I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant. G’s sight has failed, and I’ve become his eyes. When he howls in the night I don’t let go of him. The virus has entered his brain. Yesterday, he laughed when he pissed against the bedroom door.
A doctor suggested I write to make sense of the world around me. There is no sense, I said, abruptly.
Witnessing the agony of others, he continued, the bewilderment of others. What do you think this has done to you?
I took my time with this absurd question.
I’m not so fun any more, I said.
He wasn’t really a doctor doctor but a psychiatrist who works with the dying. I’m not dying, it must be said. Not yet, anyway. I have a visualisation tape and the cheery American voice tells me my body is full of light and lurve and I believe it. I’m so full of light and love, in fact, I can hardly do my trousers up. There’s a line of fat around my belly that wasn’t there a few weeks ago, and my abs used to be harder, too, more defined. If I was describing myself, I’d say this body has seen better days.
I’m thirty-nine years old, nearly forty. Does this bother me? I say it quickly when people ask, so it probably does. I don’t smoke any more, nor do I take drugs (apart from the occasional co-codamol that I stockpiled after G went on to IV). I used to be good-looking – this isn’t vanity speaking, I was actually told that a lot – but I’m not sure I am any more. People do still look at me and I get the odd suggestion at times (sometimes very odd), so maybe I still have something. Men liked to fuck me and liked me to fuck them. I had my standards. I dropped them on occasion, but generally I’ve been consistent. I liked short-term lovers or my own company. I’ve had really good lovers – inventive, exciting – but I was never one myself. I was a 7 max. I was the fantasy that rarely delivered. The slight hint of melancholy as they zipped up their trousers. I think I was a bit selfish. Or lazy. A 7, max. That was me.
My penis looks wistful, but it may be the light. In fact, I’m sure it was bigger once. But I was skinny and skinny men always look as if their cocks are big. It’s all just proportion really, and I’ve seen enough to know. Anyway, it’s been bigger and that’s because I’m teetering on the abyss of impotence and that ache, that throbbing – whatever you want to call it – well, it’s gone. And that’s OK. I like reflexology now because it helps me sleep.
Enough for today. The medication alarm has gone off and I need to check on him. I call him G because he never liked his name. He’s not my boyfriend any more. He’s twenty-six and alone.
It’s late. I’ve made vegetable broth. G’s sleeping and his temperature is 99.5. He’s burning up but he’s got no sweats as yet. I’m not panicking because we’ve been here before. He’s all bone, a T-cell count of zero. What keeps him alive, God only knows, the memory of living, I suppose. Every victory over infection we’ve celebrated, only to be dumped by a wave of despair a week or so later, as the mercury rose again. I know if he goes into hospital he won’t come out, but we said our goodbyes long ago. The morphine drips and I whisper sweet everythings to him. I watch the digital clock flick over. At 21.47 all is calm.
Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.
I used to write for a living. Maybe that’s why I have an aversion to it now. I was a journalist. Started with local press, then freelance. Eventually, I turned to publishing and became an editor. Fiction mainly. I was suited to this because I was good at altering the story. Well, that’s what someone said to me once. At the time, I’m not so sure it was a compliment.
I’ve stopped working for money. I have money. I’m not rich but I’ve enough for my needs. I get a carer’s allowance and buy things that bring pleasure – flowers, a decent-quality steak, that sort of thing. I make sure we eat well, or did, I should’ve said because G’s back on the liquid stuff. Ensure, it’s called – silly name. I mix it with ice cream, and used to get the good stuff. Organic with natural vanilla. I don’t do that now because he doesn’t keep it down.
I can’t do deadlines when everyone is dying. I actually wrote that on my resignation letter. How grand was I? I thought it captured the mood of the day, a mix of the political, the desperate, the personal. Eventually, I put down the wine glass and redrafted. Said something simple like, Time to move on and maybe write? and my publishers understood without asking me more. I worked out my notice and slipped away with a box of books I’d helped to get on to the shelves. Not one was my story, though.
G was an artist when we met. Five years ago now, not long after Mabel’s death. I was sheltering in the National Gallery one rainy afternoon when I noticed him in the crowd, his resemblance to Ellis staggering – kind eyes, that hair, beard waiting to break out – and I followed him for two hours across an eclectic journey of Titian, Vermeer and Cézanne, until we ended up in front of a painting that had come to embody an important part of my childhood. I stood behind him, and in my most sonorous voice, said: He painted it in Arles in 1888, you know. As an act of gratitude. Friendship. And hope.
He laughed. You’re creepy, he said and walked on. He was right. I’m not a natural cruiser. Have been told that many times before.
I followed him down to the bookshop and picked up books I had no intention of reading and looked at postcards I wasn’t going to buy. Come on, he said as he passed me at the door, and we went to a café just off St Martin’s Lane, and after two double espressos and a slab of chocolate torte the embarrassing age-gap between us diminished and I’d persuaded myself it was almost respectable. He asked me where I lived and I said, Soho, not far. Let’s go, he said. Really? I said. But I’m not having sex with you, he said. You’re not the first to say that, I said. I’ve got jet lag, he said. So we can have tea, I said.
