by Anna Martin
“What do you want?”
“A favour,” he admitted, taking the seat opposite the desk.
Shenal opened the cup and took a tentative sip, then waved for him to go on.
“I’m not sure if I’ve got enough cash to finish the house,” he said in a rush.
“Ah.”
“All the renovation work will get done,” he hastened to add. “I’m just worried about the last little bits. Furniture and candlesticks and linens and….”
“Finishing touches?” she supplied.
“Yes,” he said, relieved that she understood.
“Okay. So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I was wondering”—he took a deep breath for courage—“if I’d be able to take out a loan. And secure it against the house.”
Shenal pulled a well-chewed Biro from behind her ear and tapped it against her lower lip.
“Probably not,” she said lightly.
Henry’s heart sank.
“But Nell might be able to on your behalf. Or I might be able to, as a trustee.”
“How… what would I need to do to make that happen?” he asked.
“Convince me that it’s a good idea,” Shenal said with a smirk.
“Convince you? I don’t have anything prepared, you know.”
“Yeah. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll say no. If I do, you can just go to Nell and ask her. She’ll override any of my bad decisions.”
Her words gave him confidence, even if he wasn’t really sure what he was asking her for. Well, money. He wanted money.
Henry took a deep breath. “Renovation will be complete in the next four to six weeks. We’ve got enough cash left over from the sale of the land to do most of the decorating. I want to restore to a high quality—the highest quality possible. I’m cleaning and reusing as much as I can, but if I’m going to turn the house into a wedding venue, then there’s things that I have to buy new.”
As he talked, he felt his confidence grow and unconsciously leaned forward in his seat, gesturing with his hands as he talked about his ideas for uniforms for staff, the name badges he’d seen online, the local restoration company who were going to reupholster some of the existing furniture for him.
Shenal nodded, listened attentively, and left questions until the end (without being asked).
“What would happen,” she asked, once Henry was done with his impromptu pitch, “if you didn’t get the money?”
He sat back. “I’d still open,” he said honestly. “I’d probably invest some of my own money into it and pay myself back out of any earnings. Things would probably end up coming from eBay instead of the craftspeople I want to use.”
“So it’s a question of quality.”
“Yes… and no. It’s about doing it properly and treating the house and the wider community with the respect I think both deserve.”
Shenal smiled. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll run it past Nell, and we’ll probably get a better rate if we look online before going to the bank. But I can’t see a problem with what you’re suggesting.”
Henry resisted the urge to hug her. “Thanks, Shenal.”
She smiled. “Any time.
Chapter Eight
Dusk fell over the village as Henry walked down to the pub on a Friday evening, not really knowing why he was going there. Ryan had already left when Henry had arrived home earlier in the afternoon, and after wandering around the empty farmhouse for a few hours, he felt lonely. He’d been thinking about New York, not that this happened very often, and his nights out with friends. And he missed the vibrancy of being around people and alcohol and life and fun…. So he’d changed. And left.
And was now starting to regret that decision, just a little bit.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be in the pub—he did—he was just nervous about walking into a room where everyone knew everyone else, and everyone knew who he was, and he didn’t know who any of them were.
The noise of another band spilled out of the pub as a couple of older women left, lifting their hands in greeting as they passed. He nodded, and smiled, and pushed his way through the crowd.
“Henry!”
Turning his head sharply, he sought out the person calling for him, quickly finding Ryan at the bar and sighing a little (internal) sigh of relief.
“All right mate? What you drinking?”
“Gin,” Henry said quickly, adding “please” as more of an afterthought. Tonight was a gin night.
“No problem.”
Ryan leaned over the bar, which was unusually crowded, and found his sister serving at the end. When Henry gave him an inquisitive look, Ryan responded with a shrug and backed away from the queue to make his way around to where Stella was pouring a pint.
“Thank fuck,” Stella said as they approached.
To Henry’s eye, she looked more than slightly dishevelled. Her hair was pulled back and secured with a pencil, but several curls were escaping. Her face was flushed and her eyes a little wild.
“What’s going on?” Ryan asked.
“Fucking hell,” Stella said, swapping the pint for a note and turning to the till. “Caz is off sick, and Danny’s in London for the weekend. I’ve tried calling Gina, but she’s not picking up, and Andy’s on his way in, but he needs to get Jack settled at his mum’s first. It’s just me and Jen on, but she started at lunchtime, so I need to let her go at eight, and we’re stacked.”
“I can help,” Henry offered, surprising himself as well as Stella and Ryan. “Really,” he continued, surprising himself further, “I worked in a bar in Manhattan. I can serve drinks. It’s just the money I’m not quite there with yet.”
Stella’s sharp nod was his cue to duck behind the bar. He felt Ryan do the same after him.
“Can we do a stock clearance tonight, do you think?” Ryan asked.
A man yelled down the bar: “Oi! Stell!”
“Wait a fucking moment!” she yelled back, then turned to Ryan. “Yeah. I can put in an extra order if we clear it right down, and they’ll get it here by three tomorrow. Let’s do it.”
