Thai- Troubled

by Heather Mar-Gerrison

  He and Buzz were brothers and they were really good mates with River and Seth.

  Like I said, I got on well enough with them all but they were all so familiar with each other, that I kind of felt like an outsider. Maybe it was just me and my many hang ups…

  And it would be fair to say that I did have a fair number of them.

  I lived alone in a small townhouse on the other side of the town to all of the others, so I always had to drive to work.

  I had constant pressure from my rather overbearing father to join the family business – and when he wasn’t pressuring me into that he was trying to get me to date his business partner’s daughter, which I’d done to keep the peace – but it still wasn’t enough and all it had done was give him the idea that we’d one day marry – thereby uniting the two families and making the company even bigger – and therefore Dad even richer. Money. It was Dad’s God…

  I hadn’t the heart, nor the inclination to tell him that I would never want to marry her in a million years. I simply had no interest in his business partner’s daughter as anything more than a friend and marrying a friend, albeit a close one, wasn’t enough – for either of us.

  Francesca knew that I was gay and she didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry her but we were being pressured more and more on both sides – and something had to give before long. I’d promised her that I’d tell my parents the truth about my sexuality before the next Annual General Meeting, which was when they wanted us to get engaged – and it was looming – and I really wasn’t anywhere near ready…

  Having said that, I wasn’t ready to face Quentin’s friend Arthur, either but to be honest it was a rather less daunting prospect than facing my father and telling him that I liked men.

  But I couldn’t help the way I was. I did like men – and I liked one man in particular. I could totally see myself being with him for a long time to come. We gelled – and we were so compatible in the sexual sense –I’d never had anything like that with anyone before – of course I’d had sex before – plenty of times, with plenty of men. But no one compared to way I felt about Quentin and I had no idea why – but I guess when you fall in love, you fall in love…

  I wondered what he was doing this evening. Last night had been absolutely awesome. I sighed and readjusted myself in my jeans. Fuck. Just the thought of him had me getting hard.

  I’d just finished my last set and was gratefully heading for a bottle of water before I headed home. I really wanted to talk to Quentin. His silence all day was beginning to make me worry – particularly since I’d found him on that fucking bridge last night. What if I’d made things worse? What if he couldn’t live with himself for sleeping with me while Arthur was stuck in that hospital bed, dying… As I approached the entrance to the staff section, I noticed that Kenneth was sat at the bar. I froze. Had something happened to Quentin? Surely not. I’d have felt it, wouldn’t I? And if nothing had happened to him, then what the fuck did Kenneth want?

  “I’m sorry to keep turning up like a bad penny, Thai,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but Arthur’s health is deteriorating rather rapidly and he’s really quite insistent upon meeting you – before it’s too late…”

  I nodded, swallowing nervously. Fuck, if Buzz could tell I’d slept with Quentin last night, what the fuck was Arthur gonna say? “Right – when does he want to see me?”

  “How about now?” he asked, standing up and looking at me expectantly, “Can you get away?”

  Fuck. I’d finished my shift. I really had no excuse. But it was very late… I shrugged and nodded, “Why not?” I asked, with a sigh, “Let’s get it over with.”

  Kenneth chuckled, “I’ll drive you – you look exhausted.”

  I was. Having marathon sex all night, the night before and then working pretty much all day and night did that to a person. Not that I was about to mention it.

  “I’ll uh, go and get some decent clothes on.” I muttered and bolted for the staff rooms.

  *

  “Go on.” Kenneth pushed me towards the room, “He’ll be awake – he’s been waiting for you.”

  I nodded. No need to be nervous. He was just a man – a very rich and powerful man who had looked after Quentin for a number of years, but still…

  I poked my head around the door. I could see the figure of a medium-build man in the bed. He didn’t actually look all that terrifying after all. I let the breath go that I wasn’t actually aware I was holding, “Hello?”

  “Ah, Thai, I presume?” His voice was smooth.

  Fuck. He was dead posh… “Um, yes.”