We didn’t have sex but we did have tea. He slept and I watched him. And then I slept and woke up alone. A postcard of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on my pillow, a phone number scrawled on the back. I called him that evening, left a message from Vincent on his answer-machine, something about a lost ear. Four days later I was on a train.
He lived in a barn out in Suffolk, rented it off a couple of queens who spent most of their days in France. Friday nights, he’d ride with another bike by his side and meet me at Woodbridge station and we’d cycle the short distance back to his studio barn, where I’d unpack my rucksack and lay out the spoils of our weekend on the rough oak floor – the wine, the food, a video maybe, and the latest manuscript I was working on.
His body was a landscape of angles and valleys, a line of dark hair from his navel exploding around his penis, a light dusting of fuzz across his chest and buttocks. He made me feel who I’d been all those years ago with Ellis – who am I kidding? He reminded me of Ellis and not just in looks but how intense he was, how hidden, and I became the boy I’d once been, living out the fantasy of a long-gone youth.
I could watch for hours as he ground chunks of solid paint pigment and mixed it with oil before scooping it into open-bottomed tubes. He made me calm. Made me learn the names of paints, and I told him that Scarlet Lake and Rose Madder would be our drag queen names, should circumstance ever force us on to the stage.
Summer light shone in. Pollen dust diffused the scene, the scent of flowers, smells of linseed and coffee, brushes standing in olive cans, wildflowers too. A paint-splattered bed in the corner and me making Martinis naked, as G painted an abstract aberration of light across a field. It was everything Ellis and I had once planned. It was beautiful and, occasionally, it hurt. I told G that, and he laughed and the fantasy ended.
Did I love him? Yes, although I hesitate to use the word, because it turned very parental after a while, and after a while I encouraged him to see other men. I think he was grateful, certainly the bohemian in his soul was. But I wasn’t being generous or open-minded. It was a friend I needed then, nothing more. Eventually, we became the two ends of a telephone line, same time every week. Yes? I’d say. What now? I’d say. What grubby adventure have you got up to this week?
Eighteen months ago, the phone rang. Yes? I said. What now? I said. What—
But there was silence.
G?
Silence. He began to cry.
Talk to me, I said. Silence.
I’ve got it, he said. It: the shorthand we all understood. I said I’d never leave his side.
He’s awake now and he’s shouting and it’s three in the morning. What’s happened to us, G? I can’t cope any more.
I telephone Barts and they’ll have a bed ready for him, they say. I strap him into the chair and cover him with blankets and he shits two minutes after leaving the flat. The lift stinks and I know there’ll be another anonymous note put through the door. Outside, fresh air and no rain. I hurry down Long Lane past the hum of refrigerated lorries into the smoke and chat of the meat porters. I put my hand on G’s shoulder for reassurance. He’s quiet now and calm. I see our reflection in the restaurant window. We are a Still Life. Me and Old Man. Fuck.
The ward is kind and they know us. We’re on first-name terms with the doctors and nurses, which is good but also bad because it shows how many times we’ve been here.
The rooms are private with private bathrooms, thank God. There are no masks, no gloves, no rules, no visiting hours because this is a ward of palliative care. Temperatures are meticulously read, every two, four hours, to monitor the progression of infections, and days are measured out in the monotony of medication. Many contemplate suicide and refuse to eat. They’re not force-fed, but are allowed to drift off slowly to that sought-after end. Our dead are placed in body bags, as any blood-borne virus would be, and are whisked off pretty sharpish to the morgue, where a sympathetic funeral director comes by and looks on with unprejudiced care. Many of the nurses are male and many are gay. They’ve volunteered to work this ward specifically. I can’t imagine what they must be thinking, the young ones especially.
I used to wonder how it would be if I left G here and never came back. Didn’t have to strip a soiled bed again, or flush out a chest port again, just left him here for good. Be done with it all, for good. I could never do it, though, could I? Once, in the throes of passion, I’d declared I’d do anything for him. So this now, this is my anything for him. How shy our bodies are now, G. How sad we are. He likes me to comb his hair because he remembers when he was still handsome. I do it. And I tell him he’s still handsome.
I turn off his light and tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. I leave the telephone number of his parents for the ward to deal with because I’ve never been able to get through to them. Metaphorically speaking, that is. I go home and sleep for hours.
Two days ago, just along the corridor from G’s room, I met a young man. He heard me outside his room and called me in. I hesitated in the doorway, taken aback, momentarily, by the yellow autumn light that had fallen across his bed. He was full blown with a sarcoma down the side of his nose and he was losing his hair from the chemo. He smiled.
He told me his name was Chris and that he was twenty-one years old and that his parents believed he was still backpacking around Asia. In the quiet space that followed that declaration, I picked up a chair and sat next to his bed. I asked him where his two friends were, the young man and woman I’d seen hovering by the door a couple of days before.