“Set everything at two fifty?”
“And soft drinks at a quid,” she said, confirming.
Stella reached to the back wall of the bar, took hold of the rope attached to a shiny brass bell, and rang it sharply until the assembled patrons quieted.
“Right, boys and girls,” Stella called, “Call your mothers, call your wives. Tell them you’re going to be home late, Stella’s doing a stock clearance. Two fifty for anything on the bar or in the fridge, double up on your spirits for an extra quid. Call your brother, call your dad, and tell them to get their fat arses down here ’cos I won’t be doing it again any time soon.
“Who’s next?”
It was, at once, exactly like and having nothing at all in common with Henry’s last experience of working in a bar. The shiny gay bar in the Village served more Cosmos than pints, and the beer came from bottles, not a tap. Here, people were happy to wait for their Guinness to settle and teased him good-naturedly when he had no clue what a “pint of Doom” was.
As the band started up, he learned the names of all the local ales and how to use a pump to serve them (under Ryan’s watchful guidance), and by the time the first song was over, he’d rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows and had figured out the difference between a five and a ten pound note.
The phrase “and one for you, love” seemed to be uttered with every other drink he served, and even while refusing more than he accepted, a line of empty glasses started to be assembled behind him.
Stella didn’t mind him drinking on the job. In fact, she almost encouraged it. Ryan certainly was, and it was to him that Henry most often turned when he needed help with the till or figuring out what the hell someone was asking for.
The space behind the bar was small, only really big enough for a couple of people at a time, and he guessed that when the pub was built no one had taken in
to account having to squeeze three adults back there. It meant that passing someone became a rather intimate affair, and Henry couldn’t help but wonder if Ryan pressed his hand to his sister’s lower back as he tried to get to the till, or slapped her ass when she bent over to get a Corona out of the fridge.
He hoped not.
When the band finished their first set with a rather raucous number that Henry didn’t recognise, a path to the bar was cleared for them. Not that Stella made them pay for their drinks.
“You must be Henry,” the short redhead girl said as she hopped right up to sit on the bar.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up at her.
“You’re pretty. Two pints of Stag, two JD and Coke, and a ’Bow and black.”
She said it like a challenge, like she wasn’t expecting Henry to nod sharply and turn away to start pouring the drinks. Someone put a song on the jukebox, and suddenly the pub was filled with music again as Henry lined up the first two pints for the redheaded fiddler.
“Twelve fifty,” he said, echoing the local tone, and earned himself a smile. He took her money, gave her change, and nodded to the next patron to take his order.
By the time Andy arrived, things were starting to settle down, and Henry was beginning to feel the effects of the four (or was it five?) glasses of gin and tonic he’d drunk through the course of the evening.
“I’m just going to the loo,” Stella said as she ducked back under the bar. “And to get a breath of fresh air.”
“No problem,” Henry said.
He swapped the gin for a large glass of ice water and sipped it contemplatively. The band had done the second part of their set and were just packing away. The lights were still pretty dim, but people didn’t seem to mind.
Both doors—the ones at the front and the one that led to the garden at the rear—were propped open, trying to tempt a breeze through that didn’t seem to exist. It wasn’t hot, not really, but there were enough people in the little pub to make it warm, and the fresh air that did make it through was a blessing.
“You did good tonight,” Ryan said, joining him with a pint of cider. Well, half a pint. He’d already chugged the first half.
“Thanks,” Henry said and raised his glass. “I enjoyed myself, actually.”
“Don’t let Stella hear you saying that. She’ll get you signed on as staff.”
Henry chuckled. “I don’t know about that.”
When Stella and Andy came back, she shooed them out the door for a much-deserved break. Ryan snagged a couple of bags of peanuts as he passed the basket they were kept in, and they found their way to a picnic table at the back of the garden.
It was colder out here, much quieter too, and Henry pulled in deep lungfuls of crisp, cool air. Ryan sat down on the table part of the picnic table and propped his feet up on the seat. He split the bag of peanuts open and pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his back pocket, rolling a cigarette with deft fingers.
“You smoke?” he said, offering it to Henry.
“I try not to,” Henry said wryly, then accepted it. Ryan handed him a box of matches and went about rolling another. “Matches? Really?”
“Fuck off. I lost my lighter,” Ryan mumbled. “They were all I had left in the kitchen.”
“You know smoking is really bad for… oh fuck, that’s good,” Henry finished, exhaling white smoke into the night air. It was picked up by the breeze and carried in swirling patterns before dissipating completely.
Ryan snorted in amusement and took his box of matches back. “You don’t have any idea what you did tonight, do you?” he asked, lighting his cigarette and shaking out the flame on the match.
“I poured some drinks?”
