Driftwood

by Harper Fox

  A warmth at his elbow. Thomas felt it through the rolled-back sleeve of his shirt. He turned around, smiling. Yes.

  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  The room was very warm. Thomas wondered if that had set the colour under Flynn’s tan, but as he watched, it faded. God, was this still a world in which he could make someone flush with pleasure at his arrival? He pushed the idea away. Flynn could just as well have been regretting the invitation, embarrassed that he had turned up.

  “Well,” Thomas said. “I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t get the chance to explain, about the sculpture.”

  It was strange, he thought. The crush at the bar was one shade off a rugby scrum, but it felt as if the two of them were quite alone. He doubted the harried bartender would ever notice them, especially since neither he nor Flynn seemed able to spare attention to catch his eye. He had managed to commandeer a barstool, and Flynn had squeezed in beside him so that they were elbow-to-elbow on the beer-soaked formica surface.

  “You don’t have to. I was down in Marazion that afternoon, and I must’ve still had water on my brain—not because I bought you something, I mean. To go over the top and embarrass you.”

  “Oh, it didn’t. At least…” Thomas shook his head. “Not in that way, though I know how much those pieces cost. I meant to return it to you personally, to explain. Then things went a bit…” he searched for an expression to convey the debacle at the Hawke Lake barricade, “…a bit pear-shaped, and I ended up dumping it with the guard on the main gate. I’m sorry.”

  Flynn laughed. “I can imagine the scene. In fact, Junior Seaman Davis described it in detail when he brought the parcel to my barracks. He said you looked ready to take on the whole airbase, one man at a time. They’re silly bastards. Forget about them.” A movement in the crowd threatened to knock Thomas off his barstool, and Flynn stretched out a warning hand to shield him. “Christ, what a bunch of thugs. We’ll go somewhere quieter in a minute. Just…just tell me one thing. Did you like it?”

  “What?” Thomas asked stupidly. He had been too caught up in watching his companion’s easy grace. He’d seen him so far in a wetsuit and an unbecoming orange flying kit. In his civvies—just a black T-shirt and jeans, but outlining every plane and curve of his shoulders, his hips—he was distracting. Like the sculpture, pleasing from all angles. Renewing his charm with each motion. “Oh, the… Yes. I loved it, actually. Was it okay? Could you return it all right?”

  “Er… Yes. Yes, sure. Come on, let me get you a drink. What’ll you have?”

  “Thanks. Just an orange, please.”

  “You’ll need more than that to get you through a night with this lot.”

  Thomas glanced round him at the pandemonium, smiling. “Probably, but I’m driving.”

  “You can still have one.”

  “No, I can’t.” Thomas kept his smile in place, but felt Flynn’s attention refocus upon him—a quick, gentle concern, a warm readiness of perception he hardly knew how to bear. He did not want to tell this new friend that just one, on a night like this, would trigger the next fifteen or so, and maybe Flynn knew already—had heard in the village shop that the Sankerris GP sometimes went on discreet, off-duty three-day benders. Struggling to keep it light, he said, with mock solemnity, “I’m a doctor, Flynn. It’s my job to preserve life.”

  “Yes, but not in bloody formaldehyde, Doc!” A big hand landed on Thomas’s shoulder. He jumped, hard, and felt Flynn move imperceptibly to steady him. Rob Tremaine had erupted from the crowd behind them, grinning maniacally, plainly three sheets to the wind. “Bill,” he yelled to the bartender, who dropped a glass as if it had scalded him and abandoned the customer he’d been serving. “Pint for me and for Flynn, and make the doc’s a screwdriver. And bring them out the back, for God’s sake—I can’t hear myself think in this circus.”

  The pub had a small beer garden, more of a yard, fenced around with concrete-poured walls similar to the ones that enclosed the airbase. Security concerns, Thomas wondered, trailing Rob and Flynn outside, or maybe an attempt to shield the neighbouring houses.

  “Is it always like this?” he asked, watching Tremaine steer Flynn to a table, a proprietorial hand planted on his spine, aware that, if he did not take care, he would find himself disliking Tremaine intensely.

  Flynn glanced round at him, smiling wryly, perhaps reading the thought. “No. Special occasion. Birthday.”