Gone back to Bristol, he said. Is that where you’re from? I said. Yes, he said. I said I liked Bristol and he said he would’ve liked it better if he’d met me there. I laughed. I asked him if he was flirting with me and his eyes became bright. I’ll take that as a yes, I said.
He asked me why I was here and I told him about G. The shortened version, of course. Everyone’s story is the same.
He told me he’d been encouraged by a doctor to write a letter to his parents. He lifted his right hand and it was red and swollen and he asked me if I’d help him do it. I said I would. I asked if he wanted to start the letter right away, but he said no. Tomorrow would be fine.
Tomorrow came and we got no further than ‘Dear Mum and Dad’.
Today, though, we have made better progress and when the sadness overwhelms him, I put down the pen, and begin to rub his feet. Reflexology is the new sex, I say. He looks at me incredulously. Humour me, I say. His feet are cold and he smiles as I touch him. Does this mean we’re going steady? he says, and I say, Oh, yes, you’re all mine, and his smile leads to a not-so-distant boyhood, which completely disarms me.
Hand me my wallet, he says, and I do what he asks. Open it, he says. There’s a passport photograph just inside. It’s not very good, he says.
They never are, I say, as I take out the picture.
Two years ago, he says. I was nineteen.
I’ve seen that sort of change before and my face no longer registers shock. Clear skin, thick blond hair, downy chin. Glasses.
You’re lovely, I say.
Not really, he says. But my hair’ll grow back, and—
Shall I get us some tea? I say, a sudden need to leave the room.
I wasn’t promiscuous, he declares.
I stop. Ambushed by his quiet defence against the disease, the bigots, the press, the Church.
I think I know the person, he says. You do, don’t you? Looking back. That’s what someone told me. Do you believe that?
I’m not sure what I believe, I say, sharply. No one deserves to go through this. That’s all I know. You’re lovely.
I leave the room. I take my rage out on the kettle and cutlery drawer. The nurses can hear me make the tea, fucking London can hear me make the tea. On to a plate, I pile biscuits that I don’t even feel like eating, and return to his room.
How are you with food? I ask him.
Not too good right now, he says.
These are mine then, I say, and I sit down and place the chocolate bourbons on my lap.
You’ll get fat, he says.
I am fat, and I lift up my jumper. This wasn’t here yesterday, I say. This is trespassing.
He laughs. Have you ever been in love? he asks.
I look at him and roll my eyes and immediately wish I hadn’t.
I haven’t, he says. I would’ve liked to.
It’s overrated, I say, stuffing biscuits into my mouth. I eat through the silence, stuffing and eating, because I know I’ve done something wrong.
Don’t do that to me, he says.
Do what? I say.
Make out things are nothing. Things that I’m not going to experience. That’s fucked up. Pity you if you thought it was overrated. I would’ve fucking revelled in it.
I stand up, admonished, my feelings disengaged. A pathetic creature with biscuit crumbs stuck to his jumper.
You can go now, he says, turning away from me. And close the door, will you?
I do as he asks. I go to G’s room and need him to comfort me, but he’s asleep and dying. I’m fucked up. I leave.
Home. I’ve opened the windows and the cold London air streams in, and with it comes the incessant sound of sirens and traffic, sounds I’ve grown to love. Candles burn on table tops and the scent of tuberose surrounds me. Sometimes in this perfumed haze, I forget hospitals. Just sometimes, with a glass in my hand, I walk past a flame and its goodness replenishes me. I don’t want to be defined by all this. We were all so much more than this once.
I pour out the wine. I think about Chris and how I behaved with him. I try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.
I sit wrapped up in a blanket on the balcony. I feel cold but cold is good because the ward is hot. Propped up on my knees is a black-and-white photograph. Me and Ellis in a bar in Saint-Raphaël in 1969, drinking pastis. We were nineteen. I remember how the photographer went around bars at night and handed out his card. You could go and look at the photographs in his studio the next day, and I did. Ellis thought it was a con so I went by myself. I saw this photograph as soon as I walked in, my sight completely drawn to where it was pinned amidst dozens of others. It’s agonising how beautiful we are.
Tanned faces and Breton tops, we’d been in France for five days already, and felt like locals. We went to the same bar each night down on the beach. A broken-down shack that sold sandwiches during the day and dreams at night. Well, that’s what I used to say, and Ellis would squirm but he liked it really, I know he did. The bit about dreams. Who wouldn’t?
In the captured moment, we say Salut! Salut! and touch glasses, and the smell of aniseed rises sweet and inviting. Hey! a man’s voice makes us turn. FLASH! Eyes blinded momentarily, our backs against the bar. We squint. A business card is thrust into my hand. The photographer says, Demain, oui? I smile. Merci, I say. It’s a con, whispers Ellis. You’re a bloody con, I say.