“Well, yeah.” Even in the dark, Henry knew Ryan’s eyes were rolling. “More than that, though. You just integrated yourself into the village. People who had heard of you know who you are now, and you’ve got yourself a big stamp of approval. People around here like Stella, and if she likes you, then they’ll like you too. Doing something nice for Stell, not because she asked you, not because you had to, but because you offered—well, things like that will be noticed.”
“Are you saying I’m one of you now?”
“No,” Ryan said and looked over at him. “But you’re getting there, city boy.”
Henry huffed a laugh and took a final drag on the cigarette, stubbing it out when he exhaled and dumping it in the ashtray on the table.
“Do we need to go back in?”
Ryan shrugged.
“Do you want another drink?”
Ryan drained his pint glass and winced, shook his head, and winced again.
“Do you have to work in the morning?”
“Fuck no.”
“Come on,” Henry said, smiling. “We should probably head home.”
When he checked his watch, it was a little past midnight. He’d been working behind the bar for a little under four hours. Things were still pleasantly fuzzy, the sweetness of the night air laced with the scent of wildflowers and cigarette smoke heady to his gin-soaked sinuses.
“We should—just go—say good-bye to Stella,” Ryan said and was already a few steps away by the time Henry caught up with his meaning.
Good-byes took time, once thanks were given and hugs exchanged, offers of drinks refused and finally, finally, getting to the door without anyone else wanting to exchange greetings. With the night being cool and clear, the walk back to the farmhouse seemed to take no time at all, and with Ryan and Henry now comfortable in each other’s presence, they were content to walk in silence.
Back at the house, neither man felt the need to turn any lights on as they left shoes at the door, locked and bolted it and, by mutual, silent agreement, headed to the kitchen, guided by moonlight, for tea.
“I had fun tonight,” Henry said as they waited for the kettle to boil.
Ryan smiled, slow and easy, a warmth in his eyes fuelled by alcohol and the lateness of the hour. Henry let the thought enter his mind, dismissed it, then dismissed his dismissal and decided to act, for once, on stupid impulse.
Henry took two long strides forward, trapped Ryan against the counter with one hand on either side of Ryan’s waist, hands gripping the cool marble countertop, and pressed his mouth hard against Ryan’s.
For a moment Ryan resisted, then he seemed to melt into the kiss, his hands grabbing Henry’s shoulders and his slick tongue licking at Henry’s bottom lip.
As quickly as it started, it stopped. With a gasp for breath, Ryan pushed him away and reached up to rub at his mouth, seemingly in shock.
“What the fuck?” they both demanded simultaneously.
They stood in Ryan’s kitchen, an impasse, each wearing murderous expressions.
“How did you know I’m… I’m…” Ryan demanded, although his sentence lost its power somewhere around halfway through.
“Gay, Ryan,” Henry said, his eyes narrowing. “You can say the word.”
Ryan scowled. He waited for a response to the question he’d never finished.
But Henry could play the waiting game too. He raised an eyebrow, waiting to see if the revelation would dawn on the other man first.
“You have Grindr.”
“Oh.” Ryan at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Yeah. I should probably get rid of that.”
“Why? Is it something to be ashamed of?”
“No!”
“Then why are you acting like it is?”
“Don’t be such a fucking girl!”
“I am not a girl,” Henry shouted. “I’m a fucking man. And I might be a fag, but I’m doing a hell of a better job at being a man than you are right now.”
And even though he knew it was dramatic, and probably proving Ryan’s point, he stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind himself as he left.
Chapter Nine
The only problem was, he had nowhere to go. He could storm around the village, for sure, but there were still people who would be on their way home from
the pub, and he didn’t particularly want to explain why he was out on the streets in the early hours of the morning.
He could go down to the house, but that didn’t particularly appeal to him either. It was big and imposing enough in daylight, and downright scary in the dark.
So Henry stormed once around the yard, then went round to the back of the house to go up to his room via the fire route stairs. In hindsight, he probably should have expected Ryan to be sitting there, waiting for him.
He stared up at the hunched figure, dark against the night sky, almost hidden were it not for the glow of his phone lighting up his face.
In his pocket, Henry’s own phone buzzed.
He pulled it out and opened up the familiar yellow and black app.
Hey, hot stuff. You interested in some fun?
He looked up to where Ryan was still sitting several feet above him, wearing a slightly sheepish expression.
“Is this all a joke to you?”
“It’s easier to make it a joke than accept it as reality.”
There was so much vulnerability in that statement. This poor closeted guy. It was way too easy to forget that he himself had been out and proud for over ten years. There were still guys who were thirty or older and hiding their sexuality under a veneer of heteronormativity.
Henry reached out a hand and waited. He felt as much as saw Ryan taking a deep breath, steeling himself before rising and descending the few steps to slip his hand into Henry’s.
“I’m not going to out you, you know,” Henry said quietly, dropping Ryan’s hand. That was enough of a show of confidence for one night.
“I don’t… that’s not… I don’t even know if I’m gay,” Ryan said desperately.
“Okay. I’m not going to force you into defining yourself either. Just don’t—please don’t try to lie to me. It’s insulting.”
