat. I wondered how stupid I had been to not push up the armrest between Alec and me. Had that armrest not been there, I could easily have taken a left hand turn a little too fast and Alec might have slid across the polished leather…but with the armrest down, that was never going to happen. As it shouldn’t. Of course.

  The children kept us occupied for the journey, first discussing what might be at the fair, then roping us all into a game of I Spy which descended into argument and recrimination at Alec’s “Something beginning with S” which turned out to be escargot. Although he swore that he had actually seen a snail on a fence post, and that, anyway, snail did begin with an S, the children were outraged at his cheating. I had to smile as I saw them in the rear view mirror going into a huddle as they planned their revenge for the return journey, no doubt with fiendish methods.