The smell of grilled octopus lured us out on to the terrace, an area of hessian matting that gave way to the sand. We stood looking out over an unstirring black sea that merged seamlessly with night. Lights from fishing boats swayed elegantly on the swell, and Françoise Hardy sang in the background ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’. I lit a cigarette and felt as if I was in a film. The air fizzed.
I remember telling all this to Annie once, and Ellis couldn’t remember a bloody thing. He’s so disappointing at times. Couldn’t remember the fishing boats, or Françoise Hardy, or how warm the evening was, and how the air fizzed—
‘Fizzed’? he said.
Yes, I said. Fizzed with possibility or maybe excitement. I said to him that just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.
I think he’s embarrassed by the word precious, said Annie.
Maybe, I said, looking at him.
I pour out more wine and stand up. Look out across the cityscape and think London is so pretty. Music rises from a car below, its windows are down. David Bowie, ‘Starman’. The car drives off and the night fades to silence.
Back at the hospital in G’s room. I hold his hand and I whisper to him, Cadmium Orange, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Violet. He stirs. I stroke his head. Oxide of Chromium, Naples Yellow Light. This is my lullaby of colour to him. I sense someone standing in the doorway and I turn round.
You’re up, I say. I’m happy to see you.
Is this G? asks Chris.
You’re not seeing him at his best, I’m afraid.
What were you saying to him? asks Chris.
Names of paint. He was an artist.
You’re sweet, he says.
And you’re looking good, I say.
I have a T-cell, he says.
Shut up, I say, or everyone’ll want one.
He laughs. They think I’m doing better.
I can see you are.
I was angry with you.
I know.
But I miss talking with you.
I’m a dilemma, I say.
My friends have sent me a cake, he says. I feel like eating today.
Is this an invitation?
An olive branch, he says.
The cake is good. Chocolate, not too sweet, and that awful word, moist. We eat half of it – me, most of it – and I feel bloated, and lie back in the chair and put my feet up on his bed. I’m embarrassed by my socks. Green terry towelling, the ones I wear when I clean the bathroom floor, fuck knows how they ended up in my good drawer.
Here, I say, hoping to distract him from looking at my socks. I hand him the photograph I was looking at three nights before.
This is me, I say. I’m nineteen. 1969.
He puts on his glasses and holds the photograph close. You look so young, he says.
Ta, I say.
Who’s that? he asks.
Ellis, I say.
Were you together?
I think so, I say. We were then.
Where was it taken?
In France, in the South.
You look cool.
We do, don’t we?
Was he your first love?
Yes. Only one, probably.
Is he dead?
Oh God no. (Oh God no, not everyone dies, I want to say to him.)
Where’s he now?
In Oxford. He has a wife. Annie.
Do you still see him?
No, I say.
He looks at me. Why?
Because . . . (And I realise I don’t know how to answer this.) Because we lost contact. I lost contact.
You could get back in contact.
Yes. I could.
Don’t you want him to know about this? Are you ashamed?
No! Not that, I say. No. It’s complicated.
But it isn’t, though, is it? Life isn’t any more, you told me that. All this makes life simple.
It’s complicated, I say again. And there is an edge to my voice that stops him pursuing it.
He picks at my sock instead.
I know, I say. Awful.
Come on. Let’s carry on with your letter, I say.
I don’t want to write it today, he says. I want to know about this, and he waves the photograph in front of my face.
Oh blimey, I say, and I take my feet off the bed and I sigh and I stretch out my back.
And he says, You look like you’re about to lift something heavy.
Ha! That is telling, I say.
From the moment I saw him, I wanted to kiss him. That’s my well-practised and preferred introduction to a conversation about Ellis. I used to wonder if my desire for him came out of displacement. My need to join with someone, my readiness to love. The consequence of grieving, even for a father who was, by then, as distant to me as the southern sky.
I have an image of Ellis and me in Oxford, standing at the window in my bedroom. It is night. The summer air is clammy, our chests are bare and we’re wearing only our pyjama bottoms. Our age? Fifteen, maybe. The window is open and we look out across the overgrown churchyard, and darkness has its own smell back then, and the smell is fecund and shitty, grassy and exciting, and we’re listening out for the sounds of sex that rise from the crosses because that’s where the drunks go for a moment of tenderness.
I’m nervous. And I can’t look at him. And I reach down into his pants and hold him. I’m terrified he’ll push me away but he doesn’t. He moves me into the shadows and lets me wank him off. Afterwards he’s shy and thanks me and asks me if I’m all right. Never better, I say, and we laugh.
That was the start of our private world. A place where we didn’t discuss who we were or what we were, just experimented with the other’s body, and for years that was enough.
Sometimes, I wondered if his attraction to me was because I was the only one around, a release, of sorts. But when we were eighteen, he suggested a double-date. We took the girls to a film, snogged them, and got them on to a bus home. Afterwards, he and I came back to my room and got naked as if it was the most normal ending to an evening, like a strong coffee or an After Eight mint. Did I know I was gay? Yes, by then. But such compartmentalising was irrelevant. We had each other and neither wanted more.