  “Oh.” Thomas took a seat at the wooden trestle. He thought that Tremaine, settling opposite, would have pulled Flynn onto his lap if he could. Fine with Thomas, if Flynn had not looked uncomfortable, stiff with resistance in his grasp. “Yours?”

  “No, mine,” Tremaine boomed, lifting his pint. “Cheers, lads. Drink up. No, Flynnie here’s a February baby, a merry…” He trailed off suddenly, as if catching himself about to commit a faux pas.

  “A merrybegot?” Thomas finished for him. He had knocked back his drink without noticing, and could feel the familiar dangerous sparkle in his blood. That was old Cornish. And now that he’d listened to him for a while, Tremaine was hiding a good old West Country drawl beneath his officer-class RP. Come to think of it, Thomas recognised the name. Recognised him, he thought.

  “A merrybegot’s a baby conceived in May,” he explained to Flynn, who was looking bewildered. “Off in the greenwood after a Beltane ceremony.” He gave Flynn a smile from which he could not hide a trace of tenderness. “They’d arrive in February, with the lambs. Considered blessed by the gods. Robert, you’ve got to be one of the old Sankerris Bay Tremaines, to know that.”

  Robert stared at him. Thomas hadn’t meant to take the wind from his sails, but he wasn’t sorry to see it go. “Yeah,” he said, then, clearly regretting the unguarded response, “No. That is, I am, but from the London branch. Moved away from here to make money centuries ago and never looked back.”

  Thomas let it go, but he found he was amused. Plainly this great sophisticated airman was scabby little Bobby Tremaine, descendant of a family of notorious seventeenth-century moonrakers. Thomas should know, having not only treated the current little scions of the race for fleas and malnutrition, and arranged social care where necessary, but being descended himself from an equally infamous rival smuggling gang, whose territory had overlapped theirs, with violent results. Penroses and Tremaines, fighting tooth and claw for contraband, luring ships to their doom on the rocks of Sankerris cove. He used to run the streets with Bobby, although even then, with the ruthless pack instincts of childhood, he and his friends had distanced themselves from the Bay kids, their poverty and disasters. You’d play with them, but not invite them home. The family face was distinct. Thomas wondered why Tremaine was lying.

  Ashamed of his old prejudices, his readiness to judge, Thomas smiled at him. He was the last person to object, if someone had chosen some other life than the one he’d been born with. “Well,” he said. “Happy birthday. I’ll go and get a round in.”

  By the time he got back, Rob and Flynn were nowhere to be seen. He set the drinks on the trestle table, reflecting grimly how much easier it had been to thread the crowd and make his presence known at the bar with even one shot of alcohol inside him, how much easier still to get back if he’d magicked his second orange juice into a screwdriver too. What had stopped him was the knowledge that, if he did, he’d have to find somewhere in Breagh to spend the night. What he did to himself was his own business, but there the harm stopped.

  He seemed to have lost his hosts anyway. Well, Tremaine had looked ready to drag Flynn off to his lair. Thomas’s stomach lurched at the thought, but he told himself that he was relieved. He could get out of here now.

  There was an archway to the left of the doors back into the pub. Thomas thought it led to the toilets and then through to the front and the car park. A delicate May dusk had fallen, a violet cobweb behind the glaring white arc light the pub management was keeping trained on the outdoor revellers. The entrance to the passage was stark black in its shadow, from this
angle at least. To those better placed at the other tables scattered around the yard, whatever it held was apparently of some interest, and as Thomas drew closer, he picked up the distinct sound of an argument begun in discreet whispers, starting to escalate to shouts.

  Well, Tremaine was shouting. Flynn’s voice was in there—trying, Thomas thought, to make a point—but he was still sober, and his low-voiced fervour wasn’t carrying against the tide. Thomas heard, who does he think, and what did you bring him here for, and did his very best to stop listening. None of his business, even if Rob was doing his best to make it that way, and he didn’t want to add to the performance. Flynn and Tremaine were drawing enough attention on their own. Glancing round the crowd, Thomas saw a few benign smiles, as if this might be a regular sideshow on airbase nights out, but only a few. The older men—higher-ranking officers, presumably—looked grim in a way that did not promise any good to Rob’s career or Flynn’s. Locking his gaze to the ground, Thomas took his jacket off the trestle bench and checked for his car keys. Definitely time for him to go.