  “Come in, boy – come in.”

  Boy? I hadn’t been called ‘boy’ by anyone other than my father in years. He seemed to think I was a child perpetually though, incapable of making my own decisions. How foolish he was…

  I stepped into the room and was slightly taken aback by the appraising once-over the man gave me. He nodded appreciatively. “Quentin has very good taste,” he finally said.

  Oh. Well, that was unexpected. “Th-thanks.” I managed to stammer.

  He chuckled. “Sit down, Thai.” He said.

  I sat in the easy chair at the side of his bed.

  “Thank you for coming.” He said, his breathing laboured, “I didn’t know if you would.”

  “Neither did I,” I admitted bashfully, “And I wouldn’t have if it was left up to me but Kenneth was quite insistent.”

  He chuckled again, “Yes,” he said, “He does have somewhat of an authoritative air about him, doesn’t he?”

  I shrugged. Not really knowing what to say. He was obviously frail. The stroke had taken away most of his movement – that much was obvious – and I knew that some people died from strokes even with all of the medical advances we’d made in recent years, but it was still a shock that he looked so bad – that he was dying.

  He coughed. “I wanted to see you – I wanted to talk to you about Quentin.”

  I nodded, “Okay.”

  He smiled, “When I first saw him – he reminded me so strongly of someone else, someone from my past – that I couldn’t look away…”

  Resisting the urge to roll my eyes at the old man’s romanticising, I smiled politely, “May I ask whom?”

  He sighed, “It was a long time ago – when I was around your age, I suppose. Things were different back then, my boy – a whole lot different to the way things are now. Thankfully, things are easier these days for men like me – like us.” He eyed me beadily.

  I shrugged and nodded. I did know this. And it still wasn’t all that easy. With parents like mine, it was anything but… “I guess – what year are we talking?”

  His expression turned wistful, “Nineteen seventy-three.”

  Wow. A long time ago, then. “How old were you?”

  “Let me see. It was at the beginning of the autumn term so I’d have just turned sixteen. Yes, that’s right – my exams were coming up in the following June…” I waited as he reminisced. “I was quite gifted at languages. My father thought it would be a good idea to take part in the foreign exchange program at my grammar school.”

  I thought I could see where this was headed. “Go on.” I said, leaning forward slightly.

  “Well, I went to stay with a French family – and their daughter, who was the same age as I – came to stay with mine.” I nodded. That made sense. “They had a son. He was a few years older than I was. Twenty-one, actually.”

  I blinked. Fuck me. Twenty-one and a sixteen- year-old? That was quite the age gap for the sixteen-year-old Arthur. “Okay.”

  He smiled. “He was around five-eight and slender, like Quentin – and he had the same unruly dark curls and horn-rimmed spectacles that I thought made him look so studious.” He chuckled, “We liked each other immediately. My French was good. His English excellent. We hit it off instantly. Our interest in each other grew into something neither of us were willing to acknowledge until I was due to come home…”

  “So,
what?” I asked, “You had one night of passion with the guy and it ruined you forever?” Jesus. I was a bit of a romantic at heart but even that seemed a little far-fetched.

  He smiled, “You’re mocking me.” He said, “But you’re not far off the truth. It was just a kiss that first year but neither of us could leave it at that. I went back to see him. Time and again we would meet up, year after year and our friendship grew into a full-blown love affair. But then he wrote to me. It was 1981 and I was twenty-six. He begged me never to come back. He’d met a woman, he said. Fallen in love, he said…”

  I felt his pain like a blow to the stomach. The poor guy. That was brutal. “You didn’t believe him?”

  He shook his head, “Of course I didn’t believe him.” He scoffed. “He loved me. I knew it. And I loved him too – maybe it just wasn’t the right time…”

  A lump appeared in my throat from nowhere. So, he’d never loved again? What about Quentin then? Why not allow himself to love him? I swallowed hard, “So, if you don’t mind me asking – what’s the story between you and Quentin?”