We got to France in August 1969 by sheer chance. A journalist I worked with at the Oxford Times went down to a villa there every year, and two months before he was due to go he had to cancel. He’d hardly finished telling me the story, when I said, I’ll go! I’ll take the room, and he was so amused by my enthusiasm, he made phone calls to France that very day to confirm the booking, and told me everything I needed to know about getting the train.
I raced to the Car Plant and met Ellis after shift. What’s happened? he said. We’re going to France, I said. What? he said. France, I said. France, France, and I started to poke him and he was all reserved, all – Stop it, not here, people are looking.
But the summer couldn’t come fast enough. The weeks of waiting brought about a change between us, what I can only describe as a softening. The knowledge that what lay ahead was an opportunity for us to be different.
I remember standing on the ferry deck, as Dover receded. Our hands on the rail, my little finger touching his. The excitement of travel churning in my guts, an urge to kiss him, but of course, I couldn’t. Suddenly, his finger moved against my skin. The electricity in my body could have lit up the fucking ship.
At Calais, we boarded le Train Rapide a little before eight. Just being the other side of the Channel, I remember, was so incredible. We’d never travelled for so long or so far. We left our compartment and joined others to smoke out in the crowded corridor, watching the changing shape of the country as we leant out of windows, the air upon our faces fast and thrilling. As night fell, we bunked down in our cramped sleeper. Ellis sketched and I read. And I could hear his pencil moving across the page, and I felt so excited for him and for us, and every now and then a cheese baguette and a cup of red wine yo-yoed between us, and we felt so sophisticated, we really did. At Dijon, we were joined by a rude salesman who turned out the light without consulting us. So ending our first glorious night.
I remember dozing to the rhythm of the train. Listening to nocturnal sounds of railroad life as we carved through Lyon, Avignon, Toulon, before emerging into the Saint-Raphaël morning sun, where a taxi was waiting to take us into Agay and the Villa Roche Rose, our home for the next nine days. In the car we looked out and couldn’t speak. Our mouths silenced by the intense colour of the sky.
Our room was white and spacious, with two single beds that faced pale blue shutters, and the smell of a recently mopped terracotta floor, a strong hint of pine. I pulled back the shutters and sunlight streaked across the room. The red rock of the Massif de l’Esterel dominated the distance, window boxes of tuberose claimed the fore. We’d never seen anything more beautiful, I remember. And I thought of Dora in that moment, and I said, Your mum—
And he said, I know, as he always did. An instinctive closing of a door, too painful to open.
Our landlady, Madame Cournier, provided us with hand-drawn maps of the area, and we cycled straight away into Saint-Raphaël to claim a modest space on a packed beach, our old grey towels embarrassed amidst the plethora of multicoloured ones. We took up that position for days, and under a sheen of coconut oil our skin sizzled and browned, and we cooled off and healed in the weak drift of a Mediterranean tide.
I felt as if nothing else had previously existed. As if the colours and smells of this new country eradicated memory, as if every day rolled back to Day One, bringing with it the chance to experience it all again. I’d never felt more myself. Or more in tune to what I was and what I was capable of. A moment of authenticity when fate and blueprint collide and everything is not only possible, but within arm’s reach. And I fell in love. Madly, intoxicatingly so. I think he may have, too. Just for a moment. But I never really knew.
We were in our bar down on the beach, drunk on a cocktail of pastis and Françoise Hardy, and it was late, and we could hear glasses being collected behind us.
Come on, he said, and we left the terrace and felt the cool of the sand on our bare feet. We continued along the beach away from our bikes, crept over the rocks at the far side of the bay, just as the road headed out towards Frejus Plage. It was sheltered and hidden from the voices that carried along the promenade above, and we chose to settle by a large rock, equidistant between the road and the sea. He looked about and began to quickly undress. It was so unlike him, I started to laugh. He kicked off his shorts and ran naked into the sea, white arse bobbing. He swam away from shore, rolled on to his back and floated. I stripped off hurriedly and followed him in. I swam towards him, dived under and pulled him down and kissed him. There was no struggle. We surfaced, laughing, and we turned towards each other and I felt his chest on mine. Felt his leg wrap around mine, and in that moment, away from home, I could see it in his eyes. Everything was different.
Suddenly, we were stumbling through the shallows, fell on top of one another in the damp sand. The intoxicating thrill of being drunk, of being naked, of being public surged through us. And, for a while, we didn’t move because neither of us knew what the next move should be.
We crawled back into the shadow of the jutting rock, hands clasping one another’s cocks, gorging on one another’s mouths, until the proximity of the road above distracted us and made us nervous. Car lights flickered across the sand as traffic turned left, momentarily revealing our entwined legs and feet. We kept stopping to listen out for gendarmes who patrolled the beaches at night, and soon the fear of being caught overwhelmed us, and we hurriedly dressed, ran back along the beach to the Promenade where we’d left our bikes.