  A gasp from the archway’s shadows. It wouldn’t have slowed Thomas down, except that he wouldn’t have thought Flynn could sound like that. Outraged, yes, and that was the bulk of the message. But under it—tiny, fleeting, a flash Thomas wondered if he’d imagined. Yes, fear.

  Flynn, though elegant, looked tough as nails. Nobody’s pushover. For Thomas, that abruptly made it worse. What the hell hold did Rob have on him? Dropping his coat, he strode over to the passageway entrance, ignoring the hoots and warning shouts from the crowd.

  Okay, that kind of hold. Not unexpected, though he could hardly believe Tremaine had been mad enough to try it here. He was grasping Flynn by the hair at the back of his neck, and if he’d got away with one forced kiss, Flynn was definitely not having any of the next. His hands were planted flat to Tremaine’s chest.

  Without conscious thought on the subject, Thomas decided enough was enough. He grabbed Rob’s shoulder. “Hoi,” he said, his own old Cornish burr rising through his manners and his surgery veneer. “Flynn, is this bastard bothering you?”

  Tremaine spun on him with a snarl. Thomas was surprised at the purity of hatred on his face. Flynn, released, almost fell over. “Shit,” he gasped. “Thomas, for God’s sake. Get out of here. I can handle him.”

  Of course he can. That was what he got for interfering—Flynn looked, if possible, even more mortified now than before. Thomas raised both hands. “Great. Do that. Handle him, please.”

  He turned to go. A vast weight landed on his back. Without an instant’s thought, he ducked, uncurled and sent Rob Tremaine flying over his shoulder to crash in a flail of arms and legs in the courtyard.

  A roar of laughter went up. Thomas didn’t think it was funny. He had no idea he’d remembered his unarmed-combat training, let alone that he’d be willing to use it on a helpless drunk. First, do no harm… He glanced at Flynn, whose face was still a white blank of shock. Self-disgust tore at him. He had got into a public brawl within half an hour of starting his first social endeavour in years.

  He went to crouch by Tremaine, automatically beginning diagnostic checks—that his head wasn’t damaged, that his pupils were the same size. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You startled me. Are you hurt?”

  Tremaine’s big fist shot up and fastened in the front of his shirt.

  Once more, Thomas unreflectingly blocked the move, as he had with dozens of soldiers who’d grasped at him in extremity before he could get drugs into them. Rob’s eyes blazed into his. What was the problem here? Yes, he’d caught him mid-tussle with Flynn, but it was hardly as if half his division hadn’t been watching that too. Christ, was it because he’d recognised him? It couldn’t be the first time for that, either, but Flynn was new to the district. Maybe Robert had told him a different story. “Stop it. Are you hurt?”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  “The bare bloody minimum, in your case. But I’m a doctor.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Tremaine relaxed his grip and fell back, sneering. “Right. I know you too, Doctor. Up in your ivory tower, drinking yourself to death. No girlfriend, no missus. Queer as fuck, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, you chose the wrong night to crawl out and have a grab at my Flynn.”

  “Oh, for…” Thomas sat back on his heels. He refused to turn and look around the courtyard, which had fallen silent to listen. He couldn’t blame them. He had lived a quiet life, detached. Probably perceived as aloof. Their attention to this total and sudden exposure felt like hammer-blows to bruised skin. Flynn had stumbled over and crouched on Tremaine’s other side, his face ashen. Thomas couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Rob, please,” Flynn said unsteadily. “You’re pissed. Thomas hasn’t done anything to you. Let us help you up, and we’ll go home.”

  “Don’t need any fucking help,” Tremaine growled, and rolled lithely to his feet. Thomas braced not to take a reflexive step back—or, which he was gathering would have been worse, a step to shield Flynn. He was bemused at the impulse. Tremaine was big, but Flynn’s ability to take care of himself declared itself in every leanly muscled inch.

  The three of them stood staring at one another, a grim impasse Thomas was at a loss to know how to end. He’d just have walked away from it, had not Flynn’s distress latched itself into his heart, exerting an inexplicable steel-cable tug despite all the disasters being with him seemed to attract. “It’s all right,” he said to Flynn softly, and reaching a hand to his shoulder, made his last mistake.