  Arthur smiled, “It was about five years ago.” He said with some difficulty, “I’d been in a meeting all day with some clients and I was tired and grouchy.” He laughed softly.

  I smiled and nodded, “Understandable.”

  He gave an awkward shrug with only one side of his body responding, “Anyway, Ken was chauffeuring me and I asked him to take us somewhere for a drink and something to eat instead of heading straight home – the meeting was quite a way out.”

  He reached for his drink and I jumped up to help him with it. His strength had all but left him. I wondered when he was going to mention Quentin but I didn’t like to rush him when speaking was so exhausting for him. I waited.

  “Thank you, young man.” He said. I smiled. I’d already grown up in his eyes then – no longer ‘boy’. “Anyway – we went into this rather nice-looking establishment and that was when I first laid eyes on your young friend.”

  My heart started to beat a little faster. At last!

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He chuckled, “He was sitting on a bar stool at the end of the bar. He’d had a couple of drinks. God only knows what the bartender had been thinking – he was quite clearly underage. Still, he had identification that said he was nineteen. I never did ask him who had got that for him…” He frowned.

  I didn’t give a shit who’d made him the fake ID. I wanted to know how he came to be living with Arthur. “Did he speak to you first?”

  Arthur grinned, transforming his old and tired face into something really quite handsome. I guessed this was the way he’d looked back then, “Oh, he spoke to me alright.” He said with another chuckle, “Totally propositioned me.”

  I blinked, “What? He was working as a prostitute?”

  Arthur shook his head, “Oh, no. No. Well, not really.” He said, “He was just trying to survive. He’d been kicked out of his home by his godawful stepfather. His mother had backed up the nasty bastard instead of her only son – he was desperate, heartbroken and hungry. What would you have done in the same circumstances?”

  I shook my head. My circumstances were a world away from Quentin’s. My father had no idea that I was gay. He was lining me up to marry his wealthy business partner’s daughter. I really had to tell him one of these days that I totally swung the other way – breaking his heart and my mother’s – and effectively ending our somewhat difficult but at the same time, strangely loving relationship. But there was no way I was marrying anyone. I didn’t believe in marriage. As far as I could see it was simply a way of controlling another human being and I wasn’t into being controlled – or in controlling anyone else. Freedom was what I believed in. Choice. The ability to live your own life the way you saw fit.

  “Did you let him?” I asked, beginning to feel annoyed that he’d taken advantage of a boy he could see was underage. Dirty old man…

  To my surprise, he shook his head. “No,” he said, “I was too shaken by his resemblance to the man I’d loved and lost. He reminded me so strongly of Xavier. I gave him the contents of my wallet and advised him to book himself a room at the pub; to get washed and to buy some new clothes – and to find a proper job. I then drank my drink and went with Kenneth to eat.”

  I frowned. So how the fuck did they end up as they were now? Did he give him a job? What? What?

  Arthur chuckled. “It was two hours later when we left the pub. The meal was excellent as I recall – and we went over the minutes of the meeting – analysing everything. Kenneth really is a knowledgeable man. I really couldn’t do without him.”

  He paused and part of me wanted to shake him to get him back on track.

  Finally, finally he started to talk again, “Anyway, we’d just pulled out onto the main road back towards home when this idiot walked straight off the edge of the kerb and fell right in front of the car. Kenneth did well to miss him.”

  Christ. Did he make a habit of falling in front of cars, or something? My lips twitched as I pictured the scene, “And don’t tell me – it was Quentin?”

  He nodded with a delighted chuckle, “Oh, yes. He’d taken my money and had spent quite a lot of it on alcohol.” He shook his head fondly, “Silly boy – anyway, regardless of how his face had transported me back to a time in my life that had once been euphoric and then almost unbearable to live through, I took pity on him. We took him home and somehow or other that was where he stayed. I gave him his own rooms, got him tutors to enable him to get through his A Levels, and then he started university. I’m very proud of what he’s achieved.”