We didn’t stop at the bakery, didn’t buy the warm brioche that previously brought an end to our nights, we just kept on cycling, holding hands along deserted roadways, sometimes, dangerously close to the dark edge of the coast road. And sometimes, oncoming traffic suddenly appeared and swerved back into lane, unsuspecting that anyone else might be travelling in the opposite direction.
At the villa, we left our bikes at the side gate. He took out a key and we crept into the hallway. We avoided the middle stair, the creaking stair, and swiftly entered our room. The shutters were closed, and the air was still. Just us, alone, behaving like strangers. I was so nervous I could barely swallow. We were two people unsure what to do, relying solely on instinct.
I want to, I said. Me too, he said.
He locked the door. Made sure the keyhole was covered by the fall of a towel. We undressed separately, unbearably shy. I don’t know what to do, he said. Me neither, I said. I lay down and opened my legs. I pulled him on top of me and told him he had to go slow.
The sounds of breakfast rose from downstairs.
Le café est prêt! shouted Madame Cournier.
I awoke hungry. I slipped out from under the sheet and walked to the window. I opened the shutters and the warm breeze wrapped around my body. I looked back at him sleeping. I wanted to wake him. I wanted him all over again.
I moved away from the window and pulled on a pair of swimming shorts. I knelt by the bed and thought, he’ll wake up soon and he’ll wonder what happened last night. And he’ll wonder what it means he’s become. And he’ll feel shame and the creeping shadow of his father. I know this because I know him. But I won’t let him.
He stirred. He opened his eyes. He sat up disorientated and scratched the salt in his hair. And there it was – all of a sudden – the reddening, the bewilderment, the withdrawing. But I caught it before it settled. Last night was amazing, I said. Amazing, amazing, amazing. And I kissed my way down his stomach – amazing – till he filled my mouth, and we smothered one another’s coming till we could barely breathe.
The morning took us back along the coast road, past Boulouris and the red dirt cliffs dotted with bougainvillaea. He slowed and dropped behind. He got off his bike and left it at the side of the road. He walked out to the tip of the promontory, overlooking the bay. I cycled back to him and left my bike next to his. Fishing boats were out, the sea was still, the glare of the sun, white. We sat down on the ledge.
What is it? I said.
What if we don’t go back home? he said.
You serious? I said.
What if we don’t. Could we work?
Sure. We could pick grapes. Work in a hotel, a café maybe. People do. We could.
What about Mabel? he said.
Mabel would understand, I said.
I put my hand on his back and he didn’t push it away.
You could paint and I could write, I said.
He looked at me. How incredible would that be? I said. Right, Ell?
And for the four remaining days – the ninety-six remaining hours – we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees.
I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move towards leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers.
I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand.
I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died.
Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station.
I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said.
Thank you, he said. You think of everything.
Because I love you, I said.
He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly.
Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking.
Madame Cournier’s taking us.
I went to the open window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An aeroplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.
The bottle of pastis? he said.
I smiled at him. You take it, I said.
We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelt of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK.
We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.
A weekend towards the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts.
I’ll go if you want me to, he said.
I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him.
You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said.
He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later.
It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it.
I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.
So that was it, I say to Chris, when I get to the end of the story. Nine days and they never let me go.
And you never got back together afterwards? he says.
No. We had our time. Friends only.
He looks thoughtful. He looks sad.
D’you need to sleep? I say.
Maybe.
I’m going to go then. I stand up.
Can I keep this tonight? he says, holding up the photo.
I’m surprised by what he asks. If you want, I say.
I’ll give it back tomorrow. I will see you tomorrow, won’t I?
I put on my shoes. Yes, I say, but tomorrow’s a letter-writing day.
I get to the door and he calls my name. I turn.
He says, I wouldn’t have packed. I would’ve let the train go.
I nod.
The next day, a burst of winter sun has made everybody bold. Chris has persuaded me to take him outside in a wheelchair and I’ve piled on to him as many regulation blankets as possible and forced a thick woollen hat on to his head. Don’t be long, the young nurse Chloe says to me quietly. I won’t, I mouth to her.
We sit by the fountain as sunlight dances white across the ripples and he closes his eyes as he faces the brittle warmth and dictates the final words of his letter. It is a beautiful letter, and his parents will receive it the following day and their world will be shattered. He’s quiet because he knows this.
We could be anywhere, he says.
We could, I say.
Italy. Rome. What’s the fountain there?
The Trevi? I say.
Have you seen it?
Yes, I have.
What’s it like?
Underwhelming, I say.
He looks at me.
A bit fussy, I say.
You’re doing it to me again, he says.
I’m not. Seriously. It’s just an opinion. It’s not like here, I say.
Idiot, he says.
I grin.
D’you think throwing money into any fountain is lucky? he says.
I do, actually. I’m a fountain expert, I say, and I give him a coin from my pocket.
I wheel him close to the edge of the water. He blinks as spray catches his face. Minuscule rainbows darting like midges. The coin sinks. His mouth moves, a silent incantation of hope.