  Tremaine slammed him up against the courtyard wall. If he heard Flynn’s shout or felt his restraining grip, he gave no sign. “Right!” he bellowed, nose an inch from Thomas’s. “I tell you what—you can have the little fucker. Good luck with him. Good luck with the nightmares and the novel fucking ways he comes up with of committing fucking suicide every other fucking week. Ask him why he doesn’t fly anymore. You’ll be a lovely bloody pair, actually—the fuck-up pilot and the alcoholic village quack.”

  He let Thomas go. Turned, and began to walk off. Thomas watched, immobile. Everything had started going very slow, an underwater sensation he recognised. For once he welcomed the symptoms of oncoming fugue. Like Flynn’s wave, the seventh wave, it would carry him out of here, what was left of his dignity intact. He would hear and see little, drive home efficiently, go to bed… Voices came oddly to him, distorting, crackling. He could see Flynn’s face, also near to his now. He felt the warm brush of Flynn’s palm down his cheek, almost heard his shocked, pleading voice. Thomas, don’t listen. I’m so sorry.

  What was he sorry for? Thomas looked at him for a moment. It was almost a shame that in a second’s time the cold would come down on him, extinguishing everything—rage, which he could do without, and even the exquisite pleasure of that soothing touch. He waited.

  It didn’t happen.

  “Robert,” he said, low, smooth as silk. Tremaine was nearly at the door, but he turned. Thomas stepped up to him. He drew back his fist, gave the other man time to see it, to know his intention, and belted him as hard as he could in the face.

  Tremaine went down—decisively this time—and this time Dr. Penrose did not care if he cracked his thick skull like a melon.

  He eased the Land Rover carefully out of its space. He was stone-cold sober now, the alcohol metabolised off in the adrenaline still blazing through his system. The knuckles of his left hand were bleeding. He had disgraced himself, absolutely. He felt wonderful. Had he raised a brief, startled cheer from the watching crowd? He wasn’t sure. Didn’t care. He felt as if he’d punched the face of every army bigot who had ever called him queer, every supercilious public-school major-general who thought that doctors had an easy berth on the front line. Better still, every fear of his own that had been twisting up his life since his return. His heart was pounding. Drawing deep breaths, he wound down the window to gasp the night air, which was cool now, smelling of sea salt and freedom, and pulled out onto the road.

  Movement in his rear
view mirror. For an instant he thought that Tremaine might have followed him, and shuddered at the inward roar of anticipation the prospect caused. Easing off the gas, he let the Rover’s engine idle.

  Flynn appeared at the window, his hair disordered, breath coming ragged. “Thomas. Wait a second. Please.”

  Thomas pulled up the handbrake. He watched as Flynn laid a hand on the window to steady himself, opened his mouth as if to explain. Then he visibly gave up and lowered his head so that his brow was resting on the back of his hand. “Oh God.”

  Thomas looked at him. Whatever Tremaine’s power over him, it could throw him into utter disarray. His breath was coming far harder and more ragged than his run from the pub could account for, and the knuckles of the hand Thomas could see were clenched white. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, but…that was the worst social occasion of my entire bloody life.”

  Thomas considered. He would have liked to say something to make him feel better, and cast back over his own bloody life to see if he could remember anything worse. He came up dry. “Yeah,” he agreed, after a few seconds. “Mine too. What’s his problem, Flynn?”

  “Whatever it is, will you at least believe that it’s my fault as much as his?”

  The street was quiet. Its single light caught shades of bronze in Flynn’s hair. His bowed head was eloquent of something approaching desperation, surrender. Thomas resisted, and then did not resist, the urge to caress it, and Flynn looked up in surprise. “Whatever you say. Is he all right?”

  “Yes, he… He’s fine.”

  “Good. Do you want me to run you back to the base? Give him some time to cool off on his own?”

  Flynn laughed tiredly. “My address is bunk two, room six of the west barrack. His is bunk one. Will you just drop me off at the B&B in Boskenna? It’s on your way home.”

  Thomas thought, with fear and repulsion, of Flynn encountering Tremaine again tonight. Boskenna didn’t seem far enough—and, as the only accommodation for miles around, not much of a secret bolthole. “Get in,” he said, and when Flynn had clambered up into the passenger seat beside him, he gave the wheel a thoughtful tap and turned to him. “Would it cause a diplomatic incident if you came home with me?”