  I was still confused. Quentin seemed to worship the ground the guy walked on. I was convinced he was in love with him. But it was difficult to really understand how Arthur felt about him. “So, is Quentin like a sort of son to you?”

  Arthur shook his head, “No.” he said, “Initially, I was fascinated with him. He reminded me so strongly of my lost opportunities in my youth that I spent hours languishing in my memories.” He sighed and looked up at me, “And then I guess I grew to love him. No. That’s doing him a disservice – I fell in love with him – or maybe I was instantly in love with him but afraid of my feelings… Look at me, Thai,” he said reproachfully, “I’m far too old for him. Always was – and I didn’t want the same fate for him that had befallen me. I wanted him to fall in love with someone that would always be there for him. On top of that I have quite an advanced illness – and I had it back then, too. It wouldn’t have been fair to him for me to have told him how I felt about him.”

  My jaw dropped. Did he have HIV? Had he contracted it from Xavier? Was that why Xavier had begged him not to come back? So many questions were chasing around my brain – and he was in no fit state to answer them – and what did it really matter anymore, anyway?

  But would the fact that he was HIV positive have mattered to Quentin? They could have still had a relationship if it had been managed properly. It wasn’t the killer it used to be with proper precautions… I was suddenly angry with Arthur for not pursuing a relationship with Quentin. They could have been happy... He’d made assumptions about Quentin that he couldn’t possibly have known. He had underestimated his strength of character – and the depth of his feelings and had dismissed them selfishly – assuming they couldn’t possibly match up to his own. “But he feels the same about you,” I told him earnestly, “I’m sure of that.” I couldn’t help blurting it out. Hell, it was obvious to me that Quentin loved the man. Fuck. He’d been so horrified with himself that he’d also managed to start having feelings for me that he’d bolted this morning and I had no idea where he was…

  Arthur looked stricken, “You must be mistaken.” He said, his face draining of the little colour he had.

  I bit my lip. Maybe I should have kept my big mouth shut but I didn’t think I was mistaken at all, “Maybe you should talk to Quentin about this – explain things to him.”

  He shot a hand out and grabbed mine, “I will.�
�� He said, “But I haven’t got long to live and I need to know something.”

  I winced. The old guy had a pretty decent grip to say he didn’t have long left, “Okay.” I agreed.

  “Are you in love with Quentin?” He asked.

  Well. I guess I could continue to lie to myself and remain in denial for my growing feelings – or I could face them head-on and embrace them. “Yes.” I said, “I think I am.”

  He seemed to relax. His grip on my hand loosened, “Good.” He said, “Then I’m not leaving him to fend for himself. You’ll be there to look after him.”

  I nodded, “Of course.” I’ll take care of him for the rest of our lives.

  He smiled, “He’ll be financially taken care of, of course – and Kenneth will always be on hand to help him.”

  Jesus. This guy thought of everything, even when he was at death’s door. What an extraordinary man he was.

  “So, uh, you and Quentin have never…?”

  Arthur smiled, “It’s not all about sex, you know. Well, maybe at your age it is…” He said, his eyes twinkling, “I was never a particularly sexual sort of man, well, not so much after Xavier anyway – and then I got ill not so much longer afterwards, so…” he trailed off. Poor guy. He was of an age where HIV was to be ashamed of. “That was part of the reason I never made a move on Quentin. I understand that young men have needs and I didn’t have the means to fulfil them for him. I didn’t want to make him feel bad for looking for it elsewhere when he was supposed to be committed to me, so I allowed him to think that I didn’t want any sort of romance between us. I don’t regret it… Not really. I’ve always known that we meant a great deal to each other and I suppose that was enough...”

  But they could have had so much more. My heart ached for Quentin. He’d never known real love.

  “Make him yours.” Arthur rasped, his voice failing him a little from talking so much, “Show him what real love is all about. Please, Thai.”

  I nodded, the lump in my throat threatening to choke me, “I will.” I said, “Thank you.”