Take me out of here, he says.
Out of the chair? I say.
No. The gates, he says. Out of here.
I look at my watch. I look at him. I wheel him towards the entrance and stop at the border.
Do we dare? I say teasingly. Do we dare? a little nudge across the threshold.
We dare! he says, and I wheel him out into a city on the move.
Over there, he says, and I stop at a bench near the gates. I sit down next to him, sunshine on our faces. We could be anywhere, he says again. His pale arm fights free of the blankets and reaches for my hand. He closes his eyes. Rome, he says.
It’s three in the morning and I’m awake. I feel like I’m coming down with something. My mind whirrs and my pulse is all over the place. Sometimes my heart fails to beat, and I lie in an airless limbo. I’m scared. I don’t want to go through all this, I don’t want my body to fail. I only acknowledge this when I’m alone. I pick up the phone. Maybe I could call them but I don’t know what to say. Maybe Annie would answer and that would be easier.
Annie, it’s me, I’d say (in a slightly pathetic whisper).
Mikey? she’d say.
I’m sorry it’s late, I’d say (being respectful, polite).
Where are you?
London, I’d say.
Are you OK? she’d say.
Yeah, really good, I’d say (lying).
We miss you, she’d say.
I replace the phone quietly and stare at the ceiling. I try the conversation again.
Annie, it’s me, I’d say.
You sound awful, she’d say. Are you OK?
No. I start crying.
A stinking cold has kept me away from the hospital the last four days. Sneezing. Runny nose, irritated eyes. It disappears after four days, and I declare myself well. I’ve never been so grateful for a mere cold.
I decide not to go to the ward till later that afternoon and go instead to the West End to see a film that everyone has been talking about. I sit in the front row of an almost empty cinema where seventy-two frames of colour flicker across my face every second, and where a young man stands on a desk in the final moments and cries out in love, O Captain, my Captain!
And there I am, thirteen again, at Long Bridges bathing place, reciting a poem I thought I’d long forgotten. Word after word of Whitman’s poem tumbles out, as sunlight plays on the surface of the Thames.
It’s a poem about grief, I say to Dora.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning . . .
Dora bends down and kisses me on the head. She walks to the water’s edge and I race after her. Pretend to save me from drowning, I say and I jump in the river and swim to the middle of the pond, arms and legs kicking and flailing. She swims towards me, whispers to me to lean back, to let go. Everything’s going to be all right, Michael, she says, as she pulls me across those warm, still waters. And all the way, I quote,
O Captain! my Captain!
I race back to the hospital because I want to tell Chris about the film. And I’ve played it in my head, so many times, what I’m going to say to him when I get back to the ward. I’m going to stand in the doorway and recite the poem from start to finish. It will be like theatre. The doorway the stage, he the audience, and the nurses may stop to listen. I know already how it will be. Something good in a difficult day. When I arrive at Chris’s room, my knees fail. The bed has been stripped, and the room is empty. Chloe sees me. She rushes over. It’s OK, Michael, she says. It’s OK. His parents came. They’ve taken him home.
I’m in G’s room watching the late news. The BBC reporting from Germany. The Berlin Wall is down and the gates are open. Cars are honking, friends and families are reunited and champagne is drunk. Chloe comes in and brings me a tea. She puts her arm around me and says, nodding to the TV, No one thought this was possible ten years ago. And now look. Life changes in ways we can never imagine. Walls come down and people are free. You wait, she says.
I know what she’s trying to say: Hope.
G died on 1 December 1989. I haven’t cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I’m drowning from the inside.
I’ve taken to the sofa. I’m not sure of the date, I don’t care. I feel so heavy, I can barely move. I eat vegetable broth, and lots of it. I’m aware, some days, how this flat must smell.
Every time I stand up, I rearrange the cushions on this sofa so it’s ready for me to lie back down again. Small gestures are important. I lie facing the balcony, and in the evenings, I lose myself in the transfer of light. Sometimes I open the sliding doors and hear Christmas approach. I hear the chatter of who’s going where and who’s buying what. I listen to the drunken songs from office party revellers and sometimes I make it outside and watch illicit snogging in the shadows. I wonder if this stolen act is the start of something or the end of something.
The digital clock flicks over. At 18.03, there’s a knock at my door. I look through the peephole. I see a woman’s face – a kind face, sort of familiar, but not a friend. I open the door and she says, Michael? (I’m surprised she knows my name.) She says, I’m Lee. Maybe you don’t remember me? Four doors down that way, she says, pointing.
She says, I haven’t seen you out the last few days and I thought you could do with a few things. I tried you yesterday, but . . .
And she hands me a large bag of shopping.
There’s wine, too, she says. So careful when you put it down.
I stare at her. I say, Thank you, and begin to unravel. I feel her hand on my shoulder.
She says, You know, if you need anything over Christmas, we’re staying put and—
I cut her off before her kindness overtakes me. I thank her again, and wish her a happy time.
I empty the bag on the kitchen counter. Potatoes, wine, a ham and a pork pie and salad, a feast. Chocolate, too. A card. On the front, an image of Victorian London under snow. Inside, With Our Very Best Wishes, Lee and Alan.
I put the card on the table and it makes a difference to the room, to my mood especially. It’s Christmassy. I light a candle and open the sliding doors. Traffic and chill air. Lee and Alan. Who knew?
Christmas 1976. The sudden fall of light along Cowley Road. The smell of chestnuts Mabel roasts in the kitchen and sells in the shop. The smell of oranges punctured by cloves. The holly sprigs and mistletoe that Ellis and I used to gather out at Nuneham Courtenay.
I say to Ellis, Last tree and we’re done.
Where to? he says.
Divinity Road, I say. Up by Hill Top. Here’s the invoice, and I hand him the sheet.
He looks at it. Anne Cleaver, he says.
See you afterwards—
– Course, he says.
Eat here?
Great, he smiles. He leaves the shop, tree on his shoulder, fur hat on his head, and I watch him cross the road.
I sit down in Mabel’s armchair. The clock ticks over, and customers come in and make additions to their orders. But mostly, I read. Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, A Christmas Memory. I go out the back to make a cup of tea. I look at the clock and wonder where he’s got to.
In seven years, France has changed in our storytelling. It is now a holiday of single beds and single lads, sunbathing and French beauties. We keep secrets from one another now, secrets about sexual adventures, who’s done what. They’re secret because we don’t know what to do about the thing we were. So we stay away from it and don’t touch it, in case it stings. Avoidance is the dock leaf.
He’s taking forever. I’m hungry. Mabel’s not back from her friend’s, and I feel like company. The cold inches across the stone floor and finds my toes. I stand up. I jump about. I go over to the record player and search out my favourite record. The introduction plays and my heart shimmies. The Impressions. ‘People Get Ready’. I open the shop door and let my feet take me across the floor.
I sing, I close my eyes. I look up. In the doorway, Sister Teresa is laughing. Ho, ho, ho, I say. I offer her my hand, and surprisingly, she accepts. We slow waltz at arm’s length, and between us is the faint smell of soap and incense. I’ve known her for many years and let my thirteen-year-old self serenade her with his confusion and chafing hormones. We separate and she returns to the doorway. I finger-click my way to the back curtain and when I turn round, I miss a beat. Ellis is standing there with a young woman by his side, her red-blond hair vivid against the shoulders of her navy duffel coat. There is a familiarity to them already, no space between their bodies, and I know they’ve already kissed. She’s smiling at me and she has eyes that question, and I know I’ll have trouble with those eyes, one day. I don’t want the music to end. I want to keep singing and dancing because I need time to know what to say because I know she’s the One, and I just need time.
I wake with a jolt. As if the car I’m in has crossed a cattle-grid. It’s a New Decade, I know it is. The nineties. How incredible. I roll over and stay put for days.
The clocks have gone forward and mornings are light. I go into Soho to do something enjoyable because I feel so fucking normal, it hurts. I’m out of the worst of it, I know I am. All I needed was time.
I sit outside Bar Italia huddled under a blue sky. I begin to read a newspaper but I can’t be bothered. I see faces I know and we smile and nod. I order a macchiato. I send it back because it’s not quite how I like it, but they know me and know how I am, I’ve been a regular for years. Inside, Sinatra sings ‘Fly Me to the Moon’: Annie’s song. It was legendary how badly she used to sing it.
Every time Annie sings an angel loses its wings. That’s what I used to say.
Be nice, Mikey, she’d say, stroking my face. Be nice.
I walk down Charing Cross Road and notice black blotches of chewing gum on the pavements. Why do people do that? Why don’t they care? I feel the effects of the coffee in my chest and back, a growing tightness.
I climb the steps to the National Gallery and feel dizzy. I sit by the bookshop and think of G. He’s distant. I feel nothing. He’s gone. I walk through the rooms, annoyed by the presence of others.
I stand in front of a painting of fifteen sunflowers, and I think of too many things and I start to hurt and the pain is intense. What did you see, Dora? Tell me what you saw.
I turn sharply. The man next to me is saying, Can you move?
I ignore him. I feel him pushing me. I turn. What? I say.
A photo? Wait, I say.
Pushing me, pushing me, pushing me.
Don’t fucking push me! someone screams. I have a right to be here! Got it? I have a fucking right to be here. A fucking right.
And I’m frozen because the words are mine, and I don’t know what to do because everyone’s looking at me, and now the security man’s coming towards me and I need to make people not feel frightened of me, because I’m not a frightening person. And I raise my hands and say, I’m going. It’s OK, I’m going. And I back out and people are staring at me, and I’m apologising. I feel dizzy but I mustn’t collapse, I have to make it to the door. I’m sorry, I keep muttering. Out into the cold now. Keep walking, I’m so sorry, keep walking.